Josh Thompson
On Feedback
Most of what makes us who we are is based on some sort of feedback obtained earlier in our life.
By...
over a year ago
Most of what makes us who we are is based on some sort of feedback obtained earlier in our life.
By my best estimation, there are two types of feedback:
Explicit feedback
, which comes in a little box labeled “this is feedback”, and is hard to miss.
Implicit feedback
, which is...
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...
Steven Scrawls
Supposedly-Deceased Intellectuals Found Living at Resort
‘Small
Village’ of Supposedly-Deceased Intellectuals Found Alive, Thriving at
Caribbean...
4 months ago
‘Small
Village’ of Supposedly-Deceased Intellectuals Found Alive, Thriving at
Caribbean Resort
Gabriel Martinez, a 35-year-old confectioner living in the Cayman
Islands, thought he was posting a simple promotional photo when he
snapped a picture of his ‘cocoa-banana-surprise’ and...
This Space
“Can there be a pure narrative?”
The question opening Maurice Blanchot’s essay The Experience of Proust* has always drawn me back,...
over a year ago
The question opening Maurice Blanchot’s essay The Experience of Proust* has always drawn me back, not to secure a yes or a no, but to keep the question of pure narrative open in its initial uncertainty, perhaps, rather, in its impossibility, as it appears to make reading and...
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...
Astral Codex Ten
How Did You Do On The AI Art Turing Test?
...
a month ago
Wuthering...
Some lesser works of Sōseki and Tanizaki - deep in the earth directly beneath Lady Kikyō’s toilet
Dolce Bellezza is running her 17th Japanese Literature Challenge. Amazing, well done, etc.
I read...
11 months ago
Dolce Bellezza is running her 17th Japanese Literature Challenge. Amazing, well done, etc.
I read some short works for it, which I will pile up here: three
short works by Natsume Sōseki, collected in a Tuttle volume that looks like it
is titled Ten Nights of Dream Hearing...
Josh Thompson
My Good Friends (Who Don't Know Me)
Rumor has it you become like those you spend time with. Or “birds of a feather flock together”, or...
over a year ago
Rumor has it you become like those you spend time with. Or “birds of a feather flock together”, or “you are what you eat”. Maybe that last one was Hannibal Lector,
having an old friend for dinner.
Anyway, the person that
you are is influenced by the people you spend time with....
This Space
Further in the opposite direction
Modernity is supposed to be the moment when religious claims and systems of authority reveal...
a year ago
Modernity is supposed to be the moment when religious claims and systems of authority reveal themselves to be human-all-too-human fictions that lack divine legitimation. Religion is supposed to wither away. But this itself...can be understood as a religious claim: the very...
The Marginalian
Kierkegaard on the Value of Despair
"To despair over oneself, in despair to want to be rid of oneself, is the formula for all despair."
a year ago
"To despair over oneself, in despair to want to be rid of oneself, is the formula for all despair."
sbensu
The person behind the idea
When reading, it is worth understanding the kind of person authors are.
a month ago
When reading, it is worth understanding the kind of person authors are.
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Build a House for Fools and Mad'
An entry dated
June 15, 1830 in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Table
Talk: “[Jonathan, not Taylor]...
7 months ago
An entry dated
June 15, 1830 in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Table
Talk: “[Jonathan, not Taylor] Swift
was anima Rabelaisii habitans in sicco,--the
soul of Rabelais dwelling in a dry place. Yet Swift was rare.”
Now there’s a
metaphor that sticks in the mind – “dwelling in a dry...
sbensu
Default blind
In a software business, it is hard to even know what is going on.
3 months ago
In a software business, it is hard to even know what is going on.
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Perhaps the Most Impressive of All'
Spices meant
salt and pepper. For my family like others in the American working class, there
was no...
3 months ago
Spices meant
salt and pepper. For my family like others in the American working class, there
was no cardamom or turmeric. When I was a kid those would have sounded vaguely
like medical conditions. We never heard of such things until decades later.
For some baked goods, breakfast...
Josh Thompson
Simplify, simplify, simplify
Kristi and I stumbled upon the realization that we’ve become minimalists. And it is exciting.
We...
over a year ago
Kristi and I stumbled upon the realization that we’ve become minimalists. And it is exciting.
We live in a one-bedroom apartment. It is spacious, for a one-bedroom, but compared to anything larger than a one-bedroom apartment, it is small. We managed to pack it full of stuff in...
ribbonfarm
Ribbonfarm is Retiring
After several years of keeping it going in semi-retired, keep-the-lights-on (KTLO) mode, I’ve...
2 months ago
After several years of keeping it going in semi-retired, keep-the-lights-on (KTLO) mode, I’ve decided to officially fully retire this blog. The ribbonfarm.com domain and all links will remain active, but there will be no new content after November 13th, 2024, which happens to be...
Josh Thompson
2015: The year I didn't think much?
I generally think that if I write what I am thinking about, I can think about it a lot better....
over a year ago
I generally think that if I write what I am thinking about, I can think about it a lot better. Writing has a clarifying effect (or is it affect?) on thought.
If that’s the case, I just didn’t think much in 2015:
I wrote about 45 things in 2013 and 2014. I wrote 8 in 2015.
I’m...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not Merely Mental Stenography'
“Allow me a
small confession: It has been some time since I have truly enjoyed an essay in
a...
4 months ago
“Allow me a
small confession: It has been some time since I have truly enjoyed an essay in
a literary magazine. There are too many essays, and vanishingly few good
essayists. There seems to be real confusion about whether style can conceal a
fundamental incuriosity, whether...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Immense Special Talent'
D.G. Myers
and I met in person only once, in March 2012, when David came to Houston to see
his...
3 months ago
D.G. Myers
and I met in person only once, in March 2012, when David came to Houston to see
his oncologist. We had lunch in a Mexican restaurant and talked for hours, then
I drove him to the hospital. He gave me the Library of America’s collection of
Henry James’ writings on...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Painstakingly Logical and Precise'
A thought
that never occurred to me but feels self-evidently right:
“In the
course of a reading...
5 months ago
A thought
that never occurred to me but feels self-evidently right:
“In the
course of a reading life, one often stumbles on excellent prose writers never
before encountered; such discoveries, however, are less likely in poetry.
First-rate poetry is a more manageable quantity....
sbensu
Interfaces for logical migrations
This post explains how you can use interfaces to make data model and database migrations easier.
a year ago
This post explains how you can use interfaces to make data model and database migrations easier.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Some Godforsaken Province'
After the
Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, the poet Aleksander Wat fled to Lwów, already
occupied by...
7 months ago
After the
Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, the poet Aleksander Wat fled to Lwów, already
occupied by the Soviets. He was arrested by the NKVD the following year and
held in a military prison in that city, then moved to Kiev, the Lubyanka in Moscow, and Saratov, more than...
Josh Thompson
Paths In Which I Am Interested
this is still in draft status
this page serves as a placeholder for various paths I’m interested...
6 months ago
this is still in draft status
this page serves as a placeholder for various paths I’m interested in.
I hope to bring attention to “linear parks”, or a park that functions more in size and shape to a street, crossing blocks of distance, but maintaining park vibes throughout.
Path...
Josh Thompson
Be a little better at personal email
The next bunch of posts will be me “clearing out the drawers” of notes I have scattered across my...
over a year ago
The next bunch of posts will be me “clearing out the drawers” of notes I have scattered across my phone, computer, and brain. There is no unifying theme to what will be written here.
Three recommendations to email better
TL;DR Email should usually be as short as possible. More of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Art Must Be Giving Pleasure'
On May 14,
1947, after giving seven months of lectures on the sonnets and all but two of...
a year ago
On May 14,
1947, after giving seven months of lectures on the sonnets and all but two of Shakespeare’s
plays at the New School of Social Research in New York City, W.H. Auden
delivered a concluding lecture. He roots Shakespeare’s vision in the notion of original sin
and what he...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Let Us See Them There in the Shadows'
A childhood
acquaintance has died. We were never close. In fact, I didn’t know he was still
alive...
6 months ago
A childhood
acquaintance has died. We were never close. In fact, I didn’t know he was still
alive until a friend told me he was dead. What I remember is his face, his
general demeanor, roughly the sort of behavior I could expect of him. I last
saw him more than half a century...
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.
The American Scholar
In Reprise: Next, Line Please
A new poetry prompt for players new and old
The post In Reprise: Next, Line Please appeared first on...
2 months ago
A new poetry prompt for players new and old
The post In Reprise: Next, Line Please appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'It's on the Russian Level'
“I’m not a
great reader of fiction. I read through all of Jane Austen with pleasure. I
read through...
5 months ago
“I’m not a
great reader of fiction. I read through all of Jane Austen with pleasure. I
read through George Eliot at school, but I was too young to appreciate her
then. But about a year ago I read Middlemarch.
Most marvellous book. Best
thing in nineteenth-century English fiction,...
Josh Thompson
Dream Big, and Build Optionality
We all can dream big. I have dreams, and you probably do to.
For example: Travel, location...
over a year ago
We all can dream big. I have dreams, and you probably do to.
For example: Travel, location independent living, being wealthy/choosing to do work that interests you, enjoying “simple” things. The list could go on, and on, and on.
But then we go right along doing all the normal...
This Space
Dead Souls by Sam Riviere
Even before one begins reading Sam Riviere’s first novel there is despondency as one registers that...
over a year ago
Even before one begins reading Sam Riviere’s first novel there is despondency as one registers that the title is a duplication of the English translation of Nikolai Gogol’s Мёртвые души, the novel in which a character seeks to buy dead serfs from their owners but who have yet to...
Josh Thompson
Five Lessons Learned in Buenos Aires
Note: This is an unedited draft of a post from July 5, 2015. Almost exactly one year ago, written...
over a year ago
Note: This is an unedited draft of a post from July 5, 2015. Almost exactly one year ago, written after a week in Buenos Aires. Since writing this post, Kristi and I have continued on to more than a year of non-stop travel, though we’re settling down back in Golden, CO in about...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Go to the Bookcase'
I heard an
echo in something I wrote the other day, a dependent clause, inconsequential in
itself....
a month ago
I heard an
echo in something I wrote the other day, a dependent clause, inconsequential in
itself. It nagged me, like a commercial jingle from fifty years ago playing in my
head. The harder I dredged to recover the source, the deeper it sank. I let go
and an hour later it bubbled...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Also Did Not Hope'
Back to the
theme of non-specialization, of writer as generalist: “Next to
Montaigne, the rest of...
3 months ago
Back to the
theme of non-specialization, of writer as generalist: “Next to
Montaigne, the rest of the great intellectual figures of the sixteenth century,
the leaders of the Renaissance, of Humanism, of the Reformation, and of the
modern sciences, the men who created modern...
Wuthering...
Books I read in March 2024 - Literature was a game of pillaging, and this book showed it.
A nice little run at Persian literature this month. And I am reading in Portuguese again,...
8 months ago
A nice little run at Persian literature this month. And I am reading in Portuguese again, slowly,
slowly.
PERSIAN LITERATURE, MOSTLY CLASSICAL
Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings (1110), Abolqasem Ferdowsi – See here for notes on this
big epic in Dick Davis’s translation.
The...
Josh Thompson
Migrating my Jekyll site to Netlify
Troubleshooting Netilify deploy
Ugggh I moved intermediateruby.com to Netlify a few months ago in...
over a year ago
Troubleshooting Netilify deploy
Ugggh I moved intermediateruby.com to Netlify a few months ago in like 10 minutes, so my primary site, josh.works, should take maybe 20, right?
I’m a few hours deep. Here’s what I get when Netlify tries to build:
I should have done the following...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Poets in an Age of Prose'
Yvor Winters
published his final book, Forms of Discovery,
in October 1967, three months before his...
a year ago
Yvor Winters
published his final book, Forms of Discovery,
in October 1967, three months before his death from cancer at age sixty-seven on
January 25, 1968. Read his late correspondence in The Selected Letters of Yvor Winters (ed. R.L. Barth, 2000) for an
understanding of the...
Ben Borgers
The Cost of Building an Idea
over a year ago
ribbonfarm
Stack Map of the World
I’ve been buried neck deep in work stuff this week, but I did find time to make this stack diagram...
8 months ago
I’ve been buried neck deep in work stuff this week, but I did find time to make this stack diagram of the world, inspired by the xkcd Dependency cartoon. Randall Munroe draws better than me, but in my favor, I use more colors. Did you know most of the high-purity quartz needed...
Josh Thompson
Tour of D3 for Clueless Folk Like Me
D3 stands for Data Driven Documents, and it’s the coolest thing ever.
Check out a few...
over a year ago
D3 stands for Data Driven Documents, and it’s the coolest thing ever.
Check out a few examples:
Animated, interactive curves(dynamic)
OMG Particles II(dynamic)
simple map of the us(static) <= very little code
Radial Dendrogram(static)
circle wave(dynamic)
Force-directed...
The Elysian
Join our upcoming literary salon discussions
Our calendar of upcoming events.
3 months ago
Our calendar of upcoming events.
The American Scholar
Katie Heller Saltoun
Tenderness and grit
The post Katie Heller Saltoun appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 weeks ago
Tenderness and grit
The post Katie Heller Saltoun appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Between Psyche and Cyborg: Carl Jung’s Legacy and the Countercultural Courage to Reclaim the Deeply...
"A reanimated world is one in which spirit and matter are not just equally regarded but recognized...
9 months ago
"A reanimated world is one in which spirit and matter are not just equally regarded but recognized as mutually dependent."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Doing Valuable Work in Literary Criticism'
“Part of the
drama of reading Boswell’s Life for
the first time is that one can never (however much...
5 months ago
“Part of the
drama of reading Boswell’s Life for
the first time is that one can never (however much classical or Christian
erudition one brings to the task) predict confidently how Johnson is going to
respond to this or that specific question; yet of course by the end one...
Wuthering...
What books am I reading this summer in the Greek philosophy readalong? Some details.
Now that we are almost done with Plato, the bulkiest figure
in my little Greek philosophy readalong,...
a year ago
Now that we are almost done with Plato, the bulkiest figure
in my little Greek philosophy readalong, I thought it would be a good idea to
revisit, clarify, and puzzle over the texts that will take us to the end of the
project, now that I have given the matter a little more...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Like a Golden Retriever'
Part of the pleasure of listening to the late jazz
musician Dave McKenna playing piano was hearing...
a year ago
Part of the pleasure of listening to the late jazz
musician Dave McKenna playing piano was hearing the musical quotes he wove into his improvisations. The practice, deplored by some
critics, was not unique to McKenna, of course. To cite only jazz musicians I
have seen in person,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'For My Small Ailments'
Empathy, in
some quarters, is becoming quite fashionable. Clearly, my doctor has been...
10 months ago
Empathy, in
some quarters, is becoming quite fashionable. Clearly, my doctor has been benefiting
from professional development. When he enters the examination room we shake
hands, he moves a chair to face me and sits almost knee-to-knee. This is to
eliminate any suggestion of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Old Landor's Bones Are Laid'
On Tuesday I
wrote about Walter Savage Landor, his poems and especially Imaginary Conversations, a...
3 months ago
On Tuesday I
wrote about Walter Savage Landor, his poems and especially Imaginary Conversations, a collection of 174 dialogues, mostly of
historical and literary figures, published in five volumes between 1824 and
1829. I keep a mental list of books I admire and enjoy that seem...
The Marginalian
No One You Love Is Ever Dead: Hemingway on the Most Devastating of Losses and the Meaning of Life
"We must live it, now, a day at a time and be very careful not to hurt each other."
7 months ago
"We must live it, now, a day at a time and be very careful not to hurt each other."
Wuthering...
Ovid's Metamorphoses, Canto I, "Of shapes transformde to bodies straunge"
Some notes on Canto I of Ovid’s Metamorphosis (8 CE). Just some of the things I am looking for...
a year ago
Some notes on Canto I of Ovid’s Metamorphosis (8 CE). Just some of the things I am looking for or
enjoying while reading Ovid’s epic of “forms changed / into new bodies.” (tr. Charles Martin, 2004, p. 15). Or, per Arthur Golding (1567, p. 3 of the
Paul Dry paperback) “Of...
Wuthering...
Books I Read in July 2023
How embarrassing that I did not write a thing this month,
but I promise I had a good excuse. ...
a year ago
How embarrassing that I did not write a thing this month,
but I promise I had a good excuse. Posts
on Cynicism, Epicureanism, and Stoicism will appear this month, I swear, or at
least hope. My eventual excuse this month will
be, I am afraid, even better.
Still, I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'And Now We Shall Never, Never See Her Again'
Ian Donaldson
begins his 2011 biography of Ben Jonson not with the poet’s birth nor even his
death...
a year ago
Ian Donaldson
begins his 2011 biography of Ben Jonson not with the poet’s birth nor even his
death but with his interment in Westminster Abbey. Though a popular playwright
during his lifetime, Jonson died in poverty and was buried vertically in order to
consume less valuable real...
The Marginalian
The Science of What Made You You, with a Dazzling Poem Read by David Byrne
"Look at the clever things we have made out of a few building blocks — O fabulous continuum."
3 months ago
"Look at the clever things we have made out of a few building blocks — O fabulous continuum."
The American Scholar
Catalina Schliebener Muñoz
Playing with dolls
The post Catalina Schliebener Muñoz appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
Playing with dolls
The post Catalina Schliebener Muñoz appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Its Super-Ego Has Gone AWOL'
The American
philosopher Brand Blanshard delivered the Riecker Memorial Lecture at the
University of...
2 months ago
The American
philosopher Brand Blanshard delivered the Riecker Memorial Lecture at the
University of Arizona in 1962. It was published that year as a twenty-three-page
pamphlet titled “On Sanity in Thought and Art.” For much of the text Blanshard
reviews various twentieth-century...
The American Scholar
“Hymn” by A. R. Ammons
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Hymn” by A. R. Ammons appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Hymn” by A. R. Ammons appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Typing for Programmers
If you had to distill my ability to bring value to those around me, it would be “Josh types good”.
I...
over a year ago
If you had to distill my ability to bring value to those around me, it would be “Josh types good”.
I can press these magical little keys on this little metal box here, and make these words come out.
If you’re reading these words, you don’t care how these words actually got on...
sbensu
Love's Executioner (book)
Countertransference applies to regular conversation.
a month ago
Countertransference applies to regular conversation.
Josh Thompson
December 2016 Goals
December 19th seems a bit late to write about December’s goals, huh?
Nonetheless, I’ve had some, and...
over a year ago
December 19th seems a bit late to write about December’s goals, huh?
Nonetheless, I’ve had some, and I will still have them through the end of the month.
I
did post a review of November a few days ago. This should really be rolled into that. A “monthly review/going forward”...
The Marginalian
Magnolias and the Meaning of Life: Science, Poetry, Existentialism
On cruelty, kindness, and the song of life.
a year ago
On cruelty, kindness, and the song of life.
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...
The Marginalian
Kinship in the Light of Conscience: Peter Kropotkin on the Crucial Difference Between Love,...
“Every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you,” Whitman wrote in what may be the most elemental...
3 months ago
“Every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you,” Whitman wrote in what may be the most elemental definition of solidarity — this tender recognition of our interdependence and fundamental kinship, deeper than sympathy, wider than love. Half a century after Whitman’s atomic...
Ben Borgers
How ChatGPT spoiled my semester
2 months ago
The Marginalian
An Antidote to the Anxiety About Imperfection: Parenting Advice from Mister Rogers
"It’s part of being human to fall short of that total acceptance and ultimate understanding — and...
a year ago
"It’s part of being human to fall short of that total acceptance and ultimate understanding — and often far short."
The Marginalian
Albert Camus on Writing and the Importance of Stubbornness in Creative Work
"There is no greatness without a little stubbornness... Works of art are not born in flashes of...
a year ago
"There is no greatness without a little stubbornness... Works of art are not born in flashes of inspiration but in a daily fidelity."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Demographer of the Common Woe'
Only in the
last twenty years or so have I started accumulating deaths, logging them on a...
a year ago
Only in the
last twenty years or so have I started accumulating deaths, logging them on a internal
list and weighing them against my own precious self. I’ve led a improbably
healthy life which only encouraged the universal young man’s conviction that I
was immune to mortality and...
The American Scholar
Chris Combs
Surveillance state
The post Chris Combs appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
Surveillance state
The post Chris Combs appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Winnicott on the Psychology of Democracy, the Most Dangerous Type of Person, and the Unconscious...
In the late morning of the first day of August in 2023, exactly twenty summers after I arrived in...
3 months ago
In the late morning of the first day of August in 2023, exactly twenty summers after I arrived in Philadelphia as a lone teenager from a country thirteen centuries America’s senior, I experienced that wonderful capacity for self-surprise as tears came streaming down my face in a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Those Move Easiest Who Have Learned to Dance'
Hugh Kenner glosses
a well-known couplet in Alexander Pope’s “Essay on Criticism” (1711) by...
a year ago
Hugh Kenner glosses
a well-known couplet in Alexander Pope’s “Essay on Criticism” (1711) by reference to Newton’s
second law of motion (published in 1687 in his Principia Mathematica, one year before Pope’s birth) and “numerous
points of disequilibrium”:
“True ease
in writing...
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
Between Matter and Spirit: Psychoanalyst Allen Wheelis on the Substance of What We Are
"We are carriers of spirit... into a future unknown, unknowable, and in continual creation."
a year ago
"We are carriers of spirit... into a future unknown, unknowable, and in continual creation."
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Belonged Essentially to the Order of Wags'
A gift I
prize is seeing the humor in writers not taxonomically labeled “Humorists.” If
you tell me...
10 months ago
A gift I
prize is seeing the humor in writers not taxonomically labeled “Humorists.” If
you tell me a piece by S.J. Pearlman has made you laugh my response is, “Enjoy
yourself.” I don’t find Pearlman as funny as I did when I was a kid, though I’m
happy for you. But if you tell me...
The American Scholar
Writer on Board
The cruise story from Twain to Shteyngart
The post Writer on Board appeared first on The American...
4 months ago
The cruise story from Twain to Shteyngart
The post Writer on Board appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
Paradoxes and epistemology - early Greek philosophy as conceptual innovation - "Zeno argues...
The conceptual innovation of Thales that we identify as the birth of philosophy quickly spun off...
a year ago
The conceptual innovation of Thales that we identify as the birth of philosophy quickly spun off other conceptual innovations. A real conceptual innovation does not require a book or even an argument. You say there are many gods? But what if there were one? Or none? ...
The Marginalian
Endling: A Poem
I turned the corner one afternoon to find my neighborhood grocer gone. No warning, just gone —...
10 months ago
I turned the corner one afternoon to find my neighborhood grocer gone. No warning, just gone — padlocked and boarded off, closed for good, a long chain of habit suddenly severed. We know that entropy drags everything toward dissolution, that life is a vector pointed at loss, but...
Josh Thompson
Book Notes: 'Why We Get Fat' by Gary Taube
I recently read Why We Get Fat, by Gary Taubes. I read it shortly after reading The Case Against...
over a year ago
I recently read Why We Get Fat, by Gary Taubes. I read it shortly after reading The Case Against Sugar. My notes and a write-up on The Case Against Sugar
As I explained in that post, I find it helpful to do a ‘deep dive’ on some of the books I want to be deeply influenced by. For...
The Marginalian
Some Blessings to Begin with
It is good, I feel, to begin a new year, or a new day, with a little reservoir of gladness. Here are...
3 days ago
It is good, I feel, to begin a new year, or a new day, with a little reservoir of gladness. Here are some gladnesses I have gathered, and two new bird divinations I have made, as a conscious way of consecrating our days with the blessed fact that we weren’t promised any of this —...
Josh Thompson
Trip Report: New River Gorge
Kristi and I are spending a few weeks in Fayetteville, WV, home of the New River Gorge. There’s...
over a year ago
Kristi and I are spending a few weeks in Fayetteville, WV, home of the New River Gorge. There’s fantastic climbing here. I climbed with good friends, and was absolutely humbled by how strong they all are. (My defense, at least for the next few weeks, is that I’ve not climbed...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Censure of Knaves and Fools'
“Mr. Michael
Johnson was a man of large and robust body, and of a strong and active mind;
yet, as in...
3 months ago
“Mr. Michael
Johnson was a man of large and robust body, and of a strong and active mind;
yet, as in the most solid rocks veins of unsound substance are often
discovered, there was in him a mixture of that disease, the nature of which
eludes the most minute enquiry, though the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Implacable, Bewildered, It Moves Among Us'
Some sixteen
years ago David Ferry thanked me for a post I had written about some of the lines by...
a year ago
Some sixteen
years ago David Ferry thanked me for a post I had written about some of the lines by Dr. Johnson interpolated into his poems. That email is long gone but
I remember being touched by his buoyant sense of gratitude. That a man in his
eighties, much honored as a poet,...
Josh Thompson
Continuous Glucose Monitors: Why & What
This is a story and explanation about why I sometimes wear a glucose monitor. It’s visible on the...
8 months ago
This is a story and explanation about why I sometimes wear a glucose monitor. It’s visible on the rear of my upper arm, usually sparks a question or two, I’ve usually stumbled through a response, now I can simply pass this page along to anyone who asks.
Since maybe 2018, every...
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...
2 months 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...
This Space
39 Books: 1997
I found this ghastly 60-page Grove Press hardback edition in a second-hand bookshop, its large...
8 months ago
I found this ghastly 60-page Grove Press hardback edition in a second-hand bookshop, its large typeface and generous spacing very similar to Beckett's late works (Barbara Bray, Beckett's translator, also translated this). Such productions are rare now, and perhaps were when it...
Wuthering...
You drool from it. You are happy. - Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit
Finally, I have finished Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Voyage au bout
de la nuit (1932), known in English...
4 months ago
Finally, I have finished Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Voyage au bout
de la nuit (1932), known in English as Journey to the End of Night. That “end of night” is death. The existence of death makes everything
hateful and nullifies the value of anything else. I gotta say that the...
Wuthering...
The Story of the Stone, volume 3 - melodrama, drinking games, and "a convocation of bees and...
I am two-thirds through Cao Xueqin’s enormous The Story
of the Stone (c. 1760), volume 3 of the...
3 weeks ago
I am two-thirds through Cao Xueqin’s enormous The Story
of the Stone (c. 1760), volume 3 of the David Hawkes translation, and the
next twenty chapters have arrived at the library so I had better write this
chunk up.
In this big middle section a number of minor or even...
Josh Thompson
An Open Letter about Golden
2022-06-15 Update
I wrote this document the first time in a very small number of minutes, three...
over a year ago
2022-06-15 Update
I wrote this document the first time in a very small number of minutes, three weeks ago, on my way out the door on a particularly busy day. I follow “write it now”. I’ve gotten to discuss this letter with a few different people, because I mentioned it in email....
The Marginalian
We Go to the Park: A Soulful Illustrated Meditation on Our Search for Meaning
"Sometimes it feels as if all of life is made up of longing."
4 months ago
"Sometimes it feels as if all of life is made up of longing."
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Poem Calls For a Formal Reading'
I swore off
poetry readings a long time ago for reasons of health. The atmosphere of
pressurized...
6 months ago
I swore off
poetry readings a long time ago for reasons of health. The atmosphere of
pressurized solipsism makes it difficult for me to breathe. Sugary adulation induces
diabetic comas. Free verse is emetic and I’m allergic to hipsters but Thursday
evening I broke my vow and went...
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...
The Marginalian
Excellent Advice for Living: Kevin Kelly’s Life-Tested Wisdom He Wished He Knew Earlier
"The chief prevention against getting old is to remain astonished."
a year ago
"The chief prevention against getting old is to remain astonished."
The Marginalian
May Sarton on Writing, Gardening, and the Importance of Patience Over Will in Creative Work
"Gardening is like poetry in that it is gratuitous, and also that it cannot be done on will alone."
a year ago
"Gardening is like poetry in that it is gratuitous, and also that it cannot be done on will alone."
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
"Bystander Angel, He Records the Dying'
My late-life
swerve away from novels to short stories continues. It’s a humbling admission
but I’m...
a year ago
My late-life
swerve away from novels to short stories continues. It’s a humbling admission
but I’m unlikely to read Proust for a third time. The shorter form is ideally
adapted to my circadian rhythms. I can read two or three before going to bed.
Of late, the masters: Chekhov,...
Ben Borgers
I Keep Rewriting My Personal Website
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'These Pieces of Moral Prose'
“Where did
you get your humility? I thought that was an extinct virtue.”
Creating
anything...
7 months ago
“Where did
you get your humility? I thought that was an extinct virtue.”
Creating
anything worthwhile, whether joke, villanelle or pot of lentil soup, calls
for pride and humility. Pride because one presumes to add to the world’s bounty
and impose it on others; humility because...
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...
8 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...
The Marginalian
Birds, Loves, and Obscure Sorrows: The Best of The Marginalian 2024
Hindsight is how we connect the dots that figure our lives. To look back on even a single year is to...
a week ago
Hindsight is how we connect the dots that figure our lives. To look back on even a single year is to see clearly the contour of who we are in its points of attention and priority. “How we spend our days,” Annie Dillard wrote, “is how we spend our lives.” How we spend our minds is...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Then Came the Barbarians'
“Prose
poetry” suggests transfusing a patient with a blood type not his own. You’ll
kill him or at...
3 months ago
“Prose
poetry” suggests transfusing a patient with a blood type not his own. You’ll
kill him or at least make him sick. When I confront a prose poem I run, though
sometimes I pause to laugh and then run. The question becomes, which is worse:
the poet’s ineptness or his...
The American Scholar
The Baritone as Democrat
How Lawrence Tibbett prophesied the Metropolitan Opera crisis of today
The post The Baritone as...
a month ago
How Lawrence Tibbett prophesied the Metropolitan Opera crisis of today
The post The Baritone as Democrat appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
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.
Josh Thompson
HTTParty and to_json
I was having some trouble debugging an HTTParty POST request.
A few tools that were useful to...
over a year ago
I was having some trouble debugging an HTTParty POST request.
A few tools that were useful to me:
post DEBUG info to STDOUT
netcat to listen to HTTP requests locally
I had this code:
options = {
headers: {
"Content-Type": "application/json",
authorization: "Bearer...
sbensu
The Market for Takes
Solving for the Twitter equilibrium
5 months ago
Solving for the Twitter equilibrium
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Open-ended Project'
Two writers
separated by language, experience and two and a half centuries make...
10 months ago
Two writers
separated by language, experience and two and a half centuries make complementary
observations about memory. Here is Dr. Johnson in The Idler essay he published on this date, February 17, in 1759:
“The two
offices of memory are collection and distribution; by one...
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...
The Marginalian
Between the Infinite and the Infinitesimal: A Scientist’s Search for the Fulcrum of Faith
"The universe is not a place where evolution happens, it is the evolution happening. It is not a...
11 months ago
"The universe is not a place where evolution happens, it is the evolution happening. It is not a stage on which drama unfolds, it is the unfolding drama itself."
Josh Thompson
No New Books
I’ve promised myself that I won’t add any more books to my Kindle, either by purchasing them from...
over a year ago
I’ve promised myself that I won’t add any more books to my Kindle, either by purchasing them from Amazon, or downloading them online, or renting them from a Library.
Why?
I’ve let reading about doing things stand in the way of doing the things. No amount of educational literature...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Well-known Types of Miracle'
It’s grim
out there and getting grimmer. Two poems encountered on the same day provided a
touch of...
8 months ago
It’s grim
out there and getting grimmer. Two poems encountered on the same day provided a
touch of buoyancy. The first was originally written in Russian by Vladimir
Nabokov on May 6, 1923:
“No, life is
no quivering quandary!
Here under
the moon things are bright and dewy.
We are...
Anecdotal Evidence
'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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Very Close to the Caliber of Mark Twain'
I found a 2001 interview with Shelby Foote in The
American Enterprise. The author of the
three...
3 months ago
I found a 2001 interview with Shelby Foote in The
American Enterprise. The author of the
three volumes of The Civil War: A Narrative (1958-1974) was asked by Bill
Kauffman about the scarcity of politicians who are today capable of formulating their
own coherent let alone eloquent...
ribbonfarm
Storytelling — Just Add Dinosaurs
In a previous part, I covered the storytelling model of Matthew Dicks, who specializes in live,...
9 months ago
In a previous part, I covered the storytelling model of Matthew Dicks, who specializes in live, spoken-word competitive storytelling from real life. He has a theory of stories I found deeply unsatisfying: That the essence of a story is a moment of character change where the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Whole Sky Seems to Turn Into Rain'
The storm
was brief and fierce. Wind pushed the rain horizontally, like an airborne
river. The tops...
7 months ago
The storm
was brief and fierce. Wind pushed the rain horizontally, like an airborne
river. The tops of newly planted trees touched the ground. Yard and street filled
with branches, leaves and pine cones. A block away, an oak cracked and fell,
blocking the street. We lost power at...
The American Scholar
Moondance
Experience the marvel that is
The post Moondance appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
Experience the marvel that is
The post Moondance appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Human mind at its deepest and highest'
Vladimir
Nabokov is speaking in 1965 to Robert Hughes for the Television 13 Educational
Program in...
a year ago
Vladimir
Nabokov is speaking in 1965 to Robert Hughes for the Television 13 Educational
Program in New York:
“One of the
saddest cases is perhaps that of Osip Mandelshtam--a wonderful
poet, the greatest poet among
those trying to survive in Russia under the...
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...
Escaping Flatland
A greeting
They think it was a monk at the Monastery of St Alban in Trier, present-day Germany. On Christmas...
a year 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
Yes: William Stafford’s Poetic Calibration of Perspective
"No guarantees in this life."
11 months ago
"No guarantees in this life."
Escaping Flatland
Things I learned working with artists
As I said in “Lessons I learned working at an art gallery,” I had several observations that I...
2 weeks ago
As I said in “Lessons I learned working at an art gallery,” I had several observations that I couldn’t fit into that post—so lets continue today.
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...
This Space
39 Books: 2003
This year I read Robert Antelme's The Human Race for the first time. I was nonplussed. The strange...
7 months ago
This year I read Robert Antelme's The Human Race for the first time. I was nonplussed. The strange title, closer to popular sociology than memoir, should have been a warning. This was not quite the horror story one imagines of memoirs from those who survived Nazi concentration...
sbensu
Payments vs Transfers
Transfer means to move money but payment means "exchanging goods or services". A payment system has...
a year ago
Transfer means to move money but payment means "exchanging goods or services". A payment system has a lot more requirements than a transfer system and I rarely see the crypto ecosystem acknowledge these when building "payment" products.
The Marginalian
Maira Kalman on How to Live with Remorse and Make of It a Portal of Creative Vitality
Each time we have tried to elevate ourselves above the other animals by claiming singular possession...
10 months ago
Each time we have tried to elevate ourselves above the other animals by claiming singular possession of some faculty, we have been humbled otherwise: Language, it turns out, is not ours alone, nor is the use of tools, nor is music. Elephants grieve, octopuses remember and...
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Range and Liveliness of Poetry'
I heard from
a high-school classmate who remembered the time in A.P. English our senior year
when...
10 months ago
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...
Escaping Flatland
Garlic and gravel
fragments
5 months ago
This Space
39 Books: 1991
One the first books I found in a bookshop* upon moving to Brighton was Rosalind Belben's novel Is...
8 months ago
One the first books I found in a bookshop* upon moving to Brighton was Rosalind Belben's novel Is Beauty Good. I had seen it two years earlier chosen in a newspaper books of the year listing alongside Jacques Roubaud's Le Grand Incendie de Londres and Thomas Bernhard's Old...
Ben Borgers
I want to use all of my ridiculously many meal swipes
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Braña Curuchu
The post Braña Curuchu appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The post Braña Curuchu appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
My Office Makes Me Feel Stupid
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Knowing Only What Is Shown, Nothing Learned'
In Wednesday’s
installment of his newsletter “Prufrock,” Micah Mattix praises the American poet...
a year ago
In Wednesday’s
installment of his newsletter “Prufrock,” Micah Mattix praises the American poet Ernest Hilbert’s “understated realism” -- as opposed to hyperbolic fantasy, I
suppose. There’s a sobriety to Hilbert’s work, a mature acceptance of the real world
unaccompanied by...
Ben Borgers
Building an e-ink picture frame that displays an iCloud photo album
12 months ago
Wuthering...
Seneca and Marcus Aurelius and their Stoic self-help books - I shall not be afraid when my last hour...
The curious thing about Stoicism is its long-lasting
survival in the self-help genre, curious at...
a year ago
The curious thing about Stoicism is its long-lasting
survival in the self-help genre, curious at least until I read Seneca’s Letters
from a Stoic (1st C.) several years ago and discovered that it was a self-help
book, one of the founding self-help books.
The Meditations of...
The Marginalian
Practical Mysticism: Evelyn Underhill’s Stunning Century-Old Manifesto for Secular Transcendence and...
"Because mystery is horrible to us, we have agreed for the most part to live in a world of labels;...
a year ago
"Because mystery is horrible to us, we have agreed for the most part to live in a world of labels; to make of them the current coin of experience, and ignore their merely symbolic character, the infinite gradation of values which they misrepresent."
The Marginalian
Of Wonder, the Courage of Uncertainty, and How to Hear Your Soul: The Best of The Marginalian 2023
Hindsight is our finest instrument for discerning the patterns of our lives. To look back on a year...
a year ago
Hindsight is our finest instrument for discerning the patterns of our lives. To look back on a year of reading, a year of writing, is to discover a secret map of the mind, revealing the landscape of living — after all, how we spend our thoughts is how we spend our lives. In...
The Marginalian
What We Look for When We Are Looking: John Steinbeck on Wonder and the Relational Nature of the...
Searching for "that principle which keys us deeply into the pattern of all life."
a year ago
Searching for "that principle which keys us deeply into the pattern of all life."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Certificate of Naturalization'
In our
basement was a gray file cabinet we were forbidden to touch. Naturally I opened
it and in one...
4 months ago
In our
basement was a gray file cabinet we were forbidden to touch. Naturally I opened
it and in one of the drawers I found an old leather wallet containing the ID
cards of a stranger with the surname Kurpiewski. Who is this? Why is the name
so similar to ours? I couldn’t ask...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Will Your Birds Be Always Wingless Birds'
A
questionnaire sent to Louis MacNeice in 1934 – that “low dishonest decade” was
big on...
8 months ago
A
questionnaire sent to Louis MacNeice in 1934 – that “low dishonest decade” was
big on questionnaires to writers – asked, “Do you take your stand with any political
or politico-economic party or creed?” The Irishman replied: “No. In weaker
moments I wish I could.” Never a...
The Marginalian
D.H. Lawrence on the Hypocrisies of Social Change and What It Actually Takes to Shift the Status Quo
"We have created a great, almost overwhelming incubus of falsity and ugliness on top of us, so that...
a year ago
"We have created a great, almost overwhelming incubus of falsity and ugliness on top of us, so that we are almost crushed to death. Now let us move it."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Pick Up a Machete and Start Exploring'
A splendid
day for American literature: born on March 1 are Ralph Ellison (1914), Howard
Nemerov...
10 months ago
A splendid
day for American literature: born on March 1 are Ralph Ellison (1914), Howard
Nemerov (1920) and Richard Wilbur (1921). I’m reminded of how important contemporary
American writers were to me when I was young, in the 60s and 70s. Everything
was new and promising, and I...
The Elysian
Your alternatives to democracy
Entries to the March writing prompt.
8 months ago
Entries to the March writing prompt.
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."
Josh Thompson
A Retrospective on Seven Months at Turing
Collection of thoughts on Turing
It’s the last week of Turing. I went through the backend software...
over a year ago
Collection of thoughts on Turing
It’s the last week of Turing. I went through the backend software engineering program, and it’s been a journey.
In no particular order, I’m throwing down thoughts in three general categories:
What went well
What didn’t go well
What I might have...
The American Scholar
The Creator’s Code
Are humans alone in their ability to make art?
The post The Creator’s Code appeared first on The...
a month ago
Are humans alone in their ability to make art?
The post The Creator’s Code appeared first on The American Scholar.
Escaping Flatland
Self-help for cocoons
and what's on my mind
10 months ago
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...
The Marginalian
Making Space: An Illustrated Ode to the Art of Welcoming the Unknown
It is the silence between the notes that distinguishes music from noise, the stillness of the soil...
3 months ago
It is the silence between the notes that distinguishes music from noise, the stillness of the soil that germinates the seeds to burst into bloom. It is in the gap of absence that we learn trust, in the gap between knowledge and mystery that we discover wonder. Every act of making...
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.
ribbonfarm
Truth-Seeking Modes
Been on a Venn diagram kick lately, since being primed to think in Venns by Harris campaign. This...
4 months ago
Been on a Venn diagram kick lately, since being primed to think in Venns by Harris campaign. This one summarizes an idea I’ve long been noodling on: The healthiest way to relate to a truth-seeking impulse is as an infinite game, where the goal is to continue playing, not arrive...
Robert Caro
Misery Acres: An Investigative Series
Perhaps Caro’s most influential work during his years at Newsday was the investigative series,...
a year ago
Perhaps Caro’s most influential work during his years at Newsday was the investigative series, “Misery Acres,” a withering expose of fraud.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Old Collections Persist Somewhere'
Speaking of
anthologies, I again picked up Books and
Libraries (2021), published as part of the...
a year ago
Speaking of
anthologies, I again picked up Books and
Libraries (2021), published as part of the Everyman's Library Pocket Poets
Series. I’ve browsed in several of these attractively compact volumes and they are
a very mixed bag, as any thematic anthology must be. You can sense...
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Is a Rite of Finitude'
Most of
Richard Wilbur’s poetry I read retrospectively, in books, long after it was
written and...
7 months ago
Most of
Richard Wilbur’s poetry I read retrospectively, in books, long after it was
written and first published in magazines. One exception I remember is “All That Is,” which appeared in the May 13, 1985 issue of The New Yorker. I had mostly stopped reading the magazine by...
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...
The Marginalian
Something in You Hungers for Clarity: Ta-Nehisi Coates on Writing
“Words have more power than any one can guess; it is by words that the world’s great fight, now in...
3 weeks ago
“Words have more power than any one can guess; it is by words that the world’s great fight, now in these civilized times, is carried on,” Mary Shelley wrote in the middle of the Napoleonic Wars that laid the template for the colonialist power structure of the modern world, in an...
Wuthering...
Many of Plato's early Socratic dialogues - It was quite lovely.
I’ve been enjoying Plato’s dialogues recently. I’d read some of them before, at university or...
a year ago
I’ve been enjoying Plato’s dialogues recently. I’d read some of them before, at university or during my last Greek phase 25 years ago, and this time I hope to read almost all of them.
I will make some notes on them in a few posts. Give them a tag if nothing else, and make some...
This Space
The Opposite Direction, a book
Please use a link below to download an ebook of posts selected from over the last seven years of...
over a year ago
Please use a link below to download an ebook of posts selected from over the last seven years of this blog.
This is the second collection after This Space of Writing and the title comes from the adolescent Thomas Bernhard's phrase repeated to an official at the labour exchange...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Recon Patrol Is a Small Unit'
“A 21-year
old Marine Corporal leading his first patrol — a 10-man Reconnaissance Team —
kept a cool...
4 months ago
“A 21-year
old Marine Corporal leading his first patrol — a 10-man Reconnaissance Team —
kept a cool head in a tight situation.”
Long before
he was a poet and publisher, R.L. Barth in 1968-69 was a Marine serving as a
patrol leader in the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion in Vietnam....
Josh Thompson
Turing Prep Chapter 3: Moar Mythical Creatures
Preparing for Turing Series Index
What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
Preparing for Turing Series Index
What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...
Josh Thompson
Setting up for 'SQL Queries for Mere Mortals'
This tweet is from… a while ago. Turns out I didn’t dig into this book, because the pace at Turing...
over a year ago
This tweet is from… a while ago. Turns out I didn’t dig into this book, because the pace at Turing didn’t allow for a few weeks of thinking just about SQL.
yes, I'm digging into sql to better my AR skills, and ultimately whatever I need to use next. pic.twitter.com/UhjyGKv1FQ
—...
The Marginalian
Necessary Losses: The Life-Shaping Art of Letting Go
"We cannot deeply love anything without becoming vulnerable to loss. And we cannot become separate...
a year ago
"We cannot deeply love anything without becoming vulnerable to loss. And we cannot become separate people, responsible people, connected people, reflective people without some losing and leaving and letting go."
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Brave Respect the Brave'
In
observance of Memorial Day, R.L. Barth sent me a poem by Ambrose Bierce, one I
had never read...
7 months ago
In
observance of Memorial Day, R.L. Barth sent me a poem by Ambrose Bierce, one I
had never read before, “To E.S. Salomon” (Black Beetles in Amber, 1892). Here is the memorably pertinent third stanza:
“The brave
respect the brave. The brave
Respect
the dead; but you -- you...
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?"
Escaping Flatland
A measuring device that tells me what is interesting
+ links
3 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Line or Two Worth Keeping All Too Rare'
“He has
never been much of a poet for opening magic casements -- ordinary dirty storm
windows,...
a year ago
“He has
never been much of a poet for opening magic casements -- ordinary dirty storm
windows, rather.”
That’s X.J. Kennedy on Kingsley Amis, clearly seeing his own reflection in that dirty
window. Both are proof that the best writers of light verse or comic poetry are
serious...
The Marginalian
A Republic of the Sensitive: E.M. Forster on the Personal and Political Power of Empaths and the...
"I believe in... an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to...
2 months ago
"I believe in... an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet."
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...
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...
8 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
RailsConf Presentation: 'Junior' Developers are a Solution to Many of your Problems
Did this talk resonate and you want to implement some of the ideas at your company? I might be able...
over a year ago
Did this talk resonate and you want to implement some of the ideas at your company? I might be able to help. Shoot me an email at joshthompson@hey.com or book some time to talk at https://calendly.com/joshthompson/coffee.
This talk is available on railsconf.org, here:...
Escaping Flatland
On feeling connected
generosity is potency
2 months ago
The Marginalian
How to Make a World: A Poem
Like mathematics, the truest metaphors are not invented but discovered. In fact, they hardly feel...
11 months ago
Like mathematics, the truest metaphors are not invented but discovered. In fact, they hardly feel like metaphors — they feel like equations equating something previously unseen with something familiar in order to see more deeply into the nature of reality. One morning out on a...
The Marginalian
The Importance of Trusting Yourself: Nick Cave on the Relationship Between Creativity and Faith
"There is more going on than we can see or understand, and we need to find a way to lean into the...
a year ago
"There is more going on than we can see or understand, and we need to find a way to lean into the mystery of things."
Josh Thompson
Accomplishments and Achievements
We’re encouraged to accomplish and achieve, yes? From birth, we pass milestones. Generally these...
over a year ago
We’re encouraged to accomplish and achieve, yes? From birth, we pass milestones. Generally these milestones grow in complexity as we add to our abilities - it’s been a while since I’ve been rewarded for not wetting myself - but they are usually on par with our abilities.
For...
Anecdotal Evidence
'When Young Men Go to Die'
Like most lifelong civilian Americans, I have
never fired a gun in my life. I owned a BB gun when I...
7 months ago
Like most lifelong civilian Americans, I have
never fired a gun in my life. I owned a BB gun when I was a kid and often fired
my brother’s pellet gun. My experience with firearms is entirely second- or
third-hand via the movies, which give me the illusion that I know...
The American Scholar
A Messy Mix
The post A Messy Mix appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
The post A Messy Mix appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
The Day Should End at 3am
over a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 362.5
...
yesterday
Anecdotal Evidence
'Being Vulnerable to History'
I read Bernard Malamud’s
novel The Fixer when it was published
in 1966. Readers often turn...
6 months ago
I read Bernard Malamud’s
novel The Fixer when it was published
in 1966. Readers often turn melodramatic when describing the impact a book has
had on them – “life-changing,” that sort of thing. Such claims usually can be
chalked up to enthusiasm untempered by critical rigor. The...
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.
sbensu
The battlefield where arguments fight
A lot of speech is about convincing others of what type of arguments have merit
10 months ago
A lot of speech is about convincing others of what type of arguments have merit
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Whole Hog Barbecu'd!'
I was
surprised to see that Alexander Pope was familiar with the most popular cuisine
served in...
3 months ago
I was
surprised to see that Alexander Pope was familiar with the most popular cuisine
served in Texas: barbecue. You’ll find his reference in “The Second Satire in the Second Book of Horace Paraphrased”:
“Oldfield,
with more than Harpy throat endu’d,
Cries, ‘send
me, Gods! a...
Josh Thompson
Customer Success: American Airlines Case Study
Continuing the theme of “what the heck do I do for work”,
I’m writing about Customer Success as I...
over a year ago
Continuing the theme of “what the heck do I do for work”,
I’m writing about Customer Success as I see it. My words are my own, I don’t speak for the industry as a whole, or even for Litmus. I’m just trying to sharpen my own thinking.
Last time, I argued that customer success is...
The Marginalian
Wonder-Sighting on Planet Earth: The Space Telescope Eye of the Scallop
Inside Earth's most alien vision.
a year ago
Inside Earth's most alien vision.
Astral Codex Ten
Highlights From The Comments On Prison
...
3 weeks ago
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 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...
Josh Thompson
Processes Vs. Goals (or, Systems vs. Accomplishments)
In this
excellent article on systems vs. goals, James argues that even if you did not pursue any...
over a year ago
In this
excellent article on systems vs. goals, James argues that even if you did not pursue any specific goals, with the right
system, you will still go a long way.
This idea has been floating around my head for over a year, now, and I think it’s slowly coalescing into something...
Anecdotal Evidence
'My Soul, Beyond Distant Death"
More than
any secular writer I can think of, Vladimir Nabokov hints at the existence of
an...
3 months ago
More than
any secular writer I can think of, Vladimir Nabokov hints at the existence of
an afterlife. He never preaches and makes no theological assertions. His frequent
use of the word “paradise” is often ambiguous, blurring its mundane,
metaphorical meaning – an earthly place...
Anecdotal Evidence
'About As Approachable As a Porcupine'
The large bay
window facing the garden in front of our house is better than television....
2 months ago
The large bay
window facing the garden in front of our house is better than television. No
commercials, no dependency on internet whims, no bills to pay. That’s where I
do most of my reading (best lighting in the house). From the couch I watch the
show in the garden. Butterflies,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'What Is Called an Amateur'
I recently encountered
a choice example of academic snobbery, the lording of a tenured professor...
a year ago
I recently encountered
a choice example of academic snobbery, the lording of a tenured professor over lecturers,
adjuncts and even “mere assistant professors.” Normally the perpetrator tries
to disguise his snottiness or treat it as a joke but in this case the prima
donna was...
Josh Thompson
Workflow for developers (AKA My current tools)
I’m a huge fan of “a good workflow”. Makes you think better.
This is still under construction, but...
over a year ago
I’m a huge fan of “a good workflow”. Makes you think better.
This is still under construction, but I’m fleshing out all the tools, tidbits, and other things that serve me well every day as I build my skills as a developer. It will always be a work in progress, but will hopefully...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Seeing Means Going Over the Details'
Isaac Waisberg, the internet’s librarian-in-chief, has published two passages by...
a year ago
Isaac Waisberg, the internet’s librarian-in-chief, has published two passages by Émile-Auguste
Chartier (1868-1951), the French proto-blogger better known as Alain. He was a professor
of philosophy whose students included Raymond Aron and Simone Weil. Both excerpts
are taken from...
The American Scholar
Teach the Conflicts
It’s natural—and right—to foster
The post Teach the Conflicts appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
It’s natural—and right—to foster
The post Teach the Conflicts appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Poet's Hope'
Erica Light
is the daughter of my late friend Helen Pinkerton (1927-2017), the poet and
Melville...
8 months ago
Erica Light
is the daughter of my late friend Helen Pinkerton (1927-2017), the poet and
Melville scholar. We exchange emails several times each year, usually devoted
to what we are reading. This week she reported reading some of the writers and books I’ve
mentioned recently at...
The Marginalian
Befriending a Blackbird
Friendship is a lifeline twined of truth and tenderness. That we extend it to each other is...
6 months ago
Friendship is a lifeline twined of truth and tenderness. That we extend it to each other is benediction enough. To extend it across the barrier of biology and sentience, to another creature endowed with a wholly other consciousness, partakes of the miraculous. Born in England in...
Steven Scrawls
Easy Questions, Part 1: Introduction
Easy Questions, Part 1:
Introduction
What if our stories explore questions not because those...
9 months ago
Easy Questions, Part 1:
Introduction
What if our stories explore questions not because those questions are
interesting, but because those questions are easier to respond to than
the alternatives?
Trope: The Chosen One
What’s the shallow, wish-fulfillment version of...
Josh Thompson
Playing Pranks
My wife played a brilliant prank on me today, as she does every year. Here’s a partial...
over a year ago
My wife played a brilliant prank on me today, as she does every year. Here’s a partial list:
Convincing me that I was about to eat a slice of carrot cake; it was a sponge covered with toothpaste. I bit into it.
Convincing me that she had, in anger and frustration, cut off almost...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Related But Detached'
I’ve seen Hamlet on the stage only once, in 1971.
The prince was played by Dame Judith Anderson,...
10 months ago
I’ve seen Hamlet on the stage only once, in 1971.
The prince was played by Dame Judith Anderson, unconvincing in her early seventies.
Wrong sex, wrong age, wrong play – a stillborn theatrical stunt. My reaction was perhaps the
worst that staged Shakespeare can inspire – boredom...
This Space
39 Books: 2001
In 1995 I found this hardback edition in the British History section of a Brighton bookshop six...
7 months ago
In 1995 I found this hardback edition in the British History section of a Brighton bookshop six years after the French original was cited by Gabriel Josipovici as one of his books of the year: "a beautifully controlled examination of the effect on [Roubaud] of his wife's death...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Steeplejacks Top Out the Chrysler Building,'
A friend
sent me a link to a 1978 BBC documentary about a working-class hero in England.
I had never...
6 months ago
A friend
sent me a link to a 1978 BBC documentary about a working-class hero in England.
I had never heard of Fred Dibnah, practitioner of a trade I didn’t know was still
extant: steeplejack. In the words of the OED:
“a person who climbs steeples or tall chimneys to repair them.”...
The Marginalian
How to Have Enough: Wendell Berry on Creativity and Love
“Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily...
2 weeks ago
“Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily Dickinson sighed in one of her love letters to Susan an epoch before Kurt Vonnegut, in a short and lovely poem, distilled happiness to the knowledge that you have enough. It is not an...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Magnetism, an Ardor, a Refusal to Be False'
In “The Madonna of the Future,” an 1873 story by Henry James, an American painter in
Florence tells...
a year ago
In “The Madonna of the Future,” an 1873 story by Henry James, an American painter in
Florence tells the narrator, “If you but knew the rapture of observation! I
gather with every glance some hint for light, for color or relief! When I get home, I pour out my treasures into
the...
sbensu
Vibes are music, arguments are lyrics
Losing My Religion is not about religion and Arguments are not about arguments
5 months ago
Losing My Religion is not about religion and Arguments are not about arguments
Josh Thompson
How to Ask Questions of Experts To Gain More than Just Answers
Recently, I co-led a session at Turing with Regis Boudinot, a Turing grad who works at GitLab.
We...
over a year ago
Recently, I co-led a session at Turing with Regis Boudinot, a Turing grad who works at GitLab.
We discussed two things:
asking good questions
having a good workflow
After the session, I promised an overview of what we discussed. Here’s that overview for “Asking good questions”....
Anecdotal Evidence
'Cursed with an Acute Literary Conscience'
Who among
critics would begin a review with so seemingly inartistic a statement?:
“Some
writers...
a year ago
Who among
critics would begin a review with so seemingly inartistic a statement?:
“Some
writers have a dread of platitudes. I have not. What is a platitude but an
expression of the wisdom of the ages, the synopsis of a theory that was long
ago propounded, tested, established,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Age of Terror'
If “terror”
meant anything to me as a kid it was probably an episode of The Twilight Zone. Some were...
a year ago
If “terror”
meant anything to me as a kid it was probably an episode of The Twilight Zone. Some were ridiculous, others remain watchable after more than sixty years. At least one, “Night Call,” left me so frightened I didn’t want to return to my
darkened bedroom.
I grew up safe...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Echo of a Song a Stranger Sang'
I’m reminded
of my age only when someone holds a door open for me (That’s my job!) or performs some...
2 months ago
I’m reminded
of my age only when someone holds a door open for me (That’s my job!) or performs some other courtesy. I was returning to
my car from the university library, carrying a canvas tote bag of books, walking with the aid of my cane, as usual, when a
young man asked if he...
Steven Scrawls
The Firefly Artist
The Firefly Artist
Note: it’s a metaphor. I’m not calling for mass firefly
imprisonment.
Two hours...
a year ago
The Firefly Artist
Note: it’s a metaphor. I’m not calling for mass firefly
imprisonment.
Two hours after dusk, a crowd gathered by the dozens, by the
hundreds, to see the firefly artist’s yearly performance. They spread
out blankets in the clearing, sharing snacks by the light of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Single Line of Calm'
Judged
solely as a liquid asset, the most valuable book I ever held was a history of
Argentina...
4 weeks ago
Judged
solely as a liquid asset, the most valuable book I ever held was a history of
Argentina borrowed from the public library in Schenectady, N.Y. At home I discovered
the previous reader had marked his place with a twenty-dollar bill. I returned
the book but not the cash. It...
Wuthering...
The Best Books of 2024
For the last year and a half I read short books,
mostly, which was psychologically satisfying and...
11 months ago
For the last year and a half I read short books,
mostly, which was psychologically satisfying and anyway necessary to fit the
available energy and concentration. Now,
though, back on my feet, I hope, I am ready to read long books again.
Long, and I mean it, like Rebecca West’s...
Josh Thompson
Growing in your first software development job
I started my first software developer role a year ago. (November 2017)
This is tremendously...
over a year ago
I started my first software developer role a year ago. (November 2017)
This is tremendously exciting, of course, but introduces its own set of challenges, like:
I finished Turing and I’ve got a job! Oh snap. I just finished a grueling program, and my reward is I’m fit to sit at...
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...
Josh Thompson
Depression
I’m starting to write more regularly these days. For a long time, I’ve hardly written anything, or...
over a year ago
I’m starting to write more regularly these days. For a long time, I’ve hardly written anything, or only written when external circumstances required me to write something. For example, when I give a talk, I always create a page to “support” the talk, that I can link to in slides,...
Josh Thompson
Quotes from 'Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving', by Pete Walker
I’ve found Pete Walker’s Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving to be deeply helpful.
Some of you,...
over a year ago
I’ve found Pete Walker’s Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving to be deeply helpful.
Some of you, many of you, have blessed me and cared for me in kind ways, sometimes with very little knowledge of what was going on, or why I was the way that I was. Thank you. I’ve been...
Anecdotal Evidence
'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...
The Marginalian
Jonathan Franzen on How to Write About Nature, with a Side of Rachel Carson and Alice in Wonderland
I grew up loving Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. My grandmother read it to me before I could read....
10 months ago
I grew up loving Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. My grandmother read it to me before I could read. I read it to myself as soon as I could. I loved the strangeness of it, and the tenderness. As a child mathematician, I loved knowing that a grown mathematician had written it. But...
This Space
39 Books: 2013
I reread books like Aharon Appelfeld's A Table for One and Anne Atik's How It Was as if returning to...
7 months ago
I reread books like Aharon Appelfeld's A Table for One and Anne Atik's How It Was as if returning to a particular bench with a view of the sea. On first glance A Table for One promises only banal, coffee-table memories and reflections, and that would be almost right:
Real...
Ben Borgers
Driving School Corruption
over a year ago
Wuthering...
there is no wisdom in me; and that is true enough - what is knowledge? - Theaetetus and Parmenides
The epistemological crisis of Greek philosophy has surprised
me. The early attempts to...
a year ago
The epistemological crisis of Greek philosophy has surprised
me. The early attempts to systematically
understand, without the help of the revealed truth of religion, difficult
concepts like existence and virtue led, almost immediately, to the question of
whether anyone can...
Escaping Flatland
Socratic dialogue with kids
I’m simply trying to understand how she thinks. When she answers in a way that does not match my...
a year ago
I’m simply trying to understand how she thinks. When she answers in a way that does not match my understanding—that is interesting to me.
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Caught the Christmas Beetle'
I understand
why people might be repelled by a poem titled “When We Were Kids.” A wallow...
a week ago
I understand
why people might be repelled by a poem titled “When We Were Kids.” A wallow in
nostalgia can prove deadly. But the language in Clive James’ twelve stanzas cataloging
an Australian childhood is exotic enough to interest this American reader,
apart from their poetic...
The Marginalian
Wonder Beyond Why: The Majesty and Mystery of the Birds-of-Paradise
“To go all the way from a clone of archaebacteria, in just 3.7 billion years, to the B-Minor Mass...
a year ago
“To go all the way from a clone of archaebacteria, in just 3.7 billion years, to the B-Minor Mass and the Late Quartets, deserves a better technical term for the record than randomness,” the poetic scientist Lewis Thomas wrote in his forgotten masterpiece of perspective. This is...
The American Scholar
“The Last Words of My English Grandmother”
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Last Words of My English Grandmother” appeared first on...
5 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Last Words of My English Grandmother” appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
"The Pensive Citadel"
My review of
The Pensive Citadel by Victor
Brombert is published in the December issue of The New...
a year ago
My review of
The Pensive Citadel by Victor
Brombert is published in the December issue of The New Criterion.
sbensu
Team-oriented, outcome-oriented
Some people care about helping their team. Others care about achieving outcomes. It is important to...
a year ago
Some people care about helping their team. Others care about achieving outcomes. It is important to know who is who.
The American Scholar
Woman in a Red Raincoat
The post Woman in a Red Raincoat appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
The post Woman in a Red Raincoat appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
LeetCode: Words From Characters, and Benchmarking Solutions
I recently worked through a LeetCode problem.
The first run was pretty brutal. It took (what felt...
over a year ago
I recently worked through a LeetCode problem.
The first run was pretty brutal. It took (what felt like) forever, and I was not content with my solution.
Even better, it passed the test cases given while building the solution, but failed on submission.
So, once I fixed it so it...
The Marginalian
A Stone Is a Story: An Illustrated Love Letter to Deep Time and Earth’s Memory
We are denizens of an enormous pebble drifting through the cosmic ocean of pure spacetime — a planet...
a year ago
We are denizens of an enormous pebble drifting through the cosmic ocean of pure spacetime — a planet made a world largely by its rockiness. Rock gave us mountains and beaches, bridges and kitchen countertops, gave us the first Promethean fire that sparked civilization. A rock is...
Escaping Flatland
Authenticity as dialogue
John Stuart Mill, notetaking, rationality, and emotion
a month ago
John Stuart Mill, notetaking, rationality, and emotion
sbensu
When coordination pays off
Stories about Stripe Link where we have to do a lot of upfront coordination but it was worth it.
2 months ago
Stories about Stripe Link where we have to do a lot of upfront coordination but it was worth it.
Wuthering...
The Female Quixote by Charlotte Lennox - counting the pages, he was quite terrified at the number,...
Di at The little white attic is chasing Don Quixote through
the 18th century, so she read,...
3 weeks ago
Di at The little white attic is chasing Don Quixote through
the 18th century, so she read, obviously, The Female Quixote (1852) by
Charlotte Lennox. I had not read it, so
I trailed along.
An archetypal novelistic heroine, young Arabella has had her
brain addled by novels:
From...
The Marginalian
Little Black Hole: A Tender Cosmic Fable About How to Live with Loss
Right this minute, people are making plans, making promises and poems, while at the center of our...
a year ago
Right this minute, people are making plans, making promises and poems, while at the center of our galaxy a black hole with the mass of four billion suns screams its open-mouth kiss of oblivion. Someday it will swallow every atom that ever touched us and every datum we ever...
Josh Thompson
The Complete Guide to Rails Performance: basic setup
You know the feeling.
You are excited to start a guide or a tutorial. You buy it, crack it open, and...
over a year ago
You know the feeling.
You are excited to start a guide or a tutorial. You buy it, crack it open, and start working through the environment setup.
Then… something goes wrong. Next thing you know, you’ve spent two three too many hours debugging random crap, and you’re not even done...
Anecdotal Evidence
'With All Its Philistinism and Coarseness'
My roommate freshman year was
the son of a Slovak father and an Austrian mother who had emigrated to...
2 months ago
My roommate freshman year was
the son of a Slovak father and an Austrian mother who had emigrated to the U.S.
after World War II. Mike was trilingual from birth, without an accent unless it
was a Cleveland accent that I couldn’t hear because it was mine as well. His
tastes often...
This Space
39 Books: 2014
One could say that Mallarmé, through an extraordinary effort of asceticism, opened an abyss in...
7 months ago
One could say that Mallarmé, through an extraordinary effort of asceticism, opened an abyss in himself where his awareness, instead of losing itself, survives and grasps its solitude in a desperate clarity.
This is from The Silence of Mallarmé, an essay in Blanchot's first...
The Marginalian
Let the Last Thing Be Song
"When I die, I want to be sung across the threshold."
6 months ago
"When I die, I want to be sung across the threshold."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Gave Themselves Without Idle Words to Death'
Rudyard
Kipling was barely twenty years old when he wrote his “Prelude” to Departmental Ditties...
a year ago
Rudyard
Kipling was barely twenty years old when he wrote his “Prelude” to Departmental Ditties (1886), which
includes these lines: “The deaths ye died I have watched beside, / And the
lives ye led were mine.” Eugene Sledge was nineteen when he enlisted in the
Marine Corps a year...
The Marginalian
A Spell Against Stagnation: John O’Donohue on Beginnings
"Our very life here depends directly on continuous acts of beginning."
a year ago
"Our very life here depends directly on continuous acts of beginning."
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 Marginalian
200 Years of Solitude: Great Writers, Artists, and Scientists in Praise of the Creative and...
There is a silence at the center of each person — an untrammeled space where the inner voice grows...
5 months ago
There is a silence at the center of each person — an untrammeled space where the inner voice grows free to speak. That space expands in solitude. To create anything — a poem, a painting, a theorem — is to find the voice in the silence that has something to say to the world. In...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Well Educated and Glad of the Fact'
“[A] literary man or woman is someone who is not only steeped in literature but has made this...
a month ago
“[A] literary man or woman is someone who is not only steeped in literature but has made this immersion into literature part of his or her own life, so that the experience of books has been integral with the experience of life and therefore strongly influences his or her general...
The Marginalian
Are You Living a Fairy Tale, a Novel, or a Poem?
When reality fissures along the fault line of our expectations and the unwelcome happens — a death,...
5 months ago
When reality fissures along the fault line of our expectations and the unwelcome happens — a death, an abandonment, a promise broken, a kindness withheld — we tend to cope in one of two ways: We question our own sanity, assuming the outside world coherent and our response a form...
Josh Thompson
Change
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Or something like that. Sometimes change is for...
over a year ago
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Or something like that. Sometimes change is for the better, and sometimes its for the worse. I don’t know if there’s always a difference.
Recently, Kristi and I have seen lots of change; I’d say its for the better, but it’s not...
Josh Thompson
The Housing Market Is Absolutely Insane: How To Fix It
I had a brief exchange with a good friend recently:
The housing market is indeed insane. This...
over a year ago
I had a brief exchange with a good friend recently:
The housing market is indeed insane. This problem that we’re both discussing is:
Unbelievable ($650,000 for a fixer upper)
Oppressive (“unjustly inflicting hardship and constraint, especially on a minority or other subordinate...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Ordinary Life Where Things Make Sense'
An old
friend back in upstate New York and I were texting. We worked years ago as
reporters for the...
a year ago
An old
friend back in upstate New York and I were texting. We worked years ago as
reporters for the same newspaper. She was married then to her second husband,
who had multiple sclerosis and died slowly and horribly. When she had to go out of town, I would stay with him...
ribbonfarm
Decision Brownouts
In thinking about decision-making under stress, most people focus on fight-or-flight responses. Both...
7 months ago
In thinking about decision-making under stress, most people focus on fight-or-flight responses. Both fighting and fleeing are obvious courses of action that inherit a clear sense of direction from the characteristics of the threat itself, and are energized by the automatic...
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
'The Highest Kind of Verbal Exercise'
John Updike
published “Kenneths” in the July 5, 1958 issue of The New Yorker and collected it in his...
6 months ago
John Updike
published “Kenneths” in the July 5, 1958 issue of The New Yorker and collected it in his second book of poems, Telephone Poles (1963):
“Rexroth and
Patchen and Fearing—their mothers
Perhaps
could distinguish their sons from the others,
But I am
unable. My inner eye...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Neither Angels Nor Devils'
A favorite
story about Dr. Johnson reminded me of something the late critic John Simon had
written...
10 months ago
A favorite
story about Dr. Johnson reminded me of something the late critic John Simon had
written on his blog five years ago. In a post titled “Curse Words,” abbreviated
by Simon throughout as “CW,” he reviews profanity as used in various settings
and languages, including Croat,...
The Marginalian
The Universe and the Soul: Richard Jefferies on Nature as Prayer for Presence
How to grow "absorbed into the being or existence of the universe."
a year ago
How to grow "absorbed into the being or existence of the universe."
Astral Codex Ten
Take The 2025 ACX Survey
...
2 weeks ago
Josh Thompson
Training for climbing (progress update)
I am at the end of my second iteration of climbing training, and this is how it went and what I...
over a year ago
I am at the end of my second iteration of climbing training, and this is how it went and what I learned:
I completed the workout twelve times, but I took a twelve-day break between workout eleven and twelve. I first skipped a workout because I had ripped skin open on one of my...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Master Etcher of Human Portraits'
In
celebration of Edwin Arlington Robinson’s fiftieth birthday, on December 22,
1919, seventeen...
a year ago
In
celebration of Edwin Arlington Robinson’s fiftieth birthday, on December 22,
1919, seventeen poets and friends were asked to contribute to a symposium published
a day earlier in the New York Times Book
Review. All but Robert Frost contributed. Amy Lowell wrote: “A realist,...
The Marginalian
The Bird in the Heart: Terry Tempest Williams on the Paradox of Transformation and How to Live with...
"We can change, evolve, and transform our own conditioning. We can choose to move like water rather...
11 months ago
"We can change, evolve, and transform our own conditioning. We can choose to move like water rather than be molded like clay."
The Marginalian
How to Be a Living Poem: Lucille Clifton on the Balance of Intellect and Intuition in Creative Work...
"I didn’t graduate from college, which isn’t necessary to be a poet. It is only necessary to be...
a year ago
"I didn’t graduate from college, which isn’t necessary to be a poet. It is only necessary to be interested in humans and to be in touch with yourself as a human."
Wuthering...
Sōseki's Kokoro and two Tanizaki genre exercises - I resolved that I must live my life as if I were...
It is the 16th year of Dolce Bellezza’s remarkable Japanese Literature Challenge – in the old days...
a year ago
It is the 16th year of Dolce Bellezza’s remarkable Japanese Literature Challenge – in the old days for some reason we “challenged” people to read – which reminded me, as it often has, that I have never read anything by Natsumi Sōseki, the earliest of the greatest 20th century...
The American Scholar
Nights at the Opera
Long before he wrote his masterly novels, Stendhal was transformed by the power of music
The post...
4 months ago
Long before he wrote his masterly novels, Stendhal was transformed by the power of music
The post Nights at the Opera appeared first on The American Scholar.
Astral Codex Ten
It's Still Easier To Imagine The End Of The World Than The End Of Capitalism
Responding to a recent essay on wealth inequality in a post-singularity economy
yesterday
Responding to a recent essay on wealth inequality in a post-singularity economy
Escaping Flatland
After AI beat them, professional Go players got better and more creative
For many decades, it seemed professional Go players had reached a hard limit on how well it is...
11 months ago
For many decades, it seemed professional Go players had reached a hard limit on how well it is possible to play. Then AI beat them.
The Marginalian
But We Had Music: Nick Cave Reads an Animated Poem about Black Holes, Eternity, and How to Bear Our...
How, knowing that even the universe is dying, do we bear our lives? Most readily, through...
9 months ago
How, knowing that even the universe is dying, do we bear our lives? Most readily, through friendship, through connection, through co-creating the world we want to live in for the brief time we have together on this lonely, perfect planet. The seventh annual Universe in Verse — a...
This Space
The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard
I began reading The Morning Star without any prior knowledge of the contents, just as I had begun...
over a year ago
I began reading The Morning Star without any prior knowledge of the contents, just as I had begun reading every other book of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s since receiving an ARC of the first volume of My Struggle long before he shone above us like the morning star in this novel. This...
The American Scholar
Bony Ramirez
Beautiful parasites
The post Bony Ramirez appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
Beautiful parasites
The post Bony Ramirez appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'One Realises How Absolutely Modern the Best of the Old Things Are'
My late
father-in-law left me The Works of
Rudyard Kipling in twenty-three volumes, the American...
10 months ago
My late
father-in-law left me The Works of
Rudyard Kipling in twenty-three volumes, the American edition published by
Scribner’s in 1899 when the author was thirty-four years old. As a writer, Kipling
was a wonder of nature, as prodigious as Shakespeare and Dickens. To put...
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Knows to Get a Dollar'
The word tummler I learned from A.J. Liebling. It’s
the title of a story he collected in his first...
10 months ago
The word tummler I learned from A.J. Liebling. It’s
the title of a story he collected in his first book, Back Where I Came From (1938). “Tummler” was published in the
February 26, 1938 issue of The New Yorker
and begins:
“To the boys
of the I.&Y., Hymie Katz is a hero. He is a...
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 Marginalian
Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” Brought to Life in a Spanish Flashmob of 100 Musicians
A touchingly human reminder of our capacity for ecstasy, transcendence, and collective felicity.
a year ago
A touchingly human reminder of our capacity for ecstasy, transcendence, and collective felicity.
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Friends They May Become To-morrow'
“New books
can have few associations. They may reach us on the best deckle-edged Whatman
paper, in...
a month ago
“New books
can have few associations. They may reach us on the best deckle-edged Whatman
paper, in the newest types of famous presses, with backs of embossed vellum,
with tasteful tasselled strings,--and yet be no more to us than the constrained
and uneasy acquaintances of...
Astral Codex Ten
Indulge Your Internet Addiction By Reading About Internet Addiction
...
4 weeks ago
The Marginalian
17 Life-Learnings from 17 Years of The Marginalian
The Marginalian was born on October 23, 2006, under an outgrown name, to an outgrown self that feels...
a year ago
The Marginalian was born on October 23, 2006, under an outgrown name, to an outgrown self that feels to me now almost like a different species of consciousness. (It can only be so — if we don’t continually outgrow ourselves, if we don’t wince a little at our former ideas, ideals,...
The Marginalian
The Science of Tears and the Art of Crying: An Illustrated Manifesto for Reclaiming Our Deepest...
“All the poems of our lives are not yet made. We hear them crying to us,” Muriel Rukeyser writes in...
2 months ago
“All the poems of our lives are not yet made. We hear them crying to us,” Muriel Rukeyser writes in her timeless ode to the power of poetry. “Cry, heart, but never break,” entreats one of my favorite children’s books — which, at their best, are always philosophies for living. It...
Josh Thompson
Persistence
Persistence. It’s worth far more than any finite sum of money. Actually, it’s worth more than an...
over a year ago
Persistence. It’s worth far more than any finite sum of money. Actually, it’s worth more than an unlimited amount of money, because an unlimited amount of money would complicate my life (and probably yours) far more than we can possibly imagine.
Persistence. I keep trying to...
The Marginalian
Milan Kundera on Animal Rights and What True Human Goodness Really Means
"True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient...
a year ago
"True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind's true mortal test, its fundamental test... consists of its attitude toward those who are at its mercy: animals."
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Kind of Masochism Afoot in Modern Aesthetics'
“Is there a
kind of masochism afoot in modern aesthetics whereby the leaden and the dull
acquire...
5 months ago
“Is there a
kind of masochism afoot in modern aesthetics whereby the leaden and the dull
acquire significance simply because the beaten spirit would seem to claim more
seriousness than a more robust struggle with the exigencies of things?”
This
elegantly crafted question, at...
Anecdotal Evidence
'If You Want Less Trouble, Plow the Sky'
I had a
suburban kid’s notion of life on a farm -- hearty yeomen and Jeffersonian
gentleman-farmers...
a year ago
I had a
suburban kid’s notion of life on a farm -- hearty yeomen and Jeffersonian
gentleman-farmers tilling the soil and bringing in the sheaves. Working for
rural newspapers in the Midwest and upstate New York educated me to the
realities of mortgages, tractor accidents,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'O Deliquescence of Our Quartz-like Loves!'
A chemical
engineer describing his recent research to me used a lovely word: deliquescent. The word...
5 months ago
A chemical
engineer describing his recent research to me used a lovely word: deliquescent. The word entered English
in the eighteenth century and its original context was strictly scientific: deliquescence
occurs when a substance absorbs moisture from the air and becomes a...
Josh Thompson
Recommended Reading
I’ve read many books over the years. Thousands. Here’s a few that I find myself...
7 months ago
I’ve read many books over the years. Thousands. Here’s a few that I find myself referencing/recommending.Periodically, I refresh this list. It’s changed over the years years.
the list you are about to read is heavily reworked, based off this older list:...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Bright, Cheerful, Salubrious Hell'
Max
Beerbohm’s first radio broadcast, delivered on December 29, 1935, is titled
“London Revisited.”...
a year ago
Max
Beerbohm’s first radio broadcast, delivered on December 29, 1935, is titled
“London Revisited.” He celebrates the city of his birth (in 1872) and youth –
the Edwardian era – and implicitly critiques the London of the interbellum
years:
“London has been
cosmopolitanised,...
Wuthering...
Metamorphoses, cantos 7 through 10 - more Heroides, more gore, more of everything - What meen my...
Metamorphoses is fluid, quick, and ever-changing. Let’s look at cantos VII through X, which...
10 months ago
Metamorphoses is fluid, quick, and ever-changing. Let’s look at cantos VII through X, which have
their share of famous stories, stories famous, or as famous as they are,
because of Metamorphoses. Venus
and Adonis, Baucis and Philemon, Orpheus and Eurydice, Pygmalion. Icarus –...
Josh Thompson
Array divergence in Ruby
Lets say you have a list of valid items, and you want to run another array against it, and pull out...
over a year ago
Lets say you have a list of valid items, and you want to run another array against it, and pull out the items that don’t match.
You don’t want to iterate through all of the items in one array, calling other_array.include?(item). (That’s computationally expensive)
valid_people =...
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