Escaping Flatland
In praise of insular groups
Last spring, as we were exploring the coastline of our island, Johanna, the kids, and I crossed a...
7 months ago
Last spring, as we were exploring the coastline of our island, Johanna, the kids, and I crossed a meadow where two men were artificially inseminating a longhaired cow. We stopped to observe the work. When it was done, one of the men came over to where we stood by the electric...
This Space
The Opposite Direction, a book
Please use a link below to download an ebook of posts selected from over the last seven years of...
a year ago
Please use a link below to download an ebook of posts selected from over the last seven years of this blog.
This is the second collection after This Space of Writing and the title comes from the adolescent Thomas Bernhard's phrase repeated to an official at the labour exchange...
The American Scholar
A Forgotten Turner Classic
Who was George Eyser, the one-legged German-American gymnast who astounded at the Olympic Games?
The...
6 months ago
Who was George Eyser, the one-legged German-American gymnast who astounded at the Olympic Games?
The post A Forgotten Turner Classic appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Wonder Beyond Why: The Majesty and Mystery of the Birds-of-Paradise
“To go all the way from a clone of archaebacteria, in just 3.7 billion years, to the B-Minor Mass...
a year ago
“To go all the way from a clone of archaebacteria, in just 3.7 billion years, to the B-Minor Mass and the Late Quartets, deserves a better technical term for the record than randomness,” the poetic scientist Lewis Thomas wrote in his forgotten masterpiece of perspective. This is...
sbensu
Default blind
In a software business, it is hard to even know what is going on.
3 months ago
In a software business, it is hard to even know what is going on.
Josh Thompson
Five Lessons Learned in Buenos Aires
Note: This is an unedited draft of a post from July 5, 2015. Almost exactly one year ago, written...
over a year ago
Note: This is an unedited draft of a post from July 5, 2015. Almost exactly one year ago, written after a week in Buenos Aires. Since writing this post, Kristi and I have continued on to more than a year of non-stop travel, though we’re settling down back in Golden, CO in about...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Scrawls With a Lavish Hand Its Signature'
“Where the wind listeth, there the sailboats list, / Water is
touched with a light case of hives /...
2 months ago
“Where the wind listeth, there the sailboats list, / Water is
touched with a light case of hives / Or wandering gooseflesh.”
Carl George is the sort of scientist whose company I most enjoy. He is a generalist, what
used to be called a naturalist. Now an emeritus professor of...
The American Scholar
Our Pets, Our Plates
In defense of the furred and the hoofed
The post Our Pets, Our Plates appeared first on The American...
6 months ago
In defense of the furred and the hoofed
The post Our Pets, Our Plates appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
On Money (again)
Recently I posted
thoughts about money I’d written from back in 2013.
Money is hard to write about,...
over a year ago
Recently I posted
thoughts about money I’d written from back in 2013.
Money is hard to write about, because there are many different ways we can approach it. It’s easy to feel judged when someone does something with their money that I don’t do with mine.
That all said, there...
Josh Thompson
Illdefined Success is Unattainable
We all probably have a few projects floating around our head, but they seem daunting.
If it doesn’t...
over a year ago
We all probably have a few projects floating around our head, but they seem daunting.
If it doesn’t seem daunting, it’s not much of a project, and you should either ramp it up until it’s daunting, or discard it.
So - we have a daunting project. Now what? If you’re like me, you’ll...
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Is Brio Enough Here'
A word I’ve always liked is brio. It sounds like the name of a commercial product, floor wax or
an...
a year ago
A word I’ve always liked is brio. It sounds like the name of a commercial product, floor wax or
an energy drink. We have an Italian restaurant in Houston called Brio. My
Italian dictionary translates it as “zest” and the OED gives “liveliness, vivacity, ‘go.’” It
suggests...
The Marginalian
The Moon and the Yew Tree: Patti Smith Reads Sylvia Plath’s Haunting Portrait of Depression
"This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary."
a year ago
"This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Garish, Clownish, Bizarre, Stills Blocks Away'
Thirty years
ago I lived briefly in Latham, N.Y., north of Albany along the Mohawk River. The
river...
a year ago
Thirty years
ago I lived briefly in Latham, N.Y., north of Albany along the Mohawk River. The
river there is serpentine and the city paved a walking path along its southern
shore that smoothed out some of the curves. Every day I walked two miles along
the asphalt trail, turned...
Wuthering...
The Making of Americans as conceptual art - I have already made several diagrams
Sometime I will be able to make a diagram. I have already made several diagrams. I will sometime...
6 months ago
Sometime I will be able to make a diagram. I have already made several diagrams. I will sometime make a complete diagram and that will be a very long book... (580)
I am going to write about The Making of Americans as
conceptual art, art where how it is made is a central part...
Josh Thompson
The Slight Edge, and why you should read it
I read
The Slight Edge a few months ago.
Since then, it’s been the book I recommend most often to...
over a year ago
I read
The Slight Edge a few months ago.
Since then, it’s been the book I recommend most often to most people. (I don’t make book recommendations willy-nilly, but if something seems relevant to what the person I’m speaking to is experiencing/thinking about, I make a...
ribbonfarm
Stack Map of the World
I’ve been buried neck deep in work stuff this week, but I did find time to make this stack diagram...
8 months ago
I’ve been buried neck deep in work stuff this week, but I did find time to make this stack diagram of the world, inspired by the xkcd Dependency cartoon. Randall Munroe draws better than me, but in my favor, I use more colors. Did you know most of the high-purity quartz needed...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Dead in Their Silences Keep Me in Memory'
Edwin Muir (1887-1959)
I first knew as the translator with his wife Willa of Kafka’s novels...
a year ago
Edwin Muir (1887-1959)
I first knew as the translator with his wife Willa of Kafka’s novels and
stories. I remember chancing on The
Castle at the public library in the mid-sixties, knowing nothing about
Kafka. Only now do I appreciate the debts incurred – to Kafka, to the Muirs....
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Occasion for Festive Processions"
“Others will
balk at his sometimes extravagant vocabulary; words such as ‘amphisbaenic’ or ‘labarum’...
5 months ago
“Others will
balk at his sometimes extravagant vocabulary; words such as ‘amphisbaenic’ or ‘labarum’ or
‘ithyphallic’ will send them ‘scurrying’ to their dictionaries (why do they
always ‘scurry’ or even ‘scuttle’? A new word, rightly used, should be an
occasion for festive...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Painstakingly Logical and Precise'
A thought
that never occurred to me but feels self-evidently right:
“In the
course of a reading...
4 months ago
A thought
that never occurred to me but feels self-evidently right:
“In the
course of a reading life, one often stumbles on excellent prose writers never
before encountered; such discoveries, however, are less likely in poetry.
First-rate poetry is a more manageable quantity....
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...
The Marginalian
On Wanting to Change: Adam Phillips on Our Capacity for Transformation
"There is no description of a life without an account of the changes that are possible within it."
6 months ago
"There is no description of a life without an account of the changes that are possible within it."
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Word Can Open Like a Tomb to Reveal Its Past'
The poet William
Wenthe opens his essay “The Glamour of Words” with a provocative memory. It was
the...
8 months ago
The poet William
Wenthe opens his essay “The Glamour of Words” with a provocative memory. It was
the anniversary of Charles Dickens’ death and he was in the Poets’ Corner of
Westminster Abbey, where Dickens is interred and his sister is speaking to mark
the occasion. Wenthe looks...
Ben Borgers
The Code That Keeps Me Alive
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Ursula K. Le Guin on Change, Menopause as Rebirth, and the Civilizational Value of Elders
"Into the space ship, Granny."
a year ago
"Into the space ship, Granny."
The Marginalian
Honing Life on the Edges of the Possible: Geologist Turned Psychoanalyst Ruth Allen on Boundaries...
"At almost every conceivable level of our imagining, it is impossible to create a change without a...
4 months ago
"At almost every conceivable level of our imagining, it is impossible to create a change without a discontinuity, without a moment of not knowing who we are, or what we are going to become. Rupture precedes revolution."
ben-mini
The Inner Game of Tennis
I just finished reading The Inner Game of Tennis by Tim Gallwey. Originally published in 1974, the...
2 months ago
I just finished reading The Inner Game of Tennis by Tim Gallwey. Originally published in 1974, the book explores how the thoughts of an athlete affect their game. It’s lauded as being at the forefront of what we now call “sports psychology”. Although my competitive sports days...
Anecdotal Evidence
'It's on the Russian Level'
“I’m not a
great reader of fiction. I read through all of Jane Austen with pleasure. I
read through...
5 months ago
“I’m not a
great reader of fiction. I read through all of Jane Austen with pleasure. I
read through George Eliot at school, but I was too young to appreciate her
then. But about a year ago I read Middlemarch.
Most marvellous book. Best
thing in nineteenth-century English fiction,...
The Marginalian
May Sarton on the Art of Living Alone
"The people we love are built into us."
a year ago
"The people we love are built into us."
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Find It Hard to Read Great Books at All'
A young reader
tells me he is unable to read most books written before “about the middle of the
60s....
8 months ago
A young reader
tells me he is unable to read most books written before “about the middle of the
60s. I like Vonnegut. A lot of the stuff before that is like a foreign language
to me.” I’m reminded of an English professor who told me more than half a century ago that
most of her...
This Space
39 Books: 2011
How does one respond to Nietzsche's revelation at Sils Maria?
I read Pierre Klossowski's Nietzsche...
7 months ago
How does one respond to Nietzsche's revelation at Sils Maria?
I read Pierre Klossowski's Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle because the thought of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same occurred to me as a literary concept, perhaps the ultimate experience of the literary, but needed...
The Marginalian
Of Stars, Seagulls, and Love: Loren Eiseley on the First and Final Truth of Life
Somewhere along the way of life, we learn that love means very different things to different people,...
4 months ago
Somewhere along the way of life, we learn that love means very different things to different people, and yet all personal love is but a fractal of a larger universal love. Some call it God. I call it wonder. Dante called it “the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars.”...
Josh Thompson
`ls` command to show directory contents
I like to use the tree command on my local machine when trying to peek into the structure and...
over a year ago
I like to use the tree command on my local machine when trying to peek into the structure and contents of a given directory.
tree -L 2
will [L]ist recursively everything [2] levels deep from your current directory. The output is nicely formatted like this:
> tree -L 2
.
├──...
Josh Thompson
Twenties vs. Thirties (from a feeling-behind-the-curve 27 year old.)
Some months ago I found a very encouraging article, comparing one’s twenties to one’s thirties. I’ve...
over a year ago
Some months ago I found a very encouraging article, comparing one’s twenties to one’s thirties. I’ve scoured everywhere that I stick notes and interesting reads, and cannot, for the life of me, find the article.
The internet is littered with tons of
fluff pieces talking about sex...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Those Move Easiest Who Have Learned to Dance'
Hugh Kenner glosses
a well-known couplet in Alexander Pope’s “Essay on Criticism” (1711) by...
a year ago
Hugh Kenner glosses
a well-known couplet in Alexander Pope’s “Essay on Criticism” (1711) by reference to Newton’s
second law of motion (published in 1687 in his Principia Mathematica, one year before Pope’s birth) and “numerous
points of disequilibrium”:
“True ease
in writing...
The Marginalian
What Rises from the Ruins: Katherine Anne Porter on the Power of the Artist and the Function of Art...
"We understand very little of what is happening to us at any given moment."
a year ago
"We understand very little of what is happening to us at any given moment."
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Magnetism, an Ardor, a Refusal to Be False'
In “The Madonna of the Future,” an 1873 story by Henry James, an American painter in
Florence tells...
a year ago
In “The Madonna of the Future,” an 1873 story by Henry James, an American painter in
Florence tells the narrator, “If you but knew the rapture of observation! I
gather with every glance some hint for light, for color or relief! When I get home, I pour out my treasures into
the...
The Marginalian
How to Grow Re-enchanted with the World: A Salve for the Sense of Existential Meaninglessness and...
A shimmering reminder that "the magic is of our own conjuring."
a year ago
A shimmering reminder that "the magic is of our own conjuring."
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Accepter and Recorder of Things as They Are'
It has been
a good week for the satisfaction of knowing that a book I recommended has been
read and...
a year ago
It has been
a good week for the satisfaction of knowing that a book I recommended has been
read and enjoyed. A reader in New York City tells me the title character of
V.S. Pritchett’s 1951 novel Mr. Beluncle
reminds her of her late father, a man she describes as “feckless.” And...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Poets in an Age of Prose'
Yvor Winters
published his final book, Forms of Discovery,
in October 1967, three months before his...
a year ago
Yvor Winters
published his final book, Forms of Discovery,
in October 1967, three months before his death from cancer at age sixty-seven on
January 25, 1968. Read his late correspondence in The Selected Letters of Yvor Winters (ed. R.L. Barth, 2000) for an
understanding of the...
The American Scholar
What Comes Naturally
The post What Comes Naturally appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The post What Comes Naturally appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'As Sensitive As Anyone Else'
“In common
with James Jones, Gina Berriault knows that ill-educated or inarticulate people
are as...
8 months ago
“In common
with James Jones, Gina Berriault knows that ill-educated or inarticulate people
are as sensitive as anyone else. She renders their speech with a fine and
subtle ear for the shy or strident inaccuracies, for the bewilderment of missed
points and for the dim, sad rhythms...
The American Scholar
Tramping With Virginia
A seminal essay about walking the streets of London can present challenges in the classrooms of...
7 months ago
A seminal essay about walking the streets of London can present challenges in the classrooms of today
The post Tramping With Virginia appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Make Hard Things Easier by Removing Friction
Friction resists movement.
Lots of things count as (negative) friction.
Anything that consumes...
over a year ago
Friction resists movement.
Lots of things count as (negative) friction.
Anything that consumes resources (time, energy, money, physical goods.)
Anything that causes negative feelings (shame, doubt, guilt, fear.)
Anything that could have a downside (losing money, respect, your...
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...
4 months ago
“Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real,” Iris Murdoch wrote in her superb investigation of the parallels between art and morality. There could be no such realization without imagination, which is our only instrument for fathoming...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Neither Angels Nor Devils'
A favorite
story about Dr. Johnson reminded me of something the late critic John Simon had
written...
10 months ago
A favorite
story about Dr. Johnson reminded me of something the late critic John Simon had
written on his blog five years ago. In a post titled “Curse Words,” abbreviated
by Simon throughout as “CW,” he reviews profanity as used in various settings
and languages, including Croat,...
Josh Thompson
2015: The year I didn't think much?
I generally think that if I write what I am thinking about, I can think about it a lot better....
over a year ago
I generally think that if I write what I am thinking about, I can think about it a lot better. Writing has a clarifying effect (or is it affect?) on thought.
If that’s the case, I just didn’t think much in 2015:
I wrote about 45 things in 2013 and 2014. I wrote 8 in 2015.
I’m...
Josh Thompson
How to complete a project
Most of us have goals. And we usually don’t reach any of them.
The
Minimum Viable Product “concept”...
over a year ago
Most of us have goals. And we usually don’t reach any of them.
The
Minimum Viable Product “concept” has helped me with some goals, and it could be helpful to you.
It’s a simple concept: When starting something new, figure out what the minimum investment would get you the...
The American Scholar
Double Exposure
On our first memories
The post Double Exposure appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
On our first memories
The post Double Exposure appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
A Terrifying Delight
Following Robert Frost into the depths
The post A Terrifying Delight appeared first on The American...
5 months ago
Following Robert Frost into the depths
The post A Terrifying Delight appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
2018 Reading Review & Recommendations
I read many books in 2018. I’m listing them out here, along with recommendations. Here’s the...
over a year ago
I read many books in 2018. I’m listing them out here, along with recommendations. Here’s the recommendation “key”:
👍 = I recommend this book. (This metric is intentionally fuzzy.)
😔 = This book influenced my mental model of the world/reality/myself
🏢 = Book topic is...
Escaping Flatland
How I write essays
Notes on process
2 weeks ago
Josh Thompson
Simplify, simplify, simplify
Kristi and I stumbled upon the realization that we’ve become minimalists. And it is exciting.
We...
over a year ago
Kristi and I stumbled upon the realization that we’ve become minimalists. And it is exciting.
We live in a one-bedroom apartment. It is spacious, for a one-bedroom, but compared to anything larger than a one-bedroom apartment, it is small. We managed to pack it full of stuff in...
The Marginalian
Yes: William Stafford’s Poetic Calibration of Perspective
"No guarantees in this life."
11 months ago
"No guarantees in this life."
The Marginalian
Something About the Sky: Rachel Carson’s Lost Serenade to the Science of the Clouds, Found and...
A version of this essay appeared in The New York Times Book Review. A cloud is a spell against...
9 months ago
A version of this essay appeared in The New York Times Book Review. A cloud is a spell against indifference, an emblem of the water cycle that makes this planet a living world capable of trees and tenderness, a great cosmic gasp at the improbability that such a world exists, that...
Escaping Flatland
Things I learned working with artists
As I said in “Lessons I learned working at an art gallery,” I had several observations that I...
3 days ago
As I said in “Lessons I learned working at an art gallery,” I had several observations that I couldn’t fit into that post—so lets continue today.
Steven Scrawls
Easy Questions, Part 2: Delusional Desires in Fiction
Easy
Questions, Part 2: Delusional Desires in Fiction
In Part 1, I examined a few
common tropes in...
6 months ago
Easy
Questions, Part 2: Delusional Desires in Fiction
In Part 1, I examined a few
common tropes in stories and suggested that some stories might explore
certain questions not because those questions are interesting, but
because engaging with those questions allows the story to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'They Will Leave Behind Trenches'
“You wouldn’t
give up utopia it was too nourishing seductive / For mommy’s boys the heirs of
fortune...
a month ago
“You wouldn’t
give up utopia it was too nourishing seductive / For mommy’s boys the heirs of
fortune heirs / To the bloody myths of the twentieth city.”
Today is the
centenary of Polish poet and essayist Zbigniew Herbert. The
Anglophone world has been fortunate. Herbert’s poems...
Ben Borgers
Stubborn Consistency [100 daily blog posts]
over a year ago
The Marginalian
May Sarton on Grieving a Pet
"It is absolutely inward and private, the relation between oneself and an animal."
a year ago
"It is absolutely inward and private, the relation between oneself and an animal."
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Landscape in One Word!'
“When, in the course of a day, a man has read a newspaper, written a letter, and not wronged anyone,...
a month ago
“When, in the course of a day, a man has read a newspaper, written a letter, and not wronged anyone, that is more than enough.”
Enough for what? Probably to have established a minimum standard of decency and contentment. Jules Renard (1864-1910) is no stuffy moralist. There’s...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Appetizing, Clear and Understandable'
This I found
in an interview with the late novelist Richard G. Stern: “I prefer windows to
mirrors....
a year ago
This I found
in an interview with the late novelist Richard G. Stern: “I prefer windows to
mirrors. Not just for diversion, or something to study. I like new
vocabularies, rhythms, ways of thinking, associations of every sort.”
Stern (1928-2013)
was seventy-one at the time and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'One Realises How Absolutely Modern the Best of the Old Things Are'
My late
father-in-law left me The Works of
Rudyard Kipling in twenty-three volumes, the American...
10 months ago
My late
father-in-law left me The Works of
Rudyard Kipling in twenty-three volumes, the American edition published by
Scribner’s in 1899 when the author was thirty-four years old. As a writer, Kipling
was a wonder of nature, as prodigious as Shakespeare and Dickens. To put...
Josh Thompson
MySQL concatenation and casting
I recently set up my environment for working through SQL for Mere Mortals.
I’ll record some...
over a year ago
I recently set up my environment for working through SQL for Mere Mortals.
I’ll record some interested tidbits here as I go.
Chapter 5: Concatenation without the || operator
I use MySQL at work, and MySQL doesn’t support the || operator for string concatenation.
So, in the book,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Fragility of Happiness'
Christopher Carduff, books editor at the Wall Street Journal, asked me to review
a new translation...
a year ago
Christopher Carduff, books editor at the Wall Street Journal, asked me to review
a new translation of a Russian novel due for publication in November. The proofs arrived on Thursday and I sent Chris an email letting him know I was
already reading the book. The email bounced back...
Josh Thompson
On Feedback
Most of what makes us who we are is based on some sort of feedback obtained earlier in our life.
By...
over a year ago
Most of what makes us who we are is based on some sort of feedback obtained earlier in our life.
By my best estimation, there are two types of feedback:
Explicit feedback
, which comes in a little box labeled “this is feedback”, and is hard to miss.
Implicit feedback
, which is...
ben-mini
Commoditize Your Complements
To the man who coined the phrase, “nothing in life is free”… have you been on GitHub...
4 months ago
To the man who coined the phrase, “nothing in life is free”… have you been on GitHub lately?
Open-source is software that anyone can freely view, use, modify, and share because its code is publicly available on sites like Github and Huggingface. My last coding project alone was...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Troublesome Error, a Pernicious Foppery''
Let’s be
grateful to our troubled age for making it necessary to revive such formerly dormant
words...
7 months ago
Let’s be
grateful to our troubled age for making it necessary to revive such formerly dormant
words as cant and foppery, so as to avoid the more precise
but less polite bullshit. For foppery, the OED offers among its definitions “foolishness, imbecility,
stupidity, folly.” It’s...
Wuthering...
The Girl from Samos by Menander - I don’t think any one individual is better at birth than any other
It’s our last plays, the last surviving Greek play, The Girl from Samos (315 BCE) by Menander. How...
over a year ago
It’s our last plays, the last surviving Greek play, The Girl from Samos (315 BCE) by Menander. How tastes, or circumstances, had changed in the seventy years since Wealth, our last Aristophanes play. The political and social satire is gone, the sexual and scatological jokes are...
The American Scholar
Hometown Heroes
What if the goal is not to make it out of the neighborhood?
The post Hometown Heroes appeared first...
7 months ago
What if the goal is not to make it out of the neighborhood?
The post Hometown Heroes appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
Week 8: What communities should know about you? (Write a story about them)
8 months ago
The American Scholar
Moondance
Experience the marvel that is
The post Moondance appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
Experience the marvel that is
The post Moondance appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
Wealth by Aristophanes - gout here, pot bellies there, ... obesity beyond all bounds
We saw Sophocles and Euripides end their long careers with masterpieces, but we do not have that...
over a year ago
We saw Sophocles and Euripides end their long careers with masterpieces, but we do not have that luck with Aristophanes. Wealth (388 BCE) is thin, scattershot, perhaps even a bit defeated or exhausted.
The conceit is as usual excellent. Plutus, the god of wealth, is freed...
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...
Josh Thompson
The Present You
It seems most of the decisions in life are made in favor of the
present you, or the
future you. I...
over a year ago
It seems most of the decisions in life are made in favor of the
present you, or the
future you. I wish the future me could sit beside the present me, and discuss how I was going about my day. Instead, it’s a rather one-sided conversation.
There are obvious choices, like food,...
This Space
39 Books: 2014
One could say that Mallarmé, through an extraordinary effort of asceticism, opened an abyss in...
7 months ago
One could say that Mallarmé, through an extraordinary effort of asceticism, opened an abyss in himself where his awareness, instead of losing itself, survives and grasps its solitude in a desperate clarity.
This is from The Silence of Mallarmé, an essay in Blanchot's first...
The Marginalian
The Remedy for Creative Block and Existential Stuckness
"Faithfulness to the moment and to the present circumstance entails continuous surrender... Only...
a year ago
"Faithfulness to the moment and to the present circumstance entails continuous surrender... Only unconditional surrender leads to real emptiness, and from that place of emptiness I can be prolific and free."
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Grand Marxist Stalin Did Ten In'
In one of
the essential books published in the twentieth century, The Great Terror (1968; rev. 1990,...
a week ago
In one of
the essential books published in the twentieth century, The Great Terror (1968; rev. 1990, 2008), Robert Conquest (1917-2015)
writes matter-of-factly: “We are told in recent Soviet articles that on 12
December 1937 alone, Stalin and Molotov sanctioned 3,167 death...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Give Him the Darkest Inch Your Shelf Allows'
Its 1,498
pages tip the scales at 3.2 pounds: Collected
Poems of Edwin Arlington Robinson,...
8 months ago
Its 1,498
pages tip the scales at 3.2 pounds: Collected
Poems of Edwin Arlington Robinson, originally published in 1929. At Kaboom Books I bought the twelfth printing, from 1959. The dustjacket is a little
frayed around the edges but the book is otherwise sturdy. It collects the...
Josh Thompson
June trip to the New River Gorge
The New River Gorge had beautiful weather this weekend. The forecast for the weekend was, until...
over a year ago
The New River Gorge had beautiful weather this weekend. The forecast for the weekend was, until Friday, near-certain thunderstorms.
Typical of the New, the weather proved unpredictable, and we had glorious sun the entire trip.
I was eager to get out to the New, since my last...
ribbonfarm
Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities by Bettany Hughes
I started reading Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities by Bettany Hughes while I was in Istanbul last...
8 months ago
I started reading Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities by Bettany Hughes while I was in Istanbul last November and finally finished it last week. It’s a really solid and absorbing book, and far too dense and rich with detail to zip through, which is why I read it a dozen or so pages...
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 Elysian
One year of my work, printed
The Elysian Volume II is here.
2 months ago
The Elysian Volume II is here.
The Marginalian
Favorite Children’s Books of 2023
Tender and poetic reckonings with friendship, fear, love, solitude, black holes, deep time, and the...
a year ago
Tender and poetic reckonings with friendship, fear, love, solitude, black holes, deep time, and the interconnectedness of life.
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Lofty Vehicle, High Dudgeon'
A friend is studying
Greek while reading Emily Wilson’s new translation of the Iliad alongside...
a year ago
A friend is studying
Greek while reading Emily Wilson’s new translation of the Iliad alongside George Chapman’s version of Homer from the seventeenth
century. Like me, she’s a reader not a scholar, and like generations of
students and common readers I first encountered Chapman...
The American Scholar
American Modernism’s Lost Boy-King
The late, great Paul Auster on Stephen Crane
The post American Modernism’s Lost Boy-King appeared...
7 months ago
The late, great Paul Auster on Stephen Crane
The post American Modernism’s Lost Boy-King appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Never Relied on His Sensibility Alone'
In 1937,
Desmond MacCarthy delivered a lecture at Cambridge on Leslie Stephen, author of
the...
2 weeks ago
In 1937,
Desmond MacCarthy delivered a lecture at Cambridge on Leslie Stephen, author of
the three-volume Hours in a Library
(1874-7) and father of Virginia Woolf. For a
century England had specialized in producing formidably well-read, non-academic
literary critics. In addition...
Wuthering...
Metamorphoses, Books XI to XV - The whole of it flows
I had better finish up Ovid’s Metamorphoses before I
forget what was in it. It is full of
memorable...
9 months ago
I had better finish up Ovid’s Metamorphoses before I
forget what was in it. It is full of
memorable things, but I have limits.
Books XI through XV, the last five, in this post.
Book X ended with the songs of Orpheus, so he has to begin
Book XI with Orpheus’s gruesome death,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Nothingness Is Our Need'
One of R.L.
Barth’s sisters-in-law found a tote bag containing poems and drafts in a
cupboard, most...
6 months ago
One of R.L.
Barth’s sisters-in-law found a tote bag containing poems and drafts in a
cupboard, most dating back to his time at Stanford in the late
nineteen-seventies. He found epigrams (his trademark form as a poet) and some Martial
translations. The bag also held “one fugitive...
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Are Many Real Things of Beauty Here'
A reader sent
me a screed against beauty he had found online. The writer wasn’t advocating...
2 months ago
A reader sent
me a screed against beauty he had found online. The writer wasn’t advocating its
opposite, ugliness, exactly, though his prose definitely leans in that
direction. Only a graduate-school alumnus could come up with such silly ideas.
Rather, he seemed to be saying that...
Escaping Flatland
Advice from my editor
A sculptural representation of JS Bach’s Fugue in E Flat Minor by Henrik Neugeboren “I can’t make...
6 months ago
A sculptural representation of JS Bach’s Fugue in E Flat Minor by Henrik Neugeboren “I can’t make myself finish this one,” Johanna said one night when we were reading together in bed. She was working her way through a 6021-word essay draft about identities as interfaces that I...
The American Scholar
Fiction, Fakery, and Factory Farming
Spanish novelist Munir Hachemi talks about Living Things
The post Fiction, Fakery, and Factory...
a month ago
Spanish novelist Munir Hachemi talks about Living Things
The post Fiction, Fakery, and Factory Farming appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
A Retrospective on Seven Months at Turing
Collection of thoughts on Turing
It’s the last week of Turing. I went through the backend software...
over a year ago
Collection of thoughts on Turing
It’s the last week of Turing. I went through the backend software engineering program, and it’s been a journey.
In no particular order, I’m throwing down thoughts in three general categories:
What went well
What didn’t go well
What I might have...
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...
This Space
"Every day I have to invoke the absent god again"*
I really enjoy this YouTube channel despite my general lack of interest in films. The presenter’s...
over a year ago
I really enjoy this YouTube channel despite my general lack of interest in films. The presenter’s restrained voice-over is ideal for one approaching its concerns; imagine a lullaby sung by Werner Herzog. I envy him the medium for its music, its visuals, even its potential for...
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...
Ben Borgers
How ChatGPT spoiled my semester
2 months ago
The Perry Bible...
Please
The post Please appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
4 months ago
The post Please appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
Josh Thompson
Type. Publish. Done.
Yesterday I read How the Hell do I Prioritize Work, Blog & Find Balance.
The author of the letter is...
over a year ago
Yesterday I read How the Hell do I Prioritize Work, Blog & Find Balance.
The author of the letter is a busy, accomplished guy and still manages to write regularly.
He said, in short:
I sit down, and I write. I’ve done it a lot, so I’m not bad at it. I don’t often proof read my...
The American Scholar
“I Will Greet the Sun Again” by Forugh Farrokhzad
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “I Will Greet the Sun Again” by Forugh Farrokhzad appeared...
4 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “I Will Greet the Sun Again” by Forugh Farrokhzad appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Half-Life of Hope
After breaking out of timidity with “Spell Against Indifference,” an offering of another poem — this...
a year ago
After breaking out of timidity with “Spell Against Indifference,” an offering of another poem — this one inspired by a lovely piece of science news that touched me with its sonorous existential echoes. THE HALF-LIFE OF HOPE by Maria Popova Walking beneath the concrete canopy...
Josh Thompson
The Power Broker, Chapter 30: Robert Moses and Mayor Vincent R. Impellitteri
Note from Josh: The following is an excerpt of chapter 34 of the Power Broker, called “Moses and the...
a year ago
Note from Josh: The following is an excerpt of chapter 34 of the Power Broker, called “Moses and the Mayors”. The chapter is about Moses’ relationship with all of the mayors of NYC that overlapped with Moses’ “rule” over NYC.
This excerpt covers just one of the mayors’ overlap...
The Marginalian
The Living Wonder of Leafcutter Ants, in Mesmerizing Stop Motion
Alongside humans, leafcutter ants form some of nature’s vastest, most sophisticated societies — a...
a year ago
Alongside humans, leafcutter ants form some of nature’s vastest, most sophisticated societies — a single mature colony can contain as many ants as there are people on Earth, living with a great deal more social harmony and consonance of purpose than we do. They are also one of...
The American Scholar
Feels Like Coming Home
The wonders of the coastal redwood
The post Feels Like Coming Home appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
The wonders of the coastal redwood
The post Feels Like Coming Home appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'He's Not Pulling It Out of Thin Air'
A friend
tells me he is boycotting a favorite bookstore because, as he writes, “someone
posted a...
8 months ago
A friend
tells me he is boycotting a favorite bookstore because, as he writes, “someone
posted a fair-sized sign on the store’s ‘Community Board’ reading, ‘From The
River to the Sea, Palestine Shall Be Free.’” There’s a naïvely childish part of
me that finds the obscenity...
The Marginalian
“Little Women” Author Louisa May Alcott on the Creative Rewards of Being Single
"Liberty is a better husband than love."
a year ago
"Liberty is a better husband than love."
Josh Thompson
Content but Restless
There is tension between being content with what you have, and striving for more.
We have all heard...
over a year ago
There is tension between being content with what you have, and striving for more.
We have all heard the “serenity prayer”:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.
This prayer is...
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
'Not the Head But the Seat'
My late friend David Myers taught me the useful German and Yiddish word imported
into English,...
a year ago
My late friend David Myers taught me the useful German and Yiddish word imported
into English, sitzfleisch. The
etymology is straightforward: sitzen
(“to sit”) + Fleisch (“flesh”). In
other words, what we sit on -- the buttocks, ass or derriere. Metaphorically, the
OED tells us,...
The Marginalian
Home: An Illustrated Celebration of the Genius and Wonder of Animal Dwellings
“There’s no place like home,” Dorothy sighs in The Wizard of Oz. But home is not a place — it is a...
8 months ago
“There’s no place like home,” Dorothy sighs in The Wizard of Oz. But home is not a place — it is a locus of longing, always haunted by our existential homelessness. “Welcome home!” a cheaply suited broker once exclaimed at me, swinging open the door to a tiny studio as my foot...
Ben Borgers
Saturday, January 15, 2022
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Unless It From Enjoyment Spring!'
“He is the
supreme poet of childhood. He is at play all his life.”
Had I read
this out of context,...
a month ago
“He is the
supreme poet of childhood. He is at play all his life.”
Had I read
this out of context, I might have assumed the writer described was Walter de la
Mare, whose poetry I ignored for too long because teachers and critics told me
he wrote solely for children. (Something...
The Marginalian
How the Sea Came to Be: An Illustrated Singsong Celebration of the Evolution of Life
“Who has known the ocean? Neither you nor I, with our earth-bound senses,” Rachel Carson wrote in...
a year ago
“Who has known the ocean? Neither you nor I, with our earth-bound senses,” Rachel Carson wrote in the pioneering 1937 essay that invited the human imagination into the science and splendor of the marine world for the first time — a world then more mysterious than the Moon, a...
Josh Thompson
My Thoughts on Eric Weinstein's Thoughts on Pia Kalani's Thoughts
Context for two sentances
It’s August 8, 2020.
The news is full of coronavirus, schools, employment,...
over a year ago
Context for two sentances
It’s August 8, 2020.
The news is full of coronavirus, schools, employment, police brutality, a vaccine, elections, so much politics, China, Tik-Tok, the Twitter-dm-hack-bitcoin-scam-or-was-it-dm-content hack happened.
Tiger King, Cheer, Filthy Rich are...
The American Scholar
A Rebel to Remember
Gregory P. Downs on the late Anthony E. Kaye’s groundbreaking history of Nat Turner
The post A Rebel...
4 months ago
Gregory P. Downs on the late Anthony E. Kaye’s groundbreaking history of Nat Turner
The post A Rebel to Remember appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
39 Books: 2017
The list of books piles up, thirty-three now, and I'm reading fewer and fewer novels. Not through...
7 months ago
The list of books piles up, thirty-three now, and I'm reading fewer and fewer novels. Not through choice, but so little of what's new appeals. Instead, this year I read and reread books like Peter Handke's To Duration and Once Again for Thucydides, both of which escape helpful...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Where Silence Suddenly Erupts in Speech'
Zbigniew Herbert
visited Western Europe for the first time in 1958-59: France, then England,
Italy,...
a year ago
Zbigniew Herbert
visited Western Europe for the first time in 1958-59: France, then England,
Italy, France again and back to Poland. His budget was tight but Herbert was
no hedonistic tourist. Nor was he a stuffy academic or critic. The essays in Barbarian in the Garden (1962;...
Wuthering...
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr's La plus secrète mémoire des hommes - one of his objectives was to be original...
La plus secrète mémoire des hommes (2021) by
Senegalese novelist Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, published in...
8 months ago
La plus secrète mémoire des hommes (2021) by
Senegalese novelist Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, published in English as The Most
Secret History of Men (2023), is the first imitation of Roberto Bolaño I
have seen outside of Latin American literature.
Many reviews note that Sarr’s novel is...
The Marginalian
The Great Blind Spot of Science and the Art of Asking the Complex Question the Only Answer to Which...
“Real isn’t how you are made… It’s a thing that happens to you,” says the Skin Horse — a stuffed toy...
a month ago
“Real isn’t how you are made… It’s a thing that happens to you,” says the Skin Horse — a stuffed toy brought to life by a child’s love — in The Velveteen Rabbit. Great children’s books are works of philosophy in disguise; this is a fundamental question: In a reality of matter,...
The American Scholar
The Brahmin and His Imaginary Friend
How a classic paean to the honest virtues of a Maine fisherman obscured several ugly truths
The...
2 weeks ago
How a classic paean to the honest virtues of a Maine fisherman obscured several ugly truths
The post The Brahmin and His Imaginary Friend appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
How to be an awesome belayer
For the next few posts I am going to geek out on sport climbing. If you’re not a climber (or a sport...
over a year ago
For the next few posts I am going to geek out on sport climbing. If you’re not a climber (or a sport climber), these are not for you. All of this information is in the context of sport climbing on trustworthy protection - not trad climbing!
How to belay when your climber is in...
Josh Thompson
Turing Prep Chapter 2: Run your first tests (and make them pass)
Preparing for Turing Series Index
What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
Preparing for Turing Series Index
What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...
Josh Thompson
Quotes from 'Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving', by Pete Walker
I’ve found Pete Walker’s Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving to be deeply helpful.
Some of you,...
over a year ago
I’ve found Pete Walker’s Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving to be deeply helpful.
Some of you, many of you, have blessed me and cared for me in kind ways, sometimes with very little knowledge of what was going on, or why I was the way that I was. Thank you. I’ve been...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Similar Universality of Voice'
I reproach
my younger self for being lazy and not seriously studying languages other than
English. I...
5 months ago
I reproach
my younger self for being lazy and not seriously studying languages other than
English. I dabbled in Latin and German and retain a smattering of vocabulary
and little grammar. If I were to study another language today my first choice
would likely be Italian in order to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Leave Him Something to Imagine'
“I am now
beginning to get fairly into my work; and by the help of a vegetable diet, with
a few of...
a year ago
“I am now
beginning to get fairly into my work; and by the help of a vegetable diet, with
a few of the cold seeds, I make no doubt but I shall be able to go on with my
uncle Toby’s story, and my own, in a tolerable strait line.”
By the time
a persevering reader has reached Book...
Josh Thompson
2023 Annual Review
It’s that time of the year. I often enjoy reading other people’s annual reviews, and I’ve always...
11 months ago
It’s that time of the year. I often enjoy reading other people’s annual reviews, and I’ve always found value in writing my own, even as there is a few years I’ve missed, since I started the habit way back in 2015.
for a long time, I did annual reviews. 2020 was late, and then for...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Hard to Find a Name in Human Speech'
After a stop
in Hong Kong during his four-thousand-mile journey back to Moscow from Sakhalin
Island,...
a year ago
After a stop
in Hong Kong during his four-thousand-mile journey back to Moscow from Sakhalin
Island, Chekhov’s ship encountered rough weather and high seas. Before reaching
Singapore, two men had died and their bodies were thrown overboard:
“When you
see a dead man wrapped in...
Ben Borgers
Work-Life Separation in College
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'His Generous Humanity to the Miserable'
Our guests for
Thanksgiving dinner will be my oldest son and daughter-in-law, and two women,...
a year ago
Our guests for
Thanksgiving dinner will be my oldest son and daughter-in-law, and two women, acquaintances
of my wife, both recently divorced. The latter would likely otherwise spend the holiday
alone. The only serious expression of gratitude is welcoming others and sharing...
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...
ribbonfarm
Storytelling — Just Add Dinosaurs
In a previous part, I covered the storytelling model of Matthew Dicks, who specializes in live,...
9 months ago
In a previous part, I covered the storytelling model of Matthew Dicks, who specializes in live, spoken-word competitive storytelling from real life. He has a theory of stories I found deeply unsatisfying: That the essence of a story is a moment of character change where the...
ben-mini
Old School Business
In a prior role, I experienced friction with my sales team’s leadership:
They emphasized the needs...
6 months ago
In a prior role, I experienced friction with my sales team’s leadership:
They emphasized the needs of the economic buyer and neglected the end-users.
They withheld key performance indicators from prospects (i.e. pricing, number of customers, customer satisfaction).
They demeaned...
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Marsh Light Is Still Burning Hard'
I’m
suspicious of the itch for ranking books and making lists. Too often it’s a substitute...
10 months ago
I’m
suspicious of the itch for ranking books and making lists. Too often it’s a substitute for
actually reading them, a ruse for flaunting one’s hipness or sophistication. My
late friend David Myers was fond of assembling such lists, which are likely to
assure higher-than-average...
This Space
39 Books: 1992
Poetry is a notable absence in my book lists. I assumed at this time that because novels excited my...
7 months ago
Poetry is a notable absence in my book lists. I assumed at this time that because novels excited my attention, poetry should do too. Under this assumption I bought and read Wallace Stevens' Collected Poems in this chunky Faber edition, adding an ugly plastic cover.*
Many of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Everything is Singing, Blooming and Sparkling'
In a May 4, 1889 letter to his friend and editor
Alexi Suvorin, Chekhov complains of taking no...
7 months ago
In a May 4, 1889 letter to his friend and editor
Alexi Suvorin, Chekhov complains of taking no interest in “reviews,
conversations about literature, gossip, successes, failures, high royalties,”
and adds:
“[I]n short, I’ve become a damn fool. My soul
seems to be stagnating. I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Deaf Unto the Suggestions of Tale-bearers'
“Though the
Quickness of thine Ear were able to reach the noise of the Moon, which some
think it...
10 months ago
“Though the
Quickness of thine Ear were able to reach the noise of the Moon, which some
think it maketh in it rapid revolution; though the number of thy Ears should
equal Argus his Eyes . . .”
The first surgery
on my left ear was fifty years ago, prompted by a perpetually...
Josh Thompson
Accomplishments and Achievements
We’re encouraged to accomplish and achieve, yes? From birth, we pass milestones. Generally these...
over a year ago
We’re encouraged to accomplish and achieve, yes? From birth, we pass milestones. Generally these milestones grow in complexity as we add to our abilities - it’s been a while since I’ve been rewarded for not wetting myself - but they are usually on par with our abilities.
For...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Feel With Melancholy Wonder'
I was
introduced to the poet, critic and editor Stanley Burnshaw (1906-2005) in the mid-Seventies
by...
5 months ago
I was
introduced to the poet, critic and editor Stanley Burnshaw (1906-2005) in the mid-Seventies
by Edward Dahlberg, a difficult man who furthered my education. Collected in Epitaphs for Our Time: The Letters of Edward
Dahlberg (George Braziller, 1967) are five letters to...
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...
Josh Thompson
How to never accidentally click Twitter's "Moments" again (and to block anything else on the...
Do you use Twitter’s “Moments” tool, or do you just find it really annoying?
Most people find it...
over a year ago
Do you use Twitter’s “Moments” tool, or do you just find it really annoying?
Most people find it annoying. Here’s how to get rid of Twitter’s “Moments” forever:
0. Be won over to using an ad blocker on the internet.
They don’t block just ads, but malicious scripts and...
The American Scholar
Cats and Dogs
The post Cats and Dogs appeared first on The American Scholar.
a week ago
The post Cats and Dogs appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
39 Books: 1987
From two books in the first year of reading and twenty-four in the second, I read eighty-six in the...
8 months ago
From two books in the first year of reading and twenty-four in the second, I read eighty-six in the third, including a lot more non-fiction. This was due to cycling to libraries in adjacent towns where the selection was wider. One of them had my first non-novel choice: this...
This Space
39 Books: 1993
I've written about Gert Hofmann's novels a few times, most recently Veilchenfeld (Our Philosopher in...
7 months ago
I've written about Gert Hofmann's novels a few times, most recently Veilchenfeld (Our Philosopher in the US edition), but not his short stories. In the year Hofmann died aged only 62, I bought and read Balzac's Horse and other stories in the wonderful Minerva paperback imprint....
The American Scholar
Mystery Solved!
The post Mystery Solved! appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
The post Mystery Solved! appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
Atheism of the novel
"Here it comes: the information dumping..."
From section 237, page 185 of Ellis Sharp's latest...
a year ago
"Here it comes: the information dumping..."
From section 237, page 185 of Ellis Sharp's latest novel, the part that is commentary on his attempt to destroy a commercially successful novel emulating "the style that The Guardian liked and promoted":
The narrator is a young...
Ben Borgers
Thursday, January 20, 2022
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Shape of Wonder: N.J. Berrill on the Universe, the Deepest Meaning of Beauty, and the Highest...
"We, each of us, you and I, exhibit more of the true nature of the universe than any dead Saturn or...
3 months ago
"We, each of us, you and I, exhibit more of the true nature of the universe than any dead Saturn or Jupiter."
The American Scholar
Esteban Cabeza de Baca
History witnessed, from the picket lines
The post Esteban Cabeza de Baca appeared first on The...
7 months ago
History witnessed, from the picket lines
The post Esteban Cabeza de Baca appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Whole Sky Seems to Turn Into Rain'
The storm
was brief and fierce. Wind pushed the rain horizontally, like an airborne
river. The tops...
7 months ago
The storm
was brief and fierce. Wind pushed the rain horizontally, like an airborne
river. The tops of newly planted trees touched the ground. Yard and street filled
with branches, leaves and pine cones. A block away, an oak cracked and fell,
blocking the street. We lost power at...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Cool Malignity of Othello'
“As Shakespeare
went on, however, he became interested in why people like evil, not for their
own...
a year ago
“As Shakespeare
went on, however, he became interested in why people like evil, not for their
own advantage but for its own sake.”
In his
lecture on Othello, W.H. Auden understands,
as a growing number of our contemporaries do not, that evil is autonomous and
self-justifying....
Ben Borgers
How I Sent Texts for Assassins
over a year ago
Wuthering...
Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music - enchantment is the precondition of all...
When I read Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music (1872) several...
over a year ago
When I read Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music (1872) several years ago I was interested in it as a 19th century work, as a key text in the cult of Richard Wagner and an early example of the vogue for fantasizing that stuffy Prussian or...
The Elysian
Asia and the future of the nation state
A discussion with Benjamin Perry.
a month ago
A discussion with Benjamin Perry.
The Marginalian
No One You Love Is Ever Dead: Hemingway on the Most Devastating of Losses and the Meaning of Life
"We must live it, now, a day at a time and be very careful not to hurt each other."
7 months ago
"We must live it, now, a day at a time and be very careful not to hurt each other."
Josh Thompson
On Leaving Evangelicalism And Opposing It
Content warning & summary
This paper talks about ethics, ethical behavior, violence, abuse,...
a year ago
Content warning & summary
This paper talks about ethics, ethical behavior, violence, abuse, complicency, domination and oppression. It’s a condimnation of evangelicalism, but not, necessarily, any particular evangelical. There are those within evangelicalism who are ethical,...
Josh Thompson
Limitations of My Own Thinking
I sometimes make recommendations, or at least recount a story that has “actionable insights”....
over a year ago
I sometimes make recommendations, or at least recount a story that has “actionable insights”. Anytime this happens, I start tripping over myself with warnings and qualifying statements.
Here’s what would happen:
I would make a recommendation (“start a side project to help get a...
Wuthering...
Books I Read in October 2023
The five-day hospital stay breaking the month in half is likely invisible to anyone but me, but that...
a year ago
The five-day hospital stay breaking the month in half is likely invisible to anyone but me, but that is why the fiction list is so mystery-heavy, and for that matter so long. Many of these books, the post-surgery group, are not just short but light, well-suited for the invalid's...
The American Scholar
Indiana Absurd
Tiffany Tsao on translating a beguiling Indonesian short-story collection
The post Indiana Absurd...
7 months ago
Tiffany Tsao on translating a beguiling Indonesian short-story collection
The post Indiana Absurd appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'O Wonderful Nonsense of Lotions of Lucky Tiger'
I’m loyal to
my barbers because they have always been loyal to me. I don’t have to remind
them of...
11 months ago
I’m loyal to
my barbers because they have always been loyal to me. I don’t have to remind
them of what I want. Every fourth Saturday I visit, like a ritual. I sit in the
chair, he pins the sheet around my neck – and we talk. No micromanaging. I can
forget I’m getting a haircut...
Josh Thompson
October 2016 Review
October 2016 Review
This month’s review. In another few days I’ll post the goals for November.
I...
over a year ago
October 2016 Review
This month’s review. In another few days I’ll post the goals for November.
I had
three goals for October, as of about 12 days ago:
October goals:
Programming
I wanted to finish a certain Rails Tutorial, and move on to the next one. This project I made zero...
Ben Borgers
How Recurring Tasks in War Room Work
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Is a Rite of Finitude'
Most of
Richard Wilbur’s poetry I read retrospectively, in books, long after it was
written and...
7 months ago
Most of
Richard Wilbur’s poetry I read retrospectively, in books, long after it was
written and first published in magazines. One exception I remember is “All That Is,” which appeared in the May 13, 1985 issue of The New Yorker. I had mostly stopped reading the magazine by...
This Space
39 Books: 2016
I love it when people announce that "if Shakespeare was alive today, he'd be writing Eastenders", or...
7 months ago
I love it when people announce that "if Shakespeare was alive today, he'd be writing Eastenders", or Game of Thrones or crime fiction, according to one and another variation. The innocence of the claim is charming, giving voice to the desperation to give weight to ephemera. But I...
Wuthering...
Planning next year's readalong opportunities - Greek philosophy and Roman plays
If only I had another idea as good as reading all the Greek plays in order. But I do have ideas.
...
over a year ago
If only I had another idea as good as reading all the Greek plays in order. But I do have ideas.
1. Roman plays. Up to five Roman playwrights have survived: the comedians Plautus and Terence and the tragedian Seneca, along with two plays under his name that were likely...
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...
Josh Thompson
Career advice for Millenials. (ugh. I hate this title)
Hah! You thought
I had career advice?
Not quite.
Christian Bonilla writes one of the best blogs...
over a year ago
Hah! You thought
I had career advice?
Not quite.
Christian Bonilla writes one of the best blogs I’ve ever read at
Smart Like How. Please click over there, and read a few of his posts.
He talks about being
data savy even if you’re not a data scientist. He covers
how to suceed...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Art and Practice of Reading Aloud to Others'
A longtime reader in Philadelphia, a retired attorney, tells
me that since the start of the COVID-19...
11 months ago
A longtime reader in Philadelphia, a retired attorney, tells
me that since the start of the COVID-19 lockdown he has been reading books
aloud to his wife, most recently The Wife
of Martin Guerre by Janet Lewis. His list of more than a dozen titles includes
Moby-Dick (“our overall...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Monsoons, Boredom, Stench'
R.L. Barth
takes as the epigraph to his new chapbook, Ghost
Story (Scienter Press, Louisville, Ky.,...
9 months ago
R.L. Barth
takes as the epigraph to his new chapbook, Ghost
Story (Scienter Press, Louisville, Ky., 2024), a passage from Dr. Johnson’s Idler essay for September 2, 1758:
“I suppose
every man is shocked when he hears how frequently soldiers are wishing for war.
The wish is not...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Stand for the Unacademic'
“I stand for
the un-Academic: the anti-Academic.”
As do most
of the better sort among writers and...
9 months ago
“I stand for
the un-Academic: the anti-Academic.”
As do most
of the better sort among writers and readers. Something vital was lost when the
profs colonized and laid claim to literature. John Gross puts it like this in The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters
(1969; rev. ed....
Anecdotal Evidence
'How It Sounds When Read Out Loud'
Our
eighth-grade English teacher, Miss Clymer, had us open the textbook to a poem
written...
a month ago
Our
eighth-grade English teacher, Miss Clymer, had us open the textbook to a poem
written seventy-five years earlier and picked students to read aloud each of
its four, eight-line stanzas. She suggested we pay attention to who is
speaking, as the poem is written as a dialogue...
sbensu
Incentives as selection effects
When you apply a new incentive, you select for a new population that prefers the incentive.
6 months ago
When you apply a new incentive, you select for a new population that prefers the incentive.
Blog -...
Book Review - The Way of The Superior Man
There are very few books that have impacted my life with the intensity that
The Way of the...
over a year ago
There are very few books that have impacted my life with the intensity that
The Way of the Superior Man has. Even though it was first published more
than twenty years ago, its message could not be more fitting for
heterosexual men trying to navigate the intricacies of being...
The Marginalian
Let the Last Thing Be Song
"When I die, I want to be sung across the threshold."
5 months ago
"When I die, I want to be sung across the threshold."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Greatness Is Difficult'
“It is
dangerous to admire a great man for his sins: we may too easily adopt his sins
for our own...
a year ago
“It is
dangerous to admire a great man for his sins: we may too easily adopt his sins
for our own out of admiration for his genius; and when the inevitable reaction
occurs, the great man’s reputation is likely to suffer unduly.”
Among writers, Dr. Johnson
is the first fallible...
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...
The Perry Bible...
Brushed
The post Brushed appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
6 months ago
The post Brushed appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Caught the Christmas Beetle'
I understand
why people might be repelled by a poem titled “When We Were Kids.” A wallow...
yesterday
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...
Steven Scrawls
Easy Questions, Part 1: Introduction
Easy Questions, Part 1:
Introduction
What if our stories explore questions not because those...
9 months ago
Easy Questions, Part 1:
Introduction
What if our stories explore questions not because those questions are
interesting, but because those questions are easier to respond to than
the alternatives?
Trope: The Chosen One
What’s the shallow, wish-fulfillment version of...
Ben Borgers
It's Fun to Do Things with Care
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
December 2016 Goals
December 19th seems a bit late to write about December’s goals, huh?
Nonetheless, I’ve had some, and...
over a year ago
December 19th seems a bit late to write about December’s goals, huh?
Nonetheless, I’ve had some, and I will still have them through the end of the month.
I
did post a review of November a few days ago. This should really be rolled into that. A “monthly review/going forward”...
Wuthering...
On the greatness of The Story of the Stone - it is in a vigorous, somewhat staccato style
Some notes on The Story of the Stone, Volume 1: The
Golden Days (c. 1760 or maybe 1792) by Cao...
2 months ago
Some notes on The Story of the Stone, Volume 1: The
Golden Days (c. 1760 or maybe 1792) by Cao Xueqin, the first of the five
volumes of the Penguin edition of the greatest Chinese novel.
I don’t like writing about a book before I have finished it,
but in a sense I did finish a...
This Space
Notes from overground
Seventeen years ago my copy of Richard Ford's The Lay of the Land was delayed in the post and...
12 months ago
Seventeen years ago my copy of Richard Ford's The Lay of the Land was delayed in the post and arrived long after the novel had been reviewed in all the big newspapers so, instead of riding the wave of publication, I was dragged under by its backwash. I had to answer a question...
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
'The Prejudice Against Humor?'
“What is the
origin of the prejudice against humor? Why is it so dangerous, if you would
keep the...
10 months ago
“What is the
origin of the prejudice against humor? Why is it so dangerous, if you would
keep the public confidence, to make the public laugh? Is it because humor and
sound sense are essentially antagonistic? Has humanity found by experience that
the man who sees the fun of life...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Curiosity to Inquire Into All Things'
“Concupiscence
of experience, boundless curiosity to set our foot everywhere, to enter...
a month ago
“Concupiscence
of experience, boundless curiosity to set our foot everywhere, to enter every
possible situation. Montaigne.”
I could have
signed my name to that when I was twenty. I wanted to visit every country in
the world, even the most dangerous. I made plans to move to...
The American Scholar
A Toothsome Tale
Bill Schutt chomps through millennia to share the story of our pearly whites
The post A Toothsome...
3 months ago
Bill Schutt chomps through millennia to share the story of our pearly whites
The post A Toothsome Tale appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'In a More Just World'
Our youngest
son’s bedroom has lately turned into an overstuffed warehouse. Last year, as a
junior...
2 months ago
Our youngest
son’s bedroom has lately turned into an overstuffed warehouse. Last year, as a
junior at Rice, he lived off-campus in an apartment. This year he’s back in a
dormitory so most of his “housewares” – clothing, dishes and utensils, tchotchkes
– have been heaped in his...
Escaping Flatland
Socratic dialogue with kids
I’m simply trying to understand how she thinks. When she answers in a way that does not match my...
a year ago
I’m simply trying to understand how she thinks. When she answers in a way that does not match my understanding—that is interesting to me.
Steven Scrawls
The Firefly Artist
The Firefly Artist
Note: it’s a metaphor. I’m not calling for mass firefly
imprisonment.
Two hours...
a year ago
The Firefly Artist
Note: it’s a metaphor. I’m not calling for mass firefly
imprisonment.
Two hours after dusk, a crowd gathered by the dozens, by the
hundreds, to see the firefly artist’s yearly performance. They spread
out blankets in the clearing, sharing snacks by the light of...
Josh Thompson
Two Things That Are Helping Me (Finally) Learn Spanish
Kristi and I are in Costa Rica for the month of January. We spent two months in Buenos Aires this...
over a year ago
Kristi and I are in Costa Rica for the month of January. We spent two months in Buenos Aires this summer. That means in the space of six months, I’ll have spent three months in a Spanish-speaking country, yet
I’ve not made significant progress on my spanish.
That’s not to say...
Anecdotal Evidence
'But, Take It From This Famous Pote [sic]'
Isaac
Waisberg of IWP Books has published his latest anthology of Horace translations,
this time a...
11 months ago
Isaac
Waisberg of IWP Books has published his latest anthology of Horace translations,
this time a generous 417 versions of Ode I.5, the “Ode to Pyrrha,” dating from 1621 to 2007. The one I’m familiar with is John Milton’s, described
by the poet as “rendered almost word for word...
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
'Each Sweaty Midnight I’m a Lifer'
Think of
this as an unexpected coda to Monday’s post, “A Recon Patrol Is a Small Unit,”
in which I...
4 months ago
Think of
this as an unexpected coda to Monday’s post, “A Recon Patrol Is a Small Unit,”
in which I asked readers to report anything they knew about the war
correspondent Albert W. Vinson. He was author of a dispatch recounting a 1968 reconnaissance
patrol in Vietnam led by the...
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Amid Tremendous History, New Pity'
Oscar Williams (1900-4) was a middling poet with a gift for compiling excellent anthologies,
thirty...
9 months ago
Oscar Williams (1900-4) was a middling poet with a gift for compiling excellent anthologies,
thirty of which he published during his lifetime. Early on, several of them
were my primers, an inviting way to learning the poetic tradition in English on
the cheap. One of them, the...
This Space
Blood Knowledge by Kirsty Gunn
"A novel is a kind of lazy way of writing a short story, a short story a lazy way of writing a poem"...
3 weeks ago
"A novel is a kind of lazy way of writing a short story, a short story a lazy way of writing a poem" said Muriel Spark, adding by explanation: "The longer they become, the more they seem to lose value". We might wonder then if the most value is to be found in the shortest novels,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'And Then Became a Name Like Others Slain'
In a six-word
paragraph in “Preliminary,” his brief introduction to Undertones of War, Edmund...
a month ago
In a six-word
paragraph in “Preliminary,” his brief introduction to Undertones of War, Edmund Blunden articulates the impulse that
would drive his poetry for the next half-century: “I must go over it again.” Psychically,
there was no Armistice. Whether to purge its memory or...
Wuthering...
Diogenes Laertius and the fun of the fragment
We have the complete Plato, from multiple manuscript sources. We have lost every published book...
a year ago
We have the complete Plato, from multiple manuscript sources. We have lost every published book (widely copied scroll) of Aristotle’s, but a large mass of what are perhaps transcribed lecture notes survived, barely, in a single manuscript, so that is our Aristotle. I don’t know...
Anecdotal Evidence
'. . . Or That He Did Not'
Some of us
enjoy footnotes and other annotations. Thoughtful, non-Kinbotean notes accompanying
older...
6 months ago
Some of us
enjoy footnotes and other annotations. Thoughtful, non-Kinbotean notes accompanying
older texts can identify historical figures and help us decipher obsolete words. As
Joyce advised in the Wake: “Wipe your
glosses with what you know.” My preference with Shakespeare...
Josh Thompson
On Cleaner Controllers
A few days ago, I worked on a project that was mostly about serving up basic store data (modeled...
over a year ago
A few days ago, I worked on a project that was mostly about serving up basic store data (modeled after Etsy) to an API.
We had a few dozen end-points, and all responses were in JSON.
Most of the action happened inside of our controllers, and as you might imagine, our routes.rb...
This Space
39 Books: 2000
In 1998 my friend John Harris mentioned that he was travelling to the US so I asked if he could pick...
7 months ago
In 1998 my friend John Harris mentioned that he was travelling to the US so I asked if he could pick up a copy of the new translation of Peter Handke's My Year in the No-man's Bay, not available over here. He was the first to tell me about this new website called Amazon. This is...
The American Scholar
Good Intentions
The post Good Intentions appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The post Good Intentions appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
9 months ago
"While we weaken friendships by expecting too little of them, we undermine romantic relationships by expecting too much of them."
sbensu
Interfaces for logical migrations
This post explains how you can use interfaces to make data model and database migrations easier.
a year ago
This post explains how you can use interfaces to make data model and database migrations easier.
Blog -...
Book Review - Showboat: The Life of Kobe Bryant
In the book Showboat: The Life of Kobe Bryant, author Roland Lazenby
meticulously shares the...
over a year ago
In the book Showboat: The Life of Kobe Bryant, author Roland Lazenby
meticulously shares the journey of Kobe Bryant, from ancestral influences
up through his final game in the NBA. He is a clear fan of Kobe’s
inarguable work ethic, but he allows readers to reinforce their...
The Marginalian
Octavia Butler on Religion and the Spirituality of Symbiosis
"On many levels, we wind up being strengthened by what we join, or what joins us, as well as by what...
a year ago
"On many levels, we wind up being strengthened by what we join, or what joins us, as well as by what we combat."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Cloudy, Cloudy Is the Stuff of Stones'
The
best-known and still unchallenged refutation of the Irish Anglican Bishop George Berkeley’s...
9 months ago
The
best-known and still unchallenged refutation of the Irish Anglican Bishop George Berkeley’s theory of
subjective idealism – he called it “immaterialism” -- is recounted by James Boswell
on August 6, 1763:
“After we
came out of the church, we stood talking for some time...
The American Scholar
“Spring” by J. R. Solonche
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Spring” by J. R. Solonche appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Spring” by J. R. Solonche appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Loss Not to Be Repaired'
“We dined at
our inn, and had with us a Mr. Jackson, one of Johnson’s schoolfellows, whom he
treated...
a year ago
“We dined at
our inn, and had with us a Mr. Jackson, one of Johnson’s schoolfellows, whom he
treated with much kindness, though he seemed to be a low man, dull and
untaught. He had a coarse grey coat, black waistcoat, greasy leather breeches,
and a yellow uncurled wig; and his...
The American Scholar
Magic Men
The post Magic Men appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
The post Magic Men appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
A Messy Mix
The post A Messy Mix appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
The post A Messy Mix appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Migrating my Jekyll site to Netlify
Troubleshooting Netilify deploy
Ugggh I moved intermediateruby.com to Netlify a few months ago in...
over a year ago
Troubleshooting Netilify deploy
Ugggh I moved intermediateruby.com to Netlify a few months ago in like 10 minutes, so my primary site, josh.works, should take maybe 20, right?
I’m a few hours deep. Here’s what I get when Netlify tries to build:
I should have done the following...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Soothe the Soul and Nurture the Imagination'
“Among the
lessons we’ve learned during these past few difficult years of pandemic,
climate crisis...
a year ago
“Among the
lessons we’ve learned during these past few difficult years of pandemic,
climate crisis and political discord is that beauty and nature matter more than
ever, and that if our homes are to be sanctuaries from an often harsh outside
world, then we should fill them with...
The Marginalian
How to Tell Love from Desire: José Ortega y Gasset on the Chronic Confusions of Our Longing
"Loving is perennial vivification... a centrifugal act of the soul in constant flux that goes toward...
8 months ago
"Loving is perennial vivification... a centrifugal act of the soul in constant flux that goes toward the object and envelops it in warm corroboration, uniting us with it and positively affirming its being."
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...
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.
Anecdotal Evidence
'All Forms of Evil ’Neath the Sun'
Isaac
Waisberg is an Israeli academic and friend who lives with his family near Tel Aviv. He
also...
a year ago
Isaac
Waisberg is an Israeli academic and friend who lives with his family near Tel Aviv. He
also runs IWP Books, an eclectic online library of titles ranging from Walter
Bagehot and A.E. Housman to Theodor Haecker and Agnes Repplier. In short, he is
a civilized man with...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Joker; One Who Breaks a Jest'
When I
encountered the word witcracker in Much Ado About Nothing, I marked it for
further use and...
a year ago
When I
encountered the word witcracker in Much Ado About Nothing, I marked it for
further use and found myself silently singing it to the tune of “Matchmaker,Matchmaker” from Fiddler on the Roof:
“Witcracker, witcracker, / Make me a wit . . .” In Shakespeare’s Act V, Scene 4,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Some Godforsaken Province'
After the
Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, the poet Aleksander Wat fled to Lwów, already
occupied by...
7 months ago
After the
Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, the poet Aleksander Wat fled to Lwów, already
occupied by the Soviets. He was arrested by the NKVD the following year and
held in a military prison in that city, then moved to Kiev, the Lubyanka in Moscow, and Saratov, more than...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Never Has a Man Deserved a Reputation Less'
My middle
son, a Marine Corps officer at Quantico, asked last week if I would interested
in “working...
a year ago
My middle
son, a Marine Corps officer at Quantico, asked last week if I would interested
in “working through Wittgenstein” with him. Of course, so we met online on Sunday
for ninety minutes and read propositions 1 and 2 of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. I first read the book...
Josh Thompson
Full Copy of 'The Atlanta Zone Plan' from 1922
A Warning and a Request
In a moment, you will read the full text of a 1922 marketing pamphlet. This...
over a year ago
A Warning and a Request
In a moment, you will read the full text of a 1922 marketing pamphlet. This document is an important thread to understanding some very large political problems facing the world today, specifically housing, affordability, the growing wealth gap, and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Shadow Cabinet of Writers'
“All of us,
probably, have some favorite unfashionable author. Occasionally a minority
taste can be...
2 months ago
“All of us,
probably, have some favorite unfashionable author. Occasionally a minority
taste can be powerful enough to make for some isolated masterpiece a small niche
in literary history -- Henry Green’s Loving
and Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Mr. Fortune's Maggot have both...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Dull Night in a Buffalo Hotel'
When writing
journalism, H.L. Mencken occasionally practiced what I think of as an informal form
of...
7 months ago
When writing
journalism, H.L. Mencken occasionally practiced what I think of as an informal form
of Impressionism. He would organize isolated bits of description, usually
snapshots of people, without explicit narration or formal structure. The
effect, sometimes satirical, was...
The American Scholar
Such as It Is
The post Such as It Is appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 days ago
The post Such as It Is appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
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...
Ben Borgers
I Run My Life on Reminders
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Paradise Notebooks: A Poet and a Geologist’s Love Letter to Life Lensed Through a Mountain
"Each world bears all the worlds we might find within it. If you understand one outcropping of...
8 months ago
"Each world bears all the worlds we might find within it. If you understand one outcropping of stone, or one wildflower, or one hummingbird — if we see our way along the tracery of cause and effect, the mystery of change and recreation — then we are led to everything we see, and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'At the Five and Ten Cent Store'
Irving
Berlin was Jewish and gave us the soundtrack for our American holidays,...
3 weeks ago
Irving
Berlin was Jewish and gave us the soundtrack for our American holidays, including
Thanksgiving Day: “My needs are small, I buy ’em all / At the five and ten cent
store. / Oh, I've got plenty to be thankful for.” Bing Crosby, a serious Roman
Catholic, introduced “I’ve Got...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Interior Convulsion'
Too late the
other night a friend texted me links to several stand-up routines by the late
Jackie...
a year ago
Too late the
other night a friend texted me links to several stand-up routines by the late
Jackie Mason. I clicked on one and the inevitable followed: I went looking for
more and soon descended into a privately curated comedy show with guest stars Don
Rickles, Jonathan Winters...
Anecdotal Evidence
'So Many Delicate Aphorisms of Human Nature'
“We should hesitate
to name any writings which would afford so large and so various a selection of...
3 months ago
“We should hesitate
to name any writings which would afford so large and so various a selection of detached
passages complete in themselves. . . . We should be at a loss to name the
writer of English prose who is his superior, or, setting Shakespeare aside, the
writer of English...
Anecdotal Evidence
'One of the Finest of Human Creatures'
Turnstile One (1948) is a slender anthology of poems,
stories, essays and reviews edited by V.S...
10 months ago
Turnstile One (1948) is a slender anthology of poems,
stories, essays and reviews edited by V.S Pritchett and drawn from The New Statesman and Nation. Founded in
1913 by the Webbs and others associated with the Fabian Society, the magazine’s
politics were left-wing and many of...
ribbonfarm
Arbitrariness Costs
I’ve long held that civilization is the process of turning the incomprehensible into the arbitrary....
7 months ago
I’ve long held that civilization is the process of turning the incomprehensible into the arbitrary. The incomprehensible can be scary but the arbitrary tends to be merely exhausting. Unless the stakes are high, such as in paperwork around taxes or passports and visas. Then the...
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'But There Must Have Been More'
One of the unexpected
gifts of being young and working as a newspaper reporter was the...
a year ago
One of the unexpected
gifts of being young and working as a newspaper reporter was the giddy
sensation of being thrown into life and finally mistaken for an adult. Some of
the one-time abstractions – murder, suicide, cancer – become real. Once you’ve
interviewed the parents of a...
Josh Thompson
STOP YELLING ON THE INTERNET, or, A Better Use for the Caps Lock Key
My current project is to learn to type using an alternative keyboard layout called Colemak.
QWERTY...
over a year ago
My current project is to learn to type using an alternative keyboard layout called Colemak.
QWERTY has problems. Here are a few, shamelessly borrowed from
Colemak.com
It places very rare letters in the best positions, so your fingers have to move a lot more.
It suffers from a...
The American Scholar
Others
Too many people in the world isn’t the problem—people are the problem
The post Others appeared first...
3 months ago
Too many people in the world isn’t the problem—people are the problem
The post Others appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
New in Superadmin: styling, images, rich text
over a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
The Early Christian Strategy
...
a month ago
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...
4 days 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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Also Did Not Hope'
Back to the
theme of non-specialization, of writer as generalist: “Next to
Montaigne, the rest of...
3 months ago
Back to the
theme of non-specialization, of writer as generalist: “Next to
Montaigne, the rest of the great intellectual figures of the sixteenth century,
the leaders of the Renaissance, of Humanism, of the Reformation, and of the
modern sciences, the men who created modern...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Why Not Get Out of This Rut?'
"Books offer
what may be called a standing solution to the eternal and infernal
Christmas-present...
2 days ago
"Books offer
what may be called a standing solution to the eternal and infernal
Christmas-present problem.”
Well, yes
and no. I’m a graceless gift giver and receiver, especially when it comes to
books. People like my middle son are inspired and have a knack for...
The Marginalian
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows: Uncommonly Lovely Invented Words for What We Feel but Cannot Name
"Despite what dictionaries would have us believe, this world is still mostly undefined."
8 months ago
"Despite what dictionaries would have us believe, this world is still mostly undefined."
The American Scholar
To Catch a Sunset
Reflections on allergies, anxieties, and the limits of familial love
The post To Catch a Sunset...
5 months ago
Reflections on allergies, anxieties, and the limits of familial love
The post To Catch a Sunset appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
sbensu
Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union
Notes from reading the book by Zubok
10 months ago
Notes from reading the book by Zubok
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Were Nothing in Ourselves Nothing More'
“[H]e gave
us some of the best poems of our times. And, after all, one must thank a man
for what he...
a year ago
“[H]e gave
us some of the best poems of our times. And, after all, one must thank a man
for what he has done and not condemn him for his failures.”
A timely,
guilt-inducing reminder. It’s easy to scold a writer for not producing a masterpiece
each time he goes to work. Good...
Anecdotal Evidence
"The Pensive Citadel"
My review of
The Pensive Citadel by Victor
Brombert is published in the December issue of The New...
a year ago
My review of
The Pensive Citadel by Victor
Brombert is published in the December issue of The New Criterion.
Josh Thompson
Fry Your Pizza
Here’s a problem many of us first-worlders have: cold pizza.
There are two options. Microwave it, or...
over a year ago
Here’s a problem many of us first-worlders have: cold pizza.
There are two options. Microwave it, or throw it in the toaster oven or regular oven. A microwave makes it soggy, and a regular oven takes forever to heat it up.
(If you’re willing to eat it cold, may god have mercy on...
Ben Borgers
Tuesday, January 18, 2022
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'What Is Called an Amateur'
I recently encountered
a choice example of academic snobbery, the lording of a tenured professor...
a year ago
I recently encountered
a choice example of academic snobbery, the lording of a tenured professor over lecturers,
adjuncts and even “mere assistant professors.” Normally the perpetrator tries
to disguise his snottiness or treat it as a joke but in this case the prima
donna was...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Flowering Shrubs of His Letters'
To some
writers we feel an unbudgeable loyalty that defies critical understanding and
even good...
a year ago
To some
writers we feel an unbudgeable loyalty that defies critical understanding and
even good taste. I can’t defend my love of Sherwood Anderson’s stories and no
longer feel the need to do so. At some point a reader gives up trying to impress
others with his sophistication,...
Wuthering...
The elegant, intricate, sour comedies of Terence
The great Roman playwright Terence wrote six plays between 166 and 160 BCE, twenty years after the...
a year ago
The great Roman playwright Terence wrote six plays between 166 and 160 BCE, twenty years after the death of Plautus. The story is that he wrote the first one at age nineteen, while enslaved, thus winning his freedom and entry into a world of aristocratic patrons. Plautus was...
The Marginalian
Simone Weil on Love and Its Counterfeit
How to tell a plaything from a necessity.
a year ago
How to tell a plaything from a necessity.
The Marginalian
The Two Souls Within: Hermann Hesse on the Dual Life of the Creative Spirit
"Like a precious, fleeting foam over the sea of suffering arise all those works of art, in which a...
11 months ago
"Like a precious, fleeting foam over the sea of suffering arise all those works of art, in which a single individual lifts himself for an hour so high above his personal destiny that his happiness shines like a star and appears to all who see it as something eternal and as a...
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...
5 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...
Wuthering...
"Socrates gone mad" - my hero Diogenes the Cynic
He lived in a jar, owned a staff and a cloak and nothing
else, and was a sarcastic pain in the...
a year ago
He lived in a jar, owned a staff and a cloak and nothing
else, and was a sarcastic pain in the ass.
He took the example of Socrates to its limit. Plato is the one who called him “Socrates
gone mad,” but in a sense he is just the logical result of thinking through how
Socrates...
Ben Borgers
The Land of Endless Socialization
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
2018 In Review & Thoughts on 2019
I find a lot of value in other people’s reviews of their years. It’s the time of year to be...
over a year ago
I find a lot of value in other people’s reviews of their years. It’s the time of year to be contemplative and reflective on the last 12 months, so here we are.
Note to reader: I’m posting this in May, 2019. I wrote it in late December, 2018, didn’t get around to finishing it up...
This Space
Dead Souls by Sam Riviere
Even before one begins reading Sam Riviere’s first novel there is despondency as one registers that...
over a year ago
Even before one begins reading Sam Riviere’s first novel there is despondency as one registers that the title is a duplication of the English translation of Nikolai Gogol’s Мёртвые души, the novel in which a character seeks to buy dead serfs from their owners but who have yet to...
Wuthering...
Books I read in August 2024
My ambition this summer was to read extensively in Arabic literature. Eh, I did all right, but I...
3 months ago
My ambition this summer was to read extensively in Arabic literature. Eh, I did all right, but I will have to save
Ibn Battuta’s Travels and the second half of Leg over Leg for
some other time.
FICTION
The Arabian Nights (14th c.), many hands – In the
great Hassan Haddawy...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Author Who Inspires Such Perennial Affection'
“This
impossibly erudite, overbearing, tender, and anguished man lived in a perpetual
state of...
a week ago
“This
impossibly erudite, overbearing, tender, and anguished man lived in a perpetual
state of dissatisfaction with himself which only disciplined labor could allay
but never completely still.”
In their moral
and emotional complexity, certain lives resemble the finest novels –...
The Marginalian
Youth and Age: Kahlil Gibran on the Art of Becoming
A roadmap to the fulfilled belonging on the other side of "the great aloneness which knows not what...
a year ago
A roadmap to the fulfilled belonging on the other side of "the great aloneness which knows not what is far and what is near, nor what is small nor great."
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Are So Lucky Having English'
“We are
lucky that English is our language because it’s better than, say, French for
poetry. All...
a year ago
“We are
lucky that English is our language because it’s better than, say, French for
poetry. All those millions of words and all those different ways of saying the
same, or similar, things. And new words all the time.”
It’s
fashionable in some quarters to distrust language, to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'About As Approachable As a Porcupine'
The large bay
window facing the garden in front of our house is better than television....
a month ago
The large bay
window facing the garden in front of our house is better than television. No
commercials, no dependency on internet whims, no bills to pay. That’s where I
do most of my reading (best lighting in the house). From the couch I watch the
show in the garden. Butterflies,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Stood There and Stared at Silence, Silent Too'
St. Augustine
observes of St. Ambrose in Book VI, Chapter 3 of his Confessions:
“When he...
10 months ago
St. Augustine
observes of St. Ambrose in Book VI, Chapter 3 of his Confessions:
“When he was
reading, his eyes ran over the page and his heart perceived the sense, but his
voice and tongue were silent. . . . Very often when we were there, we saw him
silently reading and never...
Escaping Flatland
Having a shit blog has made me feel abundant
From Giacometti’s sketch book
3 months ago
From Giacometti’s sketch book
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Old Collections Persist Somewhere'
Speaking of
anthologies, I again picked up Books and
Libraries (2021), published as part of the...
a year ago
Speaking of
anthologies, I again picked up Books and
Libraries (2021), published as part of the Everyman's Library Pocket Poets
Series. I’ve browsed in several of these attractively compact volumes and they are
a very mixed bag, as any thematic anthology must be. You can sense...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Relief, Joy, or Nostalgia'
“Of course,
no one simply reads, or rereads, a given book. One reads a certain edition at a
specific...
7 months ago
“Of course,
no one simply reads, or rereads, a given book. One reads a certain edition at a
specific time in one’s life, and the particular book’s smell, typeface, and
paper can be as much a part of the experience as one’s physical and emotional
circumstances.”
I used to think...
Josh Thompson
Testing Rake Tasks in Rails
I recently wrote a rake task to update some values we’ve got stored in the database. The rake task...
over a year ago
I recently wrote a rake task to update some values we’ve got stored in the database. The rake task itself isn’t important in this post, but testing it is.
We’ve got many untested rake tasks in the database, so when our senior dev suggested adding a test, I had to build ours from...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Jewish Kind of Feeling of the World'
Isaac
Bashevis Singer, speaking with an interviewer in 1983:
“I really
don’t believe that a writer...
a month ago
Isaac
Bashevis Singer, speaking with an interviewer in 1983:
“I really
don’t believe that a writer can have a programme. Many have; they say, ‘I’m writing
about alienation’, or whatever they call it. I don’t have this programme. I
have a story to tell and I sit down to tell the...
The Marginalian
Wholeness and the Implicate Order: Physicist David Bohm on Bridging Consciousness and Reality
How to "include everything coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that is undivided,...
a year ago
How to "include everything coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that is undivided, unbroken, and without a border."
The Marginalian
Coleridge on the Paradox of Friendship and Romantic Love
On sympathy, reciprocity, and satisfying the fulness of our nature.
a year ago
On sympathy, reciprocity, and satisfying the fulness of our nature.
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 Elysian
Writing Prompt: Fix Capitalism
By September 30th.
3 months ago
Escaping Flatland
A greeting
They think it was a monk at the Monastery of St Alban in Trier, present-day Germany. On Christmas...
12 months ago
They think it was a monk at the Monastery of St Alban in Trier, present-day Germany. On Christmas day, sometime in the 1570s, he was out walking when he came upon a rose that had, in the blistering cold, put forth a flower. It was a hellebore, a winter rose. Moved by the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Bright Books! the Perspectives to Our Weak Sights'
April is the
kindest and cruelest month.
Think of the
births: George Herbert (April 3, 1593),...
8 months ago
April is the
kindest and cruelest month.
Think of the
births: George Herbert (April 3, 1593), Shakespeare (April 23, 1564), Henry
Vaughan (April 17, 1621), Daniel Defoe (April 24, 1731), Edward Gibbon (April
27, 1737), William Hazlitt (April 10, 1778), Anthony Trollope (April...
The Marginalian
We Go to the Park: A Soulful Illustrated Meditation on Our Search for Meaning
"Sometimes it feels as if all of life is made up of longing."
4 months ago
"Sometimes it feels as if all of life is made up of longing."
Anecdotal Evidence
'His Own Exclusive Object'
I’ve
accumulated some of the accoutrements of age – bifocals, cane, hearing aids.
None embarrasses...
4 months ago
I’ve
accumulated some of the accoutrements of age – bifocals, cane, hearing aids.
None embarrasses me and all make life less annoying. I’ve never been seriously
ill. I take my handful of vitamins and meds in the morning. I no longer drink
and never smoked. Among the last things I...
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