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Anecdotal Evidence
'An Occasion for Festive Processions" “Others will balk at his sometimes extravagant vocabulary; words such as ‘amphisbaenic’ or ‘labarum’...
6 months ago
51
6 months ago
“Others will balk at his sometimes extravagant vocabulary; words such as ‘amphisbaenic’ or ‘labarum’ or ‘ithyphallic’ will send them ‘scurrying’ to their dictionaries (why do they always ‘scurry’ or even ‘scuttle’? A new word, rightly used, should be an occasion for festive...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Doing Him a Favor By Taking His Money' Of all things, I have an anecdote – from a friend in Washington, D.C. He was visiting Second Story...
a year ago
11
a year ago
Of all things, I have an anecdote – from a friend in Washington, D.C. He was visiting Second Story Books in that city earlier this week. The volumes in the outdoor stalls are priced at $4 each. My friend collects Lionel Trilling and he found a copy of Of This Time, Of That Place...
The Marginalian
Emerson on the Singular Enchantment of Indian Summer (and a Better Term for This Liminal Season... "There are days... wherein the world reaches its perfection, when the air, the heavenly bodies, and...
2 months ago
The American Scholar
Ho Ho Horror Why not make this Christmas a little darker? The post Ho Ho Horror appeared first on The American...
a week ago
129
a week ago
Why not make this Christmas a little darker? The post Ho Ho Horror appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'It's Uncanny. The Past Is Not Dead.' “The Ferryman’s Due,” my article about Andrew Rickard and his Obolus Press, is published in the...
3 weeks ago
18
3 weeks ago
“The Ferryman’s Due,” my article about Andrew Rickard and his Obolus Press, is published in the January 2025 issue of The New Criterion.: “Rickard often encounters such passages, in which the author he is translating seems to speak for him. ‘It’s uncanny. The past is not dead,’...
Josh Thompson
First five meals from The 4-Hour Chef I don’t know how to cook. Period. My most impressive culinary creations were, until recently,...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
I don’t know how to cook. Period. My most impressive culinary creations were, until recently, spaghetti and beans-n-rice. I got married about a year ago, and had hoped that I would become inspired to become a world-class chef. After a long time eating Rice-A-Roni, spaghetti,...
Ben Borgers
The Day Should End at 3am
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Sunday, January 16, 2022
over a year ago
The Elysian
I'm traveling the world to study utopia An update about my life and artistic process.
6 months ago
Steven Scrawls
"Progress" “Progress” The following tables are my (opinionated, minimally researched) answers to questions...
a year ago
6
a year ago
“Progress” The following tables are my (opinionated, minimally researched) answers to questions about a curated version of Wikipedia’s list of most-visited websites (see Notes for details). I invite you to follow along, issue your own snap judgments, and come to your own...
The Marginalian
How to Own Your Human-Heartedness: Alan Watts on the Confucian Concept of Jen and the Dangers of... "Trust in human nature is acceptance of the good-and-bad of it, and it is hard to trust those who do...
a year ago
Josh Thompson
Climbing in "decking range" In indoor sport climbing, as your climber progresses from the ground to the first three bolts, you...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
In indoor sport climbing, as your climber progresses from the ground to the first three bolts, you need to be ready for any situation. Here’s how to give a kick-ass lead belay when your climber is close enough to the ground they could potentially deck. This is part of a series on...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Bring on the Vitamines' When I returned to college in 2002, thirty years after dropping out a year before graduating, I took...
3 weeks ago
17
3 weeks ago
When I returned to college in 2002, thirty years after dropping out a year before graduating, I took a class in something called “psychological anthropology.” The teacher was personable and the class was a sort of catch basin of random learning. We could write about any stray...
Josh Thompson
On Friction warning. self-indulgeant diatribe coming. I generally try to avoid these, but it’s my website, and I...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
warning. self-indulgeant diatribe coming. I generally try to avoid these, but it’s my website, and I can write what I want. We’re rapidly approaching the end of the year, and I’ve got a few dozen ideas rolling around my head that I want to solidify my thoughts on. One of the...
Josh Thompson
VCR's debug_logger and `git diff` I recently added the vcr gem to one of our repositories, and was adding tests for an external...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
I recently added the vcr gem to one of our repositories, and was adding tests for an external API. One of my tests was passing, and I wanted to commit the VCR cassette, along with the test/code that went with it. I had thought I’d rebuilt the VCR cassette a few minutes before,...
The Marginalian
A Taste of How It Feels to Be Free: Pioneering Psychoanalyst Karen Horney on Our Inner Conflicts,... "The most comprehensive formulation of therapeutic goals is the striving for wholeheartedness: to be...
a year ago
52
a year ago
"The most comprehensive formulation of therapeutic goals is the striving for wholeheartedness: to be without pretense, to be emotionally sincere, to be able to put the whole of oneself into one’s feelings, one’s work, one’s beliefs. It can be approximated only to the extent that...
The American Scholar
Verde Learning a foreign language isn’t just about improving cognitive function—it can teach us to sense...
a month ago
13
a month ago
Learning a foreign language isn’t just about improving cognitive function—it can teach us to sense the world anew The post Verde appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Oliver Sacks on Despair and the Meaning of Life "The meaning of life... clearly has to do with love — what and whom and how one can love."
2 months ago
The American Scholar
From All Souls by Saskia Hamilton Poems read aloud, beautifully The post From <em>All Souls</em> by Saskia Hamilton appeared first on...
3 months ago
39
3 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post From <em>All Souls</em> by Saskia Hamilton appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Consciousness, Artificial Intelligence, and Our Search for Meaning: Oliver Sacks on ChatGPT, 30... "We are not incoherent, a bundle of sensations, but a self, rising from experience, continually...
a year ago
49
a year ago
"We are not incoherent, a bundle of sensations, but a self, rising from experience, continually growing and revised... Through experience, education, art, and life, we teach our brains to become unique. We learn to be individuals. This is a neurological learning as well as a...
The Marginalian
Love and Fear: A Stunning 17th-Century Poem About How to Live with the Transcendent Terror of Love "Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back."
a year ago
Ben Borgers
Recording Screencasts
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Dictionary Story: A Love Letter to Language Tucked Into a Delightful Fable about the Difficult... “Words belong to each other,” Virginia Woolf rasped in the only surviving recording of her voice — a...
a month ago
25
a month ago
“Words belong to each other,” Virginia Woolf rasped in the only surviving recording of her voice — a love letter to language as an instrument of thought and a medium of being. “Words are events, they do things, change things,” Ursula K. Le Guin wrote a generation after her. To...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not Merely Mental Stenography' “Allow me a small confession: It has been some time since I have truly enjoyed an essay in a...
4 months ago
45
4 months ago
“Allow me a small confession: It has been some time since I have truly enjoyed an essay in a literary magazine. There are too many essays, and vanishingly few good essayists. There seems to be real confusion about whether style can conceal a fundamental incuriosity, whether...
Wuthering...
Paradoxes and epistemology - early Greek philosophy as conceptual innovation - "Zeno argues... The conceptual innovation of Thales that we identify as the birth of philosophy quickly spun off...
a year ago
37
a year ago
The conceptual innovation of Thales that we identify as the birth of philosophy quickly spun off other conceptual innovations.  A real conceptual innovation does not require a book or even an argument.  You say there are many gods?  But what if there were one? Or none? ...
Josh Thompson
On Boldness In Climbing Climb boldly. I’ve tried to write about this many times, and have thousands of words scattered...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Climb boldly. I’ve tried to write about this many times, and have thousands of words scattered across my computer about this topic. I always felt like I wasn’t communicating it quite right. I wasn’t happy with it. So I said “screw it, I’ll explain it like I would if I were...
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
5
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'You Have to Read the Words' “Tolstoy was so much better than any other writer who ever lived that you couldn’t even remotely...
3 months ago
35
3 months ago
“Tolstoy was so much better than any other writer who ever lived that you couldn’t even remotely compare anyone to him.”  I first read War and Peace in the eighth grade in a paperback abridgement. I remember reading it in science class, half-heartedly hiding the book behind the...
Robert Caro
Robert Caro on the Art of Biography I was never interested in writing biographies merely to tell the lives of famous men. From the first...
a year ago
7
a year ago
I was never interested in writing biographies merely to tell the lives of famous men. From the first time I thought of becoming a biographer
The Elysian
What futuristic projects should I visit around the world? What projects should I study around the world? And would you be interested in showing me around your...
6 months ago
41
6 months ago
What projects should I study around the world? And would you be interested in showing me around your city or project? I’d love your help plannin…
Ben Borgers
Learnings from JumboCode
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Is No Nothingness' Once asked about politics in a symposium portentously titled “The Writer’s Situation,”...
4 months ago
38
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 American Scholar
“The Poet’s Occasional Alternative” by Grace Paley Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Poet’s Occasional Alternative” by Grace Paley appeared...
4 months ago
43
4 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Poet’s Occasional Alternative” by Grace Paley appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
In the Mushroom True foraging isn’t the domain of the weekend warrior; it’s serious, serious business The post In...
a month ago
12
a month ago
True foraging isn’t the domain of the weekend warrior; it’s serious, serious business The post In the Mushroom appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Blocks recap
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Work of Wonder: Phillip Glass on Art, Science, and the Most Important Quality of a Visionary Epoch after epoch, we humans have tried to raise ourselves above other animals with distinctions...
a year ago
17
a year ago
Epoch after epoch, we humans have tried to raise ourselves above other animals with distinctions that have turned out false — consciousness is not ours alone, nor is grief, nor is play. If there is anything singular about us, it is our capacity to be wonder-smitten by the world...
Ben Borgers
CS 15: Data Structures
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Notes from 'Why We Sleep' I first read Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams about two years ago. It...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
I first read Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams about two years ago. It immediately led me to prioritize sleep over almost everything else. Most of us don’t get enough sleep, and are worse for it. Usually when the topic of sleep comes up, I say Hey, there’s...
Anecdotal Evidence
'She Exhibits the Unrepentant Bad Taste Which Belongs to Good Taste in Its Good Sense' “Most poetry is as poor as most fiction or most biography, or most books. But it is often...
7 months ago
54
7 months ago
“Most poetry is as poor as most fiction or most biography, or most books. But it is often so aggressively, so conceitedly poor and undistinguished that readers cannot be altogether blamed for not bothering with the new books as they come out, and I am always hesitant to make them...
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
43
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."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Silent Conversation' “To talk and dispute are more the practices of the Platonic school than to read and meditate....
11 months ago
16
11 months ago
“To talk and dispute are more the practices of the Platonic school than to read and meditate. Talkative men seldom read. This is among the few truths which appear the more strange the more we reflect upon them. For what is reading but silent conversation?”  This passage is...
Wuthering...
Three weeks in Portugal I was in Portugal for three weeks in June.  Five hours a day for four days I was in this inlingua...
6 months ago
75
6 months ago
I was in Portugal for three weeks in June.  Five hours a day for four days I was in this inlingua classroom in Porto, or one much like it: The results: B1 in Portuguese after about two years of fairly relaxed study – relaxed until those four days – which seems pretty good. ...
Ben Borgers
We’re All Powered by Electric Meat
over a year ago
Escaping Flatland
Almost everyone I’ve met would be well-served thinking more about what to focus on Including me
a year ago
The Marginalian
William James on the Most Vital Understanding for Successful Relationships "Neither the whole of truth nor the whole of good is revealed to any single observer."
a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
Why Worry About Incorrigible Claude? ...
2 weeks ago
The Marginalian
The Managed Heart: Emotional Labor and the Psychological Cost of Ambivalence What are you unwilling to feel? This is one of the most brutal, most clarifying questions in life,...
a month ago
32
a month ago
What are you unwilling to feel? This is one of the most brutal, most clarifying questions in life, answering which requires great courage and great vulnerability. Out of that unwillingness arises the greatest inner tension of the heart: that between what we wish we felt and what...
The Marginalian
Sheltering the Heroes Among Us: John Berger on Art as Resistance and Redemption of Justice "The powerful fear art, whatever its form... because it makes sense of what life’s brutalities...
a month ago
30
a month ago
"The powerful fear art, whatever its form... because it makes sense of what life’s brutalities cannot, a sense that unites us... becomes a meeting-place of the invisible, the irreducible, the enduring."
Ben Borgers
3blue1brown.elk.sh
over a year ago
The Elysian
Hint #2 I'm publishing a new print collection in two weeks.
4 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Energy in Things Shone Through Their Shapes' Some fugitive thinkers among us long for order in a manner almost nostalgic:  “I envied those past...
a month ago
27
a month ago
Some fugitive thinkers among us long for order in a manner almost nostalgic:  “I envied those past ages of the world When, as I thought, the energy in things Shone through their shapes, when sun and moon no less Than tree or stone or star or human face Were seen but as fantastic...
Ben Borgers
5 Pages a Day
over a year ago
The Elysian
I'm not going to have kids to save the economy Not on my list of reasons to have children.
8 months ago
The American Scholar
Drops in a Bucket The post Drops in a Bucket appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
Ben Borgers
AI is an impediment to learning web development
5 months ago
Ben Borgers
Designing Posters for Humans
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
First Name Usernames
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Do You Subvocalize?
over a year ago
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...
8 months ago
61
8 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...
The Marginalian
Octavia Butler’s Advice on Writing "No matter how tired you get, no matter how you feel like you can’t possibly do this, somehow you...
a year ago
Josh Thompson
Tour of D3 for Clueless Folk Like Me D3 stands for Data Driven Documents, and it’s the coolest thing ever. Check out a few...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
D3 stands for Data Driven Documents, and it’s the coolest thing ever. Check out a few examples: Animated, interactive curves(dynamic) OMG Particles II(dynamic) simple map of the us(static) <= very little code Radial Dendrogram(static) circle wave(dynamic) Force-directed...
The American Scholar
Marlana Stoddard Hayes Hope blooms The post Marlana Stoddard Hayes appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 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
4
over a year ago
If you have a project, make it easy to take small steps. I’m trying to publish something every day for a month. Normally, I would sit down at my computer, open a text editor, write something, the copy it into Squarespace, and customize the post from there. “Customization”...
Ben Borgers
Locked Posts on Ghost
over a year ago
Escaping Flatland
A summary of what I wrote in 2024 A man sets out to draw the world.
4 weeks ago
The Elysian
Your visions for the next Renaissance From our May writing prompt.
5 months ago
This Space
39 Books: 1997 I found this ghastly 60-page Grove Press hardback edition in a second-hand bookshop, its large...
8 months ago
57
8 months ago
I found this ghastly 60-page Grove Press hardback edition in a second-hand bookshop, its large typeface and generous spacing very similar to Beckett's late works (Barbara Bray, Beckett's translator, also translated this). Such productions are rare now, and perhaps were when it...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Winter Came in August Killing Fruit and Seed' A sad and sorely final yet incomplete tagline found after a poem in the Winter 1986 issue of The...
2 months ago
27
2 months ago
A sad and sorely final yet incomplete tagline found after a poem in the Winter 1986 issue of The American Scholar:  “Edward Case’s work has appeared in various journals, including the New Criterion, the Wall Street Journal, and Modern Age. This poem was taken from a collection of...
Steven Scrawls
Stone Hands Reaching Stone Hands Reaching I’m told the statue is right in front of me, so I reach out and find myself...
6 months ago
6
6 months ago
Stone Hands Reaching I’m told the statue is right in front of me, so I reach out and find myself touching a stone forearm. It’s cold, of course, and it’s coarser than skin, but tracing along the arms is enough to bring back memories of being comforted, of being held, when I was a...
The Elysian
The rich are controlling our government Ok but what can we do about it?
a month ago
Robert Caro
Anatomy of a $9 Burglary “Anatomy of a $9 Burglary” is among Caro’s best early writing. When police arrested a criminal, all...
a year ago
6
a year ago
“Anatomy of a $9 Burglary” is among Caro’s best early writing. When police arrested a criminal, all signs indicated a simple case of burglar
The American Scholar
“Tristan da Cunha” by Roy Campbell Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Tristan da Cunha” by Roy Campbell appeared first on The...
5 months ago
40
5 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Tristan da Cunha” by Roy Campbell appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
40
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...
The Marginalian
Nikolai Vavilov and the Living Library of Resilience: The Story of the World’s First Seed Bank and... The most moving story of self-sacrifice in the history of science.
a year ago
The American Scholar
Under a Spell Everlasting Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, published a century ago, tells of a world unable to free itself from...
a month ago
20
a month ago
Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, published a century ago, tells of a world unable to free itself from the cataclysm of war The post Under a Spell Everlasting appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Wondrous Birds of the Himalayas and the Forgotten Victorian Woman Whose Illustrations Rewilded... Bridging Blake and Darwin with a single-hair brush.
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'All Sorts of Characters in the World' “His poems are not much read now.” Sad words, often deserved but occasionally unjust. Of course,...
a year ago
15
a year ago
“His poems are not much read now.” Sad words, often deserved but occasionally unjust. Of course, much of poetry is no longer read, not even by those who consider themselves poets. Who besides eccentrics and cranks reads Pope, Tennyson and Longfellow? The opening question is posed...
Josh Thompson
Migrating my Jekyll site to Netlify Troubleshooting Netilify deploy Ugggh I moved intermediateruby.com to Netlify a few months ago in...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
Troubleshooting Netilify deploy Ugggh I moved intermediateruby.com to Netlify a few months ago in like 10 minutes, so my primary site, josh.works, should take maybe 20, right? I’m a few hours deep. Here’s what I get when Netlify tries to build: I should have done the following...
Escaping Flatland
Look for people who likes the illegible you of today, not your past achievements Though we talk about “the individual vs the collective,” as if that dichotomy is an eternal truth...
a year ago
14
a year ago
Though we talk about “the individual vs the collective,” as if that dichotomy is an eternal truth about the world, there exist groups that encourage divergence and healthy individuation.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Magnetism, an Ardor, a Refusal to Be False' In “The Madonna of the Future,” an 1873 story by Henry James, an American painter in Florence tells...
a year ago
13
a year ago
In “The Madonna of the Future,” an 1873 story by Henry James, an American painter in Florence tells the narrator, “If you but knew the rapture of observation! I gather with every glance some hint for light, for color or relief!  When I get home, I pour out my treasures into the...
This Space
The disaster of writing: My Weil by Lars Iyer "When a plane crashes, a bomb explodes, a city floods or a pandemic begins, Lucy Easthope's phone...
a year ago
17
a year ago
"When a plane crashes, a bomb explodes, a city floods or a pandemic begins, Lucy Easthope's phone starts to ring" says the blurb to her recent book subtitled Stories of Love, Loss and Hope from an Expert in Disaster, and goes on to report rapturous praise from critics and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Now You Are Elsewhere' I came late to the poet Henri Coulette, long after his death in 1988 at age sixty, and promptly fell...
10 months ago
24
10 months ago
I came late to the poet Henri Coulette, long after his death in 1988 at age sixty, and promptly fell for his charms. Chief among them are elegance, technical virtuosity, wit and devotion to his native turf, Southern California. Like one of his favorite writers, Raymond Chandler,...
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
7
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...
The Elysian
This Chinese philosopher reformed politics in one generation Mòzǐ replaced his corrupt government with a humanist one.
2 weeks ago
Josh Thompson
So you want to work remotely... Josh’s “rules” for getting a sweet remote job A few weeks ago, I met a fantastic guy who is...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
Josh’s “rules” for getting a sweet remote job A few weeks ago, I met a fantastic guy who is contemplating next steps for work. He is great at what he does, and is thinking about what direction to go in his life. He’s young, and thought working remotely sounded pretty cool. I...
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
34
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 American Scholar
The Next New Thing In architecture, the gulf between the traditional and the modern seems wider than ever before The...
7 months ago
29
7 months ago
In architecture, the gulf between the traditional and the modern seems wider than ever before The post The Next New Thing appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
39 Books: 2015 In the Spring of 1997, I visited a friend in Kassel, a city in the middle of Germany, home of the...
7 months ago
53
7 months ago
In the Spring of 1997, I visited a friend in Kassel, a city in the middle of Germany, home of the Brothers Grimm and Franz Rosenzweig, and not very far from Weimer, hence the visit to the Goethehaus mentioned in the entry for 1989. I hadn't heard of it before and nor had my...
Josh Thompson
Redefining Success It’s been pretty quiet around here lately. It’s been almost a month since my last entry. I thought...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
It’s been pretty quiet around here lately. It’s been almost a month since my last entry. I thought about writing something here almost every day, but here is why I didn’t: I want to produce “content” that is helpful and relevant to those who might read it. I felt like nothing I...
The Marginalian
The Unphotographable: Richard Adams on the Singular Magic of Autumn There is a lovely liminality to autumn — this threshold time between the centripetal exuberance of...
2 months ago
21
2 months ago
There is a lovely liminality to autumn — this threshold time between the centripetal exuberance of summer and the season for tending to the inner garden, as Rilke wrote of winter. Autumn is a living metaphor for the necessary losses that shape our human lives: What falls away...
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
24
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.
Anecdotal Evidence
''In Prose, Plain as Pike, Pillory' Austin Clarke (1896-1974) was an Irish poet of the generation after Yeats, the slightly...
3 months ago
41
3 months ago
Austin Clarke (1896-1974) was an Irish poet of the generation after Yeats, the slightly older contemporary of Louis MacNeice and Patrick Kavanagh. In 1968 he published A Sermon on Swift and Other Poems, and the 117-line title poem appeared in The Massachusetts Review in 1970....
The Marginalian
George Saunders on How to Live an Unregretting Life "At the end of my life, I know I won’t be wishing I’d held more back, been less effusive, more often...
10 months ago
26
10 months ago
"At the end of my life, I know I won’t be wishing I’d held more back, been less effusive, more often stood on ceremony, forgiven less, spent more days oblivious to the secret wishes and fears of the people around me."
The American Scholar
“A Prayer for My Daughter” by W. B. Yeats Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “A Prayer for My Daughter” by W. B. Yeats appeared first on...
a month ago
34
a month ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “A Prayer for My Daughter” by W. B. Yeats appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
How to Bear Your Loneliness: Grounding Wisdom from the Great Buddhist Teacher Pema Chödrön "We are cheating ourselves when we run away from the ambiguity of loneliness."
a year ago
Ben Borgers
Productivity YouTubers
over a year ago
Wuthering...
Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music - enchantment is the precondition of all... When I read Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music (1872) several...
over a year ago
40
over a year ago
When I read Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music (1872) several years ago I was interested in it as a 19th century work, as a key text in the cult of Richard Wagner and an early example of the vogue for fantasizing that stuffy Prussian or...
Anecdotal Evidence
'All These Jolts of Beauty' Once I interviewed a mycologist who, before his lecture, removed a yellow mushroom from an oak tree...
2 months ago
28
2 months 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...
Wuthering...
Notes on Aristotle's Poetics - What are the conditions on which the tragic effect depends? Aristotle did not invent literary criticism with Poetics(late 4th c. BCE, maybe) – we just read The...
over a year ago
41
over a year ago
Aristotle did not invent literary criticism with Poetics(late 4th c. BCE, maybe) – we just read The Frogs – but for centuries it was the base of Western literary criticism, not a source of insight but rather a set of rules.  The Unities, the Tragic Flaw, catharsis, the ranking of...
Josh Thompson
Back in the saddle (of writing) Background It’s been a hell of a year. I’ve got about 10,000 things I’ve wanted to write about, and...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
Background It’s been a hell of a year. I’ve got about 10,000 things I’ve wanted to write about, and have not gotten around to any of them. Here’s my various top-level reasons for not writing: what I want to write about feels too complicated to express easily/coherently I feel...
Anecdotal Evidence
'One Thing Always to Be Guarded Against' “Poetry, geography, moral essays, the divers [sic] subjects of philosophy, travels, natural history,...
6 months ago
62
6 months ago
“Poetry, geography, moral essays, the divers [sic] subjects of philosophy, travels, natural history, books on sciences; and, in short, the whole range of book-knowledge is before you; but there is one thing always to be guarded against; and that is, not to admire and applaud...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Flowering Shrubs of His Letters' To some writers we feel an unbudgeable loyalty that defies critical understanding and even good...
a year ago
14
a year ago
To some writers we feel an unbudgeable loyalty that defies critical understanding and even good taste. I can’t defend my love of Sherwood Anderson’s stories and no longer feel the need to do so. At some point a reader gives up trying to impress others with his sophistication,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Dispensing True Charm' Joseph Epstein turns a sprightly eighty-seven today – “sprightly” because he is still writing, still...
a year ago
22
a year 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...
Escaping Flatland
Socratic dialogue with kids I’m simply trying to understand how she thinks. When she answers in a way that does not match my...
a year ago
16
a year ago
I’m simply trying to understand how she thinks. When she answers in a way that does not match my understanding—that is interesting to me.
Wuthering...
Some lesser works of Sōseki and Tanizaki - deep in the earth directly beneath Lady Kikyō’s toilet Dolce Bellezza is running her 17th Japanese Literature Challenge.  Amazing, well done, etc. I read...
11 months ago
24
11 months ago
Dolce Bellezza is running her 17th Japanese Literature Challenge.  Amazing, well done, etc. I read some short works for it, which I will pile up here: three short works by Natsume Sōseki, collected in a Tuttle volume that looks like it is titled Ten Nights of Dream Hearing...
The Marginalian
After Love: Maxine Kumin’s Stunning Poem About Eros as a Portal to Unselfing It is one of the hardest things in life — discerning where we end and the rest of the world begins,...
a year ago
12
a year ago
It is one of the hardest things in life — discerning where we end and the rest of the world begins, negotiating the permeable boundary between self and other, all the while longing for its dissolution, longing to be set free from the prison of ourselves. That is why we cherish...
This Space
39 Books: 2011 How does one respond to Nietzsche's revelation at Sils Maria? I read Pierre Klossowski's Nietzsche...
7 months ago
59
7 months ago
How does one respond to Nietzsche's revelation at Sils Maria? I read Pierre Klossowski's Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle because the thought of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same occurred to me as a literary concept, perhaps the ultimate experience of the literary, but needed...
Steven Scrawls
Easy Questions, Part 1: Introduction Easy Questions, Part 1: Introduction What if our stories explore questions not because those...
9 months ago
6
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...
Ben Borgers
The Beginning of College Sucks
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
What Do You Do? I enjoy meeting new people. Usually, one of the first questions I’ll ask them is “What to you...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
I enjoy meeting new people. Usually, one of the first questions I’ll ask them is “What to you do?” They usually respond with their occupation, or their status in school. My follow-up question is “When you’re not doing that, what do you do?” Sometimes this is a conversational...
The American Scholar
“To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing” by William Butler Yeats The post “To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing” by William Butler Yeats appeared first on The...
a month ago
The Marginalian
Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” Brought to Life in a Spanish Flashmob of 100 Musicians A touchingly human reminder of our capacity for ecstasy, transcendence, and collective felicity.
a year ago
Ben Borgers
Why I Love Laravel
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Donating forks to the dining hall
7 months ago
The Elysian
No one buys books Everything we learned about the publishing industry from Penguin vs. DOJ.
8 months ago
This Space
39 Books: 2012 Of all the books in this series, this was the one I most wanted to write about and also the one I...
7 months ago
69
7 months ago
Of all the books in this series, this was the one I most wanted to write about and also the one I knew would be impossible to write about, at least in a couple of distracted hours. Imagine this: through mathematical calculation, close reading and literary detective work, a...
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
The American Scholar
What Comes Naturally The post What Comes Naturally appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Taking Your Time, Angel of Death' I like plain speaking when it comes to death. Not needlessly harsh but direct and above all...
a month ago
30
a month ago
I like plain speaking when it comes to death. Not needlessly harsh but direct and above all unvarnished, no flowers, closer to a coroner’s report than a greeting card. A well-meaning reader has sent belated condolences for my brother’s death in August without once using any of...
Wuthering...
The best books of 2023, in a sense - "Aren't you tired of reading?" Last January seems even more distant than usual at this time of year.  It will likely not...
a year ago
16
a year ago
Last January seems even more distant than usual at this time of year.  It will likely not surprise anyone that 2023 now comes with a strong feeling of Before and After.  So I will indulge in the “facetious and silly” exercise of identifying the best books I read in 2023.  Sorting...
Ben Borgers
Hands Occupied
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Signs His Name in Sparks' By trade my father was an ironworker for the City of Cleveland’s Municipal Light, always called...
5 months ago
45
5 months ago
By trade my father was an ironworker for the City of Cleveland’s Municipal Light, always called “Muny Light." At home he was a welder, specializing in wrought-iron railings. His aesthetic sense could be summarized in a single word: big. Or heavy. Everything he built was...
Josh Thompson
Refactoring practice: Get rid of `attr_accessors` in `ogre.rb` in 2 minutes Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...
The Marginalian
How to Eat the Sun: A Blind Hero of the Resistance on Accessing the Light Within and Touching the... “There is only one world. Things outside only exist if you go to meet them with everything you carry...
a year ago
10
a year ago
“There is only one world. Things outside only exist if you go to meet them with everything you carry in yourself. As to the things inside, you will never see them well unless you allow those outside to enter in.”
Anecdotal Evidence
'Word Should Be Looked Through' Carpenters work in wood and welders in metal -- raw materials. Extend the logic just a little:...
5 days ago
12
5 days ago
Carpenters work in wood and welders in metal -- raw materials. Extend the logic just a little: writers work in words. An obvious point but one often forgotten or never learned, especially by those who think they work in ideas. It’s a phenomenon I first encountered while working...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Dubious or Questionable Medium' In 1972, Daryl Hine, the editor of Poetry, requested poems “protesting the acceleration of the...
11 months ago
42
11 months ago
In 1972, Daryl Hine, the editor of Poetry, requested poems “protesting the acceleration of the undeclared Indo-Chinese War” for a special issue to be published in September of that year. Hine said he would be “grateful to consider any poem on this terrible and topical subject...
ribbonfarm
Bangalore Meetup Report Did a ribbonfarm meetup in Bangalore last night, the first ever in India. Thanks to Abhishek Agarwal...
7 months ago
4
7 months ago
Did a ribbonfarm meetup in Bangalore last night, the first ever in India. Thanks to Abhishek Agarwal for organizing. I think this is the first meetup I’ve done since the last Refactor Camp in 2019. It was kinda last minute, which is why I only posted on Substack rather than here...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Crisply, Pithily, and, Very Often, Cruelly' Tom Disch on Turner Cassity: “A poet so consistently epigrammatic can be dismissed, by those...
6 months ago
28
6 months ago
Tom Disch on Turner Cassity: “A poet so consistently epigrammatic can be dismissed, by those incapable themselves of wit, as unserious, as though to be serious one must always be in a fog. Cassity never writes a poem without knowing exactly what he means to say—crisply, pithily,...
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 357 ...
a month ago
The Elysian
Week 8: What communities should know about you? (Write a story about them)
8 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Bright, Cheerful, Salubrious Hell' Max Beerbohm’s first radio broadcast, delivered on December 29, 1935, is titled “London Revisited.”...
a year ago
15
a year ago
Max Beerbohm’s first radio broadcast, delivered on December 29, 1935, is titled “London Revisited.” He celebrates the city of his birth (in 1872) and youth – the Edwardian era – and implicitly critiques the London of the interbellum years:  “London has been cosmopolitanised,...
Ben Borgers
Date Picker Details
over a year ago
ribbonfarm
Intellectual Menopause I ran across the alarming phrase intellectual menopause a few months ago in John Gall’s...
4 months ago
4
4 months ago
I ran across the alarming phrase intellectual menopause a few months ago in John Gall’s Systemantics, and it naturally stuck in my brain given I’m pushing 50 and getting predictably angsty about it. The phrase conjures up visions of a phenomenon much more profound and unfunny...
Josh Thompson
Let Me Fix [some of] Your Parking Problems Hi there! I’m Josh, and I’m your local neighborhood advocate for overlooked spaces. Today, we’ll be...
a year ago
5
a year ago
Hi there! I’m Josh, and I’m your local neighborhood advocate for overlooked spaces. Today, we’ll be focusing on parking lots. Your parking lot has a job to do, and every day, every night, rain or shine, hot or cold, clear, rainy, or snowy, your parking lot does the best it can at...
Josh Thompson
Give it 30 days Do you have any big audacious goal you want to accomplish? If you think back to Jan 1, 2016, what...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
Do you have any big audacious goal you want to accomplish? If you think back to Jan 1, 2016, what were your goals? Lose weight/get in shape Make more money/start budgeting Learn a language Learn a skill Read more Stop doing something (smoking, drinking) Statistically, all of...
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
4
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 American Scholar
“Hymn” by A. R. Ammons Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Hymn” by A. R. Ammons appeared first on The American...
8 months ago
30
8 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Hymn” by A. R. Ammons appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Workflow for developers (AKA My current tools) I’m a huge fan of “a good workflow”. Makes you think better. This is still under construction, but...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
I’m a huge fan of “a good workflow”. Makes you think better. This is still under construction, but I’m fleshing out all the tools, tidbits, and other things that serve me well every day as I build my skills as a developer. It will always be a work in progress, but will hopefully...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Passions and Perturbations of the Mind' In his Dictionary (1755), Dr. Johnson illustrates fifteen words with citations from Robert Burton’s...
11 months ago
31
11 months ago
In his Dictionary (1755), Dr. Johnson illustrates fifteen words with citations from Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621): addle, colly, costard, doter, to filch, to fleer, giddyheaded, griper, hotspur, to macerate, muckhill, mutter, oligarchy, quacksalver and squalor....
Ben Borgers
Music at 20%
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Wish That He’d Arrived Much Sooner' I offended a reader by referring to Samuel Taylor Coleridge as “a brilliant windbag junkie.” Let’s...
a year ago
9
a year ago
I offended a reader by referring to Samuel Taylor Coleridge as “a brilliant windbag junkie.” Let’s consider each part of the epithet. “Brilliant”? Without question. He wrote three incontestably good poems but Coleridge is an early specimen of the “public intellectual,” bristling...
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 358 ...
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Smart Dinner Jacket and Patent Leather Pumps' I was never strictly a crime reporter but several times I covered the cops-and-courts beat, which...
a year ago
13
a year ago
I was never strictly a crime reporter but several times I covered the cops-and-courts beat, which was more genteel and less interesting than it sounds. Reading the police blotter each morning or scanning new filings in the county clerk’s office left this reporter feeling less...
The Elysian
Three classic utopian novels—now collectibles More than 100 years ago, three thinkers imagined what a utopian future might look like in the year...
4 months ago
40
4 months ago
More than 100 years ago, three thinkers imagined what a utopian future might look like in the year 2000. Now, their novels are available as a collectible set.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Domestic Privacies" Marilyn Sides won this reader’s heart in the third paragraph of her 2018 essay “The Consolations of...
9 months ago
25
9 months ago
Marilyn Sides won this reader’s heart in the third paragraph of her 2018 essay “The Consolations of Literature,” when she refers to Dr. Johnson as “grand master of English prose.” She also practices what Anecdotal Evidence preaches: “the intersection of books and life.” We might...
The Marginalian
The Mind in the Machine: John von Neumann, the Inception of AI, and the Limits of Logic "Something very small, so tiny and insignificant as to be almost invisible in its origin, can...
a year ago
16
a year ago
"Something very small, so tiny and insignificant as to be almost invisible in its origin, can nonetheless open up a new and radiant perspective, because through it a higher order of being is trying to express itself."
The Perry Bible...
Pop The post Pop appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
8 months ago
Josh Thompson
Resources for People with Jobs RESOURCES FOR PEOPLE WITH JOBS You spend most of your waking hours at work. So, spend a few of those...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
RESOURCES FOR PEOPLE WITH JOBS You spend most of your waking hours at work. So, spend a few of those waking hours when you’re not at work thinking about how to improve the hours that you are working. Often, improving your work means you can improve your work conditions and...
Josh Thompson
Train Hard When’s the last time you participated in a sporting event? (Football, Ultimate Frisbee, rock...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
When’s the last time you participated in a sporting event? (Football, Ultimate Frisbee, rock climbing, running biking, wrestling, whatever) When’s the last time you trained for that activity? Finally: When is the last time you trained for that activity with someone else?...
This Space
Proust regained I recommend very highly for anyone who has read or not read In Search of Lost Time Brian Nelson's...
a year ago
11
a year ago
I recommend very highly for anyone who has read or not read In Search of Lost Time Brian Nelson's The Swann Way, the first volume in a new translation of the entire novel by diverse hands, in this fine paperback from Oxford World's Classics. His translation of the chapter Swann...
Josh Thompson
November 2016 Goals November 2016 Goals Note to the reader: The words that follow are all about me. Very naval-gaze-ish....
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
November 2016 Goals Note to the reader: The words that follow are all about me. Very naval-gaze-ish. I feel I owe you this warning. My November goals are an extension of my October goals. October was good ( October review) - I made progress on two of three projects, and one of...
The American Scholar
Imperiled Planet The ecological havoc we’ve wrought The post Imperiled Planet appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
23
4 months ago
The ecological havoc we’ve wrought The post Imperiled Planet appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
A Terrifying Delight Following Robert Frost into the depths The post A Terrifying Delight appeared first on The American...
6 months ago
48
6 months ago
Following Robert Frost into the depths The post A Terrifying Delight appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Remedy for Creative Block and Existential Stuckness "Faithfulness to the moment and to the present circumstance entails continuous surrender... Only...
a year ago
81
a year ago
"Faithfulness to the moment and to the present circumstance entails continuous surrender... Only unconditional surrender leads to real emptiness, and from that place of emptiness I can be prolific and free."
Anecdotal Evidence
'One of the Finest of Human Creatures' Turnstile One (1948) is a slender anthology of poems, stories, essays and reviews edited by V.S...
10 months ago
24
10 months ago
Turnstile One (1948) is a slender anthology of poems, stories, essays and reviews edited by V.S Pritchett and drawn from The New Statesman and Nation. Founded in 1913 by the Webbs and others associated with the Fabian Society, the magazine’s politics were  left-wing and many of...
Josh Thompson
LeetCode: Words From Characters, and Benchmarking Solutions I recently worked through a LeetCode problem. The first run was pretty brutal. It took (what felt...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
I recently worked through a LeetCode problem. The first run was pretty brutal. It took (what felt like) forever, and I was not content with my solution. Even better, it passed the test cases given while building the solution, but failed on submission. So, once I fixed it so it...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Amuse and Gratify Her Own Self' In her first collection, A Good Time Was Had By All (1937), Stevie Smith includes a couplet already...
a year ago
17
a year ago
In her first collection, A Good Time Was Had By All (1937), Stevie Smith includes a couplet already suggesting themes that would go on preoccupying her:   “All things pass Love and mankind is grass”.   In scripture, grass is the default metaphor for the transience of life. In the...
Ben Borgers
RealMoji
over a year ago
Wuthering...
Books I read in January 2024 - as long, indeed, as this book, which hardly anyone will read by... The best book I read was Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which will also be the best thing I read in...
11 months ago
55
11 months ago
The best book I read was Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which will also be the best thing I read in February.  I gotta catch up on my posts. One big book down, and as a result my list of January books is more sensible. TRAVEL, let’s call it Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941), Rebecca...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Have Part of His Life to Himself' “I am not obliged to do any more.”  Retirement is my choice. For most of my life I assumed I would...
a week ago
17
a week ago
“I am not obliged to do any more.”  Retirement is my choice. For most of my life I assumed I would drop dead at the keyboard in my office, mid-sentence, but next week I retire. I have always enjoyed work, the sense of contributing something to an enterprise, no matter how...
The American Scholar
“The Imaginary Iceberg” by Elizabeth Bishop Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Imaginary Iceberg” by Elizabeth Bishop appeared first on...
8 months ago
28
8 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Imaginary Iceberg” by Elizabeth Bishop appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Load Testing your app with Siege Last time, I dug into using Apache Benchmark to do performance testing on a page that requires...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Last time, I dug into using Apache Benchmark to do performance testing on a page that requires authentication to access. Today, we’ll figure out how to use siege to visit many unique URLs on our page, and to get benchmarks on that process. I’ll next figure out performance...
The Marginalian
William James on Love "If it comes, it comes; if it does not come, no process of reasoning can force it. Yet it transforms...
9 months ago
31
9 months ago
"If it comes, it comes; if it does not come, no process of reasoning can force it. Yet it transforms the value of the creature loved."
Wuthering...
Philoctetes by Sophocles - Let me suffer what I must suffer Philoctetes by Sophocles (409 BCE), performed when the author was 87, which is perhaps why he is in...
over a year ago
44
over a year ago
Philoctetes by Sophocles (409 BCE), performed when the author was 87, which is perhaps why he is in a mood of reconciliation and healing.  Literal healing.  Philoctetes possesses the bow of Hercules.  Either the bow, or Philoctetes himself, or both – prophecies are ambiguous...
Josh Thompson
Overcome (some) barriers in work with this magic phrase You’re sending an email to your boss about some decision point you’re facing. How should you word...
over a year ago
8
over a year ago
You’re sending an email to your boss about some decision point you’re facing. How should you word it? Compare this wording: Let me know if my criteria are sound, or if you have any concerns. I’d like to get started as soon as possible. To this wording: Unless I hear otherwise,...
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
30
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Beauty, Clarity, Consolation, Truth' The blogosphere is infested with hair-trigger book critics whose job it is, at long last, to set you...
a year ago
11
a year ago
The blogosphere is infested with hair-trigger book critics whose job it is, at long last, to set you straight. Their world is strictly binary --  like/dislike, good/bad – and they are fond of superlatives: the best/the worst. Dissent sparks crackdowns and there is no appeals...
Escaping Flatland
Garlic and gravel fragments
6 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Still to Suruiue in My Immortall Song' Many of the best things in life, so long as they persist, are accompanied by a shadow of...
2 weeks ago
20
2 weeks ago
Many of the best things in life, so long as they persist, are accompanied by a shadow of their disappearance. If fortunate, we learn this lesson early. Their transitoriness becomes part of their charm, whether a cat, a garden or a brother. We are grateful and enjoy them...
The American Scholar
“Stick the Landing” by David Gewanter Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Stick the Landing” by David Gewanter appeared first on The...
5 months ago
19
5 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Stick the Landing” by David Gewanter appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
51
5 months ago
One of the commonest and most corrosive human reflexes is to react to helplessness with anger. We do it in our personal lives and we do it in our political lives. We are living through a time of uncommon helplessness and uncertainty, touching every aspect of our lives, and in...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Age of Terror' If “terror” meant anything to me as a kid it was probably an episode of The Twilight Zone. Some were...
a year ago
11
a year ago
If “terror” meant anything to me as a kid it was probably an episode of The Twilight Zone. Some were ridiculous, others remain watchable after more than sixty years. At least one, “Night Call,” left me so frightened I didn’t want to return to my darkened bedroom. I grew up safe...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Highest Kind of Verbal Exercise' John Updike published “Kenneths” in the July 5, 1958 issue of The New Yorker and collected it in his...
6 months ago
59
6 months ago
John Updike published “Kenneths” in the July 5, 1958 issue of The New Yorker and collected it in his second book of poems, Telephone Poles (1963):  “Rexroth and Patchen and Fearing—their mothers Perhaps could distinguish their sons from the others, But I am unable. My inner eye...
Ben Borgers
Bagel Institute
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Every Corner Is Fraught with Memory' A.J. Liebling’s valediction – to New York City, The New Yorker and the grand celebration that was...
12 months ago
30
12 months ago
A.J. Liebling’s valediction – to New York City, The New Yorker and the grand celebration that was his life as a writer – was published two weeks after his death, in the January 11, 1964 issue of the magazine that had printed more than five-hundred of his pieces since he joined...
The Marginalian
Lichens and the Meaning of Life "We are lichens on a grand scale."
a year ago
The Marginalian
From Stardust to Sapiens: A Stunning Serenade to Our Cosmic Origins and Our Ongoing Self-Creation We were never promised any of it — this world of cottonwoods and clouds — when the Big Bang set the...
a year ago
10
a year ago
We were never promised any of it — this world of cottonwoods and clouds — when the Big Bang set the possible in motion. And yet here we are, atoms with consciousness, each of us a living improbability forged of chaos and dead stars. Children of chance, we have made ourselves into...
Astral Codex Ten
Highlights From The Comments On Prison ...
a month ago
sbensu
Enterprise sales meets product development What I’ve learned from selling enterprises while developing a new product. This is less of a guide...
11 months ago
7
11 months ago
What I’ve learned from selling enterprises while developing a new product. This is less of a guide and more of a cautionary tale.
This Space
Ultimate things: The Aphorisms of Franz Kafka Although we are unmusical, we have a tradition of singing     Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse...
over a year ago
38
over a year ago
Although we are unmusical, we have a tradition of singing     Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk The first reason to celebrate Shelley Frisch’s new translation into English of Kafka’s short prose written in the village of Zürau, now Siřem in the Czech Republic, is that...
The Marginalian
Kamau & ZuZu Find a Way: A Tender Lunar Fable about the Stubborn Courage of Prevailing Over the Odds... "But we will have to find a way to live, as people do."
4 months ago
The Marginalian
Grace Against Gravity and the Physics of Vulnerability: How Birds Fly and Why They Flock in a V... “What we see from the air is so simple and beautiful,” Georgia O’Keeffe wrote after her first...
a month ago
22
a month ago
“What we see from the air is so simple and beautiful,” Georgia O’Keeffe wrote after her first airplane flight, “I cannot help feeling that it would do something wonderful for the human race — rid it of much smallness and pettiness if more people flew.” I am writing this aboard an...
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
54
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...
Wuthering...
On Great Writing by Longinus - But greatness appears suddenly; like a thunderbolt it carries all... I will deposit my notes on On Great Writing, which is either a 3rd century text by Longinus, one of...
over a year ago
40
over a year ago
I will deposit my notes on On Great Writing, which is either a 3rd century text by Longinus, one of the great scholars and rhetoricians of his time, or was written earlier and is by someone else.  Who knows.  I will call the author Longinus, and call the work On the Sublime, the...
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
22
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...
Josh Thompson
Array divergence in Ruby Lets say you have a list of valid items, and you want to run another array against it, and pull out...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
Lets say you have a list of valid items, and you want to run another array against it, and pull out the items that don’t match. You don’t want to iterate through all of the items in one array, calling other_array.include?(item). (That’s computationally expensive) valid_people =...
Wuthering...
Diogenes Laertius and the fun of the fragment We have the complete Plato, from multiple manuscript sources.  We have lost every published book...
over a year ago
41
over a year ago
We have the complete Plato, from multiple manuscript sources.  We have lost every published book (widely copied scroll) of Aristotle’s, but a large mass of what are perhaps transcribed lecture notes survived, barely, in a single manuscript, so that is our Aristotle.  I don’t know...
The American Scholar
Queen of the Night Leigh Ann Henion embraces the creatures that light up the dark The post Queen of the Night appeared...
3 months ago
45
3 months ago
Leigh Ann Henion embraces the creatures that light up the dark The post Queen of the Night appeared first on The American Scholar.
Steven Scrawls
Word Rot Word Rot Unless you are extraordinarily unfortunate, every problem you ever face will have been...
a year ago
7
a year ago
Word Rot Unless you are extraordinarily unfortunate, every problem you ever face will have been faced in some form by someone who came before you. That person may have already shared the story of that challenge, and that story might have melded with other tales to form collective...
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
4
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'So Many Delicate Aphorisms of Human Nature' “We should hesitate to name any writings which would afford so large and so various a selection of...
3 months ago
43
3 months ago
“We should hesitate to name any writings which would afford so large and so various a selection of detached passages complete in themselves. . . . We should be at a loss to name the writer of English prose who is his superior, or, setting Shakespeare aside, the writer of English...
The Elysian
Your alternatives to democracy Entries to the March writing prompt.
9 months ago
Ben Borgers
Meaningful Conversation
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Accepter and Recorder of Things as They Are' It has been a good week for the satisfaction of knowing that a book I recommended has been read and...
a year ago
36
a year ago
It has been a good week for the satisfaction of knowing that a book I recommended has been read and enjoyed. A reader in New York City tells me the title character of V.S. Pritchett’s 1951 novel Mr. Beluncle reminds her of her late father, a man she describes as “feckless.” And...
Astral Codex Ten
Friendly And Hostile Analogies For Taste ...
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Always Singular, and Never Trite or Vulgar' “He was never seen to be transported with Mirth, or dejected with Sadness; always Chearful, but...
a year ago
14
a year ago
“He was never seen to be transported with Mirth, or dejected with Sadness; always Chearful, but rarely Merry, at any sensible Rate, seldom heard to break a Jest; and when he did, he would be apt to blush at the Levity of it: His Gravity was Natural and without Affectation.”  The...
Josh Thompson
Training for climbing (progress update) I am at the end of my second iteration of climbing training, and this is how it went and what I...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
I am at the end of my second iteration of climbing training, and this is how it went and what I learned: I completed the workout twelve times, but I took a twelve-day break between workout eleven and twelve. I first skipped a workout because I had ripped skin open on one of my...
This Space
39 Books: 2016 I love it when people announce that "if Shakespeare was alive today, he'd be writing Eastenders", or...
7 months ago
55
7 months ago
I love it when people announce that "if Shakespeare was alive today, he'd be writing Eastenders", or Game of Thrones or crime fiction, according to one and another variation. The innocence of the claim is charming, giving voice to the desperation to give weight to ephemera. But I...
Ben Borgers
Why I Love Tailwind CSS
over a year ago
Wuthering...
The Best Books of 2024 For the last year and a half I read short books, mostly, which was psychologically satisfying and...
12 months ago
45
12 months ago
For the last year and a half I read short books, mostly, which was psychologically satisfying and anyway necessary to fit the available energy and concentration.  Now, though, back on my feet, I hope, I am ready to read long books again. Long, and I mean it, like Rebecca West’s...
Robert Caro
Six Books, Six New York Times Book Review Covers Since the 1974 publication of The Power Broker, every book by Robert Caro has appeared on the cover...
a year ago
4
a year ago
Since the 1974 publication of The Power Broker, every book by Robert Caro has appeared on the cover of The New York Times Book Review.
Wuthering...
You drool from it. You are happy. - Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit Finally, I have finished Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932), known in English...
4 months ago
48
4 months ago
Finally, I have finished Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932), known in English as Journey to the End of Night.  That “end of night” is death.  The existence of death makes everything hateful and nullifies the value of anything else.  I gotta say that the...
The American Scholar
A Ray of Sunshine The post A Ray of Sunshine appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
The American Scholar
The Support Ship The post The Support Ship appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'All Forms of Evil ’Neath the Sun' Isaac Waisberg is an Israeli academic and friend who lives with his family near Tel Aviv. He also...
a year ago
13
a year ago
Isaac Waisberg is an Israeli academic and friend who lives with his family near Tel Aviv. He also runs IWP Books, an eclectic online library of titles ranging from Walter Bagehot and A.E. Housman to Theodor Haecker and Agnes Repplier. In short, he is a civilized man with...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Dead Wall or a Thick Mist' Reading occasionally reveals a pleasing convergence of thought between one writer, separated by...
a year ago
15
a year ago
Reading occasionally reveals a pleasing convergence of thought between one writer, separated by centuries and continents, and another. The happy reader is their ambassador and beneficiary. I was again reading Nabokov’s brief, death-haunted novel from 1972, Transparent Things. Its...
Escaping Flatland
Thinking about perceptiveness links
5 months ago
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...
6 months ago
59
6 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...
Josh Thompson
On Leaving Evangelicalism And Opposing It Content warning & summary This paper talks about ethics, ethical behavior, violence, abuse,...
a year ago
6
a year ago
Content warning & summary This paper talks about ethics, ethical behavior, violence, abuse, complicency, domination and oppression. It’s a condimnation of evangelicalism, but not, necessarily, any particular evangelical. There are those within evangelicalism who are ethical,...
Ben Borgers
I Miss Google Classroom
over a year ago
Blog -...
Book Review - Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples, 2019 Edition I don’t anticipate giving many perfect ratings, but this book is a rare gem – a captivating...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
I don’t anticipate giving many perfect ratings, but this book is a rare gem – a captivating page-turner packed full of aha moments. The authors have woven together decades of personal research and experience in the field of intimate relationships to create a classic...
Anecdotal Evidence
'This Refined, White-Sheeted Torture' My tutelary spirit of recent days has been the American poet L.E. Sissman, dead from Hodgkin...
5 months ago
34
5 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...
ribbonfarm
Sons of the Soil, Migrants, and Civil War, We read an interesting paper today (ht Sachin Benny with an assist from ChatGPT) in the Yak...
8 months ago
4
8 months ago
We read an interesting paper today (ht Sachin Benny with an assist from ChatGPT) in the Yak Collective weekly governance study group (Fridays at 9 AM Pacific). Sons of the Soil, Migrants, and Civil War, by James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin (World Development, V 39, No. 2,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Where They Grind the Grain of Thought' Let me sing the praises of Miss Milly, Miss McClain, Miss Esson, Miss Shaker, Miss Martin, Miss...
a year ago
31
a year ago
Let me sing the praises of Miss Milly, Miss McClain, Miss Esson, Miss Shaker, Miss Martin, Miss Rose, Miss Whistler – my teachers, K-6, at Pearl Road Elementary School. Most were young and pretty, more like big sisters than mothers. On the television in Miss Shaker’s class we...
ribbonfarm
Covid and Noun-Memory Effects Ever since I got a bout of Covid a couple of years ago (late 2022), I’ve noticed memory problems of...
6 months ago
7
6 months ago
Ever since I got a bout of Covid a couple of years ago (late 2022), I’ve noticed memory problems of a very specific sort: Difficulty remembering names. Especially people names, but also other sorts of proper nouns. This is especially marked when it comes to remembering names of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Perhaps the Most Impressive of All' Spices meant salt and pepper. For my family like others in the American working class, there was no...
4 months ago
35
4 months ago
Spices meant salt and pepper. For my family like others in the American working class, there was no cardamom or turmeric. When I was a kid those would have sounded vaguely like medical conditions. We never heard of such things until decades later. For some baked goods, breakfast...
The Elysian
Your ideas for improving capitalism A collection of responses to my writing prompt.
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Pure Essay' “A good deal that he wrote took the form of the ‘pure’ essay, written, as Lord David Cecil says,...
7 months ago
64
7 months ago
“A good deal that he wrote took the form of the ‘pure’ essay, written, as Lord David Cecil says, ‘not to instruct or edify but only to produce aesthetic satisfaction.’ I do not know why it should be so, but today the ‘pure’ essay is a literary genre to which no reader under sixty...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Build a House for Fools and Mad' An entry dated June 15, 1830 in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Table Talk: “[Jonathan, not Taylor]...
7 months ago
71
7 months ago
An entry dated June 15, 1830 in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Table Talk: “[Jonathan, not Taylor] Swift was anima Rabelaisii habitans in sicco,--the soul of Rabelais dwelling in a dry place. Yet Swift was rare.”   Now there’s a metaphor that sticks in the mind – “dwelling in a dry...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Go to the Bookcase' I heard an echo in something I wrote the other day, a dependent clause, inconsequential in itself....
2 months ago
20
2 months ago
I heard an echo in something I wrote the other day, a dependent clause, inconsequential in itself. It nagged me, like a commercial jingle from fifty years ago playing in my head. The harder I dredged to recover the source, the deeper it sank. I let go and an hour later it bubbled...
The Elysian
It's ok to live in a fantasyland That's the joy of being a writer.
2 months ago
Ben Borgers
Automatic Dark Mode Colors Don’t Work
over a year ago
The American Scholar
The Writing on the Wall Augustine Sedgewick on his discovery of Henry David Thoreau’s connection to slavery The post The...
2 months ago
34
2 months ago
Augustine Sedgewick on his discovery of Henry David Thoreau’s connection to slavery The post The Writing on the Wall appeared first on The American Scholar.
sbensu
APIs as ladders APIs are hard to learn. If you think about the learning curve of your API, you can design one that...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
APIs are hard to learn. If you think about the learning curve of your API, you can design one that works for beginners, novices, and experts.
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
43
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."
sbensu
Creative kernels Artists can often trace entire pieces around one idea that drives everything else.
6 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Favourable Enough for a Writer' Jules Renard writing in his journal on November 22, 1906:  “I am in no great hurry to see the...
a year ago
17
a year ago
Jules Renard writing in his journal on November 22, 1906:  “I am in no great hurry to see the society of the future – our own favourable enough for a writer. By its absurdities, its injustices, its vices, its stupidities, it nourishes a writer’s observations. The more men...
The Marginalian
Beautiful Bacteria: Mesmerizing Photomicroscopy of Earth’s Oldest Life-forms For as long as humans have been alive, we have mistaken the limits of our sense-perception for the...
2 months ago
38
2 months ago
For as long as humans have been alive, we have mistaken the limits of our sense-perception for the full extent of reality — thinking our galaxy the only one, because that was as far as we could see; thinking life impossible below 300 fathoms, because that was as far as we could...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Where I Went and Cannot Come Again' A brief return to the Russian word toska mentioned in Thursday’s post by Gary Saul Morson in...
9 months ago
43
9 months ago
A brief return to the Russian word toska mentioned in Thursday’s post by Gary Saul Morson in reference to Chekhov. Dave Lull alerted me to Nabokov’s explication of the word in his translation of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin. In the second of the four volumes, Nabokov writes:  “No...
Ben Borgers
Customer Rewards Programs
over a year ago
The Marginalian
How to Tell Love from Desire: José Ortega y Gasset on the Chronic Confusions of Our Longing "Loving is perennial vivification... a centrifugal act of the soul in constant flux that goes toward...
8 months ago
33
8 months ago
"Loving is perennial vivification... a centrifugal act of the soul in constant flux that goes toward the object and envelops it in warm corroboration, uniting us with it and positively affirming its being."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Everything is Singing, Blooming and Sparkling' In a May 4, 1889 letter to his friend and editor Alexi Suvorin, Chekhov complains of taking no...
8 months ago
45
8 months ago
In a May 4, 1889 letter to his friend and editor Alexi Suvorin, Chekhov complains of taking no interest in “reviews, conversations about literature, gossip, successes, failures, high royalties,” and adds: “[I]n short, I’ve become a damn fool. My soul seems to be stagnating. I...
Josh Thompson
Bootstrapping streetcars in Golden I was describing this two or three stage plan to a friend the other day. They almost understood it,...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
I was describing this two or three stage plan to a friend the other day. They almost understood it, but since they don’t live in Golden, and have not spent a lot of their life nerding out on “urban mobility infrastructure”, they didn’t quite get it. Since I’m trying to write...
This Space
39 Books: 1993 I've written about Gert Hofmann's novels a few times, most recently Veilchenfeld (Our Philosopher in...
8 months ago
35
8 months ago
I've written about Gert Hofmann's novels a few times, most recently Veilchenfeld (Our Philosopher in the US edition), but not his short stories. In the year Hofmann died aged only 62, I bought and read Balzac's Horse and other stories in the wonderful Minerva paperback imprint....
Ben Borgers
I Run My Life on Reminders
over a year ago
The Marginalian
An Ecology of Intimacies At its best, an intimate relationship is a symbiote of mutual nourishment — a portable ecosystem of...
9 months ago
29
9 months ago
At its best, an intimate relationship is a symbiote of mutual nourishment — a portable ecosystem of interdependent growth, undergirded by a mycelial web of trust and tenderness. One is profoundly changed by it and yet becomes more purely oneself as projections give way to...
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
62
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,...
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
27
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Interior Decoration Doesn't Count" Just last week, and not for the first time, I had a dream set in Kay’s Books in downtown Cleveland,...
9 months ago
34
9 months ago
Just last week, and not for the first time, I had a dream set in Kay’s Books in downtown Cleveland, where I visited often as a kid and worked in 1975. I was in the basement in the general hardback fiction section where I saw the copy of Under the Volcano I bought there forty-nine...
Anecdotal Evidence
'What Is Called an Amateur' I recently encountered a choice example of academic snobbery, the lording of a tenured professor...
a year ago
54
a year ago
I recently encountered a choice example of academic snobbery, the lording of a tenured professor over lecturers, adjuncts and even “mere assistant professors.” Normally the perpetrator tries to disguise his snottiness or treat it as a joke but in this case the prima donna was...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Everyone He Knew Something About' A reader who enjoys the novels of Sinclair Lewis tells me she is put off by the length and dullness...
2 months ago
21
2 months ago
A reader who enjoys the novels of Sinclair Lewis tells me she is put off by the length and dullness of Mark Schorer’s 1961 biography of the Nobel laureate. I haven’t read Lewis since high school and have never read Schorer’s 867-page behemoth but I sympathize. I remember reading...
Escaping Flatland
On limitations that hide in your blindspot and how to find them
9 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Comfort, Solace, Inspiration' “A few books, however,” writes Michael Dirda, “become lifelong companions, works we regularly turn...
a year ago
16
a year ago
“A few books, however,” writes Michael Dirda, “become lifelong companions, works we regularly turn to for comfort, solace, inspiration.” The reviewer identifies a slightly different category, “the books we find ourselves crazy about and hope to revisit someday,” as distinguished,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Enormous Yes' “The voice was unmistakable. It made misery beautiful.”  My ideal setting for listening to music is...
5 months ago
42
5 months ago
“The voice was unmistakable. It made misery beautiful.”  My ideal setting for listening to music is my eleven-year-old Nissan. When I play a CD, I listen and never treat it as background. I hate the idea of music as ambient filler, a second atmosphere. My youngest son plays music...
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
37
2 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Three Things Enchanted Him …” by Anna Akhmatova appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'He’s a Person of Joy, a Fanatic' Unlike my sons, I can’t listen to music while working – that is, writing. When the music is good,...
a year ago
12
a year ago
Unlike my sons, I can’t listen to music while working – that is, writing. When the music is good, that’s what I’m doing, listening. Otherwise, I don’t need a soundtrack for my life. I would find that annoyingly attention-splitting. What I do instead is periodically take a break...
The American Scholar
Double Exposure On our first memories The post Double Exposure appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
Wuthering...
Books I Read in October 2023 The five-day hospital stay breaking the month in half is likely invisible to anyone but me, but that...
a year ago
69
a year ago
The five-day hospital stay breaking the month in half is likely invisible to anyone but me, but that is why the fiction list is so mystery-heavy, and for that matter so long.  Many of these books, the post-surgery group, are not just short but light, well-suited for the invalid's...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Human mind at its deepest and highest' Vladimir Nabokov is speaking in 1965 to Robert Hughes for the Television 13 Educational Program in...
a year ago
37
a year ago
Vladimir Nabokov is speaking in 1965 to Robert Hughes for the Television 13 Educational Program in New York:  “One of the saddest cases is perhaps that of Osip Mandelshtam--a  wonderful  poet, the  greatest poet among those trying to survive in Russia under the...
Ben Borgers
App Identity
over a year ago
Wuthering...
The Story of the Stone, volume 4 - It was an eerie, desolate night. At the two-thirds mark, after 80 chapters of the 120, three big changes hit The Story of the Stone...
2 weeks ago
31
2 weeks 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,...
Ben Borgers
Getir Colors
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Author Who Inspires Such Perennial Affection' “This impossibly erudite, overbearing, tender, and anguished man lived in a perpetual state of...
3 weeks ago
9
3 weeks ago
“This impossibly erudite, overbearing, tender, and anguished man lived in a perpetual state of dissatisfaction with himself which only disciplined labor could allay but never completely still.”  In their moral and emotional complexity, certain lives resemble the finest novels –...
This Space
The disappearance of criticism, part two A friend mentioned to me that he felt alienated by the articulacy of a literary critical book he was...
over a year ago
40
over a year ago
A friend mentioned to me that he felt alienated by the articulacy of a literary critical book he was reading; by its neutrality of tone, by its calm. Unruffled was another word he used. We all might recognise this feeling while assuming it is admiration, respect, perhaps even...
The Marginalian
Befriending a Blackbird Friendship is a lifeline twined of truth and tenderness. That we extend it to each other is...
6 months ago
63
6 months ago
Friendship is a lifeline twined of truth and tenderness. That we extend it to each other is benediction enough. To extend it across the barrier of biology and sentience, to another creature endowed with a wholly other consciousness, partakes of the miraculous. Born in England in...
The Elysian
The future according to artists The Parisianer 2050's project to imagine the future in art.
9 months ago
The American Scholar
Three Poems The post Three Poems appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
Ben Borgers
Friday, January 21, 2022
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'On Satan’s Chamberlains Highseated in Berlin' In 2011, in an antiques-cum-junk shop here in Houston, I found a copy of an anthology, The Spirit of...
a year ago
11
a year ago
In 2011, in an antiques-cum-junk shop here in Houston, I found a copy of an anthology, The Spirit of Man, published as a wartime morale booster in 1916, edited by the Poet Laureate, Robert Bridges. It’s the fourth edition, from 1923. I knew the title because of the contribution...
The Elysian
Week 3: The dream pitch
9 months ago
The Marginalian
The Messiah in the Mountain: Darwin on Wonder and the Spirituality of Nature Here we are, matter yearning for meaning, each of us a fragile constellation of chemistry and chance...
7 months ago
67
7 months ago
Here we are, matter yearning for meaning, each of us a fragile constellation of chemistry and chance hurtling through a cold cosmos that has no accord for our wishes, takes no interest in our dreams. “I can’t but believe that all that majesty and all that beauty, those fated and...
Josh Thompson
Fred Roger's Method For Writing Scripts Someone said: People think this is silly, but read about Fred rogers’ method for writing a script...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
Someone said: People think this is silly, but read about Fred rogers’ method for writing a script for his show. The rules aren’t fully applicable to presentations, but the attention to detail and to the Interpretation of the audience is. Don’t use any words carelessly. I...
Wuthering...
Iphigeneia in Aulis by Euripides - even babies sense the dread of evil to come The final Euripides play is Iphigeneia in Aulis, performed with The Bacchae in 405 BCE.  I normally...
over a year ago
53
over a year ago
The final Euripides play is Iphigeneia in Aulis, performed with The Bacchae in 405 BCE.  I normally write “Iphigenia,” but I read the 1978 W. S. Merwin and George E. Dimock, Jr. translation titled which goes with “Iphigeneia,” so I will switch to that spelling for this post. ...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Word Can Open Like a Tomb to Reveal Its Past' The poet William Wenthe opens his essay “The Glamour of Words” with a provocative memory. It was the...
9 months ago
35
9 months ago
The poet William Wenthe opens his essay “The Glamour of Words” with a provocative memory. It was the anniversary of Charles Dickens’ death and he was in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey, where Dickens is interred and his sister is speaking to mark the occasion. Wenthe looks...
The American Scholar
Imperfecta Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the...
6 months ago
53
6 months ago
Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the emerging era of gene editing The post Imperfecta appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Dalai Lama’s Ethical and Ecological Philosophy for the Next Generation, Illustrated "We are all interconnected in the universe, and from this, universal responsibility arises......
a year ago
56
a year ago
"We are all interconnected in the universe, and from this, universal responsibility arises... Everyone has the responsibility to develop a happier world."
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...
a year ago
49
a year 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 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
The Marginalian
The Human Scale: Oliver Sacks on How to Save Humanity from Itself "...or there will be genocide, atomic bombs, and we'll all perish and take the planet with us."
a year ago
Ben Borgers
Habit Toddler
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Last of the Anglo-Saxon Poets' “Hooray for Christmas, as Bessie Smith calls rather cautiously on one of her tracks, and if all...
a year ago
17
a year ago
“Hooray for Christmas, as Bessie Smith calls rather cautiously on one of her tracks, and if all you’re your friends like jazz it will present no problem.”  It’s December 14, 1963, and Philip Larkin is reviewing an assortment of releases for the Daily Telegraph in time for...
The American Scholar
The Importance of Being Different A travel writer’s education The post The Importance of Being Different appeared first on The...
8 months ago
79
8 months ago
A travel writer’s education The post The Importance of Being Different appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
My cancer - "It can’t be true! It can’t, but it is." Liver cancer.  That was a surprise.  I knew something was wrong, but I was not expecting that. Since...
a year ago
14
a year ago
Liver cancer.  That was a surprise.  I knew something was wrong, but I was not expecting that. Since the diagnosis last summer, since it was known for a fact that I had something serious, things have moved fast.  It has been like boarding a train.  Once in motion there is no way...
The American Scholar
Bards Behind Bars Reading Sartre aloud inside a maximum-security prison The post Bards Behind Bars appeared first on...
5 months ago
40
5 months ago
Reading Sartre aloud inside a maximum-security prison The post Bards Behind Bars appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
“One Letter” by Liu Xiaobo Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “One Letter” by Liu Xiaobo appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
66
7 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “One Letter” by Liu Xiaobo appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Pebble Presentation
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Also Read for Ecstasy' A reader one-third of my age asks, “Why are books so important to you? What do they matter?” Her...
9 months ago
59
9 months ago
A reader one-third of my age asks, “Why are books so important to you? What do they matter?” Her questions aren’t cynical. She sounds like a reader driven by the sort of bookish hunger I recognize. Her tastes are eclectic, not confined strictly to the American or...
The Marginalian
Honing Life on the Edges of the Possible: Geologist Turned Psychoanalyst Ruth Allen on Boundaries... "At almost every conceivable level of our imagining, it is impossible to create a change without a...
4 months ago
44
4 months ago
"At almost every conceivable level of our imagining, it is impossible to create a change without a discontinuity, without a moment of not knowing who we are, or what we are going to become. Rupture precedes revolution."
The American Scholar
Let Us Compare Mythologies Exploding the Canon, Episode 4 The post Let Us Compare Mythologies appeared first on The American...
8 months ago
32
8 months ago
Exploding the Canon, Episode 4 The post Let Us Compare Mythologies appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
Hint #1 I'm publishing a new print collection in three weeks.
4 months ago
Ben Borgers
The Cost of Building an Idea
over a year ago
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
31
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...
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
5
over a year ago
Customer Success - what is it? When I tell people I work in “Customer Success”, they immediately think I do either Customer Support, or sales. In a way, they are correct. I do both. Today, and more in the future, I’ll dig deep into this particular industry. A traditional...
The American Scholar
A Messy Mix The post A Messy Mix appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
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
17
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...
Josh Thompson
An Open Letter about Golden 2022-06-15 Update I wrote this document the first time in a very small number of minutes, three...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
2022-06-15 Update I wrote this document the first time in a very small number of minutes, three weeks ago, on my way out the door on a particularly busy day. I follow “write it now”. I’ve gotten to discuss this letter with a few different people, because I mentioned it in email....
This Space
39 Books: 1990 The first book I read in the 39 years of this series was a genre thriller, and I've read only two...
8 months ago
29
8 months ago
The first book I read in the 39 years of this series was a genre thriller, and I've read only two more since. The second one came along this year. In 1989, I got a temporary job in the archives of the Royal Navy Submarine Museum where I met Carl Erlewyn-Lajeunesse, an...
Josh Thompson
Piece by Piece The following is inspired by Amy Hoy. I’ve got a secret to share: I’m working on building a product...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
The following is inspired by Amy Hoy. I’ve got a secret to share: I’m working on building a product (of the digital variety) that will be so damn goodpeople will pay me $100 or more to get it.  I’ve got a lot of bits and pieces of it littered around the internet, my computer,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Superior Graduate School' When I was permitted, starting at age eleven, to ride the CTS bus into downtown Cleveland and spend...
a year ago
12
a year ago
When I was permitted, starting at age eleven, to ride the CTS bus into downtown Cleveland and spend the day as I wished, with money earned from a paper route and an erratically dispensed allowance, it was always a bookish outing. The bus let me off on Public Square near...
The Marginalian
You and the Universe: N.J. Berrill’s Poetic 1958 Masterpiece of Cosmic Perspective "The universe is as we find it and as we discover it within ourselves."
4 months ago
The Marginalian
The Sky and the Soul: 19th-Century Norwegian Artist Knud Baade’s Transcendent Cloudscapes Nothing on Earth appears more divine yet attests more fully to the materiality of being than clouds...
a year ago
20
a year ago
Nothing on Earth appears more divine yet attests more fully to the materiality of being than clouds — enchanting emblems of the water cycle that makes this rocky planet a living world, drifting across our shared dome as if exhaled by some lovesick god. That we should have such a...
Ben Borgers
3:00 a.m. Radio
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Reflection on Shutting Down Blocks
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Trader Joe's Parking Lot Hey Trader Joe’s, This is a bit of an open letter, inspired by a recent visit to the local Trader...
a year ago
4
a year ago
Hey Trader Joe’s, This is a bit of an open letter, inspired by a recent visit to the local Trader Joe’s. I just moved to this part of Denver, and now for the first time am living within like a 3 minute scoot of a Trader Joe’s. I know that some people like to complain about...
The Marginalian
Joy as a Force of Resistance and a Halo of Loss, with a Nick Cave Song and a Lisel Mueller Poem In this world heavy with robust reasons for despair, joy is a stubborn courage we must not...
4 months ago
33
4 months ago
In this world heavy with robust reasons for despair, joy is a stubborn courage we must not surrender, a fulcrum of personal power we must not yield to cynicism, blame, or any other costume of helplessness. “Experience of conflict and a load of suffering has taught me that what...
The American Scholar
In Reprise: Next, Line Please A new poetry prompt for players new and old The post In Reprise: Next, Line Please appeared first on...
2 months ago
30
2 months ago
A new poetry prompt for players new and old The post In Reprise: Next, Line Please appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
"A mighty, contagious absence" The number of obituaries, tributes, backhanded compliments and overt smears in the corporate news...
10 months ago
61
10 months ago
The number of obituaries, tributes, backhanded compliments and overt smears in the corporate news media following the death of John Pilger reveal the state of journalism in our time. [1] Can you name one living Anglophone journalist whose loss would prompt such widespread notice?...
The American Scholar
“The Horses” by Edwin Muir Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Horses” by Edwin Muir appeared first on The American...
a week ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Well Educated and Glad of the Fact' “[A] literary man or woman is someone who is not only steeped in literature but has made this...
a month ago
28
a month ago
“[A] literary man or woman is someone who is not only steeped in literature but has made this immersion into literature part of his or her own life, so that the experience of books has been integral with the experience of life and therefore strongly influences his or her general...
Josh Thompson
Practicing with Polylines Part 2 - Get Your Data (as a polyline) From Strava Last time, I did a minimum first pass on rendering a polyline on a map. It wasn’t just any polyline,...
3 months ago
8
3 months ago
Last time, I did a minimum first pass on rendering a polyline on a map. It wasn’t just any polyline, though, it was a path of a walk I went on. (Technically, just a fragment of a path). this is a heavy draft, I’ve had issues getting this all working well in the past, still have...