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
'A Landscape in One Word!'
“When, in the course of a day, a man has read a newspaper, written a letter, and not wronged anyone,...
a month ago
“When, in the course of a day, a man has read a newspaper, written a letter, and not wronged anyone, that is more than enough.”
Enough for what? Probably to have established a minimum standard of decency and contentment. Jules Renard (1864-1910) is no stuffy moralist. There’s...
The Marginalian
Leonard Cohen on the Antidote to Anger and the Meaning of Resistance
One of the commonest and most corrosive human reflexes is to react to helplessness with anger. We do...
5 months ago
One of the commonest and most corrosive human reflexes is to react to helplessness with anger. We do it in our personal lives and we do it in our political lives. We are living through a time of uncommon helplessness and uncertainty, touching every aspect of our lives, and in...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Shitcan the Sass'
George
Turberville writes in his epilogue to Epitaphes, Epigrams, Songs and Sonets (1567):
“I write...
6 months ago
George
Turberville writes in his epilogue to Epitaphes, Epigrams, Songs and Sonets (1567):
“I write but of familiar stuffe because my stile is lowe.” Today we call him a
master of the “plain style,” the opposite of ornate poeticizing, along with his
contemporaries George...
Astral Codex Ten
Prison And Crime: Much More Than You Wanted To Know
...
3 weeks ago
Josh Thompson
LeetCode: Words From Characters, and Benchmarking Solutions
I recently worked through a LeetCode problem.
The first run was pretty brutal. It took (what felt...
over a year ago
I recently worked through a LeetCode problem.
The first run was pretty brutal. It took (what felt like) forever, and I was not content with my solution.
Even better, it passed the test cases given while building the solution, but failed on submission.
So, once I fixed it so it...
The Marginalian
The Wondrous Birds of the Himalayas and the Forgotten Victorian Woman Whose Illustrations Rewilded...
Bridging Blake and Darwin with a single-hair brush.
a year ago
Bridging Blake and Darwin with a single-hair brush.
The Marginalian
We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt, the Power of Defiant Goodwill, and the Art of...
"It is when the experience of powerlessness is at its most acute, when history seems at its most...
9 months ago
"It is when the experience of powerlessness is at its most acute, when history seems at its most bleak, that the determination to think like a human being, creatively, courageously, and complicatedly, matters the most."
Steven Scrawls
Maybe your desires are delusional
Maybe your desires are
delusional
The vast majority of my desires are not the reasonable desires...
8 months ago
Maybe your desires are
delusional
The vast majority of my desires are not the reasonable desires that I
had once believed them to be. They’re actually completely delusional
desires dressed up in shoddy “reasonable desire” costumes, and I’ve just
been pretending not to notice.
How...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The World Has Always Seemed to Me So Various'
I dropped
out of university after my junior year in 1973 and didn’t return to campus to
complete my...
3 months ago
I dropped
out of university after my junior year in 1973 and didn’t return to campus to
complete my B.A. in English until 2003. The lack of a degree never got in the
way of working for almost a quarter-century as a newspaper reporter. I suspect
a degree in most non-STEM...
The Marginalian
Curiosity as an Instrument of Love: Thoreau and the Little Owl
"If you would learn the secrets of Nature, you must practice more humanity than others."
3 months ago
"If you would learn the secrets of Nature, you must practice more humanity than others."
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...
Josh Thompson
Social skills are like any other skills
Learning social
skills are no different from learning cooking
skills, or handstand
skills. It...
over a year ago
Learning social
skills are no different from learning cooking
skills, or handstand
skills. It helps to have exposure at a young age, but with time and effort, you can learn, and even master, cooking, handstands, and social skills.
Why do social skills matter?
Most people get...
sbensu
Everybody is the main character
People are motivated and engaged with the work only if they feel in charge of their own destiny....
a year ago
People are motivated and engaged with the work only if they feel in charge of their own destiny. Make it clear to them that they are!
The Marginalian
Love and the Sacred
"I did not know what love was until I encountered one that kept opening and opening and opening."
11 months ago
"I did not know what love was until I encountered one that kept opening and opening and opening."
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...
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...
Wuthering...
Books Read in June 2024 - "Why can't we steal the calm vegetable clairvoyance of these great rooted...
Three weeks in Portugal meant less and different reading.
FICTION
Wolf Solent (1929), John Cowper...
5 months ago
Three weeks in Portugal meant less and different reading.
FICTION
Wolf Solent (1929), John Cowper Powys – among the
most eccentric novels I have ever read, up there with his contemporaries D. H.
Lawrence and Ronald Firbank! I feel I
should write about it; I feel I should read...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Laurels All Are Cut'
A thoughtful
reader, knowing of my fondness for A.E. Housman’s poems, has sent me the
English...
9 months ago
A thoughtful
reader, knowing of my fondness for A.E. Housman’s poems, has sent me the
English composer John Ireland’s 1928 setting for a verse from Last Poems (1922, that literary annus mirabilis). The baritone is Mark
Stone; the pianist, Sholto Kynoch. Here is Housman’s poem,...
The Marginalian
The Night, the Light, and the Soul: Albert Pinkham Ryder’s Enchanting Moonscapes
“That best fact, the Moon,” Margaret Fuller called it. “No one ever gets tired of the moon,” Walt...
a year ago
“That best fact, the Moon,” Margaret Fuller called it. “No one ever gets tired of the moon,” Walt Whitman wrote down the Atlantic coast from her, exulting: Goddess that she is by dower of her eternal beauty, [the moon] commends herself to the matter-of-fact people by her...
Josh Thompson
Why I use a Kindle
Amazon’s e-reader is extremely functional. Most reasons to
not use one focus either on practical...
over a year ago
Amazon’s e-reader is extremely functional. Most reasons to
not use one focus either on practical issues (depending on something with a battery) or on aesthetic reasons. These are valid issues, of course, but these pale in comparison to the many, many reasons
to use a...
Josh Thompson
Krav Maga, or "Crush Balls, Gouge Eyes, and Break Bones"
In the last few weeks, I have been physically attacked dozens of times. Usually the attacker was...
over a year ago
In the last few weeks, I have been physically attacked dozens of times. Usually the attacker was just trying to choke me, but sometimes he was trying to throw me to the ground. After a few minutes of fighting, I would attack him. Then we’d both shake hands, say “thank you”, and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Always Singular, and Never Trite or Vulgar'
“He was
never seen to be transported with Mirth, or dejected with Sadness; always
Chearful, but...
a year ago
“He was
never seen to be transported with Mirth, or dejected with Sadness; always
Chearful, but rarely Merry, at any sensible Rate, seldom heard to break a Jest;
and when he did, he would be apt to blush at the Levity of it: His Gravity was
Natural and without Affectation.”
The...
Josh Thompson
POODR Notes: Acquiring Behavior Through Inheritance (Chapter 6)
I’m reading through Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby .
These are some notes from chapter 6,...
over a year ago
I’m reading through Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby .
These are some notes from chapter 6, Acquiring Behavior Through Inheritance; mostly these are for me, and they don’t intend to stand on their own. Read the book, work through chapter six, and then come back and read...
The Marginalian
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."
4 months ago
"Sometimes it feels as if all of life is made up of longing."
ben-mini
The Inner Game of Tennis
I just finished reading The Inner Game of Tennis by Tim Gallwey. Originally published in 1974, the...
2 months ago
I just finished reading The Inner Game of Tennis by Tim Gallwey. Originally published in 1974, the book explores how the thoughts of an athlete affect their game. It’s lauded as being at the forefront of what we now call “sports psychology”. Although my competitive sports days...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Man of My Kidney'
I met my
nephrologist for the first time when we shared an elevator to his office on the
fourth...
7 months ago
I met my
nephrologist for the first time when we shared an elevator to his office on the
fourth floor of the hospital. Between patients he was eating a banana, his breakfast, and carried a stack of folders in his other hand. On the front of his
white lab coat was his name, the...
Anecdotal Evidence
"The Test of a Reader'
“. . . to
say a word or two about the improvable reader. The gift of reading, as I have
called it,...
6 months ago
“. . . to
say a word or two about the improvable reader. The gift of reading, as I have
called it, is not very common, nor very generally understood. It consists,
first of all, in a vast intellectual endowment—a free grace, I find I must call
it—by which a man rises to understand...
Josh Thompson
2016 - Biggest Lesson, Most Dangerous Books
I don’t do New Years resolutions, but I like to think back on the last year.
I’ll touch on two...
over a year ago
I don’t do New Years resolutions, but I like to think back on the last year.
I’ll touch on two things:
The most important thing I’ve learned this year: Tactical Silence
Most dangerous books of 2016
Tactical Silence
I suspect that a year from now, I’m going to look back and say...
Anecdotal Evidence
'All These Jolts of Beauty'
Once I
interviewed a mycologist who, before his lecture, removed a yellow mushroom
from an oak tree...
a month ago
Once I
interviewed a mycologist who, before his lecture, removed a yellow mushroom
from an oak tree in front of the hall where he was speaking and munched on it
while he spoke. A few years later the writer Paul Metcalf, author of Genoa (1965), swore me to secrecy before
revealing...
The American Scholar
Braña Curuchu
The post Braña Curuchu appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
The post Braña Curuchu appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Book Notes: 'Why We Get Fat' by Gary Taube
I recently read Why We Get Fat, by Gary Taubes. I read it shortly after reading The Case Against...
over a year ago
I recently read Why We Get Fat, by Gary Taubes. I read it shortly after reading The Case Against Sugar. My notes and a write-up on The Case Against Sugar
As I explained in that post, I find it helpful to do a ‘deep dive’ on some of the books I want to be deeply influenced by. For...
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Greatness Is Difficult'
“It is
dangerous to admire a great man for his sins: we may too easily adopt his sins
for our own...
a year ago
“It is
dangerous to admire a great man for his sins: we may too easily adopt his sins
for our own out of admiration for his genius; and when the inevitable reaction
occurs, the great man’s reputation is likely to suffer unduly.”
Among writers, Dr. Johnson
is the first fallible...
The 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...
a week 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
"A Fury of Self-Deception, Malice, and Conceit'
There’s no
getting away from the din. Who knew the human voice, individually and in the
collective,...
a month ago
There’s no
getting away from the din. Who knew the human voice, individually and in the
collective, could carry on this way? An innocent question or observation prompts
a sonic explosion. I’m unable to get that angry and loud so quickly. Perhaps
if my family were threatened....
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Are So Lucky Having English'
“We are
lucky that English is our language because it’s better than, say, French for
poetry. All...
a year ago
“We are
lucky that English is our language because it’s better than, say, French for
poetry. All those millions of words and all those different ways of saying the
same, or similar, things. And new words all the time.”
It’s
fashionable in some quarters to distrust language, to...
Ben Borgers
The Magic of the Common Room
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Catalina Schliebener Muñoz
Playing with dolls
The post Catalina Schliebener Muñoz appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
Playing with dolls
The post Catalina Schliebener Muñoz appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
'Georgeade as a Summer Drink'
While
looking for something else I blundered on an Anglo-American writer and cartoonist
new to me...
a year ago
While
looking for something else I blundered on an Anglo-American writer and cartoonist
new to me whose name and one-time popularity long ago evaporated: Oliver Herford (1860-1935), author, co-author and illustrator of more than sixty books
for adults and children. There was a...
The Marginalian
Nobel-Winning Poet Joseph Brodsky on the Remedy for Existential Boredom
"Try to stay passionate, leave your cool to constellations. Passion, above all, is a remedy against...
5 months ago
"Try to stay passionate, leave your cool to constellations. Passion, above all, is a remedy against boredom. Another one, of course, is pain... passion's frequent aftermath."
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Things That Pass'
Among the
books and magazines for sale in our neighborhood library I found the Winter 1985 issue of...
8 months ago
Among the
books and magazines for sale in our neighborhood library I found the Winter 1985 issue of The American Scholar, which
I bought for a quarter. Joseph Epstein was still the editor. On Page 97 is a
poem, “Old
Man Sitting in a Shopping Mall,” by a writer whose name was...
Josh Thompson
So you want to work remotely...
Josh’s “rules” for getting a sweet remote job
A few weeks ago, I met a fantastic guy who is...
over a year ago
Josh’s “rules” for getting a sweet remote job
A few weeks ago, I met a fantastic guy who is contemplating next steps for work. He is great at what he does, and is thinking about what direction to go in his life. He’s young, and thought working remotely sounded pretty cool. I...
The Marginalian
How to Eat the Sun: A Blind Hero of the Resistance on Accessing the Light Within and Touching the...
“There is only one world. Things outside only exist if you go to meet them with everything you carry...
a year ago
“There is only one world. Things outside only exist if you go to meet them with everything you carry in yourself. As to the things inside, you will never see them well unless you allow those outside to enter in.”
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...
Ben Borgers
Customer Rewards Programs
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Downstream of Fukushima
The Japanese seafood industry has rebounded, but is anyone worried about irradiated water?
The post...
6 months ago
The Japanese seafood industry has rebounded, but is anyone worried about irradiated water?
The post Downstream of Fukushima appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
Jon Fosse's Septology - art "can only say something while keeping silent about what it actually...
Jon Fosse’s Septology (2019-21) is a long
stream-of-consciousness novel about a Norwegian painter...
a month ago
Jon Fosse’s Septology (2019-21) is a long
stream-of-consciousness novel about a Norwegian painter trying to understand
one of his paintings. Each of the novel’s
seven sections begins with Asle looking at the painting:
AND I SEE MYSELF STANDING and looking at the picture...
The American Scholar
A Forgotten Turner Classic
Who was George Eyser, the one-legged German-American gymnast who astounded at the Olympic Games?
The...
6 months ago
Who was George Eyser, the one-legged German-American gymnast who astounded at the Olympic Games?
The post A Forgotten Turner Classic appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
May Sarton on Generosity
“Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you,” Annie Dillard wrote in her...
a year ago
“Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you,” Annie Dillard wrote in her beautiful essay on generosity. “You open your safe and find ashes.” I feel this truth deeply, daily — for nearly two decades of offering these writings freely, I have lived by the...
The Marginalian
How to Bless Each Other: Poet and Philosopher John O’Donohue on the Light Within Us and Between Us
"The structures of our experience are the windows into the divine. When we are true to the call of...
a year ago
"The structures of our experience are the windows into the divine. When we are true to the call of experience, we are true to God."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Deaf Unto the Suggestions of Tale-bearers'
“Though the
Quickness of thine Ear were able to reach the noise of the Moon, which some
think it...
10 months ago
“Though the
Quickness of thine Ear were able to reach the noise of the Moon, which some
think it maketh in it rapid revolution; though the number of thy Ears should
equal Argus his Eyes . . .”
The first surgery
on my left ear was fifty years ago, prompted by a perpetually...
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...
sbensu
When coordination pays off
Stories about Stripe Link where we have to do a lot of upfront coordination but it was worth it.
2 months ago
Stories about Stripe Link where we have to do a lot of upfront coordination but it was worth it.
The Marginalian
Coleridge on the Paradox of Friendship and Romantic Love
On sympathy, reciprocity, and satisfying the fulness of our nature.
a year ago
On sympathy, reciprocity, and satisfying the fulness of our nature.
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...
The Elysian
One essay could change the future
Please support a better media ecosystem.
2 months ago
Please support a better media ecosystem.
The American Scholar
We Are the Borg
Is the convergence of human and machine really upon us?
The post We Are the Borg appeared first on...
6 months ago
Is the convergence of human and machine really upon us?
The post We Are the Borg appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Nothing Given Us to Keep Is Lost'
Howard Nemerov
reminded me not of Walden Pond in Concord but of a smaller, less storied pond at
the...
6 months ago
Howard Nemerov
reminded me not of Walden Pond in Concord but of a smaller, less storied pond at
the opposite end of Massachusetts, near Lee in the Berkshires. I was there to
interview Paul Metcalf (1917-99) and his wife Nancy for my newspaper in the
summer of 1988. Paul was a...
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
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...
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...
6 months 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,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Most Intense Enthusiasm for Good Literature'
I was
reading an interview with X.J. Kennedy when this line touched me unexpectedly: “He
was, of all...
8 months ago
I was
reading an interview with X.J. Kennedy when this line touched me unexpectedly: “He
was, of all the people I ever met, the one who had the most intense enthusiasm
for good literature.” Spoken by another, this might amount to glibly rendered
bullshit, the sort of thing junior...
Ben Borgers
Doubly Parasocial Relationships
over a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
How Did You Do On The AI Art Turing Test?
...
a month ago
The American Scholar
Betsy, Mary, and Trish
The post Betsy, Mary, and Trish appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
The post Betsy, Mary, and Trish appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
"Cheap and Commercial'
“He invented
cheap and commercial editions of the classics.”
Such an influential accomplishment,...
9 months ago
“He invented
cheap and commercial editions of the classics.”
Such an influential accomplishment, and I had never heard of the man. Indirectly,
generations after his time, Henry G. Bohn (1796-1884) served as one of my
tutors. His celebrator above is Theodore Dalrymple writing in...
Robert Caro
Misery Acres: An Investigative Series
Perhaps Caro’s most influential work during his years at Newsday was the investigative series,...
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.
The Marginalian
The Fairy Tale Tree
Creativity is at bottom the combinatorial work of memory and imagination. All of our impressions,...
11 months ago
Creativity is at bottom the combinatorial work of memory and imagination. All of our impressions, influences, and experiences — every sight we have ever seen, every book read, every landscape walked, every love loved — become seeds for ideas we later combine and recombine,...
The American Scholar
Échame la Culpa
The post Échame la Culpa appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The post Échame la Culpa appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Paradise Notebooks: A Poet and a Geologist’s Love Letter to Life Lensed Through a Mountain
"Each world bears all the worlds we might find within it. If you understand one outcropping of...
8 months ago
"Each world bears all the worlds we might find within it. If you understand one outcropping of stone, or one wildflower, or one hummingbird — if we see our way along the tracery of cause and effect, the mystery of change and recreation — then we are led to everything we see, and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Expression of Blatant Despotism'
Two female
acquaintances have recently endured divorce, and their lives are measurably
improved. The...
11 months ago
Two female
acquaintances have recently endured divorce, and their lives are measurably
improved. The woman I know better, whose wedding and reception we attended, was
married to a thuggish prison guard of a husband. You wouldn’t know it, looking
at him. Handsome, well-dressed and...
Steven Scrawls
Supposedly-Deceased Intellectuals Found Living at Resort
‘Small
Village’ of Supposedly-Deceased Intellectuals Found Alive, Thriving at
Caribbean...
4 months ago
‘Small
Village’ of Supposedly-Deceased Intellectuals Found Alive, Thriving at
Caribbean Resort
Gabriel Martinez, a 35-year-old confectioner living in the Cayman
Islands, thought he was posting a simple promotional photo when he
snapped a picture of his ‘cocoa-banana-surprise’ and...
Josh Thompson
Notes on, and quotes from: The Politics of Jesus (Yoder, 1972, 1994)
As I’ve done many times before, compiling some notes about some long quotes from some books.
In the...
over a year ago
As I’ve done many times before, compiling some notes about some long quotes from some books.
In the modern world, we’re loath to read long, complicated passeges of text. I hope to get some of you to eventually order your own copy of The Politics of Jesus. On my website you can...
The Marginalian
George Saunders on How to Live an Unregretting Life
"At the end of my life, I know I won’t be wishing I’d held more back, been less effusive, more often...
9 months ago
"At the end of my life, I know I won’t be wishing I’d held more back, been less effusive, more often stood on ceremony, forgiven less, spent more days oblivious to the secret wishes and fears of the people around me."
The Marginalian
Anne Morrow Lindbergh on Embracing Change in Relationships and the Key Pattern for Nourishing Love
"All living relationships are in process of change, of expansion, and must perpetually be building...
10 months ago
"All living relationships are in process of change, of expansion, and must perpetually be building themselves new forms."
The American Scholar
Poco a Poco
The post Poco a Poco appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The post Poco a Poco appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Thursday, January 20, 2022
over a year 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."
a year ago
A shimmering reminder that "the magic is of our own conjuring."
Josh Thompson
Monthly Review: November
This is my second monthly review, and I’m hooked.
I’ve thought this coming review frequently, but I...
over a year ago
This is my second monthly review, and I’m hooked.
I’ve thought this coming review frequently, but I thought about that as I was conducting my month. This proactive review is in line with
Viktor Frankl’s admonition to “live every day as if it were your second chance to live it.”...
Josh Thompson
Cultivate Curiosity, or 'Reasons to be More Childlike'
I’ve had an idea rolling around my head.
I suspect that “being curious” will correlate well with...
over a year ago
I’ve had an idea rolling around my head.
I suspect that “being curious” will correlate well with positive outcomes in my life, on pretty much any time horizon, be it days, weeks, or decades. Curiosity feels like a tolerable antidote to boredom, though boredom in and of itself is...
The 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.
This Space
39 Books: 1989
Nowadays I would be put off reading a book labelled controversial and exciting gossipy attention on...
7 months 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 Marginalian
Consciousness, Artificial Intelligence, and Our Search for Meaning: Oliver Sacks on ChatGPT, 30...
"We are not incoherent, a bundle of sensations, but a self, rising from experience, continually...
a year ago
"We are not incoherent, a bundle of sensations, but a self, rising from experience, continually growing and revised... Through experience, education, art, and life, we teach our brains to become unique. We learn to be individuals. This is a neurological learning as well as a...
This Space
"And no real fate" – reading in the interval
A sportswriter on the radio said that the lack of football in covid lockdown has disrupted the...
over a year ago
A sportswriter on the radio said that the lack of football in covid lockdown has disrupted the rhythm of the lives of those who follow the sport. The word stuck in my mind. Does rhythm differ from routine? When a routine is broken, there is an interval of confusion and anxiety,...
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."
Josh Thompson
Turing Prep Chapter 1: Make Mod 1 Easier Than It Otherwise Would Be
Preparing for Turing Series Index
What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
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...
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...
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
'Shaping Tombs in Words'
At KaboomBooks a man about my age was standing in front of the “S” shelves in fiction. I
routinely...
a year ago
At KaboomBooks a man about my age was standing in front of the “S” shelves in fiction. I
routinely stop there hoping to find hardback copies of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s
novels to replace my disintegrating paperbacks. On a nearby step-ladder I
noticed a stack of such Singer titles...
Escaping Flatland
On shortcuts and longcuts
There’s this design heuristic that if people cut across the grass, you should pave the shortcut they...
7 months ago
There’s this design heuristic that if people cut across the grass, you should pave the shortcut they make. This gives the path a lovely human fit. But sometimes you want to do the opposite. You want to design ways to get people to take a longer path, a longcut, so they can see or...
Wuthering...
Books finished in March 2023
For some reason I have been putting a monthly account of completed books on Twitter, where it is a...
a year ago
For some reason I have been putting a monthly account of completed books on Twitter, where it is a common practice, although mostly with photographs of book stacks. I am not sure why I have not put the lists here as well. I guess I am not sure any of this is interesting.
Soon,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Butterflies Have Nothing to Do With Butter'
Call me an
aesthete but I’ve always favored the definition of butterfly given by Dr. Johnson in his...
4 months ago
Call me an
aesthete but I’ve always favored the definition of butterfly given by Dr. Johnson in his Dictionary: “A beautiful insect, so named because it first appears
at the beginning of the season for butter.” Their seemingly gratuitous beauty, coupled
with not stinging like...
Josh Thompson
"Cooking" is so much more
I’ve long wanted to get better at cooking. I eat a lot of food, and would like to enjoy it. I’ve...
over a year ago
I’ve long wanted to get better at cooking. I eat a lot of food, and would like to enjoy it. I’ve gotten to a point where I am comfortable following a recipe, and I bet you normally are fine following a recipe too.
To follow a recipe, you must have two things. These two things...
Josh Thompson
Five Lessons Learned in Buenos Aires
Note: This is an unedited draft of a post from July 5, 2015. Almost exactly one year ago, written...
over a year ago
Note: This is an unedited draft of a post from July 5, 2015. Almost exactly one year ago, written after a week in Buenos Aires. Since writing this post, Kristi and I have continued on to more than a year of non-stop travel, though we’re settling down back in Golden, CO in about...
The Marginalian
May Sarton on Grieving a Pet
"It is absolutely inward and private, the relation between oneself and an animal."
a year ago
"It is absolutely inward and private, the relation between oneself and an animal."
Wuthering...
Disturbances in the Field by Lynne Sharon Schwartz - What I wanted now was the adventure of being...
Disturbances in the Field (1983) by Lynne Sharon Schwartz. Rohan Maitzen recommended the novel to...
a year ago
Disturbances in the Field (1983) by Lynne Sharon Schwartz. Rohan Maitzen recommended the novel to me because of its unusual use of the Pre-Socratic philosophers. This is a domestic novel, a fine example of, borrowing from Trollope, the way we live now (or, to me, the way they...
The American Scholar
Chris Combs
Surveillance state
The post Chris Combs appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
Surveillance state
The post Chris Combs appeared first on The American Scholar.
Escaping Flatland
In praise of insular groups
Last spring, as we were exploring the coastline of our island, Johanna, the kids, and I crossed a...
7 months ago
Last spring, as we were exploring the coastline of our island, Johanna, the kids, and I crossed a meadow where two men were artificially inseminating a longhaired cow. We stopped to observe the work. When it was done, one of the men came over to where we stood by the electric...
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...
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 358.5
...
2 weeks ago
Wuthering...
The Story of the Stone, volume 4 - It was an eerie, desolate night.
At the two-thirds mark, after 80 chapters of the 120, three
big changes hit The Story of the Stone...
17 hours ago
At the two-thirds mark, after 80 chapters of the 120, three
big changes hit The Story of the Stone (c. 1760 / 1791). First, David Hawkes, the original translator
of the Penguin edition, dies; John Minford finishes the job. Second, the author of the novel, Cao Xueqin,
dies,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Collection of Scraps and Shards of Knowledge'
“During this time we know [John] Donne was
collecting his fascinations in a book: a collection of...
4 months ago
“During this time we know [John] Donne was
collecting his fascinations in a book: a collection of scraps and shards of
knowledge known as a commonplace book.”
Like Donne (1572-1621), some of us are
magpie-minded, collecting objects shiny and drab, often without obvious
utility....
The American Scholar
Interlude: The Idea of “The West”
A brief look at a grand narrative
The post Interlude: The Idea of “The West” appeared first on The...
8 months ago
A brief look at a grand narrative
The post Interlude: The Idea of “The West” appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Transcendent Brain: The Poetic Physicist Alan Lightman on Spirituality for the Science-Spirited
A largehearted invitation to "stand on the precipice between the known and the unknown, without...
a year ago
A largehearted invitation to "stand on the precipice between the known and the unknown, without fear, without anxiety, but instead with awe and wonder at this strange and beautiful cosmos we find ourselves in."
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Be at Home in Other Places'
At his day
job my current barber is a counselor working with street people who have alcohol
and/or...
4 weeks ago
At his day
job my current barber is a counselor working with street people who have alcohol
and/or drug problems. Like most in that field, he values his clients and
dislikes the bosses, who live by the dictates of bureaucracy. Barbers are like
bartenders. The good ones usually...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Nothing Makes a Man More Reverent'
I have never thought of reading as a “hobby.” I
put the word in quotes because I sense a patronizing...
3 weeks ago
I have never thought of reading as a “hobby.” I
put the word in quotes because I sense a patronizing tinge to the word. A hobby
is a lesser pastime than a job, something frivolous, a “leisure activity” that
most people in the past couldn’t afford because they had to earn a...
Ben Borgers
The Beginning of College Sucks
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
How to never accidentally click Twitter's "Moments" again (and to block anything else on the...
Do you use Twitter’s “Moments” tool, or do you just find it really annoying?
Most people find it...
over a year ago
Do you use Twitter’s “Moments” tool, or do you just find it really annoying?
Most people find it annoying. Here’s how to get rid of Twitter’s “Moments” forever:
0. Be won over to using an ad blocker on the internet.
They don’t block just ads, but malicious scripts and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Stimulated to Vigour and Activity'
When John
Ruskin (b. 1819) traveled as a boy, his father packed in his luggage four small
volumes of...
8 months ago
When John
Ruskin (b. 1819) traveled as a boy, his father packed in his luggage four small
volumes of Dr. Johnson’s Rambler and Idler essays. In his peculiar memoir Praeterita (1885), Ruskin tells us “had
it not been for constant reading of the Bible, I might probably have...
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.
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
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Read You As I Listen to Rare Music'
Rare is the
writer who captures our imagination when we’re young and still assembling our
personal...
4 months ago
Rare is the
writer who captures our imagination when we’re young and still assembling our
personal canons, and remains rereadable for the rest of our lives. For me that
would include Swift, Defoe and a third English novelist, a rather exotic import
from Poland: Joseph Conrad. I...
The American Scholar
“Defeat” by Kahlil Gibran
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Defeat” by Kahlil Gibran appeared first on The American...
a month ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Defeat” by Kahlil Gibran appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Impetuous Eagerness to Subvert'
Dr. Johnson describes
the poet and physician Mark Akenside: “He
certainly retained an unnecessary...
6 months ago
Dr. Johnson describes
the poet and physician Mark Akenside: “He
certainly retained an unnecessary and outrageous zeal for what he called and
thought liberty; a zeal which sometimes disguises from the world, and not
rarely from the mind which it possesses, an envious desire of...
The Elysian
Is America about to fall? Or flourish?
That depends on us.
a month ago
The Marginalian
Kafka on Friendship and the Art of Reconnection
Among the paradoxes of friendship is this: All friendships of depth and durability are based on a...
a month ago
Among the paradoxes of friendship is this: All friendships of depth and durability are based on a profound knowledge of each other, of the soul beneath the costume of personality — that lovely Celtic notion of anam cara. We bring this knowledge, this mutual understanding, to...
The Marginalian
Favorite Children’s Books of 2023
Tender and poetic reckonings with friendship, fear, love, solitude, black holes, deep time, and the...
a year ago
Tender and poetic reckonings with friendship, fear, love, solitude, black holes, deep time, and the interconnectedness of life.
This Space
39 Books: 2015
In the Spring of 1997, I visited a friend in Kassel, a city in the middle of Germany, home of the...
7 months ago
In the Spring of 1997, I visited a friend in Kassel, a city in the middle of Germany, home of the Brothers Grimm and Franz Rosenzweig, and not very far from Weimer, hence the visit to the Goethehaus mentioned in the entry for 1989. I hadn't heard of it before and nor had my...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Working a Thing Out'
Long ago an
editor urged me never to assume I knew what readers were thinking or what they
wanted....
5 months ago
Long ago an
editor urged me never to assume I knew what readers were thinking or what they
wanted. It’s presumptuous to do so. Mind-reading quickly turns into seeking
approval from readers and sucking up to them. Be clear, don’t condescend,
respect the reader’s intelligence....
The American Scholar
The Source
The post The Source appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The post The Source appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Past Is Alive and Stirring With Objects'
Published in
the January 1821 issue of London Magazine
are thematically linked essays by two...
11 months ago
Published in
the January 1821 issue of London Magazine
are thematically linked essays by two friends, Charles Lamb and William
Hazlitt: “New Year’s Eve” and “On the Past and Future,” respectively. Lamb’s is
better known, and I'm aware of several readers who, like me, read it...
The American Scholar
Going for Gold
Joshua Prager on a forgotten Olympic gymnast whose 1904 record still hasn’t been beaten
The post...
4 months ago
Joshua Prager on a forgotten Olympic gymnast whose 1904 record still hasn’t been beaten
The post Going for Gold appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
Wealth by Aristophanes - gout here, pot bellies there, ... obesity beyond all bounds
We saw Sophocles and Euripides end their long careers with masterpieces, but we do not have that...
over a year ago
We saw Sophocles and Euripides end their long careers with masterpieces, but we do not have that luck with Aristophanes. Wealth (388 BCE) is thin, scattershot, perhaps even a bit defeated or exhausted.
The conceit is as usual excellent. Plutus, the god of wealth, is freed...
Josh Thompson
Redefining Success
It’s been pretty quiet around here lately. It’s been almost a month since my last entry. I thought...
over a year ago
It’s been pretty quiet around here lately. It’s been almost a month since my last entry. I thought about writing something here almost every day, but here is why I didn’t:
I want to produce “content” that is helpful and relevant to those who might read it.
I felt like nothing I...
Josh Thompson
Cancel Your Cable. Seriously.
No one likes to waste money, right?
There are two things that are even worse to...
over a year ago
No one likes to waste money, right?
There are two things that are even worse to waste.
Time
Energy
Money can be earned, and if more is needed, you can spend less or earn more. Energy is what you need to bring ideas to fruition. Unlimited time with no energy gets you nowhere, as...
The Marginalian
The Great Blind Spot of Science and the Art of Asking the Complex Question the Only Answer to Which...
“Real isn’t how you are made… It’s a thing that happens to you,” says the Skin Horse — a stuffed toy...
a month ago
“Real isn’t how you are made… It’s a thing that happens to you,” says the Skin Horse — a stuffed toy brought to life by a child’s love — in The Velveteen Rabbit. Great children’s books are works of philosophy in disguise; this is a fundamental question: In a reality of matter,...
The Elysian
Week 8: What communities should know about you? (Write a story about them)
8 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Bright, Cheerful, Salubrious Hell'
Max
Beerbohm’s first radio broadcast, delivered on December 29, 1935, is titled
“London Revisited.”...
11 months ago
Max
Beerbohm’s first radio broadcast, delivered on December 29, 1935, is titled
“London Revisited.” He celebrates the city of his birth (in 1872) and youth –
the Edwardian era – and implicitly critiques the London of the interbellum
years:
“London has been
cosmopolitanised,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Let the Words Glide Through the Air'
Some years
ago, out of the blue, a reader whose name I have forgotten sent me a copy of No Earthly...
a year ago
Some years
ago, out of the blue, a reader whose name I have forgotten sent me a copy of No Earthly Estate: The Religious Poetry of
Patrick Kavanagh (The Columba Press, Dublin, 2002) by Father Tom Stack. I was grateful because it sent me back to the Irish poet (1904-67) who seems...
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.
The Marginalian
The Last Wonder: D.H. Lawrence on Death and the Best Lifelong Preparation for It
"Know thyself, and that thou art mortal. But know thyself, denying that thou art mortal."
a year ago
"Know thyself, and that thou art mortal. But know thyself, denying that thou art mortal."
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.
Blog -...
Book Review - Zen in the Art of Archery
Zen in the Art of Archery is described by John Stevens in his book Zen Bow,
Zen Arrow as likely...
over a year ago
Zen in the Art of Archery is described by John Stevens in his book Zen Bow,
Zen Arrow as likely being the most popular book about Japanese culture and
martial arts ever. This is a bold statement I cannot contest, having read
only three other books about Zen: the...
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
Notes from 'Why We Sleep'
I first read Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams about two years ago. It...
over a year ago
I first read Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams about two years ago. It immediately led me to prioritize sleep over almost everything else.
Most of us don’t get enough sleep, and are worse for it. Usually when the topic of sleep comes up, I say
Hey, there’s...
The American Scholar
The Sound of the Picturesque
Charles Ives and the Visual
The post The Sound of the Picturesque appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
Charles Ives and the Visual
The post The Sound of the Picturesque appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'This Refined, White-Sheeted Torture'
My tutelary
spirit of recent days has been the American poet L.E. Sissman, dead from
Hodgkin...
4 months ago
My tutelary
spirit of recent days has been the American poet L.E. Sissman, dead from
Hodgkin lymphoma at age forty-eight. Out in the hall I spoke with three
oncologists after they had yet again examined
my brother. I asked the question no one had yet asked: How much time does...
The American Scholar
Hometown Heroes
What if the goal is not to make it out of the neighborhood?
The post Hometown Heroes appeared first...
7 months ago
What if the goal is not to make it out of the neighborhood?
The post Hometown Heroes appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Roxane Gay on Loving vs. Being in Love and the Mark of a Soul Mate
"It isn’t perfect, not at all. It doesn’t need to be. It is, simply, what fills you up."
a year ago
"It isn’t perfect, not at all. It doesn’t need to be. It is, simply, what fills you up."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Every Corner Is Fraught with Memory'
A.J.
Liebling’s valediction – to New York City, The
New Yorker and the grand celebration that was...
11 months ago
A.J.
Liebling’s valediction – to New York City, The
New Yorker and the grand celebration that was his life as a writer – was published
two weeks after his death, in the January 11, 1964 issue of the magazine that had printed
more than five-hundred of his pieces since he joined...
The American Scholar
Numbers Game
A novelist’s indictment of how we account for our history
The post Numbers Game appeared first on...
6 months ago
A novelist’s indictment of how we account for our history
The post Numbers Game appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
6 months 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...
Josh Thompson
Tiny Habits take 2
Dr. BJ Fogg runs
Tiny Habits, a one-week course on building new habits.
Since most of what we do is...
over a year ago
Dr. BJ Fogg runs
Tiny Habits, a one-week course on building new habits.
Since most of what we do is governed by habits, it is reasonable to study how to build new ones, or replace bad ones.
I
have done his course before, and had success. I have been reading
Freewith Kristi and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Last of All Last Words Spoken Is, Good-bye'
Memory is often
an obligation, an expression of gratitude and fondness. It can be faulty, of
course,...
a year ago
Memory is often
an obligation, an expression of gratitude and fondness. It can be faulty, of
course, especially with age, and it pays to double-check the important things
if you intend to share the memories with others. I’ve just learned that a guy I
haven’t seen in half a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Open-ended Project'
Two writers
separated by language, experience and two and a half centuries make...
10 months ago
Two writers
separated by language, experience and two and a half centuries make complementary
observations about memory. Here is Dr. Johnson in The Idler essay he published on this date, February 17, in 1759:
“The two
offices of memory are collection and distribution; by one...
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.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not Simply Bad Prose'
“It is not simply
bad prose—a tank is not a badly constructed automobile.”
Gilbert
Highet (1906-78)...
10 months ago
“It is not simply
bad prose—a tank is not a badly constructed automobile.”
Gilbert
Highet (1906-78) was a Scottish-born, Oxford-educated American classicist who
taught at Columbia for thirty-three years and managed to become a bona fide pop-culture
“celebrity.” In 1952 he was...
The Elysian
Writing Prompt: How do we create the next Renaissance?
Something I’ve been thinking a lot about is: How can we fund the next Renaissance? How can we create...
8 months ago
Something I’ve been thinking a lot about is: How can we fund the next Renaissance? How can we create a world where artists are better funded and…
Wuthering...
Thou hast devourd thy sonnes - some notes on Seneca's horror plays
My Seneca reading in March:
Medea, tr. Frederick Ahl
The Trojan Women, tr. E. F. Watling
Thyestes,...
a year ago
My Seneca reading in March:
Medea, tr. Frederick Ahl
The Trojan Women, tr. E. F. Watling
Thyestes, tr. Jasper Heywood
Hercules Furens, tr. Heywood
The Madness of Hercules, tr. Dana Gioia
The plays themselves are all from the mid-1st century,
perhaps written when Seneca was in...
Josh Thompson
Be a little better at personal email
The next bunch of posts will be me “clearing out the drawers” of notes I have scattered across my...
over a year ago
The next bunch of posts will be me “clearing out the drawers” of notes I have scattered across my phone, computer, and brain. There is no unifying theme to what will be written here.
Three recommendations to email better
TL;DR Email should usually be as short as possible. More of...
Wuthering...
The Frogs by Aristophanes - Brilliant! Brilliant! Wish I knew what you were talking about!
The Frogs by Aristophanes is this week’s play. It was performed in what now look like the waning...
over a year ago
The Frogs by Aristophanes is this week’s play. It was performed in what now look like the waning days of Athens, just before their conquest by Sparta, and in particular the last days of Athenian tragedy, with Euripides and Sophocles both recently dead. In what may be the most...
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,...
The Marginalian
A Spell Against Stagnation: John O’Donohue on Beginnings
"Our very life here depends directly on continuous acts of beginning."
11 months ago
"Our very life here depends directly on continuous acts of beginning."
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
On Friction
warning. self-indulgeant diatribe coming. I generally try to avoid these, but it’s my website, and I...
over a year ago
warning. self-indulgeant diatribe coming. I generally try to avoid these, but it’s my website, and I can write what I want.
We’re rapidly approaching the end of the year, and I’ve got a few dozen ideas rolling around my head that I want to solidify my thoughts on.
One of the...
Astral Codex Ten
The Early Christian Strategy
...
a month ago
Wuthering...
Books I read in February 2024 - if there is truth in poets' prophesies, then in my fame forever will...
Persian literature in March: the epic Shahnameh in
Dick Davis’s mostly prose translation, plus the...
9 months ago
Persian literature in March: the epic Shahnameh in
Dick Davis’s mostly prose translation, plus the classical poets he translated in
Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz, plus some Rumi and at least
one contemporary Iranian novel, Mahmoud Dowlatabadi’s The Colonel
(2009). ...
The American Scholar
A Stranger in the Seven Hills
A refugee’s experience in the Eternal City
The post A Stranger in the Seven Hills appeared first on...
3 months ago
A refugee’s experience in the Eternal City
The post A Stranger in the Seven Hills appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Nothingness Is Our Need'
One of R.L.
Barth’s sisters-in-law found a tote bag containing poems and drafts in a
cupboard, most...
6 months ago
One of R.L.
Barth’s sisters-in-law found a tote bag containing poems and drafts in a
cupboard, most dating back to his time at Stanford in the late
nineteen-seventies. He found epigrams (his trademark form as a poet) and some Martial
translations. The bag also held “one fugitive...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Scabrous Memory Writhes Here, Underneath'
I’ve just
learned that some thirty percent of Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city, is
paved,...
2 weeks ago
I’ve just
learned that some thirty percent of Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city, is
paved, covered in concrete and asphalt. That doesn’t count buildings and other
structures. It amounts to roughly 384 square miles of ground surface that is “case-hardened,
carapaced,” to...
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...
The Elysian
Hint #3
I'm publishing a new print collection in one week.
3 months ago
I'm publishing a new print collection in one week.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Doing Him a Favor By Taking His Money'
Of all things,
I have an anecdote – from a friend in Washington, D.C. He was visiting Second
Story...
a year ago
Of all things,
I have an anecdote – from a friend in Washington, D.C. He was visiting Second
Story Books in that city earlier this week. The volumes in the outdoor stalls
are priced at $4 each. My friend collects Lionel Trilling and he found a copy
of Of This Time, Of That Place...
Josh Thompson
20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don't Get
Jason Nazar recently wrote an article titled
20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don’t Get.
Please read it, but...
over a year ago
Jason Nazar recently wrote an article titled
20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don’t Get.
Please read it, but with a big grain of salt.
Nazar opens with the statement “I made a lot of mistakes along the way, and I see this generation making their own.”
This seems to be an aspirational...
The Marginalian
Kierkegaard on the Value of Despair
"To despair over oneself, in despair to want to be rid of oneself, is the formula for all despair."
a year ago
"To despair over oneself, in despair to want to be rid of oneself, is the formula for all despair."
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...
8 months 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...
Escaping Flatland
Living 80 years, you can have 8 lives
Highlights from the cutting room floor, pt. 2
a month ago
Highlights from the cutting room floor, pt. 2
The Elysian
Mondragon as the new City-State
This cooperative could be its own country.
3 months ago
This cooperative could be its own country.
Josh Thompson
Corollas and U-Hauls
These last few posts have a theme. We moved. I’m writing about it a lot because I thought about it a...
over a year ago
These last few posts have a theme. We moved. I’m writing about it a lot because I thought about it a lot, and a lot of work went into it.
When moving across the country, you have a few options. You could higher a moving company, who comes and boxes up your house, packs a truck,...
This Space
39 Books: 2013
I reread books like Aharon Appelfeld's A Table for One and Anne Atik's How It Was as if returning to...
7 months ago
I reread books like Aharon Appelfeld's A Table for One and Anne Atik's How It Was as if returning to a particular bench with a view of the sea. On first glance A Table for One promises only banal, coffee-table memories and reflections, and that would be almost right:
Real...
Josh Thompson
Why Your Belayer is Keeping You from Climbing Hard(er)
Since climbing regularly again (!!!), I’ve observed lots of belaying in the gym. I can’t walk up to...
over a year ago
Since climbing regularly again (!!!), I’ve observed lots of belaying in the gym. I can’t walk up to a stranger and say “Excuse me, sir, I noticed that your poor belaying is totally crippling your climber’s ability to try hard, and actively eliminating any hope you had of...
The Marginalian
Eunice Newton Foote and the Birth of Climate Science: The Forgotten Woman Who Discovered the...
On an anonymous desk in a spartan classroom of the pioneering Troy Female Seminary, a teenage girl...
a year ago
On an anonymous desk in a spartan classroom of the pioneering Troy Female Seminary, a teenage girl with blue-grey eyes and an oceanic mind is bent over an astronomy book, preparing to revolutionize our understanding of the planet. The year is 1836. No university anywhere in the...
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.
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
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
A Stone Is a Story: An Illustrated Love Letter to Deep Time and Earth’s Memory
We are denizens of an enormous pebble drifting through the cosmic ocean of pure spacetime — a planet...
a year ago
We are denizens of an enormous pebble drifting through the cosmic ocean of pure spacetime — a planet made a world largely by its rockiness. Rock gave us mountains and beaches, bridges and kitchen countertops, gave us the first Promethean fire that sparked civilization. A rock is...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Death Is Not Far From Me'
It’s in the
nature of most writers to come up with their own rules and obey them when it
serves...
9 months ago
It’s in the
nature of most writers to come up with their own rules and obey them when it
serves their purposes. Even the strictest formalist bends a little in the
service of what works aesthetically. The byproduct of that decision-making
process is “style.” Good work can come out...
Josh Thompson
Resources for People with Jobs
RESOURCES FOR PEOPLE WITH JOBS
You spend most of your waking hours at work. So, spend a few of those...
over a year ago
RESOURCES FOR PEOPLE WITH JOBS
You spend most of your waking hours at work. So, spend a few of those waking hours when you’re
not at work thinking about how to improve the hours that you
are working. Often, improving your work means you can improve your work conditions and...
Josh Thompson
Type. Publish. Done.
Yesterday I read How the Hell do I Prioritize Work, Blog & Find Balance.
The author of the letter is...
over a year ago
Yesterday I read How the Hell do I Prioritize Work, Blog & Find Balance.
The author of the letter is a busy, accomplished guy and still manages to write regularly.
He said, in short:
I sit down, and I write. I’ve done it a lot, so I’m not bad at it. I don’t often proof read my...
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
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...
This Space
A modern heretic
Literature can be defined by the sense of the imminence of a revelation which does not in fact...
over a year ago
Literature can be defined by the sense of the imminence of a revelation which does not in fact occur.
I used this line, apparently from Borges, as an epigram to an essay in the early days of online writing. I can't remember what book it came from and after searching I found a...
The American Scholar
The Writing on the Wall
Augustine Sedgewick on his discovery of Henry David Thoreau’s connection to slavery
The post The...
2 months ago
Augustine Sedgewick on his discovery of Henry David Thoreau’s connection to slavery
The post The Writing on the Wall appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Art of Withstanding Abandonment: The Patience of the Penguin and How Evolution Invented Faith
“Let us love this distance which is wholly woven of friendship, for those who do not love each other...
4 months ago
“Let us love this distance which is wholly woven of friendship, for those who do not love each other are not separated,” Simone Weil wrote in her soulful meditation on the paradox of closeness and separation. To be separated from a loved one — in space or in silence, by choice or...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Has Embalmed So Many Eminent Persons'
Over the
years I wrote thousands of pieces – hard news stories, features, columns,
obituaries,...
8 months ago
Over the
years I wrote thousands of pieces – hard news stories, features, columns,
obituaries, reviews of books, movies and music – for the newspapers where I
worked in Ohio, Indiana and New York. They’re clipped and saved in a chaotic file
cabinet. Most, I, like the rest of the...
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...
Ben Borgers
Optimizing Kiwi for scale
over a year ago
The Elysian
Idea Labs! An open thread for collaborative worldbuilding
Let's brainstorm the future together.
9 months ago
Let's brainstorm the future together.
Ben Borgers
It Doesn’t Have to Be Every Day
over a year ago
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...
Josh Thompson
Context Setting for certain patterns & classes of relationship difficulties
I’ve been “catching up” a lot in my life lately. Some of that catching up involves bringing up to...
over a year ago
I’ve been “catching up” a lot in my life lately. Some of that catching up involves bringing up to speed various people I’ve not spoken too (or spoken too much, or openly, or recently, or ever, or some combination thereof).
I am strongly biased towards written/editable/consistent...
Anecdotal Evidence
'How to Live With Ourselves As We Are'
“What’s
essential is not Montaigne’s wisdom, but his wise recognition of his
foolishness; not his...
3 months ago
“What’s
essential is not Montaigne’s wisdom, but his wise recognition of his
foolishness; not his virtue, but his good cognizance of his vices; not his ‘honesty,’
but his honesty, his complete
leveling with the reader.”
I tried a
little experiment, a variation on bibliomancy. I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'At the Five and Ten Cent Store'
Irving
Berlin was Jewish and gave us the soundtrack for our American holidays,...
3 weeks ago
Irving
Berlin was Jewish and gave us the soundtrack for our American holidays, including
Thanksgiving Day: “My needs are small, I buy ’em all / At the five and ten cent
store. / Oh, I've got plenty to be thankful for.” Bing Crosby, a serious Roman
Catholic, introduced “I’ve Got...
The American Scholar
All Talk
Ease of communication will not save us
The post All Talk appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
Ease of communication will not save us
The post All Talk appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Honing Life on the Edges of the Possible: Geologist Turned Psychoanalyst Ruth Allen on Boundaries...
"At almost every conceivable level of our imagining, it is impossible to create a change without a...
4 months ago
"At almost every conceivable level of our imagining, it is impossible to create a change without a discontinuity, without a moment of not knowing who we are, or what we are going to become. Rupture precedes revolution."
Josh Thompson
Habits, Milestones, and Climbing
Since April 9th, I have spent exactly 70 minutes training for climbing. Prior to April 27th, I have...
over a year ago
Since April 9th, I have spent exactly 70 minutes training for climbing. Prior to April 27th, I have climbed exactly seven times in the last five months.
I just spent two days at the New River Gorge and exceeded my expectations, considering my almost half-year hiatus from regular...
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...
12 months 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...
The Marginalian
On Wanting to Change: Adam Phillips on Our Capacity for Transformation
"There is no description of a life without an account of the changes that are possible within it."
6 months ago
"There is no description of a life without an account of the changes that are possible within it."
The Marginalian
The Courage to Be Yourself: Virginia Woolf on How to Hear Your Soul
"Beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme difficulty of being oneself."
a year ago
"Beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme difficulty of being oneself."
Josh Thompson
The Millionaire Next Door
I’m struggling to know what to write about
The Millionaire Next Door.
It’s got many wonderful...
over a year ago
I’m struggling to know what to write about
The Millionaire Next Door.
It’s got many wonderful traits, and I strongly recommend that you read it (I wouldn’t mention it otherwise) but it’s got some flaws. I’m afraid if I focus on the flaws, I’ll turn people off from it that might...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Taste for Strolling in Cemeteries'
Just
as most of the people we encounter across a lifetime mean nothing to us and
will not...
a year ago
Just
as most of the people we encounter across a lifetime mean nothing to us and
will not even
linger in memory, as they stir neither distaste nor devotion, so it is with
books and writers. Had I been one of those desperately obsessive readers who
records every title read, I...
Josh Thompson
Parenting: A Place for Sources And Stories
As some of us are or might be, I “am a parent”, or I “have a child”, or something like that.
This is...
7 months ago
As some of us are or might be, I “am a parent”, or I “have a child”, or something like that.
This is complex for me to write and engage with, because something that is certainly true for all of us is that we “have a parent” or we “have been a child”. To talk about any of it is to...
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 Challenge of Closeness: Alain de Botton on Love, Vulnerability, and the Paradox of Avoidance
The psychological machinery of our commonest coping mechanism for the terror of hurt, rejection, and...
a year ago
The psychological machinery of our commonest coping mechanism for the terror of hurt, rejection, and abandonment.
Anecdotal Evidence
'I'd Walk in Heaven With My Feet on Earth'
“If love of
beauty were the same as faith, / I’d walk in heaven with my feet on earth.”
The...
12 months ago
“If love of
beauty were the same as faith, / I’d walk in heaven with my feet on earth.”
The late
Terry Teachout once described himself as a “Midwestern aesthete,” an identification I
have happily claimed. I sense that a love of beauty has grown scarce and too
often earns contempt...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Occasion for Festive Processions"
“Others will
balk at his sometimes extravagant vocabulary; words such as ‘amphisbaenic’ or ‘labarum’...
5 months ago
“Others will
balk at his sometimes extravagant vocabulary; words such as ‘amphisbaenic’ or ‘labarum’ or
‘ithyphallic’ will send them ‘scurrying’ to their dictionaries (why do they
always ‘scurry’ or even ‘scuttle’? A new word, rightly used, should be an
occasion for festive...
Wuthering...
Metamorphoses Cantos IV and V - gore, Pyramus and Thisbe, and a rap battle
Bacchus continues his reign of terror in Canto IV of Metamorphoses
by turning three sisters who...
11 months ago
Bacchus continues his reign of terror in Canto IV of Metamorphoses
by turning three sisters who refuse to believe in his divinity into what “we in
English language Backes or Reermice call the same” (Golding, 99) “[Or, as we
say, bats.]” (Martin, 140). How sad that
we lost the...
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
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.
Ben Borgers
Un-figure-out-able Software
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Range and Liveliness of Poetry'
I heard from
a high-school classmate who remembered the time in A.P. English our senior year
when...
9 months ago
I heard from
a high-school classmate who remembered the time in A.P. English our senior year
when the teacher had us form small groups, select a poem and prepare a
discussion. At my suggestion, our group picked “The Groundhog” (1934) by Richard
Eberhart (1904-2005). Note its...
The American Scholar
In the Endless Arctic Light
A journey to the far north of Norway means confronting our changing climate
The post In the Endless...
2 weeks ago
A journey to the far north of Norway means confronting our changing climate
The post In the Endless Arctic Light appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Profoundly Bitter Lesson'
My friend
Moshe Vardi is a computer scientist at Rice University, the Karen Ostrum...
a year ago
My friend
Moshe Vardi is a computer scientist at Rice University, the Karen Ostrum George
Distinguished Service Professor in Computational Engineering. He has published
an essay, “A Moral Rot at Rice University”:
“I was well
aware that antisemitism is alive and well in the US,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Beyond the Language of the Living'
“After
someone dies I find it hard to delete their contact from my phone. It feels
cruel somehow, as...
3 months ago
“After
someone dies I find it hard to delete their contact from my phone. It feels
cruel somehow, as if it was a final obliteration.”
I didn’t
know others felt this way, and dismissed it as my indulgence in sentimentality. Rabbi David Wolpe’s admission comes as reassurance. I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Crisply, Pithily, and, Very Often, Cruelly'
Tom Disch on
Turner Cassity: “A poet so
consistently epigrammatic can be dismissed, by those...
5 months ago
Tom Disch on
Turner Cassity: “A poet so
consistently epigrammatic can be dismissed, by those incapable themselves of
wit, as unserious, as though to be serious one must always be in a fog. Cassity
never writes a poem without knowing exactly what he means to say—crisply,
pithily,...
Josh Thompson
On Leaving Evangelicalism And Opposing It
Content warning & summary
This paper talks about ethics, ethical behavior, violence, abuse,...
a year ago
Content warning & summary
This paper talks about ethics, ethical behavior, violence, abuse, complicency, domination and oppression. It’s a condimnation of evangelicalism, but not, necessarily, any particular evangelical. There are those within evangelicalism who are ethical,...
The Elysian
Yes, Taylor Swift is just as genius as Mary Shelley
The video from our live event.
2 months ago
The video from our live event.
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...
The American Scholar
“He Asked About the Quality” by C. P. Cavafy
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “He Asked About the Quality” by C. P. Cavafy appeared first...
6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “He Asked About the Quality” by C. P. Cavafy appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
The Marginalian
The Beach and the Soul: Anne Morrow Lindbergh on the Benedictions of the Sea
"The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient... Patience,...
6 months ago
"The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient... Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not Movement But Glaciation'
There’s an
art to reviewing a book one doesn’t love but doesn’t hate, especially if the
reviewer...
a year ago
There’s an
art to reviewing a book one doesn’t love but doesn’t hate, especially if the
reviewer prizes the author’s earlier work. How to juggle critical rigor, honesty and
tact? Turner Cassity, writing about Edwin Arlington Robinson’s Amaranth (1934), does it with confident...
This Space
Dead Souls by Sam Riviere
Even before one begins reading Sam Riviere’s first novel there is despondency as one registers that...
over a year ago
Even before one begins reading Sam Riviere’s first novel there is despondency as one registers that the title is a duplication of the English translation of Nikolai Gogol’s Мёртвые души, the novel in which a character seeks to buy dead serfs from their owners but who have yet to...
The Perry Bible...
The Hare and the Tortoise
The post The Hare and the Tortoise appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
2 months ago
The post The Hare and the Tortoise appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
The American Scholar
Ground Truth
A story of dirt, dollars, and death
The post Ground Truth appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
A story of dirt, dollars, and death
The post Ground Truth appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Gleams Like a Warm Homestead Light'
Here is
epigram 1.33 by Marcus Valerius Martialis (c. 38-102 A.D.), better known in
English as...
2 months ago
Here is
epigram 1.33 by Marcus Valerius Martialis (c. 38-102 A.D.), better known in
English as Martial:
“In private
she mourns not the late-lamented;
If someone’s
by, her tears leap forth on call.
Sorrow, my
dear, is not so easily rented.
They are
true tears that without witness...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Learned to Love Books'
“Though most
of the teachers followed Erasmus in seeking to make learning palatable,
Montaigne...
3 months ago
“Though most
of the teachers followed Erasmus in seeking to make learning palatable,
Montaigne considers himself fortunate to have avoided getting 'nothing out of
school but a hatred of books, as do nearly all our noblemen,’” writes Donald
Frame in his 1965 biography of the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Could Take Part in This Savouring of the World'
One of the
ways biologists distinguish the animate from the inanimate, and the dead, is
motility....
4 months ago
One of the
ways biologists distinguish the animate from the inanimate, and the dead, is
motility. Life moves independently, under its own power. Stasis suggests the
end of life. Travel is especially prized by those unable to do so, whether confined
to bed or a Soviet Bloc regime....
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...
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."
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Prejudice Against Humor?'
“What is the
origin of the prejudice against humor? Why is it so dangerous, if you would
keep the...
10 months ago
“What is the
origin of the prejudice against humor? Why is it so dangerous, if you would
keep the public confidence, to make the public laugh? Is it because humor and
sound sense are essentially antagonistic? Has humanity found by experience that
the man who sees the fun of life...
Anecdotal Evidence
'My Soul, Beyond Distant Death"
More than
any secular writer I can think of, Vladimir Nabokov hints at the existence of
an...
2 months ago
More than
any secular writer I can think of, Vladimir Nabokov hints at the existence of
an afterlife. He never preaches and makes no theological assertions. His frequent
use of the word “paradise” is often ambiguous, blurring its mundane,
metaphorical meaning – an earthly place...
Wuthering...
Ferdowsi's Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings - No one has any knowledge of those first days...
My little Persian literature syllabus in March was built on Aboloqasem
Ferdowsi’s gigantic epic...
8 months ago
My little Persian literature syllabus in March was built on Aboloqasem
Ferdowsi’s gigantic epic Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings (1010), a
slender 850 pages in Dick Davis’s 2006 prose (mostly) translation. He added another 100 pages to the 2016
edition, whether filling out...
The American Scholar
To Catch a Sunset
Reflections on allergies, anxieties, and the limits of familial love
The post To Catch a Sunset...
5 months ago
Reflections on allergies, anxieties, and the limits of familial love
The post To Catch a Sunset appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Stereotypes and the City
What to make of HBO’s attempts to diversify an iconic show?
The post Stereotypes and the City...
8 months ago
What to make of HBO’s attempts to diversify an iconic show?
The post Stereotypes and the City appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Wrapping my head around local politics 001
Warning: Buzzwords ahead about millennials.*
As a millennial, I want to “get involved” in my “local...
over a year ago
Warning: Buzzwords ahead about millennials.*
As a millennial, I want to “get involved” in my “local community”, and don’t know the best way to “mobilize my resources”.
vomit. I hate admitting that. But I still want to figure out
if it is possible for me (little old me) to do...
The American Scholar
The Support Ship
The post The Support Ship appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
The post The Support Ship appeared first on The American Scholar.
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 355.5
...
a month ago
The Perry Bible...
Clicked
The post Clicked appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
a month ago
The post Clicked appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
Escaping Flatland
Writing while walking
We do not belong to those who have ideas only among books, when stimulated by books.
3 months ago
We do not belong to those who have ideas only among books, when stimulated by books.
Josh Thompson
A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of y-intercept
The following is recounted on
Quora, from a lecture by Stanford
professor John Ousterhout (he’s in...
over a year ago
The following is recounted on
Quora, from a lecture by Stanford
professor John Ousterhout (he’s in the Computer Science department):
Here’s today’s thought for the weekend. A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of Y-intercept.
[Laughter]
So at a mathematical level this is...
Wuthering...
The elegant, intricate, sour comedies of Terence
The great Roman playwright Terence wrote six plays between 166 and 160 BCE, twenty years after the...
a year ago
The great Roman playwright Terence wrote six plays between 166 and 160 BCE, twenty years after the death of Plautus. The story is that he wrote the first one at age nineteen, while enslaved, thus winning his freedom and entry into a world of aristocratic patrons. Plautus was...
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)....
The American Scholar
Dottie Lo Bue
House and home
The post Dottie Lo Bue appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
House and home
The post Dottie Lo Bue appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
A Tender Illustrated Celebration of the Many Languages of Love
That one mind can reach out from its lonely cave of bone and touch another, express its joys and...
a year ago
That one mind can reach out from its lonely cave of bone and touch another, express its joys and sorrows to another — this is the great miracle of being alive together. The object of human communication is not the exchange of information but the exchange of understanding. If we...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I’d Be the Man Dares Clearly Sing'
I have no
musical talent apart from a sometimes annoying gift for remembering lyrics, and
not always...
7 months ago
I have no
musical talent apart from a sometimes annoying gift for remembering lyrics, and
not always the good stuff. I know all the words to a radio jingle for a car
dealer in Cleveland, circa 1964, among other clutter. A related symptom is the long-lasting
earworm. Much of this...
Anecdotal Evidence
'As a Whole It Is a Gallimaufry'
“[O]ne is
tempted—though it might be dangerous—to maintain that the best books in the
world were...
9 months ago
“[O]ne is
tempted—though it might be dangerous—to maintain that the best books in the
world were written chiefly for pleasure and with an after-hope to please.”
Things get
sticky when you start plumbing a writer’s intentions. Let’s just say that a dwindling
species of serious...
The Elysian
You’d still work if you didn’t have to
But it would feel more like play.
5 months ago
But it would feel more like play.
Escaping Flatland
Morning ritual
+ reading recommendations
10 months ago
+ reading recommendations
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Human mind at its deepest and highest'
Vladimir
Nabokov is speaking in 1965 to Robert Hughes for the Television 13 Educational
Program in...
12 months ago
Vladimir
Nabokov is speaking in 1965 to Robert Hughes for the Television 13 Educational
Program in New York:
“One of the
saddest cases is perhaps that of Osip Mandelshtam--a wonderful
poet, the greatest poet among
those trying to survive in Russia under the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Kind of Things I Love'
At the end
of her Friday post on Orson Welles and his Chimes
at Midnight, Di Nguyen at the Little...
11 months ago
At the end
of her Friday post on Orson Welles and his Chimes
at Midnight, Di Nguyen at the Little White Attic appends a bookish cri de coeur, one I have echoed many
times:
“I
increasingly feel at odds with modern culture,” she begins. “I’m indifferent to
contemporary music,...
The Marginalian
Octavio Paz on Freedom
"Without freedom, what we call a person does not exist."
a year ago
"Without freedom, what we call a person does not exist."
The American Scholar
“The Answering Machine” by Linda Pastan
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Answering Machine” by Linda Pastan appeared first on The...
6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Answering Machine” by Linda Pastan appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
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 Science of What Made You You, with a Dazzling Poem Read by David Byrne
"Look at the clever things we have made out of a few building blocks — O fabulous continuum."
3 months ago
"Look at the clever things we have made out of a few building blocks — O fabulous continuum."
Wuthering...
Books finished in April 2023
I continue the practice of posting a list as a substitute for real writing.
Coming soon: a long...
a year ago
I continue the practice of posting a list as a substitute for real writing.
Coming soon: a long overdue loot at Seneca's plays, a glance at Gide's Counterfeiters, and some messing around with Plato's Republic.
If I did not write in April, I at least read:
GREEK PHILOSOPHY
The...
The Marginalian
Audubon on Other Minds and the Secret Knowledge of Animals
“In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with...
3 months ago
“In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear,” Henry Beston observed of other animals two generations before naturalist Sy Montgomery...
This Space
39 Books: 2012
Of all the books in this series, this was the one I most wanted to write about and also the one I...
7 months ago
Of all the books in this series, this was the one I most wanted to write about and also the one I knew would be impossible to write about, at least in a couple of distracted hours. Imagine this: through mathematical calculation, close reading and literary detective work, a...
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
'Go to the Bookcase'
I heard an
echo in something I wrote the other day, a dependent clause, inconsequential in
itself....
a month ago
I heard an
echo in something I wrote the other day, a dependent clause, inconsequential in
itself. It nagged me, like a commercial jingle from fifty years ago playing in my
head. The harder I dredged to recover the source, the deeper it sank. I let go
and an hour later it bubbled...
ribbonfarm
The Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet
My essay The Extended Internet Universe, where I coined the term “cozyweb” (probably in my top 5...
8 months ago
My essay The Extended Internet Universe, where I coined the term “cozyweb” (probably in my top 5 most successful memes) is featured in this cute little collectible book, The Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet put together by Yancey Strickler (whom you may have heard of as the...
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...
The Marginalian
How to Be Animal: An Antidote to Our Self-Expatriation from Nature
How to embrace our inheritance as "a creature of organic substance and electricity that can be...
a year ago
How to embrace our inheritance as "a creature of organic substance and electricity that can be eaten, injured and dissipated back into the enigmatic physics of the universe."
Astral Codex Ten
Highlights From The Comments On Prison
...
a week ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Result of Education Carried on By Curiosity'
“His
curiosity was so pure it seemed almost childlike.”
Vladimir
Nabokov is describing his friend...
8 months ago
“His
curiosity was so pure it seemed almost childlike.”
Vladimir
Nabokov is describing his friend in exile, Iosif Hessen (1866-1943), and makes
him sound like an extraordinary fellow. He continues in the obituary he wrote
for his friend:
“He was
living proof of the fact that a...
Josh Thompson
62 lessons learned after one year of full-time travel
Kristi and I
put together a non-comprehensive list of things we’ve learned while traveling full-time...
over a year ago
Kristi and I
put together a non-comprehensive list of things we’ve learned while traveling full-time last year.
Samples:
Kristi
1. Josh and I are such a good team, and we balance each other.
We’ve figured out our strengths and how to contribute to our successes together. It’s...
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.
Anecdotal Evidence
'. . . Or That He Did Not'
Some of us
enjoy footnotes and other annotations. Thoughtful, non-Kinbotean notes accompanying
older...
6 months ago
Some of us
enjoy footnotes and other annotations. Thoughtful, non-Kinbotean notes accompanying
older texts can identify historical figures and help us decipher obsolete words. As
Joyce advised in the Wake: “Wipe your
glosses with what you know.” My preference with Shakespeare...
The American Scholar
“The Bird of Night” by Randall Jarrell
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Bird of Night” by Randall Jarrell appeared first on The...
3 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Bird of Night” by Randall Jarrell appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Friends Don't Let Friends Shortrope
The first in a series about how to be a better belayer.
Short rope
[shawrt-rohp]
verb
The act of...
over a year ago
The first in a series about how to be a better belayer.
Short rope
[shawrt-rohp]
verb
The act of not giving sufficient rope to your climber.
Getting short roped is bad.
It’s not necessarily dangerous, nor does it cause you to take a whip (it can, of course) but the real reason...
Ben Borgers
My Guilt for Useless Things
over a year ago
The Elysian
Three classic utopian novels—now collectibles
More than 100 years ago, three thinkers imagined what a utopian future might look like in the year...
3 months ago
More than 100 years ago, three thinkers imagined what a utopian future might look like in the year 2000. Now, their novels are available as a collectible set.
Josh Thompson
2020 Annual Review
please note: i’m publishing this far after it was drafted, which was in January 2021. It’s being...
over a year ago
please note: i’m publishing this far after it was drafted, which was in January 2021. It’s being published in June 2022 - I’m trying to back-fill ‘annual reviews’, I never finished this one or published it, until now.
Is it even possible to mention a 2020 review without somehow...
Ben Borgers
Are My Technical Posts Worth It?
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Work of Wonder: Phillip Glass on Art, Science, and the Most Important Quality of a Visionary
Epoch after epoch, we humans have tried to raise ourselves above other animals with distinctions...
a year ago
Epoch after epoch, we humans have tried to raise ourselves above other animals with distinctions that have turned out false — consciousness is not ours alone, nor is grief, nor is play. If there is anything singular about us, it is our capacity to be wonder-smitten by the world...
Ben Borgers
Reflection on Shutting Down Blocks
over a year ago
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...
Wuthering...
Books I Read in July 2023
How embarrassing that I did not write a thing this month,
but I promise I had a good excuse. ...
a year ago
How embarrassing that I did not write a thing this month,
but I promise I had a good excuse. Posts
on Cynicism, Epicureanism, and Stoicism will appear this month, I swear, or at
least hope. My eventual excuse this month will
be, I am afraid, even better.
Still, I...
This Space
39 Books: 1997
I found this ghastly 60-page Grove Press hardback edition in a second-hand bookshop, its large...
7 months ago
I found this ghastly 60-page Grove Press hardback edition in a second-hand bookshop, its large typeface and generous spacing very similar to Beckett's late works (Barbara Bray, Beckett's translator, also translated this). Such productions are rare now, and perhaps were when it...
The American Scholar
Marlana Stoddard Hayes
Hope blooms
The post Marlana Stoddard Hayes appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
Hope blooms
The post Marlana Stoddard Hayes appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Tuesday, January 18, 2022
over a year ago
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