The Marginalian
How to Be a Living Poem: Lucille Clifton on the Balance of Intellect and Intuition in Creative Work...
"I didn’t graduate from college, which isn’t necessary to be a poet. It is only necessary to be...
a year ago
"I didn’t graduate from college, which isn’t necessary to be a poet. It is only necessary to be interested in humans and to be in touch with yourself as a human."
The Marginalian
Beautiful Bacteria: Mesmerizing Photomicroscopy of Earth’s Oldest Life-forms
For as long as humans have been alive, we have mistaken the limits of our sense-perception for the...
a month ago
For as long as humans have been alive, we have mistaken the limits of our sense-perception for the full extent of reality — thinking our galaxy the only one, because that was as far as we could see; thinking life impossible below 300 fathoms, because that was as far as we could...
Wuthering...
Books I read in October 2024 - the old, care-free days of Wuthering Heights
I should do one of these “what I read” bits before October becomes
too distant.
I should also...
a month ago
I should do one of these “what I read” bits before October becomes
too distant.
I should also mention my health. A little over a year ago a surgeon of genius
removed a cancerous tumor from my liver, taking much of my liver along with
it. My recovery went well, and my liver
grew...
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
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
'Like a Golden Retriever'
Part of the pleasure of listening to the late jazz
musician Dave McKenna playing piano was hearing...
a year ago
Part of the pleasure of listening to the late jazz
musician Dave McKenna playing piano was hearing the musical quotes he wove into his improvisations. The practice, deplored by some
critics, was not unique to McKenna, of course. To cite only jazz musicians I
have seen in person,...
Josh Thompson
How Can You Buy Happiness?
You can’t, but that won’t stop you and me from trying, at least a little.
We (Humans, americans, at...
over a year ago
You can’t, but that won’t stop you and me from trying, at least a little.
We (Humans, americans, at least “other people like me”) like to buy
things. But we should do more than just buy
things.
Experiences can have a much bigger impact on people’s happiness than things, and a...
The Marginalian
The Mind in the Machine: John von Neumann, the Inception of AI, and the Limits of Logic
"Something very small, so tiny and insignificant as to be almost invisible in its origin, can...
a year ago
"Something very small, so tiny and insignificant as to be almost invisible in its origin, can nonetheless open up a new and radiant perspective, because through it a higher order of being is trying to express itself."
Josh Thompson
Limitations of My Own Thinking
I sometimes make recommendations, or at least recount a story that has “actionable insights”....
over a year ago
I sometimes make recommendations, or at least recount a story that has “actionable insights”. Anytime this happens, I start tripping over myself with warnings and qualifying statements.
Here’s what would happen:
I would make a recommendation (“start a side project to help get a...
Wuthering...
Books I Read in October 2023
The five-day hospital stay breaking the month in half is likely invisible to anyone but me, but that...
a year ago
The five-day hospital stay breaking the month in half is likely invisible to anyone but me, but that is why the fiction list is so mystery-heavy, and for that matter so long. Many of these books, the post-surgery group, are not just short but light, well-suited for the invalid's...
The Marginalian
The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating: An Uncommon Meditation on Presence and the Aperture of Wonder
"Survival often depends on a specific focus: a relationship, a belief, or a hope balanced on the...
a year ago
"Survival often depends on a specific focus: a relationship, a belief, or a hope balanced on the edge of possibility."
The Marginalian
Octavia Butler on Religion and the Spirituality of Symbiosis
"On many levels, we wind up being strengthened by what we join, or what joins us, as well as by what...
a year ago
"On many levels, we wind up being strengthened by what we join, or what joins us, as well as by what we combat."
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
The main trick is to design them with extension in mind so that you won't have to break them later.
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Knows to Get a Dollar'
The word tummler I learned from A.J. Liebling. It’s
the title of a story he collected in his first...
10 months ago
The word tummler I learned from A.J. Liebling. It’s
the title of a story he collected in his first book, Back Where I Came From (1938). “Tummler” was published in the
February 26, 1938 issue of The New Yorker
and begins:
“To the boys
of the I.&Y., Hymie Katz is a hero. He is a...
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
“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...
The Marginalian
The Warblers and the Wonder of Being: Loren Eiseley on Contacting the Miraculous
"The time has to be right; one has to be, by chance or intention, upon the border of two worlds. And...
10 months ago
"The time has to be right; one has to be, by chance or intention, upon the border of two worlds. And sometimes these two borders may shift or interpenetrate and one sees the miraculous."
This Space
39 Books: 1988
This is one of my most surprising discoveries in second-hand bookshop trawls in the far off days...
7 months ago
This is one of my most surprising discoveries in second-hand bookshop trawls in the far off days when they existed, especially because it was found in Portsmouth, not the most literary of cities despite Dickens and Conan-Doyle (or perhaps because of Dickens and Conan-Doyle)....
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Top Thing of the World'
John Keats’
meditation on a reader’s paradise:
“I had an
idea that a Man might pass a very pleasant...
2 months ago
John Keats’
meditation on a reader’s paradise:
“I had an
idea that a Man might pass a very pleasant life in this manner. Let him on a
certain day read a certain Page of full Poesy or distilled Prose, and let him
wander with it, and muse upon it and reflect from it, and dream...
The American Scholar
“Death Fugue” by Paul Celan
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Death Fugue” by Paul Celan appeared first on The American...
6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Death Fugue” by Paul Celan appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
December 2016 Goals
December 19th seems a bit late to write about December’s goals, huh?
Nonetheless, I’ve had some, and...
over a year ago
December 19th seems a bit late to write about December’s goals, huh?
Nonetheless, I’ve had some, and I will still have them through the end of the month.
I
did post a review of November a few days ago. This should really be rolled into that. A “monthly review/going forward”...
The Elysian
What is the goal of anarchism?
Letters to an anarchist, part five.
a month ago
Letters to an anarchist, part five.
Ben Borgers
Wednesday, January 19, 2022
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Ursula K. Le Guin on Change, Menopause as Rebirth, and the Civilizational Value of Elders
"Into the space ship, Granny."
a year ago
"Into the space ship, Granny."
The Marginalian
May Sarton on Writing, Gardening, and the Importance of Patience Over Will in Creative Work
"Gardening is like poetry in that it is gratuitous, and also that it cannot be done on will alone."
a year ago
"Gardening is like poetry in that it is gratuitous, and also that it cannot be done on will alone."
Ben Borgers
I Misjudged My Chinese Professor
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
No New Books
I’ve promised myself that I won’t add any more books to my Kindle, either by purchasing them from...
over a year ago
I’ve promised myself that I won’t add any more books to my Kindle, either by purchasing them from Amazon, or downloading them online, or renting them from a Library.
Why?
I’ve let reading about doing things stand in the way of doing the things. No amount of educational literature...
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,”...
3 weeks 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
'Never Has a Man Deserved a Reputation Less'
My middle
son, a Marine Corps officer at Quantico, asked last week if I would interested
in “working...
a year ago
My middle
son, a Marine Corps officer at Quantico, asked last week if I would interested
in “working through Wittgenstein” with him. Of course, so we met online on Sunday
for ninety minutes and read propositions 1 and 2 of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. I first read the book...
Ben Borgers
The Day Should End at 3am
over a year ago
This Space
A review from abroad
In April 2016, a review by Alexander Carnera of my book This Space of Writing appeared in the...
over a year ago
In April 2016, a review by Alexander Carnera of my book This Space of Writing appeared in the Norwegian edition of Le Monde diplomatique as a supplement to the delightfully named Norwegian newspaper Klassekampen. Even though I can't read Danish, it was not only a highlight of the...
The American Scholar
This Woman’s Work
Susannah Gibson opens the parlor doors on 18th-century feminism
The post This Woman’s Work appeared...
2 months ago
Susannah Gibson opens the parlor doors on 18th-century feminism
The post This Woman’s Work appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
Metamorphoses, Books XI to XV - The whole of it flows
I had better finish up Ovid’s Metamorphoses before I
forget what was in it. It is full of
memorable...
8 months ago
I had better finish up Ovid’s Metamorphoses before I
forget what was in it. It is full of
memorable things, but I have limits.
Books XI through XV, the last five, in this post.
Book X ended with the songs of Orpheus, so he has to begin
Book XI with Orpheus’s gruesome death,...
Josh Thompson
The Complete Guide to Rails Performance: basic setup
You know the feeling.
You are excited to start a guide or a tutorial. You buy it, crack it open, and...
over a year ago
You know the feeling.
You are excited to start a guide or a tutorial. You buy it, crack it open, and start working through the environment setup.
Then… something goes wrong. Next thing you know, you’ve spent two three too many hours debugging random crap, and you’re not even done...
The Marginalian
The Parts We Live With: D.H. Lawrence and the Yearning for Living Unison
"We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living,...
8 months ago
"We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living, incarnate cosmos."
Anecdotal Evidence
'It's Uncanny. The Past Is Not Dead.'
“The
Ferryman’s Due,” my article about Andrew Rickard and his Obolus Press, is
published in the...
4 days ago
“The
Ferryman’s Due,” my article about Andrew Rickard and his Obolus Press, is
published in the January 2025 issue of The
New Criterion.:
“Rickard
often encounters such passages, in which the author he is translating seems to
speak for him. ‘It’s uncanny. The past is not dead,’...
The Marginalian
The Experience Machine: Cognitive Philosopher Andy Clark on the Power of Expectation and How the...
"We are never simply seeing what’s 'really there,' stripped bare of our own anticipations or...
a year ago
"We are never simply seeing what’s 'really there,' stripped bare of our own anticipations or insulated from our own past experiences. Instead, all human experience is part phantom — the product of deep-set predictions."
Anecdotal Evidence
'For My Small Ailments'
Empathy, in
some quarters, is becoming quite fashionable. Clearly, my doctor has been...
10 months ago
Empathy, in
some quarters, is becoming quite fashionable. Clearly, my doctor has been benefiting
from professional development. When he enters the examination room we shake
hands, he moves a chair to face me and sits almost knee-to-knee. This is to
eliminate any suggestion of...
Josh Thompson
Things You Can't Do from Behind a Computer, pt. 1
Meet people.
Over the last nine or ten months, I can clearly remember a handful of conversations I...
over a year ago
Meet people.
Over the last nine or ten months, I can clearly remember a handful of conversations I had. I initiated each conversation with someone that I wanted to learn from. Most I had some prior relationship with (I.E. I had met them, or I knew someone who knew them). This was...
The American Scholar
“Snake” by D. H. Lawrence
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Snake” by D. H. Lawrence appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Snake” by D. H. Lawrence appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
2 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...
The Marginalian
Dead Stars: Poet Laureate Ada Limón’s Stunning Love Poem to Life
"We’ve come this far, survived this much. What would happen if we decided to survive more? To love...
a year ago
"We’ve come this far, survived this much. What would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?"
The American Scholar
“À une passante” by Charles Baudelaire
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “À une passante” by Charles Baudelaire appeared first on The...
5 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “À une passante” by Charles Baudelaire appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
John Quincy Adams on Impostor Syndrome and the True Measure of Success
“You will never get any more out of life than you expect,” Bruce Lee wrote to himself. All...
6 months ago
“You will never get any more out of life than you expect,” Bruce Lee wrote to himself. All expectation is a story of the possible. Every person lives inside a story of who they are, what they are worth, and what is possible for their life, and suffers in proportion to how...
Wuthering...
Iphigeneia in Aulis by Euripides - even babies sense the dread of evil to come
The final Euripides play is Iphigeneia in Aulis, performed with The Bacchae in 405 BCE. I normally...
over a year ago
The final Euripides play is Iphigeneia in Aulis, performed with The Bacchae in 405 BCE. I normally write “Iphigenia,” but I read the 1978 W. S. Merwin and George E. Dimock, Jr. translation titled which goes with “Iphigeneia,” so I will switch to that spelling for this post.
...
Josh Thompson
Train Hard
When’s the last time you participated in a sporting event? (Football, Ultimate Frisbee, rock...
over a year ago
When’s the last time you participated in a sporting event? (Football, Ultimate Frisbee, rock climbing, running biking, wrestling, whatever)
When’s the last time you
trained for that activity?
Finally:
When is the last time you trained for that activity
with someone else?...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Most Perverse Gesture'
“Books are
friends, oracles, household gods, characters in the ongoing drama of our...
a year ago
“Books are
friends, oracles, household gods, characters in the ongoing drama of our minds.”
Understandably,
Lance Marrow gets a little sentimental about books and their needless
destruction. We resist soft-headed fetishism but for some of us, discarding or
destroying books, even...
The Marginalian
The First Scientist’s Guide to Truth: Alhazen on Critical Thinking
Born into a world with no clocks, telescopes, microscopes, or democracy, Ḥasan Ibn al-Haytham...
a year ago
Born into a world with no clocks, telescopes, microscopes, or democracy, Ḥasan Ibn al-Haytham (c. 965–c. 1040), known in the West as Alhazen, began his life studying religion, but grew quickly disenchanted by its unquestioned dogmas and the way it turned people on each other with...
Anecdotal Evidence
'For Whom They Were Framed in Words'
Louis
MacNeice is startlingly prescient in “To Posterity,” originally published in Visitations...
a year ago
Louis
MacNeice is startlingly prescient in “To Posterity,” originally published in Visitations (1957):
“When books
have all seized up like the books in graveyards
And reading
and even speaking have been replaced
By other,
less difficult, media, we wonder if you
Will find...
The American Scholar
Laura S. Lewis
Welding trash into treasure
The post Laura S. Lewis appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
Welding trash into treasure
The post Laura S. Lewis appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Some Could, Some Could Not, Shake Off Misery'
Last week I
wrote a post about the poet Bob Barth, the patrol he led as a 21-year-old...
4 months ago
Last week I
wrote a post about the poet Bob Barth, the patrol he led as a 21-year-old Marine
Corporal in Vietnam, and the war correspondent who wrote a dispatch about him
for a newspaper. Two days later, after learning that the stringer, Albert W.
Vinson, soon took his own life,...
This Space
Favourite books 2022
This selection does not include those books I enjoyed, that asinine dilution poured into innumerable...
over a year ago
This selection does not include those books I enjoyed, that asinine dilution poured into innumerable books of the year lists, though I enjoyed those not included in this selection.
Jon Fosse – Septology
Thomas Bernhard – The Rest is Slander
"we are concealing a secret, a secret...
Anecdotal Evidence
'More Profundities Than Twists'
I’m sure some of you share my slightly guilty impulse: a book last read months or decades ago
enters...
5 months ago
I’m sure some of you share my slightly guilty impulse: a book last read months or decades ago
enters my thoughts and I can’t shake it. I have to read it again. For me, the
same is true of movies. To put it in not non-artistic terms, sometimes you get
a craving for spaghetti...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Being Vulnerable to History'
I read Bernard Malamud’s
novel The Fixer when it was published
in 1966. Readers often turn...
6 months ago
I read Bernard Malamud’s
novel The Fixer when it was published
in 1966. Readers often turn melodramatic when describing the impact a book has
had on them – “life-changing,” that sort of thing. Such claims usually can be
chalked up to enthusiasm untempered by critical rigor. The...
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
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...
This Space
The end of literature, part four
This tweet has been seen thousands of times since it was posted on the 82nd anniversary of Britain...
over a year ago
This tweet has been seen thousands of times since it was posted on the 82nd anniversary of Britain and France declaring war on Germany. Not that the coincidence means much. At least, no more than what the general population, interest and powerful mean here, or indeed what poetry...
Steven Scrawls
Not As Giants Love
Not As Giants Love
Short story, ~2000 words
A week ago, when I asked you if you still loved me, I...
5 months ago
Not As Giants Love
Short story, ~2000 words
A week ago, when I asked you if you still loved me, I thought the
most painful thing you could’ve said was no. I don’t know if you
remember, but when you said “Of course I still love you” and asked if
I still loved you, I started to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Domestic Privacies"
Marilyn Sides won this reader’s heart in the third paragraph of her 2018 essay “The Consolations of...
9 months ago
Marilyn Sides won this reader’s heart in the third paragraph of her 2018 essay “The Consolations of Literature,” when she refers to Dr. Johnson as “grand master of
English prose.” She also practices what Anecdotal Evidence preaches: “the
intersection of books and life.” We might...
Josh Thompson
How I take notes, AKA 'Add an Index to Your Notebook'
A while back, sometime in 2017, I wrote this tweet:
a while ago, I read about how to keep...
over a year ago
A while back, sometime in 2017, I wrote this tweet:
a while ago, I read about how to keep well-organized notes on a range of topics. Here's my current notebook, indexed by category: pic.twitter.com/aVsNnGPEpd
— Josh Thompson (@josh_works) May 8, 2017
Since then, I occasionally...
The American Scholar
My Cousin Manya
One survivor’s story
The post My Cousin Manya appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
One survivor’s story
The post My Cousin Manya appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
How ChatGPT spoiled my semester
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Was Only Coming True'
In the final
year of his life, Clive James published a book-length poem, The River in the Sky...
a year ago
In the final
year of his life, Clive James published a book-length poem, The River in the Sky (2018), a dying man’s
last fling. The title refers to the Japanese phrase for the Milky Way. It’s
mostly autobiography, a book of well-rehearsed memories, largely unstructured, much
of...
The Marginalian
How You Relate to Anything Is How You Relate to Everything: Reclaiming the Spirit of the Christmas...
Because life is a cosmos of connection, because to be alive is to be in relationship with the world,...
2 days ago
Because life is a cosmos of connection, because to be alive is to be in relationship with the world, because (in the immortal words of John Muir) “when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe,” how we relate to anything is how...
The American Scholar
Cancer
The post Cancer appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The post Cancer appeared first on The American Scholar.
ribbonfarm
Protocol Entrepreneurship
I’m running the Summer of Protocols program for the Ethereum Foundation again this year. Here is the...
9 months ago
I’m running the Summer of Protocols program for the Ethereum Foundation again this year. Here is the Call for Applications. I’d appreciate any help getting it in front of the right candidates. The core of it is what we’re calling Protocol Improvement Grants (PIGs): 90k for a team...
Wuthering...
Daryl Hine's Ovid's Heroines - I, who could a dragon hypnotize
An anti-Valentine’s Day book now, Ovid’s Heroides
(25-16 BCE, somewhere in there), a collection of...
10 months ago
An anti-Valentine’s Day book now, Ovid’s Heroides
(25-16 BCE, somewhere in there), a collection of fictional letters in verse written
by mythical heroines to their no-good boyfriends and husbands. Many end in suicide. Dido castigating Aeneas, Phaedra mourning...
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
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...
Josh Thompson
Full Copy of 'The Atlanta Zone Plan' from 1922
A Warning and a Request
In a moment, you will read the full text of a 1922 marketing pamphlet. This...
over a year ago
A Warning and a Request
In a moment, you will read the full text of a 1922 marketing pamphlet. This document is an important thread to understanding some very large political problems facing the world today, specifically housing, affordability, the growing wealth gap, and...
The American Scholar
“To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing” by William Butler Yeats
The post “To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing” by William Butler Yeats appeared first on The...
2 weeks ago
The post “To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing” by William Butler Yeats appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'But Johnson Fought Back'
Epigraphs to
books are often superfluous. They can come off as cute or pretentious. They add...
3 months ago
Epigraphs to
books are often superfluous. They can come off as cute or pretentious. They add little
or nothing to the manner in which we read the book and often amount to our
author showing off, touting his own vast reading or giving himself an unearned
endorsement. The most...
The American Scholar
Bards Behind Bars
Reading Sartre aloud inside a maximum-security prison
The post Bards Behind Bars appeared first on...
4 months ago
Reading Sartre aloud inside a maximum-security prison
The post Bards Behind Bars appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'On the Marge of Lake Lebarge'
Memory has
no conscience and little sense of good taste. It’s our most intimate capacity
yet often...
11 months ago
Memory has
no conscience and little sense of good taste. It’s our most intimate capacity
yet often feels alien, as though we were recalling the memories of someone
else. In the past, of course, we were
someone else. As a kid I watched ridiculous amounts of television, which is...
sbensu
Hiring from Big Tech
Some brief notes about the subject
8 months ago
Some brief notes about the subject
The American Scholar
The Next New Thing
In architecture, the gulf between the traditional and the modern seems wider than ever before
The...
6 months ago
In architecture, the gulf between the traditional and the modern seems wider than ever before
The post The Next New Thing appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Love’s Work: Philosopher Gillian Rose on the Value of Getting It Wrong
"You may be weaker than the whole world but you are always stronger than yourself. Let me send my...
a year ago
"You may be weaker than the whole world but you are always stronger than yourself. Let me send my power against my power... Let me discover what it is that I want and fear from love. Power and love, might and grace."
This Space
39 Books: 2016
I love it when people announce that "if Shakespeare was alive today, he'd be writing Eastenders", or...
7 months ago
I love it when people announce that "if Shakespeare was alive today, he'd be writing Eastenders", or Game of Thrones or crime fiction, according to one and another variation. The innocence of the claim is charming, giving voice to the desperation to give weight to ephemera. But I...
Josh Thompson
On Cleaner Controllers
A few days ago, I worked on a project that was mostly about serving up basic store data (modeled...
over a year ago
A few days ago, I worked on a project that was mostly about serving up basic store data (modeled after Etsy) to an API.
We had a few dozen end-points, and all responses were in JSON.
Most of the action happened inside of our controllers, and as you might imagine, our routes.rb...
Josh Thompson
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
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...
Josh Thompson
Whole Messages in Slack
I use Slack at work. And used it in Turing. And am in a few programming-related Slack groups. (Ahoy,...
over a year ago
I use Slack at work. And used it in Turing. And am in a few programming-related Slack groups. (Ahoy, #DenverDevs). My last job, I used Slack. The job before that, I got the whole company on Slack. I’ve used it for years.
Slack delivers value to me, and induces little anxiety, and...
Josh Thompson
How to Wake Up Early
An understanding of sleep, and attempts to wake up early
(Read Part Two, and Part Three)
My...
over a year ago
An understanding of sleep, and attempts to wake up early
(Read Part Two, and Part Three)
My understanding of sleep has evolved. When I was born, I spent most of my time asleep (if I recall correctly…) and gradually spent less and less time sleeping, until I was down to about...
The Marginalian
Archives of Joy: Reflections on Animals and the Nature of Being
An invitation to "a certain, forgotten way of seeing the world" and an exultation at "earthly life,...
a year ago
An invitation to "a certain, forgotten way of seeing the world" and an exultation at "earthly life, with its duration so short it obliges us to surpass ourselves."
The Marginalian
The Life of Trees: A Poem
"I want to sleep and dream the life of trees, beings from the muted world..."
a year ago
"I want to sleep and dream the life of trees, beings from the muted world..."
The Marginalian
Trust, Betrayal, and the Nexus of Mathematics and Morality: The Prisoner’s Dilemma Animated
Illuminating the pitfalls of the mind in felt and gingerbread.
a year ago
Illuminating the pitfalls of the mind in felt and gingerbread.
The Marginalian
A Republic of the Sensitive: E.M. Forster on the Personal and Political Power of Empaths and the...
"I believe in... an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to...
a month ago
"I believe in... an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet."
Wuthering...
The Story of the Stone, volume 2 - all agreed that this was the definitive poem on the subject of...
I have continued on with The Story of the Stone, the
2,500 page 18th century Chinese novel by, or...
a month ago
I have continued on with The Story of the Stone, the
2,500 page 18th century Chinese novel by, or mostly by, Cao Xueqin. Here I will write about the second volume of
the David Hawkes translation, The Crab-flower Club. Last time, after reading the first fifth of
the novel, I...
The Marginalian
Simone Weil on Love and Its Counterfeit
How to tell a plaything from a necessity.
a year ago
How to tell a plaything from a necessity.
Wuthering...
Books I Read in September 2023
Despite all evidence I hope to wrap up the Greek philosophy project within the next couple of...
a year ago
Despite all evidence I hope to wrap up the Greek philosophy project within the next couple of weeks. A medical deadline approaches. That will help.
As usual, I read good books.
PHILOSOPHY & SELF-HELP
Letters from a Stoic (c. 60), Seneca - good timing for some...
This Space
The disappearance of criticism, part two
A friend mentioned to me that he felt alienated by the articulacy of a literary critical book he was...
over a year ago
A friend mentioned to me that he felt alienated by the articulacy of a literary critical book he was reading; by its neutrality of tone, by its calm. Unruffled was another word he used. We all might recognise this feeling while assuming it is admiration, respect, perhaps even...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Garish, Clownish, Bizarre, Stills Blocks Away'
Thirty years
ago I lived briefly in Latham, N.Y., north of Albany along the Mohawk River. The
river...
a year ago
Thirty years
ago I lived briefly in Latham, N.Y., north of Albany along the Mohawk River. The
river there is serpentine and the city paved a walking path along its southern
shore that smoothed out some of the curves. Every day I walked two miles along
the asphalt trail, turned...
The Marginalian
The Afterlives of the Soul: Sister Nivedita on Love and Death
"To the soul, time does not exist. Only her own great purpose exists, shining clear and steady...
a year ago
"To the soul, time does not exist. Only her own great purpose exists, shining clear and steady through the mists before her."
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Title Is Apt and Not a Whit Pretentious'
I hadn’t
opened my copy of Raymond Sokolov’s Wayward
Reporter: The Life of A.J. Liebling (Harper and...
a week ago
I hadn’t
opened my copy of Raymond Sokolov’s Wayward
Reporter: The Life of A.J. Liebling (Harper and Row, 1980) in a long time.
It’s a rather skimpy biography, though the only one we have, so I hope someone,
someday writes a life worthy of Liebling’s gifts. When I was a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'In Constant Repair'
“In the streets I saw two men meet after a long separation, it
was plain. They came forward with a...
2 months ago
“In the streets I saw two men meet after a long separation, it
was plain. They came forward with a little run and LEAPED at each other’s
hands. You never saw such bright eyes as they both had. It put one in a good
humour to see it.”
Yet again I’ve heard the small-minded slur that...
Josh Thompson
Anarchy (or, less provocatively, Mutuality and Co-Creation)
In 2017, I read The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the...
7 months ago
In 2017, I read The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey; everything and nothing changed.
Lots changed because all of I sudden, I could clearly label a dynamic that had always irked me. I could see that some people would avoid...
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
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...
Escaping Flatland
Almost everyone I’ve met would be well-served thinking more about what to focus on
Including me
11 months ago
This Space
39 Books: 2021
I lived in Brighton for 30 years. One of the many painful aspects of leaving in 2021 was losing the...
6 months ago
I lived in Brighton for 30 years. One of the many painful aspects of leaving in 2021 was losing the many second-hand bookshops, all within walking distance. Many have closed over the years, such as Sandpiper, a remaindered bookshop in Kensington Gardens. It had a backroom in...
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
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...
ribbonfarm
Sons of the Soil, Migrants, and Civil War,
We read an interesting paper today (ht Sachin Benny with an assist from ChatGPT) in the Yak...
7 months ago
We read an interesting paper today (ht Sachin Benny with an assist from ChatGPT) in the Yak Collective weekly governance study group (Fridays at 9 AM Pacific). Sons of the Soil, Migrants, and Civil War, by James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin (World Development, V 39, No. 2,...
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
An antidote to the civilizational compulsions that rob human nature of nature.
The Marginalian
A Victorian Visionary’s Prescient Case for Animal Rights and Vegetarianism
"Once upon a time your fore-fathers made no scruple about not only killing, but also eating their...
a year ago
"Once upon a time your fore-fathers made no scruple about not only killing, but also eating their relations."
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Writer As Illusionist'
My review of
William Maxwell’s The Writer As
Illusionist: Uncollected and Unpublished Work (ed. Alec...
7 months ago
My review of
William Maxwell’s The Writer As
Illusionist: Uncollected and Unpublished Work (ed. Alec Wilkinson, Nonpareil
Books, 2024) is published in the June issue of The New Criterion.
This Space
39 Books: 1999
I've always preferred the Serpent's Tail edition of Pessoa's Book of Disquiet over the others...
7 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...
The Marginalian
The Consolations of Chronodiversity: Geologist Turned Psychologist Ruth Allen on the 12 Kinds of...
“I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars,” Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska wrote in her...
3 months ago
“I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars,” Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska wrote in her lovely poem “Possibilities.” Our preferences, of course, hardly matter to time — we live here suspended between the time of insects and the time of stars, our transient lives...
The Marginalian
Albert Camus on How to Live Whole in a Broken World
Born into a World War to live through another, Albert Camus (November 7, 1913–January 4, 1960) died...
6 months ago
Born into a World War to live through another, Albert Camus (November 7, 1913–January 4, 1960) died in a car crash with an unused train ticket to the same destination in his pocket. Just three years earlier, he had become the second-youngest laureate of the Nobel Prize, awarded...
The American Scholar
“Hymn” by A. R. Ammons
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Hymn” by A. R. Ammons appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Hymn” by A. R. Ammons appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Fixing Ford and Washington
Do all of these, in the right order/way/buy-in. btw, i’m pretending it’s easy. it’s not trivial, but...
over a year ago
Do all of these, in the right order/way/buy-in. btw, i’m pretending it’s easy. it’s not trivial, but it is doable:
Step 1: Install car-friendly roundabouts targeting a ~20 mph throughput speed throughout the city and eliminate all stopsigns and stoplights
Please see about...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Implacable, Bewildered, It Moves Among Us'
Some sixteen
years ago David Ferry thanked me for a post I had written about some of the lines by...
a year ago
Some sixteen
years ago David Ferry thanked me for a post I had written about some of the lines by Dr. Johnson interpolated into his poems. That email is long gone but
I remember being touched by his buoyant sense of gratitude. That a man in his
eighties, much honored as a poet,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Amateurism (in the Original Sense of the Term)'
Autodidact as a noun and adjective arrived in English in
1534 via French, from a Latinized form of...
11 months ago
Autodidact as a noun and adjective arrived in English in
1534 via French, from a Latinized form of the Greek for “self-taught.” The
range of the word’s uses in our university-smitten age is vast. Some academics apply
it to anyone without an advanced degree who presumes to have...
Josh Thompson
About Roundabouts
I’m desperately trying to work through a giant back-log of writings. Please see write it now for...
over a year ago
I’m desperately trying to work through a giant back-log of writings. Please see write it now for more. I’m spending only a few minutes on this, forgive my errors.
Of late, I’ve had a lot of conversations about roundabouts. I’m basically trying to explain the ways that a mobility...
Ben Borgers
Things Go Downhill After We Leave
over a year ago
The American Scholar
In Reprise: Next, Line Please
A new poetry prompt for players new and old
The post In Reprise: Next, Line Please appeared first on...
a month ago
A new poetry prompt for players new and old
The post In Reprise: Next, Line Please appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Probity Was Perhaps the Highest Good'
As a
newspaper reporter I covered only one capital murder trial. This was in rural
Indiana in 1983....
8 months ago
As a
newspaper reporter I covered only one capital murder trial. This was in rural
Indiana in 1983. At the age of eighteen, William Spranger had fatally shot a
town marshal, William Miner, in the back with the officer’s service revolver. The
jury found Spranger guilty and Judge...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I’m Tickled to Death When They Call Me Comic'
Like
porkchops, fame is highly perishable. Writers once read by millions – think of James
Michener...
9 months ago
Like
porkchops, fame is highly perishable. Writers once read by millions – think of James
Michener and, at a far more accomplished level, James Gould Cozzens – have evaporated
from literary memory. Newspaper writing and journalism in general are especially
biodegradable. Who...
ribbonfarm
History is More Like Science Fiction Than Fantasy
I’ve been slow-reading Bettany Hughes’ Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities for months now, ever since I...
8 months ago
I’ve been slow-reading Bettany Hughes’ Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities for months now, ever since I visited the city (on Kindle, so I didn’t realize when I started that it’s 600 pages plus another 250 odd notes). It’s dense and absorbing and I’ll probably do a reflections post...
Escaping Flatland
On having more interesting ideas
“To write well, all you have to do is cultivate your mind and then write what you see.” When I talk...
7 months ago
“To write well, all you have to do is cultivate your mind and then write what you see.” When I talk to people who have worked with their ideas seriously for 10+ years, it feels like I can throw any topic on them and they’ll have an interesting idea, or if not an idea so at least...
The Marginalian
The Ant, the Grasshopper, and the Antidote to the Cult of More: A Lovely Vintage Illustrated Poem...
“Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily...
a year ago
“Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily Dickinson lamented in a love letter. In his splendid short poem about the secret of happiness, Kurt Vonnegut exposed the taproot of our modern suffering as the gnawing sense that what we...
This Space
39 Books: 1995
Looking over the list of books read over a decade, it becomes clear that each book came too early or...
7 months ago
Looking over the list of books read over a decade, it becomes clear that each book came too early or too late, or not at all; unless, of course, not yet. Untimely medications. Of the first, Robert Pinget's Be Brave applies. Again, lightness rather than heaviness, when there was...
The Marginalian
What Birds Dream About: The Evolution of REM and How We Practice the Possible in Our Sleep
"It may be that in REM, this gloaming between waking consciousness and the unconscious, we practice...
5 months ago
"It may be that in REM, this gloaming between waking consciousness and the unconscious, we practice the possible into the real... It may be that we evolved to dream ourselves into reality — a laboratory of consciousness that began in the bird brain."
The Perry Bible...
The Good Knight
The post The Good Knight appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
6 months ago
The post The Good Knight appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
The Marginalian
Kafka’s Creative Block and the Four Psychological Hindrances That Keep the Talented from Manifesting...
The most paradoxical thing about creative work is that it is both a way in and a way out, that it...
2 months ago
The most paradoxical thing about creative work is that it is both a way in and a way out, that it plunges you into the depths of your being and at the same time takes you out of yourself. Writing is the best instrument I have for metabolizing my experience and clarifying my own...
The American Scholar
“water sign woman” by Lucille Clifton
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “water sign woman” by Lucille Clifton appeared first on The...
2 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “water sign woman” by Lucille Clifton appeared first on The American Scholar.
Astral Codex Ten
Book Review: From Bauhaus To Our House
...
2 weeks ago
sbensu
Industrial macros
Most industry codebases use macros, aka code-generation to solve practical problems like talking to...
6 months ago
Most industry codebases use macros, aka code-generation to solve practical problems like talking to the database.
Blog -...
Book Review - King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine
This book is a timeless classic that had a significant impact on deepening
my understanding of the...
over a year ago
This book is a timeless classic that had a significant impact on deepening
my understanding of the masculine. Published in 1990, King, Warrior,
Magician, Lover introduces readers to the concept of mature masculine
archetypes and their immature shadows. The authors, Robert...
The American Scholar
Reborn in the City of Light
At a time when Paris was an incubator of modernism, a group of bold American women arrived to make...
3 months ago
At a time when Paris was an incubator of modernism, a group of bold American women arrived to make art out of their lives
The post Reborn in the City of Light appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Find It Hard to Read Great Books at All'
A young reader
tells me he is unable to read most books written before “about the middle of the
60s....
8 months ago
A young reader
tells me he is unable to read most books written before “about the middle of the
60s. I like Vonnegut. A lot of the stuff before that is like a foreign language
to me.” I’m reminded of an English professor who told me more than half a century ago that
most of her...
Josh Thompson
Processes Vs. Goals (or, Systems vs. Accomplishments)
In this
excellent article on systems vs. goals, James argues that even if you did not pursue any...
over a year ago
In this
excellent article on systems vs. goals, James argues that even if you did not pursue any specific goals, with the right
system, you will still go a long way.
This idea has been floating around my head for over a year, now, and I think it’s slowly coalescing into something...
The Marginalian
An Ecology of Intimacies
At its best, an intimate relationship is a symbiote of mutual nourishment — a portable ecosystem of...
9 months ago
At its best, an intimate relationship is a symbiote of mutual nourishment — a portable ecosystem of interdependent growth, undergirded by a mycelial web of trust and tenderness. One is profoundly changed by it and yet becomes more purely oneself as projections give way to...
The Marginalian
Emerson on the Singular Enchantment of Indian Summer (and a Better Term for This Liminal Season...
"There are days... wherein the world reaches its perfection, when the air, the heavenly bodies, and...
a month ago
"There are days... wherein the world reaches its perfection, when the air, the heavenly bodies, and the earth, make a harmony."
The Elysian
Let's read the Terra Ignota series together
Our summer reading is Ada Palmer's feat of utopian worldbuilding.
5 months ago
Our summer reading is Ada Palmer's feat of utopian worldbuilding.
The American Scholar
Cats and Dogs
The post Cats and Dogs appeared first on The American Scholar.
a week ago
The post Cats and Dogs appeared first on The American Scholar.
sbensu
Vibes are music, arguments are lyrics
Losing My Religion is not about religion and Arguments are not about arguments
5 months ago
Losing My Religion is not about religion and Arguments are not about arguments
Anecdotal Evidence
'Exhausted By Their Long Dying'
Isaac
Bashevis Singer’s Shadows on the Hudson
is a novel of endless conversation, much of it...
a year ago
Isaac
Bashevis Singer’s Shadows on the Hudson
is a novel of endless conversation, much of it passionate and grief-stricken,
spoken by well-educated, middle-class Jewish characters in New York City
shortly after World War II. Chief among the title’s Shadows are the victims of the...
Ben Borgers
Donating forks to the dining hall
6 months ago
sbensu
Team-oriented, outcome-oriented
Some people care about helping their team. Others care about achieving outcomes. It is important to...
a year ago
Some people care about helping their team. Others care about achieving outcomes. It is important to know who is who.
Escaping Flatland
How I write essays
Notes on process
2 weeks ago
Wuthering...
Menander's Dyskolos - each man would hold a moderate share and be content
This week it’s Menander’s Dyskolos, or The Grouch, or The Misanthrope (316 BCE), which may or may...
over a year ago
This week it’s Menander’s Dyskolos, or The Grouch, or The Misanthrope (316 BCE), which may or may not have inspired the title of Molière’s great play, and nothing more than the title since the play was, like all of Menander’s plays, long lost. A fairly complete Dyskolos was the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Everything is Singing, Blooming and Sparkling'
In a May 4, 1889 letter to his friend and editor
Alexi Suvorin, Chekhov complains of taking no...
7 months ago
In a May 4, 1889 letter to his friend and editor
Alexi Suvorin, Chekhov complains of taking no interest in “reviews,
conversations about literature, gossip, successes, failures, high royalties,”
and adds:
“[I]n short, I’ve become a damn fool. My soul
seems to be stagnating. I...
The Elysian
Writing Prompt: What movement does the world need right now?
And how do we build it?
3 weeks ago
The Marginalian
Winnicott on the Psychology of Democracy, the Most Dangerous Type of Person, and the Unconscious...
In the late morning of the first day of August in 2023, exactly twenty summers after I arrived in...
3 months ago
In the late morning of the first day of August in 2023, exactly twenty summers after I arrived in Philadelphia as a lone teenager from a country thirteen centuries America’s senior, I experienced that wonderful capacity for self-surprise as tears came streaming down my face in a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not At All Abashed Before the Fact'
“We do not
go to cowards for tender dealing; there is nothing so cruel as panic; the man
who has...
a year ago
“We do not
go to cowards for tender dealing; there is nothing so cruel as panic; the man
who has least fear for his own carcass, has most time to consider others.”
What a
remarkable sentence, one I would never have the guts to write. It’s not the
sentiment but the form that’s so...
Anecdotal Evidence
'This Refined, White-Sheeted Torture'
My tutelary
spirit of recent days has been the American poet L.E. Sissman, dead from
Hodgkin...
4 months ago
My tutelary
spirit of recent days has been the American poet L.E. Sissman, dead from
Hodgkin lymphoma at age forty-eight. Out in the hall I spoke with three
oncologists after they had yet again examined
my brother. I asked the question no one had yet asked: How much time does...
Wuthering...
Many of Plato's early Socratic dialogues - It was quite lovely.
I’ve been enjoying Plato’s dialogues recently. I’d read some of them before, at university or...
a year ago
I’ve been enjoying Plato’s dialogues recently. I’d read some of them before, at university or during my last Greek phase 25 years ago, and this time I hope to read almost all of them.
I will make some notes on them in a few posts. Give them a tag if nothing else, and make some...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Treated Us Like Adults'
I grew up
thinking writers – poets, certainly – were not quite real. None lived in my
neighborhood....
11 months ago
I grew up
thinking writers – poets, certainly – were not quite real. None lived in my
neighborhood. I never saw writers on television. My parents never talked about them, as they might actors and politicians,
who also were unreal. Without thinking too
deeply about it, I put...
Josh Thompson
Change
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Or something like that. Sometimes change is for...
over a year ago
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Or something like that. Sometimes change is for the better, and sometimes its for the worse. I don’t know if there’s always a difference.
Recently, Kristi and I have seen lots of change; I’d say its for the better, but it’s not...
Ben Borgers
JumboCode plans for Head of Engineering
a year ago
Wuthering...
Books Read in May 2024 – Some are certainly knowing what they are meaning, some are certainly not...
A month without writing anything. Plenty of reading, though.
FICTIONS
The Autobiography of an...
6 months ago
A month without writing anything. Plenty of reading, though.
FICTIONS
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912), James
Weldon Johnson
The Making of Americans (1925), Gertrude Stein – read
over the course of months. The quotation
up above is from p. 783. I will write
about...
The Marginalian
The Other Significant Others: Living and Loving Outside the Confines of Conventional Friendship and...
"While we weaken friendships by expecting too little of them, we undermine romantic relationships by...
9 months ago
"While we weaken friendships by expecting too little of them, we undermine romantic relationships by expecting too much of them."
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Role Is a Role Worth Perfecting'
“The tragic
Portuguese Jew of Amsterdam wrote that there is nothing the free man thinks of
less than...
11 months ago
“The tragic
Portuguese Jew of Amsterdam wrote that there is nothing the free man thinks of
less than he does of death. But that sort of free man is no more than a dead
man; he is free only from life’s wellspring, lacking in love, a slave to his
freedom. The thought that I must...
The Elysian
How would anarchist societies protect themselves?
Letters to an anarchist, part three.
a month ago
Letters to an anarchist, part three.
Josh Thompson
Jaywalking: What, So What, What To Do
What Is “Jaywalking”
authors note: This feels very draft-y. There’s two distinct perspectives I note...
7 months ago
What Is “Jaywalking”
authors note: This feels very draft-y. There’s two distinct perspectives I note in my mind, as I write this. Some people might “believe in jaywalking” and view non-car-users as an underclass, and act in such a way that makes this belief manifestly obvious....
Josh Thompson
How to Move
Kristi and I are moving to Colorado in July. We’ve taken three broad steps to make this move...
over a year ago
Kristi and I are moving to Colorado in July. We’ve taken three broad steps to make this move happen:
We both are in process with new jobs
I just started working remotely for Litmus, which means I can seamlessly transition to Colorado this summer. Kristi spent a few days last week...
Escaping Flatland
How to think in writing
Part 1: The thought behind the thought
8 months ago
Part 1: The thought behind the thought
Josh Thompson
Planned Unit Design Document (work-in-progress)
This is a draft document, meant for circulation, will evolve with time and eventually be something...
over a year ago
This is a draft document, meant for circulation, will evolve with time and eventually be something we bring to the City of Golden for ratification, or whatever needs to happen to get this done in this zone. This document relates to Collateralizing Mortgages and Loans With the...
The Marginalian
Doris: A Watercolor Serenade to the Courage of Authenticity and the Art of Connection
“There is no insurmountable solitude,” Pablo Neruda asserted in his stirring Nobel Prize acceptance...
a year ago
“There is no insurmountable solitude,” Pablo Neruda asserted in his stirring Nobel Prize acceptance speech. “All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the...
Josh Thompson
Typing in Colemac 2.0
I want to learn to type in Colemak, but I’m afraid to try to invest twenty hours in it. That’s a...
over a year ago
I want to learn to type in Colemak, but I’m afraid to try to invest twenty hours in it. That’s a long commitment, and I’m afraid I would not follow through, and feel like it was a failure, because I didn’t allot enough time, nor reach a desired level of skill.
My hope is that as...
The Marginalian
The Rigor of Angels: Human Nature and the Nature of Reality
"What we are striving for lies inside us; we find ourselves in the world and the world in...
a year ago
"What we are striving for lies inside us; we find ourselves in the world and the world in ourselves."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Dispensing True Charm'
Joseph
Epstein turns a sprightly eighty-seven today – “sprightly” because he is still
writing, still...
11 months ago
Joseph
Epstein turns a sprightly eighty-seven today – “sprightly” because he is still
writing, still reading, still sending notes of encouragement to those of us who
can use the occasional infusion of sprightliness. In the last month he has
published reviews and essays devoted to...
The Perry Bible...
Please
The post Please appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
4 months ago
The post Please appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
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
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...
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
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...
The Marginalian
Thunder, Bells, and Silence: The Eclipse that Went Extinct
What was it like for Martha, the endling of her species, to die alone at the Cincinnati Zoo that...
6 months ago
What was it like for Martha, the endling of her species, to die alone at the Cincinnati Zoo that late-summer day in 1914, all the other passenger pigeons gone from the face of the Earth, having once filled its skies with an immensity of beating wings, so many that John James...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Beautiful Lighthearted Perfection'
Who is the
quintessential American? Who embodies E
pluribus unum? Who, at the intergalactic council,...
11 months ago
Who is the
quintessential American? Who embodies E
pluribus unum? Who, at the intergalactic council, might represent our
nation (and species, for that matter)? I nominate Louis Armstrong. Other names
come to mind: Abraham Lincoln, Jacques Barzun, Ralph Ellison, perhaps...
This Space
39 Books: 1992
Poetry is a notable absence in my book lists. I assumed at this time that because novels excited my...
7 months ago
Poetry is a notable absence in my book lists. I assumed at this time that because novels excited my attention, poetry should do too. Under this assumption I bought and read Wallace Stevens' Collected Poems in this chunky Faber edition, adding an ugly plastic cover.*
Many of...
Astral Codex Ten
Indulge Your Internet Addiction By Reading About Internet Addiction
...
2 weeks ago
The Marginalian
Grace Against Gravity and the Physics of Vulnerability: How Birds Fly and Why They Flock in a V...
“What we see from the air is so simple and beautiful,” Georgia O’Keeffe wrote after her first...
a month ago
“What we see from the air is so simple and beautiful,” Georgia O’Keeffe wrote after her first airplane flight, “I cannot help feeling that it would do something wonderful for the human race — rid it of much smallness and pettiness if more people flew.” I am writing this aboard an...
Escaping Flatland
On feeling connected
generosity is potency
2 months ago
Josh Thompson
Streets in Asheville
Quick-and-dirty street analysis in Asheville, NC
A few months ago, I visited Asheville, NC. It’s a...
over a year ago
Quick-and-dirty street analysis in Asheville, NC
A few months ago, I visited Asheville, NC. It’s a nice town, and has a great pedestrian life, as far as I can tell.
As a thought experiment, I decided to see how well I could make the case for reducing the road width of a few...
The Marginalian
The Humanistic Philosopher and Psychologist Erich Fromm on Love and the Meaning of Respect
"Care and responsibility are constituent elements of love, but without respect for and knowledge of...
5 months ago
"Care and responsibility are constituent elements of love, but without respect for and knowledge of the beloved person, love deteriorates into domination and possessiveness."
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Am Entirely Sure That I Like It'
On March 27,
1905, Theodore Roosevelt had just started his second term as president of the
United...
9 months ago
On March 27,
1905, Theodore Roosevelt had just started his second term as president of the
United States when he wrote a letter to a little-known poet living in Boston:
Dear Mr.
Robinson:
I have
enjoyed your poems especially The
Children of the Night so much that I must write to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Half-Buried Sense for Poetry'
It’s easy to
mistake geniality for prevarication. So rare a quality seems suspicious or...
6 days 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...
sbensu
Breaking changes in JSON APIs
A collection of common breaking changes to JSON APIs for you to keep in mind as you design.
a year ago
A collection of common breaking changes to JSON APIs for you to keep in mind as you design.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Soothe the Soul and Nurture the Imagination'
“Among the
lessons we’ve learned during these past few difficult years of pandemic,
climate crisis...
a year ago
“Among the
lessons we’ve learned during these past few difficult years of pandemic,
climate crisis and political discord is that beauty and nature matter more than
ever, and that if our homes are to be sanctuaries from an often harsh outside
world, then we should fill them with...
The American Scholar
The March Down Main
The post The March Down Main appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The post The March Down Main appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Doubly Parasocial Relationships
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Energy in Things Shone Through Their Shapes'
Some
fugitive thinkers among us long for order in a manner almost nostalgic:
“I envied
those past...
a month ago
Some
fugitive thinkers among us long for order in a manner almost nostalgic:
“I envied
those past ages of the world
When, as I
thought, the energy in things
Shone
through their shapes, when sun and moon no less
Than tree or
stone or star or human face
Were seen
but as fantastic...
The Marginalian
The Heart of Matter: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin on Bridging the Scientific and the Sacred
"Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever new-born; you who, by...
a year ago
"Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever new-born; you who, by constantly shattering our mental categories, force us to go ever further and further in our pursuit of the truth."
Ben Borgers
I want to use all of my ridiculously many meal swipes
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Corona Chasers
You never forget your first solar eclipse
The post Corona Chasers appeared first on The American...
6 months ago
You never forget your first solar eclipse
The post Corona Chasers appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Good Software Has a Clear Geography
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Almost Sure to Please Others'
I prefer the
prose to the verse of two great poets: John Keats and Marianne Moore. That’s
heresy, I...
10 months ago
I prefer the
prose to the verse of two great poets: John Keats and Marianne Moore. That’s
heresy, I know, and I’m not trying to be provocative. I can judge only by my frequency
of rereading and the resultant pleasure. Keats’ letters are endlessly amusing,...
The American Scholar
Tramping With Virginia
A seminal essay about walking the streets of London can present challenges in the classrooms of...
7 months ago
A seminal essay about walking the streets of London can present challenges in the classrooms of today
The post Tramping With Virginia appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Wound Is the Gift: David Whyte on the Relationship Between Anxiety and Intimacy
"Intimacy is presence magnified by our vulnerability, magnified by increasing proximity to the fear...
2 weeks ago
"Intimacy is presence magnified by our vulnerability, magnified by increasing proximity to the fear that underlies that vulnerability."
This Space
39 Books: 1987
From two books in the first year of reading and twenty-four in the second, I read eighty-six in the...
8 months ago
From two books in the first year of reading and twenty-four in the second, I read eighty-six in the third, including a lot more non-fiction. This was due to cycling to libraries in adjacent towns where the selection was wider. One of them had my first non-novel choice: this...
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
The art-science that captured the wonder of some of "the most brilliant productions of Nature."
Josh Thompson
Practicing with Polylines
This is a first pass at trying to do something interesting (repeatedly) with the same base...
3 months ago
This is a first pass at trying to do something interesting (repeatedly) with the same base primative, in this case, a “polyline”. Read the rest of this post, understand what we’re going for, then go to part 2: get your own polyline from strava. It’s not trivial to get, but its...
Josh Thompson
Refactoring practice: Get rid of `attr_accessors` in `ogre.rb` in 2 minutes
Preparing for Turing Series Index
What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
Preparing for Turing Series Index
What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Master of Light But Stinging Irony'
I bought
Vikram Seth’s novel-in-verse The Golden
Gate when it was published in 1986. Around that...
5 months ago
I bought
Vikram Seth’s novel-in-verse The Golden
Gate when it was published in 1986. Around that time I was giving up the
practice of writing in books, which had always left me a little uncomfortable. Instead,
I switched to keeping notebooks. In The
Golden Gate I see that I...
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
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Those Move Easiest Who Have Learn’d to Dance'
Alexander
Pope’s 1716 imitation of Martial’s epigram X.23:
“At length,
my Friend (while Time, with...
7 months ago
Alexander
Pope’s 1716 imitation of Martial’s epigram X.23:
“At length,
my Friend (while Time, with still career,
Wafts on his
gentle wing his eightieth year),
Sees his
past days safe out of Fortune’s power,
Nor dreads
approaching Fate’s uncertain hour;
Reviews his
life, and in...
The American Scholar
In the Mushroom
True foraging isn’t the domain of the weekend warrior; it’s serious, serious business
The post In...
2 weeks ago
True foraging isn’t the domain of the weekend warrior; it’s serious, serious business
The post In the Mushroom appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
Hint #1
I'm publishing a new print collection in three weeks.
4 months ago
I'm publishing a new print collection in three weeks.
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Excellent Judge, Posterity'
A reader can
sometimes judge the true worth of a writer by the quality of his detractors....
9 months ago
A reader can
sometimes judge the true worth of a writer by the quality of his detractors. Take
Dwight Macdonald on James Gould Cozzens. And then consider Arnold Bennett
(1867-1931). Today he’s judged a respectable but minor English novelist, something
of a documentarian, if he’s...
ribbonfarm
Decision Brownouts
In thinking about decision-making under stress, most people focus on fight-or-flight responses. Both...
7 months ago
In thinking about decision-making under stress, most people focus on fight-or-flight responses. Both fighting and fleeing are obvious courses of action that inherit a clear sense of direction from the characteristics of the threat itself, and are energized by the automatic...
The Marginalian
The Ecstasy of Eternity: Richard Jefferies on Time and Self-Transcendence
This is the great paradox: that human life, lived between the time of starlings and the time of...
9 months ago
This is the great paradox: that human life, lived between the time of starlings and the time of stars, is made meaningful entirely inside the self, but the self is a mirage of the mind, a figment of cohesion that makes the chaos and transience bearable. A few times a lifetime, if...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Kind of Representative Figure of His Era'
We gave our sons
Hebrew names: Joshua, Michael, David. They roughly translate as “God is...
a year ago
We gave our sons
Hebrew names: Joshua, Michael, David. They roughly translate as “God is deliverance,”
“gift of God” and “beloved,” respectively. We are not Jewish and not linguists
but we like plain names rooted in tradition, names with an identifiable history
traceable, in this...
Wuthering...
Ovid's Metamorhpses, Canto 6 - the sexual assaults - Because the lewdness of the Gods was so blazed...
Back to Ovid.
First, I have just begun Paul Barolsky’s Ovid and the
Metamorphoses of Modern Art...
10 months ago
Back to Ovid.
First, I have just begun Paul Barolsky’s Ovid and the
Metamorphoses of Modern Art from Boticelli to Picasso (2014), a work of art
history about Ovid written in the spirit of Ovid. The book is of the highest interest, and is a
long way from the catalogue of...
Ben Borgers
There’s No Personal Space in College
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Harbinger of a Song Greater Still'
“I went to
him very late each night, and he read many of the poems to me or discussed them
with me...
a year ago
“I went to
him very late each night, and he read many of the poems to me or discussed them
with me till the early hours of the morning. The tears often ran down his face
as he read, without the slightest apparent consciousness of them on his part.
The pathos and grandeur of these...
The Marginalian
A Tender Illustrated Celebration of the Many Languages of Love
That one mind can reach out from its lonely cave of bone and touch another, express its joys and...
a year ago
That one mind can reach out from its lonely cave of bone and touch another, express its joys and sorrows to another — this is the great miracle of being alive together. The object of human communication is not the exchange of information but the exchange of understanding. If we...
The American Scholar
Up Close
The post Up Close appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The post Up Close appeared first on The American Scholar.
sbensu
The birth of a (pseudo) currency
A dozen pseudo-currencies were issued in Argentina in 2002. How did that work? And why are they...
10 months ago
A dozen pseudo-currencies were issued in Argentina in 2002. How did that work? And why are they coming back in 2024?
The Marginalian
The Sunflower and the Soul: Wendell Berry on the Collaborative Nature of the Universe and the Cure...
"We are not the authors of ourselves. That we are not is a religious perception, but it is also a...
5 months ago
"We are not the authors of ourselves. That we are not is a religious perception, but it is also a biological and a social one. Each of us has had many authors, and each of us is engaged, for better or worse, in that same authorship. We could say that the human race is a great...
This Space
39 Books: 1986
In my second year of reading, I read four novels by DM Thomas, beginning with his most famous, The...
8 months ago
In my second year of reading, I read four novels by DM Thomas, beginning with his most famous, The White Hotel, in the edition below with its very 1980s cover design. I look at the single-word titles of the others and can remember absolutely nothing about them.
Both the title...
Josh Thompson
RailsConf CFP Outline
I’m pitching some ideas for RailsConf. I only heard about it a few days ago (oops) so this is a bit...
over a year ago
I’m pitching some ideas for RailsConf. I only heard about it a few days ago (oops) so this is a bit rushed:
Idea 1: “Junior” Developers are the Solution to Many of Your Problems
Abstract:
Our industry telegraphs: “We don’t want (or know how to handle) ‘Jr. Devs’.”
Jr. Devs, or as...
Josh Thompson
Things That Are Surprisingly Good For The Cost (AKA How I want to build my tiny house)
Working title: “My Dream Backyard House/ADU/round-one-of-building-experiment”
I’m trying to build a...
over a year ago
Working title: “My Dream Backyard House/ADU/round-one-of-building-experiment”
I’m trying to build a kinda cool, quirky, sensitive-to-supply-chain-disruption, cheap, functional, emotionally healing home in my back yard. We love to host friends and family, guests, maybe AirBnB...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Noble Unconsciousness Is in Him'
A reader
asks if I have any heroes. “I’m guessing Samuel Johnson is one,” she writes,
and that’s...
5 months ago
A reader
asks if I have any heroes. “I’m guessing Samuel Johnson is one,” she writes,
and that’s correct. “I think people are too cynical to have heroes today,” she
continues. “They’re embarrassed to say someone is a hero. Nobody’s good enough.
Everybody wants to look for failure...
Anecdotal Evidence
'First of All a Student of Human Nature'
“Desmond
MacCarthy, like Dr. Johnson, was first of all a student of human nature.”
The...
9 months ago
“Desmond
MacCarthy, like Dr. Johnson, was first of all a student of human nature.”
The best
writers, the ones who compel us to read their work across a lifetime, whose
thoughts become our own and who at last become teachers and companions, are
those who work in two media: words...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Its Super-Ego Has Gone AWOL'
The American
philosopher Brand Blanshard delivered the Riecker Memorial Lecture at the
University of...
2 months ago
The American
philosopher Brand Blanshard delivered the Riecker Memorial Lecture at the
University of Arizona in 1962. It was published that year as a twenty-three-page
pamphlet titled “On Sanity in Thought and Art.” For much of the text Blanshard
reviews various twentieth-century...
Josh Thompson
Rails Migration: When you can't add a uniqueness constraint because you already have duplicates
I get to occasionally contribute to the Wombat Security dev blog. I wrote the following for...
over a year ago
I get to occasionally contribute to the Wombat Security dev blog. I wrote the following for development.wombatsecurity.com.
This post has been updated to reflect some lessons learned while running this migration in production. Don’t leave a column without an index at any point in...
Wuthering...
Seneca and Marcus Aurelius and their Stoic self-help books - I shall not be afraid when my last hour...
The curious thing about Stoicism is its long-lasting
survival in the self-help genre, curious at...
a year ago
The curious thing about Stoicism is its long-lasting
survival in the self-help genre, curious at least until I read Seneca’s Letters
from a Stoic (1st C.) several years ago and discovered that it was a self-help
book, one of the founding self-help books.
The Meditations of...
Josh Thompson
Robert Moses - The Most Important Person You've Never Heard Of
this was originally posted a few years ago, republishing as a blog post as I organize an...
7 months ago
this was originally posted a few years ago, republishing as a blog post as I organize an increasingly large number of links and resources here.
Here’s a big dumping ground for some resources on robert moses I’ve got floating around.
Obviously, this has grown to an unwieldy sizy...
This Space
39 Books: 2020
It may be a sign of something that I read Louis-René des Forêts's Poems of Samuel Wood several years...
6 months ago
It may be a sign of something that I read Louis-René des Forêts's Poems of Samuel Wood several years after reading A Voice from Elsewhere in which Maurice Blanchot dedicates three unusually personal (and often bewildering) essays to them. The book's title is adapted from a line...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Belonged Essentially to the Order of Wags'
A gift I
prize is seeing the humor in writers not taxonomically labeled “Humorists.” If
you tell me...
9 months ago
A gift I
prize is seeing the humor in writers not taxonomically labeled “Humorists.” If
you tell me a piece by S.J. Pearlman has made you laugh my response is, “Enjoy
yourself.” I don’t find Pearlman as funny as I did when I was a kid, though I’m
happy for you. But if you tell me...
Wuthering...
Stein's style - Mostly no one will be wanting to listen, I am certain
Not many find it interesting this way I am realizing every
one, not any I am just now hearing, and...
6 months ago
Not many find it interesting this way I am realizing every
one, not any I am just now hearing, and it is so completely an important thing,
it is a complete thing in understanding, I am going on writing, I am going on
now with a description of all whom Alfred Hersland came to know...
sbensu
Designing for support teams
Support agents spend their entire lives using the same software. Their needs are very different from...
10 months ago
Support agents spend their entire lives using the same software. Their needs are very different from consumer software. Here are some things to keep in mind.
Josh Thompson
An Intro to Customer Success
Customer Success - what is it?
When I tell people I work in “Customer Success”, they immediately...
over a year ago
Customer Success - what is it?
When I tell people I work in “Customer Success”, they immediately think I do either Customer Support, or sales. In a way, they are correct. I do both. Today, and more in the future, I’ll dig deep into this particular industry.
A traditional...
The American Scholar
The Rescuer
In search of the Underground Railroad’s legendary conductor
The post The Rescuer appeared first on...
6 months ago
In search of the Underground Railroad’s legendary conductor
The post The Rescuer appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Katie Heller Saltoun
Tenderness and grit
The post Katie Heller Saltoun appeared first on The American Scholar.
a week ago
Tenderness and grit
The post Katie Heller Saltoun appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
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...
sbensu
The Market for Takes
Solving for the Twitter equilibrium
5 months ago
Solving for the Twitter equilibrium
The American Scholar
The Diagnostician of Despair
Why Rousseau believed that Enlightenment values would lead us to ruin
The post The Diagnostician of...
3 days ago
Why Rousseau believed that Enlightenment values would lead us to ruin
The post The Diagnostician of Despair appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
On Boldness In Climbing
Climb boldly. I’ve tried to write about this many times, and have thousands of words scattered...
over a year ago
Climb boldly. I’ve tried to write about this many times, and have thousands of words scattered across my computer about this topic. I always felt like I wasn’t communicating it quite right. I wasn’t happy with it.
So I said “screw it, I’ll explain it like I would if I were...
ben-mini
Modality Switching Online
I hate it when my dad leaves me a voicemail. Whenever I open my phone and see the pending voicemail,...
6 months ago
I hate it when my dad leaves me a voicemail. Whenever I open my phone and see the pending voicemail, I roll my eyes. He tends to meander. My dad’s messages can range from 40 seconds to 2 minutes. He typically wants to inform me of something, like an upcoming family event or an...
Wuthering...
Metamorphoses, cantos 7 through 10 - more Heroides, more gore, more of everything - What meen my...
Metamorphoses is fluid, quick, and ever-changing. Let’s look at cantos VII through X, which...
9 months ago
Metamorphoses is fluid, quick, and ever-changing. Let’s look at cantos VII through X, which have
their share of famous stories, stories famous, or as famous as they are,
because of Metamorphoses. Venus
and Adonis, Baucis and Philemon, Orpheus and Eurydice, Pygmalion. Icarus –...
Josh Thompson
Constraints
Constraints are USUALLY seen in a negative light.
Google defines it as:
a limitation or...
over a year ago
Constraints are USUALLY seen in a negative light.
Google defines it as:
a limitation or restriction
Here’s some example constraints that we find in the world around us, which we often view as an annoyance or frustration:
I have to be to work by 9a
I have to get up at 7a
I have...
Josh Thompson
VCR's debug_logger and `git diff`
I recently added the vcr gem to one of our repositories, and was adding tests for an external...
over a year ago
I recently added the vcr gem to one of our repositories, and was adding tests for an external API.
One of my tests was passing, and I wanted to commit the VCR cassette, along with the test/code that went with it.
I had thought I’d rebuilt the VCR cassette a few minutes before,...
The 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...
2 weeks 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.
The American Scholar
“I Have Had My Vision”
Three prompts
The post “I Have Had My Vision” appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
Three prompts
The post “I Have Had My Vision” appeared first on The American Scholar.
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 358.5
...
2 weeks ago
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,...
3 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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'And in the Darkness Comes the Light'
Chard Powers
Smith (1894-1977) was a latecomer to the protracted Era of American Writers
with Three...
a year ago
Chard Powers
Smith (1894-1977) was a latecomer to the protracted Era of American Writers
with Three Names, coming decades after John Greenleaf Whittier, James Russell
Lowell and William Dean Howells. Smith is probably more thoroughly forgotten
than the others, though in 1939 he...
Ben Borgers
Building henrynitzberg.com
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Make Memory Speak so Volubly'
A reader
shares with me her first reading of two books she knows I value highly. First,...
a year ago
A reader
shares with me her first reading of two books she knows I value highly. First, Kipling’s
Kim: “I was
twelve. I was very interested in ‘spiritual’ things. It was the Beatles and the
Maharishi, you know. I got it from the library and it was love at first sight.
I...
The American Scholar
Hot and Cold
The post Hot and Cold appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
The post Hot and Cold appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Quitting the shallow for the deep
Deep work over shallow
TL;DR: I’m off social media, but want to keep a functioning Twitter URL. So,...
over a year ago
Deep work over shallow
TL;DR: I’m off social media, but want to keep a functioning Twitter URL. So, it redirects here.
This year’s “best book I’ve read” label might go to Cal Newport’s Deep Work.
Here’s the gist:
One of the most valuable skills in our economy is becoming...
This Space
Further in the opposite direction
Modernity is supposed to be the moment when religious claims and systems of authority reveal...
a year ago
Modernity is supposed to be the moment when religious claims and systems of authority reveal themselves to be human-all-too-human fictions that lack divine legitimation. Religion is supposed to wither away. But this itself...can be understood as a religious claim: the very...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Fond of Books and Fond of Reading'
A friend has
loaned me his copy of Maurice Baring’s Have You Anything to Declare? (1936),
subtitled...
8 months ago
A friend has
loaned me his copy of Maurice Baring’s Have You Anything to Declare? (1936),
subtitled A Note Book with Commentaries. This
is the 1950 edition published by William Heinemann and comes with an indecipherable
pencil inscription on the front end paper that may be...
Wuthering...
The Best Books of 2024
For the last year and a half I read short books,
mostly, which was psychologically satisfying and...
11 months ago
For the last year and a half I read short books,
mostly, which was psychologically satisfying and anyway necessary to fit the
available energy and concentration. Now,
though, back on my feet, I hope, I am ready to read long books again.
Long, and I mean it, like Rebecca West’s...
The Perry Bible...
Invasion
The post Invasion appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
a month ago
The post Invasion appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
The American Scholar
Camouflage
The post Camouflage appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
The post Camouflage appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
My terminal setup
note: this is a draft. Please ping me in slack/email with questions, spots where this is unclear....
over a year ago
note: this is a draft. Please ping me in slack/email with questions, spots where this is unclear. I’ll answer your question, and update this post.
Here’s some quick notes on how I have my terminal setup.
First, I use Zsh. If you’re on a new Macbook Pro, you also are using...
Josh Thompson
MacOS: Keyboard Shortcut to Toggle Bookmarks Bar in Firefox
A few weeks ago, after Firefox Quantum came out, I decided to try making Firefox my daily browser,...
over a year ago
A few weeks ago, after Firefox Quantum came out, I decided to try making Firefox my daily browser, instead of Chrome.
Turns out, Firefox is great! It was a near-seamless transition, and Firefox has a much lower memory footprint, as well as features Chrome does not have, like...
Josh Thompson
Driven by Compression Progress
Note from author: This is part of an experimental series, more-or-less based on “white papers” and...
over a year ago
Note from author: This is part of an experimental series, more-or-less based on “white papers” and academic literature, as applied to somewhat practical-ish domains.
These pages serve as a brief overview of a paper, and I’ll be able to link to this paper down the road when I what...
Ben Borgers
Best Type of Bathroom Lock
over a year ago
This Space
39 Books: 2018
In spite of what I said yesterday about the decline in the number of novels I read each year, this...
6 months ago
In spite of what I said yesterday about the decline in the number of novels I read each year, this year was packed with a variety: Australian, Korean, Austrian, Egyptian, German, Argentinian and, today's choice, Norwegian; that is, if variety depends on the country of origin. But...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Flow, Like Waters After Summer Show’rs'
“As two men
sit silent, after having exhausted all their topics of conversation; one says, ‘It
is...
4 months ago
“As two men
sit silent, after having exhausted all their topics of conversation; one says, ‘It
is very fine weather,’ and the other says, ‘Yes;’—one blows his nose, and the
other rubs his eye-brows; (by the way, this is very much in Homer’s manner;)
such seems to be the case...
The Marginalian
Shame and the Secret Chambers of the Self: Pioneering Sociologist and Philosopher Helen Merrell Lynd...
"Experiences of shame throw a flooding light on what and who we are and what the world we live in...
8 months ago
"Experiences of shame throw a flooding light on what and who we are and what the world we live in is."
sbensu
When coordination pays off
Stories about Stripe Link where we have to do a lot of upfront coordination but it was worth it.
2 months ago
Stories about Stripe Link where we have to do a lot of upfront coordination but it was worth it.
This Space
Books of the year 2024
In order of being read.
Giorgio Agamben – What I saw, heard, learned…
One night, along Venice’s...
a week ago
In order of being read.
Giorgio Agamben – What I saw, heard, learned…
One night, along Venice’s Zattere, watching the putrid water lap at the city’s foundations, I saw that we exist solely in the intermittence of our being, and that what we call I is just a shadow...
The American Scholar
Just When You Thought It Wasn’t Safe …
How Wilbert Longfellow turned America into a nation of swimmers
The post Just When You Thought It...
6 months ago
How Wilbert Longfellow turned America into a nation of swimmers
The post Just When You Thought It <em>Wasn’t</em> Safe … appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Leave Him, Full of Envy'
Without resorting to clues, who do you think Eugenio Montale is talking about:
“He is a
strong,...
a year ago
Without resorting to clues, who do you think Eugenio Montale is talking about:
“He is a
strong, cordial, human man, whom one seems to have always known.”
One hint: it’s
a poet. Among major poets, the pickings are slim. Strong? Scratch Cavafy.
Cordial? There goes Frost. “Human...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Bluster (New Style) Invokes the Public Good'
I write
about money more often than ever before at my day job. I’m not naïve and understand
that...
a year ago
I write
about money more often than ever before at my day job. I’m not naïve and understand
that research can be costly and professors don’t work for the love of it, but money
has become the barometer of worth. Small grants can be ignored regardless of
the intrinsic worth of the...
Josh Thompson
A New Old Financial Product
I’m going to weave together talk of land value, and financing, and some of the primitives1 around...
over a year ago
I’m going to weave together talk of land value, and financing, and some of the primitives1 around financial products.
How much would you pay for a box that lives in your mailbox and delivers $1000 on the first of every month?
Would you pay at least $5000, if you felt really...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Will Your Birds Be Always Wingless Birds'
A
questionnaire sent to Louis MacNeice in 1934 – that “low dishonest decade” was
big on...
7 months ago
A
questionnaire sent to Louis MacNeice in 1934 – that “low dishonest decade” was
big on questionnaires to writers – asked, “Do you take your stand with any political
or politico-economic party or creed?” The Irishman replied: “No. In weaker
moments I wish I could.” Never a...
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...
a month 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...
sbensu
The secondary market in gift cards
This post by patio11 covers a few things that I learned working with gift cards over the years.
over a year ago
This post by patio11 covers a few things that I learned working with gift cards over the years.
This Space
"When now?"
Out of curiosity, I read a few novels that over the last year have received the highest praise on...
over a year ago
Out of curiosity, I read a few novels that over the last year have received the highest praise on social media and literary podcasts, and have appeared multiple times in newspaper Books of the Year choices and on prize shortlists, and one that even won a prize. I wanted to see...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not the Head But the Seat'
My late friend David Myers taught me the useful German and Yiddish word imported
into English,...
a year ago
My late friend David Myers taught me the useful German and Yiddish word imported
into English, sitzfleisch. The
etymology is straightforward: sitzen
(“to sit”) + Fleisch (“flesh”). In
other words, what we sit on -- the buttocks, ass or derriere. Metaphorically, the
OED tells us,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'What She or He Ought to Know'
In a
typically mordant essay, “A Great Fog Over the Past,” Peter Hitchens cites “Spanish Waters,” a...
4 months ago
In a
typically mordant essay, “A Great Fog Over the Past,” Peter Hitchens cites “Spanish Waters,” a poem by John Masefield, one of the first poets I claimed as my own
when a boy, years before Eliot and Yeats. The poem’s “decrepit beggar,” as Hitchens
puts it, “knows where the...
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
It’s natural—and right—to foster
The post Teach the Conflicts appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
39 Books: 2010
This series has sailed into the doldrum years. Reading has become less of a headlong existential...
7 months ago
This series has sailed into the doldrum years. Reading has become less of a headlong existential adventure than something one does, a pastime, a hobby, something you tell a quiz show presenter how you relax: "I like to read, Brad."
By this time I had given up reviewing...
Josh Thompson
Book Notes: 'The Case Against Sugar' by Gary Taube
In the last few weeks, I read The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes.
I found it to be compelling...
over a year ago
In the last few weeks, I read The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes.
I found it to be compelling (more on that in a moment) and I want to be impacted by them. I want the daily decisions that I make to be subtly influenced by this author and these books.
Related but in a different...
Josh Thompson
Turing Prep Chapter 3: Moar Mythical Creatures
Preparing for Turing Series Index
What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
Preparing for Turing Series Index
What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...
The Marginalian
The Science of Tears and the Art of Crying: An Illustrated Manifesto for Reclaiming Our Deepest...
“All the poems of our lives are not yet made. We hear them crying to us,” Muriel Rukeyser writes in...
a month ago
“All the poems of our lives are not yet made. We hear them crying to us,” Muriel Rukeyser writes in her timeless ode to the power of poetry. “Cry, heart, but never break,” entreats one of my favorite children’s books — which, at their best, are always philosophies for living. It...
Josh Thompson
Elixir/Phoenix part deux
I planned on working through this tutorial for building a slack clone, but half-way through the...
over a year ago
I planned on working through this tutorial for building a slack clone, but half-way through the set-up instructions, after I installed Elixir and Phoenix, I took a long detour through the basic set-up guide. Built some custom routes, along with controllers/views/templates,...
The American Scholar
Bitten
The post Bitten appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
The post Bitten appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
20 hours 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...
The American Scholar
Drops in a Bucket
The post Drops in a Bucket appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
The post Drops in a Bucket appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Leaning Toward Light: A Posy of Poems Celebrating the Joys and Consolations of the Garden
“Gardening is like poetry in that it is gratuitous, and also that it cannot be done on will alone,”...
a year ago
“Gardening is like poetry in that it is gratuitous, and also that it cannot be done on will alone,” the poet and passionate gardener May Sarton wrote as she contemplated the parallels between these two creative practices — parallels that have led centuries of beloved writers to...
The Marginalian
Albert Camus on Writing and the Importance of Stubbornness in Creative Work
"There is no greatness without a little stubbornness... Works of art are not born in flashes of...
a year ago
"There is no greatness without a little stubbornness... Works of art are not born in flashes of inspiration but in a daily fidelity."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Stood There and Stared at Silence, Silent Too'
St. Augustine
observes of St. Ambrose in Book VI, Chapter 3 of his Confessions:
“When he...
10 months ago
St. Augustine
observes of St. Ambrose in Book VI, Chapter 3 of his Confessions:
“When he was
reading, his eyes ran over the page and his heart perceived the sense, but his
voice and tongue were silent. . . . Very often when we were there, we saw him
silently reading and never...
Anecdotal Evidence
'More Interesting to Me Than the Future'
“The past
has always been more interesting to me than the future, just as I have found
pessimists...
4 months ago
“The past
has always been more interesting to me than the future, just as I have found
pessimists more amusing than optimists and failures more attractive than
successes. I do not say that my preferences are based upon universal principles
or that everyone should share them; in...
The Marginalian
Favorite Books of the Year: Art, Science, Poetry, Psychology, Children’s, and More
Because I read for the same reason I write — to fathom my life and deepen my living — looking back...
5 days ago
Because I read for the same reason I write — to fathom my life and deepen my living — looking back on a year of life has always been looking back on a year of reading. This year was different — a time of such profound pain and profound transformation that it fused reading and...
Wuthering...
The Assemblywomen by Aristophanes - Octopus tunnyfish dogfish and skate
The Assemblywomen by Aristophanes – or The Parliament of Women, or several other titles – was...
over a year ago
The Assemblywomen by Aristophanes – or The Parliament of Women, or several other titles – was performed in 392 BCE, thirteen years after The Frogs. In the interval many things had changed. Athens had been conquered; democracy was overthrown but restored; one endless war ended...
The Marginalian
Comet & Star: A Cosmic Fable about the Rhythms and Consolations of Friendship
People pass through our lives and change us, tilting our orbit with their own. Sometimes, if the...
2 months ago
People pass through our lives and change us, tilting our orbit with their own. Sometimes, if the common gravitational center is strong enough, they return, they stay. Sometimes they travel on. But they change us all the same. The great consolation of the cosmic order is the...
The Perry Bible...
Brushed
The post Brushed appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
6 months ago
The post Brushed appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
sbensu
The Perfectionists (book)
A great book that covers the ideas and people behind modern industry.
4 months ago
A great book that covers the ideas and people behind modern industry.
The Marginalian
Between Matter and Spirit: Psychoanalyst Allen Wheelis on the Substance of What We Are
"We are carriers of spirit... into a future unknown, unknowable, and in continual creation."
a year ago
"We are carriers of spirit... into a future unknown, unknowable, and in continual creation."
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