The American Scholar
Changing the Lens
Exploding the Canon, Episode 5 (Finale)
The post Changing the Lens appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
Exploding the Canon, Episode 5 (Finale)
The post Changing the Lens appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
My cancer - "It can’t be true! It can’t, but it is."
Liver cancer. That
was a surprise. I knew something was
wrong, but I was not expecting that.
Since...
a year ago
Liver cancer. That
was a surprise. I knew something was
wrong, but I was not expecting that.
Since the diagnosis last summer, since it was known for a
fact that I had something serious, things have moved fast. It has been like boarding a train. Once in motion there is no way...
Ben Borgers
Are My Technical Posts Worth It?
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Moment Before the Germans Will Arrive'
A Jewish
friend writes: “The distraction of the war and its repercussions around the
world is making...
a year ago
A Jewish
friend writes: “The distraction of the war and its repercussions around the
world is making concentration on other things difficult. . . . I wish I could tune the news out. But
the stakes for the future of Israel and of Jewish life generally are too great
for me to be...
This Space
Literature likes to hide
Last December I was fortunate enough to borrow a copy of The Unmediated Vision, Geoffrey Hartman's...
a year ago
Last December I was fortunate enough to borrow a copy of The Unmediated Vision, Geoffrey Hartman's first book, published in 1954. It is difficult to find a copy now but you can download a digital version of the book via the link. The opening chapter is a 50-page study of "Tintern...
The Marginalian
Blue Glass
Not long after writing about the bowerbird’s enchantment in blue, I walked out of my house and...
11 months ago
Not long after writing about the bowerbird’s enchantment in blue, I walked out of my house and gasped at the sight of what looked like two extraordinary jewels sparkling on a bed of yellow leaves, right there on the sidewalk — chunks of cobalt glass, much larger than what a...
Ben Borgers
Giving Out Chick-fil-A on a Schedule App
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'What American Beauty Should Be'
An old
friend called and reminded me of the September almost forty years ago when we
hiked along...
3 months ago
An old
friend called and reminded me of the September almost forty years ago when we
hiked along Otter Creek in southern Vermont near Dorset. Often we hiked in Otter Creek, which is filled with granite
boulders. It was less hiking than climbing horizontally. Between the stones...
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."
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Anticipating Since Morning a Successful Hunt'
The neighbors
had several tall ash trees growing in their backyard behind the garage and the
trunks...
9 months ago
The neighbors
had several tall ash trees growing in their backyard behind the garage and the
trunks were a favorite perch for Polyphemus and especially cecropia moths. These
are large insects, beautifully colored, with “eyes” on their wings. To budding lepidopterists
they were...
Astral Codex Ten
How Did You Do On The AI Art Turing Test?
...
a month ago
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...
a month 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
Taking the Plunge with Colemak
This entire post is written in
Colemak.
I am aiming to write at least 100 words, and this is...
over a year ago
This entire post is written in
Colemak.
I am aiming to write at least 100 words, and this is certainly harder than copying someone else’s words.
I have completed a few hours of dedicated practice, and it is quite possible that I am jumping the gun, and will quickly revert to...
Ben Borgers
Why Do We Still Use Snapchat?
over a year ago
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...
7 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
'For Whom They Were Framed in Words'
Louis
MacNeice is startlingly prescient in “To Posterity,” originally published in Visitations...
a year ago
Louis
MacNeice is startlingly prescient in “To Posterity,” originally published in Visitations (1957):
“When books
have all seized up like the books in graveyards
And reading
and even speaking have been replaced
By other,
less difficult, media, we wonder if you
Will find...
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...
4 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...
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 Elysian
One year of my work, printed
The Elysian Volume II is here.
2 months ago
The Elysian Volume II is here.
This Space
39 Books: 1992
Poetry is a notable absence in my book lists. I assumed at this time that because novels excited my...
7 months ago
Poetry is a notable absence in my book lists. I assumed at this time that because novels excited my attention, poetry should do too. Under this assumption I bought and read Wallace Stevens' Collected Poems in this chunky Faber edition, adding an ugly plastic cover.*
Many of...
Josh Thompson
Recommended books from 2017
I read many books in 2017. I’m listing them out here, along with recommendations. Here’s the...
over a year ago
I read many books in 2017. I’m listing them out here, along with recommendations. Here’s the recommendation “key”:
👍 = I recommend this book. This is intentionally fuzzy.
😔 = This book influenced my mental model of the world/reality/myself
🏢 = Book topic is architecture and/or...
Steven Scrawls
Stone Hands Reaching
Stone Hands Reaching
I’m told the statue is right in front of me, so I reach out and find
myself...
6 months ago
Stone Hands Reaching
I’m told the statue is right in front of me, so I reach out and find
myself touching a stone forearm. It’s cold, of course, and it’s coarser
than skin, but tracing along the arms is enough to bring back memories
of being comforted, of being held, when I was a...
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Each Sweaty Midnight I’m a Lifer'
Think of
this as an unexpected coda to Monday’s post, “A Recon Patrol Is a Small Unit,”
in which I...
4 months ago
Think of
this as an unexpected coda to Monday’s post, “A Recon Patrol Is a Small Unit,”
in which I asked readers to report anything they knew about the war
correspondent Albert W. Vinson. He was author of a dispatch recounting a 1968 reconnaissance
patrol in Vietnam led by the...
Ben Borgers
Building an e-ink picture frame that displays an iCloud photo album
11 months ago
The Marginalian
Time and the Soul: Philosopher Jacob Needleman on Our Search for Meaning
"The real significance of our problem with time... is a crisis of meaning... The root of our modern...
10 months ago
"The real significance of our problem with time... is a crisis of meaning... The root of our modern problem with time is neither technological, sociological, economic nor psychological. It is metaphysical. It is a question of the meaning of human life itself."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Speak Knowledge Meagerly and Piteously'
“Montaigne
is heavy going, it has to be said.”
For once the
commonsensical Jules Renard is wrong....
2 months ago
“Montaigne
is heavy going, it has to be said.”
For once the
commonsensical Jules Renard is wrong. There’s no context for the remark in his
journal (October 1, 1898), so I take his words as given. Montaigne’s prose, at
least in translation, seems clear and readily understood. The...
This Space
39 Books: 1986
In my second year of reading, I read four novels by DM Thomas, beginning with his most famous, The...
8 months ago
In my second year of reading, I read four novels by DM Thomas, beginning with his most famous, The White Hotel, in the edition below with its very 1980s cover design. I look at the single-word titles of the others and can remember absolutely nothing about them.
Both the title...
The Marginalian
Poetic Ecology and the Biology of Wonder
"The real disconnect is not between our human nature and all the other beings; it is between our...
a year ago
"The real disconnect is not between our human nature and all the other beings; it is between our image of our nature and our real nature."
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Kind of Representative Figure of His Era'
We gave our sons
Hebrew names: Joshua, Michael, David. They roughly translate as “God is...
a year ago
We gave our sons
Hebrew names: Joshua, Michael, David. They roughly translate as “God is deliverance,”
“gift of God” and “beloved,” respectively. We are not Jewish and not linguists
but we like plain names rooted in tradition, names with an identifiable history
traceable, in this...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Am Thinking This May Be My Last Summer'
I never
encountered the name Keith Douglas in school. We knew some of the English poets
of the first...
6 months ago
I never
encountered the name Keith Douglas in school. We knew some of the English poets
of the first war – Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon – but the
second seemed a blank. On my own, I learned of the Americans – Karl Shapiro,
Anthony Hecht, Howard Nemerov. Only...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He’s a Person of Joy, a Fanatic'
Unlike my
sons, I can’t listen to music while working – that is, writing. When the music
is good,...
a year ago
Unlike my
sons, I can’t listen to music while working – that is, writing. When the music
is good, that’s what I’m doing, listening. Otherwise, I don’t need a soundtrack
for my life. I would find that annoyingly attention-splitting. What I do
instead is periodically take a break...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The World's an End'
In recent
years John Dryden has become one of my reliable poets. He impresses me as a
sane adult,...
4 months ago
In recent
years John Dryden has become one of my reliable poets. He impresses me as a
sane adult, with equal emphasis on both of those words. No dabbling in drugs
and madness. I brought a volume of his poems with me to Cleveland where I’m
visiting my brother in hospice. No...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Buy Something Before You Get Socked in the Eye'
The indispensable
Brad Bigelow of The Neglected Books Page has introduced me to a poet I had
never...
a year ago
The indispensable
Brad Bigelow of The Neglected Books Page has introduced me to a poet I had
never known before, Margaret Fishback (1900-85). Like L.E. Sissman she worked
in advertising and published in The New
Yorker. Unlike Sissman, she wrote light verse almost exclusively and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Result of Education Carried on By Curiosity'
“His
curiosity was so pure it seemed almost childlike.”
Vladimir
Nabokov is describing his friend...
8 months ago
“His
curiosity was so pure it seemed almost childlike.”
Vladimir
Nabokov is describing his friend in exile, Iosif Hessen (1866-1943), and makes
him sound like an extraordinary fellow. He continues in the obituary he wrote
for his friend:
“He was
living proof of the fact that a...
Ben Borgers
How I got scammed on Facebook Marketplace
a year ago
The Marginalian
Sundogs and the Sacred Geometry of Wonder: The Science of the Atmospheric Phenomenon That Inspired...
Notes on the eternal dialogue between art and science in our yearning to know reality.
a year ago
Notes on the eternal dialogue between art and science in our yearning to know reality.
Josh Thompson
Daily Exercise - Russian Kettlebells
Exercise. It makes most people either cringe or salivate.
Those of you who love exercising for the...
over a year ago
Exercise. It makes most people either cringe or salivate.
Those of you who love exercising for the sake of exercising - you can stop reading now. This information is probably not relevant to you.
Those of you who don’t like to exercise, but know you really should exercise...
The American Scholar
Bards Behind Bars
Reading Sartre aloud inside a maximum-security prison
The post Bards Behind Bars appeared first on...
4 months ago
Reading Sartre aloud inside a maximum-security prison
The post Bards Behind Bars appeared first on The American Scholar.
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."
The Elysian
The future according to artists
The Parisianer 2050's project to imagine the future in art.
8 months ago
The Parisianer 2050's project to imagine the future in art.
Ben Borgers
I Misjudged My Chinese Professor
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Signs His Name in Sparks'
By trade my
father was an ironworker for the City of Cleveland’s Municipal Light, always
called...
5 months ago
By trade my
father was an ironworker for the City of Cleveland’s Municipal Light, always
called “Muny Light." At home he was a welder, specializing in wrought-iron
railings. His aesthetic sense could be summarized in a single word: big. Or heavy. Everything he built was...
Josh Thompson
Back in the saddle (of writing)
Background
It’s been a hell of a year. I’ve got about 10,000 things I’ve wanted to write about, and...
over a year ago
Background
It’s been a hell of a year. I’ve got about 10,000 things I’ve wanted to write about, and have not gotten around to any of them. Here’s my various top-level reasons for not writing:
what I want to write about feels too complicated to express easily/coherently
I feel...
Josh Thompson
Book Notes: 'The Case Against Sugar' by Gary Taube
In the last few weeks, I read The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes.
I found it to be compelling...
over a year ago
In the last few weeks, I read The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes.
I found it to be compelling (more on that in a moment) and I want to be impacted by them. I want the daily decisions that I make to be subtly influenced by this author and these books.
Related but in a different...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Nothingness Is Our Need'
One of R.L.
Barth’s sisters-in-law found a tote bag containing poems and drafts in a
cupboard, most...
6 months ago
One of R.L.
Barth’s sisters-in-law found a tote bag containing poems and drafts in a
cupboard, most dating back to his time at Stanford in the late
nineteen-seventies. He found epigrams (his trademark form as a poet) and some Martial
translations. The bag also held “one fugitive...
The Marginalian
Shame and the Secret Chambers of the Self: Pioneering Sociologist and Philosopher Helen Merrell Lynd...
"Experiences of shame throw a flooding light on what and who we are and what the world we live in...
8 months ago
"Experiences of shame throw a flooding light on what and who we are and what the world we live in is."
Josh Thompson
Robert Moses - The Most Important Person You've Never Heard Of
this was originally posted a few years ago, republishing as a blog post as I organize an...
7 months ago
this was originally posted a few years ago, republishing as a blog post as I organize an increasingly large number of links and resources here.
Here’s a big dumping ground for some resources on robert moses I’ve got floating around.
Obviously, this has grown to an unwieldy sizy...
Josh Thompson
Benchmarking a page protected by a login with Apache Benchmark
I’ve been slowly working through The Complete Guide to Rails Performance. I’m taking the ideas and...
over a year ago
I’ve been slowly working through The Complete Guide to Rails Performance. I’m taking the ideas and concepts from Nate’s book and working on applying the lessons to the app I work on in my day job.
I had a chance to attend Nate’s workshop in Denver a few days ago, as well; while...
The Marginalian
Honing Life on the Edges of the Possible: Geologist Turned Psychoanalyst Ruth Allen on Boundaries...
"At almost every conceivable level of our imagining, it is impossible to create a change without a...
4 months ago
"At almost every conceivable level of our imagining, it is impossible to create a change without a discontinuity, without a moment of not knowing who we are, or what we are going to become. Rupture precedes revolution."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not Movement But Glaciation'
There’s an
art to reviewing a book one doesn’t love but doesn’t hate, especially if the
reviewer...
a year ago
There’s an
art to reviewing a book one doesn’t love but doesn’t hate, especially if the
reviewer prizes the author’s earlier work. How to juggle critical rigor, honesty and
tact? Turner Cassity, writing about Edwin Arlington Robinson’s Amaranth (1934), does it with confident...
Josh Thompson
Context Setting for certain patterns & classes of relationship difficulties
I’ve been “catching up” a lot in my life lately. Some of that catching up involves bringing up to...
over a year ago
I’ve been “catching up” a lot in my life lately. Some of that catching up involves bringing up to speed various people I’ve not spoken too (or spoken too much, or openly, or recently, or ever, or some combination thereof).
I am strongly biased towards written/editable/consistent...
sbensu
Math intuitions on variance
This is a supplement to High Variance Management, where I build some intuition on the different...
a year ago
This is a supplement to High Variance Management, where I build some intuition on the different probability distributions involved.
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...
The American Scholar
Overconsumed
Adam Minter on what happens to all the stuff we downsize, declutter, and discard
The post...
3 weeks ago
Adam Minter on what happens to all the stuff we downsize, declutter, and discard
The post Overconsumed appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Energy in Things Shone Through Their Shapes'
Some
fugitive thinkers among us long for order in a manner almost nostalgic:
“I envied
those past...
a month ago
Some
fugitive thinkers among us long for order in a manner almost nostalgic:
“I envied
those past ages of the world
When, as I
thought, the energy in things
Shone
through their shapes, when sun and moon no less
Than tree or
stone or star or human face
Were seen
but as fantastic...
Josh Thompson
Falling into Place
I recently started a job with
Litmus.
A key component of this job search for me was that it be 100%...
over a year ago
I recently started a job with
Litmus.
A key component of this job search for me was that it be 100% remote.
At my last job, I worked remote regularly, at least one day a week, but the rest of the week, I was in the office.
Remote work is becoming established around the world,...
Josh Thompson
Pry Tips and Tricks
the following is cross-posted from development.wombatsecurity.com. I wrote about some handy extra...
over a year ago
the following is cross-posted from development.wombatsecurity.com. I wrote about some handy extra features I’ve found using Pry much of my day.
I joined the Wombat team a few months ago, and have been working on the threatsim product. We had a bit of a bug backlog, and myself and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Where Its Masters’ Love Is'
The late
D.G. Myers and I once talked about the tendency to pigeonhole writers according
to some...
6 months ago
The late
D.G. Myers and I once talked about the tendency to pigeonhole writers according
to some aspect of their subject matter. Melville is your
go-to cetology guy and Edith Wharton took care of sleds. Or, as Nabokov said of
Hemingway’s books: “something about bells, balls and...
The Marginalian
How the Octopus Came to Earth: Stunning 19th-Century French Chromolithographs of Cephalopods
The art-science that captured the wonder of some of "the most brilliant productions of Nature."
a year ago
The art-science that captured the wonder of some of "the most brilliant productions of Nature."
The Marginalian
Favorite Children’s Books of 2023
Tender and poetic reckonings with friendship, fear, love, solitude, black holes, deep time, and the...
a year ago
Tender and poetic reckonings with friendship, fear, love, solitude, black holes, deep time, and the interconnectedness of life.
The American Scholar
“Peter Quince at the Clavier” by Wallace Stevens
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Peter Quince at the Clavier” by Wallace Stevens appeared...
5 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Peter Quince at the Clavier” by Wallace Stevens appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Denver Botanic Gardens - What, How, Why
I recently got access to a delightful amenity, based on where I live. I’ve been sharing it with...
6 months ago
I recently got access to a delightful amenity, based on where I live. I’ve been sharing it with others as quickly as possible, because they too have access to it.
From here on out, when I reference “botanic gardens” or “the gardens”, I’m referencing the Denver Botanic Gardens,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'So Many Delicate Aphorisms of Human Nature'
“We should hesitate
to name any writings which would afford so large and so various a selection of...
3 months ago
“We should hesitate
to name any writings which would afford so large and so various a selection of detached
passages complete in themselves. . . . We should be at a loss to name the
writer of English prose who is his superior, or, setting Shakespeare aside, the
writer of English...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Winter Came in August Killing Fruit and Seed'
A sad and
sorely final yet incomplete tagline found after a poem in the Winter 1986 issue of The...
a month ago
A sad and
sorely final yet incomplete tagline found after a poem in the Winter 1986 issue of The American Scholar:
“Edward Case’s
work has appeared in various journals, including the New Criterion, the Wall
Street Journal, and Modern Age.
This poem was taken from a collection of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Comfort, Solace, Inspiration'
“A few
books, however,” writes Michael Dirda, “become lifelong companions, works we
regularly turn...
a year ago
“A few
books, however,” writes Michael Dirda, “become lifelong companions, works we
regularly turn to for comfort, solace, inspiration.” The reviewer identifies a slightly
different category, “the books we find ourselves crazy about and hope to
revisit someday,” as distinguished,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Will Be No One Left Who Knew Their Cost'
For the boys
in the neighborhood, our primary occupation when chores were finished and the
grownups...
8 months ago
For the boys
in the neighborhood, our primary occupation when chores were finished and the
grownups were leaving us alone was “playing Army.” All of us had toy guns or at
least sticks. Given our ages, when dividing into good guys and bad guys, the
latter were always Germans and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Everyone He Knew Something About'
A reader who
enjoys the novels of Sinclair Lewis tells me she is put off by the length and
dullness...
2 months ago
A reader who
enjoys the novels of Sinclair Lewis tells me she is put off by the length and
dullness of Mark Schorer’s 1961 biography of the Nobel laureate. I haven’t read
Lewis since high school and have never read Schorer’s 867-page behemoth but I
sympathize. I remember reading...
The American Scholar
Bony Ramirez
Beautiful parasites
The post Bony Ramirez appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
Beautiful parasites
The post Bony Ramirez appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
How to Own Your Human-Heartedness: Alan Watts on the Confucian Concept of Jen and the Dangers of...
"Trust in human nature is acceptance of the good-and-bad of it, and it is hard to trust those who do...
a year ago
"Trust in human nature is acceptance of the good-and-bad of it, and it is hard to trust those who do not admit their own weakness."
Anecdotal Evidence
'At the Five and Ten Cent Store'
Irving
Berlin was Jewish and gave us the soundtrack for our American holidays,...
3 weeks ago
Irving
Berlin was Jewish and gave us the soundtrack for our American holidays, including
Thanksgiving Day: “My needs are small, I buy ’em all / At the five and ten cent
store. / Oh, I've got plenty to be thankful for.” Bing Crosby, a serious Roman
Catholic, introduced “I’ve Got...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Hard to Find a Name in Human Speech'
After a stop
in Hong Kong during his four-thousand-mile journey back to Moscow from Sakhalin
Island,...
a year ago
After a stop
in Hong Kong during his four-thousand-mile journey back to Moscow from Sakhalin
Island, Chekhov’s ship encountered rough weather and high seas. Before reaching
Singapore, two men had died and their bodies were thrown overboard:
“When you
see a dead man wrapped in...
Anecdotal Evidence
"Cheap and Commercial'
“He invented
cheap and commercial editions of the classics.”
Such an influential accomplishment,...
9 months ago
“He invented
cheap and commercial editions of the classics.”
Such an influential accomplishment, and I had never heard of the man. Indirectly,
generations after his time, Henry G. Bohn (1796-1884) served as one of my
tutors. His celebrator above is Theodore Dalrymple writing in...
The Marginalian
Louise Erdrich on the Deepest Meaning of Resistance
"Resist loss of the miraculous by lowering your standards for what constitutes a miracle. It is all...
a month ago
"Resist loss of the miraculous by lowering your standards for what constitutes a miracle. It is all a fucking miracle."
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Carry on With the Business of the Day'
Beware of “nature
poetry.” It tends to be not about nature but the poet and his self-regarding...
4 months ago
Beware of “nature
poetry.” It tends to be not about nature but the poet and his self-regarding epiphanies.
Perhaps our finest nature poet is Yvor Winters. A basic understanding of
biology is useful in discouraging pantheism and other forms of fashionable nature
mysticism.
We...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Humour Is Reason Itself'
The saddest
man I know wishes more than anything to be thought of as a comedian, a
jokester, the...
4 days ago
The saddest
man I know wishes more than anything to be thought of as a comedian, a
jokester, the reliably funny guy at the party. The sadness derives from his
inability to say or do anything even modestly amusing. People will laugh aloud at
something he says out of pity and an...
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 Marginalian
Delight Between Science and Magic: Euler’s Disk and the Sound of the Singularity
One afternoon in the late 1980s, sitting in the company cafeteria, aerospace engineer Joseph Bendik...
3 weeks ago
One afternoon in the late 1980s, sitting in the company cafeteria, aerospace engineer Joseph Bendik found himself so bored that he took a coin out of his pocket and began spinning it atop the table. In a testament to the eternal paradox of boredom and wonder as two sides of the...
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,...
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:...
Ben Borgers
Understanding CalcYouLater Subconsciously
over a year ago
The American Scholar
“The Gaffe” by C. K. Williams
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Gaffe” by C. K. Williams appeared first on The American...
2 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Gaffe” by C. K. Williams appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Notes on, and quotes from: The Politics of Jesus (Yoder, 1972, 1994)
As I’ve done many times before, compiling some notes about some long quotes from some books.
In the...
over a year ago
As I’ve done many times before, compiling some notes about some long quotes from some books.
In the modern world, we’re loath to read long, complicated passeges of text. I hope to get some of you to eventually order your own copy of The Politics of Jesus. On my website you can...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Stimulated to Vigour and Activity'
When John
Ruskin (b. 1819) traveled as a boy, his father packed in his luggage four small
volumes of...
8 months ago
When John
Ruskin (b. 1819) traveled as a boy, his father packed in his luggage four small
volumes of Dr. Johnson’s Rambler and Idler essays. In his peculiar memoir Praeterita (1885), Ruskin tells us “had
it not been for constant reading of the Bible, I might probably have...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Let One Book Lead Him to Another'
I have not
run the analytics but I believe the Joseph Epstein essay with the longest shelf
life and...
6 months ago
I have not
run the analytics but I believe the Joseph Epstein essay with the longest shelf
life and largest number of citations is “Joseph Epstein’s Lifetime Reading Plan,” published in The American Scholar in
1983 and collected four years later in Once More Around
the Block. A...
Blog -...
Book Review - The Surrender Experiment
With the book The Surrender Experiment, author Michael (Mickey) Singer,
gives us a gift. In this...
over a year ago
With the book The Surrender Experiment, author Michael (Mickey) Singer,
gives us a gift. In this eloquently penned biography of his “journey into
life’s perfection”, he demonstrates the beauty that life can provide for us
when we are not solely guided by our logical,...
The Elysian
Yes, Taylor Swift is just as genius as Mary Shelley
The video from our live event.
2 months ago
The video from our live event.
Wuthering...
Books I read in September 2024 - Boring books had their origin in boring readers
My reading took an interesting Russian turn that I will
write about, soon, tomorrow, there, I said...
2 months ago
My reading took an interesting Russian turn that I will
write about, soon, tomorrow, there, I said it out loud so maybe I will really
do it.
November is Norwegian month at Dolce Bellezza. I will be joining her by reading at least the
first novel, The Other Name (2019), of Jon...
The Marginalian
The Proper Object of Love: Iris Murdoch on the Angst of Not Knowing Ourselves and Each Other
One of the hardest things to learn in life is that the heart is a clock too fast not to break. We...
4 months ago
One of the hardest things to learn in life is that the heart is a clock too fast not to break. We lurch into loving, only to discover again and again that it takes a long time to know people, to understand people — and “understanding is love’s other name.” Even without...
Josh Thompson
Resources for People with Jobs
RESOURCES FOR PEOPLE WITH JOBS
You spend most of your waking hours at work. So, spend a few of those...
over a year ago
RESOURCES FOR PEOPLE WITH JOBS
You spend most of your waking hours at work. So, spend a few of those waking hours when you’re
not at work thinking about how to improve the hours that you
are working. Often, improving your work means you can improve your work conditions and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'They’ve No Clue of My Reality'
“We are all
well and in good spirits, have enough to eat. I have not yet eaten the cake you
sent me....
10 months ago
“We are all
well and in good spirits, have enough to eat. I have not yet eaten the cake you
sent me. I do not have to do guard duty as I am an officer, think of sergeant
Peck, sounds pretty big don’t it, eh?”
That’s
Marcus Peck, a soldier from Sand Lake, N.Y., who answered...
The Marginalian
The Power of a Thin Skin
"To be thin-skinned is to feel keenly, to perceive things that might go unseen, unnoticed, that...
a year ago
"To be thin-skinned is to feel keenly, to perceive things that might go unseen, unnoticed, that others might prefer not to notice."
The Elysian
One essay could change the future
Please support a better media ecosystem.
2 months ago
Please support a better media ecosystem.
The Marginalian
The Wound Is the Gift: David Whyte on the Relationship Between Anxiety and Intimacy
"Intimacy is presence magnified by our vulnerability, magnified by increasing proximity to the fear...
2 weeks ago
"Intimacy is presence magnified by our vulnerability, magnified by increasing proximity to the fear that underlies that vulnerability."
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.
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Other Thermopylae, the Alamo'
A reader asks for impressions of Texas, a place
she, a lifelong Northerner, has never visited....
6 months ago
A reader asks for impressions of Texas, a place
she, a lifelong Northerner, has never visited. Twenty years ago last month I
saw Texas for the first time, and the first surprise, seen from the air, was
abundant greenery. I was expecting desert and tumbleweeds. Houston is...
Josh Thompson
Ruby Tutorial 001
I’m playing with
Michael Hartl’s
Learn Enough Ruby book.
I’ll throw basic things I learn along the...
over a year ago
I’m playing with
Michael Hartl’s
Learn Enough Ruby book.
I’ll throw basic things I learn along the way on here.
A good starting point is using your command line. I use
iTerm2 for my terminal instead of the default Terminal installation.
To get up and running in your terminal,...
Wuthering...
You drool from it. You are happy. - Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit
Finally, I have finished Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Voyage au bout
de la nuit (1932), known in English...
3 months ago
Finally, I have finished Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Voyage au bout
de la nuit (1932), known in English as Journey to the End of Night. That “end of night” is death. The existence of death makes everything
hateful and nullifies the value of anything else. I gotta say that the...
ben-mini
The Most Mind-Blowing Tech Moments of My Life
This is a fun one. Below is a brief list of the most mind-blowing tech moments in my 27 years of...
5 months ago
This is a fun one. Below is a brief list of the most mind-blowing tech moments in my 27 years of life. There’s nothing too heady here- just an exercise in what might have made me get so into tech.
1. WarioWare: Twisted (2006)
At my community center, waiting for my friend’s karate...
The American Scholar
Dottie Lo Bue
House and home
The post Dottie Lo Bue appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
House and home
The post Dottie Lo Bue appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Monsoons, Boredom, Stench'
R.L. Barth
takes as the epigraph to his new chapbook, Ghost
Story (Scienter Press, Louisville, Ky.,...
9 months ago
R.L. Barth
takes as the epigraph to his new chapbook, Ghost
Story (Scienter Press, Louisville, Ky., 2024), a passage from Dr. Johnson’s Idler essay for September 2, 1758:
“I suppose
every man is shocked when he hears how frequently soldiers are wishing for war.
The wish is not...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Oaks That Were Acorns That Were Oaks'
We hear acorns
hitting the roof of the house and the cars. It makes the cats nervous and sounds
like...
a year ago
We hear acorns
hitting the roof of the house and the cars. It makes the cats nervous and sounds
like slow hail. The crop this year is prodigious. The
patio is covered with them, more than the squirrels can keep up with. Stomping on them make a satisfying crack/pop sound. I’ve...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Won’t You Turn Your Radio Down'
Most of the
surfaces in the radio station, not counting the DJs and turntables, are plastered
with...
a year ago
Most of the
surfaces in the radio station, not counting the DJs and turntables, are plastered
with yellow-on-black KTRU bumper stickers. In some cases, students have cut up
the stickers and rearranged the letters into the same timeless obscenities we
scrawled on the walls of the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'They Are Wary of My Plain-speaking'
A reader alerts
me to a parlor game proposed by The
Guardian in 2017: Which books do I wish my...
10 months ago
A reader alerts
me to a parlor game proposed by The
Guardian in 2017: Which books do I wish my younger self had read? Julian
Barnes suggests volumes devoted to “the true nature of war, empire and race,”
which sounds a bit like retrospective virtue-signaling. William Boyd’s...
The Marginalian
The Sky and the Soul: 19th-Century Norwegian Artist Knud Baade’s Transcendent Cloudscapes
Nothing on Earth appears more divine yet attests more fully to the materiality of being than clouds...
a year ago
Nothing on Earth appears more divine yet attests more fully to the materiality of being than clouds — enchanting emblems of the water cycle that makes this rocky planet a living world, drifting across our shared dome as if exhaled by some lovesick god. That we should have such a...
Escaping Flatland
Reading challenging books with kids is fun and probably useful
I was looking through my diary from the summer of 2020 and found this entry about Maud, then three...
8 months ago
I was looking through my diary from the summer of 2020 and found this entry about Maud, then three years old, in late toddlerhood. 25th of July 2020. I was doing the dishes. Maud came in. “I have looked a little in books,” she said.
Steven Scrawls
I want to love fiction
I want to love fiction
I want to love fiction.
I want to love both reading and writing fiction. I...
8 months ago
I want to love fiction
I want to love fiction.
I want to love both reading and writing fiction. I want to obsess
over the craft of fiction, to pore over characterization and structure,
to create stories that radiate color and humanity and hope.
I want fiction to be a tool for...
ribbonfarm
Imagination vs. Creativity
I like to make a distinction between imagination and creativity that you may or may not agree with....
5 months ago
I like to make a distinction between imagination and creativity that you may or may not agree with. Imagination is the ability to see known possibilities as being reachable from a situation. Creativity is the ability to manufacture new possibilities out of a situation. The two...
Ben Borgers
“you have a lack of deadlines”
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Provided That He Gives Us What We Can Enjoy'
A reader is
enjoying Tristram Shandy and passing
along choice selections from Sterne’s novel. This...
a year ago
A reader is
enjoying Tristram Shandy and passing
along choice selections from Sterne’s novel. This she gleaned from Book V,
Chap. 32, spoken by Tristram’s father:
“—Here is
the glass for pedagogues, preceptors, tutors, governors, gerund-grinders, and
bear-leaders, to view...
ribbonfarm
History is More Like Science Fiction Than Fantasy
I’ve been slow-reading Bettany Hughes’ Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities for months now, ever since I...
8 months ago
I’ve been slow-reading Bettany Hughes’ Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities for months now, ever since I visited the city (on Kindle, so I didn’t realize when I started that it’s 600 pages plus another 250 odd notes). It’s dense and absorbing and I’ll probably do a reflections post...
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...
Ben Borgers
Prototyping an AI-powered note-taking app
a year ago
Josh Thompson
Type. Publish. Done.
Yesterday I read How the Hell do I Prioritize Work, Blog & Find Balance.
The author of the letter is...
over a year ago
Yesterday I read How the Hell do I Prioritize Work, Blog & Find Balance.
The author of the letter is a busy, accomplished guy and still manages to write regularly.
He said, in short:
I sit down, and I write. I’ve done it a lot, so I’m not bad at it. I don’t often proof read my...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Twitter of Inconsequent Vitality'
This week I
will interview a professor of chemical engineering who is retiring after
forty-four...
8 months ago
This week I
will interview a professor of chemical engineering who is retiring after
forty-four years on the faculty. He came to the university straight from
earning his Ph.D. He’s neither flashy nor hungry for publicity, and I was
surprised he agreed to speak with me. He has a...
The Marginalian
The Managed Heart: Emotional Labor and the Psychological Cost of Ambivalence
What are you unwilling to feel? This is one of the most brutal, most clarifying questions in life,...
a month ago
What are you unwilling to feel? This is one of the most brutal, most clarifying questions in life, answering which requires great courage and great vulnerability. Out of that unwillingness arises the greatest inner tension of the heart: that between what we wish we felt and what...
The Marginalian
Simone Weil on Love and Its Counterfeit
How to tell a plaything from a necessity.
a year ago
How to tell a plaything from a necessity.
The Marginalian
The Ant, the Grasshopper, and the Antidote to the Cult of More: A Lovely Vintage Illustrated Poem...
“Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily...
a year ago
“Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily Dickinson lamented in a love letter. In his splendid short poem about the secret of happiness, Kurt Vonnegut exposed the taproot of our modern suffering as the gnawing sense that what we...
Anecdotal Evidence
'They Fluttered Around Like Blue Snowflakes'
As a former
newspaper reporter I regularly read three hard-copy newspapers: The Leader, a...
11 months ago
As a former
newspaper reporter I regularly read three hard-copy newspapers: The Leader, a neighborhood weekly here
in Houston; the weekend edition of the Wall
Street Journal; and County Highway.
That’s down from thirty years ago when I read seven or eight papers every day
(like a...
The Marginalian
How to Say Goodbye: An Illustrated Field Guide to Accompanying a Loved One at the End of Life
"If you don't know what to say, start by saying that... That opens things up."
a year ago
"If you don't know what to say, start by saying that... That opens things up."
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Express It As Nearly As I Can'
Over the
weekend I remembered a blog I visited fairly often during my early ventures
into the...
3 weeks ago
Over the
weekend I remembered a blog I visited fairly often during my early ventures
into the blogosphere. This would be around 2006, the year I launched Anecdotal
Evidence. The proprietor and I exchanged a few emails. He was a reader though
his blog was not exclusively devoted...
The American Scholar
“The Testimony of J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Fiction” by Ai
The post “The Testimony of J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Fiction” by Ai appeared first on The American...
a month ago
The post “The Testimony of J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Fiction” by Ai appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
“Planetarium” by Adrienne Rich
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Planetarium” by Adrienne Rich appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Planetarium” by Adrienne Rich appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
October 2016 Review
October 2016 Review
This month’s review. In another few days I’ll post the goals for November.
I...
over a year ago
October 2016 Review
This month’s review. In another few days I’ll post the goals for November.
I had
three goals for October, as of about 12 days ago:
October goals:
Programming
I wanted to finish a certain Rails Tutorial, and move on to the next one. This project I made zero...
The Marginalian
What It’s Like to Be an Owl: The Strange Science of Seeing with Sound
“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals,” the great nature...
12 months ago
“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals,” the great nature writer Henry Beston wrote in his lovely century-old meditation on otherness and the web of life. “In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted...
Josh Thompson
How To Write A Letter of Recommendation for Yourself
I meet regularly with early-career software developers. A few recurring meetings, 1x/week, plus...
over a year ago
I meet regularly with early-career software developers. A few recurring meetings, 1x/week, plus ad-hoc calls as needed with others.
A question came up recently:
My three-month internship is close to wrapping up. The Co-founder/CEO/lead developer of the consulting company I’m at...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not At All Abashed Before the Fact'
“We do not
go to cowards for tender dealing; there is nothing so cruel as panic; the man
who has...
a year ago
“We do not
go to cowards for tender dealing; there is nothing so cruel as panic; the man
who has least fear for his own carcass, has most time to consider others.”
What a
remarkable sentence, one I would never have the guts to write. It’s not the
sentiment but the form that’s so...
Ben Borgers
It Does Have to Be Every Day
over a year ago
Wuthering...
The appeal of Septology as religious fiction - the urge, inexplicably, to pray - because it helps!...
Septology is a stream-of-consciousness novel
throughout, a mix of sentence fragments, unconventional...
a month ago
Septology is a stream-of-consciousness novel
throughout, a mix of sentence fragments, unconventional punctuation, and temporal
shifts, meaning the painter Asle is sometimes thinking about the present and
sometimes about the past.
These are all old moves, old techniques. I was a...
The American Scholar
All Talk
Ease of communication will not save us
The post All Talk appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
Ease of communication will not save us
The post All Talk appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Uneven, Irregular, and Multiform Movement'
“There are
readers—and I am one of them—whose reading is rather like a series...
2 months ago
“There are
readers—and I am one of them—whose reading is rather like a series of
intoxications.”
Driving while
reading is discouraged. Once, in Bellevue, Wash., while stopped at a red light,
I was intoxicated by the book propped against the wheel until a cop pulled up, rolled...
The American Scholar
“Snake” by D. H. Lawrence
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Snake” by D. H. Lawrence appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Snake” by D. H. Lawrence appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Testing Rake Tasks in Rails
I recently wrote a rake task to update some values we’ve got stored in the database. The rake task...
over a year ago
I recently wrote a rake task to update some values we’ve got stored in the database. The rake task itself isn’t important in this post, but testing it is.
We’ve got many untested rake tasks in the database, so when our senior dev suggested adding a test, I had to build ours from...
The American Scholar
My Cousin Manya
One survivor’s story
The post My Cousin Manya appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
One survivor’s story
The post My Cousin Manya appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
The Magic of the Common Room
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Cordyceps, the Carpenter Ant, and the Boundaries of the Self: The Strange Science of Zombie Fungi
"It is likely that fungi have been manipulating animal minds for much of the time that there have...
9 months ago
"It is likely that fungi have been manipulating animal minds for much of the time that there have been minds to manipulate."
Josh Thompson
How Can You Buy Happiness?
You can’t, but that won’t stop you and me from trying, at least a little.
We (Humans, americans, at...
over a year ago
You can’t, but that won’t stop you and me from trying, at least a little.
We (Humans, americans, at least “other people like me”) like to buy
things. But we should do more than just buy
things.
Experiences can have a much bigger impact on people’s happiness than things, and a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Bluster (New Style) Invokes the Public Good'
I write
about money more often than ever before at my day job. I’m not naïve and understand
that...
a year ago
I write
about money more often than ever before at my day job. I’m not naïve and understand
that research can be costly and professors don’t work for the love of it, but money
has become the barometer of worth. Small grants can be ignored regardless of
the intrinsic worth of the...
Ben Borgers
My Stress is an Inside Job
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Consolations of Chronodiversity: Geologist Turned Psychologist Ruth Allen on the 12 Kinds of...
“I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars,” Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska wrote in her...
3 months ago
“I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars,” Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska wrote in her lovely poem “Possibilities.” Our preferences, of course, hardly matter to time — we live here suspended between the time of insects and the time of stars, our transient lives...
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Is the Past That Cast the Stars'
I and the
first issue of Mad magazine arrived
in October 1952. A decade or so later I was a devoted...
a year ago
I and the
first issue of Mad magazine arrived
in October 1952. A decade or so later I was a devoted reader. That same month, Poetry, a journal I would start reading
a few years after Mad, published its fortieth anniversary issue. Included is the work of more than fifty poets,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'One of the Finest of Human Creatures'
Turnstile One (1948) is a slender anthology of poems,
stories, essays and reviews edited by V.S...
10 months ago
Turnstile One (1948) is a slender anthology of poems,
stories, essays and reviews edited by V.S Pritchett and drawn from The New Statesman and Nation. Founded in
1913 by the Webbs and others associated with the Fabian Society, the magazine’s
politics were left-wing and many of...
The Elysian
Maybe you need to have more fun
"Fun" as essential to human flourishing.
5 months ago
"Fun" as essential to human flourishing.
sbensu
How to avoid breaking APIs
The main trick is to design them with extension in mind so that you won't have to break them later.
a year ago
The main trick is to design them with extension in mind so that you won't have to break them later.
The Marginalian
The Pleasure of Being Left Alone
"An exquisite peace obtains: a drowsy, golden peace, flowing honey-sweet over my dwelling, soaking...
6 months ago
"An exquisite peace obtains: a drowsy, golden peace, flowing honey-sweet over my dwelling, soaking it, dripping like music from the walls... A peace for gods; a divine emptiness."
sbensu
Risk-takers decide faster
Unsurprising connection between risk and speed.
a month ago
Unsurprising connection between risk and speed.
Wuthering...
Heraclitus and Empedocles - Everything flows - eyes roamed alone
My rummage through the early Greek philosophers has been rewarding, but it is a strange exercise. ...
a year ago
My rummage through the early Greek philosophers has been rewarding, but it is a strange exercise. “Readers of this book will, I suspect, be frequently perplexed and sometimes annoyed” write Jonathan Barnes in Early Greek Philosophy, a collection with commentary of the most...
sbensu
Hiring from Big Tech
Some brief notes about the subject
8 months ago
Some brief notes about the subject
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Mouldering Boots of Other Days'
The triolet,
like its cousins the rondeau, rondel, and rondelet, is an intricate French
verse form,...
9 months ago
The triolet,
like its cousins the rondeau, rondel, and rondelet, is an intricate French
verse form, usually eight lines long and written in iambic tetrameter. The
first line is repeated as the fourth and seventh lines. Among English-language
poets, Robert Bridges and Thomas Hardy...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Colder Here Than Organized Charity'
Hugh Kenner’s
first extant letter to Guy Davenport is dated March 7, 1958. Its manner is at
once...
9 months ago
Hugh Kenner’s
first extant letter to Guy Davenport is dated March 7, 1958. Its manner is at
once business-like and chatty: “I hope subsequent activities haven’t yet
sufficed to obliterate our Boston dinner last fall from your memory.” The men had
first met in 1953 when each...
The Marginalian
The Great Blind Spot of Science and the Art of Asking the Complex Question the Only Answer to Which...
“Real isn’t how you are made… It’s a thing that happens to you,” says the Skin Horse — a stuffed toy...
a month ago
“Real isn’t how you are made… It’s a thing that happens to you,” says the Skin Horse — a stuffed toy brought to life by a child’s love — in The Velveteen Rabbit. Great children’s books are works of philosophy in disguise; this is a fundamental question: In a reality of matter,...
The American Scholar
Nights at the Opera
Long before he wrote his masterly novels, Stendhal was transformed by the power of music
The post...
4 months ago
Long before he wrote his masterly novels, Stendhal was transformed by the power of music
The post Nights at the Opera appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Ups and Downs
The post Ups and Downs appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 weeks ago
The post Ups and Downs appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Secret Life of Chocolate: Oliver Sacks on the Cultural and Natural History of Cacao
Without chocolate, life would be a mistake — not a paraphrasing of Nietzsche he would have easily...
10 months ago
Without chocolate, life would be a mistake — not a paraphrasing of Nietzsche he would have easily envisioned, for he was a toddler in Germany when a British chocolatier created the first modern version of what we now think of as chocolate: a paste of sugar, chocolate liquor, and...
This Space
The end of literature, part five
"Stupid" and "a marketing exercise" were the first two descriptions I saw of the New York Times' 100...
5 months ago
"Stupid" and "a marketing exercise" were the first two descriptions I saw of the New York Times' 100 Best Books of the 21st Century polled from hundreds of "literary luminaries" offering ten choices each, and while it is both of those things, "parochial" is the first word that...
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...
sbensu
The Perfectionists (book)
A great book that covers the ideas and people behind modern industry.
4 months ago
A great book that covers the ideas and people behind modern industry.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Will Your Birds Be Always Wingless Birds'
A
questionnaire sent to Louis MacNeice in 1934 – that “low dishonest decade” was
big on...
7 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 American Scholar
Imperfecta
Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the...
6 months ago
Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the emerging era of gene editing
The post Imperfecta appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Octavia Butler on Religion and the Spirituality of Symbiosis
"On many levels, we wind up being strengthened by what we join, or what joins us, as well as by what...
a year ago
"On many levels, we wind up being strengthened by what we join, or what joins us, as well as by what we combat."
ben-mini
Root Canals and Bill Gates
In Finding Nemo, there was a scene about a root canal surgery that absolutely terrified me:
This...
6 months ago
In Finding Nemo, there was a scene about a root canal surgery that absolutely terrified me:
This could just be me, but I spent a remarkable amount of my childhood worrying about root canals. Horror stories like these created a universal phobia that dentists suck and that’s...
Ben Borgers
On “Incrementally Correct Personal Websites”
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Master of Light But Stinging Irony'
I bought
Vikram Seth’s novel-in-verse The Golden
Gate when it was published in 1986. Around that...
5 months ago
I bought
Vikram Seth’s novel-in-verse The Golden
Gate when it was published in 1986. Around that time I was giving up the
practice of writing in books, which had always left me a little uncomfortable. Instead,
I switched to keeping notebooks. In The
Golden Gate I see that I...
Escaping Flatland
Talking to part of a friend
Finding an authentic connection based on who you are now, not who you were in the past
a year ago
Finding an authentic connection based on who you are now, not who you were in the past
Anecdotal Evidence
'Each Man Can Be Judged By His Favorite Books'
This I find
in The Lone Heretic: A Biography of Miguel
de Unamuno y Jugo (1963) by Margaret Thomas...
6 months ago
This I find
in The Lone Heretic: A Biography of Miguel
de Unamuno y Jugo (1963) by Margaret Thomas Rudd, who quotes her subject: “Each
man can be judged by his favorite books.” She adds of the great Spanish thinker
and novelist:
“Throughout
his long life Unamuno returned to...
The Marginalian
How to Bless Each Other: Poet and Philosopher John O’Donohue on the Light Within Us and Between Us
"The structures of our experience are the windows into the divine. When we are true to the call of...
a year ago
"The structures of our experience are the windows into the divine. When we are true to the call of experience, we are true to God."
Josh Thompson
The Power Broker, Chapter 30: Robert Moses and Mayor Vincent R. Impellitteri
Note from Josh: The following is an excerpt of chapter 34 of the Power Broker, called “Moses and the...
a year ago
Note from Josh: The following is an excerpt of chapter 34 of the Power Broker, called “Moses and the Mayors”. The chapter is about Moses’ relationship with all of the mayors of NYC that overlapped with Moses’ “rule” over NYC.
This excerpt covers just one of the mayors’ overlap...
The American Scholar
Anchoring Shards of Memory
We don’t often associate Charles Ives and Gustav Mahler, but both
The post Anchoring Shards of...
3 months ago
We don’t often associate Charles Ives and Gustav Mahler, but both
The post Anchoring Shards of Memory appeared first on The American Scholar.
Blog -...
Book Review - Shots from the Hip
In the fields of Taoism, herbalism, and Chinese culture, Daniel Reid is a
legendary author who has...
over a year ago
In the fields of Taoism, herbalism, and Chinese culture, Daniel Reid is a
legendary author who has written books that have changed the course of
lives. His most recent publication is a two-book memoir entitled Shots from
the Hip, a colourful account of his many exotic...
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Be in Some Respect Unique'
“[L]et us
not forget that ‘public’ denotes a collection not of identical units, but of
units...
10 months ago
“[L]et us
not forget that ‘public’ denotes a collection not of identical units, but of
units separable and (under close scrutiny) distinguishable one from another.”
I work with professors of statistics, among others, for whom data are the primal substance of the human world. You...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Poets in an Age of Prose'
Yvor Winters
published his final book, Forms of Discovery,
in October 1967, three months before his...
a year ago
Yvor Winters
published his final book, Forms of Discovery,
in October 1967, three months before his death from cancer at age sixty-seven on
January 25, 1968. Read his late correspondence in The Selected Letters of Yvor Winters (ed. R.L. Barth, 2000) for an
understanding of the...
The American Scholar
Adventures With Jean
Striking up a friendship with an older writer meant accepting the risk of getting hurt
The post...
3 months ago
Striking up a friendship with an older writer meant accepting the risk of getting hurt
The post Adventures With Jean appeared first on The American Scholar.
sbensu
On becoming a person (book)
It reframes therapy as a relationship instead of a treatment.
2 weeks ago
It reframes therapy as a relationship instead of a treatment.
Ben Borgers
Stories for College Applications
over a year ago
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...
Escaping Flatland
On feeling connected
generosity is potency
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Some Spirit That Didn’t Wobble'
“As a
youngster I came to the classics simply by following the clues of other
writers. Cooper,...
11 months ago
“As a
youngster I came to the classics simply by following the clues of other
writers. Cooper, Stevenson, Whitman, even Edgar Rice Burroughs seemed to lead,
allusion by allusion, back to a body of writing that was solider and wiser,
some spirit that didn’t wobble, wasn’t under...
The American Scholar
Insisting on the Positive
A popular historian’s philosophical musings
The post Insisting on the Positive appeared first on The...
3 months ago
A popular historian’s philosophical musings
The post Insisting on the Positive appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Poem Saves Time and Space'
Discovering
a good writer long after his death is a gift and a betrayal. Gratitude mingles
with...
7 months ago
Discovering
a good writer long after his death is a gift and a betrayal. Gratitude mingles
with regret and even guilt. Selfishly, we wish he had truly been our
contemporary and we had been smarter and watched him develop as a writer.
Instead, we compensate by scrambling after his...
Escaping Flatland
Becoming perceptive
This is the second part of an essay series that began with “Everything that turned out well in my...
3 months ago
This is the second part of an essay series that began with “Everything that turned out well in my life followed the same design process.” It can be read on its own.
The Marginalian
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."
Josh Thompson
The Slight Edge, and why you should read it
I read
The Slight Edge a few months ago.
Since then, it’s been the book I recommend most often to...
over a year ago
I read
The Slight Edge a few months ago.
Since then, it’s been the book I recommend most often to most people. (I don’t make book recommendations willy-nilly, but if something seems relevant to what the person I’m speaking to is experiencing/thinking about, I make a...
This Space
The last novel
"(We are, it seems to remind us, always saying goodbye to our children.)"
John Self's aside in his...
over a year ago
"(We are, it seems to remind us, always saying goodbye to our children.)"
John Self's aside in his review of JM Coetzee's The Death of Jesus captures the pervasive anxiety experienced while reading this novel better than even the most detailed plot summary, which is anyway likely...
Josh Thompson
Mocks & Stubs & Exceptions in Ruby
Some of my recent work has been around improving error handling and logging.
We had some tasks that,...
over a year ago
Some of my recent work has been around improving error handling and logging.
We had some tasks that, if they failed to execute correctly, were supposed to raise exceptions, log themselves, and re-queue, but they were not.
The class in which I was working managed in large part API...
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,...
Wuthering...
The Bacchae by Euripides - O gods, I see the greatest grief there is.
Reading Euripides chronologically, it would be fair to think that however ingenious and inventive...
over a year ago
Reading Euripides chronologically, it would be fair to think that however ingenious and inventive Euripides was, he did not write a play quite at the level of Agamemnon or Oedipus the King, at least until his brief exile in Macedon, where he wrote The Bacchae just before his...
Josh Thompson
A New Old Financial Product
I’m going to weave together talk of land value, and financing, and some of the primitives1 around...
over a year ago
I’m going to weave together talk of land value, and financing, and some of the primitives1 around financial products.
How much would you pay for a box that lives in your mailbox and delivers $1000 on the first of every month?
Would you pay at least $5000, if you felt really...
The Elysian
Mondragon as the new City-State
This cooperative could be its own country.
3 months ago
This cooperative could be its own country.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Hallmark of What Is Truly Priceless'
“. . . what
literature is really about: our very survival as human beings.”
A bit melodramatic,
no?...
10 months ago
“. . . what
literature is really about: our very survival as human beings.”
A bit melodramatic,
no? Grandiose? Perhaps expressed by a writer worried about sales or a reader boosting
his self-esteem? Could be. But there’s something to it. Maybe it amounts to
more than...
The Marginalian
O Sweet Spontaneous: E.E. Cummings’s Love-Poem to Earth and the Glory of Spring
The ultimate anthem of resistance to the assaults on life.
a year ago
The ultimate anthem of resistance to the assaults on life.
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Treated Us Like Adults'
I grew up
thinking writers – poets, certainly – were not quite real. None lived in my
neighborhood....
11 months ago
I grew up
thinking writers – poets, certainly – were not quite real. None lived in my
neighborhood. I never saw writers on television. My parents never talked about them, as they might actors and politicians,
who also were unreal. Without thinking too
deeply about it, I put...
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...
This Space
39 Books: 2005
Four years later, browsing in Waterstones, I picked a book from a table and read "What will we do to...
7 months ago
Four years later, browsing in Waterstones, I picked a book from a table and read "What will we do to disappear?" – the epigram to Enrique Vila-Matas's novel Montano's Malady. It's a line taken from Maurice Blanchot's Infinite Conversation, so I had to buy it. Later that year,...
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.
The Marginalian
Let Your Heart Be Broken
"The miracle is that we rise again out of suffering... The miracle is that we create ourselves...
a year ago
"The miracle is that we rise again out of suffering... The miracle is that we create ourselves anew."
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Expression of Blatant Despotism'
Two female
acquaintances have recently endured divorce, and their lives are measurably
improved. The...
11 months ago
Two female
acquaintances have recently endured divorce, and their lives are measurably
improved. The woman I know better, whose wedding and reception we attended, was
married to a thuggish prison guard of a husband. You wouldn’t know it, looking
at him. Handsome, well-dressed and...
The Marginalian
Octavia Butler’s Advice on Writing
"No matter how tired you get, no matter how you feel like you can’t possibly do this, somehow you...
a year ago
"No matter how tired you get, no matter how you feel like you can’t possibly do this, somehow you do."
sbensu
But I want to turn people into dinosaurs
Beware of what you actually want.
5 months ago
Beware of what you actually want.
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 American Scholar
The Redoubtable Bull Shark
Reflecting on one of nature’s most dangerous predators
The post The Redoubtable Bull Shark appeared...
7 months ago
Reflecting on one of nature’s most dangerous predators
The post The Redoubtable Bull Shark appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Perry Bible...
Please
The post Please appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
4 months ago
The post Please appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
Astral Codex Ten
Against The Generalized Anti-Caution Argument
...
a month ago
Ben Borgers
We’re All Powered by Electric Meat
over a year ago
The American Scholar
“He Asked About the Quality” by C. P. Cavafy
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “He Asked About the Quality” by C. P. Cavafy appeared first...
6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “He Asked About the Quality” by C. P. Cavafy appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
“Full Moon Rhyme” by Judith Wright
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Full Moon Rhyme” by Judith Wright appeared first on The...
a week ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Full Moon Rhyme” by Judith Wright appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Very Quietly, an Aside'
Reporters
and their editors have always fetishized what’s known in the trade as the lede – the...
11 months ago
Reporters
and their editors have always fetishized what’s known in the trade as the lede – the opening sentence or paragraph
of a news story. The idea is to quickly grab the reader’s attention and, with
luck, hold on to it. Subtlety is discouraged in journalism. There’s much...
The Elysian
Are Democrats too liberal? Or too conservative?
We're asking the wrong questions.
2 weeks ago
We're asking the wrong questions.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not the Head But the Seat'
My late friend David Myers taught me the useful German and Yiddish word imported
into English,...
a year ago
My late friend David Myers taught me the useful German and Yiddish word imported
into English, sitzfleisch. The
etymology is straightforward: sitzen
(“to sit”) + Fleisch (“flesh”). In
other words, what we sit on -- the buttocks, ass or derriere. Metaphorically, the
OED tells us,...
The Marginalian
How to Befriend Time: The Gospel of Pete Seeger and Nina Simone
"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven."
a year ago
"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven."
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."
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 American Scholar
Turning the World to Powder
Jay Owens on the tiny particles that float through our lives
The post Turning the World to Powder...
5 months ago
Jay Owens on the tiny particles that float through our lives
The post Turning the World to Powder appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
Denver.rb meetup notes
Move Slow and Improve Things: Performance Improvement in a Rails App
Denver.rb Monthly Meetup...
over a year ago
Move Slow and Improve Things: Performance Improvement in a Rails App
Denver.rb Monthly Meetup @WeWork, Feb 12, 2018
We talked about performance profiling!
Here’s the slides, on Dropbox
I’m working on going deeper on the topic of Rails performance. I’ve got a lot more on the...
The Marginalian
Everything Is Happening All the Time: Legendary Physicist John Archibald Wheeler on Death and the...
“To die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier,” Walt Whitman writes in the prime of...
2 months ago
“To die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier,” Walt Whitman writes in the prime of life. “What happens when you get to the end of things?” four-year-old Johnny in Ohio asks his mother from the bathtub while Whitman’s borrowed atoms are becoming young grass in a...
Wuthering...
Books I Read in August 2023
As I suspected my energy for writing in August was diverted
to more important things. Plenty of...
a year ago
As I suspected my energy for writing in August was diverted
to more important things. Plenty of energy
to read, though.
With a respite in September, I should soon be able to write
a bit on the Greek philosophers I have been reading. The Cynics, Epicureans, and Stoics work...
Escaping Flatland
How I write essays
Notes on process
2 weeks ago
Josh Thompson
`Medusa` mythical creature: part 2
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...
This Space
Atheism of the novel
"Here it comes: the information dumping..."
From section 237, page 185 of Ellis Sharp's latest...
a year ago
"Here it comes: the information dumping..."
From section 237, page 185 of Ellis Sharp's latest novel, the part that is commentary on his attempt to destroy a commercially successful novel emulating "the style that The Guardian liked and promoted":
The narrator is a young...
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."
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...
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
Mortal Coils
We aren’t alone in facing the inevitable
The post Mortal Coils appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
We aren’t alone in facing the inevitable
The post Mortal Coils appeared first on The American Scholar.
sbensu
Love's Executioner (book)
Countertransference applies to regular conversation.
3 weeks ago
Countertransference applies to regular conversation.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Always Singular, and Never Trite or Vulgar'
“He was
never seen to be transported with Mirth, or dejected with Sadness; always
Chearful, but...
a year ago
“He was
never seen to be transported with Mirth, or dejected with Sadness; always
Chearful, but rarely Merry, at any sensible Rate, seldom heard to break a Jest;
and when he did, he would be apt to blush at the Levity of it: His Gravity was
Natural and without Affectation.”
The...
The Elysian
Am I a Democrat or a Republican?
The case for going label-less.
2 days ago
The case for going label-less.
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 American Scholar
What Do You Want to Know For?
The post What Do You Want to Know For? appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
The post What Do You Want to Know For? appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Like to Think of Pasteur in Elysium'
In 1985, the
year Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo, the scholar
and...
7 months ago
In 1985, the
year Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo, the scholar
and translator Clarence Brown published The
Portable Twentieth-Century Russian Reader, a selection ranging from Tolstoy
and Chekhov to Voinovich and Sokolov. In the introduction he...
The American Scholar
Imperiled Planet
The ecological havoc we’ve wrought
The post Imperiled Planet appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The ecological havoc we’ve wrought
The post Imperiled Planet appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
‘Of Course’
“Auden says, Wordsworth says, Valery says, Shakespeare says. Always the present tense. Of...
7 months ago
“Auden says, Wordsworth says, Valery says, Shakespeare says. Always the present tense. Of course.”
—Geoffrey Grigson, The Private Art: A Poetry Notebook (Allison and Busby, 1982).
This Space
39 Books: 1994
Given that my undergraduate degree was in Philosophy, it may seem odd that this the first book of...
7 months ago
Given that my undergraduate degree was in Philosophy, it may seem odd that this the first book of philosophy in the series. Many will say it is not a book of philosophy at all. That would explain why I gorged on Nick Land's The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and...
The Elysian
Humanity from the perspective of robots
Talking points for our literary salon next week.
7 months ago
Talking points for our literary salon next week.
The Marginalian
Milan Kundera on the Power of Coincidences and the Musicality of How Chance Composes Our Lives
"Human lives... are composed like music. Guided by his sense of beauty, an individual transforms a...
a year ago
"Human lives... are composed like music. Guided by his sense of beauty, an individual transforms a fortuitous occurrence... into a motif, which then assumes a permanent place in the composition of the individual's life."
Ben Borgers
My Guilt for Useless Things
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Cool Malignity of Othello'
“As Shakespeare
went on, however, he became interested in why people like evil, not for their
own...
a year ago
“As Shakespeare
went on, however, he became interested in why people like evil, not for their
own advantage but for its own sake.”
In his
lecture on Othello, W.H. Auden understands,
as a growing number of our contemporaries do not, that evil is autonomous and
self-justifying....
The Elysian
How many hours a week do you (actually) spend on your salary job?
I can’t find any statistics about this (because how would you?), but most of the people I know who...
5 months ago
I can’t find any statistics about this (because how would you?), but most of the people I know who work salary jobs work significantly fewer tha…
Josh Thompson
Letter to Two Climbers (Part 1)
Hello!
We met recently. (I gave Justin tape after he cut his toe and didn’t have a bandaid.)
You and...
over a year ago
Hello!
We met recently. (I gave Justin tape after he cut his toe and didn’t have a bandaid.)
You and your partner were climbing a route near me and my partner. One of you (I’ll call Charles, because he had a British accent) was trying
so hard to figure out some moves high above...
Ben Borgers
You Might Be Right, But Shut Up
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'It's Uncanny. The Past Is Not Dead.'
“The
Ferryman’s Due,” my article about Andrew Rickard and his Obolus Press, is
published in the...
4 days ago
“The
Ferryman’s Due,” my article about Andrew Rickard and his Obolus Press, is
published in the January 2025 issue of The
New Criterion.:
“Rickard
often encounters such passages, in which the author he is translating seems to
speak for him. ‘It’s uncanny. The past is not dead,’...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Moved—Stopp’d--Shall I Go On?—No'
The
professor asked me to write a paper on Tristram
Shandy, the novel she had introduced to us in...
4 weeks ago
The
professor asked me to write a paper on Tristram
Shandy, the novel she had introduced to us in her eighteenth-century English
fiction class. It was her favorite novel. Its bawdy humor matched her own. For
me it was love at first sight – for the novel, I mean. I was already a...
ribbonfarm
Going Sessile
One of the biggest changes in my personality with middle age is that I no longer really enjoy travel...
7 months ago
One of the biggest changes in my personality with middle age is that I no longer really enjoy travel beyond local weekend getaways. Almost no destination has a pain/novelty ratio that makes it worth it. On the one hand, I’ve traveled enough that few places hold the promise of...
Idle Words
The Lunacy of Artemis
In August 2020, the New York Times asked me to write an op-ed for a special feature on...
7 months ago
In August 2020, the New York Times asked me to write an op-ed for a special feature on authoritarianism and democracy. They declined to publish my submission, which I am sharing here instead.
A little over 51 years ago, a rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral carrying three...
The Marginalian
The Great Blue Heron, Signs vs. Omens, and Our Search for Meaning
One September dawn on the verge of a significant life change, sitting on my poet friend’s dock, I...
3 months ago
One September dawn on the verge of a significant life change, sitting on my poet friend’s dock, I watched a great blue heron rise slow and prehistoric through the morning mist, carrying the sky on her back. In the years since, the heron has become the closest thing I have to what...
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...
The Marginalian
God, Human, Animal, Machine: Consciousness and Our Search for Meaning in the Age of Artificial...
An inquiry into the eternal enchantment of why the world exists.
a year ago
An inquiry into the eternal enchantment of why the world exists.
Steven Scrawls
You Are Not Incompressible
You Are Not Incompressible
can be summarised as: walking, walking, walking, bit of fighting...
6 months ago
You Are Not Incompressible
can be summarised as: walking, walking, walking, bit of fighting with
orcs, walking, walking, walking, anguish, walking, walking, walking, bit
more fighting with orcs, walking, walking, walking.
—Goodreads review of “The Lord of the Rings”
Im returning...
The Elysian
It's ok to live in a fantasyland
That's the joy of being a writer.
a month ago
That's the joy of being a writer.
The Elysian
You’d still work if you didn’t have to
But it would feel more like play.
5 months ago
But it would feel more like play.
Anecdotal Evidence
'All Forms of Evil ’Neath the Sun'
Isaac
Waisberg is an Israeli academic and friend who lives with his family near Tel Aviv. He
also...
a year ago
Isaac
Waisberg is an Israeli academic and friend who lives with his family near Tel Aviv. He
also runs IWP Books, an eclectic online library of titles ranging from Walter
Bagehot and A.E. Housman to Theodor Haecker and Agnes Repplier. In short, he is
a civilized man with...
Josh Thompson
Upgrade your job
So, apparently I send a lot of email about people trying to get cool jobs. Here’s yet
another email...
over a year ago
So, apparently I send a lot of email about people trying to get cool jobs. Here’s yet
another email I sent to a friend, recorded here.
Hi [redacted],
First I want to highlight is that flexible/remote jobs are
just like normal jobs, but more people want them, so the companies...
This Space
39 Books: 2023
This is the 39th and final post of this series. As the introduction explains, I began seeking a...
6 months ago
This is the 39th and final post of this series. As the introduction explains, I began seeking a return to the short-form of the early days of blogging. And it started off well, with each entry written in no time, sometimes stirring up the sediment of initial enchantment. As I got...
The Marginalian
Sheltering the Heroes Among Us: John Berger on Art as Resistance and Redemption of Justice
"The powerful fear art, whatever its form... because it makes sense of what life’s brutalities...
a month ago
"The powerful fear art, whatever its form... because it makes sense of what life’s brutalities cannot, a sense that unites us... becomes a meeting-place of the invisible, the irreducible, the enduring."
Wuthering...
The best books of 2023, in a sense - "Aren't you tired of reading?"
Last January seems even more distant than usual at this time
of year. It will likely not...
11 months ago
Last January seems even more distant than usual at this time
of year. It will likely not surprise
anyone that 2023 now comes with a strong feeling of Before and After. So I will indulge in the “facetious and silly”
exercise of identifying the best books I read in 2023. Sorting...
Escaping Flatland
Can we scale cultures that support learning?
new essay in Asterisk
2 months ago
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...
2 weeks ago
Are humans alone in their ability to make art?
The post The Creator’s Code appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'I’d Be the Man Dares Clearly Sing'
I have no
musical talent apart from a sometimes annoying gift for remembering lyrics, and
not always...
7 months ago
I have no
musical talent apart from a sometimes annoying gift for remembering lyrics, and
not always the good stuff. I know all the words to a radio jingle for a car
dealer in Cleveland, circa 1964, among other clutter. A related symptom is the long-lasting
earworm. Much of this...
The American Scholar
Battle Hymns
Charles Ives and the Civil War
The post Battle Hymns appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
Charles Ives and the Civil War
The post Battle Hymns appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'In Itself and Forever Shipwreck'
I’ve just
finished rereading William Maxwell’s final novel, So Long, See You Tomorrow, published in...
a year ago
I’ve just
finished rereading William Maxwell’s final novel, So Long, See You Tomorrow, published in two issues of The New Yorker in 1979 and as a book the
following year. I read it in the magazine and I’ve since read the book –
Maxwell’s finest, written when he was seventy years...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Scrawls With a Lavish Hand Its Signature'
“Where the wind listeth, there the sailboats list, / Water is
touched with a light case of hives /...
2 months ago
“Where the wind listeth, there the sailboats list, / Water is
touched with a light case of hives / Or wandering gooseflesh.”
Carl George is the sort of scientist whose company I most enjoy. He is a generalist, what
used to be called a naturalist. Now an emeritus professor of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Old Man in the Dark'
Philip
Larkin shares with us the mundane complaints of the middle class, the lusts and
anxieties of...
a year ago
Philip
Larkin shares with us the mundane complaints of the middle class, the lusts and
anxieties of people unburdened with wealth and pull. He grows deaf, loses hair,
juggles girlfriends, gains weight and drinks too much. As a librarian he works hard.
He will never be hip except...
The Marginalian
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows: Uncommonly Lovely Invented Words for What We Feel but Cannot Name
"Despite what dictionaries would have us believe, this world is still mostly undefined."
8 months ago
"Despite what dictionaries would have us believe, this world is still mostly undefined."
The American Scholar
Numbers Game
A novelist’s indictment of how we account for our history
The post Numbers Game appeared first on...
6 months ago
A novelist’s indictment of how we account for our history
The post Numbers Game appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Turning to Stone: A Geologist’s Love Letter to the Wisdom of Rocks
Among the great salvations of my childhood were the rocks and minerals lining the bookshelves of our...
4 months ago
Among the great salvations of my childhood were the rocks and minerals lining the bookshelves of our next door neighbor — a geologist working for the Bulgarian Ministry of Environment and Water. I spent long hours casting amethyst refractions on the ceiling, carving words into...
The Marginalian
Nothing: The Illustrated Story of How John Cage Revolutionized Music Through Silence
"We make our lives by what we love."
7 months ago
"We make our lives by what we love."
Escaping Flatland
Life update
+ open thread and a few fragments of essays
11 months ago
+ open thread and a few fragments of essays
The American Scholar
The Given Child
To what lengths would a mother go to ensure her family’s survival in a remote Himalayan village?
The...
6 months ago
To what lengths would a mother go to ensure her family’s survival in a remote Himalayan village?
The post The Given Child appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Amber of His Style'
Isaac
Waisberg at IWP Books has digitalized three volumes of Desmond MacCarthy’s essays
and reviews...
8 months ago
Isaac
Waisberg at IWP Books has digitalized three volumes of Desmond MacCarthy’s essays
and reviews -- Portraits (1931), Criticism (1932), Memories (1953) – with a promise of more to come. MacCarthy’s reputation
in the U.S. is almost sub-atomic. Devotees of Bloomsbury think of hm...
The Elysian
Three classic utopian novels—now collectibles
More than 100 years ago, three thinkers imagined what a utopian future might look like in the year...
3 months ago
More than 100 years ago, three thinkers imagined what a utopian future might look like in the year 2000. Now, their novels are available as a collectible set.
The Marginalian
Batter My Heart: Love, the Divine Within, and How Not to Break Our Your Own Heart
There are many things we mistake for love — infatuation, admiration, need — but there is no error of...
4 months ago
There are many things we mistake for love — infatuation, admiration, need — but there is no error of the heart graver than making another our higher power. This may seem inevitable — because to love is always to see the divine in each other, because all love is a yearning for the...
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