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The American Scholar
The Rascal of Pont-Aven Reassessing a renowned painter’s troubling life The post The Rascal of Pont-Aven appeared first on...
a month ago
9
a month ago
Reassessing a renowned painter’s troubling life The post The Rascal of Pont-Aven appeared first on The American Scholar.
Astral Codex Ten
Moldbug Sold Out "At long last, I've created the populist strongman from my classic 11,000 blog post series 'Don't...
2 months ago
24
2 months ago
"At long last, I've created the populist strongman from my classic 11,000 blog post series 'Don't Create The Populist Strongman'"
Blog -...
Book Review - Owning Your Own Shadow The shadow of the human psyche cannot be overlooked in a thorough exploration of personal...
over a year ago
17
over a year ago
The shadow of the human psyche cannot be overlooked in a thorough exploration of personal development. According to the classic resource Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche, “The shadow is that which has not entered adequately into...
The American Scholar
Family Values Augustine Sedgewick on the history of paternity and patriarchy The post Family Values appeared first...
a month ago
15
a month ago
Augustine Sedgewick on the history of paternity and patriarchy The post Family Values appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Perry Bible...
Us The post Us appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
8 months ago
The Elysian
Every company should be owned by its employees Central States Manufacturing as a model for employee-ownership.
11 months ago
The American Scholar
A Rebel to Remember Gregory P. Downs on the late Anthony E. Kaye’s groundbreaking history of Nat Turner The post A Rebel...
10 months ago
60
10 months ago
Gregory P. Downs on the late Anthony E. Kaye’s groundbreaking history of Nat Turner The post A Rebel to Remember appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
18 Life-Learnings from 18 Years of The Marginalian Somewhere along the way, you realize that no one will teach you how to live your own life — not your...
8 months ago
57
8 months ago
Somewhere along the way, you realize that no one will teach you how to live your own life — not your parents or your idols, not the philosophers or the poets, not your liberal arts education or your twelve-step program, not church or therapy or Tolstoy. No matter how valuable any...
Josh Thompson
The Power Broker, Chapter 30: Robert Moses and Mayor Vincent R. Impellitteri Note from Josh: The following is an excerpt of chapter 34 of the Power Broker, called “Moses and the...
a year ago
16
a year ago
Note from Josh: The following is an excerpt of chapter 34 of the Power Broker, called “Moses and the Mayors”. The chapter is about Moses’ relationship with all of the mayors of NYC that overlapped with Moses’ “rule” over NYC. This excerpt covers just one of the mayors’ overlap...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Fun Which Is Ebullient All Over Yours' A pun is best delivered without announcing itself as a pun. Those ungifted at wordplay tend...
2 weeks ago
9
2 weeks ago
A pun is best delivered without announcing itself as a pun. Those ungifted at wordplay tend to underline, boldface and italicize their every attempt at a pun, most of which are already feeble. Thus, the pun’s bad reputation and the ensuing groans. In contrast I love a good,...
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 359 ...
7 months ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ This Is What We Have To Lose Yesterday felt defeating with the damning report that our climate has indeed moved unfortunately...
over a year ago
12
over a year ago
Yesterday felt defeating with the damning report that our climate has indeed moved unfortunately forward into severity and decline. It’s too late for some aspects but not too late to avoid some of the worst aspects. The fires, the smoke, and the record-high temperatures that...
Ben Borgers
Fancy Quotation Marks
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Terra Do Queixo The post Terra Do Queixo appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The Marginalian
The Science of Tears and the Art of Crying: An Illustrated Manifesto for Reclaiming Our Deepest... “All the poems of our lives are not yet made. We hear them crying to us,” Muriel Rukeyser writes in...
8 months ago
57
8 months ago
“All the poems of our lives are not yet made. We hear them crying to us,” Muriel Rukeyser writes in her timeless ode to the power of poetry. “Cry, heart, but never break,” entreats one of my favorite children’s books — which, at their best, are always philosophies for living. It...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Needlessly Limited Accommodation' That certain mediocre books are judged “classics,” at least by teachers and librarians desperate to...
3 weeks ago
9
3 weeks ago
That certain mediocre books are judged “classics,” at least by teachers and librarians desperate to stock their shelves, fill bulletin boards and placate administrators, is well-known and nobody says much about it. I’m uncertain what mysterious collective formulates this canon...
The Marginalian
The Stubborn Art of Turning Suffering into Strength: Václav Havel’s Extraordinary Letters from... “I have got to make everything that has happened to me good for me,” Oscar Wilde wrote from prison....
5 months ago
42
5 months ago
“I have got to make everything that has happened to me good for me,” Oscar Wilde wrote from prison. “There is not a single degradation of the body which I must not try and make into a spiritualising of the soul.” The cruel kindness of life is that our sturdiest fulcrum of...
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 369.5 ...
4 months ago
ribbonfarm
Storytelling — Just Add Dinosaurs In a previous part, I covered the storytelling model of Matthew Dicks, who specializes in live,...
a year ago
20
a year ago
In a previous part, I covered the storytelling model of Matthew Dicks, who specializes in live, spoken-word competitive storytelling from real life. He has a theory of stories I found deeply unsatisfying: That the essence of a story is a moment of character change where the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Things That Might Have Been and Never Were' My middle son enjoys a genre of fiction known as “alternate history.” Among its practitioners is the...
4 months ago
26
4 months ago
My middle son enjoys a genre of fiction known as “alternate history.” Among its practitioners is the American novelist Harry Turtledove. As I understand it, the premise is simple: change an event in the past and see what happens in subsequent history. Hitler, for instance, dies...
Josh Thompson
Upgrade your job So, apparently I send a lot of email about people trying to get cool jobs. Here’s yet another email...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
So, apparently I send a lot of email about people trying to get cool jobs. Here’s yet another email I sent to a friend, recorded here.  Hi [redacted], First I want to highlight is that flexible/remote jobs are just like normal jobs, but more people want them, so the companies...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Lies Until the Trauma Trots Away' At age fourteen, our dog, if human, would be eligible for Social Security. Luke sleeps more than he...
2 months ago
16
2 months ago
At age fourteen, our dog, if human, would be eligible for Social Security. Luke sleeps more than he did when a pup. His rear end aches and he takes nearly as many meds each day as I do. He throws up more often and has trouble jumping on the bed. We indulge him as we would a sick...
The Marginalian
Something in You Hungers for Clarity: Ta-Nehisi Coates on Writing “Words have more power than any one can guess; it is by words that the world’s great fight, now in...
7 months ago
65
7 months ago
“Words have more power than any one can guess; it is by words that the world’s great fight, now in these civilized times, is carried on,” Mary Shelley wrote in the middle of the Napoleonic Wars that laid the template for the colonialist power structure of the modern world, in an...
Anecdotal Evidence
"Some of His Work Was Gold' From a dusty, thoroughly disorganized Houston bookstore I bought a copy of Turnstile One: A...
a week ago
9
a week ago
From a dusty, thoroughly disorganized Houston bookstore I bought a copy of Turnstile One: A Literary Miscellany (Turnstile Press, 1948), edited by V.S. Pritchett. Much of its literary quality shames today's readers and writers. It collects poems, stories, essays and reviews...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Illustrate With Marginal Notes' I no longer write in books, a decision I made decades ago that I occasionally regret. It came...
a month ago
14
a month ago
I no longer write in books, a decision I made decades ago that I occasionally regret. It came to feel like defacement. But it’s interesting to see what attracted, delighted or puzzled my younger self. Here are the three books on my shelves most heavily underlined and...
The American Scholar
Drops in a Bucket The post Drops in a Bucket appeared first on The American Scholar.
11 months ago
The Marginalian
17 Life-Learnings from 17 Years of The Marginalian The Marginalian was born on October 23, 2006, under an outgrown name, to an outgrown self that feels...
a year ago
61
a year ago
The Marginalian was born on October 23, 2006, under an outgrown name, to an outgrown self that feels to me now almost like a different species of consciousness. (It can only be so — if we don’t continually outgrow ourselves, if we don’t wince a little at our former ideas, ideals,...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Is Substack so Bad? All those readers that Substack shows you as a positive thing on your dashboard are worth very...
6 months ago
24
6 months ago
All those readers that Substack shows you as a positive thing on your dashboard are worth very little. Upon leaving Substack authors have found that users acquired via the Substack recommendation engine have higher churn than organic growth and are less likely to open your...
Josh Thompson
Depression I’m starting to write more regularly these days. For a long time, I’ve hardly written anything, or...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
I’m starting to write more regularly these days. For a long time, I’ve hardly written anything, or only written when external circumstances required me to write something. For example, when I give a talk, I always create a page to “support” the talk, that I can link to in slides,...
The Marginalian
The Wild Iris: Louise Glück on the Door at the End of Your Suffering "Whatever returns from oblivion returns to find a voice."
a year ago
The Marginalian
Facts about the Moon: Dorianne Laux’s Stunning Poem about Bearing Our Human Losses When Even the... “Hearing the rising tide,” Rachel Carson wrote in her poetic meditation on the ocean and the meaning...
a year ago
94
a year ago
“Hearing the rising tide,” Rachel Carson wrote in her poetic meditation on the ocean and the meaning of life, “there are echoes of past and future: of the flow of time, obliterating yet containing all that has gone before… of the stream of life, flowing as inexorably as any ocean...
Josh Thompson
Switching to Jekyll Why I switched to Jekyll A few days ago, I was really feeling the urge to write a short little blog...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
Why I switched to Jekyll A few days ago, I was really feeling the urge to write a short little blog post. So, I put it in a gist on Github. I’m an advocate of writing publicly, and making it a habit, so why was I putting it in a gist, instead of here, on my website, where I...
The American Scholar
Survival Situation The debate over evolution and its discoverer The post Survival Situation appeared first on The...
a year ago
41
a year ago
The debate over evolution and its discoverer The post Survival Situation appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
A Shelter in Time: John Berger on the Power of Music "Songs are like rivers: each follows its own course, yet all flow to the sea, from which everything...
over a year ago
Wuthering...
The Best Books of 2024 For the last year and a half I read short books, mostly, which was psychologically satisfying and...
a year ago
61
a year 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 Elysian
How WeFunder democratizes business ownership A discussion with Jonny Price, president of WeFunder.
3 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Cultivation As a Proficient Amateur' Perhaps the most interesting and even important person in Montaigne’s life – especially for...
a month ago
11
a month ago
Perhaps the most interesting and even important person in Montaigne’s life – especially for his readers -- was not his wife nor his friend Étienne de La Boétie, whose death in 1563 left him bereft, but Marie de Gournay (1565-1645), the model of an autodidact, who taught herself...
The Marginalian
William James on Love "If it comes, it comes; if it does not come, no process of reasoning can force it. Yet it transforms...
a year ago
50
a year ago
"If it comes, it comes; if it does not come, no process of reasoning can force it. Yet it transforms the value of the creature loved."
Josh Thompson
Mentors and Attitude Having a mentor is equal parts “having a mentor” and “being one who can be mentored”. If I am too...
over a year ago
17
over a year ago
Having a mentor is equal parts “having a mentor” and “being one who can be mentored”. If I am too thick-headed to evaluate things that someone tells me and figure out how to apply that to my life, both of us are wasting our time. Having a mentor is life-changing because you have...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Piccalilli Front-end education for the real world. Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
10 months ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Transition Day 8: Sept 17, 2023 — It’s frigid. The first light is finally peaking over the mountains with a...
a year ago
11
a year ago
Day 8: Sept 17, 2023 — It’s frigid. The first light is finally peaking over the mountains with a soft orange-pink glow. We packed up most everything last night since we anticipated a cold morning. I notice the roof top tent is crusted with frost. I suspect the forecast for 39ºF...
The Elysian
Join us for a discussion about CITY STATE A literary salon discussion about autonomous governance.
3 months ago
The Marginalian
The Power of a Thin Skin "To be thin-skinned is to feel keenly, to perceive things that might go unseen, unnoticed, that...
a year ago
28
a year ago
"To be thin-skinned is to feel keenly, to perceive things that might go unseen, unnoticed, that others might prefer not to notice."
The Marginalian
What Rises from the Ruins: Katherine Anne Porter on the Power of the Artist and the Function of Art... "We understand very little of what is happening to us at any given moment."
a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
What Happened To NAEP Scores? ...
4 months ago
sbensu
Lieutenants are the limiting reagent Why don't software companies ship more products? Why do they move more slowly as they grow? What do...
a year ago
20
a year ago
Why don't software companies ship more products? Why do they move more slowly as they grow? What do we mean when we say "this company lacks focus"?
ribbonfarm
Protocol Entrepreneurship I’m running the Summer of Protocols program for the Ethereum Foundation again this year. Here is the...
a year ago
16
a year 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...
Books I read in January 2024 - as long, indeed, as this book, which hardly anyone will read by... The best book I read was Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which will also be the best thing I read in...
a year ago
81
a year ago
The best book I read was Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which will also be the best thing I read in February.  I gotta catch up on my posts. One big book down, and as a result my list of January books is more sensible. TRAVEL, let’s call it Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941), Rebecca...
The American Scholar
“Defeat” by Kahlil Gibran Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Defeat” by Kahlil Gibran appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
Josh Thompson
Focus: One Thing at a Time The pressure to be working on more than one thing at a time is enormous. This pressure comes from no...
over a year ago
15
over a year ago
The pressure to be working on more than one thing at a time is enormous. This pressure comes from no one but me. And before I dismiss this tendency as “proof that I work too hard”, I must take another tact. It comes from a need to satisfy my ego. It is much easier to say “I did...
The American Scholar
Another You The post Another You appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The Marginalian
“Little Women” Author Louisa May Alcott on the Creative Rewards of Being Single "Liberty is a better husband than love."
a year ago
The Elysian
An American case for building new cities We need to remember how to build things.
3 months ago
Josh Thompson
On Minimalism I reluctantly call myself a minimalist. I’d prefer to call myself an “enoughalist”. This reluctance...
over a year ago
20
over a year ago
I reluctantly call myself a minimalist. I’d prefer to call myself an “enoughalist”. This reluctance is because I think the label brings in a bunch of connotations that I don’t like. Our apartment never looked like this. Source: home-designing.com What is Minimalism? a removal or...
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
17
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...
The Perry Bible...
Bubbled The post Bubbled appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
4 months ago
The American Scholar
Corona Chasers You never forget your first solar eclipse The post Corona Chasers appeared first on The American...
a year ago
41
a year ago
You never forget your first solar eclipse The post Corona Chasers appeared first on The American Scholar.
Escaping Flatland
After AI beat them, professional Go players got better and more creative For many decades, it seemed professional Go players had reached a hard limit on how well it is...
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'After So Many Deaths I Live and Write' One needn’t be a fetishist or even a book collector – reader is close enough -- to prize an...
3 months ago
32
3 months ago
One needn’t be a fetishist or even a book collector – reader is close enough -- to prize an “association copy,” a term neatly defined here: “A book that belonged to or was annotated by the author, someone close to the author, a famous or noteworthy person, or someone especially...
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...
a year ago
90
a year 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,...
Ben Borgers
Am I a Gym Bro Now?
over a year ago
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
30
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...
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...
a year ago
85
a year 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...
Ben Borgers
Everyone’s Asking for Tips Now
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
My Good Friends (Who Don't Know Me) Rumor has it you become like those you spend time with. Or “birds of a feather flock together”, or...
over a year ago
15
over a year ago
Rumor has it you become like those you spend time with. Or “birds of a feather flock together”, or “you are what you eat”. Maybe that last one was Hannibal Lector, having an old friend for dinner. Anyway, the person that you are is influenced by the people you spend time with....
Josh Thompson
Denver Botanic Gardens - What, How, Why I recently got access to a delightful amenity, based on where I live. I’ve been sharing it with...
a year ago
20
a year ago
I recently got access to a delightful amenity, based on where I live. I’ve been sharing it with others as quickly as possible, because they too have access to it. From here on out, when I reference “botanic gardens” or “the gardens”, I’m referencing the Denver Botanic Gardens,...
Astral Codex Ten
Introducing AI 2027 Or maybe 2028, it's complicated
3 months ago
The American Scholar
America the Beautiful The poem that became a hymn to the nation came about in troubled, polarizing times The post America...
a week ago
11
a week ago
The poem that became a hymn to the nation came about in troubled, polarizing times The post America the Beautiful appeared first on The American Scholar.
Robert Caro
‘The Power Broker’ Is Finally Getting a Digital Edition. What Took So Long? Caro’s mammoth study of the urban planner Robert Moses is coming out as an e-book on the 50th...
3 months ago
16
3 months ago
Caro’s mammoth study of the urban planner Robert Moses is coming out as an e-book on the 50th anniversary of the biography’s publication.
Astral Codex Ten
The Early Christian Strategy ...
8 months ago
Josh Thompson
On Learning As a student at Turing, I’ve recently been thinking about learning how to learn, specifically in the...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
As a student at Turing, I’ve recently been thinking about learning how to learn, specifically in the context of software development. I am a bit hyperactive when it comes to trying to learn new things. Over the years, I’ve done plenty of ineffective learning, and at least a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Read During Every Possible Free Moment' A reader asks, “How did you learn to read so fast?” The answer is simple: I didn’t. I have always...
3 months ago
32
3 months ago
A reader asks, “How did you learn to read so fast?” The answer is simple: I didn’t. I have always read slowly, often taking notes, which makes it even slower. This frustrated me when I was young, and I briefly contemplated enrolling in one of Evelyn Wood’s...
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...
over a year ago
91
over 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."
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Bad Apple Artworks Everything you see here is made by myself by hand. Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
a year ago
Escaping Flatland
Advice from my editor A sculptural representation of JS Bach’s Fugue in E Flat Minor by Henrik Neugeboren “I can’t make...
a year ago
102
a year ago
A sculptural representation of JS Bach’s Fugue in E Flat Minor by Henrik Neugeboren “I can’t make myself finish this one,” Johanna said one night when we were reading together in bed. She was working her way through a 6021-word essay draft about identities as interfaces that I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A New Past' Robert Conquest writing thirty-one years ago:  “Literature is the expression of our whole past, of...
17 hours ago
3
17 hours ago
Robert Conquest writing thirty-one years ago:  “Literature is the expression of our whole past, of our whole context in life and time – and not only ours. Anatole France said that the word pleurer (to cry, to weep) in French is different from the same sort of word in every other...
The American Scholar
“How Do I Love Thee” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “How Do I Love Thee” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning appeared...
10 months ago
41
10 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “How Do I Love Thee” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Making Space: An Illustrated Ode to the Art of Welcoming the Unknown It is the silence between the notes that distinguishes music from noise, the stillness of the soil...
10 months ago
39
10 months ago
It is the silence between the notes that distinguishes music from noise, the stillness of the soil that germinates the seeds to burst into bloom. It is in the gap of absence that we learn trust, in the gap between knowledge and mystery that we discover wonder. Every act of making...
Ben Borgers
How Recurring Tasks in War Room Work
over a year ago
The Elysian
Week 8: What communities should know about you? (Write a story about them)
a year ago
This Space
Drowning is Fine by Darren Allen For reasons unclear to me at the time I re-read several novels by Aharon Appelfeld, the author born...
over a year ago
57
over a year ago
For reasons unclear to me at the time I re-read several novels by Aharon Appelfeld, the author born in 1932 to a German-speaking Jewish family in what was also Paul Celan’s hometown, Czernowitz, then in Romania, now in Ukraine, and who wrote exclusively in Hebrew after he had...
Astral Codex Ten
AMA With AI Futures Project Team ...
2 months ago
Ben Borgers
Giving Out Chick-fil-A on a Schedule App
over a year ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 When bats were wiped out, more human babies died, a study found. Here's why. Researchers find infant deaths increased after farmers used more pesticides to compensate for rise...
10 months ago
37
10 months ago
Researchers find infant deaths increased after farmers used more pesticides to compensate for rise of pests. Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
The Marginalian
Youth and Age: Kahlil Gibran on the Art of Becoming A roadmap to the fulfilled belonging on the other side of "the great aloneness which knows not what...
over a year ago
81
over a year ago
A roadmap to the fulfilled belonging on the other side of "the great aloneness which knows not what is far and what is near, nor what is small nor great."
Wuthering...
Let's read Ovid's Metamorphoses! And perhaps more. Who would like to read Ovid’s Metamorphoses (8 CE) with me?  We have had some discussion of this...
a year ago
34
a year ago
Who would like to read Ovid’s Metamorphoses (8 CE) with me?  We have had some discussion of this good idea, and I feel I am up to it now.  Up to writing about it. Metamorphoses is a compendium of Greek myths that feature transformation, which turns out to be hundreds of pages...
The Elysian
Expanding your research "Research with me" session two.
5 months ago
Ben Borgers
How You Perceive the World
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Rest Is Silence' Here I pause to remember a forgotten poet who remembered a slightly less forgotten poet – a reminder...
3 months ago
28
3 months ago
Here I pause to remember a forgotten poet who remembered a slightly less forgotten poet – a reminder that all of us are eminently forgettable, regardless of our purported virtues. Walter de la Mare died on June 22, 1956, at age eighty-three. The journal Poetry assigned William...
Ben Borgers
Formulaic Classes
over a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 363.5 ...
6 months ago
Ben Borgers
Cheating on Field Notes
over a year ago
The Marginalian
States of Possession: Erich Neumann on Creativity, the Unconscious, and the Psychology of... There are things in life that come over you sudden as a flash flood, total as an eclipse — the great...
2 months ago
19
2 months ago
There are things in life that come over you sudden as a flash flood, total as an eclipse — the great loves, the great creative passions, the great urges to conquer a mountain or a theorem. They can feel like an alien invasion, like the immense hand of some imperative has seized...
The Marginalian
The Lost Drop: An Illustrated Celebration of the Wonder of the Water Cycle and the Interconnected... I remember when I first learned about the water cycle, about how it makes of our planet a living...
a year ago
57
a year ago
I remember when I first learned about the water cycle, about how it makes of our planet a living world and binds the fate of every molecule to that of every other. I remember feeling in my child-bones the profound interconnectedness of life as I realized I was breathing the...
The Elysian
Substack could create the future of books Here’s how that could look.
a year ago
The American Scholar
My Cousin Manya One survivor’s story The post My Cousin Manya appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
The Elysian
The future according to artists The Parisianer 2050's project to imagine the future in art.
a year ago
Ben Borgers
Is It Worth It to Be Passive Aggressive?
over a year ago
Wuthering...
Finishing The Story of the Stone - What a blessing this is, to return to the scene of my childhood... How I wish all long novels were published in sensible multi-volume editions.  I have finished...
5 months ago
48
5 months ago
How I wish all long novels were published in sensible multi-volume editions.  I have finished The Story of the Stone, 2,500 pages in five volumes, the last two translated by John Minford.  Cao Xueqin and his posthumous editor Gao E again share credit for authorship.  Chapters...
The American Scholar
Poco a Poco The post Poco a Poco appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
The Elysian
Companies are the new City-States That’s why we need to build better ones.
5 months ago
sbensu
Notes on UX and LLM integrations I analyze 8 apps (ChatGPT, Notion, Perplexity, etc.) that use or integrate LLM and try to break down...
a year ago
17
a year ago
I analyze 8 apps (ChatGPT, Notion, Perplexity, etc.) that use or integrate LLM and try to break down when and why they work well, or poorly.
The Marginalian
After Love: Maxine Kumin’s Stunning Poem About Eros as a Portal to Unselfing It is one of the hardest things in life — discerning where we end and the rest of the world begins,...
a year ago
26
a year ago
It is one of the hardest things in life — discerning where we end and the rest of the world begins, negotiating the permeable boundary between self and other, all the while longing for its dissolution, longing to be set free from the prison of ourselves. That is why we cherish...
Ben Borgers
An Eye for Design
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Michael Douglas Explains It All Jessa Crispin on what the actor’s roles tell us about the crisis of masculinity The post Michael...
4 days ago
7
4 days ago
Jessa Crispin on what the actor’s roles tell us about the crisis of masculinity The post Michael Douglas Explains It All appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Winter Sun The post Winter Sun appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
The Marginalian
The Ant, the Grasshopper, and the Antidote to the Cult of More: A Lovely Vintage Illustrated Poem... “Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily...
a year ago
23
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...
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...
7 months ago
This Space
39 Books: 2000 In 1998 my friend John Harris mentioned that he was travelling to the US so I asked if he could pick...
a year ago
90
a year ago
In 1998 my friend John Harris mentioned that he was travelling to the US so I asked if he could pick up a copy of the new translation of Peter Handke's My Year in the No-man's Bay, not available over here. He was the first to tell me about this new website called Amazon. This is...
The Marginalian
The Necessity of Our Illusions: Oliver Sacks on the Mind as an Escape Artist from Reality "We need detachment... as much as we need engagement in our lives... transports that make our...
a year ago
Josh Thompson
Ethan Magnass' sermons from Grace Anglican Church in Grove City, PA I’ve been recommending a collection of sermons to many people recently. I’ve listened to each of...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
I’ve been recommending a collection of sermons to many people recently. I’ve listened to each of these sermons quite a few times. They’re worth your time. Ethan Magness is the rector at Grace Anglican Church in Grove City, PA. Sermon Series on Joseph Grace Anglican Church podcast...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Viva Las Vegas Day 25: Oct 4, 2023 — Today’s 8:30 a.m. Zoom motivates us awake. I’m fortunate to be able to work...
a year ago
17
a year ago
Day 25: Oct 4, 2023 — Today’s 8:30 a.m. Zoom motivates us awake. I’m fortunate to be able to work from the road, though it does require some planning and commitment. Planning in being present with reliable cell service, and commitment in doing the work I’m paid to do and to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Opsimath That I Am in So Many Matters' I was a lazy student who worked hard when the task interested me and coasted the rest of the time....
2 months ago
10
2 months ago
I was a lazy student who worked hard when the task interested me and coasted the rest of the time. I dropped out of Latin prematurely because I couldn’t be bothered to master the ablative absolute, among other things. Formal education was an evasive game played with teachers....
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 361 ...
6 months ago
The Marginalian
The Shape of Wonder: N.J. Berrill on the Universe, the Deepest Meaning of Beauty, and the Highest... "We, each of us, you and I, exhibit more of the true nature of the universe than any dead Saturn or...
10 months ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 The Many Lives of Null Island At risk of ruining the secret for you, Null Island is a long-running inside joke among...
11 months ago
35
11 months ago
At risk of ruining the secret for you, Null Island is a long-running inside joke among cartographers. It is an imaginary island located at a real place: the coordinates of 0º latitude and 0º longitude, a location in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa where the Prime...
The Marginalian
Alone Together: An Illustrated Celebration of the Art of Shared Solitude “One can never be alone enough to write,” Susan Sontag lamented in her diary. “Oh comforting...
a year ago
29
a year ago
“One can never be alone enough to write,” Susan Sontag lamented in her diary. “Oh comforting solitude, how favorable thou art to original thought!” the founding father of neuroscience exulted in considering the ideal environment for creative breakthrough. All creative people,...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Substack is at it again There is no such thing as a perfect place on the internet. But it’s possible to avoid the ones that...
6 months ago
22
6 months ago
There is no such thing as a perfect place on the internet. But it’s possible to avoid the ones that aren’t even pretending to try to be better. The best time to leave Substack was a long time ago. The second best time is now. — Marisa Kabas Visit original link → or View on...
Ben Borgers
JumboCode plans for Head of Engineering
over a year ago
Robert Caro
Misery Acres: An Investigative Series Perhaps Caro’s most influential work during his years at Newsday was the investigative series,...
over a year ago
22
over a year ago
Perhaps Caro’s most influential work during his years at Newsday was the investigative series, “Misery Acres,” a withering expose of fraud.
Escaping Flatland
Pseudonyms lets you practice agency I don’t think I would have become a writer if it wasn’t for the internet forums of the early 2000s.
10 months ago
The Marginalian
Let the Last Thing Be Song "When I die, I want to be sung across the threshold."
a year ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Threaded I penned a Thot(?!), or rather, a post on Threads, the Twitter clone that Meta released some time...
a year ago
10
a year ago
I penned a Thot(?!), or rather, a post on Threads, the Twitter clone that Meta released some time ago. I don’t find it particularly useful, as my Twitter usage had declined long ago. Anyway, the post (and accompanying photo): “When I contemplate the idea of relocating, it’s 70°...
Ben Borgers
3blue1brown.elk.sh
over a year ago
Escaping Flatland
Take a part of the world that you love and give it your care Edward Weston, Armco Steel, Ohio, 1922
3 months ago
The Marginalian
How to Grow Re-enchanted with the World: A Salve for the Sense of Existential Meaninglessness and... A shimmering reminder that "the magic is of our own conjuring."
over a year ago
sbensu
But I want to turn people into dinosaurs Beware of what you actually want.
11 months ago
The American Scholar
Lindsey Weber Relationships that define us The post Lindsey Weber appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
Wuthering...
The Female Quixote by Charlotte Lennox - counting the pages, he was quite terrified at the number,... Di at The little white attic is chasing Don Quixote through the 18th century, so she read,...
7 months ago
51
7 months ago
Di at The little white attic is chasing Don Quixote through the 18th century, so she read, obviously, The Female Quixote (1852) by Charlotte Lennox.  I had not read it, so I trailed along. An archetypal novelistic heroine, young Arabella has had her brain addled by novels: From...
Josh Thompson
First pass with Elixir/Phoenix I’m digging into Elixir and Phoenix. I’m working through this tutorial to cloning Slack. The...
over a year ago
15
over a year ago
I’m digging into Elixir and Phoenix. I’m working through this tutorial to cloning Slack. The tutorial author says At the time of writing, I have ~1 week experience with Phoenix. Similar to Rubber Ducky Debugging, I am writing this blog post to force myself to think differently...
The American Scholar
“Käthe Kollwitz” by Muriel Rukeyser Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Käthe Kollwitz” by Muriel Rukeyser appeared first on The...
3 months ago
30
3 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Käthe Kollwitz” by Muriel Rukeyser appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Twenties vs. Thirties (from a feeling-behind-the-curve 27 year old.) Some months ago I found a very encouraging article, comparing one’s twenties to one’s thirties. I’ve...
over a year ago
18
over a year ago
Some months ago I found a very encouraging article, comparing one’s twenties to one’s thirties. I’ve scoured everywhere that I stick notes and interesting reads, and cannot, for the life of me, find the article. The internet is littered with tons of fluff pieces talking about sex...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Where You Give Your Energy I had just turned 40. I was feeling increasingly stagnant at VSCO and recognized the need for a...
a year ago
12
a year ago
I had just turned 40. I was feeling increasingly stagnant at VSCO and recognized the need for a change. I began discussions with leadership about my desire for greater involvement. It was straight-up politicking, with my objective being a title change to formally lead the product...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Future Web It’s idealistic and very millennial of me to reminiscence the early days of Web innocence, unbound...
6 months ago
33
6 months ago
It’s idealistic and very millennial of me to reminiscence the early days of Web innocence, unbound creativity it hosted and wonderful lack of monetisation of virtually every aspect of being online. We can’t turn back time. But, individually and collectively, we can strive for...
Ben Borgers
No Dessert Challenge
over a year ago
Blog -...
Book Review - Codependent No More With more than five million copies sold by its twenty-fifth anniversary nearly a decade ago,...
over a year ago
20
over a year ago
With more than five million copies sold by its twenty-fifth anniversary nearly a decade ago, Codependent No More is a startling, powerful book that has touched the lives of so very many.
The American Scholar
What’s Not to Like? On similes, good and bad The post What’s Not to Like? appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Great Euthanasia' I can’t think of another poet who wrote so often or so amusingly about death as Thomas Disch. I once...
a week ago
9
a week ago
I can’t think of another poet who wrote so often or so amusingly about death as Thomas Disch. I once tried tallying his death-themed poems and lost count. Here’s a sample: “How to Behave When Dead,” “Symbols of Love and Death,” “In Defense of Forest Lawn,” “At the Tomb of the...
Astral Codex Ten
Can You Hate Everyone In Rome? ...
6 months ago
The American Scholar
“Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes appeared first on...
a year ago
86
a year ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes appeared first on The American Scholar.
Astral Codex Ten
Deliberative Alignment, And The Spec ...
5 months ago
The American Scholar
Reasons for Living The post Reasons for Living appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The Marginalian
The Dalai Lama’s Ethical and Ecological Philosophy for the Next Generation, Illustrated "We are all interconnected in the universe, and from this, universal responsibility arises......
over a year ago
81
over a year ago
"We are all interconnected in the universe, and from this, universal responsibility arises... Everyone has the responsibility to develop a happier world."
This Space
39 Books: 2004 Bought for an eye-watering £13 in the LRB Bookshop three months before this blog began, Once Again...
a year ago
58
a year ago
Bought for an eye-watering £13 in the LRB Bookshop three months before this blog began, Once Again for Thucydides is another example in this series of how a book of under 100 pages can be worth as much as any number of maximalist breeze blocks. But do I really want to make such...
The American Scholar
Indiana Absurd Tiffany Tsao on translating a beguiling Indonesian short-story collection The post Indiana Absurd...
a year ago
53
a year ago
Tiffany Tsao on translating a beguiling Indonesian short-story collection The post Indiana Absurd 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...
9 months ago
75
9 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...
Josh Thompson
Don't Focus on the Present If you accept the premise that training  cycles are the method by which you will improve your...
over a year ago
14
over a year ago
If you accept the premise that training  cycles are the method by which you will improve your climbing, you  should be able to focus less on the day-by-day fluctuation in your performance. At least, I should be able to, since I accept that premise. Yet I still struggle to not be...
This Space
This kingdom by the sea Published in 1912, it’s about the fall of the repressed writer Gustav von Aschenbach, when his...
over a year ago
57
over a year ago
Published in 1912, it’s about the fall of the repressed writer Gustav von Aschenbach, when his supposedly objective appreciation of a young boy’s beauty becomes sexual obsession. This is how BBC Radio 4's In Our Time sets up a discussion of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Eero Saarinen designed it 20230925_Weightshifting_STL_01.jpg Day 16: Sept 25, 2023 — We visit this marvel almost every time...
a year ago
11
a year ago
20230925_Weightshifting_STL_01.jpg Day 16: Sept 25, 2023 — We visit this marvel almost every time we’re in the area. It’s always stunning. Read on nazhamid.com or Reply via email
Josh Thompson
Climbing in "decking range" In indoor sport climbing, as your climber progresses from the ground to the first three bolts, you...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
In indoor sport climbing, as your climber progresses from the ground to the first three bolts, you need to be ready for any situation. Here’s how to give a kick-ass lead belay when your climber is close enough to the ground they could potentially deck. This is part of a series on...
The Marginalian
Ocean Vuong on Anger “To be an artist is a guarantee to your fellow humans that the wear and tear of living will not let...
2 months ago
29
2 months ago
“To be an artist is a guarantee to your fellow humans that the wear and tear of living will not let you become a murderer,” Louise Bourgeois wrote in her diary as a young artist. “The poets (by which I mean all artists),” James Baldwin wrote in his late thirties, “are finally the...
The Marginalian
O Sweet Spontaneous: E.E. Cummings’s Love-Poem to Earth and the Glory of Spring The ultimate anthem of resistance to the assaults on life.
over a year ago
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
17
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'All of Time is Cut in Two—Before and After' Rhina Espaillat writes the sonnet “How Like a Winter . . .” (And After All: Poems, 2018) in...
a month ago
15
a month ago
Rhina Espaillat writes the sonnet “How Like a Winter . . .” (And After All: Poems, 2018) in response to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 17:  “So Shakespeare describes absence. Yes—but no, since every winter ends, gentling to spring’s tentative yellows, then the green and blue and bolder...
Wuthering...
Platonov's Chevengur - “But communism’s about to set in... Why am I finding everything so hard?” Another remarkable Russian novel finally made it into English last year, Andrey Platonov’s...
3 months ago
39
3 months ago
Another remarkable Russian novel finally made it into English last year, Andrey Platonov’s Chevengur, written in 1929 but not published until 1972, in Paris. Robert and Elizabeth Chandler have been translating Platonov for decades now, and this novel and the apparatus...
Ben Borgers
Bagel Institute
over a year ago
Naz Hamid
The Abstraction Gap Bridging the design-development gap as AI rises. There’s a frustrating gap in how development...
2 months ago
15
2 months ago
Bridging the design-development gap as AI rises. There’s a frustrating gap in how development projects present themselves. What looks straightforward on GitHub — ‘just run this command!’ — quickly spirals into an odyssey of sudo permissions, package managers, and missing...
sbensu
Love's Executioner (book) Countertransference applies to regular conversation.
7 months ago
Josh Thompson
How to Run Your Rails App in Profiling Mode Last time, I wrote about setting up DataDog for your Rails application. Even when “just” running the...
over a year ago
17
over a year ago
Last time, I wrote about setting up DataDog for your Rails application. Even when “just” running the app locally, it is sending data to DataDog. This is super exciting, because I’m getting close to being able to glean good insights from DataDog’s Application Performance...
Wuthering...
Plato's Republic - justice, fantasy and censorship - We'll ask Homer not to be angry I had ambitions to write about Plato’s Republic with some thoroughness, but I guess I will just...
over a year ago
92
over a year ago
I had ambitions to write about Plato’s Republic with some thoroughness, but I guess I will just pursue one point.  Good enough. I have been separating Socrates from Plato, an imaginative exercise based on circular criteria.  The more Socratic of the Socratic dialogues are...
The American Scholar
This Woman’s Work Susannah Gibson opens the parlor doors on 18th-century feminism The post This Woman’s Work appeared...
9 months ago
43
9 months ago
Susannah Gibson opens the parlor doors on 18th-century feminism The post This Woman’s Work appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Marie Howe’s Stunning Hymn of Humanity, Animated "It began as an almost inaudible hum..."
a year ago
The American Scholar
Above the River of Your Longing Two new prompts The post Above the River of Your Longing appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
Wuthering...
Naming the garden in The Story of the Stone - the pleasures of incomprehension The older sister of Bao-yu, the boy, now a young teen, who was born with the jade stone in his...
9 months ago
61
9 months ago
The older sister of Bao-yu, the boy, now a young teen, who was born with the jade stone in his mouth, is an Imperial Concubine, a high prestige slave of the Emperor.  She is likely herself still a teen when we learn, in Chapter 16 of The Story of the Stone, that she has been...
The Elysian
Who should control AI? Nonprofits aren't our only option.
a month ago
Wuthering...
Metamorphoses, cantos 7 through 10 - more Heroides, more gore, more of everything - What meen my... Metamorphoses is fluid, quick, and ever-changing.  Let’s look at cantos VII through X, which...
a year ago
113
a year ago
Metamorphoses is fluid, quick, and ever-changing.  Let’s look at cantos VII through X, which have their share of famous stories, stories famous, or as famous as they are, because of Metamorphoses.  Venus and Adonis, Baucis and Philemon, Orpheus and Eurydice, Pygmalion.  Icarus –...
Ben Borgers
Batching
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Wherever You Are, Stop What You’re Doing Nothing magnifies life — in the proper sense of the word, rooted in the Latin for “to make greater,...
6 months ago
76
6 months ago
Nothing magnifies life — in the proper sense of the word, rooted in the Latin for “to make greater, to glorify” — more than the act of noticing its details, and nothing sanctifies it more: Kneeling to look at a lichen is a devotional act. We bless our own lives by recognizing and...
The Marginalian
How to Own Your Human-Heartedness: Alan Watts on the Confucian Concept of Jen and the Dangers of... "Trust in human nature is acceptance of the good-and-bad of it, and it is hard to trust those who do...
a year ago
Escaping Flatland
Things I learned working with artists As I said in “Lessons I learned working at an art gallery,” I had several observations that I...
6 months ago
84
6 months ago
As I said in “Lessons I learned working at an art gallery,” I had several observations that I couldn’t fit into that post—so lets continue today.
Josh Thompson
Three Ways to Decide What to be When You Grow Up Recently, I have had to explain to people what is it that I want to do. This question is difficult...
over a year ago
18
over a year ago
Recently, I have had to explain to people what is it that I want to do. This question is difficult to answer for two reasons. The first reason is I am not yet strongly pulled into a specific position. My ideal answer would be “I want to do X role at company Y.” Short. Concise....
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Familiar Hearts of Strangers' “At bottom Chekhov is a writer who has flung his soul to the side of pity, and sees into the...
2 months ago
21
2 months ago
“At bottom Chekhov is a writer who has flung his soul to the side of pity, and sees into the holiness and immaculate fragility of the hidden striver below.”  In his letters to family and friends, Chekhov can be harsh, hectoring and even smutty, though seldom in the stories except...
Ben Borgers
Did MCAS Matter?
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Bunny & Tree: A Tender Wordless Parable of Friendship and the Improbable Saviors That Make Life... Traversing the landscape of life on the wings of trust.
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Things Go Downhill After We Leave
over a year ago
The Marginalian
We Go to the Park: A Soulful Illustrated Meditation on Our Search for Meaning "Sometimes it feels as if all of life is made up of longing."
11 months ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Maripedia The print library Maripedia offers you an overview of Marimekko’s art of printmaking from the 1950s...
12 months ago
12
12 months ago
The print library Maripedia offers you an overview of Marimekko’s art of printmaking from the 1950s to the 2020s. Here you can identify and explore our vibrant prints, discover their designers, and enjoy the stories behind the patterns. Visit original link → or View on...
The Elysian
No, KKR is not “equity washing” Contra Katie Boland on the private equity company’s employee-ownership model.
5 days ago
Astral Codex Ten
Highlights From The Comments On Lynn And IQ ...
6 months ago
The American Scholar
The March Down Main The post The March Down Main appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Road Hunting Sometimes I look at past images and marvel at what’s there. In this case, the marvel came from the...
over a year ago
10
over a year ago
Sometimes I look at past images and marvel at what’s there. In this case, the marvel came from the fact that we (Jen, Grant, and Ryan) drove this trail after we spent the night from where this was taken. Read on nazhamid.com or Reply via email
Josh Thompson
An announcement, and a teaser (for you rock climbers) Here’s a clip from a video I shot today.  Can you guess what’s coming? (This is all going to happen...
over a year ago
17
over a year ago
Here’s a clip from a video I shot today.  Can you guess what’s coming? (This is all going to happen on The Climber’s Guide) (Warning to mobile users: big gif) In case you didn’t guess, or you guessed wrong… I’m shooting tons of video for a course. It’s going to be awesome. It’s...
Josh Thompson
Thoughts on Money from 2013 I was looking through some draft posts I have lying around, and found one from the middle of 2013....
over a year ago
13
over a year ago
I was looking through some draft posts I have lying around, and found one from the middle of 2013. That’s 2.5 years ago. Reading over it, I feel satisfaction for a few reasons: Old Josh (from July 2013) wasn’t a train wreck. As soon as I think about myself in highschool and...
Ben Borgers
We’re All Powered by Electric Meat
over a year ago
The American Scholar
The Wonder of It All In search of awe The post The Wonder of It All appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
The Elysian
If you have a social mission, go into business An interview with Frederick Freundlich about working at Mondragon, participating in a cooperative,...
4 months ago
32
4 months ago
An interview with Frederick Freundlich about working at Mondragon, participating in a cooperative, and building social companies.
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."
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Terror, Tenderness, and the Paradoxes of Human Nature: How a Marmoset Saved Leonard and Virginia... The most discomposing thing about people capable of monstrous acts is that they too enjoy art, they...
a year ago
48
a year ago
The most discomposing thing about people capable of monstrous acts is that they too enjoy art, they too read to their children, they too can be moved to tears by music. The dissident poet Joseph Brodsky captured this as he contemplated the greatest antidote to evil, observing...
The Marginalian
The Work of Art: Inside the Creative Process of Beloved Artists, Poets, Musicians, and Other Makes... “The true artist,” Beethoven wrote in his touching letter of advice to a young girl aspiring to be...
a year ago
51
a year ago
“The true artist,” Beethoven wrote in his touching letter of advice to a young girl aspiring to be an artist, “is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.” The choreographer Martha Graham called this particular shade of...
The American Scholar
Jane Skafte The language of trees The post Jane Skafte appeared first on The American Scholar.
a year ago
The Marginalian
Edward Abbey on How to Live and How to Die: Immortal Wisdom from the Park Ranger Who Inspired... The summer after graduating high school, knowing he would face conscription into the military as...
4 months ago
48
4 months ago
The summer after graduating high school, knowing he would face conscription into the military as soon as his eighteenth birthday arrived, Edward Abbey (January 29, 1927–March 14, 1989) set out to get to know the land he was being asked to die for. He hitchhiked and hopped freight...
Ben Borgers
HEY’s Fun Names
over a year ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Turning the Tide: Can Kamala Harris Flip Texas Blue? Let me be clear: Texas will be blue. It’s inevitable. The only question is when? And how do we get...
11 months ago
11
11 months ago
Let me be clear: Texas will be blue. It’s inevitable. The only question is when? And how do we get there? Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
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...
9 months ago
63
9 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...
Ben Borgers
How I Sent Texts for Assassins
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Life of Trees: A Poem "I want to sleep and dream the life of trees, beings from the muted world..."
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Set in Seclusion The post Set in Seclusion appeared first on The American Scholar.
a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 360.5 ...
6 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
Compatible Observations of Great Men Andrew Taylor on Charles Montagu Doughty, author of Travels in Arabia Deserta (1888): “He appealed...
a month ago
19
a month ago
Andrew Taylor on Charles Montagu Doughty, author of Travels in Arabia Deserta (1888): “He appealed instinctively to the past, against what he saw as the corruption of language, manners and morality of his own time, but Travels in Arabia Deserta is not backward-looking for its own...
Ploum.net
Du désir profond de se faire arnaquer Du désir profond de se faire arnaquer Pour suivre les modes et faire comme tout le monde Stefano...
3 months ago
34
3 months ago
Du désir profond de se faire arnaquer Pour suivre les modes et faire comme tout le monde Stefano Marinelli, un administrateur système chevronné, installe principalement des serveurs sous FreeBSD, OpenBSD ou NetBSD pour ses clients. Le plus difficile ? Arriver à convaincre un...
Wuthering...
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr's La plus secrète mémoire des hommes - one of his objectives was to be original... La plus secrète mémoire des hommes (2021) by Senegalese novelist Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, published in...
a year ago
92
a year ago
La plus secrète mémoire des hommes (2021) by Senegalese novelist Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, published in English as The Most Secret History of Men (2023), is the first imitation of Roberto Bolaño I have seen outside of Latin American literature.  Many reviews note that Sarr’s novel is...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 archives.design A digital archive of graphic design related items that are available on the Internet Archives. Visit...
11 months ago
11
11 months ago
A digital archive of graphic design related items that are available on the Internet Archives. Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
Ben Borgers
Hands Occupied
over a year ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ The Last Times During our trip this year, looking at my mother, the reality suddenly hit me. She's 75. I visit my...
6 months ago
28
6 months ago
During our trip this year, looking at my mother, the reality suddenly hit me. She's 75. I visit my family in Malaysia once a year, and if she lives to 90, that means just 15 more visits together. The realization shook me. When my father passed in 2017, I hadn't considered how...
Ploum.net
À la recherche de l’attention perdue À la recherche de l’attention perdue La messagerie instantanée et la politique Vous l’avez...
3 months ago
36
3 months ago
À la recherche de l’attention perdue La messagerie instantanée et la politique Vous l’avez certainement vu passer : Un journaliste américain s’est fait inviter par erreur sur un chat Signal où des personnes très haut placées de l’administration américaine (y compris le...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Pebble Is a Perfect Creature' My nephew has introduced me to the practice of “pebbling,” not to be confused with “stoning.” Sorry...
5 months ago
29
5 months ago
My nephew has introduced me to the practice of “pebbling,” not to be confused with “stoning.” Sorry to say the psychologists and sociologists got their hands on it first, but there’s nothing new about so simple a human gesture. The word is adopted from the courtship rituals of...
Wuthering...
The books I read in December 2024 - From her earliest youth she had discovered a fondness for... A different kind of month with a different category of reading. CHINA Mountain Home: The Wilderness...
6 months ago
65
6 months ago
A different kind of month with a different category of reading. CHINA Mountain Home: The Wilderness Poetry of Ancient China (5th-13th cent.), tr. David Hinton – The teenagers in The Story of the Stone play various games based on their memorization of massive amounts of...
Wuthering...
Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music - enchantment is the precondition of all... When I read Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music (1872) several...
over a year ago
59
over a year ago
When I read Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music (1872) several years ago I was interested in it as a 19th century work, as a key text in the cult of Richard Wagner and an early example of the vogue for fantasizing that stuffy Prussian or...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Re-entry This past Friday on April 16th, I awoke early and decided to go wait in line for my first vaccine...
over a year ago
12
over a year ago
This past Friday on April 16th, I awoke early and decided to go wait in line for my first vaccine shot at SF Gen (as it’s locally known — you may know it better as Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital). I became eligible when San Francisco opened up vaccines to those 16 and...
The Marginalian
Wonder-Sighting on Planet Earth: The Space Telescope Eye of the Scallop Inside Earth's most alien vision.
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Engulfed The post Engulfed appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
This Space
Proust regained I recommend very highly for anyone who has read or not read In Search of Lost Time Brian Nelson's...
a year ago
26
a year ago
I recommend very highly for anyone who has read or not read In Search of Lost Time Brian Nelson's The Swann Way, the first volume in a new translation of the entire novel by diverse hands, in this fine paperback from Oxford World's Classics. His translation of the chapter Swann...
Steven Scrawls
Doomr Most of my creations can be contained within an RSS feed; Doomr cannot. You'll want to check the...
a year ago
15
a year ago
Most of my creations can be contained within an RSS feed; Doomr cannot. You'll want to check the website for this one.
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 The cost of fueling my body I’ve become a bit obsessed with how much it costs to fuel my body during the working hours. — Dave...
11 months ago
11
11 months ago
I’ve become a bit obsessed with how much it costs to fuel my body during the working hours. — Dave Rupert Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
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...
a year ago
87
a year 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...
Escaping Flatland
A summary of what I wrote in 2023 In 2023, I published 37 essays. I’ve spent the better part of the morning going through it all to...
a year ago
28
a year ago
In 2023, I published 37 essays. I’ve spent the better part of the morning going through it all to see what the themes were—it is quite surprising to notice what emerges when you allow yourself to follow your curiosity and intuition for a full year. I wrote a summary of the...
Escaping Flatland
Advice for a friend who wants to start a blog What’s odd about you is what’s interesting.
5 months ago
The American Scholar
Lessons in the Diplomatic Arts Notes from a musical tour of South Africa The post Lessons in the Diplomatic Arts appeared first on...
a week ago
27
a week ago
Notes from a musical tour of South Africa The post Lessons in the Diplomatic Arts appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
12 Lessons Learned While Publishing Something Every Day for a Month A month ago, I decided to publish something every day for at least thirty days. I read a few others...
over a year ago
13
over a year ago
A month ago, I decided to publish something every day for at least thirty days. I read a few others who did something similar, and discussed all the benefits. I’ve found myself struggling with creating something and then making it public. (Public here, on another project, or at...
Astral Codex Ten
OpenAI Nonprofit Buyout: Much More Than You Wanted To Know ...
4 months ago
Ben Borgers
War Room — using the native date picker
over a year ago
Wuthering...
Readalongs I wish someone else would organize - Cuban literature, August Wilson plays, and many more The glory days of book blogs were full of “challenges.”  I hosted several: Scottish literature,...
over a year ago
51
over a year ago
The glory days of book blogs were full of “challenges.”  I hosted several: Scottish literature, Italian, Austrian, Scandinavian, Portuguese, always limited to the 19th century and earlier to keep the scope manageable.  The idea was that I read a lot, while others were invited to...
The Marginalian
Bertrand Russell on the Salve for Our Modern Helplessness and Overwhelm "A way of life cannot be successful so long as it is a mere intellectual conviction. It must be...
a year ago
26
a year ago
"A way of life cannot be successful so long as it is a mere intellectual conviction. It must be deeply felt, deeply believed, dominant even in dreams."
Josh Thompson
Turing Prep Chapter 4: Arrays, Hashes, and Nested Collections Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
18
over a year ago
Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...
Ben Borgers
Apple Credit Card Rewards
over a year ago
The American Scholar
“The Frog Prince” by Stevie Smith Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Frog Prince” by Stevie Smith appeared first on The...
5 months ago
39
5 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Frog Prince” by Stevie Smith appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
I Don’t Get Getir
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Center of the Universe: Non-Speaking Autistic Poet Hannah Emerson’s Extraordinary Poem About How to... "Please try to go to hell frequently because you will find the light there."
a year ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Public Work Public Work is a search engine for public domain content. Explore 100,000+ copyright-free images...
11 months ago
18
11 months ago
Public Work is a search engine for public domain content. Explore 100,000+ copyright-free images from The MET, New York Public Library, and other sources. Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
The Marginalian
The Last Wonder: D.H. Lawrence on Death and the Best Lifelong Preparation for It "Know thyself, and that thou art mortal. But know thyself, denying that thou art mortal."
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Raspberry Heaven A yearly back-yard harvest opens a door to the divine The post Raspberry Heaven appeared first on...
4 months ago
13
4 months ago
A yearly back-yard harvest opens a door to the divine The post Raspberry Heaven appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Stalactite & Stalagmite: A Brief Illustrated History of Earth and One Great Truth about Love We are always either drawing closer or drifting apart — there is no stasis in relationships. The...
2 months ago
31
2 months ago
We are always either drawing closer or drifting apart — there is no stasis in relationships. The direction of movement may change over the course of a relationship, but there is no stasis. Despite our culture’s bias for the drama of cataclysm — the violent heartbreaks, the very...
The Elysian
Writing Prompt: Fix Capitalism By September 30th.
10 months ago
The American Scholar
Good Intentions The post Good Intentions appeared first on The American Scholar.
9 months ago
Josh Thompson
2019 Annual Review It’s that time of the year. I always really enjoy reading other people’s annual reviews, and I find...
over a year ago
14
over a year ago
It’s that time of the year. I always really enjoy reading other people’s annual reviews, and I find value in writing my own. Previous reviews: 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 My review breaks down into a few broad categories: Travel Relationships & Community Leadville Trail...
Ben Borgers
Website redesign, December 2022
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Taking the Plunge with Colemak This entire post is written in Colemak. I am aiming to write at least 100 words, and this is...
over a year ago
17
over a year ago
This entire post is written in Colemak. I am aiming to write at least 100 words, and this is certainly harder than copying someone else’s words. I have completed a few hours of dedicated practice, and it is quite possible that I am jumping the gun, and will quickly revert to...
Josh Thompson
2016 - Biggest Lesson, Most Dangerous Books I don’t do New Years resolutions, but I like to think back on the last year. I’ll touch on two...
over a year ago
13
over a year ago
I don’t do New Years resolutions, but I like to think back on the last year. I’ll touch on two things: The most important thing I’ve learned this year: Tactical Silence Most dangerous books of 2016 Tactical Silence I suspect that a year from now, I’m going to look back and say...
This Space
39 Books: 1989 Nowadays I would be put off reading a book labelled controversial and exciting gossipy attention on...
a year ago
56
a year ago
Nowadays I would be put off reading a book labelled controversial and exciting gossipy attention on TV and in newspapers, but in 1989 I read Alexander Stuart's The War Zone that did exactly that. It was later made into a controversial film. The only thing I remember of the...
The American Scholar
Food for Thought A pragmatic approach to one of humanity’s gravest threats The post Food for Thought appeared first...
4 months ago
16
4 months ago
A pragmatic approach to one of humanity’s gravest threats The post Food for Thought appeared first on The American Scholar.
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 What price? If anything, as the well gets poisoned by their own outputs, large language models may well end up...
9 months ago
14
9 months ago
If anything, as the well gets poisoned by their own outputs, large language models may well end up eating their own slop and getting their own version of mad cow disease. So this might be as good as they’re ever going to get. — Jeremy Keith I use AI. Not particularly for...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Tag, you're it Tagged by Scott and Luke and in thoughtful return, I’m answering the Blog Questions Challenge here....
5 months ago
50
5 months ago
Tagged by Scott and Luke and in thoughtful return, I’m answering the Blog Questions Challenge here. Some of these answers may overlap with the answers I gave Manu for his People & Blogs series, so I’ll do my best to do something a bit different. Please visit Manu’s P&B site...
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 379.5 ...
2 months ago
The Marginalian
Vision of the Womb and Vision of the Brain: H.D. on the Two Kinds of Seeing and the Key to Over-mind... “One must be a seer, make oneself a seer,” Arthur Rimbaud wrote, “by a long, gigantic and rational...
a week ago
12
a week ago
“One must be a seer, make oneself a seer,” Arthur Rimbaud wrote, “by a long, gigantic and rational derangement of all the senses.” As more and more of our senses are being amputated by the blade of our image-centric culture, reducing the vast and delicate sensorium of human...
Ben Borgers
Daily Habits
over a year ago
Ploum.net
Dédicace à Trolls & Vélo et magie cycliste Dédicace à Trolls & Vélo et magie cycliste Je serai ce samedi 19 avril à Mons au festival Trolls &...
2 months ago
26
2 months ago
Dédicace à Trolls & Vélo et magie cycliste Je serai ce samedi 19 avril à Mons au festival Trolls & Légende en dédicace au stand PVH. La star de la table sera sans conteste Sara Schneider, autrice fantasy de la saga des enfants d’Aliel et qui est toute auréolée du Prix SFFF Suisse...
The American Scholar
Learning to Be Social What might Rousseau teach us about how to live with others? The post Learning to Be Social appeared...
4 months ago
15
4 months ago
What might Rousseau teach us about how to live with others? The post Learning to Be Social appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ploum.net
À la recherche de la déconnexion parfaite À la recherche de la déconnexion parfaite Une rétrospective de ma quête de concentration Une...
5 months ago
37
5 months ago
À la recherche de la déconnexion parfaite Une rétrospective de ma quête de concentration Une première déconnexion À la fin de l’année 2018, épuisé par la promotion de la compagne Ulule de mon livre « Les aventures d’Aristide, le lapin cosmonaute » et prenant conscience de mon...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Forty Three On March 28th 2021, I turned 43. My second pandemic birthday, I turned 42 shortly after San...
over a year ago
12
over a year ago
On March 28th 2021, I turned 43. My second pandemic birthday, I turned 42 shortly after San Francisco went into lockdown. It feels like a lifetime has passed between now and then, and with a sense of deja vu, like it was yesterday. Except that I wasn't at home, and I was on the...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Brewed and baked Day 12: Sept 21, 2023 — I am predictable when visiting a reasonably sized city. I look for coffee, a...
a year ago
11
a year ago
Day 12: Sept 21, 2023 — I am predictable when visiting a reasonably sized city. I look for coffee, a juice / smoothie shop, a natural foods store, a sourdough bakery, and a decent restaurant that serves up clean and fresh fare or some local delicacy. St. Louis fortunately checks...
The Elysian
What movement does the world need now? Your answers to December's writing prompt.
6 months ago
Escaping Flatland
Morning ritual + reading recommendations
a year ago
The American Scholar
Feels Like Coming Home The wonders of the coastal redwood The post Feels Like Coming Home appeared first on The American...
10 months ago
40
10 months ago
The wonders of the coastal redwood The post Feels Like Coming Home appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Overwhelmed
over a year ago
Escaping Flatland
Seeing people clearly Head of people operations for the entire friend group
a year ago
The Marginalian
Blue Is the Color of Desire: The Science, Poetry, and Wonder of the Bowerbird For all the enchantment the color blue has cast upon humanity, no animal has fallen under its spell...
a year ago
87
a year ago
For all the enchantment the color blue has cast upon humanity, no animal has fallen under its spell more hopelessly than the bowerbird, whose very survival hinges on blue. In a small clearing on the forest floor, the male weaves twigs and branches into an elaborate bower, which...
The Marginalian
But We Had Music: Nick Cave Reads an Animated Poem about Black Holes, Eternity, and How to Bear Our... How, knowing that even the universe is dying, do we bear our lives? Most readily, through...
a year ago
73
a year ago
How, knowing that even the universe is dying, do we bear our lives? Most readily, through friendship, through connection, through co-creating the world we want to live in for the brief time we have together on this lonely, perfect planet. The seventh annual Universe in Verse — a...
The Marginalian
Uncaging the Bird in the Mind: William Henry Hudson and the Gift of the Ruin of Your Best Laid Plans “The mind is its own place, and in it self can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n,” wrote...
2 weeks ago
12
2 weeks ago
“The mind is its own place, and in it self can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n,” wrote Milton in Paradise Lost. Because the mind (which may in the end be a full-body phenomenon) is the cup that lifts the world to our lips to be tasted — a taste we call reality — it is...
The Marginalian
Some Thoughts about the Ocean and the Universe How to bear the gravity of being.
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Climbing in Cuba, 2019 A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go climbing in Cuba. Mark and Dave, walking back from...
over a year ago
13
over a year ago
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go climbing in Cuba. Mark and Dave, walking back from climbing outside Viñales Locals crag, called “The roof of the world”. Stunning routes. because it was so hot, we spent a lot of time in this cave. Kristi and I tend to stick...
The Marginalian
The Wanting Monster: An Almost Unbearably Tender Illustrated Spell Against the Curse of Not Enough Wanting is the menacing margin of error between desire and need. It is the blade that vivisects your...
a month ago
18
a month ago
Wanting is the menacing margin of error between desire and need. It is the blade that vivisects your serenity, the hammer that shatters your wholeness — to want anything is to deem your life incomplete without it. It is a perpetual motion machine that keeps you restlessly...
The American Scholar
Sticking With It A sobering chronicle of our toxic times The post Sticking With It appeared first on The American...
a month ago
6
a month ago
A sobering chronicle of our toxic times The post Sticking With It appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
8 months ago
49
8 months ago
A new poetry prompt for players new and old The post In Reprise: Next, Line Please appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
Notes from overground Seventeen years ago my copy of Richard Ford's The Lay of the Land was delayed in the post and...
a year ago
57
a year ago
Seventeen years ago my copy of Richard Ford's The Lay of the Land was delayed in the post and arrived long after the novel had been reviewed in all the big newspapers so, instead of riding the wave of publication, I was dragged under by its backwash. I had to answer a question...
Anecdotal Evidence
'This Is My Time and Theme' “I delight sensually in Time, in its stuff and spread, in the fall of its folds, in the...
2 months ago
20
2 months ago
“I delight sensually in Time, in its stuff and spread, in the fall of its folds, in the very impalpability of its grayish gauze, in the coolness of its continuum.”  You may recognize the almost overripe prose. Ingesting so rich a diet too early in life can spoil one for plainer...
Josh Thompson
`Medusa` mythical creature: part 1 Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
14
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...
This Space
"Every day I have to invoke the absent god again"* I really enjoy this YouTube channel despite my general lack of interest in films. The presenter’s...
over a year ago
54
over a year ago
I really enjoy this YouTube channel despite my general lack of interest in films. The presenter’s restrained voice-over is ideal for one approaching its concerns; imagine a lullaby sung by Werner Herzog. I envy him the medium for its music, its visuals, even its potential for...
The American Scholar
Song for the Earth Finding a message for today in the music of Gustav Mahler The post Song for the Earth appeared first...
3 months ago
34
3 months ago
Finding a message for today in the music of Gustav Mahler The post Song for the Earth appeared first on The American Scholar.
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 The art in everyday life It’s becoming more important than ever that people keep making art, in the age of derivative AI slop...
7 months ago
15
7 months ago
It’s becoming more important than ever that people keep making art, in the age of derivative AI slop and an ever-worsening political climate. Deliberately creative pursuits are radical. I gave a talk a while back about building personal websites (and I’ll write that talk up soon)...
Wuthering...
Andrey Platonov's "Soul" - the universal happiness of the unhappy I read Andrey Platonov’s novel Chevengur (1929) not too long ago and the collection of stories Soul...
3 months ago
29
3 months ago
I read Andrey Platonov’s novel Chevengur (1929) not too long ago and the collection of stories Soul (1935-46) last month.  Here we will have some notes.  These are the Robert and Elizabeth Chandler translations (four additional translators assist with Soul).  Those dates are for...
Ben Borgers
College CS Classes Are Tragically Dull
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Information Distribution
over a year ago
Idle Words
Effective Political Giving With less than two months left before the election, this is an explainer for the politically...
over a year ago
12
over a year ago
With less than two months left before the election, this is an explainer for the politically panicked. You're anxious, you feel the need to do something, and you have a little money to spare. Who should you give it to? My goal here is not to sell you on specific candidates...
Ben Borgers
Portal
over a year ago
The American Scholar
The Next New Thing In architecture, the gulf between the traditional and the modern seems wider than ever before The...
a year ago
35
a year 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.
ribbonfarm
Intellectual Menopause I ran across the alarming phrase intellectual menopause a few months ago in John Gall’s...
11 months ago
27
11 months ago
I ran across the alarming phrase intellectual menopause a few months ago in John Gall’s Systemantics, and it naturally stuck in my brain given I’m pushing 50 and getting predictably angsty about it. The phrase conjures up visions of a phenomenon much more profound and unfunny...
Ben Borgers
Tuesday, January 18, 2022
over a year ago
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...
over a year ago
Ploum.net
Goodbye Offpunk, Welcome XKCDpunk! Goodbye Offpunk, Welcome XKCDpunk! For the last three years, I’ve been working on Offpunk, a...
3 months ago
35
3 months ago
Goodbye Offpunk, Welcome XKCDpunk! For the last three years, I’ve been working on Offpunk, a command-line gemini and web browser. Offpunk.net While my initial goal was to browse the Geminisphere offline, the mission has slowly morphed into cleaning and unenshitiffying the modern...
Josh Thompson
Waking Up Early 2.0 A few months ago, I wrote about waking up early. I tracked my progress for almost a month, and most...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
A few months ago, I wrote about waking up early. I tracked my progress for almost a month, and most of the days I woke up between 4:45 and 6:00. My “must be up by” time is 7:30a, so waking up more than an hour and a half early counts as a huge win. From mid-may until June 7, I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Quiet Intent of a Conscious Artist' For the observant – those who revere good prose and other accomplishments of civilization --...
5 months ago
33
5 months ago
For the observant – those who revere good prose and other accomplishments of civilization -- February 12 is doubly a holy day. In 1809, Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin in Hodgenville, Ky. Across the Atlantic, on the same day, Charles Darwin was born in a Georgian-style...
The Marginalian
What It Takes to Grow: Pioneering Psychoanalyst Karen Horney on the Key to Self-Realization "Self-knowledge... is not an aim in itself, but a means of liberating the forces of spontaneous...
over a year ago
112
over a year ago
"Self-knowledge... is not an aim in itself, but a means of liberating the forces of spontaneous growth. In this sense, to work at ourselves becomes not only the prime moral obligation, but... the prime moral privilege."
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
The Elysian
Are Democrats too liberal? Or too conservative? We're asking the wrong questions.
7 months ago
The American Scholar
Guillermo The post Guillermo appeared first on The American Scholar.
10 months ago
The American Scholar
Ask Already The post Ask Already appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The American Scholar
“The Yellowhammer’s Nest” by John Clare Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Yellowhammer’s Nest” by John Clare appeared first on The...
3 months ago
31
3 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Yellowhammer’s Nest” by John Clare appeared first on The American Scholar.
Escaping Flatland
A measuring device that tells me what is interesting + links
9 months ago
The Marginalian
How We Become Ourselves: Erik Erikson’s 8 Stages of Human Development It never ceases to stagger that some stroke of chance in the early history of the universe set into...
9 months ago
77
9 months ago
It never ceases to stagger that some stroke of chance in the early history of the universe set into motion the Rube Goldberg machine of events that turned atoms born in the first stars into you — into this temporary clump of borrowed stardust that, for the brief interlude between...
Wuthering...
Ovid's Metamorphoses, Canto I, "Of shapes transformde to bodies straunge" Some notes on Canto I of Ovid’s Metamorphosis (8 CE).  Just some of the things I am looking for...
a year ago
30
a year ago
Some notes on Canto I of Ovid’s Metamorphosis (8 CE).  Just some of the things I am looking for or enjoying while reading Ovid’s epic of “forms changed / into new bodies.”  (tr. Charles Martin, 2004, p. 15).  Or, per Arthur Golding (1567, p. 3 of the Paul Dry paperback) “Of...
Astral Codex Ten
Try The 2025 ACX/Metaculus Forecasting Contest ...
5 months ago
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 366.666 ...
5 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Books Which Can Be Read Again and Again' “The great bulk of the world’s prose fiction, contemporary and past, does not wear well. Almost all...
a month ago
20
a month ago
“The great bulk of the world’s prose fiction, contemporary and past, does not wear well. Almost all of it is soon forgotten and of those books which survive the wear of time, only a few withstand the effects of time on the reader himself. Out of all the novels ever written there...
Ben Borgers
Building an e-ink picture frame that displays an iCloud photo album
a year ago
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.
over a year ago
18
over a year ago
The main trick is to design them with extension in mind so that you won't have to break them later.
Ben Borgers
AI is an impediment to learning web development
11 months ago
The American Scholar
“The White Heart of God” by Jack Gilbert Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The White Heart of God” by Jack Gilbert appeared first on...
5 months ago
45
5 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The White Heart of God” by Jack Gilbert appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Migrating my Jekyll site to Netlify Troubleshooting Netilify deploy Ugggh I moved intermediateruby.com to Netlify a few months ago in...
over a year ago
17
over a year ago
Troubleshooting Netilify deploy Ugggh I moved intermediateruby.com to Netlify a few months ago in like 10 minutes, so my primary site, josh.works, should take maybe 20, right? I’m a few hours deep. Here’s what I get when Netlify tries to build: I should have done the following...
This Space
“Can there be a pure narrative?” The question opening Maurice Blanchot’s essay The Experience of Proust* has always drawn me back,...
over a year ago
54
over a year ago
The question opening Maurice Blanchot’s essay The Experience of Proust* has always drawn me back, not to secure a yes or a no, but to keep the question of pure narrative open in its initial uncertainty, perhaps, rather, in its impossibility, as it appears to make reading and...
Escaping Flatland
A summary of what I wrote in 2024 A man sets out to draw the world.
7 months ago