Anecdotal Evidence
'When We Have Excellent Books, They Sell'
“People tell
us all the time that civilization is finished, that the world is coming to an
end. But...
4 months ago
“People tell
us all the time that civilization is finished, that the world is coming to an
end. But then we look at our sales details and we smile.”
John Byron
Kuhner posts a rare dispatch of hope from the world of books, the beating heart
of what remains of our civilization. In...
The American Scholar
“Death Fugue” by Paul Celan
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Death Fugue” by Paul Celan appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Death Fugue” by Paul Celan appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Typing in Colemac 2.0
I want to learn to type in Colemak, but I’m afraid to try to invest twenty hours in it. That’s a...
over a year ago
I want to learn to type in Colemak, but I’m afraid to try to invest twenty hours in it. That’s a long commitment, and I’m afraid I would not follow through, and feel like it was a failure, because I didn’t allot enough time, nor reach a desired level of skill.
My hope is that as...
The American Scholar
Bards Behind Bars
Reading Sartre aloud inside a maximum-security prison
The post Bards Behind Bars appeared first on...
7 months ago
Reading Sartre aloud inside a maximum-security prison
The post Bards Behind Bars appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Were Nothing in Ourselves Nothing More'
“[H]e gave
us some of the best poems of our times. And, after all, one must thank a man
for what he...
a year ago
“[H]e gave
us some of the best poems of our times. And, after all, one must thank a man
for what he has done and not condemn him for his failures.”
A timely,
guilt-inducing reminder. It’s easy to scold a writer for not producing a masterpiece
each time he goes to work. Good...
Josh Thompson
OK, some new books
Yesterday, I proclaimed “
No new books”. I spent a lot of time today thinking about that...
over a year ago
Yesterday, I proclaimed “
No new books”. I spent a lot of time today thinking about that proclamation.
Do I really want to limit myself to just the books that I’ve already picked for myself?
Yes. Maybe.
There’s a kind of book I don’t want to read any more of. That’s the “get...
Josh Thompson
Change
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Or something like that. Sometimes change is for...
over a year ago
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Or something like that. Sometimes change is for the better, and sometimes its for the worse. I don’t know if there’s always a difference.
Recently, Kristi and I have seen lots of change; I’d say its for the better, but it’s not...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Learning Is Not Defunct in the Republic'
“As you
probably don’t read National Review,
I enclose proof that learning is not defunct in the...
3 months ago
“As you
probably don’t read National Review,
I enclose proof that learning is not defunct in the Republic. Buckley had
printed a note . . . praising Waugh’s delightful whimsy in coining a nonsense
phrase like tohu bohu. Catholics tend
not to have read a word of Holy Writ.”
I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Well-known Types of Miracle'
It’s grim
out there and getting grimmer. Two poems encountered on the same day provided a
touch of...
8 months ago
It’s grim
out there and getting grimmer. Two poems encountered on the same day provided a
touch of buoyancy. The first was originally written in Russian by Vladimir
Nabokov on May 6, 1923:
“No, life is
no quivering quandary!
Here under
the moon things are bright and dewy.
We are...
Anecdotal Evidence
'All These Jolts of Beauty'
Once I
interviewed a mycologist who, before his lecture, removed a yellow mushroom
from an oak tree...
a month ago
Once I
interviewed a mycologist who, before his lecture, removed a yellow mushroom
from an oak tree in front of the hall where he was speaking and munched on it
while he spoke. A few years later the writer Paul Metcalf, author of Genoa (1965), swore me to secrecy before
revealing...
The American Scholar
A Ray of Sunshine
The post A Ray of Sunshine appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
The post A Ray of Sunshine appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Doubly Parasocial Relationships
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Stubborn Consistency [100 daily blog posts]
over a year 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
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...
sbensu
Payments vs Transfers
Transfer means to move money but payment means "exchanging goods or services". A payment system has...
a year ago
Transfer means to move money but payment means "exchanging goods or services". A payment system has a lot more requirements than a transfer system and I rarely see the crypto ecosystem acknowledge these when building "payment" products.
Josh Thompson
Typing for Programmers
If you had to distill my ability to bring value to those around me, it would be “Josh types good”.
I...
over a year ago
If you had to distill my ability to bring value to those around me, it would be “Josh types good”.
I can press these magical little keys on this little metal box here, and make these words come out.
If you’re reading these words, you don’t care how these words actually got on...
The Elysian
Your ideas for improving capitalism
A collection of responses to my writing prompt.
2 months ago
A collection of responses to my writing prompt.
Wuthering...
The Story of the Stone, fairy tale and realism - Not so wonderful, really, is it?
I left the characters of The Story of the Stone as
they were buying drapes and tablecloths for a...
2 months ago
I left the characters of The Story of the Stone as
they were buying drapes and tablecloths for a party. I will rejoin the party planning momentarily.
The Story of the Stone is a massive domestic novel
about an extended family. The main plot
is the teenage love triangle, but...
Blog -...
Book Review - Owning Your Own Shadow
The shadow of the human psyche cannot be overlooked in a thorough
exploration of personal...
over a year ago
The shadow of the human psyche cannot be overlooked in a thorough
exploration of personal development. According to the classic resource
Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche, “The
shadow is that which has not entered adequately into...
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
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...
The Marginalian
The Courage to Be Yourself: Virginia Woolf on How to Hear Your Soul
"Beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme difficulty of being oneself."
a year ago
"Beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme difficulty of being oneself."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Comfort, Solace, Inspiration'
“A few
books, however,” writes Michael Dirda, “become lifelong companions, works we
regularly turn...
a year ago
“A few
books, however,” writes Michael Dirda, “become lifelong companions, works we
regularly turn to for comfort, solace, inspiration.” The reviewer identifies a slightly
different category, “the books we find ourselves crazy about and hope to
revisit someday,” as distinguished,...
Josh Thompson
Ruby Tutorial 001
I’m playing with
Michael Hartl’s
Learn Enough Ruby book.
I’ll throw basic things I learn along the...
over a year ago
I’m playing with
Michael Hartl’s
Learn Enough Ruby book.
I’ll throw basic things I learn along the way on here.
A good starting point is using your command line. I use
iTerm2 for my terminal instead of the default Terminal installation.
To get up and running in your terminal,...
Josh Thompson
Krav Maga, or "Crush Balls, Gouge Eyes, and Break Bones"
In the last few weeks, I have been physically attacked dozens of times. Usually the attacker was...
over a year ago
In the last few weeks, I have been physically attacked dozens of times. Usually the attacker was just trying to choke me, but sometimes he was trying to throw me to the ground. After a few minutes of fighting, I would attack him. Then we’d both shake hands, say “thank you”, and...
The Marginalian
A Parliament of Owls and a Murder of Crows: How Groups of Birds Got Their Names, with Wondrous...
Language is an instrument of great precision and poignancy — our best tool for telling each other...
12 months ago
Language is an instrument of great precision and poignancy — our best tool for telling each other what the world is and what we are, for conveying the blueness of blue and the wonder of being alive. But it is also a thing of great pliancy and creativity — a living reminder that...
This Space
39 Books: Introducing a blog series
In 1985, I read two books. The following year I read a lot more, and it was then I began to keep a...
8 months ago
In 1985, I read two books. The following year I read a lot more, and it was then I began to keep a list of each book I finished. I've kept the list ever since. In this blog series I will choose one book from each of the 39 years and write whatever occurs to me and post whatever...
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
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...
Astral Codex Ten
H5N1: Much More Than You Wanted To Know
Don't give your true love a partridge, turtledoves, or (especially) French hens
2 days ago
Don't give your true love a partridge, turtledoves, or (especially) French hens
Wuthering...
Books I read in September 2024 - Boring books had their origin in boring readers
My reading took an interesting Russian turn that I will
write about, soon, tomorrow, there, I said...
3 months ago
My reading took an interesting Russian turn that I will
write about, soon, tomorrow, there, I said it out loud so maybe I will really
do it.
November is Norwegian month at Dolce Bellezza. I will be joining her by reading at least the
first novel, The Other Name (2019), of Jon...
Josh Thompson
Some Lessons Learned While Preparing for Two Technical Talks
A few weeks ago, I gave two talks about Ruby and Rails:
An 8-minute lightning talk about using...
over a year ago
A few weeks ago, I gave two talks about Ruby and Rails:
An 8-minute lightning talk about using .count vs .size in ActiveRecord query methods
A 30-minute talk at the Boulder Ruby Group arguing that developers should embrace working with non-development business functions, and the...
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 356.5
...
a month ago
The Marginalian
Birds, Loves, and Obscure Sorrows: The Best of The Marginalian 2024
Hindsight is how we connect the dots that figure our lives. To look back on even a single year is to...
a week ago
Hindsight is how we connect the dots that figure our lives. To look back on even a single year is to see clearly the contour of who we are in its points of attention and priority. “How we spend our days,” Annie Dillard wrote, “is how we spend our lives.” How we spend our minds is...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Successfully Pretend I Am a Human Being'
A longtime
reader is convinced we are enduring an imagination deficit. “Everywhere,” she
writes, “I...
10 months ago
A longtime
reader is convinced we are enduring an imagination deficit. “Everywhere,” she
writes, “I see clichés taking over. Obviously in public life with politicians
and journalists. That’s nothing new but in the arts too, music and writing.
It’s as though AI created them.” No...
Steven Scrawls
Maybe your desires are delusional
Maybe your desires are
delusional
The vast majority of my desires are not the reasonable desires...
8 months ago
Maybe your desires are
delusional
The vast majority of my desires are not the reasonable desires that I
had once believed them to be. They’re actually completely delusional
desires dressed up in shoddy “reasonable desire” costumes, and I’ve just
been pretending not to notice.
How...
The Marginalian
Albert Camus on Writing and the Importance of Stubbornness in Creative Work
"There is no greatness without a little stubbornness... Works of art are not born in flashes of...
a year ago
"There is no greatness without a little stubbornness... Works of art are not born in flashes of inspiration but in a daily fidelity."
sbensu
But I want to turn people into dinosaurs
Beware of what you actually want.
5 months ago
Beware of what you actually want.
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
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.
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...
2 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.
The Marginalian
Grace Paley on the Countercultural Courage of Imagining Other Lives
“Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real,” Iris...
5 months ago
“Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real,” Iris Murdoch wrote in her superb investigation of the parallels between art and morality. There could be no such realization without imagination, which is our only instrument for fathoming...
The American Scholar
Riding With Mr. Washington
How my great-grandfather invented himself at the end of Reconstruction
The post Riding With Mr....
4 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
Habits, Milestones, and Climbing
Since April 9th, I have spent exactly 70 minutes training for climbing. Prior to April 27th, I have...
over a year ago
Since April 9th, I have spent exactly 70 minutes training for climbing. Prior to April 27th, I have climbed exactly seven times in the last five months.
I just spent two days at the New River Gorge and exceeded my expectations, considering my almost half-year hiatus from regular...
Josh Thompson
`ls` command to show directory contents
I like to use the tree command on my local machine when trying to peek into the structure and...
over a year ago
I like to use the tree command on my local machine when trying to peek into the structure and contents of a given directory.
tree -L 2
will [L]ist recursively everything [2] levels deep from your current directory. The output is nicely formatted like this:
> tree -L 2
.
├──...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Open-ended Project'
Two writers
separated by language, experience and two and a half centuries make...
10 months ago
Two writers
separated by language, experience and two and a half centuries make complementary
observations about memory. Here is Dr. Johnson in The Idler essay he published on this date, February 17, in 1759:
“The two
offices of memory are collection and distribution; by one...
The American Scholar
Paolo Arao
Acts of devotion
The post Paolo Arao appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
Acts of devotion
The post Paolo Arao appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Catalina Schliebener Muñoz
Playing with dolls
The post Catalina Schliebener Muñoz appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
Playing with dolls
The post Catalina Schliebener Muñoz appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
Let's read the Terra Ignota series together
Our summer reading is Ada Palmer's feat of utopian worldbuilding.
6 months ago
Our summer reading is Ada Palmer's feat of utopian worldbuilding.
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
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Other Thermopylae, the Alamo'
A reader asks for impressions of Texas, a place
she, a lifelong Northerner, has never visited....
7 months ago
A reader asks for impressions of Texas, a place
she, a lifelong Northerner, has never visited. Twenty years ago last month I
saw Texas for the first time, and the first surprise, seen from the air, was
abundant greenery. I was expecting desert and tumbleweeds. Houston is...
Ben Borgers
Streaks Are Extremely Powerful
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Gratitude 3x/day
Earlier this year, I read
The Miracle Morning, which promises (paraphrasing here):
If you do these...
over a year ago
Earlier this year, I read
The Miracle Morning, which promises (paraphrasing here):
If you do these seven things every morning you’ll be the most amazing person you’ve ever met.
OK, it’s not exactly that bold, but it’s not far off. It wasn’t a terrible book, it had lots of good...
Anecdotal Evidence
'With All Its Philistinism and Coarseness'
My roommate freshman year was
the son of a Slovak father and an Austrian mother who had emigrated to...
2 months ago
My roommate freshman year was
the son of a Slovak father and an Austrian mother who had emigrated to the U.S.
after World War II. Mike was trilingual from birth, without an accent unless it
was a Cleveland accent that I couldn’t hear because it was mine as well. His
tastes often...
This Space
Favourite books 2020
Every time Dennis Cooper posts his favorite (sic) fiction and non-fiction of the year, it alone...
over a year ago
Every time Dennis Cooper posts his favorite (sic) fiction and non-fiction of the year, it alone exceeds the number of books I'm able to read in a year let alone the number from which it was presumably narrowed down. This is why I suggested a couple of years ago such pages choose...
Josh Thompson
My terminal setup
note: this is a draft. Please ping me in slack/email with questions, spots where this is unclear....
over a year ago
note: this is a draft. Please ping me in slack/email with questions, spots where this is unclear. I’ll answer your question, and update this post.
Here’s some quick notes on how I have my terminal setup.
First, I use Zsh. If you’re on a new Macbook Pro, you also are using...
Ben Borgers
War Room — using the native date picker
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Bright, Cheerful, Salubrious Hell'
Max
Beerbohm’s first radio broadcast, delivered on December 29, 1935, is titled
“London Revisited.”...
a year ago
Max
Beerbohm’s first radio broadcast, delivered on December 29, 1935, is titled
“London Revisited.” He celebrates the city of his birth (in 1872) and youth –
the Edwardian era – and implicitly critiques the London of the interbellum
years:
“London has been
cosmopolitanised,...
The Marginalian
The Other Significant Others: Living and Loving Outside the Confines of Conventional Friendship and...
"While we weaken friendships by expecting too little of them, we undermine romantic relationships by...
10 months ago
"While we weaken friendships by expecting too little of them, we undermine romantic relationships by expecting too much of them."
Wuthering...
Books I Read in June 2023
If only I had the will to write something. But I can read.
PHILOSOPHY
Fragments or Sayings or...
a year ago
If only I had the will to write something. But I can read.
PHILOSOPHY
Fragments or Sayings or Tall Tales (4th
C. BCE), Diogenes the Cynic, tr. Guy Davenport
Cynics (2008), William Desmond - for an entry in a series aimed at students, surprisingly well written. It helps that...
Josh Thompson
Talent is Overrated
Talent is Overrated
In Talent is Overrated, the author argues that world-class performers are not...
over a year ago
Talent is Overrated
In Talent is Overrated, the author argues that world-class performers are not genetically gifted. The difference between world-class performers and the rest of us? Lots of deliberate practice. (Read the article.)
I have no interest in becoming Mozart, or Tiger...
The Elysian
Idea Labs! An open thread for collaborative worldbuilding
Let's brainstorm the future together.
9 months ago
Let's brainstorm the future together.
Josh Thompson
Cultivate the Skill of Undivided Attention, or 'Deep Work' (Crosspost from...
Dan Moore is always welcoming to guest authors; he accepted something I wrote: Cultivate the Skill...
over a year ago
Dan Moore is always welcoming to guest authors; he accepted something I wrote: Cultivate the Skill of Undivided Attention, or “Deep Work” (Letters to a New Developer). It ended up on Hacker News with 100 comments. I wrote this back in December 2019, forgot to post here until...
The Marginalian
Poetic Ecology and the Biology of Wonder
"The real disconnect is not between our human nature and all the other beings; it is between our...
a year ago
"The real disconnect is not between our human nature and all the other beings; it is between our image of our nature and our real nature."
This Space
A rare sort of writer
Today is Gabriel Josipovici's 80th birthday. To mark the occasion, I'll link to various posts I've...
over a year ago
Today is Gabriel Josipovici's 80th birthday. To mark the occasion, I'll link to various posts I've written over the years – after a brief interlude.
I read him first in July 1988 after borrowing The Lessons of Modernism from the second floor of Portsmouth Central Library because...
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
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...
Josh Thompson
Letter to Two Climbers (Part 1)
Hello!
We met recently. (I gave Justin tape after he cut his toe and didn’t have a bandaid.)
You and...
over a year ago
Hello!
We met recently. (I gave Justin tape after he cut his toe and didn’t have a bandaid.)
You and your partner were climbing a route near me and my partner. One of you (I’ll call Charles, because he had a British accent) was trying
so hard to figure out some moves high above...
The Marginalian
How to Bear Your Loneliness: Grounding Wisdom from the Great Buddhist Teacher Pema Chödrön
"We are cheating ourselves when we run away from the ambiguity of loneliness."
a year ago
"We are cheating ourselves when we run away from the ambiguity of loneliness."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Go to the Bookcase'
I heard an
echo in something I wrote the other day, a dependent clause, inconsequential in
itself....
a month ago
I heard an
echo in something I wrote the other day, a dependent clause, inconsequential in
itself. It nagged me, like a commercial jingle from fifty years ago playing in my
head. The harder I dredged to recover the source, the deeper it sank. I let go
and an hour later it bubbled...
Anecdotal Evidence
'At the Center of Our Mediterranean Civilization'
My youngest
son, age twenty-one, is spending much of his summer in Paris as part of a
university...
6 months ago
My youngest
son, age twenty-one, is spending much of his summer in Paris as part of a
university study program. He’ll be a senior in the fall. I first visited Paris (and
Europe) in 1973, age twenty, and stayed in a hotel on the Rue de Maubeuge, 10th
arrondissement. Headlines in...
The American Scholar
The Rescuer
In search of the Underground Railroad’s legendary conductor
The post The Rescuer appeared first on...
7 months ago
In search of the Underground Railroad’s legendary conductor
The post The Rescuer appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Find Other Things Which We Liked Better'
One night in the spring of 1766, Boswell and Goldsmith visited Dr. Johnson unannounced and
asked if...
10 months ago
One night in the spring of 1766, Boswell and Goldsmith visited Dr. Johnson unannounced and
asked if he wished to join them at the Mitre Tavern on Fleet Street in London.
Johnson was “indisposed” and Goldsmith said, “[W]e will not go to the Mitre to-night,
since we cannot have the...
The Marginalian
A Stone Is a Story: An Illustrated Love Letter to Deep Time and Earth’s Memory
We are denizens of an enormous pebble drifting through the cosmic ocean of pure spacetime — a planet...
a year ago
We are denizens of an enormous pebble drifting through the cosmic ocean of pure spacetime — a planet made a world largely by its rockiness. Rock gave us mountains and beaches, bridges and kitchen countertops, gave us the first Promethean fire that sparked civilization. A rock is...
The Marginalian
Alain de Botton on the Qualities of a Healthy Mind
"A healthy mind knows how to hope; it identifies and then hangs on tenaciously to a few reasons to...
a year ago
"A healthy mind knows how to hope; it identifies and then hangs on tenaciously to a few reasons to keep going."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Make Memory Speak so Volubly'
A reader
shares with me her first reading of two books she knows I value highly. First,...
a year ago
A reader
shares with me her first reading of two books she knows I value highly. First, Kipling’s
Kim: “I was
twelve. I was very interested in ‘spiritual’ things. It was the Beatles and the
Maharishi, you know. I got it from the library and it was love at first sight.
I...
The Marginalian
Mars and Our Search for Meaning: A Planetary Scientist’s Love Letter to Life
"It is the search for infinity, the search for evidence that our capacious universe might hold life...
a year ago
"It is the search for infinity, the search for evidence that our capacious universe might hold life elsewhere, in a different place or at a different time or in a different form."
Escaping Flatland
On having more interesting ideas
“To write well, all you have to do is cultivate your mind and then write what you see.” When I talk...
7 months ago
“To write well, all you have to do is cultivate your mind and then write what you see.” When I talk to people who have worked with their ideas seriously for 10+ years, it feels like I can throw any topic on them and they’ll have an interesting idea, or if not an idea so at least...
Wuthering...
Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles - indeed his end / Was wonderful if ever mortal’s was
Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles is one of the plays that got me excited about the entire project of...
over a year ago
Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles is one of the plays that got me excited about the entire project of reading or re-reading the complete plays. The last surviving tragedy, even if it hardly recognizable as a tragedy, it provides a coherent ending to the tragic tradition. It is...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Whole Hog Barbecu'd!'
I was
surprised to see that Alexander Pope was familiar with the most popular cuisine
served in...
3 months ago
I was
surprised to see that Alexander Pope was familiar with the most popular cuisine
served in Texas: barbecue. You’ll find his reference in “The Second Satire in the Second Book of Horace Paraphrased”:
“Oldfield,
with more than Harpy throat endu’d,
Cries, ‘send
me, Gods! a...
The American Scholar
Imperfecta
Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the...
6 months ago
Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the emerging era of gene editing
The post Imperfecta appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'What She or He Ought to Know'
In a
typically mordant essay, “A Great Fog Over the Past,” Peter Hitchens cites “Spanish Waters,” a...
4 months ago
In a
typically mordant essay, “A Great Fog Over the Past,” Peter Hitchens cites “Spanish Waters,” a poem by John Masefield, one of the first poets I claimed as my own
when a boy, years before Eliot and Yeats. The poem’s “decrepit beggar,” as Hitchens
puts it, “knows where the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'As a Whole It Is a Gallimaufry'
“[O]ne is
tempted—though it might be dangerous—to maintain that the best books in the
world were...
10 months ago
“[O]ne is
tempted—though it might be dangerous—to maintain that the best books in the
world were written chiefly for pleasure and with an after-hope to please.”
Things get
sticky when you start plumbing a writer’s intentions. Let’s just say that a dwindling
species of serious...
Josh Thompson
The Housing Market Is Absolutely Insane: How To Fix It
I had a brief exchange with a good friend recently:
The housing market is indeed insane. This...
over a year ago
I had a brief exchange with a good friend recently:
The housing market is indeed insane. This problem that we’re both discussing is:
Unbelievable ($650,000 for a fixer upper)
Oppressive (“unjustly inflicting hardship and constraint, especially on a minority or other subordinate...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Minute Passage of Private Life'
A young reader asks “Why ‘anecdotal’?” It was a last-minute decision
that Sunday afternoon almost...
a year ago
A young reader asks “Why ‘anecdotal’?” It was a last-minute decision
that Sunday afternoon almost eighteen years ago. I had it narrowed down to
three or four potential titles but liked the legal/criminological connotation
of “anecdotal evidence,” which is always judged suspect by...
Ben Borgers
Customer Rewards Programs
over a year ago
ben-mini
Root Canals and Bill Gates
In Finding Nemo, there was a scene about a root canal surgery that absolutely terrified me:
This...
6 months ago
In Finding Nemo, there was a scene about a root canal surgery that absolutely terrified me:
This could just be me, but I spent a remarkable amount of my childhood worrying about root canals. Horror stories like these created a universal phobia that dentists suck and that’s...
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
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...
Ben Borgers
I want to use all of my ridiculously many meal swipes
over a year ago
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
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:...
The Marginalian
How to Have Enough: Wendell Berry on Creativity and Love
“Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily...
2 weeks ago
“Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily Dickinson sighed in one of her love letters to Susan an epoch before Kurt Vonnegut, in a short and lovely poem, distilled happiness to the knowledge that you have enough. It is not an...
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
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...
Josh Thompson
Recommended Reading
I’ve read many books over the years. Thousands. Here’s a few that I find myself...
7 months ago
I’ve read many books over the years. Thousands. Here’s a few that I find myself referencing/recommending.Periodically, I refresh this list. It’s changed over the years years.
the list you are about to read is heavily reworked, based off this older list:...
The American Scholar
All in Your Head
The post All in Your Head appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The post All in Your Head appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Paths In Which I Am Interested
this is still in draft status
this page serves as a placeholder for various paths I’m interested...
6 months ago
this is still in draft status
this page serves as a placeholder for various paths I’m interested in.
I hope to bring attention to “linear parks”, or a park that functions more in size and shape to a street, crossing blocks of distance, but maintaining park vibes throughout.
Path...
The American Scholar
The Challenge
The post The Challenge appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
The post The Challenge appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
How Emotions Are Made
"Emotions are not reactions to the world; they are your constructions of the world."
10 months ago
"Emotions are not reactions to the world; they are your constructions of the world."
ribbonfarm
Covid and Noun-Memory Effects
Ever since I got a bout of Covid a couple of years ago (late 2022), I’ve noticed memory problems of...
6 months ago
Ever since I got a bout of Covid a couple of years ago (late 2022), I’ve noticed memory problems of a very specific sort: Difficulty remembering names. Especially people names, but also other sorts of proper nouns. This is especially marked when it comes to remembering names of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'These Pieces of Moral Prose'
“Where did
you get your humility? I thought that was an extinct virtue.”
Creating
anything...
7 months ago
“Where did
you get your humility? I thought that was an extinct virtue.”
Creating
anything worthwhile, whether joke, villanelle or pot of lentil soup, calls
for pride and humility. Pride because one presumes to add to the world’s bounty
and impose it on others; humility because...
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
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...
This Space
Proust regained
I recommend very highly for anyone who has read or not read In Search of Lost Time Brian Nelson's...
a year ago
I recommend very highly for anyone who has read or not read In Search of Lost Time Brian Nelson's The Swann Way, the first volume in a new translation of the entire novel by diverse hands, in this fine paperback from Oxford World's Classics. His translation of the chapter Swann...
The Perry Bible...
Invasion
The post Invasion appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
a month ago
The post Invasion appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
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
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
Preparing to adopt a habit
There are many habits I wish I had. More times than I can count, I have tried to get up early. I...
over a year ago
There are many habits I wish I had. More times than I can count, I have tried to get up early. I faithfully set my alarm for some crack-of-dawn time that leaves me with a reasonable amount of sleep, but gives me time to myself before I have to get ready for work.
Almost as many...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Title Is Apt and Not a Whit Pretentious'
I hadn’t
opened my copy of Raymond Sokolov’s Wayward
Reporter: The Life of A.J. Liebling (Harper and...
3 weeks ago
I hadn’t
opened my copy of Raymond Sokolov’s Wayward
Reporter: The Life of A.J. Liebling (Harper and Row, 1980) in a long time.
It’s a rather skimpy biography, though the only one we have, so I hope someone,
someday writes a life worthy of Liebling’s gifts. When I was a...
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
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...
Wuthering...
Books I Read in May 2023
I had a good time.
GREEK PHILOSOPHY
The Nicomachean Ethics (4th C. BCE), Aristotle - a post,...
a year ago
I had a good time.
GREEK PHILOSOPHY
The Nicomachean Ethics (4th C. BCE), Aristotle - a post, however shallow, should appear soon.
FICTION
Joseph in Egypt (1936), Thomas Mann
The Long Valley (1938)
&
The Grapes of Wrath (1939), John Steinbeck - I last read this probably...
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
“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...
Anecdotal Evidence
‘A Pocket Universe’
We lost power again around noon Saturday. No idea when it will be restored. Here is “The Next Book,”...
7 months ago
We lost power again around noon Saturday. No idea when it will be restored. Here is “The Next Book,” a 1969 poem by James Hayford (Star in the Shed Window: Collected Poems 1933-1988, New England Press, 1989):
“May the next book you read
Be what you need—
“A pocket...
The Elysian
Please come up with wildly speculative futures
Inside my writing philosophy.
9 months ago
Inside my writing philosophy.
The American Scholar
“Snake” by D. H. Lawrence
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Snake” by D. H. Lawrence appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Snake” by D. H. Lawrence appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Work of Art: Inside the Creative Process of Beloved Artists, Poets, Musicians, and Other Makes...
“The true artist,” Beethoven wrote in his touching letter of advice to a young girl aspiring to be...
8 months ago
“The true artist,” Beethoven wrote in his touching letter of advice to a young girl aspiring to be an artist, “is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.” The choreographer Martha Graham called this particular shade of...
Escaping Flatland
Authenticity as dialogue
John Stuart Mill, notetaking, rationality, and emotion
a month ago
John Stuart Mill, notetaking, rationality, and emotion
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
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.
Ben Borgers
How Recurring Tasks in War Room Work
over 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
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'You Must Start Rewriting in Your Head'
“Rhythm is
never effortless. To achieve it, you must start rewriting in your head and then
continue...
10 months ago
“Rhythm is
never effortless. To achieve it, you must start rewriting in your head and then
continue rewriting on the page. The hallmark of a seductive style is to extend
natural speech rhythm over the distance of a complex sentence.”
When I
applied for my first job on a...
Wuthering...
Books finished in March 2023
For some reason I have been putting a monthly account of completed books on Twitter, where it is a...
a year ago
For some reason I have been putting a monthly account of completed books on Twitter, where it is a common practice, although mostly with photographs of book stacks. I am not sure why I have not put the lists here as well. I guess I am not sure any of this is interesting.
Soon,...
Josh Thompson
Monthly Review: November
This is my second monthly review, and I’m hooked.
I’ve thought this coming review frequently, but I...
over a year ago
This is my second monthly review, and I’m hooked.
I’ve thought this coming review frequently, but I thought about that as I was conducting my month. This proactive review is in line with
Viktor Frankl’s admonition to “live every day as if it were your second chance to live it.”...
Josh Thompson
December Review, January Goals
This is a follow-up from last month’s goals
1. Deepen Knowledge of Back-end Development
I finished...
over a year ago
This is a follow-up from last month’s goals
1. Deepen Knowledge of Back-end Development
I finished OverTheWire’s Bandit series, except the last lesson, which didn’t make sense. (It does now! Turns out login shells and “regular” shells are different. I’ll take another spin at it...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Goddam Stone Wall You Butt Your Head Into'
Aging feels like playing the role of a generic Old
Guy on the stage. It’s a performance, not a...
7 hours ago
Aging feels like playing the role of a generic Old
Guy on the stage. It’s a performance, not a chronological state. I can slough
it off any time I wish. Such is the power of delusion. I retire today. On
Thursday I went to the police department on campus to get my retiree’s ID...
The Marginalian
God, Human, Animal, Machine: Consciousness and Our Search for Meaning in the Age of Artificial...
An inquiry into the eternal enchantment of why the world exists.
a year ago
An inquiry into the eternal enchantment of why the world exists.
This Space
39 Books: 1985
The first novel I read was Twice Shy by Dick Francis, reportedly the Queen Mother's favourite...
8 months ago
The first novel I read was Twice Shy by Dick Francis, reportedly the Queen Mother's favourite novelist (which tells you all you need to know about the intellectual energies of British Royal Family). It was the hardback edition below and tells the story of an Olympic champion...
Wuthering...
Thou hast devourd thy sonnes - some notes on Seneca's horror plays
My Seneca reading in March:
Medea, tr. Frederick Ahl
The Trojan Women, tr. E. F. Watling
Thyestes,...
a year ago
My Seneca reading in March:
Medea, tr. Frederick Ahl
The Trojan Women, tr. E. F. Watling
Thyestes, tr. Jasper Heywood
Hercules Furens, tr. Heywood
The Madness of Hercules, tr. Dana Gioia
The plays themselves are all from the mid-1st century,
perhaps written when Seneca was in...
Josh Thompson
Lay a foundation
Yesterday I mentioned that
low friction goals are an advantage over “high friction” goals.
This is...
over a year ago
Yesterday I mentioned that
low friction goals are an advantage over “high friction” goals.
This is just another way of saying “easy things are easier to do than harder things”. Revelatory, I know.
Similarly,
I wrote a long time ago that:
We tell ourselves we can’t accomplish...
The Elysian
Writing Prompt: Fix Capitalism
By September 30th.
4 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Moved—Stopp’d--Shall I Go On?—No'
The
professor asked me to write a paper on Tristram
Shandy, the novel she had introduced to us in...
a month ago
The
professor asked me to write a paper on Tristram
Shandy, the novel she had introduced to us in her eighteenth-century English
fiction class. It was her favorite novel. Its bawdy humor matched her own. For
me it was love at first sight – for the novel, I mean. I was already a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Obscuration of the Luminaries of Heaven'
In 1963, our
street in a suburb on the West Side of Cleveland was still unpaved and the...
8 months ago
In 1963, our
street in a suburb on the West Side of Cleveland was still unpaved and the city
periodically coated it with tar. Rain fell on the morning of July 20 but by late
afternoon the skies had cleared and all that remained of the rain were puddles
in the water-proof street....
The Elysian
Mondragon as the new City-State
This cooperative could be its own country.
4 months ago
This cooperative could be its own country.
The Marginalian
Between Matter and Spirit: Psychoanalyst Allen Wheelis on the Substance of What We Are
"We are carriers of spirit... into a future unknown, unknowable, and in continual creation."
a year ago
"We are carriers of spirit... into a future unknown, unknowable, and in continual creation."
Josh Thompson
Three Android Apps I Use Every Day (and maybe you'll use them too)
I’m not here to talk about Twitter and Instagram, which… I use too much. Lets talk about things that...
over a year ago
I’m not here to talk about Twitter and Instagram, which… I use too much. Lets talk about things that make my life better, and might do the same for you.
(If you’re an iPhone user, just Google for the iOS version of the following tools. They’re all out there)
Rewire App:...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Magnetism, an Ardor, a Refusal to Be False'
“It’s
against his nature to be a critic—he is too grateful.”
That’s from one
of Elias Canetti’s...
2 months ago
“It’s
against his nature to be a critic—he is too grateful.”
That’s from one
of Elias Canetti’s notebooks, collected in Notes
from Hampstead (trans. John Hargraves, 1998). While I admire the work of a
handful of critics – Dryden, Johnson, Winters, Cunningham, a few others –...
Josh Thompson
Waking Up Early 2.0
A few months ago, I wrote about
waking up early.
I tracked my progress for almost a month, and most...
over a year ago
A few months ago, I wrote about
waking up early.
I tracked my progress for almost a month, and most of the days I woke up between 4:45 and 6:00. My “must be up by” time is 7:30a, so waking up more than an hour and a half early counts as a huge win.
From mid-may until June 7, I...
Wuthering...
Books I read, and desks I saw, in July - hoping he might tell me, / tell me what the waves don't...
Right, July, July, so long ago. I was on the road a little bit, making
literary pilgrimages. ...
4 months ago
Right, July, July, so long ago. I was on the road a little bit, making
literary pilgrimages. Pittsfield,
Massachusetts, for example, to Herman Melville’s Arrowhead:
On this spot, not at this exact desk but in front of this
exact window, Herman Melville wrote Moby-Dick,...
The Marginalian
Are You Living a Fairy Tale, a Novel, or a Poem?
When reality fissures along the fault line of our expectations and the unwelcome happens — a death,...
5 months ago
When reality fissures along the fault line of our expectations and the unwelcome happens — a death, an abandonment, a promise broken, a kindness withheld — we tend to cope in one of two ways: We question our own sanity, assuming the outside world coherent and our response a form...
Josh Thompson
Customer Success: American Airlines Case Study
Continuing the theme of “what the heck do I do for work”,
I’m writing about Customer Success as I...
over a year ago
Continuing the theme of “what the heck do I do for work”,
I’m writing about Customer Success as I see it. My words are my own, I don’t speak for the industry as a whole, or even for Litmus. I’m just trying to sharpen my own thinking.
Last time, I argued that customer success is...
Wuthering...
Sōseki's Kokoro and two Tanizaki genre exercises - I resolved that I must live my life as if I were...
It is the 16th year of Dolce Bellezza’s remarkable Japanese Literature Challenge – in the old days...
a year ago
It is the 16th year of Dolce Bellezza’s remarkable Japanese Literature Challenge – in the old days for some reason we “challenged” people to read – which reminded me, as it often has, that I have never read anything by Natsumi Sōseki, the earliest of the greatest 20th century...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Sum of All the Losses'
Abraham Lincoln
was six feet, four inches tall, making him the tallest of U.S. presidents (LBJ
was...
a month ago
Abraham Lincoln
was six feet, four inches tall, making him the tallest of U.S. presidents (LBJ
was half an inch shorter). The crown of his trademark top hat – a stovepipe, it
was called -- measured twelve inches in height. Allowing for the silk hat settling on his head, the...
Astral Codex Ten
Book Review: From Bauhaus To Our House
...
a month ago
The American Scholar
The Source
The post The Source appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The post The Source appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Has Embalmed So Many Eminent Persons'
Over the
years I wrote thousands of pieces – hard news stories, features, columns,
obituaries,...
9 months ago
Over the
years I wrote thousands of pieces – hard news stories, features, columns,
obituaries, reviews of books, movies and music – for the newspapers where I
worked in Ohio, Indiana and New York. They’re clipped and saved in a chaotic file
cabinet. Most, I, like the rest of the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Wisdom As a Kind of Courtesy'
“[A]
reverence for the natural world, and a conviction that intelligent sanity is
both more...
a year ago
“[A]
reverence for the natural world, and a conviction that intelligent sanity is
both more difficult than unreflective complacency and more interesting than
madness.”
That’s how
the poet Dick Davis characterized the concerns of Janet Lewis and her husband Yvor
Winters in his...
ribbonfarm
Storytelling — Philosophical Stakes
Via the latest issue of Simon de la Rouviere’s excellent Scenes with Simon newsletter, I found a...
9 months ago
Via the latest issue of Simon de la Rouviere’s excellent Scenes with Simon newsletter, I found a video on good endings by Michael Arndt, screenwriter of Little Miss Sunshine, that basically answers the question I explored in Just Add Dinosaurs, where I argued that Matthew Dicks’...
Josh Thompson
12 Lessons Learned While Publishing Something Every Day for a Month
A month ago, I decided to publish something every day for at least thirty days.
I read a few others...
over a year ago
A month ago, I decided to publish something every day for at least thirty days.
I read a few others who did something similar, and discussed all the benefits. I’ve found myself struggling with creating something and then making it public. (Public here, on another project, or at...
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
“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...
Josh Thompson
Focus: One Thing at a Time
The pressure to be working on more than one thing at a time is enormous. This pressure comes from no...
over a year ago
The pressure to be working on more than one thing at a time is enormous. This pressure comes from no one but me. And before I dismiss this tendency as “proof that I work too hard”, I must take another tact. It comes from a need to satisfy my ego. It is much easier to say “I did...
The Marginalian
Hermann Hesse on Discovering the Soul Beneath the Self and the Key to Finding Peace
"Self-hate is really the same thing as sheer egoism, and in the long run breeds the same cruel...
10 months ago
"Self-hate is really the same thing as sheer egoism, and in the long run breeds the same cruel isolation and despair."
The American Scholar
In the Mushroom
True foraging isn’t the domain of the weekend warrior; it’s serious, serious business
The post In...
a month ago
True foraging isn’t the domain of the weekend warrior; it’s serious, serious business
The post In the Mushroom appeared first on The American Scholar.
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 most moving story of self-sacrifice in the history of science.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Taking Your Time, Angel of Death'
I like plain
speaking when it comes to death. Not needlessly harsh but direct and above all...
a month ago
I like plain
speaking when it comes to death. Not needlessly harsh but direct and above all unvarnished,
no flowers, closer to a coroner’s report than a greeting card. A well-meaning
reader has sent belated condolences for my brother’s death in August without
once using any of...
The Elysian
I built a castle to save the economy
You're welcome.
8 months ago
The American Scholar
Échame la Culpa
The post Échame la Culpa appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The post Échame la Culpa appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Punners and Rhymers Must Have the Last Word'
“I cannot
but think that we live in a bad age, / O
tempora, O mores! as ’tis in the adage.”
The...
3 months ago
“I cannot
but think that we live in a bad age, / O
tempora, O mores! as ’tis in the adage.”
The Latin
tag is proverbial, deriving from Cicero’s Catiline orations: “O times, O manners!”
It’s the template for all lamentations. Jonathan Swift is repeating it in the
opening lines of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Soil Must Have Been Prepared'
Tom Disch
took the title of his first collection of essays and reviews from “The Castle of...
a year ago
Tom Disch
took the title of his first collection of essays and reviews from “The Castle of Indolence” (1748), eighty-one Spenserian stanzas by the Scottish poet James
Thomson. The poem is a sort of mock-epical hymn to the Protestant work ethic, a virtue ably
represented by...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Caught the Christmas Beetle'
I understand
why people might be repelled by a poem titled “When We Were Kids.” A wallow...
a week ago
I understand
why people might be repelled by a poem titled “When We Were Kids.” A wallow in
nostalgia can prove deadly. But the language in Clive James’ twelve stanzas cataloging
an Australian childhood is exotic enough to interest this American reader,
apart from their poetic...
Ben Borgers
How I got scammed on Facebook Marketplace
a year ago
The Marginalian
How to Be More Alive: Hermann Hesse on Wonder and the Proper Aim of Education
"While wandering down the path of wonder, I briefly escape the world of separation and enter the...
a year ago
"While wandering down the path of wonder, I briefly escape the world of separation and enter the world of unity."
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
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...
sbensu
Enterprise sales meets product development
What I’ve learned from selling enterprises while developing a new product. This is less of a guide...
11 months ago
What I’ve learned from selling enterprises while developing a new product. This is less of a guide and more of a cautionary tale.
sbensu
Pricing APIs
Lessons from AWS S3 and others on how to price APIs.
11 months ago
Lessons from AWS S3 and others on how to price APIs.
Anecdotal Evidence
'More Talkative But Less Writative'
Lately I’ve been
reading the Swift/Pope correspondence. Long ago I adopted the author of Gulliver’s...
a year ago
Lately I’ve been
reading the Swift/Pope correspondence. Long ago I adopted the author of Gulliver’s Travels as the most useful
model for prose style in English. It’s not the only way to write but it’s the best
if we judge clarity the supreme virtue. Sloppy prose, unless...
The Marginalian
How to Apologize: Reflections on Forgiveness, Self-Forgiveness, and the Paradox of Doing the Right...
"It's permitted to receive solace for whatever you did or didn't do, pitiful, beautiful human."
a year ago
"It's permitted to receive solace for whatever you did or didn't do, pitiful, beautiful human."
The American Scholar
“To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing” by William Butler Yeats
The post “To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing” by William Butler Yeats appeared first on The...
a month ago
The post “To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing” by William Butler Yeats appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
3 months ago
Ives, music-making, and hope
The post The Power of the Common Soul appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
Books Read in June 2024 - "Why can't we steal the calm vegetable clairvoyance of these great rooted...
Three weeks in Portugal meant less and different reading.
FICTION
Wolf Solent (1929), John Cowper...
6 months ago
Three weeks in Portugal meant less and different reading.
FICTION
Wolf Solent (1929), John Cowper Powys – among the
most eccentric novels I have ever read, up there with his contemporaries D. H.
Lawrence and Ronald Firbank! I feel I
should write about it; I feel I should read...
The American Scholar
Katie Heller Saltoun
Tenderness and grit
The post Katie Heller Saltoun appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 weeks ago
Tenderness and grit
The post Katie Heller Saltoun appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
“I Have Had My Vision”
Three prompts
The post “I Have Had My Vision” appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
Three prompts
The post “I Have Had My Vision” appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Jaywalking: What, So What, What To Do
What Is “Jaywalking”
authors note: This feels very draft-y. There’s two distinct perspectives I note...
7 months ago
What Is “Jaywalking”
authors note: This feels very draft-y. There’s two distinct perspectives I note in my mind, as I write this. Some people might “believe in jaywalking” and view non-car-users as an underclass, and act in such a way that makes this belief manifestly obvious....
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
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Living Through Radical Change'
Ten years
ago, Joseph Epstein wrote to his friend Frederic Raphael:
“I have
myself long ago put...
8 months ago
Ten years
ago, Joseph Epstein wrote to his friend Frederic Raphael:
“I have
myself long ago put aside any thought about writing an autobiography. . . .
When I became, almost without conscious decision, a bookish and a scribbling
man, the larger sense of adventure went out of my...
This Space
The end of literature, part four
This tweet has been seen thousands of times since it was posted on the 82nd anniversary of Britain...
over a year ago
This tweet has been seen thousands of times since it was posted on the 82nd anniversary of Britain and France declaring war on Germany. Not that the coincidence means much. At least, no more than what the general population, interest and powerful mean here, or indeed what poetry...
The Marginalian
Terror, Tenderness, and the Paradoxes of Human Nature: How a Marmoset Saved Leonard and Virginia...
The most discomposing thing about people capable of monstrous acts is that they too enjoy art, they...
a year ago
The most discomposing thing about people capable of monstrous acts is that they too enjoy art, they too read to their children, they too can be moved to tears by music. The dissident poet Joseph Brodsky captured this as he contemplated the greatest antidote to evil, observing...
The American Scholar
The Next New Thing
In architecture, the gulf between the traditional and the modern seems wider than ever before
The...
7 months ago
In architecture, the gulf between the traditional and the modern seems wider than ever before
The post The Next New Thing appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Cosmogony of You
We live in a state of perpetual dissociation from the almost unbearable wonder of being alive....
a month ago
We live in a state of perpetual dissociation from the almost unbearable wonder of being alive. Wonder is always an edge state, its edge so sharp it threatens to rupture the mundane and sever us from what we mistake for reality — the TV, the townhouse, the trauma narrative. If we...
The Perry Bible...
Hacked
The post Hacked appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
9 months ago
The post Hacked appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
The Marginalian
Necessary Losses: The Life-Shaping Art of Letting Go
"We cannot deeply love anything without becoming vulnerable to loss. And we cannot become separate...
a year ago
"We cannot deeply love anything without becoming vulnerable to loss. And we cannot become separate people, responsible people, connected people, reflective people without some losing and leaving and letting go."
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Kind of Representative Figure of His Era'
We gave our sons
Hebrew names: Joshua, Michael, David. They roughly translate as “God is...
a year ago
We gave our sons
Hebrew names: Joshua, Michael, David. They roughly translate as “God is deliverance,”
“gift of God” and “beloved,” respectively. We are not Jewish and not linguists
but we like plain names rooted in tradition, names with an identifiable history
traceable, in this...
The American Scholar
Moondance
Experience the marvel that is
The post Moondance appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
Experience the marvel that is
The post Moondance appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
“What a Strange Path”
Three new prompts
The post “What a Strange Path” appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
Three new prompts
The post “What a Strange Path” appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
Some lesser works of Sōseki and Tanizaki - deep in the earth directly beneath Lady Kikyō’s toilet
Dolce Bellezza is running her 17th Japanese Literature Challenge. Amazing, well done, etc.
I read...
11 months ago
Dolce Bellezza is running her 17th Japanese Literature Challenge. Amazing, well done, etc.
I read some short works for it, which I will pile up here: three
short works by Natsume Sōseki, collected in a Tuttle volume that looks like it
is titled Ten Nights of Dream Hearing...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Also Did Not Hope'
Back to the
theme of non-specialization, of writer as generalist: “Next to
Montaigne, the rest of...
3 months ago
Back to the
theme of non-specialization, of writer as generalist: “Next to
Montaigne, the rest of the great intellectual figures of the sixteenth century,
the leaders of the Renaissance, of Humanism, of the Reformation, and of the
modern sciences, the men who created modern...
Ben Borgers
It's Fun to Do Things with Care
over a year ago
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
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...
Ben Borgers
The Day Should End at 3am
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Consciousness, Artificial Intelligence, and Our Search for Meaning: Oliver Sacks on ChatGPT, 30...
"We are not incoherent, a bundle of sensations, but a self, rising from experience, continually...
a year ago
"We are not incoherent, a bundle of sensations, but a self, rising from experience, continually growing and revised... Through experience, education, art, and life, we teach our brains to become unique. We learn to be individuals. This is a neurological learning as well as a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Build a House for Fools and Mad'
An entry dated
June 15, 1830 in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Table
Talk: “[Jonathan, not Taylor]...
7 months ago
An entry dated
June 15, 1830 in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Table
Talk: “[Jonathan, not Taylor] Swift
was anima Rabelaisii habitans in sicco,--the
soul of Rabelais dwelling in a dry place. Yet Swift was rare.”
Now there’s a
metaphor that sticks in the mind – “dwelling in a dry...
The Elysian
The Cooperatist Manifesto that inspired Mondragon
Father José María Arizmendiarrieta didn’t just imagine a better economic system, he built it.
2 months ago
Father José María Arizmendiarrieta didn’t just imagine a better economic system, he built it.
ben-mini
Making My SQL Skills Obsolete
Quick Update: I updated my domain to ben-mini.com! All old URLs and the RSS feed under...
a week ago
Quick Update: I updated my domain to ben-mini.com! All old URLs and the RSS feed under ben-mini.github.io will automatically redirect, so no changes are needed on your end.
By far, the most useful LLM app I’ve made is the Kibu Schema God:
I try not to make my posts too...
The Elysian
Hint #3
I'm publishing a new print collection in one week.
4 months ago
I'm publishing a new print collection in one week.
The Marginalian
The Universe and the Soul: Richard Jefferies on Nature as Prayer for Presence
How to grow "absorbed into the being or existence of the universe."
a year ago
How to grow "absorbed into the being or existence of the universe."
The American Scholar
“The Bird of Night” by Randall Jarrell
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Bird of Night” by Randall Jarrell appeared first on The...
3 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Bird of Night” by Randall Jarrell appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
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...
The Marginalian
How to Love Yourself and How to Love Another: A Playful and Poignant Vintage Illustrated Fable about...
The great problem of consciousness is that all it knows is itself, and only dimly. We can override...
a month ago
The great problem of consciousness is that all it knows is itself, and only dimly. We can override this elemental self-reference only with constant vigilance, reminding ourselves again and again as we forget over and over how difficult it is — how nigh impossible — to know what...
The Elysian
I’d rather have an investor than a publishing contract
In pursuit of a better book deal (and record deal and podcast deal...)
7 months ago
In pursuit of a better book deal (and record deal and podcast deal...)
This Space
39 Books: 1990
The first book I read in the 39 years of this series was a genre thriller, and I've read only two...
8 months ago
The first book I read in the 39 years of this series was a genre thriller, and I've read only two more since. The second one came along this year. In 1989, I got a temporary job in the archives of the Royal Navy Submarine Museum where I met Carl Erlewyn-Lajeunesse, an...
The Marginalian
The Unphotographable: Richard Adams on the Singular Magic of Autumn
There is a lovely liminality to autumn — this threshold time between the centripetal exuberance of...
2 months ago
There is a lovely liminality to autumn — this threshold time between the centripetal exuberance of summer and the season for tending to the inner garden, as Rilke wrote of winter. Autumn is a living metaphor for the necessary losses that shape our human lives: What falls away...
The American Scholar
The Writing on the Wall
Augustine Sedgewick on his discovery of Henry David Thoreau’s connection to slavery
The post The...
2 months ago
Augustine Sedgewick on his discovery of Henry David Thoreau’s connection to slavery
The post The Writing on the Wall appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Books in the Running Brooks'
One of my
favorite literary analogies:
“The work of
a correct and regular writer is a garden...
11 months ago
One of my
favorite literary analogies:
“The work of
a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed and diligently
planted, varied with shades, and scented with flowers; the composition of
Shakespeare is a forest, in which oaks extend their branches, and pines tower
in...
Josh Thompson
2020 Annual Review
please note: i’m publishing this far after it was drafted, which was in January 2021. It’s being...
over a year ago
please note: i’m publishing this far after it was drafted, which was in January 2021. It’s being published in June 2022 - I’m trying to back-fill ‘annual reviews’, I never finished this one or published it, until now.
Is it even possible to mention a 2020 review without somehow...
Josh Thompson
Save hundreds by being willing to spend $20
When you pack for a trip, you pack “just in case” items, right? Things that in a certain situation...
over a year ago
When you pack for a trip, you pack “just in case” items, right? Things that in a certain situation would be priceless. Think “umbrella” or “underpants”.
But then you think of all the possible situations you might encounter, and you’ll find your “just in case” items quickly...
Josh Thompson
On Friction
warning. self-indulgeant diatribe coming. I generally try to avoid these, but it’s my website, and I...
over a year ago
warning. self-indulgeant diatribe coming. I generally try to avoid these, but it’s my website, and I can write what I want.
We’re rapidly approaching the end of the year, and I’ve got a few dozen ideas rolling around my head that I want to solidify my thoughts on.
One of the...
Wuthering...
What has happened to me may well be a good thing - the death of Socrates
Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo,
the extended version of the death of Socrates.
These texts,...
a year ago
Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo,
the extended version of the death of Socrates.
These texts, especially the last three, are a large part of the fame of
Socrates, the reason he is an exemplar of the wise man to this day. He asked annoying questions, he rejected
material...
Anecdotal Evidence
'On a Certain Street There Is a Certain Door'
Borges
titled a sonnet in The Gold of the Tigers,
his 1972 collection, "J.M.":
“On a
certain street...
6 months ago
Borges
titled a sonnet in The Gold of the Tigers,
his 1972 collection, "J.M.":
“On a
certain street there is a certain door
shut with
its bell and its exact address
and with a
flavor of lost Paradise,
which in the
early evening I can never
open to
enter. The day’s work at its...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Personal Affections'
Only
recently have I learned of the entrenched snobbery in certain quarters against anthologies.
It...
2 months ago
Only
recently have I learned of the entrenched snobbery in certain quarters against anthologies.
It seems to be rooted in the conviction that readers ought to read writers in
their original volumes, not someone’s curated selection, or something like
that. In common with most...
The Elysian
One essay could change the future
Please support a better media ecosystem.
2 months ago
Please support a better media ecosystem.
Josh Thompson
Bollards: Why & What
author’s note: it’s always fun to see your own stuff on the Hacker News front page! This very post...
8 months ago
author’s note: it’s always fun to see your own stuff on the Hacker News front page! This very post sparked >450 comments worth of conversation! I didn’t even know this got posted until days later!
What are bollards
The what and the why in a single image:
The what and why in a...
The Elysian
Further reading on employee ownership
My notes from the margins of my research.
4 months ago
My notes from the margins of my research.
The Marginalian
Working Out, Working In: Applying the Six Principles of Athletic Training to Writing and Creative...
The highest and hardest task of life may be to become entirely ourselves — to continually purify and...
a year ago
The highest and hardest task of life may be to become entirely ourselves — to continually purify and clarify who and what we are, shedding the shoulds of culture, convention, and expectation to discover the innermost musts: those deepest and truest callings of the authentic self,...
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
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,...
Ben Borgers
The Land of Endless Socialization
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Human Impulse, the Human Aspiration'
The upstairs
neighbor, a diffident graduate student in English, knocked on the door to tell me W.H....
a year ago
The upstairs
neighbor, a diffident graduate student in English, knocked on the door to tell me W.H. Auden had died. He was close to
tears and couldn’t stop shaking his head in disbelief. This was half a century ago, late September
1973. We talked books almost daily and a few...
Josh Thompson
Trip Report: New River Gorge
Kristi and I are spending a few weeks in Fayetteville, WV, home of the New River Gorge. There’s...
over a year ago
Kristi and I are spending a few weeks in Fayetteville, WV, home of the New River Gorge. There’s fantastic climbing here. I climbed with good friends, and was absolutely humbled by how strong they all are. (My defense, at least for the next few weeks, is that I’ve not climbed...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Old Man or Young Man Mad About Literature'
Sometimes an
eccentric judgment – one that reflects the critic’s discernment, not merely his
wish to...
8 months ago
Sometimes an
eccentric judgment – one that reflects the critic’s discernment, not merely his
wish to provoke and attract attention – proves useful to the common reader. Take
a sentence from Ford Madox Ford's final book, The March of Literature (1939): “The modern
English language...
The American Scholar
Ground Truth
A story of dirt, dollars, and death
The post Ground Truth appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
A story of dirt, dollars, and death
The post Ground Truth appeared first on The American Scholar.
Blog -...
Book Review - The Alchemy of Inner Work
The Alchemy of Inner Work, by Lorie Eve Dechar and Benjamin Fox, is an
exposition of an inner...
over a year ago
The Alchemy of Inner Work, by Lorie Eve Dechar and Benjamin Fox, is an
exposition of an inner healing art that is incredibly valuable to
practitioners. Yet, each of us – regardless of trade, title, or label – is
ultimately our own healing practitioner, and this book is a...
The Marginalian
The Science and Poetry of Anthotypes: Emily Dickinson’s Herbarium, Recreated in Hauntingly Beautiful...
On September 20, 1845, the polymathic Scottish mathematician Mary Somerville — the woman for whom...
11 months ago
On September 20, 1845, the polymathic Scottish mathematician Mary Somerville — the woman for whom the word scientist was coined — sent a letter to the polymathic English astronomer John Herschel, who six years earlier had coined the word photography for the radical invention of...
Wuthering...
The Best Books of 2024
For the last year and a half I read short books,
mostly, which was psychologically satisfying and...
11 months ago
For the last year and a half I read short books,
mostly, which was psychologically satisfying and anyway necessary to fit the
available energy and concentration. Now,
though, back on my feet, I hope, I am ready to read long books again.
Long, and I mean it, like Rebecca West’s...
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
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Hundred Words for the Word Brother'
One of the
stranger events recounted by Montaigne:
“[I]f I must
bring myself into this, a brother...
2 months ago
One of the
stranger events recounted by Montaigne:
“[I]f I must
bring myself into this, a brother of mine, [Arnaud, Lord of] Saint-Martin,
twenty-three years old, who had already given pretty good proof of his valor, while
playing tennis was struck by a ball a little above the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Was Spared That Annoyance'
As expected,
Beryl made landfall near Matagorda early Monday as a Category 1 hurricane.
Sustained...
5 months ago
As expected,
Beryl made landfall near Matagorda early Monday as a Category 1 hurricane.
Sustained winds hit 80 m.p.h. By 7 a.m. we could hear a hum like a dentist’s
drill when the wind gusted. Trees fell and we watched water fill the street,
top the curb and slosh on the lawn....
Josh Thompson
Why I Eat Bacon Every Day (And You Should Too)
note: as of late 2017, I’ve rolled over to a mostly vegetarian diet. I still love meat, but don’t...
over a year ago
note: as of late 2017, I’ve rolled over to a mostly vegetarian diet. I still love meat, but don’t feel comfortable eating it, for ethical reasons. I still believe that, on a whole, bacon is good for you, and I still eat veggies and many eggs every day. I just don’t eat bacon or...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Ordinary, Helpless, Moody Human Talk'
Long ago I came
to accept that certain writers will never be enjoyed by certain readers. I’m...
a year ago
Long ago I came
to accept that certain writers will never be enjoyed by certain readers. I’m no
matchmaker and don’t have the soul of a proselytizer. I resent people telling
me what I ought to like. On Wednesday two young missionaries came to the front
door. One launched his...
Josh Thompson
How to never accidentally click Twitter's "Moments" again (and to block anything else on the...
Do you use Twitter’s “Moments” tool, or do you just find it really annoying?
Most people find it...
over a year ago
Do you use Twitter’s “Moments” tool, or do you just find it really annoying?
Most people find it annoying. Here’s how to get rid of Twitter’s “Moments” forever:
0. Be won over to using an ad blocker on the internet.
They don’t block just ads, but malicious scripts and...
Josh Thompson
On Scooters as a class of vehicle/tool
Introduction
Often when I say “scooter”, especially in the united states, the person thinks of...
2 weeks ago
Introduction
Often when I say “scooter”, especially in the united states, the person thinks of something different than what I mean. Here’s Denver’s Sportique Scooters, here’s one of their recent posts:
So that is the kind of vehicle I’m talking about when I say “scooter”.
I...
The American Scholar
Woman in a Red Raincoat
The post Woman in a Red Raincoat appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
The post Woman in a Red Raincoat appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Find out how much money you've made (in your entire life)
This post went by on the Personal Finance subreddit today:
https://www.ssa.gov/myaccount/
After...
over a year ago
This post went by on the Personal Finance subreddit today:
https://www.ssa.gov/myaccount/
After creating an account / logging in, click on Earnings, then add the columns. If you have been working for many years, try copying/pasting the column in excel and using the sum...
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
Since the 1974 publication of The Power Broker, every book by Robert Caro has appeared on the cover of The New York Times Book Review.
Wuthering...
Books finished in April 2023
I continue the practice of posting a list as a substitute for real writing.
Coming soon: a long...
a year ago
I continue the practice of posting a list as a substitute for real writing.
Coming soon: a long overdue loot at Seneca's plays, a glance at Gide's Counterfeiters, and some messing around with Plato's Republic.
If I did not write in April, I at least read:
GREEK PHILOSOPHY
The...
The American Scholar
A Poet of the Soil
The legacy of a writer who struggled with his celebrity
The post A Poet of the Soil appeared first...
3 months ago
The legacy of a writer who struggled with his celebrity
The post A Poet of the Soil appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Jell-O Once a Week'
On Thursday I
slipped my brother some Montaigne without him knowing the source. It...
4 months ago
On Thursday I
slipped my brother some Montaigne without him knowing the source. It wasn’t
plagiarism, exactly, and it was paraphrased. It’s a well-known passage from the
essay “That to philosophize is to learn to die,” one that always reminds me of
Spinoza:
“It is
uncertain...
The American Scholar
Lift Off
The post Lift Off appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
The post Lift Off appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Perhaps the Most Impressive of All'
Spices meant
salt and pepper. For my family like others in the American working class, there
was no...
3 months ago
Spices meant
salt and pepper. For my family like others in the American working class, there
was no cardamom or turmeric. When I was a kid those would have sounded vaguely
like medical conditions. We never heard of such things until decades later.
For some baked goods, breakfast...
Wuthering...
Menander's Dyskolos - each man would hold a moderate share and be content
This week it’s Menander’s Dyskolos, or The Grouch, or The Misanthrope (316 BCE), which may or may...
over a year ago
This week it’s Menander’s Dyskolos, or The Grouch, or The Misanthrope (316 BCE), which may or may not have inspired the title of Molière’s great play, and nothing more than the title since the play was, like all of Menander’s plays, long lost. A fairly complete Dyskolos was the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Consider Seriously My Condition'
Soon after
he is shipwrecked on an island off the coast of Venezuela and has finished...
a year ago
Soon after
he is shipwrecked on an island off the coast of Venezuela and has finished salvaging
everything useful from the wreckage, Robinson Crusoe builds a calendar:
“After I had
been there about ten or twelve days, it came into my thoughts that I should
lose my reckoning of...
Wuthering...
Books I read in November 2023
Recovery from surgery leads to a long list of books.
(Everything is going well, by the way,...
a year ago
Recovery from surgery leads to a long list of books.
(Everything is going well, by the way, thanks).
My idea of a “comfort read” is a book on a subject about which I do not
know much – start me over at the beginning – thus my enthusiastic Indian
literature project, which is...
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
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...
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
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...
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...
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...
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
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...
The Elysian
What futuristic projects should I visit around the world?
What projects should I study around the world? And would you be interested in showing me around your...
6 months ago
What projects should I study around the world? And would you be interested in showing me around your city or project? I’d love your help plannin…
Wuthering...
Notes on Aristotle's Poetics - What are the conditions on which the tragic effect depends?
Aristotle did not invent literary criticism with Poetics(late 4th c. BCE, maybe) – we just read The...
over a year ago
Aristotle did not invent literary criticism with Poetics(late 4th c. BCE, maybe) – we just read The Frogs – but for centuries it was the base of Western literary criticism, not a source of insight but rather a set of rules. The Unities, the Tragic Flaw, catharsis, the ranking of...
Josh Thompson
Three Levels of Competence
Raise your hand if you’d like to be better at climbing.
Yeah. Me too.
I’ve spent an unusual amount...
over a year ago
Raise your hand if you’d like to be better at climbing.
Yeah. Me too.
I’ve spent an unusual amount of time working with beginners, to help them improve at climbing. I’ve also worked a lot with (what I would consider to be) intermediate climbers, so
can get better. I’ve certainly...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Energy in Things Shone Through Their Shapes'
Some
fugitive thinkers among us long for order in a manner almost nostalgic:
“I envied
those past...
a month ago
Some
fugitive thinkers among us long for order in a manner almost nostalgic:
“I envied
those past ages of the world
When, as I
thought, the energy in things
Shone
through their shapes, when sun and moon no less
Than tree or
stone or star or human face
Were seen
but as fantastic...
Ben Borgers
Is It Worth It to Be Passive Aggressive?
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'One I Loved Taught Here, Provoking Strife'
When Yvor
Winters retired from the Stanford English Department in 1966 after almost forty
years, the...
2 months ago
When Yvor
Winters retired from the Stanford English Department in 1966 after almost forty
years, the university published a commemorative volume, Laurel, Archaic, Rude: A Collection of Poems. It gathers twenty-six
poems written by former students, including Edgar Bowers,...
The Marginalian
What Birds Dream About: The Evolution of REM and How We Practice the Possible in Our Sleep
"It may be that in REM, this gloaming between waking consciousness and the unconscious, we practice...
6 months ago
"It may be that in REM, this gloaming between waking consciousness and the unconscious, we practice the possible into the real... It may be that we evolved to dream ourselves into reality — a laboratory of consciousness that began in the bird brain."
The American Scholar
Adventures With Jean
Striking up a friendship with an older writer meant accepting the risk of getting hurt
The post...
4 months ago
Striking up a friendship with an older writer meant accepting the risk of getting hurt
The post Adventures With Jean appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
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
'A Chap Who Doesn't Care Much About Anything'
Below the
masthead of the August 19, 2024 issue of The
Daily Chronicle is a brief, boxed...
4 months ago
Below the
masthead of the August 19, 2024 issue of The
Daily Chronicle is a brief, boxed announcement:
“Today is
National Orangutan Day. The apes are the largest tree-dwelling animals on
Earth. They spend 90 percent of their time in trees, even sleeping in leafy
nests. No wonder...
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
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...
Josh Thompson
Learn to Type - Again
Yesterday, we talked about why the
Caps Lock key should be converted into a delete key.
What I’ve...
over a year ago
Yesterday, we talked about why the
Caps Lock key should be converted into a delete key.
What I’ve learned from learning Colemak
Short, focused practice yields great results.
When I start a timer for twenty minutes, I feel a sense of urgency, rather than defeat. Time boxing...
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
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...
sbensu
Hiring from Big Tech
Some brief notes about the subject
9 months ago
Some brief notes about the subject
Escaping Flatland
Becoming perceptive
This is the second part of an essay series that began with “Everything that turned out well in my...
3 months ago
This is the second part of an essay series that began with “Everything that turned out well in my life followed the same design process.” It can be read on its own.
The Marginalian
The Dalai Lama’s Ethical and Ecological Philosophy for the Next Generation, Illustrated
"We are all interconnected in the universe, and from this, universal responsibility arises......
a year ago
"We are all interconnected in the universe, and from this, universal responsibility arises... Everyone has the responsibility to develop a happier world."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Bluster (New Style) Invokes the Public Good'
I write
about money more often than ever before at my day job. I’m not naïve and understand
that...
a year ago
I write
about money more often than ever before at my day job. I’m not naïve and understand
that research can be costly and professors don’t work for the love of it, but money
has become the barometer of worth. Small grants can be ignored regardless of
the intrinsic worth of the...
The American Scholar
Poco a Poco
The post Poco a Poco appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The post Poco a Poco appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Shaping Tombs in Words'
At KaboomBooks a man about my age was standing in front of the “S” shelves in fiction. I
routinely...
a year ago
At KaboomBooks a man about my age was standing in front of the “S” shelves in fiction. I
routinely stop there hoping to find hardback copies of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s
novels to replace my disintegrating paperbacks. On a nearby step-ladder I
noticed a stack of such Singer titles...
Wuthering...
You drool from it. You are happy. - Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit
Finally, I have finished Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Voyage au bout
de la nuit (1932), known in English...
4 months ago
Finally, I have finished Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Voyage au bout
de la nuit (1932), known in English as Journey to the End of Night. That “end of night” is death. The existence of death makes everything
hateful and nullifies the value of anything else. I gotta say that the...
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
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...
This Space
39 Books in one
For anyone interested (you there in the phone box), here's a PDF of the 39 Books series.
39 Books:...
7 months ago
For anyone interested (you there in the phone box), here's a PDF of the 39 Books series.
39 Books: PDF
As the introduction explained, the books were chosen from those on my books-read lists that I hadn't written about before. I thought it might be instructive to contrast the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Won’t You Turn Your Radio Down'
Most of the
surfaces in the radio station, not counting the DJs and turntables, are plastered
with...
a year ago
Most of the
surfaces in the radio station, not counting the DJs and turntables, are plastered
with yellow-on-black KTRU bumper stickers. In some cases, students have cut up
the stickers and rearranged the letters into the same timeless obscenities we
scrawled on the walls of the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Curiosity'
Someone is
forever rediscovering the novels of Dawn Powell. Just this week I reread My Home Is Far...
yesterday
Someone is
forever rediscovering the novels of Dawn Powell. Just this week I reread My Home Is Far Away (1944), one of her “Ohio
novels.” Here she describes children out after dark in the winter in a small
town. I choose it because it is typical of Powell’s prose, not a...
The Marginalian
Lichens and the Meaning of Life
"We are lichens on a grand scale."
a year ago
"We are lichens on a grand scale."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Dark But Festive'
I grew up in
the Age of Magazines. My parents, who were not book readers, subscribed at
various...
7 months ago
I grew up in
the Age of Magazines. My parents, who were not book readers, subscribed at
various times to Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, Time, Life, Look, Saturday Evening Post and National Geographic, not to mention those periodicals subscribed to by my
mother (McCall’s,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Master Etcher of Human Portraits'
In
celebration of Edwin Arlington Robinson’s fiftieth birthday, on December 22,
1919, seventeen...
a year ago
In
celebration of Edwin Arlington Robinson’s fiftieth birthday, on December 22,
1919, seventeen poets and friends were asked to contribute to a symposium published
a day earlier in the New York Times Book
Review. All but Robert Frost contributed. Amy Lowell wrote: “A realist,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Top Thing of the World'
John Keats’
meditation on a reader’s paradise:
“I had an
idea that a Man might pass a very pleasant...
2 months ago
John Keats’
meditation on a reader’s paradise:
“I had an
idea that a Man might pass a very pleasant life in this manner. Let him on a
certain day read a certain Page of full Poesy or distilled Prose, and let him
wander with it, and muse upon it and reflect from it, and dream...
Astral Codex Ten
Links For December 2024
...
2 weeks ago
ben-mini
The Most Mind-Blowing Tech Moments of My Life
This is a fun one. Below is a brief list of the most mind-blowing tech moments in my 27 years of...
6 months ago
This is a fun one. Below is a brief list of the most mind-blowing tech moments in my 27 years of life. There’s nothing too heady here- just an exercise in what might have made me get so into tech.
1. WarioWare: Twisted (2006)
At my community center, waiting for my friend’s karate...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Stimulated to Vigour and Activity'
When John
Ruskin (b. 1819) traveled as a boy, his father packed in his luggage four small
volumes of...
8 months ago
When John
Ruskin (b. 1819) traveled as a boy, his father packed in his luggage four small
volumes of Dr. Johnson’s Rambler and Idler essays. In his peculiar memoir Praeterita (1885), Ruskin tells us “had
it not been for constant reading of the Bible, I might probably have...
The Marginalian
Into the Blue Beyond: William Beebe’s Dazzling Account of Becoming the First Human Being to See the...
"It was stranger than any imagination could have conceived... an indefinable translucent blue quite...
a year ago
"It was stranger than any imagination could have conceived... an indefinable translucent blue quite unlike anything I have ever seen in the upper world."
Josh Thompson
Why schedule something that doesn't exist?
The first thing I did when making this post is I set it to be published tomorrow.
Then, I left the...
over a year ago
The first thing I did when making this post is I set it to be published tomorrow.
Then, I left the room for a bit. I didn’t have anything to say. Or, I didn’t think I did.
Yet, all over my computer, and in various list trackers and note-taking apps, I’ve got dozens of ideas to...
The Marginalian
The Poetry of Reality: Robert Louis Stevenson on What Makes Life Worth Living
"The true realism, always and everywhere, is that of the poets: to find out where joy resides, and...
a year ago
"The true realism, always and everywhere, is that of the poets: to find out where joy resides, and give it a voice far beyond singing."
The Marginalian
How People Change: Psychoanalyst Allen Wheelis on the Essence of Freedom and the Two Elements of...
"We create ourselves. The sequence is suffering, insight, will, action, change."
a year ago
"We create ourselves. The sequence is suffering, insight, will, action, change."
Josh Thompson
November 2016 Review
Note to the reader: The words that follow are all about me. This is naval-gaze-ish. I feel I owe you...
over a year ago
Note to the reader: The words that follow are all about me. This is naval-gaze-ish. I feel I owe you this warning.
My November goals were an extension of October’s goals. I feel comfortable with long-term unchanging goals.
They were:
Deepen my knowledge of front-end web...
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