Steven Scrawls
Care doesn't scale
Care Doesn’t Scale
I met a social worker whose job was to look after four orphaned
children. She’d...
a month ago
Care Doesn’t Scale
I met a social worker whose job was to look after four orphaned
children. She’d alternate with her coworkers spending 24 hours at a time
living with the kids, effectively acting as their parent. The children,
unsurprisingly, had a lot of trauma and so her job...
The Elysian
Founders will get much richer by exiting to employees
This is how we create a wave of employee ownership.
4 months ago
This is how we create a wave of employee ownership.
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Dictionary of Dead Words'
How to
account for the enduring appeal of clichés? Why do we snub the riches of our language?...
a year ago
How to
account for the enduring appeal of clichés? Why do we snub the riches of our language? I’ve
always supposed it was laziness or the absence of imagination. Why work hard at
writing or speaking when a ready-made word, phrase or thought shows up automatically
like pain with a...
Josh Thompson
Boulder Ruby Group meetup notes
Move Slow and Improve Things: Performance Improvement in a Rails App
Boulder Ruby Group Monthly...
over a year ago
Move Slow and Improve Things: Performance Improvement in a Rails App
Boulder Ruby Group Monthly Meetup @Recurly Offices, Feb 13, 2018
Slides are available here on Dropbox
Git Push, Git Paid
Here’s the “Git Push, Git Paid” t-shirt I mentioned:
Thoughtbot designed these, and it...
Josh Thompson
Metaprogramming in Ruby: method_missing
I’m working through Metaprogramming in Ruby
It’s a great read. There are examples in the books, but...
over a year ago
I’m working through Metaprogramming in Ruby
It’s a great read. There are examples in the books, but I wanted to take them out and apply them to some easy Exercisms.
I feel some disclosure may be useful. In no way, at all, should you ever implement any of the “solutions” I’m...
Ben Borgers
How I got scammed on Facebook Marketplace
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'On a Certain Street There Is a Certain Door'
Borges
titled a sonnet in The Gold of the Tigers,
his 1972 collection, "J.M.":
“On a
certain street...
6 months ago
Borges
titled a sonnet in The Gold of the Tigers,
his 1972 collection, "J.M.":
“On a
certain street there is a certain door
shut with
its bell and its exact address
and with a
flavor of lost Paradise,
which in the
early evening I can never
open to
enter. The day’s work at its...
This Space
39 Books: 1988
This is one of my most surprising discoveries in second-hand bookshop trawls in the far off days...
7 months ago
This is one of my most surprising discoveries in second-hand bookshop trawls in the far off days when they existed, especially because it was found in Portsmouth, not the most literary of cities despite Dickens and Conan-Doyle (or perhaps because of Dickens and Conan-Doyle)....
Anecdotal Evidence
'Gleams Like a Warm Homestead Light'
Here is
epigram 1.33 by Marcus Valerius Martialis (c. 38-102 A.D.), better known in
English as...
2 months ago
Here is
epigram 1.33 by Marcus Valerius Martialis (c. 38-102 A.D.), better known in
English as Martial:
“In private
she mourns not the late-lamented;
If someone’s
by, her tears leap forth on call.
Sorrow, my
dear, is not so easily rented.
They are
true tears that without witness...
The Marginalian
The Dalai Lama’s Ethical and Ecological Philosophy for the Next Generation, Illustrated
"We are all interconnected in the universe, and from this, universal responsibility arises......
a year ago
"We are all interconnected in the universe, and from this, universal responsibility arises... Everyone has the responsibility to develop a happier world."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Who Needs Your Stories?'
Have you
ever read something – it might be a poem or a history
book, almost anything – and...
2 months ago
Have you
ever read something – it might be a poem or a history
book, almost anything – and encountered a phrase or sentence so self-contained
and dense with meaning, in words so perfectly arranged, that you stop reading,
ponder and write it down? You may not even continue with...
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.
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Build a House for Fools and Mad'
An entry dated
June 15, 1830 in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Table
Talk: “[Jonathan, not Taylor]...
6 months ago
An entry dated
June 15, 1830 in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Table
Talk: “[Jonathan, not Taylor] Swift
was anima Rabelaisii habitans in sicco,--the
soul of Rabelais dwelling in a dry place. Yet Swift was rare.”
Now there’s a
metaphor that sticks in the mind – “dwelling in a dry...
The Elysian
Is America about to fall? Or flourish?
That depends on us.
a month ago
Wuthering...
Books I Read in October 2023
The five-day hospital stay breaking the month in half is likely invisible to anyone but me, but that...
a year ago
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...
Josh Thompson
Setting up Application Performance Monitoring in DataDog in your Rails App
When I write guides to things, I write them first and foremost for myself, and I tend to work...
over a year ago
When I write guides to things, I write them first and foremost for myself, and I tend to work through things in excruciating detail. You might find this to be a little too in-depth, or you might appreciate the detail. Either way, if you want a step-by-step guide, this should do...
Anecdotal Evidence
'What Will Become of My Diary?'
“During the
morning hours of the first of September 1939, war broke out between Germany and
Poland...
3 months ago
“During the
morning hours of the first of September 1939, war broke out between Germany and
Poland and indirectly between Germany and Poland’s allies, England and France.
This war will indeed bring destruction upon human civilization which merits
annihilation and destruction....
The Marginalian
Doris: A Watercolor Serenade to the Courage of Authenticity and the Art of Connection
“There is no insurmountable solitude,” Pablo Neruda asserted in his stirring Nobel Prize acceptance...
a year ago
“There is no insurmountable solitude,” Pablo Neruda asserted in his stirring Nobel Prize acceptance speech. “All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the...
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."
The Marginalian
Time and the Soul: Philosopher Jacob Needleman on Our Search for Meaning
"The real significance of our problem with time... is a crisis of meaning... The root of our modern...
10 months ago
"The real significance of our problem with time... is a crisis of meaning... The root of our modern problem with time is neither technological, sociological, economic nor psychological. It is metaphysical. It is a question of the meaning of human life itself."
The Marginalian
Leaning Toward Light: A Posy of Poems Celebrating the Joys and Consolations of the Garden
“Gardening is like poetry in that it is gratuitous, and also that it cannot be done on will alone,”...
a year ago
“Gardening is like poetry in that it is gratuitous, and also that it cannot be done on will alone,” the poet and passionate gardener May Sarton wrote as she contemplated the parallels between these two creative practices — parallels that have led centuries of beloved writers to...
Astral Codex Ten
Against The Generalized Anti-Caution Argument
...
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'When We Have Excellent Books, They Sell'
“People tell
us all the time that civilization is finished, that the world is coming to an
end. But...
3 months ago
“People tell
us all the time that civilization is finished, that the world is coming to an
end. But then we look at our sales details and we smile.”
John Byron
Kuhner posts a rare dispatch of hope from the world of books, the beating heart
of what remains of our civilization. In...
Josh Thompson
Denver Botanic Gardens - What, How, Why
I recently got access to a delightful amenity, based on where I live. I’ve been sharing it with...
6 months ago
I recently got access to a delightful amenity, based on where I live. I’ve been sharing it with others as quickly as possible, because they too have access to it.
From here on out, when I reference “botanic gardens” or “the gardens”, I’m referencing the Denver Botanic Gardens,...
The Marginalian
Trauma, Growth, and How to Be Twice as Alive: Tove Jansson on the Worm and the Art of Self-Renewal
"Nothing is easy when you might come apart in the middle at any moment."
4 months ago
"Nothing is easy when you might come apart in the middle at any moment."
Wuthering...
Thou hast devourd thy sonnes - some notes on Seneca's horror plays
My Seneca reading in March:
Medea, tr. Frederick Ahl
The Trojan Women, tr. E. F. Watling
Thyestes,...
a year ago
My Seneca reading in March:
Medea, tr. Frederick Ahl
The Trojan Women, tr. E. F. Watling
Thyestes, tr. Jasper Heywood
Hercules Furens, tr. Heywood
The Madness of Hercules, tr. Dana Gioia
The plays themselves are all from the mid-1st century,
perhaps written when Seneca was in...
The American Scholar
Aging Out
Many of us do not go gentle into that good night
The post Aging Out appeared first on The American...
2 weeks ago
Many of us do not go gentle into that good night
The post Aging Out appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Injury Impedes Improvement
Kristi and I have been in Colorado for three months, I’ve been climbing regularly for two, I am back...
over a year ago
Kristi and I have been in Colorado for three months, I’ve been climbing regularly for two, I am back in shape and it feels good.
I am tempted to throw myself into climbing again. To climb every day, or maybe every other day, and finish every session with training. But here’s the...
The Marginalian
The Donkey and the Meaning of Eternity: Nobel-Winning Spanish Poet Juan Ramón Jiménez’s Love Letter...
"Come with me. I'll teach you the flowers and the stars."
a year ago
"Come with me. I'll teach you the flowers and the stars."
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Was Only Coming True'
In the final
year of his life, Clive James published a book-length poem, The River in the Sky...
a year ago
In the final
year of his life, Clive James published a book-length poem, The River in the Sky (2018), a dying man’s
last fling. The title refers to the Japanese phrase for the Milky Way. It’s
mostly autobiography, a book of well-rehearsed memories, largely unstructured, much
of...
The American Scholar
Good Vibrations
One eccentric’s desert landmark allows visitors to bathe in sound
The post Good Vibrations appeared...
8 months ago
One eccentric’s desert landmark allows visitors to bathe in sound
The post Good Vibrations appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Afterlives of the Soul: Sister Nivedita on Love and Death
"To the soul, time does not exist. Only her own great purpose exists, shining clear and steady...
a year ago
"To the soul, time does not exist. Only her own great purpose exists, shining clear and steady through the mists before her."
Wuthering...
Books I read in February 2024 - if there is truth in poets' prophesies, then in my fame forever will...
Persian literature in March: the epic Shahnameh in
Dick Davis’s mostly prose translation, plus the...
9 months ago
Persian literature in March: the epic Shahnameh in
Dick Davis’s mostly prose translation, plus the classical poets he translated in
Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz, plus some Rumi and at least
one contemporary Iranian novel, Mahmoud Dowlatabadi’s The Colonel
(2009). ...
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,...
The Marginalian
Grace Against Gravity and the Physics of Vulnerability: How Birds Fly and Why They Flock in a V...
“What we see from the air is so simple and beautiful,” Georgia O’Keeffe wrote after her first...
a month ago
“What we see from the air is so simple and beautiful,” Georgia O’Keeffe wrote after her first airplane flight, “I cannot help feeling that it would do something wonderful for the human race — rid it of much smallness and pettiness if more people flew.” I am writing this aboard an...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Remarkable Literary Judgment'
She was
twelve or thirteen, a girl in a hooded sweatshirt seated beside a woman I
assume was her...
4 months ago
She was
twelve or thirteen, a girl in a hooded sweatshirt seated beside a woman I
assume was her mother. She sat on the aisle two rows ahead of me. The cabin of
the plane glowed with screens while she was reading Andrew R. MacAndrew’s 1961 translation
of Dead Souls, the Signet...
The Marginalian
Facts about the Moon: Dorianne Laux’s Stunning Poem about Bearing Our Human Losses When Even the...
“Hearing the rising tide,” Rachel Carson wrote in her poetic meditation on the ocean and the meaning...
8 months ago
“Hearing the rising tide,” Rachel Carson wrote in her poetic meditation on the ocean and the meaning of life, “there are echoes of past and future: of the flow of time, obliterating yet containing all that has gone before… of the stream of life, flowing as inexorably as any ocean...
Ben Borgers
Half a Slice of Apple Pie
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Moonlight and the Magic of the Unnecessary
Every night, for every human being that ever was and ever will be, the Moon rises to remind us how...
9 months ago
Every night, for every human being that ever was and ever will be, the Moon rises to remind us how improbably lucky we are, each of its craters a monument of the odds we prevailed against to exist, a reliquary of the violent collisions that forged our rocky planet lush with life...
The American Scholar
Bastienne Schmidt
The fabric of life
The post Bastienne Schmidt appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
The fabric of life
The post Bastienne Schmidt appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Kamau & ZuZu Find a Way: A Tender Lunar Fable about the Stubborn Courage of Prevailing Over the Odds...
"But we will have to find a way to live, as people do."
3 months ago
"But we will have to find a way to live, as people do."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Arid Interrogation'
As boys, in
our imaginations we tested ourselves. Would we prove courageous in combat? Our
fathers...
4 months ago
As boys, in
our imaginations we tested ourselves. Would we prove courageous in combat? Our
fathers had, so we believed, during World War II. Could we withstand torture?
These virtues, touched with Hollywood melodrama, seemed like essential aspects of
maturity. We wanted to be...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Bright, Cheerful, Salubrious Hell'
Max
Beerbohm’s first radio broadcast, delivered on December 29, 1935, is titled
“London Revisited.”...
11 months ago
Max
Beerbohm’s first radio broadcast, delivered on December 29, 1935, is titled
“London Revisited.” He celebrates the city of his birth (in 1872) and youth –
the Edwardian era – and implicitly critiques the London of the interbellum
years:
“London has been
cosmopolitanised,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Even Erudition is Possible Outside Academe'
A reader tells
me he earned his B.A. in English several years ago and now he works for a
non-profit...
5 months ago
A reader tells
me he earned his B.A. in English several years ago and now he works for a
non-profit that pushes “arts education,” whatever that might be. I don’t take
him for an idealist. He’s bright, personable, an ambitious reader and bored.
Our culture doesn’t know what to do...
The American Scholar
Look Out!
Why did it take so long to protect
The post Look Out! appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
Why did it take so long to protect
The post Look Out! appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
How I take notes, AKA 'Add an Index to Your Notebook'
A while back, sometime in 2017, I wrote this tweet:
a while ago, I read about how to keep...
over a year ago
A while back, sometime in 2017, I wrote this tweet:
a while ago, I read about how to keep well-organized notes on a range of topics. Here's my current notebook, indexed by category: pic.twitter.com/aVsNnGPEpd
— Josh Thompson (@josh_works) May 8, 2017
Since then, I occasionally...
The American Scholar
The Redoubtable Bull Shark
Reflecting on one of nature’s most dangerous predators
The post The Redoubtable Bull Shark appeared...
7 months ago
Reflecting on one of nature’s most dangerous predators
The post The Redoubtable Bull Shark appeared first on The American Scholar.
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.
This Space
39 Books: 2021
I lived in Brighton for 30 years. One of the many painful aspects of leaving in 2021 was losing the...
6 months ago
I lived in Brighton for 30 years. One of the many painful aspects of leaving in 2021 was losing the many second-hand bookshops, all within walking distance. Many have closed over the years, such as Sandpiper, a remaindered bookshop in Kensington Gardens. It had a backroom in...
The Marginalian
The Pleasure of Being Left Alone
"An exquisite peace obtains: a drowsy, golden peace, flowing honey-sweet over my dwelling, soaking...
6 months ago
"An exquisite peace obtains: a drowsy, golden peace, flowing honey-sweet over my dwelling, soaking it, dripping like music from the walls... A peace for gods; a divine emptiness."
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Harbinger of a Song Greater Still'
“I went to
him very late each night, and he read many of the poems to me or discussed them
with me...
a year ago
“I went to
him very late each night, and he read many of the poems to me or discussed them
with me till the early hours of the morning. The tears often ran down his face
as he read, without the slightest apparent consciousness of them on his part.
The pathos and grandeur of these...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Probity Was Perhaps the Highest Good'
As a
newspaper reporter I covered only one capital murder trial. This was in rural
Indiana in 1983....
8 months ago
As a
newspaper reporter I covered only one capital murder trial. This was in rural
Indiana in 1983. At the age of eighteen, William Spranger had fatally shot a
town marshal, William Miner, in the back with the officer’s service revolver. The
jury found Spranger guilty and Judge...
Josh Thompson
Becoming an Early Riser
Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
-The man no child likes to...
over a year ago
Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
-The man no child likes to hear about when being awoken by their parents
Getting out of bed is a struggle. I’ve spent the better part of twenty four years setting my alarm as late as possible so I could have...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Am Breathing--Still'
R.L. Barth
is preparing a chapbook of poems titled Ghost Story for a publisher. One of its sections,...
11 months ago
R.L. Barth
is preparing a chapbook of poems titled Ghost Story for a publisher. One of its sections, “Snowfall in
Vietnam: Poems/Maxims,” consists of ten one-line, five-syllable poems and
accompanying titles, some of which are longer than the poems. Their extreme...
Wuthering...
Roald Amundsen’s My Life as an Explorer - an adventure is merely a bit of bad planning
One last book for Norwegian November, Roald Amundsen’s My
Life as an Explorer (1927), a memoir...
2 weeks ago
One last book for Norwegian November, Roald Amundsen’s My
Life as an Explorer (1927), a memoir covering the polar explorer’s entire
career. It’s a good book, full of adventure.
To the explorer, however, adventure is merely an unwelcome
interruption of his serious labours. ...
Ben Borgers
The Cost of Building an Idea
over a year ago
Wuthering...
The Best Books of 2024
For the last year and a half I read short books,
mostly, which was psychologically satisfying and...
11 months ago
For the last year and a half I read short books,
mostly, which was psychologically satisfying and anyway necessary to fit the
available energy and concentration. Now,
though, back on my feet, I hope, I am ready to read long books again.
Long, and I mean it, like Rebecca West’s...
The Marginalian
Love’s Work: Philosopher Gillian Rose on the Value of Getting It Wrong
"You may be weaker than the whole world but you are always stronger than yourself. Let me send my...
a year ago
"You may be weaker than the whole world but you are always stronger than yourself. Let me send my power against my power... Let me discover what it is that I want and fear from love. Power and love, might and grace."
The Elysian
One year of my work, printed
The Elysian Volume II is here.
2 months ago
The Elysian Volume II is here.
Ben Borgers
Automatic Dark Mode Colors Don’t Work
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Planned Unit Design Document (work-in-progress)
This is a draft document, meant for circulation, will evolve with time and eventually be something...
over a year ago
This is a draft document, meant for circulation, will evolve with time and eventually be something we bring to the City of Golden for ratification, or whatever needs to happen to get this done in this zone. This document relates to Collateralizing Mortgages and Loans With the...
The Marginalian
In the Dark: A Lyrical Illustrated Invitation to Find the Light Behind the Fear
The mind is a camera obscura constantly trying to render an image of reality on the back wall of...
a year ago
The mind is a camera obscura constantly trying to render an image of reality on the back wall of consciousness through the pinhole of awareness, its aperture narrowed by our selective attention, honed on our hopes and fears. In consequence, the projection we see inside the dark...
Anecdotal Evidence
'They Fluttered Around Like Blue Snowflakes'
As a former
newspaper reporter I regularly read three hard-copy newspapers: The Leader, a...
11 months ago
As a former
newspaper reporter I regularly read three hard-copy newspapers: The Leader, a neighborhood weekly here
in Houston; the weekend edition of the Wall
Street Journal; and County Highway.
That’s down from thirty years ago when I read seven or eight papers every day
(like a...
The Marginalian
The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating: An Uncommon Meditation on Presence and the Aperture of Wonder
"Survival often depends on a specific focus: a relationship, a belief, or a hope balanced on the...
a year ago
"Survival often depends on a specific focus: a relationship, a belief, or a hope balanced on the edge of possibility."
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'What She or He Ought to Know'
In a
typically mordant essay, “A Great Fog Over the Past,” Peter Hitchens cites “Spanish Waters,” a...
4 months ago
In a
typically mordant essay, “A Great Fog Over the Past,” Peter Hitchens cites “Spanish Waters,” a poem by John Masefield, one of the first poets I claimed as my own
when a boy, years before Eliot and Yeats. The poem’s “decrepit beggar,” as Hitchens
puts it, “knows where the...
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...
The American Scholar
A Poet of the Soil
The legacy of a writer who struggled with his celebrity
The post A Poet of the Soil appeared first...
2 months ago
The legacy of a writer who struggled with his celebrity
The post A Poet of the Soil appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Sentimentality and Being Mortal: Poet Mark Doty on the Passionate Fragility of Our Attachments
How beautiful and unbearable that only one of each exists — each lover, each child, each dog; that...
11 months ago
How beautiful and unbearable that only one of each exists — each lover, each child, each dog; that this particular chance-constellation of atoms has never before existed and will never again recur in the history of the universe. The fact of each such singularity is a wonder...
Josh Thompson
Input metrics vs. Output metrics
It’s tempting to track results, when trying to accomplish something.
If you’re working on any...
over a year ago
It’s tempting to track results, when trying to accomplish something.
If you’re working on any project of sufficient size, the results will come
slowly, fitfully, and sometimes not at all.
So, don’t track results, track your efforts. (Yes, how very American of me.
I don’t believe...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Air of Baffled Absence'
R.L. Barth
has sent a new epigram, “Baffled,” not overtly related to the Vietnam War:
“I see...
4 months ago
R.L. Barth
has sent a new epigram, “Baffled,” not overtly related to the Vietnam War:
“I see these
hands on the deck railing, but
Whose are
they? Have they any meaning? What?”
Some readers
will understand. The familiar can become strange with age. That’s not always a...
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...
8 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,...
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."
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...
Ben Borgers
It Does Have to Be Every Day
over a year ago
Wuthering...
Thales, the first philosopher - what is philosophy, anyways?
He [Thales of Miletus] held that the original substance of all things is water, and that the world...
a year ago
He [Thales of Miletus] held that the original substance of all things is water, and that the world is animate and full of deities. They say he discovered the seasons of the year, and divided the day into 365 days. (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, p. 12,...
The Marginalian
Octavio Paz on Freedom
"Without freedom, what we call a person does not exist."
a year ago
"Without freedom, what we call a person does not exist."
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
'I Read the Wild Wallpaper of My Heart'
Meade
Harwell, Gordon H. Felton, M.J.A. McGittigan, Jess H. Cloud, Byron Vazakas,
Ellis Foote, Myron...
a year ago
Meade
Harwell, Gordon H. Felton, M.J.A. McGittigan, Jess H. Cloud, Byron Vazakas,
Ellis Foote, Myron H. Broomell, Celeste Turner Wright.
Who are
these strangers? What brings them together? They recall a walk in the cemetery,
reading on the stones the names of people we have...
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Range and Liveliness of Poetry'
I heard from
a high-school classmate who remembered the time in A.P. English our senior year
when...
9 months ago
I heard from
a high-school classmate who remembered the time in A.P. English our senior year
when the teacher had us form small groups, select a poem and prepare a
discussion. At my suggestion, our group picked “The Groundhog” (1934) by Richard
Eberhart (1904-2005). Note its...
This Space
The disappearance of criticism, part two
A friend mentioned to me that he felt alienated by the articulacy of a literary critical book he was...
over a year ago
A friend mentioned to me that he felt alienated by the articulacy of a literary critical book he was reading; by its neutrality of tone, by its calm. Unruffled was another word he used. We all might recognise this feeling while assuming it is admiration, respect, perhaps even...
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...
The Marginalian
How the Octopus Came to Earth: Stunning 19th-Century French Chromolithographs of Cephalopods
The art-science that captured the wonder of some of "the most brilliant productions of Nature."
a year ago
The art-science that captured the wonder of some of "the most brilliant productions of Nature."
Josh Thompson
Climbing in Cuba, 2019
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go climbing in Cuba.
Mark and Dave, walking back from...
over a year ago
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go climbing in Cuba.
Mark and Dave, walking back from climbing outside Viñales
Locals crag, called “The roof of the world”. Stunning routes.
because it was so hot, we spent a lot of time in this cave.
Kristi and I tend to stick...
The Marginalian
The Cosmogony of You
We live in a state of perpetual dissociation from the almost unbearable wonder of being alive....
3 weeks ago
We live in a state of perpetual dissociation from the almost unbearable wonder of being alive. Wonder is always an edge state, its edge so sharp it threatens to rupture the mundane and sever us from what we mistake for reality — the TV, the townhouse, the trauma narrative. If we...
Josh Thompson
Turing Prep appendix: Troubleshooting Errors
Pretty much any time I hear the same question twice, I will try to add a section here for it, and...
over a year ago
Pretty much any time I hear the same question twice, I will try to add a section here for it, and make it as findable by future students as possible.
Do you have a question not answered here? PLEASE send me a DM in Slack or @ me (I’m josh_t in the Turing slack). I’ll take a...
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Have Finally Written on Politics"
The April
1970 issue of the now-defunct New
American Review included one of those self-important...
a year ago
The April
1970 issue of the now-defunct New
American Review included one of those self-important symposia beloved by
editors, this one titled “The Writer’s Situation.” A surprising participant was
J.V. Cunningham, who seldom played the conventional literary game. A poet,
critic,...
The Marginalian
Comet & Star: A Cosmic Fable about the Rhythms and Consolations of Friendship
People pass through our lives and change us, tilting our orbit with their own. Sometimes, if the...
2 months ago
People pass through our lives and change us, tilting our orbit with their own. Sometimes, if the common gravitational center is strong enough, they return, they stay. Sometimes they travel on. But they change us all the same. The great consolation of the cosmic order is the...
Astral Codex Ten
The Early Christian Strategy
...
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Enormous Yes'
“The voice was unmistakable. It made misery beautiful.”
My ideal setting for listening to music is...
5 months ago
“The voice was unmistakable. It made misery beautiful.”
My ideal setting for listening to music is my eleven-year-old Nissan. When
I play a CD, I listen and never treat
it as background. I hate the idea of music as ambient filler, a second
atmosphere. My youngest son plays music...
The American Scholar
Ups and Downs
The post Ups and Downs appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 weeks ago
The post Ups and Downs appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Ant, the Grasshopper, and the Antidote to the Cult of More: A Lovely Vintage Illustrated Poem...
“Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily...
a year ago
“Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily Dickinson lamented in a love letter. In his splendid short poem about the secret of happiness, Kurt Vonnegut exposed the taproot of our modern suffering as the gnawing sense that what we...
The Elysian
I'm traveling the world to study utopia
An update about my life and artistic process.
6 months ago
An update about my life and artistic process.
Josh Thompson
Gratitude 3x/day
Earlier this year, I read
The Miracle Morning, which promises (paraphrasing here):
If you do these...
over a year ago
Earlier this year, I read
The Miracle Morning, which promises (paraphrasing here):
If you do these seven things every morning you’ll be the most amazing person you’ve ever met.
OK, it’s not exactly that bold, but it’s not far off. It wasn’t a terrible book, it had lots of good...
sbensu
APIs as ladders
APIs are hard to learn. If you think about the learning curve of your API, you can design one that...
over a year ago
APIs are hard to learn. If you think about the learning curve of your API, you can design one that works for beginners, novices, and experts.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Human Impulse, the Human Aspiration'
The upstairs
neighbor, a diffident graduate student in English, knocked on the door to tell me W.H....
a year ago
The upstairs
neighbor, a diffident graduate student in English, knocked on the door to tell me W.H. Auden had died. He was close to
tears and couldn’t stop shaking his head in disbelief. This was half a century ago, late September
1973. We talked books almost daily and a few...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Jell-O Once a Week'
On Thursday I
slipped my brother some Montaigne without him knowing the source. It...
4 months ago
On Thursday I
slipped my brother some Montaigne without him knowing the source. It wasn’t
plagiarism, exactly, and it was paraphrased. It’s a well-known passage from the
essay “That to philosophize is to learn to die,” one that always reminds me of
Spinoza:
“It is
uncertain...
Ben Borgers
Why Do We Still Use Snapchat?
over a year ago
This Space
The criticism of Lessons, the lessons of criticism
I give thanks to Ryan Ruby for his review of Lessons, Ian McEwan’s latest novel. It brings to our...
over a year ago
I give thanks to Ryan Ruby for his review of Lessons, Ian McEwan’s latest novel. It brings to our attention that rare thing, joy of joys, a novel telling the story of a life remarkably similar to the author’s own set against the backdrop of recent history. Ruby shows how the...
ribbonfarm
History is More Like Science Fiction Than Fantasy
I’ve been slow-reading Bettany Hughes’ Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities for months now, ever since I...
8 months ago
I’ve been slow-reading Bettany Hughes’ Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities for months now, ever since I visited the city (on Kindle, so I didn’t realize when I started that it’s 600 pages plus another 250 odd notes). It’s dense and absorbing and I’ll probably do a reflections post...
The Marginalian
How to Bless Each Other: Poet and Philosopher John O’Donohue on the Light Within Us and Between Us
"The structures of our experience are the windows into the divine. When we are true to the call of...
a year ago
"The structures of our experience are the windows into the divine. When we are true to the call of experience, we are true to God."
The Marginalian
Don’t Waste Your Wildness
"What is wild cannot be bought or sold, borrowed or copied. It is. Unmistakable, unforgettable,...
2 months ago
"What is wild cannot be bought or sold, borrowed or copied. It is. Unmistakable, unforgettable, unshamable, elemental as earth and ice, water, fire and air, a quintessence, pure spirit, resolving into no constituents. Don't waste your wildness: it is precious and necessary. In...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Off to Welter and Waste'
The
Russian-Jewish poet Boris Slutsky (1919-86) was thirty-three years old on the
Night of the...
a year ago
The
Russian-Jewish poet Boris Slutsky (1919-86) was thirty-three years old on the
Night of the Murdered Poets, and he wasn’t among them. In the final stanza of his
poem “About the Jews” (trans. G.S. Smith), dating from the 1950s, Slutsky
writes:
“From the
war I came back safe
So...
The American Scholar
Survival Situation
The debate over evolution and its discoverer
The post Survival Situation appeared first on The...
6 months ago
The debate over evolution and its discoverer
The post Survival Situation appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Collateralizing Mortgages and Loans With the Present Value of Rent Flow
this is a draft document, it pairs with this Planned Unit Development application draft...
over a year ago
this is a draft document, it pairs with this Planned Unit Development application draft document
Inspiration comes from many places, but most strongly it draws heavily from Order Without Design. I’ve quoted in depth two pages below, but there is many other sections of the book...
The Elysian
I'd like to open a Singapore franchise please?
Franchise Cities as an alternative to Charter Cities.
8 months ago
Franchise Cities as an alternative to Charter Cities.
This Space
The enigma for criticism
To this day, I can learn only from bad films. The good ones I watch in the same spirit in which I...
a year ago
To this day, I can learn only from bad films. The good ones I watch in the same spirit in which I watched when I was a kid. The great ones, even when I see them many times, are just an enigma.
Werner Herzog describes a few "bad films" in his autobiography, all from his...
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...
Josh Thompson
Benefits of helplessness
The last few days were rough, strangely enough. I live in beautiful Golden, Colorado with my best...
over a year ago
The last few days were rough, strangely enough. I live in beautiful Golden, Colorado with my best friend (who I happen to be married to), and I’ve got a pretty cool job to boot. That’s the “big three”, right? (Relationships, work, location.)
Yep. Except from Thursday through...
sbensu
Creative kernels
Artists can often trace entire pieces around one idea that drives everything else.
5 months ago
Artists can often trace entire pieces around one idea that drives everything else.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Only Little People Frightened By the Long Night'
The calendar
and tradition assure us that Halloween is October 31 but the voice of the
people in our...
a year ago
The calendar
and tradition assure us that Halloween is October 31 but the voice of the
people in our neighborhood as expressed through the “group chat” I have never
looked at moved the celebration to October 29. The reasons are unclear. What
this means in practical terms is two...
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...
The Marginalian
A Glow in the Consciousness: The Continuous Creative Act of Seeing Clearly
"Simply to look on anything... with the love that penetrates to its essence, is to widen the domain...
6 months ago
"Simply to look on anything... with the love that penetrates to its essence, is to widen the domain of being in the vastness of non-being."
Josh Thompson
October 2016 Goals
In the last year, I’ve fluctuated between writing
every day for 30 days and
not posting once in...
over a year ago
In the last year, I’ve fluctuated between writing
every day for 30 days and
not posting once in two months.
Frankly, neither of those is good for me.
I like writing because it clarifies my own thoughts. Sometimes it seems useful to others. I like to be useful (“utility” can...
The American Scholar
Laura S. Lewis
Welding trash into treasure
The post Laura S. Lewis appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
Welding trash into treasure
The post Laura S. Lewis appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
“What a Strange Path”
Three new prompts
The post “What a Strange Path” appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 days ago
Three new prompts
The post “What a Strange Path” appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Beach and the Soul: Anne Morrow Lindbergh on the Benedictions of the Sea
"The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient... Patience,...
6 months ago
"The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient... Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach."
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....
Josh Thompson
Things That Are Surprisingly Good For The Cost (AKA How I want to build my tiny house)
Working title: “My Dream Backyard House/ADU/round-one-of-building-experiment”
I’m trying to build a...
over a year ago
Working title: “My Dream Backyard House/ADU/round-one-of-building-experiment”
I’m trying to build a kinda cool, quirky, sensitive-to-supply-chain-disruption, cheap, functional, emotionally healing home in my back yard. We love to host friends and family, guests, maybe AirBnB...
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."
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 356.5
...
a month ago
The Marginalian
Make Yourself a Seer: The Teenage Arthur Rimbaud on How to Be a Poet and a Prophet of Possibility
"The day of a single universal language will dawn!... This language will be of the soul, for the...
a year ago
"The day of a single universal language will dawn!... This language will be of the soul, for the soul, encompassing everything, scents, sounds, colors, one thought mounting another."
The Marginalian
We Are the Music, We Are the Spark: Pioneering Biologist Ernest Everett Just on What Makes Life...
"Life is exquisitely a time-thing, like music."
12 months ago
"Life is exquisitely a time-thing, like music."
Josh Thompson
Write Less Say More
I recently read a short piece about
using software to improve your own writing. To paraphrase one...
over a year ago
I recently read a short piece about
using software to improve your own writing. To paraphrase one of the suggestions: “do away with weasel words, the passive voice, adverbs, cliches.”
I’m adding “complex sentences” to the list.
Out of curiosity, I looked through things that...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Daft in a Socially Useful and Quite Pleasant Way'
A young man
and his friend wish to open a bookstore and I'm reluctant to say anything to
discourage...
6 months ago
A young man
and his friend wish to open a bookstore and I'm reluctant to say anything to
discourage them. Nor do I want to encourage costly foolishness. He’s twenty-one,
my age when I indulged in a similar fantasy half a century ago. With a poet and
his wife – hardly the most...
Escaping Flatland
Can we scale cultures that support learning?
new essay in Asterisk
2 months ago
Josh Thompson
2017 In Review & Thoughts on 2018
Note: this “annual review” covers three topics. Click on one to skip to it:
Looking back on...
over a year ago
Note: this “annual review” covers three topics. Click on one to skip to it:
Looking back on 2017
thoughts on going into 2018
book recommendations from the 79 books I read last year
I’ve got mixed feelings on annual reviews. I steadfastly refuse to set New Years’ resolutions, and...
Robert Caro
An Interview With Robert Caro and Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt greeted us in his beautiful 19th century house and in his bare feet (of which more later). As...
a year ago
Kurt greeted us in his beautiful 19th century house and in his bare feet (of which more later). As the interview progressed it grew sort 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...
This Space
Favourite books 2021
If such things matter, and they don't, my book of the year is Peter Holm Jensen’s The Moment. As I...
over a year ago
If such things matter, and they don't, my book of the year is Peter Holm Jensen’s The Moment. As I wrote in April, it’s one in which the writer seeks “a modest, self-effacing place within the intersection of time and eternity” and can be read again and again for this reason, as...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Passions and Perturbations of the Mind'
In his Dictionary (1755), Dr. Johnson illustrates
fifteen words with citations from Robert Burton’s...
11 months ago
In his Dictionary (1755), Dr. Johnson illustrates
fifteen words with citations from Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621): addle, colly, costard, doter, to filch, to fleer, giddyheaded, griper, hotspur, to macerate, muckhill, mutter, oligarchy, quacksalver
and squalor....
The Marginalian
Nature’s Oldest Mandolin: The Poetic Science of How Cicadas Sing
“The use of music,” Richard Powers wrote, “is to remind us how short a time we have a body” — a...
7 months ago
“The use of music,” Richard Powers wrote, “is to remind us how short a time we have a body” — a truth nowhere more bittersweet than in the creature whose body is the oldest unchanged musical instrument on Earth: a tiny mandolin silent for most of its existence, then sonorous with...
The American Scholar
Corona Chasers
You never forget your first solar eclipse
The post Corona Chasers appeared first on The American...
6 months ago
You never forget your first solar eclipse
The post Corona Chasers appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'All These Jolts of Beauty'
Once I
interviewed a mycologist who, before his lecture, removed a yellow mushroom
from an oak tree...
a month ago
Once I
interviewed a mycologist who, before his lecture, removed a yellow mushroom
from an oak tree in front of the hall where he was speaking and munched on it
while he spoke. A few years later the writer Paul Metcalf, author of Genoa (1965), swore me to secrecy before
revealing...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Bluster (New Style) Invokes the Public Good'
I write
about money more often than ever before at my day job. I’m not naïve and understand
that...
a year ago
I write
about money more often than ever before at my day job. I’m not naïve and understand
that research can be costly and professors don’t work for the love of it, but money
has become the barometer of worth. Small grants can be ignored regardless of
the intrinsic worth of the...
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...
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.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Life Is Slow Dying'
One of
Philip Larkin’s most technically adept poems, “Here,” is never self-consciously
flashy,...
a year ago
One of
Philip Larkin’s most technically adept poems, “Here,” is never self-consciously
flashy, though the first of its three sentences is twenty-five lines long. Its
earliest readers perhaps flipped past it in The
Whitsun Weddings (1964) -- it’s the first poem in the collection –...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Worked His Weaponed Wit'
A reader is
displeased: “Oh my aren’t you witty?” He/she was offended by something I had written a...
a year ago
A reader is
displeased: “Oh my aren’t you witty?” He/she was offended by something I had written a long time ago about Robert Bly. Granted, criticizing Bly is like
shooting fish in the bathtub with a bazooka. I was a little ashamed of myself
but that passed. My consolation is...
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...
The Marginalian
Nobel-Winning Poet Joseph Brodsky on the Remedy for Existential Boredom
"Try to stay passionate, leave your cool to constellations. Passion, above all, is a remedy against...
5 months ago
"Try to stay passionate, leave your cool to constellations. Passion, above all, is a remedy against boredom. Another one, of course, is pain... passion's frequent aftermath."
ribbonfarm
Protocol Entrepreneurship
I’m running the Summer of Protocols program for the Ethereum Foundation again this year. Here is the...
9 months ago
I’m running the Summer of Protocols program for the Ethereum Foundation again this year. Here is the Call for Applications. I’d appreciate any help getting it in front of the right candidates. The core of it is what we’re calling Protocol Improvement Grants (PIGs): 90k for a team...
Josh Thompson
Quitting the shallow for the deep
Deep work over shallow
TL;DR: I’m off social media, but want to keep a functioning Twitter URL. So,...
over a year ago
Deep work over shallow
TL;DR: I’m off social media, but want to keep a functioning Twitter URL. So, it redirects here.
This year’s “best book I’ve read” label might go to Cal Newport’s Deep Work.
Here’s the gist:
One of the most valuable skills in our economy is becoming...
The American Scholar
All Talk
Ease of communication will not save us
The post All Talk appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
Ease of communication will not save us
The post All Talk appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Last Laugh
The post Last Laugh appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
The post Last Laugh appeared first on The American Scholar.
sbensu
Industrial macros
Most industry codebases use macros, aka code-generation to solve practical problems like talking to...
6 months ago
Most industry codebases use macros, aka code-generation to solve practical problems like talking to the database.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Fond of Books and Fond of Reading'
A friend has
loaned me his copy of Maurice Baring’s Have You Anything to Declare? (1936),
subtitled...
8 months ago
A friend has
loaned me his copy of Maurice Baring’s Have You Anything to Declare? (1936),
subtitled A Note Book with Commentaries. This
is the 1950 edition published by William Heinemann and comes with an indecipherable
pencil inscription on the front end paper that may be...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Express It As Nearly As I Can'
Over the
weekend I remembered a blog I visited fairly often during my early ventures
into the...
3 weeks ago
Over the
weekend I remembered a blog I visited fairly often during my early ventures
into the blogosphere. This would be around 2006, the year I launched Anecdotal
Evidence. The proprietor and I exchanged a few emails. He was a reader though
his blog was not exclusively devoted...
This Space
The disaster of writing: My Weil by Lars Iyer
"When a
plane crashes, a bomb explodes, a city floods or a pandemic begins,
Lucy Easthope's phone...
a year ago
"When a
plane crashes, a bomb explodes, a city floods or a pandemic begins,
Lucy Easthope's phone starts to ring" says the blurb to her recent book subtitled Stories of Love, Loss and Hope from an Expert in Disaster, and goes on to report rapturous praise from critics and...
Josh Thompson
Why schedule something that doesn't exist?
The first thing I did when making this post is I set it to be published tomorrow.
Then, I left the...
over a year ago
The first thing I did when making this post is I set it to be published tomorrow.
Then, I left the room for a bit. I didn’t have anything to say. Or, I didn’t think I did.
Yet, all over my computer, and in various list trackers and note-taking apps, I’ve got dozens of ideas to...
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...
Ben Borgers
Is It Worth It to Be Passive Aggressive?
over a year ago
The Marginalian
18 Life-Learnings from 18 Years of The Marginalian
Somewhere along the way, you realize that no one will teach you how to live your own life — not your...
2 months ago
Somewhere along the way, you realize that no one will teach you how to live your own life — not your parents or your idols, not the philosophers or the poets, not your liberal arts education or your twelve-step program, not church or therapy or Tolstoy. No matter how valuable any...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Don’t See Other People As Peculiar'
For my
money, the Canadian short story
writer is Mavis Gallant (1922-2014), not Alice Munro, who is...
11 months ago
For my
money, the Canadian short story
writer is Mavis Gallant (1922-2014), not Alice Munro, who is too dull to endure.
(Joseph Epstein said of her work: “Humor never obtrudes.”) Born in Montreal, Gallant
moved to Europe in 1950, hoping to give up journalism and write fiction....
Anecdotal Evidence
"The Saint’s Strange Way to Practice Death"
Among the road
kill I’ve tallied on Houston streets, the most common casualty is the...
9 months ago
Among the road
kill I’ve tallied on Houston streets, the most common casualty is the strangely
spelled opossum (from the Powhatan). The least common, incidentally, is the
armadillo, with two KIAs sighted in twenty years, both being pecked at by
crows. Natives here seem uncommonly...
The Marginalian
What Birds Dream About: The Evolution of REM and How We Practice the Possible in Our Sleep
"It may be that in REM, this gloaming between waking consciousness and the unconscious, we practice...
5 months ago
"It may be that in REM, this gloaming between waking consciousness and the unconscious, we practice the possible into the real... It may be that we evolved to dream ourselves into reality — a laboratory of consciousness that began in the bird brain."
Josh Thompson
Can You Recover From Months (YEARS!) of Not Climbing?
A few weeks ago, I headed into the gym thinking that I felt a little off-kilter. I’d not climbed in...
over a year ago
A few weeks ago, I headed into the gym thinking that I felt a little off-kilter. I’d not climbed in a week, I though, and maybe I was getting weaker or something. Turns out that wasn’t the problem - I had actually been climbing too much, and was feeling it.
This is an odd...
Ben Borgers
How ChatGPT spoiled my semester
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Postmodern Pigeonhole Is a Shuck'
With Tom
Disch’s suicide in 2008 we lost not only one of our best poets, a fine writer
of short...
a month ago
With Tom
Disch’s suicide in 2008 we lost not only one of our best poets, a fine writer
of short stories and of one novel, Camp
Concentration, but perhaps the most entertaining of our critics. His only
recent rivals have been Turner Cassity and R.S. Gwynn. “Entertainment” and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not More Respected, Though Less Loved'
In the late
summer and autumn of 1773, Johnson and Boswell visited Scotland, the latter’s...
a year ago
In the late
summer and autumn of 1773, Johnson and Boswell visited Scotland, the latter’s birthplace
and the butt of many jokes by the former. The journey lasted eighty-three days
and both men published books recounting their adventures. Johnson’s A Journey to the Western Islands...
The Marginalian
Your Voice Is a Garden: Margaret Watts Hughes’s Wondrous Victorian Visualizations of Sound
“I hear bravuras of birds… I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice,” Walt Whitman...
4 months ago
“I hear bravuras of birds… I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice,” Walt Whitman exulted in his ode to the “puzzle of puzzles” we call Being. How puzzling indeed, and how miraculous, that of the cold silence of spacetime voice emerged, in all its warm loveliness —...
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Nothing Given Us to Keep Is Lost'
Howard Nemerov
reminded me not of Walden Pond in Concord but of a smaller, less storied pond at
the...
6 months ago
Howard Nemerov
reminded me not of Walden Pond in Concord but of a smaller, less storied pond at
the opposite end of Massachusetts, near Lee in the Berkshires. I was there to
interview Paul Metcalf (1917-99) and his wife Nancy for my newspaper in the
summer of 1988. Paul was a...
This Space
More and less: Veilchenfeld by Gert Hofmann
Gert Hofmann's Veilchenfeld is the latest of his novels to be published in English translation, and...
over a year ago
Gert Hofmann's Veilchenfeld is the latest of his novels to be published in English translation, and the first translated by Eric Mace-Tessler. Tom Conaghan at Review31 has given it an appreciative review, recognising that Hofmann's presentation of a civilisation's descent into...
The American Scholar
In the Mushroom
True foraging isn’t the domain of the weekend warrior; it’s serious, serious business
The post In...
2 weeks ago
True foraging isn’t the domain of the weekend warrior; it’s serious, serious business
The post In the Mushroom appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
A Small Goal is Better than a Grand Plan
We all have grand plans. Who’s future projection of themselves goes something like this: “One day,...
over a year ago
We all have grand plans. Who’s future projection of themselves goes something like this: “One day, when I’m rich (goal one), location independent (goal two), and married to a fabulous woman (goal three), I will travel the world (goal four) while exploring my hobby of ___ (goal...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Weightier Than All the Gear I’ll Carry'
I was a lazy
student of Latin in junior high school and gave it up after two years. What I...
2 months ago
I was a lazy
student of Latin in junior high school and gave it up after two years. What I retained
was a lasting interest in mythology, Roman history and etymology. I probably
learned more English words than Latin – celerity,
pulchritude, jocular, spelunker, procrastination,...
The Marginalian
A Lighthouse for Dark Times
This is the elemental speaking: It is during phase transition — when the temperature and pressure of...
a month ago
This is the elemental speaking: It is during phase transition — when the temperature and pressure of a system go beyond what the system can withstand and matter changes from one state to another — that the system is most pliant, most possible. This chaos of particles that...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Diana Steads Him Nothing, He Must Stay'
For earned emotional
intensity, especially coming from a man seldom associated with emotion, you...
a year ago
For earned emotional
intensity, especially coming from a man seldom associated with emotion, you can
hardly outdo A.E. Housman, as recounted by one of his students in Richard
Perceval Graves’ A. E. Housman: The
Scholar-Poet (1979):
“One morning
in May, 1914, when the trees in...
Ben Borgers
It Doesn’t Have to Be Every Day
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Look for Truth, for Knowledge, for Wisdom'
“The library
is, and always has been, the heart of a college. . . . For professors--professors
of...
a year ago
“The library
is, and always has been, the heart of a college. . . . For professors--professors
of the humanities, at any rate--as much as students, are the creatures of the
library. Just as the laboratory is the domain of the sciences, so the library
is the domain of the...
The Elysian
I’d rather have an investor than a publishing contract
In pursuit of a better book deal (and record deal and podcast deal...)
7 months ago
In pursuit of a better book deal (and record deal and podcast deal...)
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...
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 Elysian
Your alternatives to democracy
Entries to the March writing prompt.
8 months ago
Entries to the March writing prompt.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Buttonhole Strangers on the Street'
Dedicated
readers have to be optimists. When we return to a book already read and enjoyed,
often...
10 months ago
Dedicated
readers have to be optimists. When we return to a book already read and enjoyed,
often decades later, we’re acting on faith, trusting that we and it remain
compatible. That’s not always the case, of course. My younger self is not a reliable critic. For too long I was an...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Man of My Kidney'
I met my
nephrologist for the first time when we shared an elevator to his office on the
fourth...
7 months ago
I met my
nephrologist for the first time when we shared an elevator to his office on the
fourth floor of the hospital. Between patients he was eating a banana, his breakfast, and carried a stack of folders in his other hand. On the front of his
white lab coat was his name, the...
The American Scholar
On Book
August Wilson’s play just hit the big screen, but even greater rewards await on the page
The post On...
3 weeks ago
August Wilson’s play just hit the big screen, but even greater rewards await on the page
The post On Book appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Impetuous Eagerness to Subvert'
Dr. Johnson describes
the poet and physician Mark Akenside: “He
certainly retained an unnecessary...
6 months ago
Dr. Johnson describes
the poet and physician Mark Akenside: “He
certainly retained an unnecessary and outrageous zeal for what he called and
thought liberty; a zeal which sometimes disguises from the world, and not
rarely from the mind which it possesses, an envious desire of...
Josh Thompson
A Runbook for Upgrading Your Parent's Junky Old Laptop to a Chromebook
tl;dr: I’m creating a runbook for a very specific, delicate, and potentially time-consuming and...
over a year ago
tl;dr: I’m creating a runbook for a very specific, delicate, and potentially time-consuming and emotionally-charged operation to replace my 70-year-old newly-widowed mother-in-law's ancient desktop computer with a easy-for-me-to-manage Chromebook
Update: I posted to r/ChromeOS...
Ben Borgers
My Guilt for Useless Things
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Human Scale: Oliver Sacks on How to Save Humanity from Itself
"...or there will be genocide, atomic bombs, and we'll all perish and take the planet with us."
a year ago
"...or there will be genocide, atomic bombs, and we'll all perish and take the planet with us."
The American Scholar
Rage, Muse
The novels that revisit Greek myths, giving voice to the women who were scorned, wronged, or...
4 months ago
The novels that revisit Greek myths, giving voice to the women who were scorned, wronged, or forgotten
The post Rage, Muse appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
O Sweet Spontaneous: E.E. Cummings’s Love-Poem to Earth and the Glory of Spring
The ultimate anthem of resistance to the assaults on life.
a year ago
The ultimate anthem of resistance to the assaults on life.
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Wish He Would Explain His Explanation'
On this
date, April 10, in 1816, Coleridge and Lord Byron met for the only time, at the
latter’s...
8 months ago
On this
date, April 10, in 1816, Coleridge and Lord Byron met for the only time, at the
latter’s house in Piccadilly. Earlier, Coleridge had a friend deliver to Byron
a copy of his latest and last play, Zapolya,
and a letter explaining that for the previous fifteen years he had...
The Marginalian
The Art of Withstanding Abandonment: The Patience of the Penguin and How Evolution Invented Faith
“Let us love this distance which is wholly woven of friendship, for those who do not love each other...
4 months ago
“Let us love this distance which is wholly woven of friendship, for those who do not love each other are not separated,” Simone Weil wrote in her soulful meditation on the paradox of closeness and separation. To be separated from a loved one — in space or in silence, by choice or...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Our Lives Are Permanently Unfinished Projects'
“My
bookshelves, like my writings, are haunted by the ghosts of influences past,
all remembered with...
11 months ago
“My
bookshelves, like my writings, are haunted by the ghosts of influences past,
all remembered with great tenderness, much as one recalls an old flame from
college days: Whitney Balliett, Edmund Wilson, William F. Buckley, Jr., A. J.
Liebling, Somerset Maugham, Diana Trilling,...
Josh Thompson
62 lessons learned after one year of full-time travel
Kristi and I
put together a non-comprehensive list of things we’ve learned while traveling full-time...
over a year ago
Kristi and I
put together a non-comprehensive list of things we’ve learned while traveling full-time last year.
Samples:
Kristi
1. Josh and I are such a good team, and we balance each other.
We’ve figured out our strengths and how to contribute to our successes together. It’s...
Josh Thompson
Save hundreds by being willing to spend $20
When you pack for a trip, you pack “just in case” items, right? Things that in a certain situation...
over a year ago
When you pack for a trip, you pack “just in case” items, right? Things that in a certain situation would be priceless. Think “umbrella” or “underpants”.
But then you think of all the possible situations you might encounter, and you’ll find your “just in case” items quickly...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Dead Wall or a Thick Mist'
Reading occasionally reveals a pleasing convergence of thought between one writer, separated by...
a year ago
Reading occasionally reveals a pleasing convergence of thought between one writer, separated by centuries
and continents, and another. The happy reader is their ambassador and beneficiary.
I was again reading Nabokov’s brief, death-haunted novel from 1972, Transparent Things. Its...
Ben Borgers
The Land of Endless Socialization
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Love of Reading Is Caught, Not Taught'
I’ve used “home
library” to describe the accumulation of books in our house but it’s starting
to...
2 months ago
I’ve used “home
library” to describe the accumulation of books in our house but it’s starting
to sound a little pretentious. For now I’ll keep it at “books.” Nadya Williams
titles her essay “Home Libraries Will Save Civilization,” which, I understand, is
more reader-enticing than...
The Marginalian
The Universe in Verse Book
"We need science to help us meet reality on its own terms, and we need poetry to help us broaden and...
7 months ago
"We need science to help us meet reality on its own terms, and we need poetry to help us broaden and deepen the terms on which we meet ourselves and each other. At the crossing point of the two we may find a way of clarifying our experience and of sanctifying it."
sbensu
Breaking changes in JSON APIs
A collection of common breaking changes to JSON APIs for you to keep in mind as you design.
a year ago
A collection of common breaking changes to JSON APIs for you to keep in mind as you design.
The Elysian
How would anarchist societies protect themselves?
Letters to an anarchist, part three.
a month ago
Letters to an anarchist, part three.
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Sacrifice and Doom'
Scholars of
Russian literature tell us the edition of Anton Chekhov’s letters published
between 1944...
2 months ago
Scholars of
Russian literature tell us the edition of Anton Chekhov’s letters published
between 1944 and 1951 was heavily censored by Soviet editors, filled with
ellipses that signify an excised word, phrase or sentence. Nothing surprising
here. Censorship is an obligatory tool...
Josh Thompson
Sidekiq and Background Jobs for Beginners
I’ve recently had to learn more about background jobs (using Sidekiq, specifically) for some bugs I...
over a year ago
I’ve recently had to learn more about background jobs (using Sidekiq, specifically) for some bugs I was working on.
I learned a lot. Much of it was extremely basic. Anyone who knows much at all about Sidekiq will say “oh, duh, of course that’s true”, but at the time, it wasn’t...
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...
Josh Thompson
Focus: One Thing at a Time
The pressure to be working on more than one thing at a time is enormous. This pressure comes from no...
over a year ago
The pressure to be working on more than one thing at a time is enormous. This pressure comes from no one but me. And before I dismiss this tendency as “proof that I work too hard”, I must take another tact. It comes from a need to satisfy my ego. It is much easier to say “I did...
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Is Wonderful to Be a Writer'
I met the Israeli novelist
Aharon Appelfeld in 1987 on the same day I met Raul Hilberg and Cynthia...
7 months ago
I met the Israeli novelist
Aharon Appelfeld in 1987 on the same day I met Raul Hilberg and Cynthia Ozick.
I had read Appelfeld’s first novel, Badenheim
1939 (1978; trans. 1980), several years earlier and found it disturbing in
a novel way. The action takes place on the cusp of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'What American Beauty Should Be'
An old
friend called and reminded me of the September almost forty years ago when we
hiked along...
3 months ago
An old
friend called and reminded me of the September almost forty years ago when we
hiked along Otter Creek in southern Vermont near Dorset. Often we hiked in Otter Creek, which is filled with granite
boulders. It was less hiking than climbing horizontally. Between the stones...
Josh Thompson
Give it 30 days
Do you have any big audacious goal you want to accomplish?
If you think back to Jan 1, 2016, what...
over a year ago
Do you have any big audacious goal you want to accomplish?
If you think back to Jan 1, 2016, what were your goals?
Lose weight/get in shape
Make more money/start budgeting
Learn a language
Learn a skill
Read more
Stop doing something (smoking, drinking)
Statistically, all of...
Ben Borgers
There’s No Personal Space in College
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Whole Hog Barbecu'd!'
I was
surprised to see that Alexander Pope was familiar with the most popular cuisine
served in...
2 months ago
I was
surprised to see that Alexander Pope was familiar with the most popular cuisine
served in Texas: barbecue. You’ll find his reference in “The Second Satire in the Second Book of Horace Paraphrased”:
“Oldfield,
with more than Harpy throat endu’d,
Cries, ‘send
me, Gods! a...
The Marginalian
The Ecstasy of Eternity: Richard Jefferies on Time and Self-Transcendence
This is the great paradox: that human life, lived between the time of starlings and the time of...
9 months ago
This is the great paradox: that human life, lived between the time of starlings and the time of stars, is made meaningful entirely inside the self, but the self is a mirage of the mind, a figment of cohesion that makes the chaos and transience bearable. A few times a lifetime, if...
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...
The Marginalian
Starlings and the Magic of Murmurations: A Stunning Watercolor Celebration of One of Earth’s Living...
Biking back to my rented cottage from CERN one autumn evening, having descended into the underworld...
a year ago
Biking back to my rented cottage from CERN one autumn evening, having descended into the underworld of matter for a visit to the world’s largest high-energy particle collider, a sight stopped me up short on the shore of Lake Geneva: In the orange sky over the orange water, a...
Ben Borgers
My Office Makes Me Feel Stupid
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Don't Focus on the Present
If you accept the premise that training
cycles are the method by which you will improve your...
over a year ago
If you accept the premise that training
cycles are the method by which you will improve your climbing, you
should be able to focus less on the day-by-day fluctuation in your performance.
At least, I should be able to, since I accept that premise. Yet I still struggle to not be...
This Space
39 Books: 2018
In spite of what I said yesterday about the decline in the number of novels I read each year, this...
6 months ago
In spite of what I said yesterday about the decline in the number of novels I read each year, this year was packed with a variety: Australian, Korean, Austrian, Egyptian, German, Argentinian and, today's choice, Norwegian; that is, if variety depends on the country of origin. But...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Leave Him, Full of Envy'
Without resorting to clues, who do you think Eugenio Montale is talking about:
“He is a
strong,...
a year ago
Without resorting to clues, who do you think Eugenio Montale is talking about:
“He is a
strong, cordial, human man, whom one seems to have always known.”
One hint: it’s
a poet. Among major poets, the pickings are slim. Strong? Scratch Cavafy.
Cordial? There goes Frost. “Human...
Josh Thompson
Cultivate Curiosity, or 'Reasons to be More Childlike'
I’ve had an idea rolling around my head.
I suspect that “being curious” will correlate well with...
over a year ago
I’ve had an idea rolling around my head.
I suspect that “being curious” will correlate well with positive outcomes in my life, on pretty much any time horizon, be it days, weeks, or decades. Curiosity feels like a tolerable antidote to boredom, though boredom in and of itself is...
The American Scholar
Reborn in the City of Light
At a time when Paris was an incubator of modernism, a group of bold American women arrived to make...
3 months ago
At a time when Paris was an incubator of modernism, a group of bold American women arrived to make art out of their lives
The post Reborn in the City of Light appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
Hint #3
I'm publishing a new print collection in one week.
3 months ago
I'm publishing a new print collection in one week.
The Marginalian
Spell Against Indifference
I was a latecomer to poetry — an art form I did not understand and, as we tend to do with what we do...
a year ago
I was a latecomer to poetry — an art form I did not understand and, as we tend to do with what we do not understand, discounted. But under its slow seduction, I came to see how it shines a sidewise gleam on the invisible and unnameable regions of being where the truest truths...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I’m Tickled to Death When They Call Me Comic'
Like
porkchops, fame is highly perishable. Writers once read by millions – think of James
Michener...
9 months ago
Like
porkchops, fame is highly perishable. Writers once read by millions – think of James
Michener and, at a far more accomplished level, James Gould Cozzens – have evaporated
from literary memory. Newspaper writing and journalism in general are especially
biodegradable. Who...
sbensu
Designing for support teams
Support agents spend their entire lives using the same software. Their needs are very different from...
10 months ago
Support agents spend their entire lives using the same software. Their needs are very different from consumer software. Here are some things to keep in mind.
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.
The American Scholar
“Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes appeared first on...
5 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Love and the Sacred
"I did not know what love was until I encountered one that kept opening and opening and opening."
11 months ago
"I did not know what love was until I encountered one that kept opening and opening and opening."
The Marginalian
An Almanac of Birds: Divinations for Uncertain Days
I have found that the surest way of seeing the wondrous in something ordinary, something previously...
4 months ago
I have found that the surest way of seeing the wondrous in something ordinary, something previously underappreciated, is coming to love someone who loves it. As we enter each other’s worlds in love — whatever its shape or species — we double our way of seeing, broaden our way of...
This Space
39 Books: 1985
The first novel I read was Twice Shy by Dick Francis, reportedly the Queen Mother's favourite...
8 months ago
The first novel I read was Twice Shy by Dick Francis, reportedly the Queen Mother's favourite novelist (which tells you all you need to know about the intellectual energies of British Royal Family). It was the hardback edition below and tells the story of an Olympic champion...
ribbonfarm
Intellectual Menopause
I ran across the alarming phrase intellectual menopause a few months ago in John Gall’s...
4 months ago
I ran across the alarming phrase intellectual menopause a few months ago in John Gall’s Systemantics, and it naturally stuck in my brain given I’m pushing 50 and getting predictably angsty about it. The phrase conjures up visions of a phenomenon much more profound and unfunny...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Successfully Pretend I Am a Human Being'
A longtime
reader is convinced we are enduring an imagination deficit. “Everywhere,” she
writes, “I...
10 months ago
A longtime
reader is convinced we are enduring an imagination deficit. “Everywhere,” she
writes, “I see clichés taking over. Obviously in public life with politicians
and journalists. That’s nothing new but in the arts too, music and writing.
It’s as though AI created them.” No...
The American Scholar
Poco a Poco
The post Poco a Poco appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The post Poco a Poco appeared first on The American Scholar.
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 Elysian
Yes, Taylor Swift is just as genius as Mary Shelley
The video from our live event.
2 months ago
The video from our live event.
Ben Borgers
Good Software Has a Clear Geography
over a year ago
ribbonfarm
There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm
I’m a little late to the party, but I just finished the wonderfully imaginative There Is No...
7 months ago
I’m a little late to the party, but I just finished the wonderfully imaginative There Is No Antimemetics Division (2020) by qntm. The premise is that our world is full of things with antimemetic properties. An antimeme is “an idea with self-censoring properties; an idea which, by...
Josh Thompson
How To Write A Letter of Recommendation for Yourself
I meet regularly with early-career software developers. A few recurring meetings, 1x/week, plus...
over a year ago
I meet regularly with early-career software developers. A few recurring meetings, 1x/week, plus ad-hoc calls as needed with others.
A question came up recently:
My three-month internship is close to wrapping up. The Co-founder/CEO/lead developer of the consulting company I’m at...
The Marginalian
Dead Stars: Poet Laureate Ada Limón’s Stunning Love Poem to Life
"We’ve come this far, survived this much. What would happen if we decided to survive more? To love...
a year ago
"We’ve come this far, survived this much. What would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?"
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Taste for Strolling in Cemeteries'
Just
as most of the people we encounter across a lifetime mean nothing to us and
will not...
a year ago
Just
as most of the people we encounter across a lifetime mean nothing to us and
will not even
linger in memory, as they stir neither distaste nor devotion, so it is with
books and writers. Had I been one of those desperately obsessive readers who
records every title read, I...
The Marginalian
An Introvert’s Field Guide to Friendship: Thoreau on the Challenges and Rewards of the Art of...
"We only need to be as true to others as we are to ourselves that there may be ground enough for...
a year ago
"We only need to be as true to others as we are to ourselves that there may be ground enough for friendship."
Josh Thompson
Why I Eat Bacon Every Day (And You Should Too)
note: as of late 2017, I’ve rolled over to a mostly vegetarian diet. I still love meat, but don’t...
over a year ago
note: as of late 2017, I’ve rolled over to a mostly vegetarian diet. I still love meat, but don’t feel comfortable eating it, for ethical reasons. I still believe that, on a whole, bacon is good for you, and I still eat veggies and many eggs every day. I just don’t eat bacon or...
The Marginalian
Bunny & Tree: A Tender Wordless Parable of Friendship and the Improbable Saviors That Make Life...
Traversing the landscape of life on the wings of trust.
a year ago
Traversing the landscape of life on the wings of trust.
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.
Ben Borgers
Apple Credit Card Rewards
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Everything Is Happening All the Time: Legendary Physicist John Archibald Wheeler on Death and the...
“To die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier,” Walt Whitman writes in the prime of...
2 months ago
“To die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier,” Walt Whitman writes in the prime of life. “What happens when you get to the end of things?” four-year-old Johnny in Ohio asks his mother from the bathtub while Whitman’s borrowed atoms are becoming young grass in a...
Josh Thompson
Cheap fix to night-time teeth grinding
A few years ago, I found out I grind me teeth at night.
Kristi says it sounds like I’m chewing...
over a year ago
A few years ago, I found out I grind me teeth at night.
Kristi says it sounds like I’m chewing marbles.
Others who grind their teeth give themselves headaches, or wake themselves up at night.
You can’t really stop yourself from grinding your teeth, since you’re asleep.
You
can...
The Marginalian
Shame and the Secret Chambers of the Self: Pioneering Sociologist and Philosopher Helen Merrell Lynd...
"Experiences of shame throw a flooding light on what and who we are and what the world we live in...
8 months ago
"Experiences of shame throw a flooding light on what and who we are and what the world we live in is."
Ben Borgers
Understanding CalcYouLater Subconsciously
over a year ago
Escaping Flatland
A summary of what I wrote in 2023
In 2023, I published 37 essays. I’ve spent the better part of the morning going through it all to...
a year ago
In 2023, I published 37 essays. I’ve spent the better part of the morning going through it all to see what the themes were—it is quite surprising to notice what emerges when you allow yourself to follow your curiosity and intuition for a full year. I wrote a summary of the...
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...
The American Scholar
Snow!
The post Snow! appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
The post Snow! appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Crisply, Pithily, and, Very Often, Cruelly'
Tom Disch on
Turner Cassity: “A poet so
consistently epigrammatic can be dismissed, by those...
5 months ago
Tom Disch on
Turner Cassity: “A poet so
consistently epigrammatic can be dismissed, by those incapable themselves of
wit, as unserious, as though to be serious one must always be in a fog. Cassity
never writes a poem without knowing exactly what he means to say—crisply,
pithily,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Chevengur'
My review of
Chevengur by Andrey Platonov,
translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, is published...
11 months ago
My review of
Chevengur by Andrey Platonov,
translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, is published in the Wall Street Journal.
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Profoundly Bitter Lesson'
My friend
Moshe Vardi is a computer scientist at Rice University, the Karen Ostrum...
a year ago
My friend
Moshe Vardi is a computer scientist at Rice University, the Karen Ostrum George
Distinguished Service Professor in Computational Engineering. He has published
an essay, “A Moral Rot at Rice University”:
“I was well
aware that antisemitism is alive and well in the US,...
Josh Thompson
Three Android Apps I Use Every Day (and maybe you'll use them too)
I’m not here to talk about Twitter and Instagram, which… I use too much. Lets talk about things that...
over a year ago
I’m not here to talk about Twitter and Instagram, which… I use too much. Lets talk about things that make my life better, and might do the same for you.
(If you’re an iPhone user, just Google for the iOS version of the following tools. They’re all out there)
Rewire App:...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Actually Read the Dictionary'
In one of
the news weeklies long ago I read that Dr. Oliver Sacks enjoyed reading the Oxford English...
a year ago
In one of
the news weeklies long ago I read that Dr. Oliver Sacks enjoyed reading the Oxford English Dictionary. Was this mere
bravado, another instance of Sacks polishing his image as a lovable, learned
eccentric? Or, like his friend W.H. Auden, was he gleaning the dictionary...
Escaping Flatland
Pseudonyms lets you practice agency
I don’t think I would have become a writer if it wasn’t for the internet forums of the early 2000s.
4 months ago
I don’t think I would have become a writer if it wasn’t for the internet forums of the early 2000s.
Wuthering...
You drool from it. You are happy. - Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit
Finally, I have finished Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Voyage au bout
de la nuit (1932), known in English...
3 months ago
Finally, I have finished Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Voyage au bout
de la nuit (1932), known in English as Journey to the End of Night. That “end of night” is death. The existence of death makes everything
hateful and nullifies the value of anything else. I gotta say that the...
Anecdotal Evidence
‘Of Course’
“Auden says, Wordsworth says, Valery says, Shakespeare says. Always the present tense. Of...
7 months ago
“Auden says, Wordsworth says, Valery says, Shakespeare says. Always the present tense. Of course.”
—Geoffrey Grigson, The Private Art: A Poetry Notebook (Allison and Busby, 1982).
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...
The Marginalian
Flowers for Things I Don’t Know How to Say: A Tender Painted Lexicon of Consolation and Connection
“To be a Flower is profound Responsibility,” Emily Dickinson wrote. From the moment she pressed the...
7 months ago
“To be a Flower is profound Responsibility,” Emily Dickinson wrote. From the moment she pressed the first wildflower into her astonishing teenage herbarium until the moment Susan pinned a violet to her alabaster chest in the casket, she filled her poems with flowers and made of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Last of the Anglo-Saxon Poets'
“Hooray for
Christmas, as Bessie Smith calls rather cautiously on one of her tracks, and if
all...
12 months ago
“Hooray for
Christmas, as Bessie Smith calls rather cautiously on one of her tracks, and if
all you’re your friends like jazz it will present no problem.”
It’s
December 14, 1963, and Philip Larkin is reviewing an assortment of releases for
the Daily Telegraph in time for...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Make a Friend or Sonnet'
Some deny
that true friendship can flourish on the internet, that genuine intimacy, trust
and...
10 months ago
Some deny
that true friendship can flourish on the internet, that genuine intimacy, trust
and affection thrive only in the physical world. I was once sympathetic to this
idea, which was more revealing of my own digital backwardness than of the
nature of friendship. My thinking...
Blog -...
Book Review - Open
Open by Andre Agassi is a narrative tour de force. I literally could not
put it down. I usually...
over a year ago
Open by Andre Agassi is a narrative tour de force. I literally could not
put it down. I usually have four to six books on the go at any time, but
all of them were put on pause for the day and a half it took me to devour
this book.
Josh Thompson
On Boldness In Climbing
Climb boldly. I’ve tried to write about this many times, and have thousands of words scattered...
over a year ago
Climb boldly. I’ve tried to write about this many times, and have thousands of words scattered across my computer about this topic. I always felt like I wasn’t communicating it quite right. I wasn’t happy with it.
So I said “screw it, I’ll explain it like I would if I were...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Now You Are Elsewhere'
I came late
to the poet Henri Coulette, long after his death in 1988 at age sixty, and
promptly fell...
9 months ago
I came late
to the poet Henri Coulette, long after his death in 1988 at age sixty, and
promptly fell for his charms. Chief among them are elegance, technical
virtuosity, wit and devotion to his native turf, Southern California. Like one
of his favorite writers, Raymond Chandler,...
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 360.5
...
3 days ago
Josh Thompson
Deliberate Practice in Programming with Avdi Grimm and the Rake gem
I’ve had the concept of Deliberate Practice stuck in my head for a while.
I want to improve at...
over a year ago
I’ve had the concept of Deliberate Practice stuck in my head for a while.
I want to improve at things (all the things!) in general, but writing and reading code, specifically. Writing and reading code is germane to my primary occupation (software developer) and drives most of my...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Silent Conversation'
“To talk and
dispute are more the practices of the Platonic school than to read and
meditate....
10 months ago
“To talk and
dispute are more the practices of the Platonic school than to read and
meditate. Talkative men seldom read. This is among the few truths which appear
the more strange the more we reflect upon them. For what is reading but silent conversation?”
This passage
is...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Anticipating Since Morning a Successful Hunt'
The neighbors
had several tall ash trees growing in their backyard behind the garage and the
trunks...
9 months ago
The neighbors
had several tall ash trees growing in their backyard behind the garage and the
trunks were a favorite perch for Polyphemus and especially cecropia moths. These
are large insects, beautifully colored, with “eyes” on their wings. To budding lepidopterists
they were...
The Marginalian
Kate Sessions and the Devotion to Delight: The Forgotten Woman Who Covered California with Trees and...
In May 1941, next to news of the Nazi savagely bombing London, The Los Angeles Times published a...
a year ago
In May 1941, next to news of the Nazi savagely bombing London, The Los Angeles Times published a memorial profile of “California’s Mother of Gardens” — a hopeful antidote to the undoing of the human world, celebrating the woman who covered Southern California with the loveliest...
Josh Thompson
Resources for People with Jobs
RESOURCES FOR PEOPLE WITH JOBS
You spend most of your waking hours at work. So, spend a few of those...
over a year ago
RESOURCES FOR PEOPLE WITH JOBS
You spend most of your waking hours at work. So, spend a few of those waking hours when you’re
not at work thinking about how to improve the hours that you
are working. Often, improving your work means you can improve your work conditions and...
Josh Thompson
Refactoring practice: Get rid of `attr_accessors` in `ogre.rb` in 2 minutes
Preparing for Turing Series Index
What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
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...
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