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Anecdotal Evidence
'Read Well, Read Little' A reader asks what novels by William Makepeace Thackeray I would suggest he read. My answer is brief...
4 months ago
34
4 months ago
A reader asks what novels by William Makepeace Thackeray I would suggest he read. My answer is brief and not terribly helpful: Vanity Fair. It’s the only book by Thackery I have read, and that was a long time ago. I saw Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Barry Lyndon in 1975....
Ben Borgers
Understanding CalcYouLater Subconsciously
over a year ago
Idle Words
Alyse Galvin on Coronavirus in Alaska Last week I spoke by video chat with Alyse Galvin, who is running for Congress in Alaska's sole,...
over a year ago
15
over a year ago
Last week I spoke by video chat with Alyse Galvin, who is running for Congress in Alaska's sole, enormous Congressional district in a rematch against Don Young, the longest-serving member of Congress. Young, who just turned 87, is a notorious figure in state and national...
This Space
39 Books: 2019 So much for this blog being labelled "the best resource in English on European modernist...
a year ago
99
a year ago
So much for this blog being labelled "the best resource in English on European modernist literature": this year's choice is a collection of lectures delivered in the early 1960s at the University of Zürich, published in English translation in 1970, with this edition being...
The Elysian
The future used to be better How contemporary art reflects our waning belief in progress.
2 months ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Truck Camping is Here to Eat Van Life's Lunch We’re reaching the tipping point of an oversaturated custom sprinter van market. There are hundreds...
a year ago
24
a year ago
We’re reaching the tipping point of an oversaturated custom sprinter van market. There are hundreds of brands all attempting to do very similar things at scale, as if they’re late to the overbuilt expensive van party. Customer interest feels like it is swinging back to simplicity...
Astral Codex Ten
Why Should Intelligence Be Related To Neuron Count? ...
6 months ago
The Marginalian
How to Meet Your Mystery: Thomas Merton on Solitude and the Soul "It is a vocation to become fully awake, even more than the common somnolence permits one to be,...
5 months ago
38
5 months ago
"It is a vocation to become fully awake, even more than the common somnolence permits one to be, with its arbitrary selection of approved dreams, mixed with a few really valid and fruitful conceptions."
This Space
39 Books: 2005 Four years later, browsing in Waterstones, I picked a book from a table and read "What will we do to...
a year ago
107
a year ago
Four years later, browsing in Waterstones, I picked a book from a table and read "What will we do to disappear?" – the epigram to Enrique Vila-Matas's novel Montano's Malady. It's a line taken from Maurice Blanchot's Infinite Conversation, so I had to buy it. Later that year,...
The American Scholar
Let Us Compare Mythologies Exploding the Canon, Episode 4 The post Let Us Compare Mythologies appeared first on The American...
a year ago
The Marginalian
The Shape of Wonder: N.J. Berrill on the Universe, the Deepest Meaning of Beauty, and the Highest... "We, each of us, you and I, exhibit more of the true nature of the universe than any dead Saturn or...
a year ago
Escaping Flatland
Almost everyone I’ve met would be well-served thinking more about what to focus on Including me
a year ago
Naz Hamid
SXSW ’11 Memories are an interesting beast. I have certain core memories that are embedded deep in my mind....
4 months ago
25
4 months ago
Memories are an interesting beast. I have certain core memories that are embedded deep in my mind. The years I attended SXSW from 2007-2012 encompass some of those. In 2011, I shared a house with longtime partner-in-crime Scott Robbin, Jeff Skinner, and Sam Felder. We were off...
The American Scholar
“How Do I Love Thee” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “How Do I Love Thee” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning appeared...
a year ago
48
a year ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “How Do I Love Thee” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
Will you explain anarchism to me? Letters to an anarchist, part one.
10 months ago
The Marginalian
200 Years of Solitude: Great Writers, Artists, and Scientists in Praise of the Creative and... There is a silence at the center of each person — an untrammeled space where the inner voice grows...
a year ago
77
a year ago
There is a silence at the center of each person — an untrammeled space where the inner voice grows free to speak. That space expands in solitude. To create anything — a poem, a painting, a theorem — is to find the voice in the silence that has something to say to the world. In...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Marginalia: Search Engine This is an independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to...
9 months ago
26
9 months ago
This is an independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren't aware of in favor of the sort of sites you probably already knew existed. More like this, please. Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
This Space
39 Books: 2010 This series has sailed into the doldrum years. Reading has become less of a headlong existential...
a year ago
97
a year 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...
The Marginalian
Leonard Cohen on the Antidote to Anger and the Meaning of Resistance One of the commonest and most corrosive human reflexes is to react to helplessness with anger. We do...
a year ago
90
a year ago
One of the commonest and most corrosive human reflexes is to react to helplessness with anger. We do it in our personal lives and we do it in our political lives. We are living through a time of uncommon helplessness and uncertainty, touching every aspect of our lives, and in...
Anecdotal Evidence
'At a Quarter a Tome' I owe a significant chunk of my education to the existence of paperback books. By “education” I...
3 months ago
40
3 months ago
I owe a significant chunk of my education to the existence of paperback books. By “education” I don’t mean what I pretended to do while in the company of professors, though many of them assigned books published in soft covers. I mean self-assigned literature, beginning as a kid...
The Marginalian
A Taste of How It Feels to Be Free: Pioneering Psychoanalyst Karen Horney on Our Inner Conflicts,... "The most comprehensive formulation of therapeutic goals is the striving for wholeheartedness: to be...
over a year ago
87
over a year ago
"The most comprehensive formulation of therapeutic goals is the striving for wholeheartedness: to be without pretense, to be emotionally sincere, to be able to put the whole of oneself into one’s feelings, one’s work, one’s beliefs. It can be approximated only to the extent that...
The American Scholar
Two Names The post Two Names appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
Josh Thompson
Denver Botanic Gardens - What, How, Why I recently got access to a delightful amenity, based on where I live. I’ve been sharing it with...
a year ago
27
a year ago
I recently got access to a delightful amenity, based on where I live. I’ve been sharing it with others as quickly as possible, because they too have access to it. From here on out, when I reference “botanic gardens” or “the gardens”, I’m referencing the Denver Botanic Gardens,...
Ben Borgers
Mornings Set the Tone
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Moon at Times Is Hunched and Old' A few weeks after my boss hired me in 2006 to work as a science writer for Rice University, we met...
7 months ago
29
7 months ago
A few weeks after my boss hired me in 2006 to work as a science writer for Rice University, we met to informally talk about how things were going. Both of us were pleased and knew we had made a good choice. We already liked and trusted each other. Ann paid me an odd compliment...
The Marginalian
Shame and the Secret Chambers of the Self: Pioneering Sociologist and Philosopher Helen Merrell Lynd... "Experiences of shame throw a flooding light on what and who we are and what the world we live in...
a year ago
The American Scholar
The Egoist When a Zen master loses his way The post The Egoist appeared first on The American Scholar.
a week ago
Escaping Flatland
On the pleasure of reading private notebooks One reason I like this genre is that people censor themselves less when they are writing in private.
3 months ago
Ben Borgers
Winter break project list [2024]
8 months ago
ribbonfarm
Arbitrariness Costs I’ve long held that civilization is the process of turning the incomprehensible into the arbitrary....
a year ago
24
a year ago
I’ve long held that civilization is the process of turning the incomprehensible into the arbitrary. The incomprehensible can be scary but the arbitrary tends to be merely exhausting. Unless the stakes are high, such as in paperwork around taxes or passports and visas. Then the...
Josh Thompson
Simplify, simplify, simplify Kristi and I stumbled upon the realization that we’ve become minimalists. And it is exciting. We...
over a year ago
26
over a year ago
Kristi and I stumbled upon the realization that we’ve become minimalists. And it is exciting. We live in a one-bedroom apartment. It is spacious, for a one-bedroom, but compared to anything larger than a one-bedroom apartment, it is small. We managed to pack it full of stuff in...
The Marginalian
The Galapagos and the Meaning of Life: A Young Woman’s Bittersweet Experiment in Inner Freedom “We may think we are domesticated but we are not,” Jay Griffiths wrote in her homily on not wasting...
10 months ago
52
10 months ago
“We may think we are domesticated but we are not,” Jay Griffiths wrote in her homily on not wasting our wildness, insisting on the “primal allegiance” the human spirit has to the wild. A decade after artist Rockwell Kent headed to a remote Alaskan island “to stand face to face...
The Perry Bible...
Please The post Please appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
a year ago
The American Scholar
Scrolling Through Jack Kerouac, Malcolm Cowley, and the difficult birth of On the Road The post Scrolling Through...
a week ago
4
a week ago
Jack Kerouac, Malcolm Cowley, and the difficult birth of On the Road The post Scrolling Through appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
RailsConf CFP Outline I’m pitching some ideas for RailsConf. I only heard about it a few days ago (oops) so this is a bit...
over a year ago
24
over a year ago
I’m pitching some ideas for RailsConf. I only heard about it a few days ago (oops) so this is a bit rushed: Idea 1: “Junior” Developers are the Solution to Many of Your Problems Abstract: Our industry telegraphs: “We don’t want (or know how to handle) ‘Jr. Devs’.” Jr. Devs, or as...
Josh Thompson
How I take notes, AKA 'Add an Index to Your Notebook' A while back, sometime in 2017, I wrote this tweet: a while ago, I read about how to keep...
over a year ago
29
over a year ago
A while back, sometime in 2017, I wrote this tweet: a while ago, I read about how to keep well-organized notes on a range of topics. Here's my current notebook, indexed by category: pic.twitter.com/aVsNnGPEpd — Josh Thompson (@josh_works) May 8, 2017 Since then, I occasionally...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 disorganized notes on a low information diet Stop thinking of Knowing The News as some sort of important part of a living person’s routine. The...
9 months ago
21
9 months ago
Stop thinking of Knowing The News as some sort of important part of a living person’s routine. The news is not designed to help you! — Kevin Fanning Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
This Space
At home he’s a tourist: The Moment by Peter Holm Jensen Such a modest, self-effacing title, barely relieved by the blanched map on the cover. In everyday...
over a year ago
82
over a year ago
Such a modest, self-effacing title, barely relieved by the blanched map on the cover. In everyday speech, a word or two is usually added to supplement the weedy noun: people say “At this moment in time”, which is when I ask: can a moment be in anything else; a moment in lampposts...
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...
a year ago
90
a year 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...
The Elysian
Am I an anarchist? Letters to an anarchist, part seven.
9 months ago
The Perry Bible...
Ditty The post Ditty appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
6 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Will We Ever Be So Young Again?' On July 2, 1944, the Polish poet and fiction writer Tadeusz Borowski begins a letter to his mother...
2 months ago
22
2 months ago
On July 2, 1944, the Polish poet and fiction writer Tadeusz Borowski begins a letter to his mother written while he was a prisoner in Auschwitz:  “What’s of greatest interest first: the eggs are amazingly fresh and very much desired, the butter is wonderful, straight from the...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Make Better Documents Stop formatting everything to death. — Anil Dash Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
a year ago
The Elysian
Hint #3 I'm publishing a new print collection in one week.
a year ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ The Phone As Disruptive My phone doesn't follow me everywhere. It occupies the last place I left it. This happens when I...
a year ago
20
a year ago
My phone doesn't follow me everywhere. It occupies the last place I left it. This happens when I leave to go for a run, sometimes when I run errands, and often hours go by without it. This is occurring more and more. It feels light. I feel light. The literal weight of the phone...
Ben Borgers
Hash Tables [explained for anyone]
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Heart of Semi-Darkness A writer’s delectable quest for rare flavors The post Heart of Semi-Darkness appeared first on The...
a year ago
54
a year ago
A writer’s delectable quest for rare flavors The post Heart of Semi-Darkness appeared first on The American Scholar.
ribbonfarm
Sons of the Soil, Migrants, and Civil War, We read an interesting paper today (ht Sachin Benny with an assist from ChatGPT) in the Yak...
a year ago
22
a year ago
We read an interesting paper today (ht Sachin Benny with an assist from ChatGPT) in the Yak Collective weekly governance study group (Fridays at 9 AM Pacific). Sons of the Soil, Migrants, and Civil War, by James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin (World Development, V 39, No. 2,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Take Its Rise from Mutual Pleasure' It’s a comfort to know people who know you. Cleveland has become a semi-ghost town. My brother,...
a week ago
6
a week ago
It’s a comfort to know people who know you. Cleveland has become a semi-ghost town. My brother, parents, teachers, most friends and former co-workers are dead. My niece and nephew are here and so are two of my oldest friends, the artists Gary and Laura Dumm. Gary and I met in...
Josh Thompson
Constraints Constraints are USUALLY seen in a negative light. Google defines it as: a limitation or...
over a year ago
24
over a year ago
Constraints are USUALLY seen in a negative light. Google defines it as: a limitation or restriction Here’s some example constraints that we find in the world around us, which we often view as an annoyance or frustration: I have to be to work by 9a I have to get up at 7a I have...