Anecdotal Evidence
'In Constant Repair'
“In the streets I saw two men meet after a long separation, it
was plain. They came forward with a...
3 months ago
“In the streets I saw two men meet after a long separation, it
was plain. They came forward with a little run and LEAPED at each other’s
hands. You never saw such bright eyes as they both had. It put one in a good
humour to see it.”
Yet again I’ve heard the small-minded slur that...
This Space
39 Books in one
For anyone interested (you there in the phone box), here's a PDF of the 39 Books series.
39 Books:...
7 months ago
For anyone interested (you there in the phone box), here's a PDF of the 39 Books series.
39 Books: PDF
As the introduction explained, the books were chosen from those on my books-read lists that I hadn't written about before. I thought it might be instructive to contrast the...
The Marginalian
The Secret Life of Chocolate: Oliver Sacks on the Cultural and Natural History of Cacao
Without chocolate, life would be a mistake — not a paraphrasing of Nietzsche he would have easily...
10 months ago
Without chocolate, life would be a mistake — not a paraphrasing of Nietzsche he would have easily envisioned, for he was a toddler in Germany when a British chocolatier created the first modern version of what we now think of as chocolate: a paste of sugar, chocolate liquor, and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Amid Tremendous History, New Pity'
Oscar Williams (1900-4) was a middling poet with a gift for compiling excellent anthologies,
thirty...
9 months ago
Oscar Williams (1900-4) was a middling poet with a gift for compiling excellent anthologies,
thirty of which he published during his lifetime. Early on, several of them
were my primers, an inviting way to learning the poetic tradition in English on
the cheap. One of them, the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Also Did Not Hope'
Back to the
theme of non-specialization, of writer as generalist: “Next to
Montaigne, the rest of...
3 months ago
Back to the
theme of non-specialization, of writer as generalist: “Next to
Montaigne, the rest of the great intellectual figures of the sixteenth century,
the leaders of the Renaissance, of Humanism, of the Reformation, and of the
modern sciences, the men who created modern...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Dispensing True Charm'
Joseph
Epstein turns a sprightly eighty-seven today – “sprightly” because he is still
writing, still...
12 months ago
Joseph
Epstein turns a sprightly eighty-seven today – “sprightly” because he is still
writing, still reading, still sending notes of encouragement to those of us who
can use the occasional infusion of sprightliness. In the last month he has
published reviews and essays devoted to...
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...
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...
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'More Profundities Than Twists'
I’m sure some of you share my slightly guilty impulse: a book last read months or decades ago
enters...
5 months ago
I’m sure some of you share my slightly guilty impulse: a book last read months or decades ago
enters my thoughts and I can’t shake it. I have to read it again. For me, the
same is true of movies. To put it in not non-artistic terms, sometimes you get
a craving for spaghetti...
The Marginalian
Look Up: The Illustrated Story of Astronomer Henrietta Leavitt, Who Laid the Groundwork for...
How a brilliant woman rose against the tide of her time to fathom the mysteries of space.
a year ago
How a brilliant woman rose against the tide of her time to fathom the mysteries of space.
Josh Thompson
Build a Personal Website in Jekyll - A Detailed Guide For First-Timers
You’re a turing student, in the backend program.
You know Ruby, you wanna start blogging, but...
over a year ago
You’re a turing student, in the backend program.
You know Ruby, you wanna start blogging, but everyone who says
go start a blog
Seems to also think you have 10 hours (or 20 hours? or 2 hours? how long does this take) to sit around dealing with setting up a personal website.
Lets...
The 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.
Josh Thompson
Travel somewhere fun. But first get on Scott's email list
Most of us have a bucket list item of “travel abroad”, right?
It gets harder to realize once you...
over a year ago
Most of us have a bucket list item of “travel abroad”, right?
It gets harder to realize once you start looking through flight prices, though. If you and your significant other want to head to Europe or Asia, you might be dropping $2500, minimum, for the both of you.
That’s...
Wuthering...
Plato's Republic - justice, fantasy and censorship - We'll ask Homer not to be angry
I had ambitions to write about Plato’s Republic with
some thoroughness, but I guess I will just...
a year ago
I had ambitions to write about Plato’s Republic with
some thoroughness, but I guess I will just pursue one point. Good enough.
I have been separating Socrates from Plato, an imaginative
exercise based on circular criteria. The
more Socratic of the Socratic dialogues are...
Ben Borgers
How You Perceive the World
over a year ago
The American Scholar
“Snow” by Louis MacNeice
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Snow” by Louis MacNeice appeared first on The American...
a week ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Snow” by Louis MacNeice appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
39 Books: 2002
The quiet joy of short, constrained memoirs. I borrowed a copy of this book in 2002 and then found a...
7 months ago
The quiet joy of short, constrained memoirs. I borrowed a copy of this book in 2002 and then found a copy in a remaindered shop for £5.
Anne Atik got to know Beckett in the late 1950s through the artist Avigdor Arikha, later her husband. Beckett's circle of friends included as...
The American Scholar
Adventures With Jean
Striking up a friendship with an older writer meant accepting the risk of getting hurt
The post...
4 months ago
Striking up a friendship with an older writer meant accepting the risk of getting hurt
The post Adventures With Jean appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
There Was a Shadow: A Lyrical Illustrated Celebration of the Changing Light, in the World and in the...
“Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty,” Junichiro Tanizaki wrote in the 1933 Japanese...
6 months ago
“Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty,” Junichiro Tanizaki wrote in the 1933 Japanese classic In Praise of Shadows. As a physical phenomenon, shadows are one of the most beguiling phenomena of nature, emissaries of the entwined history of light and consciousness; as...
Wuthering...
The Story of the Stone, volume 4 - It was an eerie, desolate night.
At the two-thirds mark, after 80 chapters of the 120, three
big changes hit The Story of the Stone...
a week ago
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,...
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...
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...
Josh Thompson
Maybe "Now" Is Not the Right Time
Recently I deleted a bunch of old notes I had in
Evernote. Some of the notes were almost immediately...
over a year ago
Recently I deleted a bunch of old notes I had in
Evernote. Some of the notes were almost immediately unneeded, like old receipts and confirmations.
Much of the rest was notes related to goals (“Checklist to move out of MD Apartment”, “Planning trip to Buenos Aires”) or to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Appear to the Public to be Some Sort of Miracle'
On Christmas
Eve 1890, Chekhov writes to his friend and editor Alexi Suvorin:
“I believe
in both...
4 months ago
On Christmas
Eve 1890, Chekhov writes to his friend and editor Alexi Suvorin:
“I believe
in both [Robert] Koch and spermine, and I praise the Lord. Kochines, spermines,
etc. all appear to the public to be some sort of miracle that has sprung
unexpectedly from someone’s head like...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Joker; One Who Breaks a Jest'
When I
encountered the word witcracker in Much Ado About Nothing, I marked it for
further use and...
a year ago
When I
encountered the word witcracker in Much Ado About Nothing, I marked it for
further use and found myself silently singing it to the tune of “Matchmaker,Matchmaker” from Fiddler on the Roof:
“Witcracker, witcracker, / Make me a wit . . .” In Shakespeare’s Act V, Scene 4,...
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...
7 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,...
The Marginalian
Fox and Bear: A Tender Modern Fable About Reversing the Anthropocene, Illustrated in Cut-Cardboard...
An antidote to the civilizational compulsions that rob human nature of nature.
a year ago
An antidote to the civilizational compulsions that rob human nature of nature.
Astral Codex Ten
The Innocent And The Beautiful Have No Enemy But Time
...
3 weeks ago
The Marginalian
Nick Cave on the Two Pillars of a Meaningful Life
"Cultivating a questioning mind, of which conversation is the chief instrument, enriches our...
a year ago
"Cultivating a questioning mind, of which conversation is the chief instrument, enriches our relationship with the world."
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...
5 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
Rhyme, Not Repetition
All that’s past isn’t necessarily present
The post Rhyme, Not Repetition appeared first on The...
7 months ago
All that’s past isn’t necessarily present
The post Rhyme, Not Repetition appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Cloudy, Cloudy Is the Stuff of Stones'
The
best-known and still unchallenged refutation of the Irish Anglican Bishop George Berkeley’s...
9 months ago
The
best-known and still unchallenged refutation of the Irish Anglican Bishop George Berkeley’s theory of
subjective idealism – he called it “immaterialism” -- is recounted by James Boswell
on August 6, 1763:
“After we
came out of the church, we stood talking for some time...
Anecdotal Evidence
'If the Nation Is to Be Saved From This Menace'
“To the
thinking man there are few things more disturbing than the realization that we
are becoming...
10 months ago
“To the
thinking man there are few things more disturbing than the realization that we
are becoming a nation of minor poets.”
P.G.
Wodehouse is being kind. He wrote “The Alarming Spread of Poetry” in 1916 when
the blight was fresh and perhaps still reversible. His Exhibit A is...
The Marginalian
Milan Kundera on the Power of Coincidences and the Musicality of How Chance Composes Our Lives
"Human lives... are composed like music. Guided by his sense of beauty, an individual transforms a...
a year ago
"Human lives... are composed like music. Guided by his sense of beauty, an individual transforms a fortuitous occurrence... into a motif, which then assumes a permanent place in the composition of the individual's life."
This Space
The criticism of Lessons, the lessons of criticism
I give thanks to Ryan Ruby for his review of Lessons, Ian McEwan’s latest novel. It brings to our...
over a year ago
I give thanks to Ryan Ruby for his review of Lessons, Ian McEwan’s latest novel. It brings to our attention that rare thing, joy of joys, a novel telling the story of a life remarkably similar to the author’s own set against the backdrop of recent history. Ruby shows how the...
The Elysian
Hint #3
I'm publishing a new print collection in one week.
4 months ago
I'm publishing a new print collection in one week.
This Space
39 Books: 1998
I said I'd come back to "not writing".
A few months ago I watched Unstuck in Time, a long but...
8 months ago
I said I'd come back to "not writing".
A few months ago I watched Unstuck in Time, a long but captivating documentary on the life of Kurt Vonnegut and his friendship with the film's maker, Robert Weide. In his final years, Vonnegut moved to the country and stopped writing. His...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Like a Wagon-Load of Monkeys'
“It is not
an accident that Gulliver has become
a child’s book; only a child could be so...
a year ago
“It is not
an accident that Gulliver has become
a child’s book; only a child could be so destructive, so irresponsible and so
cruel.”
And only a
parent could acknowledge the potential for raw nastiness in the heart of a child.
V.S. Pritchett had two children and few illusions...
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Was No One There Anymore'
Jorge Luis Borges
published his final story collection, Shakespeare’s
Memory, in 1983, three years...
a year ago
Jorge Luis Borges
published his final story collection, Shakespeare’s
Memory, in 1983, three years before his death. The first story in the volume
is “August 25, 1983.” The narrator is Borges or at least one version of Borges.
He enters a hotel and sees his own name signed in the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Our Instinctual Taste for Periodicity and Return'
I got a kick
out of Damian at A Sunday of Liberty reveling in a rhyme that seems...
a year ago
I got a kick
out of Damian at A Sunday of Liberty reveling in a rhyme that seems genetically
implanted in American kids, regardless of age or geography:
“Greasy,
grimy gopher guts!
Little dirty
birdie feet!”
As in any
folk tradition, variants abound. This is the version I grew...
Josh Thompson
Write Less Say More
I recently read a short piece about
using software to improve your own writing. To paraphrase one...
over a year ago
I recently read a short piece about
using software to improve your own writing. To paraphrase one of the suggestions: “do away with weasel words, the passive voice, adverbs, cliches.”
I’m adding “complex sentences” to the list.
Out of curiosity, I looked through things that...
Josh Thompson
Recommended Reading
I’ve read many books over the years. Thousands. Here’s a few that I find myself...
7 months ago
I’ve read many books over the years. Thousands. Here’s a few that I find myself referencing/recommending.Periodically, I refresh this list. It’s changed over the years years.
the list you are about to read is heavily reworked, based off this older list:...
Anecdotal Evidence
'O Friend Unseen, Unborn, Unknown'
Rabbi David Wolpe tells me Monday’s post reminds him of a poem, “To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence,”...
a month ago
Rabbi David Wolpe tells me Monday’s post reminds him of a poem, “To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence,” by a poet I knew only by name: James Elroy Flecker. “I've always been
moved,” David said, “especially by the penultimate stanza”:
“O friend
unseen, unborn, unknown,
Student of...
Josh Thompson
Mentors and Attitude
Having a mentor is equal parts “having a mentor” and “being one who can be mentored”. If I am too...
over a year ago
Having a mentor is equal parts “having a mentor” and “being one who can be mentored”. If I am too thick-headed to evaluate things that someone tells me and figure out how to apply that to my life, both of us are wasting our time.
Having a mentor is life-changing because you have...
The American Scholar
Aging Out
Many of us do not go gentle into that good night
The post Aging Out appeared first on The American...
a month ago
Many of us do not go gentle into that good night
The post Aging Out appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Single Line of Calm'
Judged
solely as a liquid asset, the most valuable book I ever held was a history of
Argentina...
4 weeks ago
Judged
solely as a liquid asset, the most valuable book I ever held was a history of
Argentina borrowed from the public library in Schenectady, N.Y. At home I discovered
the previous reader had marked his place with a twenty-dollar bill. I returned
the book but not the cash. It...
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...
4 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...
Ben Borgers
How ChatGPT spoiled my semester
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Be at Home in Other Places'
At his day
job my current barber is a counselor working with street people who have alcohol
and/or...
a month ago
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...
The Marginalian
Simone Weil on Love and Its Counterfeit
How to tell a plaything from a necessity.
a year ago
How to tell a plaything from a necessity.
Wuthering...
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...
10 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 –...
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 Perry Bible...
Us
The post Us appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
2 months ago
The post Us appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
Josh Thompson
Mythical Creatures: Refactoring wizard.rb
Preparing for Turing Series Index
What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
Preparing for Turing Series Index
What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...
The Elysian
What is the goal of anarchism?
Letters to an anarchist, part five.
a month ago
Letters to an anarchist, part five.
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Is No Nothingness'
Once asked
about politics in a symposium portentously titled “The Writer’s Situation,”...
4 months ago
Once asked
about politics in a symposium portentously titled “The Writer’s Situation,” J.V.
Cunningham replied:
“You can
write on politics or not. I do not. But is politics meant here? Or is it,
rather, ideology? The latter is religious, not political, though religion...
The Marginalian
The Ecstasy of Eternity: Richard Jefferies on Time and Self-Transcendence
This is the great paradox: that human life, lived between the time of starlings and the time of...
10 months ago
This is the great paradox: that human life, lived between the time of starlings and the time of stars, is made meaningful entirely inside the self, but the self is a mirage of the mind, a figment of cohesion that makes the chaos and transience bearable. A few times a lifetime, if...
Josh Thompson
On Feedback
Most of what makes us who we are is based on some sort of feedback obtained earlier in our life.
By...
over a year ago
Most of what makes us who we are is based on some sort of feedback obtained earlier in our life.
By my best estimation, there are two types of feedback:
Explicit feedback
, which comes in a little box labeled “this is feedback”, and is hard to miss.
Implicit feedback
, which is...
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...
Wuthering...
Middle period Plato - He’s garbage, he cares about nothing but the truth.
Assembling yesterday’s post I saw that I was only missing one dialogue from Plato’s early period, so...
a year ago
Assembling yesterday’s post I saw that I was only missing one dialogue from Plato’s early period, so I knocked off Greater Hippiaslast night. The early dialogues are generally short; the three in the “death of Socrates” group are only fifty pages total, for example.
Hippias is...
Ben Borgers
Lessons Learned from Hanging Posters
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Agent 37
The post Agent 37 appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
The post Agent 37 appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Everything Is Already There: Javier Marías on the Courage to Heed Your Intuitions
"This has nothing to do with premonitions, there is nothing supernatural or mysterious about it,...
a year ago
"This has nothing to do with premonitions, there is nothing supernatural or mysterious about it, what’s mysterious is that we pay no heed to it."
Escaping Flatland
Things I learned working with artists
As I said in “Lessons I learned working at an art gallery,” I had several observations that I...
2 weeks ago
As I said in “Lessons I learned working at an art gallery,” I had several observations that I couldn’t fit into that post—so lets continue today.
The Marginalian
Heroism and the Human Search for Meaning: Ernest Becker on the Hidden Root of Our Existential...
"To become conscious of what one is doing to earn his feeling of heroism is the main self-analytic...
a year ago
"To become conscious of what one is doing to earn his feeling of heroism is the main self-analytic problem of life."
Wuthering...
Xenophon's Socrates
I’m still catching up with myself.
I wanted to spend March thinking about Socrates as a...
a year ago
I’m still catching up with myself.
I wanted to spend March thinking about Socrates as a philosopher,
independent from Plato’s use of him, to the extent that it is possible. The Socrates of Aristophanes in The Clouds
is not much help. But luckily we have
Xenophon, a close...
The American Scholar
“Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes appeared first on...
6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
American Modernism’s Lost Boy-King
The late, great Paul Auster on Stephen Crane
The post American Modernism’s Lost Boy-King appeared...
8 months ago
The late, great Paul Auster on Stephen Crane
The post American Modernism’s Lost Boy-King appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'And the Third Is To Be Kind.'
A Palpable Elysium: Portraits of Genius and
Solitude
(David R. Godine, 2002) is a collection of the...
a year ago
A Palpable Elysium: Portraits of Genius and
Solitude
(David R. Godine, 2002) is a collection of the late publisher/poet’s
photographs of artists well-known and obscure. Williams was no snob when it
came to talent and genius. He photographs Stevie Smith, Guy Davenport...
Josh Thompson
Crock Pots are Foolproof, Right?
A while back I got together with my good friend
Dustin. I had an evening free, wanted to cook, AND...
over a year ago
A while back I got together with my good friend
Dustin. I had an evening free, wanted to cook, AND hang out with good friends. I wanted to try a
really good looking recipe, and watch Django Unchained.
The cooking instructions for the recipe was “cook on low for 7-9 hours”. I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Some Spirit That Didn’t Wobble'
“As a
youngster I came to the classics simply by following the clues of other
writers. Cooper,...
a year ago
“As a
youngster I came to the classics simply by following the clues of other
writers. Cooper, Stevenson, Whitman, even Edgar Rice Burroughs seemed to lead,
allusion by allusion, back to a body of writing that was solider and wiser,
some spirit that didn’t wobble, wasn’t under...
The American Scholar
Numbers Game
A novelist’s indictment of how we account for our history
The post Numbers Game appeared first on...
7 months ago
A novelist’s indictment of how we account for our history
The post Numbers Game appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
2018 In Review & Thoughts on 2019
I find a lot of value in other people’s reviews of their years. It’s the time of year to be...
over a year ago
I find a lot of value in other people’s reviews of their years. It’s the time of year to be contemplative and reflective on the last 12 months, so here we are.
Note to reader: I’m posting this in May, 2019. I wrote it in late December, 2018, didn’t get around to finishing it up...
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Are No Millers Any More'
I’ve just
learned of the suicide of a woman I knew casually a long time ago. Such news is
always...
a week ago
I’ve just
learned of the suicide of a woman I knew casually a long time ago. Such news is
always unsettling, as though a fundamental law of nature had been violated. Given what we
know of the person, and it may be very little, we apply
her circumstances to our own and conclude,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Craft Is Perfected Attention'
The
campiness can get a little thick when the poet/publisher/photographer Jonathan
Williams...
a year ago
The
campiness can get a little thick when the poet/publisher/photographer Jonathan
Williams (1929-2008) is in the neighborhood, but he’s always festive, the sort
of fellow you could hire to turn around tedious parties or staff meetings. A
reader says she is enjoying Williams’...
The Marginalian
Making Space: An Illustrated Ode to the Art of Welcoming the Unknown
It is the silence between the notes that distinguishes music from noise, the stillness of the soil...
4 months ago
It is the silence between the notes that distinguishes music from noise, the stillness of the soil that germinates the seeds to burst into bloom. It is in the gap of absence that we learn trust, in the gap between knowledge and mystery that we discover wonder. Every act of making...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Like a Golden Retriever'
Part of the pleasure of listening to the late jazz
musician Dave McKenna playing piano was hearing...
a year ago
Part of the pleasure of listening to the late jazz
musician Dave McKenna playing piano was hearing the musical quotes he wove into his improvisations. The practice, deplored by some
critics, was not unique to McKenna, of course. To cite only jazz musicians I
have seen in person,...
The Marginalian
The Warblers and the Wonder of Being: Loren Eiseley on Contacting the Miraculous
"The time has to be right; one has to be, by chance or intention, upon the border of two worlds. And...
11 months ago
"The time has to be right; one has to be, by chance or intention, upon the border of two worlds. And sometimes these two borders may shift or interpenetrate and one sees the miraculous."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Books in the Running Brooks'
One of my
favorite literary analogies:
“The work of
a correct and regular writer is a garden...
11 months ago
One of my
favorite literary analogies:
“The work of
a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed and diligently
planted, varied with shades, and scented with flowers; the composition of
Shakespeare is a forest, in which oaks extend their branches, and pines tower
in...
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...
ben-mini
Buying a House
Two days ago, I decided I want to buy my first house. My goal is to purchase it before the summer of...
3 months ago
Two days ago, I decided I want to buy my first house. My goal is to purchase it before the summer of 2025.
Why are you buying a house?
To make money. I see this as an opportunity in a space that many friends and family consider a safe, high-return bet (if done right). When...
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Line or Two Worth Keeping All Too Rare'
“He has
never been much of a poet for opening magic casements -- ordinary dirty storm
windows,...
a year ago
“He has
never been much of a poet for opening magic casements -- ordinary dirty storm
windows, rather.”
That’s X.J. Kennedy on Kingsley Amis, clearly seeing his own reflection in that dirty
window. Both are proof that the best writers of light verse or comic poetry are
serious...
The Marginalian
Stunning 200-Year-Old French Illustrations of Exotic, Endangered, and Extinct Birds
From peacocks to penguins, a winged menagerie of wonder.
a year ago
From peacocks to penguins, a winged menagerie of wonder.
Josh Thompson
Habits Take Preparation
Kristi and I moved to Golden, Colorado. We’ve been in our new apartment for five days. I’m trying to...
over a year ago
Kristi and I moved to Golden, Colorado. We’ve been in our new apartment for five days. I’m trying to quickly settle into a routine that makes sense for both of us.
For example - I work for a company in Boston. While I could keep local working hours (Mountain Time) I prefer to...
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...
a year 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...
The Marginalian
Shame and the Secret Chambers of the Self: Pioneering Sociologist and Philosopher Helen Merrell Lynd...
"Experiences of shame throw a flooding light on what and who we are and what the world we live in...
8 months ago
"Experiences of shame throw a flooding light on what and who we are and what the world we live in is."
The American Scholar
Autumn 2024
The post Autumn 2024 appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The post Autumn 2024 appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Oaks That Were Acorns That Were Oaks'
We hear acorns
hitting the roof of the house and the cars. It makes the cats nervous and sounds
like...
a year ago
We hear acorns
hitting the roof of the house and the cars. It makes the cats nervous and sounds
like slow hail. The crop this year is prodigious. The
patio is covered with them, more than the squirrels can keep up with. Stomping on them make a satisfying crack/pop sound. I’ve...
The Marginalian
Wholeness and the Implicate Order: Physicist David Bohm on Bridging Consciousness and Reality
How to "include everything coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that is undivided,...
a year ago
How to "include everything coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that is undivided, unbroken, and without a border."
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.
Wuthering...
Metamorphoses, Books XI to XV - The whole of it flows
I had better finish up Ovid’s Metamorphoses before I
forget what was in it. It is full of
memorable...
9 months ago
I had better finish up Ovid’s Metamorphoses before I
forget what was in it. It is full of
memorable things, but I have limits.
Books XI through XV, the last five, in this post.
Book X ended with the songs of Orpheus, so he has to begin
Book XI with Orpheus’s gruesome death,...
Josh Thompson
Bollards: Why & What
author’s note: it’s always fun to see your own stuff on the Hacker News front page! This very post...
8 months ago
author’s note: it’s always fun to see your own stuff on the Hacker News front page! This very post sparked >450 comments worth of conversation! I didn’t even know this got posted until days later!
What are bollards
The what and the why in a single image:
The what and why in a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Moved—Stopp’d--Shall I Go On?—No'
The
professor asked me to write a paper on Tristram
Shandy, the novel she had introduced to us in...
a month ago
The
professor asked me to write a paper on Tristram
Shandy, the novel she had introduced to us in her eighteenth-century English
fiction class. It was her favorite novel. Its bawdy humor matched her own. For
me it was love at first sight – for the novel, I mean. I was already a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Make Memory Speak so Volubly'
A reader
shares with me her first reading of two books she knows I value highly. First,...
a year ago
A reader
shares with me her first reading of two books she knows I value highly. First, Kipling’s
Kim: “I was
twelve. I was very interested in ‘spiritual’ things. It was the Beatles and the
Maharishi, you know. I got it from the library and it was love at first sight.
I...
The Marginalian
May Sarton on Writing, Gardening, and the Importance of Patience Over Will in Creative Work
"Gardening is like poetry in that it is gratuitous, and also that it cannot be done on will alone."
a year ago
"Gardening is like poetry in that it is gratuitous, and also that it cannot be done on will alone."
The Elysian
Please come up with wildly speculative futures
Inside my writing philosophy.
9 months ago
Inside my writing philosophy.
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Were Nothing in Ourselves Nothing More'
“[H]e gave
us some of the best poems of our times. And, after all, one must thank a man
for what he...
a year ago
“[H]e gave
us some of the best poems of our times. And, after all, one must thank a man
for what he has done and not condemn him for his failures.”
A timely,
guilt-inducing reminder. It’s easy to scold a writer for not producing a masterpiece
each time he goes to work. Good...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Implacable, Bewildered, It Moves Among Us'
Some sixteen
years ago David Ferry thanked me for a post I had written about some of the lines by...
a year ago
Some sixteen
years ago David Ferry thanked me for a post I had written about some of the lines by Dr. Johnson interpolated into his poems. That email is long gone but
I remember being touched by his buoyant sense of gratitude. That a man in his
eighties, much honored as a poet,...
The Elysian
One year of my work, printed
The Elysian Volume II is here.
2 months ago
The Elysian Volume II is here.
Escaping Flatland
A measuring device that tells me what is interesting
+ links
3 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Essence of Good Talk'
A longtime reader
of this blog stopped by the house on Saturday, we talked and the...
a year ago
A longtime reader
of this blog stopped by the house on Saturday, we talked and the afternoon
evaporated. Neither of us brought a script. “Improvisation is the essence of
good talk,” writes Max Beerbohm in “Lytton Strachey” (1943). “Heaven defend us
from the talker who doles out...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Speak Knowledge Meagerly and Piteously'
“Montaigne
is heavy going, it has to be said.”
For once the
commonsensical Jules Renard is wrong....
3 months ago
“Montaigne
is heavy going, it has to be said.”
For once the
commonsensical Jules Renard is wrong. There’s no context for the remark in his
journal (October 1, 1898), so I take his words as given. Montaigne’s prose, at
least in translation, seems clear and readily understood. The...
The Marginalian
How the Sea Came to Be: An Illustrated Singsong Celebration of the Evolution of Life
“Who has known the ocean? Neither you nor I, with our earth-bound senses,” Rachel Carson wrote in...
a year ago
“Who has known the ocean? Neither you nor I, with our earth-bound senses,” Rachel Carson wrote in the pioneering 1937 essay that invited the human imagination into the science and splendor of the marine world for the first time — a world then more mysterious than the Moon, a...
Astral Codex Ten
H5N1: Much More Than You Wanted To Know
Don't give your true love a partridge, turtledoves, or (especially) French hens
2 days ago
Don't give your true love a partridge, turtledoves, or (especially) French hens
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.
Anecdotal Evidence
'With All Its Philistinism and Coarseness'
My roommate freshman year was
the son of a Slovak father and an Austrian mother who had emigrated to...
2 months ago
My roommate freshman year was
the son of a Slovak father and an Austrian mother who had emigrated to the U.S.
after World War II. Mike was trilingual from birth, without an accent unless it
was a Cleveland accent that I couldn’t hear because it was mine as well. His
tastes often...
Blog -...
Book Review - Iron John
Iron John by Robert Bly is a classic book about men. It has legions of
ardent fans, but I...
over a year ago
Iron John by Robert Bly is a classic book about men. It has legions of
ardent fans, but I reluctantly admit I am not one of the more zealous.
Although the book has high points – the classic story of Iron John as put
down by the Grimm brothers stands out to me, as well as an...
Blog -...
Book Review - Open
Open by Andre Agassi is a narrative tour de force. I literally could not
put it down. I usually...
over a year ago
Open by Andre Agassi is a narrative tour de force. I literally could not
put it down. I usually have four to six books on the go at any time, but
all of them were put on pause for the day and a half it took me to devour
this book.
Josh Thompson
Monthly Review: October
This is my first monthly review. I’ll spend some time fleshing out the why and the how, and then get...
over a year ago
This is my first monthly review. I’ll spend some time fleshing out the why and the how, and then get right to it. If you don’t want to read a lot of introspective Josh, stop reading. I use the word “I” dozens of times. Consider yourself warned.
For a long time I have feared life...
Josh Thompson
Typing in Colemac 2.0
I want to learn to type in Colemak, but I’m afraid to try to invest twenty hours in it. That’s a...
over a year ago
I want to learn to type in Colemak, but I’m afraid to try to invest twenty hours in it. That’s a long commitment, and I’m afraid I would not follow through, and feel like it was a failure, because I didn’t allot enough time, nor reach a desired level of skill.
My hope is that as...
The Elysian
Asia and the future of the nation state
A discussion with Benjamin Perry.
2 months ago
A discussion with Benjamin Perry.
The Marginalian
To Be a Person: Jane Hirshfield’s Playful and Poignant Poem About Bearing Our Human Condition
"To be a person may be possible then, after all."
a year ago
"To be a person may be possible then, after all."
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Whole Hog Barbecu'd!'
I was
surprised to see that Alexander Pope was familiar with the most popular cuisine
served in...
3 months ago
I was
surprised to see that Alexander Pope was familiar with the most popular cuisine
served in Texas: barbecue. You’ll find his reference in “The Second Satire in the Second Book of Horace Paraphrased”:
“Oldfield,
with more than Harpy throat endu’d,
Cries, ‘send
me, Gods! a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'On the Cello of Shared Grief'
With the deaths
of certain writers our reaction is shamefully selfish: Why did he do that to me? No...
2 weeks ago
With the deaths
of certain writers our reaction is shamefully selfish: Why did he do that to me? No thought for family or friends, or
even other readers, merely one’s sense of personal betrayal. That’s how I felt
seven years ago when Richard Wilbur died at age ninety-six, as...
Josh Thompson
About Roundabouts
I’m desperately trying to work through a giant back-log of writings. Please see write it now for...
over a year ago
I’m desperately trying to work through a giant back-log of writings. Please see write it now for more. I’m spending only a few minutes on this, forgive my errors.
Of late, I’ve had a lot of conversations about roundabouts. I’m basically trying to explain the ways that a mobility...
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...
Ben Borgers
New in Superadmin: styling, images, rich text
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'They Will Leave Behind Trenches'
“You wouldn’t
give up utopia it was too nourishing seductive / For mommy’s boys the heirs of
fortune...
2 months ago
“You wouldn’t
give up utopia it was too nourishing seductive / For mommy’s boys the heirs of
fortune heirs / To the bloody myths of the twentieth city.”
Today is the
centenary of Polish poet and essayist Zbigniew Herbert. The
Anglophone world has been fortunate. Herbert’s poems...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Don’t See Other People As Peculiar'
For my
money, the Canadian short story
writer is Mavis Gallant (1922-2014), not Alice Munro, who is...
11 months ago
For my
money, the Canadian short story
writer is Mavis Gallant (1922-2014), not Alice Munro, who is too dull to endure.
(Joseph Epstein said of her work: “Humor never obtrudes.”) Born in Montreal, Gallant
moved to Europe in 1950, hoping to give up journalism and write fiction....
Josh Thompson
Hidden Damages of the Introvert vs. Extrovert "debate"
Are you an introvert or an extrovert?
Chances are good an answer pops to your mind. Of course you’re...
over a year ago
Are you an introvert or an extrovert?
Chances are good an answer pops to your mind. Of course you’re right! You’ve taken internet tests! You’ve read Buzzfeed articles describing one aptitude or the other, and you feel like they speak to you!
Stop. Right now. You’re speaking lies...
The American Scholar
“Three Things Enchanted Him …” by Anna Akhmatova
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Three Things Enchanted Him …” by Anna Akhmatova appeared...
2 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Three Things Enchanted Him …” by Anna Akhmatova appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Interior Convulsion'
Too late the
other night a friend texted me links to several stand-up routines by the late
Jackie...
a year ago
Too late the
other night a friend texted me links to several stand-up routines by the late
Jackie Mason. I clicked on one and the inevitable followed: I went looking for
more and soon descended into a privately curated comedy show with guest stars Don
Rickles, Jonathan Winters...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Title Is Apt and Not a Whit Pretentious'
I hadn’t
opened my copy of Raymond Sokolov’s Wayward
Reporter: The Life of A.J. Liebling (Harper and...
3 weeks ago
I hadn’t
opened my copy of Raymond Sokolov’s Wayward
Reporter: The Life of A.J. Liebling (Harper and Row, 1980) in a long time.
It’s a rather skimpy biography, though the only one we have, so I hope someone,
someday writes a life worthy of Liebling’s gifts. When I was a...
The American Scholar
Just When You Thought It Wasn’t Safe …
How Wilbert Longfellow turned America into a nation of swimmers
The post Just When You Thought It...
6 months ago
How Wilbert Longfellow turned America into a nation of swimmers
The post Just When You Thought It <em>Wasn’t</em> Safe … appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
Week 5: Write one (pitchable) think piece
9 months ago
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...
The Marginalian
The Consolations of Chronodiversity: Geologist Turned Psychologist Ruth Allen on the 12 Kinds of...
“I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars,” Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska wrote in her...
3 months ago
“I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars,” Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska wrote in her lovely poem “Possibilities.” Our preferences, of course, hardly matter to time — we live here suspended between the time of insects and the time of stars, our transient lives...
Josh Thompson
Benefits of helplessness
The last few days were rough, strangely enough. I live in beautiful Golden, Colorado with my best...
over a year ago
The last few days were rough, strangely enough. I live in beautiful Golden, Colorado with my best friend (who I happen to be married to), and I’ve got a pretty cool job to boot. That’s the “big three”, right? (Relationships, work, location.)
Yep. Except from Thursday through...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Colder Here Than Organized Charity'
Hugh Kenner’s
first extant letter to Guy Davenport is dated March 7, 1958. Its manner is at
once...
10 months ago
Hugh Kenner’s
first extant letter to Guy Davenport is dated March 7, 1958. Its manner is at
once business-like and chatty: “I hope subsequent activities haven’t yet
sufficed to obliterate our Boston dinner last fall from your memory.” The men had
first met in 1953 when each...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Though Lightly Made, Are Hard to Keep'
Even the
most chillingly honest among us remain liars, at least to ourselves. Self-delusion
is...
a year ago
Even the
most chillingly honest among us remain liars, at least to ourselves. Self-delusion
is endemically human and not always a bad thing. It can serve as a useful
motivator. Take the annual farce of New Year’s resolutions, those earnestly mustered plans for...
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...
Josh Thompson
October 2016 Goals
In the last year, I’ve fluctuated between writing
every day for 30 days and
not posting once in...
over a year ago
In the last year, I’ve fluctuated between writing
every day for 30 days and
not posting once in two months.
Frankly, neither of those is good for me.
I like writing because it clarifies my own thoughts. Sometimes it seems useful to others. I like to be useful (“utility” can...
Wuthering...
Books I read in December 2023 - No one’s worse than you, she says
Lots of short fantasy fiction this month, perhaps everything
in the first section except the May...
a year ago
Lots of short fantasy fiction this month, perhaps everything
in the first section except the May Sarton novel and Eugene O’Neill play,
balanced by a complementary pair of Holocaust memoirs.
NOVELS, STORIES & A PLAY
Ocean of Story, Vol. 1 (11th cent.), Somadeva, tr. C. H....
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Pristine Caldera of Consonants'
The subject
of quarks came up in conversation with an electrical engineer. We didn’t linger
but I...
6 months ago
The subject
of quarks came up in conversation with an electrical engineer. We didn’t linger
but I got to explain its etymology. The word for the subatomic particle was
coined by the physicist Murray Gell-Mann, who borrowed it from Finnegans Wake: “Three quarks for Muster
Mark!”...
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…
The Marginalian
Hermann Hesse on Discovering the Soul Beneath the Self and the Key to Finding Peace
"Self-hate is really the same thing as sheer egoism, and in the long run breeds the same cruel...
10 months ago
"Self-hate is really the same thing as sheer egoism, and in the long run breeds the same cruel isolation and despair."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Read a Little, Listen to a Little Music'
“To tend the
world: read a little, listen to a little music.”
I was slow
to warm to the late Adam...
a year ago
“To tend the
world: read a little, listen to a little music.”
I was slow
to warm to the late Adam Zagajewski. I still prefer his essays to his poems,
which often seem sentimental and formless, as though he demanded too little of
himself when writing poetry. Only in the five...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Kind of Representative Figure of His Era'
We gave our sons
Hebrew names: Joshua, Michael, David. They roughly translate as “God is...
a year ago
We gave our sons
Hebrew names: Joshua, Michael, David. They roughly translate as “God is deliverance,”
“gift of God” and “beloved,” respectively. We are not Jewish and not linguists
but we like plain names rooted in tradition, names with an identifiable history
traceable, in this...
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."
The Marginalian
A Glow in the Consciousness: The Continuous Creative Act of Seeing Clearly
"Simply to look on anything... with the love that penetrates to its essence, is to widen the domain...
6 months ago
"Simply to look on anything... with the love that penetrates to its essence, is to widen the domain of being in the vastness of non-being."
The Marginalian
A Whole of Parts: Philosopher R.L. Nettleship on Love, Death, and the Paradox of Personality
"Death is self-surrender... Love is the consciousness of survival in the act of self-surrender."
a week ago
"Death is self-surrender... Love is the consciousness of survival in the act of self-surrender."
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.
Ben Borgers
“you have a lack of deadlines”
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Known to All But Themselves'
Suddenly,
there’s nothing shameful about ignorance. I mean personally, not as an indictment
of the...
5 months ago
Suddenly,
there’s nothing shameful about ignorance. I mean personally, not as an indictment
of the bigger culture. There’s so much I don’t know or understand, and that
knowledge of my ignorance no longer bothers me very much. I still like learning
things but there was a time when...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Principle Is Growth'
I remember
learning as a kid the word dendrology
while reading about maple trees (we had seven in...
9 months ago
I remember
learning as a kid the word dendrology
while reading about maple trees (we had seven in our front yard – all are gone,
one carried away by a tornado) in a field guide: the study of trees. From the
Greek for “tree.” A close synonym is silvics,
this time from the Latin. I...
The Marginalian
The Half-Life of Hope
After breaking out of timidity with “Spell Against Indifference,” an offering of another poem — this...
a year ago
After breaking out of timidity with “Spell Against Indifference,” an offering of another poem — this one inspired by a lovely piece of science news that touched me with its sonorous existential echoes. THE HALF-LIFE OF HOPE by Maria Popova Walking beneath the concrete canopy...
The American Scholar
On Book
August Wilson’s play just hit the big screen, but even greater rewards await on the page
The post On...
a month ago
August Wilson’s play just hit the big screen, but even greater rewards await on the page
The post On Book appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
“Friends” as the ideal community
The one where communes aren't the answer.
7 months ago
The one where communes aren't the answer.
Josh Thompson
How to Move
Kristi and I are moving to Colorado in July. We’ve taken three broad steps to make this move...
over a year ago
Kristi and I are moving to Colorado in July. We’ve taken three broad steps to make this move happen:
We both are in process with new jobs
I just started working remotely for Litmus, which means I can seamlessly transition to Colorado this summer. Kristi spent a few days last week...
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...
Josh Thompson
Find out how much money you've made (in your entire life)
This post went by on the Personal Finance subreddit today:
https://www.ssa.gov/myaccount/
After...
over a year ago
This post went by on the Personal Finance subreddit today:
https://www.ssa.gov/myaccount/
After creating an account / logging in, click on Earnings, then add the columns. If you have been working for many years, try copying/pasting the column in excel and using the sum...
sbensu
High Variance Management
How should you manage a team that is trying to achieve results out of the ordinary?
a year ago
How should you manage a team that is trying to achieve results out of the ordinary?
sbensu
Vibes are music, arguments are lyrics
Losing My Religion is not about religion and Arguments are not about arguments
5 months ago
Losing My Religion is not about religion and Arguments are not about arguments
Josh Thompson
Setting up for 'SQL Queries for Mere Mortals'
This tweet is from… a while ago. Turns out I didn’t dig into this book, because the pace at Turing...
over a year ago
This tweet is from… a while ago. Turns out I didn’t dig into this book, because the pace at Turing didn’t allow for a few weeks of thinking just about SQL.
yes, I'm digging into sql to better my AR skills, and ultimately whatever I need to use next. pic.twitter.com/UhjyGKv1FQ
—...
The American Scholar
Heart of Semi-Darkness
A writer’s delectable quest for rare flavors
The post Heart of Semi-Darkness appeared first on The...
4 months ago
A writer’s delectable quest for rare flavors
The post Heart of Semi-Darkness appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Trash Bags in the Laundry Room
over a year ago
The Elysian
Week 8: What communities should know about you? (Write a story about them)
8 months ago
Josh Thompson
The advantage of low friction goals
If you have a project, make it easy to take small steps.
I’m trying to publish something every day...
over a year ago
If you have a project, make it easy to take small steps.
I’m trying to publish something every day for a month.
Normally, I would sit down at my computer, open a text editor, write
something, the copy it into Squarespace, and customize the post from there.
“Customization”...
The Marginalian
Delight Between Science and Magic: Euler’s Disk and the Sound of the Singularity
One afternoon in the late 1980s, sitting in the company cafeteria, aerospace engineer Joseph Bendik...
a month ago
One afternoon in the late 1980s, sitting in the company cafeteria, aerospace engineer Joseph Bendik found himself so bored that he took a coin out of his pocket and began spinning it atop the table. In a testament to the eternal paradox of boredom and wonder as two sides of the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Old Man or Young Man Mad About Literature'
Sometimes an
eccentric judgment – one that reflects the critic’s discernment, not merely his
wish to...
8 months ago
Sometimes an
eccentric judgment – one that reflects the critic’s discernment, not merely his
wish to provoke and attract attention – proves useful to the common reader. Take
a sentence from Ford Madox Ford's final book, The March of Literature (1939): “The modern
English language...
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."
Josh Thompson
Cheap fix to night-time teeth grinding
A few years ago, I found out I grind me teeth at night.
Kristi says it sounds like I’m chewing...
over a year ago
A few years ago, I found out I grind me teeth at night.
Kristi says it sounds like I’m chewing marbles.
Others who grind their teeth give themselves headaches, or wake themselves up at night.
You can’t really stop yourself from grinding your teeth, since you’re asleep.
You
can...
Escaping Flatland
The third chair
I remembered my loneliness; I felt it with a defencelessness that I had denied myself at the time....
10 months ago
I remembered my loneliness; I felt it with a defencelessness that I had denied myself at the time. The feeling that writing was impossible; that I would never find a place in the world that felt like home; that no one except my wife would ever care about me, about the things that...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Doing Valuable Work in Literary Criticism'
“Part of the
drama of reading Boswell’s Life for
the first time is that one can never (however much...
5 months ago
“Part of the
drama of reading Boswell’s Life for
the first time is that one can never (however much classical or Christian
erudition one brings to the task) predict confidently how Johnson is going to
respond to this or that specific question; yet of course by the end one...
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...
The Marginalian
How to Miss Loved Ones Better: The Psychology of Waiting and Withstanding Absence
On "the capacity to bear frustration without turning against one’s needy self, or against the person...
4 months ago
On "the capacity to bear frustration without turning against one’s needy self, or against the person one needs."
sbensu
The Market for Takes
Solving for the Twitter equilibrium
5 months ago
Solving for the Twitter equilibrium
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Harbinger of a Song Greater Still'
“I went to
him very late each night, and he read many of the poems to me or discussed them
with me...
a year ago
“I went to
him very late each night, and he read many of the poems to me or discussed them
with me till the early hours of the morning. The tears often ran down his face
as he read, without the slightest apparent consciousness of them on his part.
The pathos and grandeur of these...
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Is Pure Absence, No Place, Nowhere, Not'
I remember
in high school reading Louis Fischer’s The
Life of Lenin (1964), though all I retain of...
4 months ago
I remember
in high school reading Louis Fischer’s The
Life of Lenin (1964), though all I retain of the book is the account of
Lenin’s autopsy, following his death at age fifty-two from atherosclerosis.
When tapped with tweezers, his cerebral arteries pinged like stone. They...
Josh Thompson
Fixing Ford and Washington
Do all of these, in the right order/way/buy-in. btw, i’m pretending it’s easy. it’s not trivial, but...
over a year ago
Do all of these, in the right order/way/buy-in. btw, i’m pretending it’s easy. it’s not trivial, but it is doable:
Step 1: Install car-friendly roundabouts targeting a ~20 mph throughput speed throughout the city and eliminate all stopsigns and stoplights
Please see about...
Wuthering...
The appeal of Septology as religious fiction - the urge, inexplicably, to pray - because it helps!...
Septology is a stream-of-consciousness novel
throughout, a mix of sentence fragments, unconventional...
a month ago
Septology is a stream-of-consciousness novel
throughout, a mix of sentence fragments, unconventional punctuation, and temporal
shifts, meaning the painter Asle is sometimes thinking about the present and
sometimes about the past.
These are all old moves, old techniques. I was a...
Wuthering...
The Story of the Stone, volume 2 - all agreed that this was the definitive poem on the subject of...
I have continued on with The Story of the Stone, the
2,500 page 18th century Chinese novel by, or...
a month ago
I have continued on with The Story of the Stone, the
2,500 page 18th century Chinese novel by, or mostly by, Cao Xueqin. Here I will write about the second volume of
the David Hawkes translation, The Crab-flower Club. Last time, after reading the first fifth of
the novel, I...
This Space
The withdrawal of the novel
We are subjected to that which does not exist
Simone Weil
When an old friend who...
over a year ago
We are subjected to that which does not exist
Simone Weil
When an old friend who has drunk deep from the puddle of the New Atheism complained on social media that religious people believe things that are “inventions, fairy stories, not real, made up", I was...
Anecdotal Evidence
'With Squeaky Wit the Light, Improper Verse'
Without
context or other clue, who do you think might have written this tart...
7 months ago
Without
context or other clue, who do you think might have written this tart little
couplet?:
“With
squeaky wit the light, improper verse
Falls on the
heavy lunch and makes it worse.”
I first encountered
him in the eighth grade, in English class. He was sold to us as the “poet...
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.
Astral Codex Ten
Can You Hate Everyone In Rome?
...
8 hours ago
The Marginalian
Beyond Either/Or: Kierkegaard on the Passion for Possibility and the Key to Resetting Relationships
"Were I to wish for anything I would not wish for wealth and power, but for the passion of the...
5 months ago
"Were I to wish for anything I would not wish for wealth and power, but for the passion of the possible, that eye which everywhere, ever young, ever burning, sees possibility."
The Perry Bible...
Pop
The post Pop appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
8 months ago
The post Pop appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
The American Scholar
“To David, About His Education” by Howard Nemerov
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “To David, About His Education” by Howard Nemerov appeared...
a month ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “To David, About His Education” by Howard Nemerov appeared first on The American Scholar.
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,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Monsoons, Boredom, Stench'
R.L. Barth
takes as the epigraph to his new chapbook, Ghost
Story (Scienter Press, Louisville, Ky.,...
10 months ago
R.L. Barth
takes as the epigraph to his new chapbook, Ghost
Story (Scienter Press, Louisville, Ky., 2024), a passage from Dr. Johnson’s Idler essay for September 2, 1758:
“I suppose
every man is shocked when he hears how frequently soldiers are wishing for war.
The wish is not...
Josh Thompson
The Slight Edge, and why you should read it
I read
The Slight Edge a few months ago.
Since then, it’s been the book I recommend most often to...
over a year ago
I read
The Slight Edge a few months ago.
Since then, it’s been the book I recommend most often to most people. (I don’t make book recommendations willy-nilly, but if something seems relevant to what the person I’m speaking to is experiencing/thinking about, I make a...
Josh Thompson
Mocks & Stubs & Exceptions in Ruby
Some of my recent work has been around improving error handling and logging.
We had some tasks that,...
over a year ago
Some of my recent work has been around improving error handling and logging.
We had some tasks that, if they failed to execute correctly, were supposed to raise exceptions, log themselves, and re-queue, but they were not.
The class in which I was working managed in large part API...
Ben Borgers
I Used All of My Meal Swipes!
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Some Lessons Learned While Preparing for Two Technical Talks
A few weeks ago, I gave two talks about Ruby and Rails:
An 8-minute lightning talk about using...
over a year ago
A few weeks ago, I gave two talks about Ruby and Rails:
An 8-minute lightning talk about using .count vs .size in ActiveRecord query methods
A 30-minute talk at the Boulder Ruby Group arguing that developers should embrace working with non-development business functions, and the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I See Only Their Marvelous Works'
“How
pleasant it is to respect people! When I see books, I am not concerned with how
the authors...
11 months ago
“How
pleasant it is to respect people! When I see books, I am not concerned with how
the authors loved or played cards; I see only their marvelous works.”
A reader
reprimands me for dismissing Ezra Pound from serious consideration. “We can’t
imagine modernism without him,” he...
Anecdotal Evidence
'One Is Always at Home in One’s Past'
I will quote
the writer who has given me more pleasure – “aesthetic bliss” he called it –
than any...
8 months ago
I will quote
the writer who has given me more pleasure – “aesthetic bliss” he called it –
than any other and whose birthday we observed earlier this week: “One is always at home in one’s past.” That might
serve as a gloss on his autobiography, Speak,
Memory, in which he writes at...
Josh Thompson
Playing Pranks
My wife played a brilliant prank on me today, as she does every year. Here’s a partial...
over a year ago
My wife played a brilliant prank on me today, as she does every year. Here’s a partial list:
Convincing me that I was about to eat a slice of carrot cake; it was a sponge covered with toothpaste. I bit into it.
Convincing me that she had, in anger and frustration, cut off almost...
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...
ribbonfarm
Storytelling — Just Add Dinosaurs
In a previous part, I covered the storytelling model of Matthew Dicks, who specializes in live,...
9 months ago
In a previous part, I covered the storytelling model of Matthew Dicks, who specializes in live, spoken-word competitive storytelling from real life. He has a theory of stories I found deeply unsatisfying: That the essence of a story is a moment of character change where the...
Blog -...
Book Review - The Surrender Experiment
With the book The Surrender Experiment, author Michael (Mickey) Singer,
gives us a gift. In this...
over a year ago
With the book The Surrender Experiment, author Michael (Mickey) Singer,
gives us a gift. In this eloquently penned biography of his “journey into
life’s perfection”, he demonstrates the beauty that life can provide for us
when we are not solely guided by our logical,...
The Marginalian
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows: Uncommonly Lovely Invented Words for What We Feel but Cannot Name
"Despite what dictionaries would have us believe, this world is still mostly undefined."
8 months ago
"Despite what dictionaries would have us believe, this world is still mostly undefined."
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Culmination of Contemporary Economism'
For half a
century my brother earned his living making picture frames, some of which were
themselves...
4 months ago
For half a
century my brother earned his living making picture frames, some of which were
themselves works of art. In later years he relied more on accounts with hotel
chains and the glass office buildings in downtown Cleveland. Frames for these corporate
accounts he called...
Josh Thompson
Continuous Glucose Monitors: Why & What
This is a story and explanation about why I sometimes wear a glucose monitor. It’s visible on the...
8 months ago
This is a story and explanation about why I sometimes wear a glucose monitor. It’s visible on the rear of my upper arm, usually sparks a question or two, I’ve usually stumbled through a response, now I can simply pass this page along to anyone who asks.
Since maybe 2018, every...
The Elysian
Your alternatives to democracy
Entries to the March writing prompt.
8 months ago
Entries to the March writing prompt.
The Marginalian
Of Stars, Seagulls, and Love: Loren Eiseley on the First and Final Truth of Life
Somewhere along the way of life, we learn that love means very different things to different people,...
4 months ago
Somewhere along the way of life, we learn that love means very different things to different people, and yet all personal love is but a fractal of a larger universal love. Some call it God. I call it wonder. Dante called it “the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars.”...
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...
6 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
‘Of Course’
“Auden says, Wordsworth says, Valery says, Shakespeare says. Always the present tense. Of...
7 months ago
“Auden says, Wordsworth says, Valery says, Shakespeare says. Always the present tense. Of course.”
—Geoffrey Grigson, The Private Art: A Poetry Notebook (Allison and Busby, 1982).
Escaping Flatland
On mentors
What is it that motivates someone to take on someone and help them grow? Why do some learners have...
a year ago
What is it that motivates someone to take on someone and help them grow? Why do some learners have that privilege?
Josh Thompson
December 2016 Goals
December 19th seems a bit late to write about December’s goals, huh?
Nonetheless, I’ve had some, and...
over a year ago
December 19th seems a bit late to write about December’s goals, huh?
Nonetheless, I’ve had some, and I will still have them through the end of the month.
I
did post a review of November a few days ago. This should really be rolled into that. A “monthly review/going forward”...
Wuthering...
Books I read in August 2024
My ambition this summer was to read extensively in Arabic literature. Eh, I did all right, but I...
4 months ago
My ambition this summer was to read extensively in Arabic literature. Eh, I did all right, but I will have to save
Ibn Battuta’s Travels and the second half of Leg over Leg for
some other time.
FICTION
The Arabian Nights (14th c.), many hands – In the
great Hassan Haddawy...
Ben Borgers
Website redesign, December 2022
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Master of Light But Stinging Irony'
I bought
Vikram Seth’s novel-in-verse The Golden
Gate when it was published in 1986. Around that...
6 months ago
I bought
Vikram Seth’s novel-in-verse The Golden
Gate when it was published in 1986. Around that time I was giving up the
practice of writing in books, which had always left me a little uncomfortable. Instead,
I switched to keeping notebooks. In The
Golden Gate I see that I...
Steven Scrawls
Easy Questions, Part 1: Introduction
Easy Questions, Part 1:
Introduction
What if our stories explore questions not because those...
9 months ago
Easy Questions, Part 1:
Introduction
What if our stories explore questions not because those questions are
interesting, but because those questions are easier to respond to than
the alternatives?
Trope: The Chosen One
What’s the shallow, wish-fulfillment version of...
The Marginalian
Flowers for Things I Don’t Know How to Say: A Tender Painted Lexicon of Consolation and Connection
“To be a Flower is profound Responsibility,” Emily Dickinson wrote. From the moment she pressed the...
7 months ago
“To be a Flower is profound Responsibility,” Emily Dickinson wrote. From the moment she pressed the first wildflower into her astonishing teenage herbarium until the moment Susan pinned a violet to her alabaster chest in the casket, she filled her poems with flowers and made of...
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,...
Josh Thompson
Primitive Obsession & Exceptional Values
I’ve been working through Avdi Grimes’ Mastering the Object Oriented Mindset course.
One of the...
over a year ago
I’ve been working through Avdi Grimes’ Mastering the Object Oriented Mindset course.
One of the topics was using “whole values”, instead of being “primative obsessed”. The example Avdi gave was clear as day.
He used a course with a duration attribute to show the...
The American Scholar
To Catch a Sunset
Reflections on allergies, anxieties, and the limits of familial love
The post To Catch a Sunset...
7 months ago
Reflections on allergies, anxieties, and the limits of familial love
The post To Catch a Sunset appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Flow, Like Waters After Summer Show’rs'
“As two men
sit silent, after having exhausted all their topics of conversation; one says, ‘It
is...
5 months ago
“As two men
sit silent, after having exhausted all their topics of conversation; one says, ‘It
is very fine weather,’ and the other says, ‘Yes;’—one blows his nose, and the
other rubs his eye-brows; (by the way, this is very much in Homer’s manner;)
such seems to be the case...
Josh Thompson
Turing Prep appendix: Troubleshooting Errors
Pretty much any time I hear the same question twice, I will try to add a section here for it, and...
over a year ago
Pretty much any time I hear the same question twice, I will try to add a section here for it, and make it as findable by future students as possible.
Do you have a question not answered here? PLEASE send me a DM in Slack or @ me (I’m josh_t in the Turing slack). I’ll take a...
This Space
Further in the opposite direction
Modernity is supposed to be the moment when religious claims and systems of authority reveal...
a year ago
Modernity is supposed to be the moment when religious claims and systems of authority reveal themselves to be human-all-too-human fictions that lack divine legitimation. Religion is supposed to wither away. But this itself...can be understood as a religious claim: the very...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Artist Knows He Is Ready'
A young
reader complains that he’s “good with words” but doesn’t know what to write
about. It sounds...
7 months ago
A young
reader complains that he’s “good with words” but doesn’t know what to write
about. It sounds as though he seizes up when he sits down at the keyboard. To
call his condition “writer’s block” would be premature. He’s too inexperienced
for that to be happening already. The...
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'At Least When Practised By a Master'
I know
several industrious readers who read nothing but novels, not even short stories
and certainly...
a year ago
I know
several industrious readers who read nothing but novels, not even short stories
and certainly not biographies, poetry or other forms of nonfiction. Some are
devoted to genre fiction – mysteries, science fiction – and at least one sticks
to the “classics” -- Austen and...
The Marginalian
Some Thoughts about the Ocean and the Universe
How to bear the gravity of being.
a year ago
How to bear the gravity of being.
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...
This Space
The enigma for criticism
To this day, I can learn only from bad films. The good ones I watch in the same spirit in which I...
a year ago
To this day, I can learn only from bad films. The good ones I watch in the same spirit in which I watched when I was a kid. The great ones, even when I see them many times, are just an enigma.
Werner Herzog describes a few "bad films" in his autobiography, all from his...
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,...
7 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...
The Marginalian
The Parts We Live With: D.H. Lawrence and the Yearning for Living Unison
"We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living,...
8 months ago
"We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living, incarnate cosmos."
The Marginalian
Between the Infinite and the Infinitesimal: A Scientist’s Search for the Fulcrum of Faith
"The universe is not a place where evolution happens, it is the evolution happening. It is not a...
11 months ago
"The universe is not a place where evolution happens, it is the evolution happening. It is not a stage on which drama unfolds, it is the unfolding drama itself."
Josh Thompson
Everything I Do and Think I've Read in a Book (or, exploring the relationship between books and...
Here’s yet another big post on money and income and saving and reading. I tried to write everything...
over a year ago
Here’s yet another big post on money and income and saving and reading. I tried to write everything on my mind in one massive letter, so I could write a really detailed answer once, rather than a less-useful but less-thoughtful email that I can never reuse.
Hey there,
I’m...
Josh Thompson
Practicing with Polylines
This is a first pass at trying to do something interesting (repeatedly) with the same base...
3 months ago
This is a first pass at trying to do something interesting (repeatedly) with the same base primative, in this case, a “polyline”. Read the rest of this post, understand what we’re going for, then go to part 2: get your own polyline from strava. It’s not trivial to get, but its...
The Elysian
The Cooperatist Manifesto that inspired Mondragon
Father José María Arizmendiarrieta didn’t just imagine a better economic system, he built it.
2 months ago
Father José María Arizmendiarrieta didn’t just imagine a better economic system, he built it.
Josh Thompson
`ls` command to show directory contents
I like to use the tree command on my local machine when trying to peek into the structure and...
over a year ago
I like to use the tree command on my local machine when trying to peek into the structure and contents of a given directory.
tree -L 2
will [L]ist recursively everything [2] levels deep from your current directory. The output is nicely formatted like this:
> tree -L 2
.
├──...
Josh Thompson
A New Old Financial Product
I’m going to weave together talk of land value, and financing, and some of the primitives1 around...
over a year ago
I’m going to weave together talk of land value, and financing, and some of the primitives1 around financial products.
How much would you pay for a box that lives in your mailbox and delivers $1000 on the first of every month?
Would you pay at least $5000, if you felt really...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Dark But Festive'
I grew up in
the Age of Magazines. My parents, who were not book readers, subscribed at
various...
7 months ago
I grew up in
the Age of Magazines. My parents, who were not book readers, subscribed at
various times to Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, Time, Life, Look, Saturday Evening Post and National Geographic, not to mention those periodicals subscribed to by my
mother (McCall’s,...
The Marginalian
Dead Stars: Poet Laureate Ada Limón’s Stunning Love Poem to Life
"We’ve come this far, survived this much. What would happen if we decided to survive more? To love...
a year ago
"We’ve come this far, survived this much. What would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?"
Wuthering...
Thales, the first philosopher - what is philosophy, anyways?
He [Thales of Miletus] held that the original substance of all things is water, and that the world...
a year ago
He [Thales of Miletus] held that the original substance of all things is water, and that the world is animate and full of deities. They say he discovered the seasons of the year, and divided the day into 365 days. (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, p. 12,...
The Elysian
No one buys books
Everything we learned about the publishing industry from Penguin vs. DOJ.
8 months ago
Everything we learned about the publishing industry from Penguin vs. DOJ.
The Elysian
Are Democrats too liberal? Or too conservative?
We're asking the wrong questions.
a month ago
We're asking the wrong questions.
The Marginalian
Doris: A Watercolor Serenade to the Courage of Authenticity and the Art of Connection
“There is no insurmountable solitude,” Pablo Neruda asserted in his stirring Nobel Prize acceptance...
a year ago
“There is no insurmountable solitude,” Pablo Neruda asserted in his stirring Nobel Prize acceptance speech. “All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the...
Josh Thompson
Turing Prep Chapter 4: Arrays, Hashes, and Nested Collections
Preparing for Turing Series Index
What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
Preparing for Turing Series Index
What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...
Josh Thompson
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Old Landor's Bones Are Laid'
On Tuesday I
wrote about Walter Savage Landor, his poems and especially Imaginary Conversations, a...
3 months ago
On Tuesday I
wrote about Walter Savage Landor, his poems and especially Imaginary Conversations, a collection of 174 dialogues, mostly of
historical and literary figures, published in five volumes between 1824 and
1829. I keep a mental list of books I admire and enjoy that seem...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Very Close to the Caliber of Mark Twain'
I found a 2001 interview with Shelby Foote in The
American Enterprise. The author of the
three...
3 months ago
I found a 2001 interview with Shelby Foote in The
American Enterprise. The author of the
three volumes of The Civil War: A Narrative (1958-1974) was asked by Bill
Kauffman about the scarcity of politicians who are today capable of formulating their
own coherent let alone eloquent...
The Marginalian
Winnicott on the Qualities of a Healthy Mind and a Healthy Relationship
"A sign of health in the mind is the ability of one individual to enter imaginatively and yet...
4 months ago
"A sign of health in the mind is the ability of one individual to enter imaginatively and yet accurately into the thoughts and feelings and hopes and fears of another person; also to allow the other person to do the same to us."
The Marginalian
The Science and Poetry of Anthotypes: Emily Dickinson’s Herbarium, Recreated in Hauntingly Beautiful...
On September 20, 1845, the polymathic Scottish mathematician Mary Somerville — the woman for whom...
11 months ago
On September 20, 1845, the polymathic Scottish mathematician Mary Somerville — the woman for whom the word scientist was coined — sent a letter to the polymathic English astronomer John Herschel, who six years earlier had coined the word photography for the radical invention of...
The Perry Bible...
Brushed
The post Brushed appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
7 months ago
The post Brushed appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
Anecdotal Evidence
'More Interesting to Me Than the Future'
“The past
has always been more interesting to me than the future, just as I have found
pessimists...
5 months ago
“The past
has always been more interesting to me than the future, just as I have found
pessimists more amusing than optimists and failures more attractive than
successes. I do not say that my preferences are based upon universal principles
or that everyone should share them; in...
The Marginalian
How to Grow Up: Nick Cave’s Life-Advice to a 13-Year-Old
"Fill yourself with the beautiful stuff of the world... Get amazed. Get astonished. Get awed on a...
a year ago
"Fill yourself with the beautiful stuff of the world... Get amazed. Get astonished. Get awed on a regular basis, so that getting awed is habitual and becomes a state of being."
The Marginalian
Everything Is Happening All the Time: Legendary Physicist John Archibald Wheeler on Death and the...
“To die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier,” Walt Whitman writes in the prime of...
2 months ago
“To die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier,” Walt Whitman writes in the prime of life. “What happens when you get to the end of things?” four-year-old Johnny in Ohio asks his mother from the bathtub while Whitman’s borrowed atoms are becoming young grass in a...
Idle Words
The Lunacy of Artemis
In August 2020, the New York Times asked me to write an op-ed for a special feature on...
7 months ago
In August 2020, the New York Times asked me to write an op-ed for a special feature on authoritarianism and democracy. They declined to publish my submission, which I am sharing here instead.
A little over 51 years ago, a rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral carrying three...
The American Scholar
“The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry appeared first on...
6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'I'm Not a Funny Man'
“All writers
that are worth anything are humorists.”
It’s one of
those preposterously broad...
a year ago
“All writers
that are worth anything are humorists.”
It’s one of
those preposterously broad observations you want to immediately endorse or
dismiss, but if “humor” is defined liberally and we accept it as a spectrum ranging
from the driest wit to slapstick, farce and bawdy,...
The Marginalian
Trust, Betrayal, and the Nexus of Mathematics and Morality: The Prisoner’s Dilemma Animated
Illuminating the pitfalls of the mind in felt and gingerbread.
a year ago
Illuminating the pitfalls of the mind in felt and gingerbread.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The World's an End'
In recent
years John Dryden has become one of my reliable poets. He impresses me as a
sane adult,...
4 months ago
In recent
years John Dryden has become one of my reliable poets. He impresses me as a
sane adult, with equal emphasis on both of those words. No dabbling in drugs
and madness. I brought a volume of his poems with me to Cleveland where I’m
visiting my brother in hospice. No...
The Marginalian
Between Mathematics and the Miraculous: The Stunning Pendulum Drawings of Swiss Healer and Artist...
Emma Kunz (May 23, 1892–January 16, 1963) was forty-six and the world was aflame with war when she...
7 months ago
Emma Kunz (May 23, 1892–January 16, 1963) was forty-six and the world was aflame with war when she became an artist. She had worked at a knitting factory and as a housekeeper. She had written poetry, publishing a collection titled Life in the interlude between the two World Wars....
Ben Borgers
Read the Dang Thing Out Loud
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Grace Paley on the Countercultural Courage of Imagining Other Lives
“Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real,” Iris...
5 months ago
“Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real,” Iris Murdoch wrote in her superb investigation of the parallels between art and morality. There could be no such realization without imagination, which is our only instrument for fathoming...
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...
The American Scholar
Bitten
The post Bitten appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
The post Bitten appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
9 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...
ribbonfarm
Storytelling — Philosophical Stakes
Via the latest issue of Simon de la Rouviere’s excellent Scenes with Simon newsletter, I found a...
9 months ago
Via the latest issue of Simon de la Rouviere’s excellent Scenes with Simon newsletter, I found a video on good endings by Michael Arndt, screenwriter of Little Miss Sunshine, that basically answers the question I explored in Just Add Dinosaurs, where I argued that Matthew Dicks’...
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.
The Marginalian
The Double Flame: Octavio Paz on Love
“Love is a bet, a wild one, placed on freedom. Not my own; the freedom of the Other… A knot made of...
a year ago
“Love is a bet, a wild one, placed on freedom. Not my own; the freedom of the Other… A knot made of two intertwined freedoms.” We love to forget ourselves, but also to remember what we are: mortal creatures lustful of meaning, radiant with life, eternally alone and eternally...
Astral Codex Ten
Indulge Your Internet Addiction By Reading About Internet Addiction
...
4 weeks ago
Josh Thompson
On Learning
As a student at Turing, I’ve recently been thinking about learning how to learn, specifically in the...
over a year ago
As a student at Turing, I’ve recently been thinking about learning how to learn, specifically in the context of software development.
I am a bit hyperactive when it comes to trying to learn new things. Over the years, I’ve done plenty of ineffective learning, and at least a...
The Marginalian
Milan Kundera on Animal Rights and What True Human Goodness Really Means
"True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient...
a year ago
"True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind's true mortal test, its fundamental test... consists of its attitude toward those who are at its mercy: animals."
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Find It Hard to Read Great Books at All'
A young reader
tells me he is unable to read most books written before “about the middle of the
60s....
8 months ago
A young reader
tells me he is unable to read most books written before “about the middle of the
60s. I like Vonnegut. A lot of the stuff before that is like a foreign language
to me.” I’m reminded of an English professor who told me more than half a century ago that
most of her...
Escaping Flatland
Seeing people clearly
Head of people operations for the entire friend group
a year ago
Head of people operations for the entire friend group
The Marginalian
The New Science of Plant Intelligence and the Mystery of What Makes a Mind
"Every thought that has ever passed through your brain was made possible by plants."
7 months ago
"Every thought that has ever passed through your brain was made possible by plants."
Josh Thompson
About working remotely at Litmus with Pajamas.io
A while back, I wrote a long interview for
Pajamas.io, a publication around remote work. I’ve pasted...
over a year ago
A while back, I wrote a long interview for
Pajamas.io, a publication around remote work. I’ve pasted the entire article here below.
When Josh Thompson wanted to move out to rural Colorado with his family to be closer to the mountains he loves to climb, he knew finding a company...
ben-mini
Root Canals and Bill Gates
In Finding Nemo, there was a scene about a root canal surgery that absolutely terrified me:
This...
6 months ago
In Finding Nemo, there was a scene about a root canal surgery that absolutely terrified me:
This could just be me, but I spent a remarkable amount of my childhood worrying about root canals. Horror stories like these created a universal phobia that dentists suck and that’s...
Josh Thompson
The Violence of God and the Hermeneutics of Paul
Sometimes I (Josh) want to share around certain academic works. Sometimes its a PDF that I want...
over a year ago
Sometimes I (Josh) want to share around certain academic works. Sometimes its a PDF that I want someone to download and read, sometimes it’s text from a book I’ve read, and cannot otherwise get a sharable format of. So, I laboriously take photos of pages, use an optical character...
Ben Borgers
A Design Improvement for Our Communal Showers
over a year ago
The Marginalian
John Gardner on the Key to Self-Renewal Across Life and the Art of Making Rather Than Finding...
"The potentialities you develop to the full come as the result of an interplay between you and...
7 months ago
"The potentialities you develop to the full come as the result of an interplay between you and life's challenges."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Thoughts Wait Here for Future Readers'
In Another Beauty (trans. Clare Cavanagh,
2000), the late Adam Zagajewski revisits his alma mater,...
a year ago
In Another Beauty (trans. Clare Cavanagh,
2000), the late Adam Zagajewski revisits his alma mater, the Jagiellonka
Library in Kraków, and calls it a “botanical garden of ideas,” a metaphor
worthy of the librarian Borges. I briefly visited the Jagiellonka, as it’s
known, in 2012...
Wuthering...
Orestes by Euripides - And what had seemed so right, / as soon as done, became / evil, monstrous,...
I want to invite anyone interested to join me in reading Aristotle’s Poetics, the foundation of...
over a year ago
I want to invite anyone interested to join me in reading Aristotle’s Poetics, the foundation of Western literary criticism, influential to the present day and bizarrely dominant, almost sacred, for centuries. I hope to write about it at the end of the month, having just reread...
Anecdotal Evidence
'For the Ordinary Educated Man'
I’ve read
most of Robert Conquest’s books – history, poetry, fiction – and here is the
sole passage...
5 months ago
I’ve read
most of Robert Conquest’s books – history, poetry, fiction – and here is the
sole passage I have almost committed to memory:
“Literature
exists for the ordinary educated man, and any literature that actively requires
enormous training can be at best of only peripheral...
Wuthering...
Jeremy Denk plays Charles Ives and Blind Tom Wiggins - a pleasing conjunction of Wuthering...
More Massachusetts semi-literay adventures.
Last weekend I was at Tanglewood in Lenox,...
4 months ago
More Massachusetts semi-literay adventures.
Last weekend I was at Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts,
enjoying Jeremy Denk’s performance of insurance executive Charles Ives’s Concord
Sonata (c. 1913). It was a pleasing
congruence of Wuthering Expectations themes.
I have nothing...
The Marginalian
Marie Howe’s Stunning Hymn of Humanity, Animated
"It began as an almost inaudible hum..."
9 months ago
"It began as an almost inaudible hum..."
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 362.5
...
yesterday
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