Full Width [alt+shift+f] Shortcuts [alt+shift+k]
Sign Up [alt+shift+s] Log In [alt+shift+l]
Top Categories > literature
#all #programming #history #technology #startups #science #life #literature #architecture #travel #creative #design #comics #finance #cartography #AI #indiehacker Muted Categories [alt+←][alt+→]
Ben Borgers
Website Rewrite 2
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Monday, January 17, 2022
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
''He Knew It Was All Wrong for the Season' Once I listened to a guy who had decided to stop drinking while sitting alone in a diner eating his...
2 weeks ago
18
2 weeks ago
Once I listened to a guy who had decided to stop drinking while sitting alone in a diner eating his Christmas dinner, separated from his wife and children. He recalled the moment with good humor. What had depressed him was eating canned corn. He had grown up associating good food...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Seeing Means Going Over the Details' Isaac Waisberg, the internet’s librarian-in-chief, has published two passages by...
a year ago
52
a year ago
Isaac Waisberg, the internet’s librarian-in-chief, has published two passages by Émile-Auguste Chartier (1868-1951), the French proto-blogger better known as Alain. He was a professor of philosophy whose students included Raymond Aron and Simone Weil. Both excerpts are taken from...
The American Scholar
The Weight of a Stone Searching for stability in an erratic world led Oliver Sacks and other writers to the realms of...
a week ago
16
a week ago
Searching for stability in an erratic world led Oliver Sacks and other writers to the realms of geology The post The Weight of a Stone appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
The Bacchae by Euripides - O gods, I see the greatest grief there is. Reading Euripides chronologically, it would be fair to think that however ingenious and inventive...
over a year ago
47
over a year ago
Reading Euripides chronologically, it would be fair to think that however ingenious and inventive Euripides was, he did not write a play quite at the level of Agamemnon or Oedipus the King, at least until his brief exile in Macedon, where he wrote The Bacchae just before his...
The American Scholar
Paolo Arao Acts of devotion The post Paolo Arao appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Make Something Beautiful' “There have been many things I’ve tried to write about and could not. Things too serious, too...
a month ago
20
a month ago
“There have been many things I’ve tried to write about and could not. Things too serious, too painful, and that’s not the purpose of writing a poem. The point of poetry is to make something beautiful—something in itself. I’m not trying to pour my sorrows down on the page.”  Janet...
Blog -...
Book Review - Dancing Naked in the Mind Field Dancing Naked in the Mind Field, the autobiography of Kary Mullis, published in 1998, is...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Dancing Naked in the Mind Field, the autobiography of Kary Mullis, published in 1998, is reminiscent of another Nobel Prize winning autobiography, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!. Dr. Mullis and Dr. Feynman had a great deal in common, including their incomprehensible...
The American Scholar
“Peter Quince at the Clavier” by Wallace Stevens Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Peter Quince at the Clavier” by Wallace Stevens appeared...
6 months ago
45
6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Peter Quince at the Clavier” by Wallace Stevens appeared first on The American Scholar.
Astral Codex Ten
On Priesthoods ...
2 days ago
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
'Art Must Be Giving Pleasure' On May 14, 1947, after giving seven months of lectures on the sonnets and all but two of...
a year ago
14
a year ago
On May 14, 1947, after giving seven months of lectures on the sonnets and all but two of Shakespeare’s plays at the New School of Social Research in New York City, W.H. Auden delivered a concluding lecture. He roots Shakespeare’s vision in the notion of original sin and what he...
Ben Borgers
Public Radio Stories
over a year ago
The Marginalian
To Be a Person: Jane Hirshfield’s Playful and Poignant Poem About Bearing Our Human Condition "To be a person may be possible then, after all."
a year ago
Escaping Flatland
Talking to part of a friend Finding an authentic connection based on who you are now, not who you were in the past
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Someone Who Could Never Be a Peasant' I first encountered Robert Alter in 1970 in the issue of TriQuarterly devoted to Vladimir Nabokov,...
4 months ago
36
4 months ago
I first encountered Robert Alter in 1970 in the issue of TriQuarterly devoted to Vladimir Nabokov, already one of my favorite writers. Alter’s contribution was “Invitation to a Beheading: Nabokov and the Art of Politics,” which Nabokov later described as “practically flawless.” A...
Josh Thompson
Blocks and Closures in Ruby Continuing on from yesterday’s post about method_missing, I’m moving on to a part of Ruby’s language...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
Continuing on from yesterday’s post about method_missing, I’m moving on to a part of Ruby’s language that has been a bit of a mystery for me for quite some time. I’m still working through Metaprogramming in Ruby. It’s the concept of lambdas, procs, blocks, and more. I also hope...
Josh Thompson
Setting up Application Performance Monitoring in DataDog in your Rails App When I write guides to things, I write them first and foremost for myself, and I tend to work...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
When I write guides to things, I write them first and foremost for myself, and I tend to work through things in excruciating detail. You might find this to be a little too in-depth, or you might appreciate the detail. Either way, if you want a step-by-step guide, this should do...
This Space
39 Books: 2010 This series has sailed into the doldrum years. Reading has become less of a headlong existential...
7 months ago
58
7 months ago
This series has sailed into the doldrum years. Reading has become less of a headlong existential adventure than something one does, a pastime, a hobby, something you tell a quiz show presenter how you relax: "I like to read, Brad." By this time I had given up reviewing...
Josh Thompson
Hidden Damages of the Introvert vs. Extrovert "debate" Are you an introvert or an extrovert? Chances are good an answer pops to your mind. Of course you’re...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
Are you an introvert or an extrovert? Chances are good an answer pops to your mind. Of course you’re right! You’ve taken internet tests! You’ve read Buzzfeed articles describing one aptitude or the other, and you feel like they speak to you! Stop. Right now. You’re speaking lies...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Open-ended Project' Two writers separated by language, experience and two and a half centuries make...
10 months ago
27
10 months ago
Two writers separated by language, experience and two and a half centuries make complementary observations about memory. Here is Dr. Johnson in The Idler essay he published on this date, February 17, in 1759:  “The two offices of memory are collection and distribution; by one...
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...
Josh Thompson
About working remotely at Litmus with Pajamas.io A while back, I wrote a long interview for Pajamas.io, a publication around remote work. I’ve pasted...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
A while back, I wrote a long interview for Pajamas.io, a publication around remote work. I’ve pasted the entire article here below. When Josh Thompson wanted to move out to rural Colorado with his family to be closer to the mountains he loves to climb, he knew finding a company...
This Space
"Every day I have to invoke the absent god again"* I really enjoy this YouTube channel despite my general lack of interest in films. The presenter’s...
over a year ago
37
over a year ago
I really enjoy this YouTube channel despite my general lack of interest in films. The presenter’s restrained voice-over is ideal for one approaching its concerns; imagine a lullaby sung by Werner Herzog. I envy him the medium for its music, its visuals, even its potential for...
The American Scholar
Just When You Thought It Wasn’t Safe … How Wilbert Longfellow turned America into a nation of swimmers The post Just When You Thought It...
6 months ago
50
6 months ago
How Wilbert Longfellow turned America into a nation of swimmers The post Just When You Thought It <em>Wasn’t</em> Safe … appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Nature’s Oldest Mandolin: The Poetic Science of How Cicadas Sing “The use of music,” Richard Powers wrote, “is to remind us how short a time we have a body” — a...
8 months ago
61
8 months ago
“The use of music,” Richard Powers wrote, “is to remind us how short a time we have a body” — a truth nowhere more bittersweet than in the creature whose body is the oldest unchanged musical instrument on Earth: a tiny mandolin silent for most of its existence, then sonorous with...
Ben Borgers
The TikTok Peer Group
over a year ago
ben-mini
Buying a House Two days ago, I decided I want to buy my first house. My goal is to purchase it before the summer of...
3 months ago
11
3 months ago
Two days ago, I decided I want to buy my first house. My goal is to purchase it before the summer of 2025. Why are you buying a house? To make money. I see this as an opportunity in a space that many friends and family consider a safe, high-return bet (if done right). When...
The Marginalian
The Shape of Wonder: N.J. Berrill on the Universe, the Deepest Meaning of Beauty, and the Highest... "We, each of us, you and I, exhibit more of the true nature of the universe than any dead Saturn or...
4 months ago
Escaping Flatland
How to think in writing Part 1: The thought behind the thought
8 months ago
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Make a Friend or Sonnet' Some deny that true friendship can flourish on the internet, that genuine intimacy, trust and...
10 months ago
21
10 months ago
Some deny that true friendship can flourish on the internet, that genuine intimacy, trust and affection thrive only in the physical world. I was once sympathetic to this idea, which was more revealing of my own digital backwardness than of the nature of friendship. My thinking...
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...
Ben Borgers
App Identity
over a year ago
The Marginalian
There Was a Shadow: A Lyrical Illustrated Celebration of the Changing Light, in the World and in the... “Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty,” Junichiro Tanizaki wrote in the 1933 Japanese...
6 months ago
43
6 months ago
“Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty,” Junichiro Tanizaki wrote in the 1933 Japanese classic In Praise of Shadows. As a physical phenomenon, shadows are one of the most beguiling phenomena of nature, emissaries of the entwined history of light and consciousness; as...
The Marginalian
Henry James on Losing a Mother "These are hours of exquisite pain; thank Heaven this particular pang comes to us but once."
a year ago
The American Scholar
Drops in a Bucket The post Drops in a Bucket appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Liked to Hold Ideas Up to the Light' The single most influential book in my life, the one that with time altered the way I think, not...
12 months ago
15
12 months ago
The single most influential book in my life, the one that with time altered the way I think, not just what I think, is Guy’s Davenport’s The Geography of the Imagination (North Point Press, 1981). I bought it that year in a lesbian bookstore in Manhattan. Over the previous decade...
Ben Borgers
2023 in review
a year ago
Ben Borgers
iPad Impatience
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Fiction, Fakery, and Factory Farming Spanish novelist Munir Hachemi talks about Living Things The post Fiction, Fakery, and Factory...
a month ago
27
a month ago
Spanish novelist Munir Hachemi talks about Living Things The post Fiction, Fakery, and Factory Farming 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
'Weightier Than All the Gear I’ll Carry' I was a lazy student of Latin in junior high school and gave it up after two years. What I...
2 months ago
19
2 months ago
I was a lazy student of Latin in junior high school and gave it up after two years. What I retained was a lasting interest in mythology, Roman history and etymology. I probably learned more English words than Latin – celerity, pulchritude, jocular, spelunker, procrastination,...
Astral Codex Ten
Book Review: From Bauhaus To Our House ...
a month ago
Josh Thompson
A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of y-intercept The following is recounted on  Quora, from a lecture by Stanford professor John Ousterhout (he’s in...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
The following is recounted on  Quora, from a lecture by Stanford professor John Ousterhout (he’s in the Computer Science department): Here’s today’s thought for the weekend.  A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of Y-intercept.   [Laughter] So at a mathematical level this is...
The Elysian
Can we create a wise & enlightened citizenry? We'll need to address cognitive biases if we want to reach Plato's ideal.
9 months ago
Ben Borgers
Reflection on Shutting Down Blocks
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Publishing my Fall 2022 class notes
over a year ago
This Space
39 Books: 2020 It may be a sign of something that I read Louis-René des Forêts's Poems of Samuel Wood several years...
7 months ago
62
7 months ago
It may be a sign of something that I read Louis-René des Forêts's Poems of Samuel Wood several years after reading A Voice from Elsewhere in which Maurice Blanchot dedicates three unusually personal (and often bewildering) essays to them. The book's title is adapted from a line...
The Marginalian
Practical Mysticism: Evelyn Underhill’s Stunning Century-Old Manifesto for Secular Transcendence and... "Because mystery is horrible to us, we have agreed for the most part to live in a world of labels;...
a year ago
61
a year ago
"Because mystery is horrible to us, we have agreed for the most part to live in a world of labels; to make of them the current coin of experience, and ignore their merely symbolic character, the infinite gradation of values which they misrepresent."
Ben Borgers
My Office Makes Me Feel Stupid
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Grounded in the Deep Tradition of English Poesy' When I’m told someone, somewhere has started a new poetry journal, a little piece of me dies. Just...
3 months ago
46
3 months ago
When I’m told someone, somewhere has started a new poetry journal, a little piece of me dies. Just what we’ve been waiting for: more precious self-revelations, strident politics and lineated prose. Nice to know the world can still surprise us. An Australian, Clarence Caddell, has...
The Marginalian
Bunny & Tree: A Tender Wordless Parable of Friendship and the Improbable Saviors That Make Life... Traversing the landscape of life on the wings of trust.
a year ago
The American Scholar
As I Walked Out One Morning The post As I Walked Out One Morning appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
Ben Borgers
Why I Love Laravel
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'O Deliquescence of Our Quartz-like Loves!' A chemical engineer describing his recent research to me used a lovely word: deliquescent. The word...
5 months ago
48
5 months ago
A chemical engineer describing his recent research to me used a lovely word: deliquescent. The word entered English in the eighteenth century and its original context was strictly scientific: deliquescence occurs when a substance absorbs moisture from the air and becomes a...
The Marginalian
Endling: A Poem I turned the corner one afternoon to find my neighborhood grocer gone. No warning, just gone —...
10 months ago
27
10 months ago
I turned the corner one afternoon to find my neighborhood grocer gone. No warning, just gone — padlocked and boarded off, closed for good, a long chain of habit suddenly severed. We know that entropy drags everything toward dissolution, that life is a vector pointed at loss, but...
The Marginalian
How to Triumph Over the Challenges of the Creative Life: Audubon’s Antidote to Despair We move through the world as surfaces shimmering with the visibilia of our accomplishments, the...
3 months ago
45
3 months ago
We move through the world as surfaces shimmering with the visibilia of our accomplishments, the undertow of our suffering invisible to passers-by. The selective collective memory we call history contributes to this willful blindness, obscuring the tremendous personal cost behind...
Wuthering...
Heraclitus and Empedocles - Everything flows - eyes roamed alone My rummage through the early Greek philosophers has been rewarding, but it is a strange exercise. ...
a year ago
53
a year ago
My rummage through the early Greek philosophers has been rewarding, but it is a strange exercise.  “Readers of this book will, I suspect, be frequently perplexed and sometimes annoyed” write Jonathan Barnes in Early Greek Philosophy, a collection with commentary of the most...
The American Scholar
Survival Situation The debate over evolution and its discoverer The post Survival Situation appeared first on The...
7 months ago
27
7 months ago
The debate over evolution and its discoverer The post Survival Situation appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Amy Wetsch Life, magnified The post Amy Wetsch appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 days ago
Josh Thompson
How to fly… like a boss I am in a quest to level up my life. Free flights is a big part of this. I’ve not gotten too many...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
I am in a quest to level up my life. Free flights is a big part of this. I’ve not gotten too many of those yet, but the next best thing is free seat upgrades. I’m not talking about first class - that’s beyond me, at the moment. I’m talking about getting stuck in the back of the...
Ben Borgers
Charles’ Sandwiches
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Whispering Parasite' In Act III, Scene 2 of Henry IV, Part 1, Prince Hal hopes to convince his father that he has mended...
11 months ago
25
11 months ago
In Act III, Scene 2 of Henry IV, Part 1, Prince Hal hopes to convince his father that he has mended his ways, is a worthy successor and will in the future avoid the riff raff (“rude society,” the king calls them; i.e., Falstaff). Hal says:  “So please your majesty, I would I...
Wuthering...
Plato's Symposium - philosophy as realist fiction - pick up something to tickle your nose with, and... Philosophy makes me nervous, so I will begin my squib about Plato’s Symposium (c. 385-370 BCE) with...
over a year ago
36
over a year ago
Philosophy makes me nervous, so I will begin my squib about Plato’s Symposium (c. 385-370 BCE) with an anxiety-deflating observation:  Symposium is fiction, a long story.  It is fiction in that at least some of it is invented, but mostly in that it uses the techniques of fiction:...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Implacable, Bewildered, It Moves Among Us' Some sixteen years ago David Ferry thanked me for a post I had written about some of the lines by...
a year ago
12
a year ago
Some sixteen years ago David Ferry thanked me for a post I had written about some of the lines by Dr. Johnson interpolated into his poems. That email is long gone but I remember being touched by his buoyant sense of gratitude. That a man in his eighties, much honored as a poet,...
ribbonfarm
Protocol Entrepreneurship I’m running the Summer of Protocols program for the Ethereum Foundation again this year. Here is the...
10 months ago
4
10 months ago
I’m running the Summer of Protocols program for the Ethereum Foundation again this year. Here is the Call for Applications. I’d appreciate any help getting it in front of the right candidates. The core of it is what we’re calling Protocol Improvement Grants (PIGs): 90k for a team...
Ben Borgers
Productivity YouTubers
over a year ago
Wuthering...
Ovid's Metamorhpses, Canto 6 - the sexual assaults - Because the lewdness of the Gods was so blazed... Back to Ovid. First, I have just begun Paul Barolsky’s Ovid and the Metamorphoses of Modern Art...
11 months ago
25
11 months ago
Back to Ovid. First, I have just begun Paul Barolsky’s Ovid and the Metamorphoses of Modern Art from Boticelli to Picasso (2014), a work of art history about Ovid written in the spirit of Ovid.  The book is of the highest interest, and is a long way from the catalogue of...
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...
Josh Thompson
Climbing in Cuba, 2019 A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go climbing in Cuba. Mark and Dave, walking back from...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go climbing in Cuba. Mark and Dave, walking back from climbing outside Viñales Locals crag, called “The roof of the world”. Stunning routes. because it was so hot, we spent a lot of time in this cave. Kristi and I tend to stick...
Josh Thompson
Mentors and Attitude Having a mentor is equal parts “having a mentor” and “being one who can be mentored”. If I am too...
over a year ago
8
over a year ago
Having a mentor is equal parts “having a mentor” and “being one who can be mentored”. If I am too thick-headed to evaluate things that someone tells me and figure out how to apply that to my life, both of us are wasting our time. Having a mentor is life-changing because you have...
The Marginalian
Turning to Stone: A Geologist’s Love Letter to the Wisdom of Rocks Among the great salvations of my childhood were the rocks and minerals lining the bookshelves of our...
4 months ago
43
4 months ago
Among the great salvations of my childhood were the rocks and minerals lining the bookshelves of our next door neighbor — a geologist working for the Bulgarian Ministry of Environment and Water. I spent long hours casting amethyst refractions on the ceiling, carving words into...
The American Scholar
A Giant of a Man The legacy of Willie Mays and the Birmingham ballpark where he first made his mark The post A Giant...
3 months ago
27
3 months ago
The legacy of Willie Mays and the Birmingham ballpark where he first made his mark The post A Giant of a Man appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Beyond the Language of the Living' “After someone dies I find it hard to delete their contact from my phone. It feels cruel somehow, as...
4 months ago
47
4 months ago
“After someone dies I find it hard to delete their contact from my phone. It feels cruel somehow, as if it was a final obliteration.”  I didn’t know others felt this way, and dismissed it as my indulgence in sentimentality. Rabbi David Wolpe’s admission comes as reassurance. I...
Ben Borgers
Lessons Learned from Hanging Posters
over a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
Can You Hate Everyone In Rome? ...
a week ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Life Is Slow Dying' One of Philip Larkin’s most technically adept poems, “Here,” is never self-consciously flashy,...
a year ago
9
a year ago
One of Philip Larkin’s most technically adept poems, “Here,” is never self-consciously flashy, though the first of its three sentences is twenty-five lines long. Its earliest readers perhaps flipped past it in The Whitsun Weddings (1964) -- it’s the first poem in the collection –...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Love of Reading Is Caught, Not Taught' I’ve used “home library” to describe the accumulation of books in our house but it’s starting to...
3 months ago
28
3 months ago
I’ve used “home library” to describe the accumulation of books in our house but it’s starting to sound a little pretentious. For now I’ll keep it at “books.” Nadya Williams titles her essay “Home Libraries Will Save Civilization,” which, I understand, is more reader-enticing than...
This Space
39 Books: 2008 On January 19 of this year, I received a traumatic brain injury that for 16 years has limited my...
7 months ago
67
7 months ago
On January 19 of this year, I received a traumatic brain injury that for 16 years has limited my capacity to read. It was also the year I read two novels in which the legacy of violence presses on the form they take. Horacio Castellanos Moya's Senselessness spirals in Bernhardian...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Brief, Dry, Almost Colorless Account ' The Polish writer Gustaw Herling-Grudziński (1919-2000) -- Gulag survivor, co-founder of Kultura and...
a year ago
31
a year ago
The Polish writer Gustaw Herling-Grudziński (1919-2000) -- Gulag survivor, co-founder of Kultura and author of A World Apart: Imprisonment in a Soviet Labor Camp During World War II (1951) – has sent me back to Varlam Shalamov and his Kolyma stories. Herling-Grudziński in 1971...
Ben Borgers
Good Software Has a Clear Geography
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Publishing Class Notes
over a year ago
The Marginalian
An Illustrated Ode to Love’s Secret Knowledge When Dante wrote of “the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars,” he was shining a sidewise...
3 months ago
42
3 months ago
When Dante wrote of “the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars,” he was shining a sidewise gleam on the secret knowledge of the universe, the knowledge by which everything coheres. All love is an outstretched hand of curiosity reaching for knowledge — a tender...
The American Scholar
Born to Be Wild One founding family’s centuries-long journey The post Born to Be Wild appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
33
7 months ago
One founding family’s centuries-long journey The post Born to Be Wild appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
Menander's Dyskolos - each man would hold a moderate share and be content This week it’s Menander’s Dyskolos, or The Grouch, or The Misanthrope (316 BCE), which may or may...
over a year ago
34
over a year ago
This week it’s Menander’s Dyskolos, or The Grouch, or The Misanthrope (316 BCE), which may or may not have inspired the title of Molière’s great play, and nothing more than the title since the play was, like all of Menander’s plays, long lost.  A fairly complete Dyskolos was the...
The Marginalian
The Broadest Portal to Joy "Despite every single lie to the contrary, despite every single action born of that lie — we are in...
a year ago
59
a year ago
"Despite every single lie to the contrary, despite every single action born of that lie — we are in the midst of rhizomatic care that extends in every direction, spatially, temporally, spiritually."
Ben Borgers
About
3 months ago
Josh Thompson
Fry Your Pizza Here’s a problem many of us first-worlders have: cold pizza. There are two options. Microwave it, or...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
Here’s a problem many of us first-worlders have: cold pizza. There are two options. Microwave it, or throw it in the toaster oven or regular oven. A microwave makes it soggy, and a regular oven takes forever to heat it up. (If you’re willing to eat it cold, may god have mercy on...
Josh Thompson
Setting up for 'SQL Queries for Mere Mortals' This tweet is from… a while ago. Turns out I didn’t dig into this book, because the pace at Turing...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
This tweet is from… a while ago. Turns out I didn’t dig into this book, because the pace at Turing didn’t allow for a few weeks of thinking just about SQL. yes, I'm digging into sql to better my AR skills, and ultimately whatever I need to use next. pic.twitter.com/UhjyGKv1FQ —...
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 359 ...
a month ago
The Marginalian
A Heron’s Antidote to Fear of Death They didn’t imagine it, the dying dinosaurs, that they would grow wings and become birds, become the...
a month ago
18
a month ago
They didn’t imagine it, the dying dinosaurs, that they would grow wings and become birds, become the laboratory in which evolution invented dreams and the cathedral in which it invented faith. “There is grandeur in this view of life,” Darwin consoled himself as his beloved...
The American Scholar
Three Poems The post Three Poems appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Like to Think of Pasteur in Elysium' In 1985, the year Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo, the scholar and...
7 months ago
63
7 months ago
In 1985, the year Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo, the scholar and translator Clarence Brown published The Portable Twentieth-Century Russian Reader, a selection ranging from Tolstoy and Chekhov to Voinovich and Sokolov. In the introduction he...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Dead in Their Silences Keep Me in Memory' Edwin Muir (1887-1959) I first knew as the translator with his wife Willa of Kafka’s novels...
a year ago
11
a year ago
Edwin Muir (1887-1959) I first knew as the translator with his wife Willa of Kafka’s novels and stories. I remember chancing on The Castle at the public library in the mid-sixties, knowing nothing about Kafka. Only now do I appreciate the debts incurred – to Kafka, to the Muirs....
The Marginalian
Hermann Hesse on Discovering the Soul Beneath the Self and the Key to Finding Peace "Self-hate is really the same thing as sheer egoism, and in the long run breeds the same cruel...
10 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'So Important That It Ought to Absorb Him' In his brief portrait of Joseph Conrad, Desmond MacCarthy tells us the novelist “felt himself...
a month ago
24
a month ago
In his brief portrait of Joseph Conrad, Desmond MacCarthy tells us the novelist “felt himself impelled to attempt an intenser vividness in description. Try, just try, so to describe something that the inattentive reader must see it, and the attentive one can never forget that he...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Like a Golden Retriever' Part of the pleasure of listening to the late jazz musician Dave McKenna playing piano was hearing...
a year ago
11
a year ago
Part of the pleasure of listening to the late jazz musician Dave McKenna playing piano was hearing the musical quotes he wove into his improvisations. The practice, deplored by some critics, was not unique to McKenna, of course. To cite only jazz musicians I have seen in person,...
Wuthering...
Metamorphoses, cantos 7 through 10 - more Heroides, more gore, more of everything - What meen my... Metamorphoses is fluid, quick, and ever-changing.  Let’s look at cantos VII through X, which...
10 months ago
71
10 months ago
Metamorphoses is fluid, quick, and ever-changing.  Let’s look at cantos VII through X, which have their share of famous stories, stories famous, or as famous as they are, because of Metamorphoses.  Venus and Adonis, Baucis and Philemon, Orpheus and Eurydice, Pygmalion.  Icarus –...
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
Roxane Gay on Loving vs. Being in Love and the Mark of a Soul Mate "It isn’t perfect, not at all. It doesn’t need to be. It is, simply, what fills you up."
a year ago
The American Scholar
“What a Strange Path” Three new prompts The post “What a Strange Path” appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 weeks ago
The Elysian
Writing Prompt: How do we create the next Renaissance? Something I’ve been thinking a lot about is: How can we fund the next Renaissance? How can we create...
8 months ago
28
8 months ago
Something I’ve been thinking a lot about is: How can we fund the next Renaissance? How can we create a world where artists are better funded and…
The American Scholar
American Modernism’s Lost Boy-King The late, great Paul Auster on Stephen Crane The post American Modernism’s Lost Boy-King appeared...
8 months ago
35
8 months ago
The late, great Paul Auster on Stephen Crane The post American Modernism’s Lost Boy-King appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Recommended books from 2017 I read many books in 2017. I’m listing them out here, along with recommendations. Here’s the...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
I read many books in 2017. I’m listing them out here, along with recommendations. Here’s the recommendation “key”: 👍 = I recommend this book. This is intentionally fuzzy. 😔 = This book influenced my mental model of the world/reality/myself 🏢 = Book topic is architecture and/or...
Wuthering...
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr's La plus secrète mémoire des hommes - one of his objectives was to be original... La plus secrète mémoire des hommes (2021) by Senegalese novelist Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, published in...
8 months ago
62
8 months ago
La plus secrète mémoire des hommes (2021) by Senegalese novelist Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, published in English as The Most Secret History of Men (2023), is the first imitation of Roberto Bolaño I have seen outside of Latin American literature.  Many reviews note that Sarr’s novel is...
Escaping Flatland
Ethos and imagination Milk Drop Coronet, an ultra-high-speed photograph of the splash of a drop of milk, Harold Edgerton,...
2 months ago
30
2 months ago
Milk Drop Coronet, an ultra-high-speed photograph of the splash of a drop of milk, Harold Edgerton, 1957
Josh Thompson
Structural Holes and Good Ideas Note from author: This is part of an experimental series, more-or-less based on “white papers” and...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Note from author: This is part of an experimental series, more-or-less based on “white papers” and academic literature, as applied to somewhat practical-ish domains. These pages serve as a brief overview of a paper, and I’ll be able to link to this paper down the road when I what...
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
6
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...
Ben Borgers
Strong Hobbies
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...
Josh Thompson
Dream Big, and Build Optionality We all can dream big. I have dreams, and you probably do to. For example: Travel, location...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
We all can dream big. I have dreams, and you probably do to. For example: Travel, location independent living, being wealthy/choosing to do work that interests you, enjoying “simple” things. The list could go on, and on, and on. But then we go right along doing all the normal...
This Space
39 Books: 1995 Looking over the list of books read over a decade, it becomes clear that each book came too early or...
8 months ago
37
8 months ago
Looking over the list of books read over a decade, it becomes clear that each book came too early or too late, or not at all; unless, of course, not yet. Untimely medications. Of the first, Robert Pinget's Be Brave applies. Again, lightness rather than heaviness, when there was...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Nothing Makes a Man More Reverent' I have never thought of reading as a “hobby.” I put the word in quotes because I sense a patronizing...
a month ago
23
a month ago
I have never thought of reading as a “hobby.” I put the word in quotes because I sense a patronizing tinge to the word. A hobby is a lesser pastime than a job, something frivolous, a “leisure activity” that most people in the past couldn’t afford because they had to earn a...
Josh Thompson
62 lessons learned after one year of full-time travel Kristi and I put together a non-comprehensive list of things we’ve learned while traveling full-time...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Kristi and I put together a non-comprehensive list of things we’ve learned while traveling full-time last year.  Samples: Kristi 1. Josh and I are such a good team, and we balance each other.  We’ve figured out our strengths and how to contribute to our successes together. It’s...
Wuthering...
Lucian's satires - Frankly he's a blamed nuisance The great 2nd century satirist Lucian was a great shock to me at one point, twenty-five years ago...
a year ago
12
a year ago
The great 2nd century satirist Lucian was a great shock to me at one point, twenty-five years ago when I got serious about classical literature.  I had never heard of him, partly because of the odd historical artifact where what he writes is called “Menippean satire” even though...
The American Scholar
All in Your Head The post All in Your Head appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Appetizing, Clear and Understandable' This I found in an interview with the late novelist Richard G. Stern: “I prefer windows to mirrors....
a year ago
18
a year ago
This I found in an interview with the late novelist Richard G. Stern: “I prefer windows to mirrors. Not just for diversion, or something to study. I like new vocabularies, rhythms, ways of thinking, associations of every sort.”  Stern (1928-2013) was seventy-one at the time and...
The American Scholar
A Story for Christmas The post A Story for Christmas appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
Astral Codex Ten
It's Still Easier To Imagine The End Of The World Than The End Of Capitalism Responding to a recent essay on wealth inequality in a post-singularity economy
a week ago
Ben Borgers
Am I a Gym Bro Now?
over a year ago
Escaping Flatland
Bring everything into the conversation layer A conversation is not an interface that lets you get to know each other; it is an interface that...
3 days ago
22
3 days ago
A conversation is not an interface that lets you get to know each other; it is an interface that lets you savor and get enriched by the Otherness of each other. The richer the conversation becomes, the more this Otherness can be expressed and explored.
This Space
39 Books: 1994 Given that my undergraduate degree was in Philosophy, it may seem odd that this the first book of...
8 months ago
66
8 months ago
Given that my undergraduate degree was in Philosophy, it may seem odd that this the first book of philosophy in the series. Many will say it is not a book of philosophy at all. That would explain why I gorged on Nick Land's The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Death Is Divestment, Death Is Communion' “Whenever in my dreams I see the dead, they always appear silent, bothered, strangely depressed,...
6 months ago
56
6 months ago
“Whenever in my dreams I see the dead, they always appear silent, bothered, strangely depressed, quite unlike their dear, bright selves. I am aware of them, without any astonishment, in surroundings they never visited during their earthly existence, in the house of some friend of...
Josh Thompson
Elixir/Phoenix part deux I planned on working through this tutorial for building a slack clone, but half-way through the...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
I planned on working through this tutorial for building a slack clone, but half-way through the set-up instructions, after I installed Elixir and Phoenix, I took a long detour through the basic set-up guide. Built some custom routes, along with controllers/views/templates,...
Josh Thompson
Be Gentle to You There are many types of people in the world, all with different approaches to “getting stuff done”....
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
There are many types of people in the world, all with different approaches to “getting stuff done”. My approach to doing stuff is different from my wife’s approach. (Who’da thunk?) These two years of marriage have revealed much. One of these “revelations” was this: my sense of...
The American Scholar
“Full Moon Rhyme” by Judith Wright Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Full Moon Rhyme” by Judith Wright appeared first on The...
a month ago
27
a month ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Full Moon Rhyme” by Judith Wright appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Thank You, Everything: An Illustrated Love Letter to the World We forget that none of this had to exist — that we weren’t owed mountains and music by the universe....
4 weeks ago
33
4 weeks ago
We forget that none of this had to exist — that we weren’t owed mountains and music by the universe. And maybe we have to forget — or we would be too stupefied with gratitude for every raindrop and every eyelash to get through the daily tasks punctuating the unbidden wonder of...
The American Scholar
“water sign woman” by Lucille Clifton Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “water sign woman” by Lucille Clifton appeared first on The...
2 months ago
36
2 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “water sign woman” by Lucille Clifton appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Fundamental Truth of His Periodic Law” My middle son is given to serial enthusiasms, what others call hobbies. He’s a second lieutenant in...
a year ago
16
a year ago
My middle son is given to serial enthusiasms, what others call hobbies. He’s a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps, now in training at Quantico, and spends his weekends rock climbing in Virginia, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. This lends a pleasing symmetry to his life, as one...
Ben Borgers
Website redesign, December 2022
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'What Will Become of My Diary?' “During the morning hours of the first of September 1939, war broke out between Germany and Poland...
4 months ago
38
4 months ago
“During the morning hours of the first of September 1939, war broke out between Germany and Poland and indirectly between Germany and Poland’s allies, England and France. This war will indeed bring destruction upon human civilization which merits annihilation and destruction....
The Marginalian
What We Look for When We Are Looking: John Steinbeck on Wonder and the Relational Nature of the... Searching for "that principle which keys us deeply into the pattern of all life."
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The World's an End' In recent years John Dryden has become one of my reliable poets. He impresses me as a sane adult,...
4 months ago
43
4 months ago
In recent years John Dryden has become one of my reliable poets. He impresses me as a sane adult, with equal emphasis on both of those words. No dabbling in drugs and madness. I brought a volume of his poems with me to Cleveland where I’m visiting my brother in hospice. No...
The Marginalian
May Sarton on Writing, Gardening, and the Importance of Patience Over Will in Creative Work "Gardening is like poetry in that it is gratuitous, and also that it cannot be done on will alone."
a year ago
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 Marginalian
Heroism and the Human Search for Meaning: Ernest Becker on the Hidden Root of Our Existential... "To become conscious of what one is doing to earn his feeling of heroism is the main self-analytic...
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'First of All a Student of Human Nature' “Desmond MacCarthy, like Dr. Johnson, was first of all a student of human nature.”  The...
9 months ago
19
9 months ago
“Desmond MacCarthy, like Dr. Johnson, was first of all a student of human nature.”  The best writers, the ones who compel us to read their work across a lifetime, whose thoughts become our own and who at last become teachers and companions, are those who work in two media: words...
The Marginalian
The Moon and the Yew Tree: Patti Smith Reads Sylvia Plath’s Haunting Portrait of Depression "This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary."
a year ago
The Marginalian
The Living Wonder of Leafcutter Ants, in Mesmerizing Stop Motion Alongside humans, leafcutter ants form some of nature’s vastest, most sophisticated societies — a...
a year ago
10
a year ago
Alongside humans, leafcutter ants form some of nature’s vastest, most sophisticated societies — a single mature colony can contain as many ants as there are people on Earth, living with a great deal more social harmony and consonance of purpose than we do. They are also one of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Pristine Caldera of Consonants' The subject of quarks came up in conversation with an electrical engineer. We didn’t linger but I...
6 months ago
47
6 months ago
The subject of quarks came up in conversation with an electrical engineer. We didn’t linger but I got to explain its etymology. The word for the subatomic particle was coined by the physicist Murray Gell-Mann, who borrowed it from Finnegans Wake: “Three quarks for Muster Mark!”...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Thus Massive Was the Vessel, Built in Vain' Gee-whiz technology soon grows obsolete and quaint. On this date in 1934, the USS Macon, a U.S. Navy...
5 months ago
30
5 months ago
Gee-whiz technology soon grows obsolete and quaint. On this date in 1934, the USS Macon, a U.S. Navy airship – blimp, dirigible, Zeppelin – successfully tracked the heavy cruiser USS Houston as it carried President Franklin Roosevelt on a secret voyage from Annapolis, Md., to...
The American Scholar
Changing the Lens Exploding the Canon, Episode 5 (Finale) The post Changing the Lens appeared first on The American...
8 months ago
62
8 months ago
Exploding the Canon, Episode 5 (Finale) The post Changing the Lens appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Be at Home in Other Places' At his day job my current barber is a counselor working with street people who have alcohol and/or...
a month ago
14
a month ago
At his day job my current barber is a counselor working with street people who have alcohol and/or drug problems. Like most in that field, he values his clients and dislikes the bosses, who live by the dictates of bureaucracy. Barbers are like bartenders. The good ones usually...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Probity Was Perhaps the Highest Good' As a newspaper reporter I covered only one capital murder trial. This was in rural Indiana in 1983....
9 months ago
18
9 months ago
As a newspaper reporter I covered only one capital murder trial. This was in rural Indiana in 1983. At the age of eighteen, William Spranger had fatally shot a town marshal, William Miner, in the back with the officer’s service revolver. The jury found Spranger guilty and Judge...
Steven Scrawls
Against Confidence Against Confidence I hope I never make a habit of writing stuff that makes me feel confident. If my...
a year ago
4
a year ago
Against Confidence I hope I never make a habit of writing stuff that makes me feel confident. If my writing makes me feel confident, it probably has a title like “Look At My Cleverly Constructed Argument/Insight” (subtitle: “Also Look At My Pretty Words”). If I release writing...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Soothe the Soul and Nurture the Imagination' “Among the lessons we’ve learned during these past few difficult years of pandemic, climate crisis...
a year ago
19
a year ago
“Among the lessons we’ve learned during these past few difficult years of pandemic, climate crisis and political discord is that beauty and nature matter more than ever, and that if our homes are to be sanctuaries from an often harsh outside world, then we should fill them with...
The 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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'What American Beauty Should Be' An old friend called and reminded me of the September almost forty years ago when we hiked along...
4 months ago
36
4 months ago
An old friend called and reminded me of the September almost forty years ago when we hiked along Otter Creek in southern Vermont near Dorset. Often we hiked in Otter Creek, which is filled with granite boulders. It was less hiking than climbing horizontally. Between the stones...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Is Some Twentie Sev’rall Men at Least' Whitman “contained multitudes,” of course, while George Herbert says of a man: “He is some...
8 months ago
37
8 months ago
Whitman “contained multitudes,” of course, while George Herbert says of a man: “He is some twentie sev’rall men at least / Each sev’rall houre.” What sounds self-dramatizing in the American simply acknowledges our inconstancy, our fickle nature, in Herbert’s poem “Giddinesse.” In...
Anecdotal Evidence
'In a More Just World' Our youngest son’s bedroom has lately turned into an overstuffed warehouse. Last year, as a junior...
3 months ago
30
3 months ago
Our youngest son’s bedroom has lately turned into an overstuffed warehouse. Last year, as a junior at Rice, he lived off-campus in an apartment. This year he’s back in a dormitory so most of his “housewares” – clothing, dishes and utensils, tchotchkes – have been heaped in his...
The American Scholar
We Are the Borg Is the convergence of human and machine really upon us? The post We Are the Borg appeared first on...
7 months ago
17
7 months ago
Is the convergence of human and machine really upon us? The post We Are the Borg appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Poets in an Age of Prose' Yvor Winters published his final book, Forms of Discovery, in October 1967, three months before his...
a year ago
14
a year ago
Yvor Winters published his final book, Forms of Discovery, in October 1967, three months before his death from cancer at age sixty-seven on January 25, 1968. Read his late correspondence in The Selected Letters of Yvor Winters (ed. R.L. Barth, 2000) for an understanding of the...
The Marginalian
Thich Nhat Hanh on True Love and the Five Rivers of Self-Knowledge “For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks… the work...
11 months ago
17
11 months ago
“For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks… the work for which all other work is but preparation,” Rilke wrote to his young correspondent. The great difficulty of loving arises from the great difficulty of bridging the abyss between...
sbensu
Love's Executioner (book) Countertransference applies to regular conversation.
a month ago
The Marginalian
The Fairy Tale Tree Creativity is at bottom the combinatorial work of memory and imagination. All of our impressions,...
12 months ago
21
12 months ago
Creativity is at bottom the combinatorial work of memory and imagination. All of our impressions, influences, and experiences — every sight we have ever seen, every book read, every landscape walked, every love loved — become seeds for ideas we later combine and recombine,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Books I Have Liked' One way to classify readers is by their choice of reading matter across time. Some are specialists....
a month ago
17
a month ago
One way to classify readers is by their choice of reading matter across time. Some are specialists. They read deeply but narrowly, only science fiction or the Latin classics in translation. That strategy is alien to me because by nature I’m an omnivore, moving from Henry James to...
Escaping Flatland
Notes on energy and intelligence becoming cheaper In 2015, I amused myself by training a neural network to generate poems in the style of various...
a year ago
11
a year ago
In 2015, I amused myself by training a neural network to generate poems in the style of various poets I knew and submitted the results to a fanzine.
The Marginalian
Spell Against Indifference I was a latecomer to poetry — an art form I did not understand and, as we tend to do with what we do...
a year ago
15
a year ago
I was a latecomer to poetry — an art form I did not understand and, as we tend to do with what we do not understand, discounted. But under its slow seduction, I came to see how it shines a sidewise gleam on the invisible and unnameable regions of being where the truest truths...
Josh Thompson
The Slight Edge, and why you should read it I read The Slight Edge a few months ago. Since then, it’s been the book I recommend most often to...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
I read The Slight Edge a few months ago. Since then, it’s been the book I recommend most often to most people. (I don’t make book recommendations willy-nilly, but if something seems relevant to what the person I’m speaking to is experiencing/thinking about, I make a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Example of Abundant Good Nature' The Rev. Sydney Smith writing to his friend Harriet Martineau on December 11, 1842:  “I...
2 months ago
19
2 months ago
The Rev. Sydney Smith writing to his friend Harriet Martineau on December 11, 1842:  “I am seventy-two years of age, at which period there comes over one a shameful love of ease and repose, common to dogs, horses, clergymen and even to Edinburgh Reviewers. Then an idea...
Ben Borgers
A Sixth Sense for Errors
over a year ago
Wuthering...
Please read the Roman plays with me (although not all of them) - Plautus, Terence, Seneca Roman plays, a sampling, readalong #1. Fresh off the Greek plays, I want to revisit some of the...
over a year ago
56
over a year ago
Roman plays, a sampling, readalong #1. Fresh off the Greek plays, I want to revisit some of the surviving Roman plays to remind myself what they are like.  Twenty-six comedies and ten tragedies have survived.  I read about half of them long ago and plan to reread fewer than...
Ben Borgers
Covid Test Instructions
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Insisting on the Positive A popular historian’s philosophical musings The post Insisting on the Positive appeared first on The...
4 months ago
28
4 months ago
A popular historian’s philosophical musings The post Insisting on the Positive appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Doesn't Want to Read' In a comment on last Friday’s post, my friend John Dieffenbach asks about bibliophile:  “Is that a...
a year ago
13
a year ago
In a comment on last Friday’s post, my friend John Dieffenbach asks about bibliophile:  “Is that a ‘lover of books’ because they are books? A lover of reading books? A lover of reading certain books? What makes one bibliophile more of a bibliophile than another? Size of the...
The American Scholar
Esteban Cabeza de Baca History witnessed, from the picket lines The post Esteban Cabeza de Baca appeared first on The...
7 months ago
57
7 months ago
History witnessed, from the picket lines The post Esteban Cabeza de Baca appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Semester 3
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Thinking in Silence
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
How To Write A Letter of Recommendation for Yourself I meet regularly with early-career software developers. A few recurring meetings, 1x/week, plus...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
I meet regularly with early-career software developers. A few recurring meetings, 1x/week, plus ad-hoc calls as needed with others. A question came up recently: My three-month internship is close to wrapping up. The Co-founder/CEO/lead developer of the consulting company I’m at...
Anecdotal Evidence
'One's Lucidity Is Shaken' “This is beyond imagining: one’s lucidity is shaken. Difficult to think clearly.”  As the horrors...
3 months ago
32
3 months ago
“This is beyond imagining: one’s lucidity is shaken. Difficult to think clearly.”  As the horrors piled up, the twentieth century taught us to accept such expressions as useful and accurate, not hyperbole, though the events defied belief and understanding, and often still do. The...
The Marginalian
An Antidote to the Anxiety About Imperfection: Parenting Advice from Mister Rogers "It’s part of being human to fall short of that total acceptance and ultimate understanding — and...
a year ago
Josh Thompson
Testing Rake Tasks in Rails I recently wrote a rake task to update some values we’ve got stored in the database. The rake task...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
I recently wrote a rake task to update some values we’ve got stored in the database. The rake task itself isn’t important in this post, but testing it is. We’ve got many untested rake tasks in the database, so when our senior dev suggested adding a test, I had to build ours from...
Ben Borgers
Writing Tasks Down
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Appear to the Public to be Some Sort of Miracle' On Christmas Eve 1890, Chekhov writes to his friend and editor Alexi Suvorin:  “I believe in both...
5 months ago
44
5 months ago
On Christmas Eve 1890, Chekhov writes to his friend and editor Alexi Suvorin:  “I believe in both [Robert] Koch and spermine, and I praise the Lord. Kochines, spermines, etc. all appear to the public to be some sort of miracle that has sprung unexpectedly from someone’s head like...
The Marginalian
May Sarton on Grieving a Pet "It is absolutely inward and private, the relation between oneself and an animal."
a year ago
This Space
39 Books: 2018 In spite of what I said yesterday about the decline in the number of novels I read each year, this...
7 months ago
57
7 months ago
In spite of what I said yesterday about the decline in the number of novels I read each year, this year was packed with a variety: Australian, Korean, Austrian, Egyptian, German, Argentinian and, today's choice, Norwegian; that is, if variety depends on the country of origin. But...
Anecdotal Evidence
'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...
Ben Borgers
Tufts & Change Makers
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Garish, Clownish, Bizarre, Stills Blocks Away' Thirty years ago I lived briefly in Latham, N.Y., north of Albany along the Mohawk River. The river...
a year ago
15
a year ago
Thirty years ago I lived briefly in Latham, N.Y., north of Albany along the Mohawk River. The river there is serpentine and the city paved a walking path along its southern shore that smoothed out some of the curves. Every day I walked two miles along the asphalt trail, turned...
Ben Borgers
A Small Life Radius
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Uses of the Erotic: Audre Lorde on the Relationship Between Eros, Creativity, and Power "There is, for me, no difference between writing a good poem and moving into sunlight against the...
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Important Part of Anyone’s Reading' A variation on the question Matthew Walther reports getting in his essay “The One Hundred Pages...
a month ago
24
a month ago
A variation on the question Matthew Walther reports getting in his essay “The One Hundred Pages Strategy” – “How do you do it?” – is the one I get when a workman or friend visits my home office where most of my books are shelved: “You read all these?” I can reply with one of...
The Perry Bible...
Clicked The post Clicked appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
a month ago
Wuthering...
The endlessly adaptable plays of Plautus - I’ll make it into a comedy with some tragedy mixed in The plays of Plautus are the foundation of Western comedy.  That they are based on the plays of...
a year ago
56
a year ago
The plays of Plautus are the foundation of Western comedy.  That they are based on the plays of Menander and the other Greek New Comedy writers was irrelevant, since all of those texts were soon lost.  Plautus (and his successor Terence) carried the stage traditions, the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'O Friend Unseen, Unborn, Unknown' Rabbi David Wolpe tells me Monday’s post reminds him of a poem, “To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence,”...
a month ago
22
a month ago
Rabbi David Wolpe tells me Monday’s post reminds him of a poem, “To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence,” by a poet I knew only by name: James Elroy Flecker. “I've always been moved,” David said, “especially by the penultimate stanza”:  “O friend unseen, unborn, unknown,     Student of...
The Marginalian
The Warblers and the Wonder of Being: Loren Eiseley on Contacting the Miraculous "The time has to be right; one has to be, by chance or intention, upon the border of two worlds. And...
11 months ago
19
11 months ago
"The time has to be right; one has to be, by chance or intention, upon the border of two worlds. And sometimes these two borders may shift or interpenetrate and one sees the miraculous."
Josh Thompson
The Power Broker, Chapter 30: Robert Moses and Mayor Vincent R. Impellitteri Note from Josh: The following is an excerpt of chapter 34 of the Power Broker, called “Moses and the...
a year ago
6
a year ago
Note from Josh: The following is an excerpt of chapter 34 of the Power Broker, called “Moses and the Mayors”. The chapter is about Moses’ relationship with all of the mayors of NYC that overlapped with Moses’ “rule” over NYC. This excerpt covers just one of the mayors’ overlap...
Ben Borgers
Bronze, Silver, Gold
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'First Find a Thinking Being. Lots of Luck' As a non-mathematician, I’m more interested in the history of mathematics than in math itself....
7 months ago
58
7 months ago
As a non-mathematician, I’m more interested in the history of mathematics than in math itself. That’s a confession of inadequacy, though I’m not one of those people who says, “I don’t have a head for math,” when what they really mean is arithmetic. Because of my job I’ve learned...
The American Scholar
Good Vibrations One eccentric’s desert landmark allows visitors to bathe in sound The post Good Vibrations appeared...
9 months ago
27
9 months ago
One eccentric’s desert landmark allows visitors to bathe in sound The post Good Vibrations appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
Josh Thompson
Typing in Colemac 2.0 I want to learn to type in Colemak, but I’m afraid to try to invest twenty hours in it. That’s a...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
I want to learn to type in Colemak, but I’m afraid to try to invest twenty hours in it. That’s a long commitment, and I’m afraid I would not follow through, and feel like it was a failure, because I didn’t allot enough time, nor reach a desired level of skill. My hope is that as...
sbensu
Vibes are music, arguments are lyrics Losing My Religion is not about religion and Arguments are not about arguments
5 months ago
The Marginalian
The Beach and the Soul: Anne Morrow Lindbergh on the Benedictions of the Sea "The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient... Patience,...
7 months ago
26
7 months ago
"The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient... Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach."
Ben Borgers
Ben-Edit
over a year ago
This Space
39 Books: 1999 I've always preferred the Serpent's Tail edition of Pessoa's Book of Disquiet over the others...
8 months ago
64
8 months ago
I've always preferred the Serpent's Tail edition of Pessoa's Book of Disquiet over the others published around the same time, such as from Quartet Encounters and Carcanet, the latter with a fussy variant on the title: The Book of Disquietude. But this one is the most pleasurable...
Josh Thompson
Mocks & Stubs & Exceptions in Ruby Some of my recent work has been around improving error handling and logging. We had some tasks that,...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
Some of my recent work has been around improving error handling and logging. We had some tasks that, if they failed to execute correctly, were supposed to raise exceptions, log themselves, and re-queue, but they were not. The class in which I was working managed in large part API...
The American Scholar
“The Answering Machine” by Linda Pastan Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Answering Machine” by Linda Pastan appeared first on The...
6 months ago
55
6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Answering Machine” by Linda Pastan appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Mandelstam Dances Barefoot in the Snow Alone' “In the end like all great poets he became a jester”  Not the usual encomium one expects for Osip...
2 months ago
28
2 months ago
“In the end like all great poets he became a jester”  Not the usual encomium one expects for Osip Mandelstam, dead at age forty-seven in a Soviet camp, but the eulogist is Zbigniew Herbert, a congenitally ironic poet, ever aware of the comic in the appalling. For my birthday I...
The American Scholar
Riding With Mr. Washington How my great-grandfather invented himself at the end of Reconstruction The post Riding With Mr....
7 months ago
19
7 months ago
How my great-grandfather invented himself at the end of Reconstruction The post Riding With Mr. Washington appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Driven by Compression Progress Note from author: This is part of an experimental series, more-or-less based on “white papers” and...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
Note from author: This is part of an experimental series, more-or-less based on “white papers” and academic literature, as applied to somewhat practical-ish domains. These pages serve as a brief overview of a paper, and I’ll be able to link to this paper down the road when I what...
The American Scholar
The Baritone as Democrat How Lawrence Tibbett prophesied the Metropolitan Opera crisis of today The post The Baritone as...
a month ago
29
a month ago
How Lawrence Tibbett prophesied the Metropolitan Opera crisis of today The post The Baritone as Democrat appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Thoughts on Money from 2013 I was looking through some draft posts I have lying around, and found one from the middle of 2013....
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
I was looking through some draft posts I have lying around, and found one from the middle of 2013. That’s 2.5 years ago. Reading over it, I feel satisfaction for a few reasons: Old Josh (from July 2013) wasn’t a train wreck. As soon as I think about myself in highschool and...
The American Scholar
The Power of the Common Soul Ives, music-making, and hope The post The Power of the Common Soul appeared first on The American...
4 months ago
The Marginalian
The Challenge of Closeness: Alain de Botton on Love, Vulnerability, and the Paradox of Avoidance The psychological machinery of our commonest coping mechanism for the terror of hurt, rejection, and...
a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
Take The 2025 ACX Survey ...
3 weeks ago
Josh Thompson
Input metrics vs. Output metrics It’s tempting to track results, when trying to accomplish something. If you’re working on any...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
It’s tempting to track results, when trying to accomplish something. If you’re working on any project of sufficient size, the results will come slowly, fitfully, and sometimes not at all. So, don’t track results, track your efforts. (Yes, how very American of me. I don’t believe...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Time Is Tight' My brother is dying as he lived – stubbornly. He has been in hospice for two weeks and is...
4 months ago
29
4 months ago
My brother is dying as he lived – stubbornly. He has been in hospice for two weeks and is failing incrementally. On Monday we were swapping memories and he stopped talking on Tuesday, the same day he stopped eating. He lies on his back on the hospice bed, mouth open, eyes staring...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Very Close to the Caliber of Mark Twain' I found a 2001 interview with Shelby Foote in The American Enterprise. The author of the three...
3 months ago
41
3 months ago
I found a 2001 interview with Shelby Foote in The American Enterprise. The author of the three volumes of The Civil War: A Narrative (1958-1974) was asked by Bill Kauffman about the scarcity of politicians who are today capable of formulating their own coherent let alone eloquent...
Ben Borgers
An Eye for Design
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Two Souls Within: Hermann Hesse on the Dual Life of the Creative Spirit "Like a precious, fleeting foam over the sea of suffering arise all those works of art, in which a...
a year ago
15
a year ago
"Like a precious, fleeting foam over the sea of suffering arise all those works of art, in which a single individual lifts himself for an hour so high above his personal destiny that his happiness shines like a star and appears to all who see it as something eternal and as a...
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...
Ben Borgers
Bin System
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Saturday, January 15, 2022
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Octavia Butler (and Whitman’s Ghost) on America “Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought,” Octavia Butler (June 22, 1947–February 24, 2006)...
2 months ago
17
2 months ago
“Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought,” Octavia Butler (June 22, 1947–February 24, 2006) urged in her prophetic Parable of the Talents, written in the 1990s and set in the 2020s. Her words remain a haunting reminder that our rights are founded upon our...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Being Vulnerable to History' I read Bernard Malamud’s novel The Fixer when it was published in 1966. Readers often turn...
6 months ago
67
6 months ago
I read Bernard Malamud’s novel The Fixer when it was published in 1966. Readers often turn melodramatic when describing the impact a book has had on them – “life-changing,” that sort of thing. Such claims usually can be chalked up to enthusiasm untempered by critical rigor. The...
Josh Thompson
Friends Don't Let Friends Shortrope The first in a series about how to be a better belayer. Short rope [shawrt-rohp] verb The act of...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
The first in a series about how to be a better belayer. Short rope [shawrt-rohp] verb The act of not giving sufficient rope to your climber. Getting short roped is bad. It’s not necessarily dangerous, nor does it cause you to take a whip (it can, of course) but the real reason...
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...
Josh Thompson
Who inspires you, and is still alive? There are lots of dead people that we look up to. But people that are alive, and not world-wide...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
There are lots of dead people that we look up to. But people that are alive, and not world-wide famous are a bit more knowable. Some of them will even reply to tweets you send them! So, here are a few people that I follow and have received TONS of amazing wisdom from. (I...
The Marginalian
Kierkegaard on the Value of Despair "To despair over oneself, in despair to want to be rid of oneself, is the formula for all despair."
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Mouldering Boots of Other Days' The triolet, like its cousins the rondeau, rondel, and rondelet, is an intricate French verse form,...
10 months ago
53
10 months ago
The triolet, like its cousins the rondeau, rondel, and rondelet, is an intricate French verse form, usually eight lines long and written in iambic tetrameter. The first line is repeated as the fourth and seventh lines. Among English-language poets, Robert Bridges and Thomas Hardy...
Ben Borgers
Late Night Sprints
over a year ago
Wuthering...
Thou hast devourd thy sonnes - some notes on Seneca's horror plays My Seneca reading in March: Medea, tr. Frederick Ahl The Trojan Women, tr. E. F. Watling Thyestes,...
a year ago
62
a year ago
My Seneca reading in March: Medea, tr. Frederick Ahl The Trojan Women, tr. E. F. Watling Thyestes, tr. Jasper Heywood Hercules Furens, tr. Heywood The Madness of Hercules, tr. Dana Gioia The plays themselves are all from the mid-1st century, perhaps written when Seneca was in...
sbensu
Pricing APIs Lessons from AWS S3 and others on how to price APIs.
11 months ago
This Space
A modern heretic Literature can be defined by the sense of the imminence of a revelation which does not in fact...
over a year ago
48
over a year ago
Literature can be defined by the sense of the imminence of a revelation which does not in fact occur. I used this line, apparently from Borges, as an epigram to an essay in the early days of online writing. I can't remember what book it came from and after searching I found a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Excellent Judge, Posterity' A reader can sometimes judge the true worth of a writer by the quality of his detractors....
9 months ago
21
9 months ago
A reader can sometimes judge the true worth of a writer by the quality of his detractors. Take Dwight Macdonald on James Gould Cozzens. And then consider Arnold Bennett (1867-1931). Today he’s judged a respectable but minor English novelist, something of a documentarian, if he’s...
Josh Thompson
Dizzying but Invisible Depth The following is from https://plus.google.com/+JeanBaptisteQueru/posts/dfydM2Cnepe, but Google+ is...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
The following is from https://plus.google.com/+JeanBaptisteQueru/posts/dfydM2Cnepe, but Google+ is shutdown, so it’s not easily sharable. I’m reposting here because this is such a useful post. Dizzying but invisible depth You just went to the Google home page. Simple, isn’t...
The American Scholar
On Book August Wilson’s play just hit the big screen, but even greater rewards await on the page The post On...
a month ago
24
a month ago
August Wilson’s play just hit the big screen, but even greater rewards await on the page The post On Book appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Old Man in the Dark' Philip Larkin shares with us the mundane complaints of the middle class, the lusts and anxieties of...
a year ago
14
a year ago
Philip Larkin shares with us the mundane complaints of the middle class, the lusts and anxieties of people unburdened with wealth and pull. He grows deaf, loses hair, juggles girlfriends, gains weight and drinks too much. As a librarian he works hard. He will never be hip except...
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...
Blog -...
Book Review - Codependent No More With more than five million copies sold by its twenty-fifth anniversary nearly a decade ago,...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
With more than five million copies sold by its twenty-fifth anniversary nearly a decade ago, Codependent No More is a startling, powerful book that has touched the lives of so very many.
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.
The American Scholar
Nights at the Opera Long before he wrote his masterly novels, Stendhal was transformed by the power of music The post...
4 months ago
47
4 months ago
Long before he wrote his masterly novels, Stendhal was transformed by the power of music The post Nights at the Opera appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
How to Move Kristi and I are moving to Colorado in July. We’ve taken three broad steps to make this move...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
Kristi and I are moving to Colorado in July. We’ve taken three broad steps to make this move happen: We both are in process with new jobs I just started working remotely for Litmus, which means I can seamlessly transition to Colorado this summer. Kristi spent a few days last week...
The Elysian
Further reading on employee ownership My notes from the margins of my research.
4 months ago
Josh Thompson
Turing Prep Chapter 3: Moar Mythical Creatures Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
4
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...
sbensu
How to: friction logs Friction logs are a technique to improve your own products and understand others. You use the...
a year ago
6
a year ago
Friction logs are a technique to improve your own products and understand others. You use the produdct the way a real user would and write down every single moment you experience some form of negative emotion.
Steven Scrawls
Not As Giants Love Not As Giants Love Short story, ~2000 words A week ago, when I asked you if you still loved me, I...
6 months ago
6
6 months ago
Not As Giants Love Short story, ~2000 words A week ago, when I asked you if you still loved me, I thought the most painful thing you could’ve said was no. I don’t know if you remember, but when you said “Of course I still love you” and asked if I still loved you, I started to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'It All But Lovely As Silence Is' Thanks to S.J. Perelman and his 1952 collection The Ill-Tempered Clavichord, I get confused with...
6 months ago
61
6 months ago
Thanks to S.J. Perelman and his 1952 collection The Ill-Tempered Clavichord, I get confused with Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier (1722) and with that bone that runs from the sternum to the shoulder blade. You know, the clavicle. Each time I need to cite one of the three, in writing...
The Marginalian
The First Scientist’s Guide to Truth: Alhazen on Critical Thinking Born into a world with no clocks, telescopes, microscopes, or democracy, Ḥasan Ibn al-Haytham...
a year ago
15
a year ago
Born into a world with no clocks, telescopes, microscopes, or democracy, Ḥasan Ibn al-Haytham (c. 965–c. 1040), known in the West as Alhazen, began his life studying religion, but grew quickly disenchanted by its unquestioned dogmas and the way it turned people on each other with...
Escaping Flatland
Writing while walking We do not belong to those who have ideas only among books, when stimulated by books.
4 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Past Is Alive and Stirring With Objects' Published in the January 1821 issue of London Magazine are thematically linked essays by two...
a year ago
12
a year ago
Published in the January 1821 issue of London Magazine are thematically linked essays by two friends, Charles Lamb and William Hazlitt: “New Year’s Eve” and “On the Past and Future,” respectively. Lamb’s is better known, and I'm aware of several readers who, like me, read it...
The Marginalian
The Afterlives of the Soul: Sister Nivedita on Love and Death "To the soul, time does not exist. Only her own great purpose exists, shining clear and steady...
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Are So Lucky Having English' “We are lucky that English is our language because it’s better than, say, French for poetry. All...
a year ago
12
a year ago
“We are lucky that English is our language because it’s better than, say, French for poetry. All those millions of words and all those different ways of saying the same, or similar, things. And new words all the time.”  It’s fashionable in some quarters to distrust language, to...
ribbonfarm
News from the Universe I did not expect to see auroras in the Seattle area. Or ever in my life without a special...
8 months ago
6
8 months ago
I did not expect to see auroras in the Seattle area. Or ever in my life without a special bucket-list effort I had no particular intention of making. Though now I might. It feels a bit like I’ve just seen giraffes in the wild without going to Africa. You’ve probably seen some of...
This Space
Favourite books 2021 If such things matter, and they don't, my book of the year is Peter Holm Jensen’s The Moment. As I...
over a year ago
32
over a year ago
If such things matter, and they don't, my book of the year is Peter Holm Jensen’s The Moment. As I wrote in April, it’s one in which the writer seeks “a modest, self-effacing place within the intersection of time and eternity” and can be read again and again for this reason, as...
The American Scholar
“À une passante” by Charles Baudelaire Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “À une passante” by Charles Baudelaire appeared first on The...
5 months ago
47
5 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “À une passante” by Charles Baudelaire appeared first on The American Scholar.
sbensu
Notes on UX and LLM integrations I analyze 8 apps (ChatGPT, Notion, Perplexity, etc.) that use or integrate LLM and try to break down...
a year ago
7
a year ago
I analyze 8 apps (ChatGPT, Notion, Perplexity, etc.) that use or integrate LLM and try to break down when and why they work well, or poorly.
Ben Borgers
Reading with RSS
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Blue Is the Color of Desire: The Science, Poetry, and Wonder of the Bowerbird For all the enchantment the color blue has cast upon humanity, no animal has fallen under its spell...
a year ago
59
a year ago
For all the enchantment the color blue has cast upon humanity, no animal has fallen under its spell more hopelessly than the bowerbird, whose very survival hinges on blue. In a small clearing on the forest floor, the male weaves twigs and branches into an elaborate bower, which...
The Marginalian
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...
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 358.5 ...
a month ago
Ben Borgers
Bubble Tea Snobbery
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
It's Fun to Do Things with Care
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Brief: AI-summarized news
over a year ago
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...
The Marginalian
There’s a Ghost in the Garden: A Subtle and Soulful Illustrated Fable about Memory and Mystery One of the things no one tells us as we grow up is that we will be living in a world rife with...
a month ago
18
a month ago
One of the things no one tells us as we grow up is that we will be living in a world rife with ghosts — all of our disappointed hopes and our outgrown dreams, all the abandoned novels and unproven theorems, all the people we used to love, all the people we used to be. A ghost is...
Ben Borgers
Hash Tables [explained for anyone]
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Moondance Experience the marvel that is The post Moondance appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
sbensu
Designing for support teams Support agents spend their entire lives using the same software. Their needs are very different from...
11 months ago
5
11 months ago
Support agents spend their entire lives using the same software. Their needs are very different from consumer software. Here are some things to keep in mind.
ben-mini
The Inner Game of Tennis I just finished reading The Inner Game of Tennis by Tim Gallwey. Originally published in 1974, the...
3 months ago
8
3 months ago
I just finished reading The Inner Game of Tennis by Tim Gallwey. Originally published in 1974, the book explores how the thoughts of an athlete affect their game. It’s lauded as being at the forefront of what we now call “sports psychology”. Although my competitive sports days...
Josh Thompson
Deliberate Practice in Programming with Avdi Grimm and the Rake gem I’ve had the concept of Deliberate Practice stuck in my head for a while. I want to improve at...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
I’ve had the concept of Deliberate Practice stuck in my head for a while. I want to improve at things (all the things!) in general, but writing and reading code, specifically. Writing and reading code is germane to my primary occupation (software developer) and drives most of my...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Memories Packed in the Rapid-Access File' Last Saturday morning, the day my brother would die, the Uber driver who carried me from hotel to...
4 months ago
40
4 months ago
Last Saturday morning, the day my brother would die, the Uber driver who carried me from hotel to hospice in the morning went by the professional name “Lazarus” – an omen I choose to leave unexamined and merely enjoy. Ken would have enjoyed it. Shortly after his death one of the...
The Marginalian
We Go to the Park: A Soulful Illustrated Meditation on Our Search for Meaning "Sometimes it feels as if all of life is made up of longing."
4 months ago
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
The Elysian
It's ok to live in a fantasyland That's the joy of being a writer.
2 months ago
Blog -...
Book Review - The Surrender Experiment With the book The Surrender Experiment, author Michael (Mickey) Singer, gives us a gift. In this...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
With the book The Surrender Experiment, author Michael (Mickey) Singer, gives us a gift. In this eloquently penned biography of his “journey into life’s perfection”, he demonstrates the beauty that life can provide for us when we are not solely guided by our logical,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Chronic Independence of Mind' “A chronic independence of mind is unpardonable in any age; in our own it has certainly been safer...
2 months ago
19
2 months ago
“A chronic independence of mind is unpardonable in any age; in our own it has certainly been safer to praise independence than to exemplify it.”  Bracing words from one of literature’s inveterate outsiders, English poet and critic C.H. Sisson (1914-2003). He’s writing about...
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.
Ben Borgers
Un-figure-out-able Software
over a year ago
Escaping Flatland
6 lessons I learned working at an art gallery On agency, doing value-aligned work, and making your job fun
a month ago
The Elysian
A grassroots political party for the middle The Forward Party, citizen's assemblies, and a creating better independence movement in the US.
3 weeks ago
The Elysian
The unbearable necessity of being online On loving and loathing the internet as an artist and why we need to be here anyway.
9 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not At All Reliable for Climbing On' Decades ago I interviewed a guy who had climbed all forty-six of the high peaks in New...
9 months ago
17
9 months ago
Decades ago I interviewed a guy who had climbed all forty-six of the high peaks in New York’s Adirondack Mountains in his bare feet. Surprisingly, he completed the shoeless stunt without serious injury. It was one of those Ripley’s-Believe-It-or-Not accomplishments that seems...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Range and Liveliness of Poetry' I heard from a high-school classmate who remembered the time in A.P. English our senior year when...
10 months ago
19
10 months ago
I heard from a high-school classmate who remembered the time in A.P. English our senior year when the teacher had us form small groups, select a poem and prepare a discussion. At my suggestion, our group picked “The Groundhog” (1934) by Richard Eberhart (1904-2005). Note its...
Josh Thompson
My Good Friends (Who Don't Know Me) Rumor has it you become like those you spend time with. Or “birds of a feather flock together”, or...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
Rumor has it you become like those you spend time with. Or “birds of a feather flock together”, or “you are what you eat”. Maybe that last one was Hannibal Lector, having an old friend for dinner. Anyway, the person that you are is influenced by the people you spend time with....
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
Consummated in Exile A new recording of Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances conveys the breadth of the 20th-century...
7 months ago
42
7 months ago
A new recording of Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances conveys the breadth of the 20th-century composer’s life’s journey The post Consummated in Exile appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
The Marginalian
The Proper Object of Love: Iris Murdoch on the Angst of Not Knowing Ourselves and Each Other One of the hardest things to learn in life is that the heart is a clock too fast not to break. We...
5 months ago
60
5 months ago
One of the hardest things to learn in life is that the heart is a clock too fast not to break. We lurch into loving, only to discover again and again that it takes a long time to know people, to understand people — and “understanding is love’s other name.” Even without...
ribbonfarm
Decision Brownouts In thinking about decision-making under stress, most people focus on fight-or-flight responses. Both...
8 months ago
7
8 months ago
In thinking about decision-making under stress, most people focus on fight-or-flight responses. Both fighting and fleeing are obvious courses of action that inherit a clear sense of direction from the characteristics of the threat itself, and are energized by the automatic...
Anecdotal Evidence
'And Then Became a Name Like Others Slain' In a six-word paragraph in “Preliminary,” his brief introduction to Undertones of War, Edmund...
2 months ago
29
2 months ago
In a six-word paragraph in “Preliminary,” his brief introduction to Undertones of War, Edmund Blunden articulates the impulse that would drive his poetry for the next half-century: “I must go over it again.” Psychically, there was no Armistice. Whether to purge its memory or...
Josh Thompson
About Roundabouts I’m desperately trying to work through a giant back-log of writings. Please see write it now for...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
I’m desperately trying to work through a giant back-log of writings. Please see write it now for more. I’m spending only a few minutes on this, forgive my errors. Of late, I’ve had a lot of conversations about roundabouts. I’m basically trying to explain the ways that a mobility...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Even Erudition is Possible Outside Academe' A reader tells me he earned his B.A. in English several years ago and now he works for a non-profit...
6 months ago
27
6 months ago
A reader tells me he earned his B.A. in English several years ago and now he works for a non-profit that pushes “arts education,” whatever that might be. I don’t take him for an idealist. He’s bright, personable, an ambitious reader and bored. Our culture doesn’t know what to do...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Old Landor's Bones Are Laid' On Tuesday I wrote about Walter Savage Landor, his poems and especially Imaginary Conversations, a...
3 months ago
27
3 months ago
On Tuesday I wrote about Walter Savage Landor, his poems and especially Imaginary Conversations, a collection of 174 dialogues, mostly of historical and literary figures, published in five volumes between 1824 and 1829. I keep a mental list of books I admire and enjoy that seem...
The Marginalian
The Merger Self, the Seeker Self, and the Lifelong Challenge of Balancing Intimacy and Independence Each time I see a sparrow inside an airport, I am seized with tenderness for the bird, for living so...
8 months ago
60
8 months ago
Each time I see a sparrow inside an airport, I am seized with tenderness for the bird, for living so acutely and concretely a paradox that haunts our human lives in myriad guises — the difficulty of discerning comfort from entrapment, freedom from peril. It is a paradox rooted in...
This Space
No safe landing A review of A Winter in Zürau and Partita by Gabriel Josipovici   Gabriel Josipovici has said that...
3 months ago
48
3 months ago
A review of A Winter in Zürau and Partita by Gabriel Josipovici   Gabriel Josipovici has said that as a critic he is conservative but as a novelist he is radical. The second claim may not be controversial but the first will come as a surprise to those who remember what he said...
The American Scholar
Feels Like Coming Home The wonders of the coastal redwood The post Feels Like Coming Home appeared first on The American...
4 months ago
25
4 months ago
The wonders of the coastal redwood The post Feels Like Coming Home appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
Dead Souls by Sam Riviere Even before one begins reading Sam Riviere’s first novel there is despondency as one registers that...
over a year ago
35
over a year ago
Even before one begins reading Sam Riviere’s first novel there is despondency as one registers that the title is a duplication of the English translation of Nikolai Gogol’s Мёртвые души, the novel in which a character seeks to buy dead serfs from their owners but who have yet to...
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...
Ben Borgers
Thumbs up for Six Flags
over a year ago
This Space
39 Books: 2014 One could say that Mallarmé, through an extraordinary effort of asceticism, opened an abyss in...
7 months ago
65
7 months ago
One could say that Mallarmé, through an extraordinary effort of asceticism, opened an abyss in himself where his awareness, instead of losing itself, survives and grasps its solitude in a desperate clarity. This is from The Silence of Mallarmé, an essay in Blanchot's first...
The Marginalian
We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt, the Power of Defiant Goodwill, and the Art of... "It is when the experience of powerlessness is at its most acute, when history seems at its most...
10 months ago
21
10 months ago
"It is when the experience of powerlessness is at its most acute, when history seems at its most bleak, that the determination to think like a human being, creatively, courageously, and complicatedly, matters the most."
This Space
39 Books: 1987 From two books in the first year of reading and twenty-four in the second, I read eighty-six in the...
8 months ago
30
8 months ago
From two books in the first year of reading and twenty-four in the second, I read eighty-six in the third, including a lot more non-fiction. This was due to cycling to libraries in adjacent towns where the selection was wider. One of them had my first non-novel choice: this...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I See Only Their Marvelous Works' “How pleasant it is to respect people! When I see books, I am not concerned with how the authors...
11 months ago
18
11 months ago
“How pleasant it is to respect people! When I see books, I am not concerned with how the authors loved or played cards; I see only their marvelous works.”  A reader reprimands me for dismissing Ezra Pound from serious consideration. “We can’t imagine modernism without him,” he...
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
sbensu
Incentives as selection effects When you apply a new incentive, you select for a new population that prefers the incentive.
7 months ago