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The Marginalian
Poetry as Prayer: The Great Russian Poet Marina Tsvetaeva on Reclaiming the Divine "In our age, to have the courage for direct speech to God (for prayer) we must either not know what...
6 months ago
Ben Borgers
Gamelan Music
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Some Thoughts about the Ocean and the Universe How to bear the gravity of being.
a year ago
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
33
a year ago
It is the 16th year of Dolce Bellezza’s remarkable Japanese Literature Challenge – in the old days for some reason we “challenged” people to read – which reminded me, as it often has, that I have never read anything by Natsumi Sōseki, the earliest of the greatest 20th century...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Working a Thing Out' Long ago an editor urged me never to assume I knew what readers were thinking or what they wanted....
6 months ago
27
6 months ago
Long ago an editor urged me never to assume I knew what readers were thinking or what they wanted. It’s presumptuous to do so. Mind-reading quickly turns into seeking approval from readers and sucking up to them. Be clear, don’t condescend, respect the reader’s intelligence....
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...
11 months ago
17
11 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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Fond of Books and Fond of Reading' A friend has loaned me his copy of Maurice Baring’s Have You Anything to Declare? (1936), subtitled...
9 months ago
26
9 months ago
A friend has loaned me his copy of Maurice Baring’s Have You Anything to Declare? (1936), subtitled A Note Book with Commentaries. This is the 1950 edition published by William Heinemann and comes with an indecipherable pencil inscription on the front end paper that may be...
Anecdotal Evidence
'What She or He Ought to Know' In a typically mordant essay, “A Great Fog Over the Past,” Peter Hitchens cites “Spanish Waters,” a...
4 months ago
49
4 months ago
In a typically mordant essay, “A Great Fog Over the Past,” Peter Hitchens cites “Spanish Waters,” a poem by John Masefield, one of the first poets I claimed as my own when a boy, years before Eliot and Yeats. The poem’s “decrepit beggar,” as Hitchens puts it, “knows where the...
Escaping Flatland
Living 80 years, you can have 8 lives Highlights from the cutting room floor, pt. 2
a month ago
Astral Codex Ten
Links For December 2024 ...
3 weeks ago
Josh Thompson
Talent is Overrated Talent is Overrated In Talent is Overrated, the author argues that world-class performers are not...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
Talent is Overrated In Talent is Overrated, the author argues that world-class performers are not genetically gifted. The difference between world-class performers and the rest of us? Lots of deliberate practice. (Read the article.) I have no interest in becoming Mozart, or Tiger...
Ben Borgers
Web of Thoughts
over a year ago
The American Scholar
The Wonder of It All In search of awe The post The Wonder of It All appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
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
18
a year ago
Tender and poetic reckonings with friendship, fear, love, solitude, black holes, deep time, and the interconnectedness of life.
Blog -...
Book Review - Zen in the Art of Archery Zen in the Art of Archery is described by John Stevens in his book Zen Bow, Zen Arrow as likely...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
Zen in the Art of Archery is described by John Stevens in his book Zen Bow, Zen Arrow as likely being the most popular book about Japanese culture and martial arts ever. This is a bold statement I cannot contest, having read only three other books about Zen: the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'On the Marge of Lake Lebarge' Memory has no conscience and little sense of good taste. It’s our most intimate capacity yet often...
11 months ago
15
11 months ago
Memory has no conscience and little sense of good taste. It’s our most intimate capacity yet often feels alien, as though we were recalling the memories of someone else. In the past, of course, we were someone else. As a kid I watched ridiculous amounts of television, which is...
Anecdotal Evidence
'One of the Least Appealing Aspects of Our Species' The twentieth century was a graduate-level education in irony. Our medical advances...
2 months ago
35
2 months ago
The twentieth century was a graduate-level education in irony. Our medical advances were extraordinary – antibiotics, insulin, the Salk and Sabin vaccines. Airplanes, television, computers, space exploration. And yet Guy Davenport was not being needlessly morbid when he...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Greatness Is Difficult' “It is dangerous to admire a great man for his sins: we may too easily adopt his sins for our own...
a year ago
12
a year ago
“It is dangerous to admire a great man for his sins: we may too easily adopt his sins for our own out of admiration for his genius; and when the inevitable reaction occurs, the great man’s reputation is likely to suffer unduly.”  Among writers, Dr. Johnson is the first fallible...
Josh Thompson
Array divergence in Ruby Lets say you have a list of valid items, and you want to run another array against it, and pull out...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
Lets say you have a list of valid items, and you want to run another array against it, and pull out the items that don’t match. You don’t want to iterate through all of the items in one array, calling other_array.include?(item). (That’s computationally expensive) valid_people =...
The Marginalian
Stunning Century-Old Illustrations of Tibetan Fairy Tales from the Artist Who Created Bambi Soulful art from stories that speak "to the childhood of all times and all races."
a year ago
The American Scholar
Verde Learning a foreign language isn’t just about improving cognitive function—it can teach us to sense...
a month ago
13
a month ago
Learning a foreign language isn’t just about improving cognitive function—it can teach us to sense the world anew The post Verde appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Shadow Cabinet of Writers' “All of us, probably, have some favorite unfashionable author. Occasionally a minority taste can be...
3 months ago
34
3 months ago
“All of us, probably, have some favorite unfashionable author. Occasionally a minority taste can be powerful enough to make for some isolated masterpiece a small niche in literary history -- Henry Green’s Loving and Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Mr. Fortune's Maggot have both...
The Elysian
Is America about to fall? Or flourish? That depends on us.
2 months ago
Ben Borgers
Monday, January 17, 2022
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
60 kHz
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Monthly Review: November This is my second monthly review, and I’m hooked. I’ve thought this coming review frequently, but I...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
This is my second monthly review, and I’m hooked. I’ve thought this coming review frequently, but I thought about that as I was conducting my month. This proactive review is in line with Viktor Frankl’s admonition to “live every day as if it were your second chance to live it.”...
Ben Borgers
Tufts & Change Makers
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Is a Rite of Finitude' Most of Richard Wilbur’s poetry I read retrospectively, in books, long after it was written and...
8 months ago
62
8 months ago
Most of Richard Wilbur’s poetry I read retrospectively, in books, long after it was written and first published in magazines. One exception I remember is “All That Is,” which appeared in the May 13, 1985 issue of The New Yorker. I had mostly stopped reading the magazine by...
ben-mini
IMG_0416 Between 2009 and 2012, Apple iPhones and iPod Touches included a feature called “Send to YouTube”...
2 months ago
8
2 months ago
Between 2009 and 2012, Apple iPhones and iPod Touches included a feature called “Send to YouTube” that allowed users to upload videos directly to YouTube from the Photos app. The feature worked… really well. In fact, YouTube reported a 1700% increase in total video uploads...
The Marginalian
What It’s Like to Be a Falcon: The Peregrine as a Portal to a Way of Seeing and a State of Being "You cannot know what freedom means till you have seen a peregrine loosed into the warm spring sky...
8 months ago
66
8 months ago
"You cannot know what freedom means till you have seen a peregrine loosed into the warm spring sky to roam at will through all the far provinces of light."
The Elysian
I’d rather have an investor than a publishing contract In pursuit of a better book deal (and record deal and podcast deal...)
8 months ago
The Marginalian
Henry James on Losing a Mother "These are hours of exquisite pain; thank Heaven this particular pang comes to us but once."
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Important Part of Anyone’s Reading' A variation on the question Matthew Walther reports getting in his essay “The One Hundred Pages...
a month ago
24
a month ago
A variation on the question Matthew Walther reports getting in his essay “The One Hundred Pages Strategy” – “How do you do it?” – is the one I get when a workman or friend visits my home office where most of my books are shelved: “You read all these?” I can reply with one of...
Ben Borgers
One Year Ago Email
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Why Your Belayer is Keeping You from Climbing Hard(er) Since climbing regularly again (!!!), I’ve observed lots of belaying in the gym. I can’t walk up to...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
Since climbing regularly again (!!!), I’ve observed lots of belaying in the gym. I can’t walk up to a stranger and say “Excuse me, sir, I noticed that your poor belaying is totally crippling your climber’s ability to try hard, and actively eliminating any hope you had of...
Ben Borgers
Novel Food
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Fancy Quotation Marks
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Bastienne Schmidt The fabric of life The post Bastienne Schmidt appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
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
6
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...
Ben Borgers
2023 in review
a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
Friendly And Hostile Analogies For Taste ...
a month ago
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...
a year ago
16
a year 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...
sbensu
Creative kernels Artists can often trace entire pieces around one idea that drives everything else.
6 months ago
This Space
"Every day I have to invoke the absent god again"* I really enjoy this YouTube channel despite my general lack of interest in films. The presenter’s...
over a year ago
37
over a year ago
I really enjoy this YouTube channel despite my general lack of interest in films. The presenter’s restrained voice-over is ideal for one approaching its concerns; imagine a lullaby sung by Werner Herzog. I envy him the medium for its music, its visuals, even its potential for...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Favourable Enough for a Writer' Jules Renard writing in his journal on November 22, 1906:  “I am in no great hurry to see the...
a year ago
17
a year ago
Jules Renard writing in his journal on November 22, 1906:  “I am in no great hurry to see the society of the future – our own favourable enough for a writer. By its absurdities, its injustices, its vices, its stupidities, it nourishes a writer’s observations. The more men...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Adieu! for Once Again the Fierce Dispute' Among John Keats’ closest friends was the modestly gifted poet John Hamilton Reynolds...
a year ago
17
a year ago
Among John Keats’ closest friends was the modestly gifted poet John Hamilton Reynolds (1794-1852). It was to Reynolds that Keats wrote in a February 3, 1818 letter:  “We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us—and if we do not agree, seems to put its hand in its breeches...
The Marginalian
Something in You Hungers for Clarity: Ta-Nehisi Coates on Writing “Words have more power than any one can guess; it is by words that the world’s great fight, now in...
4 weeks ago
31
4 weeks ago
“Words have more power than any one can guess; it is by words that the world’s great fight, now in these civilized times, is carried on,” Mary Shelley wrote in the middle of the Napoleonic Wars that laid the template for the colonialist power structure of the modern world, in an...
Josh Thompson
Practicing with Polylines Part 2 - Get Your Data (as a polyline) From Strava Last time, I did a minimum first pass on rendering a polyline on a map. It wasn’t just any polyline,...
3 months ago
8
3 months ago
Last time, I did a minimum first pass on rendering a polyline on a map. It wasn’t just any polyline, though, it was a path of a walk I went on. (Technically, just a fragment of a path). this is a heavy draft, I’ve had issues getting this all working well in the past, still have...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Glory Seemingly Reserved For Poems' “He was born in the jumbled catacombs of the stair-stepped port of Odessa, late in 1894. Irreparably...
6 months ago
43
6 months ago
“He was born in the jumbled catacombs of the stair-stepped port of Odessa, late in 1894. Irreparably Semitic, Isaac was the son of a rag merchant from Kiev and a Moldavian Jewess. Catastrophe has been the normal climate of his life.”  Though born within five years of each other,...
Wuthering...
Books finished in April 2023 I continue the practice of posting a list as a substitute for real writing. Coming soon: a long...
a year ago
60
a year ago
I continue the practice of posting a list as a substitute for real writing. Coming soon: a long overdue loot at Seneca's plays, a glance at Gide's Counterfeiters, and some messing around with Plato's Republic. If I did not write in April, I at least read: GREEK PHILOSOPHY The...
Josh Thompson
The Housing Market Is Absolutely Insane: How To Fix It I had a brief exchange with a good friend recently: The housing market is indeed insane. This...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
I had a brief exchange with a good friend recently: The housing market is indeed insane. This problem that we’re both discussing is: Unbelievable ($650,000 for a fixer upper) Oppressive (“unjustly inflicting hardship and constraint, especially on a minority or other subordinate...
Wuthering...
Menander's Dyskolos - each man would hold a moderate share and be content This week it’s Menander’s Dyskolos, or The Grouch, or The Misanthrope (316 BCE), which may or may...
over a year ago
34
over a year ago
This week it’s Menander’s Dyskolos, or The Grouch, or The Misanthrope (316 BCE), which may or may not have inspired the title of Molière’s great play, and nothing more than the title since the play was, like all of Menander’s plays, long lost.  A fairly complete Dyskolos was the...
Ben Borgers
Is Advice Flawed?
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Stubborn Consistency [100 daily blog posts]
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Consciousness, Artificial Intelligence, and Our Search for Meaning: Oliver Sacks on ChatGPT, 30... "We are not incoherent, a bundle of sensations, but a self, rising from experience, continually...
a year ago
49
a year ago
"We are not incoherent, a bundle of sensations, but a self, rising from experience, continually growing and revised... Through experience, education, art, and life, we teach our brains to become unique. We learn to be individuals. This is a neurological learning as well as a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Comfort, Solace, Inspiration' “A few books, however,” writes Michael Dirda, “become lifelong companions, works we regularly turn...
a year ago
16
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,...
Steven Scrawls
Against Confidence Against Confidence I hope I never make a habit of writing stuff that makes me feel confident. If my...
a year ago
4
a year ago
Against Confidence I hope I never make a habit of writing stuff that makes me feel confident. If my writing makes me feel confident, it probably has a title like “Look At My Cleverly Constructed Argument/Insight” (subtitle: “Also Look At My Pretty Words”). If I release writing...
The Elysian
Writing Prompt: Fix Capitalism By September 30th.
4 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Whole Hog Barbecu'd!' I was surprised to see that Alexander Pope was familiar with the most popular cuisine served in...
3 months ago
39
3 months ago
I was surprised to see that Alexander Pope was familiar with the most popular cuisine served in Texas: barbecue. You’ll find his reference in “The Second Satire in the Second Book of Horace Paraphrased”: “Oldfield, with more than Harpy throat endu’d, Cries, ‘send me, Gods! a...
This Space
39 Books: 2019 So much for this blog being labelled "the best resource in English on European modernist...
7 months ago
62
7 months ago
So much for this blog being labelled "the best resource in English on European modernist literature": this year's choice is a collection of lectures delivered in the early 1960s at the University of Zürich, published in English translation in 1970, with this edition being...
Josh Thompson
Typing for Programmers If you had to distill my ability to bring value to those around me, it would be “Josh types good”. I...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
If you had to distill my ability to bring value to those around me, it would be “Josh types good”. I can press these magical little keys on this little metal box here, and make these words come out. If you’re reading these words, you don’t care how these words actually got on...
Wuthering...
The Girl from Samos by Menander - I don’t think any one individual is better at birth than any other It’s our last plays, the last surviving Greek play, The Girl from Samos (315 BCE) by Menander.  How...
over a year ago
42
over a year ago
It’s our last plays, the last surviving Greek play, The Girl from Samos (315 BCE) by Menander.  How tastes, or circumstances, had changed in the seventy years since Wealth, our last Aristophanes play.  The political and social satire is gone, the sexual and scatological jokes are...
The Marginalian
The Art of the Sacred Pause and Despair as a Catalyst of Regeneration Just as there are transitional times in the life of the world — dark periods of disorientation...
2 weeks ago
17
2 weeks ago
Just as there are transitional times in the life of the world — dark periods of disorientation between two world systems, periods in which humanity loses the ability to comprehend itself and collapses into chaos in order to rebuild itself around a new organizing principle — there...
Ben Borgers
The Web is a Superpower
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Three Poems The post Three Poems appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
This Space
Kafka's great fire The centenary of Kafka's death was marked twelve years late. His diary records it in September...
6 months ago
67
6 months ago
The centenary of Kafka's death was marked twelve years late. His diary records it in September 1912: This story, The Judgment, I wrote at one sitting during the night of the 22nd-23rd, from ten o'clock at night to six o'clock in the morning. I was hardly able to pull my legs...
Anecdotal Evidence
'By Studying Little Things' “He advised me to keep a journal of my life, fair and undisguised.”  So did my high-school English...
5 months ago
35
5 months ago
“He advised me to keep a journal of my life, fair and undisguised.”  So did my high-school English teacher two centuries later. Boswell took Dr. Johnson’s advice and later mined the resulting journal when assembling his Life of Johnson (1791). Much of Boswell’s London Journal...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Cursed with an Acute Literary Conscience' Who among critics would begin a review with so seemingly inartistic a statement?:  “Some writers...
a year ago
8
a year ago
Who among critics would begin a review with so seemingly inartistic a statement?:  “Some writers have a dread of platitudes. I have not. What is a platitude but an expression of the wisdom of the ages, the synopsis of a theory that was long ago propounded, tested, established,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'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
45
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
Metaprogramming in Ruby: method_missing I’m working through Metaprogramming in Ruby It’s a great read. There are examples in the books, but...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
I’m working through Metaprogramming in Ruby It’s a great read. There are examples in the books, but I wanted to take them out and apply them to some easy Exercisms. I feel some disclosure may be useful. In no way, at all, should you ever implement any of the “solutions” I’m...
This Space
Books of the year 2024 In order of being read. Giorgio Agamben – What I saw, heard, learned… One night, along Venice’s...
3 weeks ago
35
3 weeks ago
In order of being read. Giorgio Agamben – What I saw, heard, learned… One night, along Venice’s Zattere, watching the putrid water lap at the city’s foundations, I saw that we exist solely in the intermittence of our being, and that what we call I is just a shadow...
The Marginalian
After Love: Maxine Kumin’s Stunning Poem About Eros as a Portal to Unselfing It is one of the hardest things in life — discerning where we end and the rest of the world begins,...
a year ago
12
a year ago
It is one of the hardest things in life — discerning where we end and the rest of the world begins, negotiating the permeable boundary between self and other, all the while longing for its dissolution, longing to be set free from the prison of ourselves. That is why we cherish...
Josh Thompson
Simplify, simplify, simplify Kristi and I stumbled upon the realization that we’ve become minimalists. And it is exciting. We...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
Kristi and I stumbled upon the realization that we’ve become minimalists. And it is exciting. We live in a one-bedroom apartment. It is spacious, for a one-bedroom, but compared to anything larger than a one-bedroom apartment, it is small. We managed to pack it full of stuff in...
The American Scholar
Tramping With Virginia A seminal essay about walking the streets of London can present challenges in the classrooms of...
8 months ago
59
8 months ago
A seminal essay about walking the streets of London can present challenges in the classrooms of today The post Tramping With Virginia appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
Disturbances in the Field by Lynne Sharon Schwartz - What I wanted now was the adventure of being... Disturbances in the Field (1983) by Lynne Sharon Schwartz.  Rohan Maitzen recommended the novel to...
a year ago
42
a year ago
Disturbances in the Field (1983) by Lynne Sharon Schwartz.  Rohan Maitzen recommended the novel to me because of its unusual use of the Pre-Socratic philosophers.  This is a domestic novel, a fine example of, borrowing from Trollope, the way we live now (or, to me, the way they...
Anecdotal Evidence
'For a Dream's Sake' Interviewer: “Do you feel you could have had a much happier life?”  Philip Larkin: “Not without...
a year ago
13
a year ago
Interviewer: “Do you feel you could have had a much happier life?”  Philip Larkin: “Not without being someone else. I think it is very much easier to imagine happiness than to experience it. Which is a pity because what you imagine makes you dissatisfied with what you experience,...
ribbonfarm
Storytelling — Just Add Dinosaurs In a previous part, I covered the storytelling model of Matthew Dicks, who specializes in live,...
10 months ago
7
10 months ago
In a previous part, I covered the storytelling model of Matthew Dicks, who specializes in live, spoken-word competitive storytelling from real life. He has a theory of stories I found deeply unsatisfying: That the essence of a story is a moment of character change where the...
The Marginalian
The Warblers and the Wonder of Being: Loren Eiseley on Contacting the Miraculous "The time has to be right; one has to be, by chance or intention, upon the border of two worlds. And...
11 months ago
19
11 months ago
"The time has to be right; one has to be, by chance or intention, upon the border of two worlds. And sometimes these two borders may shift or interpenetrate and one sees the miraculous."
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
18
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,...
The American Scholar
The Scales The post The Scales appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
Ben Borgers
Optimizing Kiwi for scale
over a year ago
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
6
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
Use an Alarm to Go to Bed Ironically, this is about going to bed early. See, it’s 10:40p, and I’m getting up tomorrow at 6:00....
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
Ironically, this is about going to bed early. See, it’s 10:40p, and I’m getting up tomorrow at 6:00. So I’m looking at about 7 hours of sleep. This is perfect. But, that is only if I’m asleep in the next twenty minutes. I know how long it takes to get ready to leave in the...
Josh Thompson
Recommended Reading I’ve read many books over the years. Thousands. Here’s a few that I find myself...
7 months ago
7
7 months ago
I’ve read many books over the years. Thousands. Here’s a few that I find myself referencing/recommending.Periodically, I refresh this list. It’s changed over the years years. the list you are about to read is heavily reworked, based off this older list:...
Anecdotal Evidence
'For Whom They Were Framed in Words' Louis MacNeice is startlingly prescient in “To Posterity,” originally published in Visitations...
a year ago
21
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...
Robert Caro
Misery Acres: An Investigative Series Perhaps Caro’s most influential work during his years at Newsday was the investigative series,...
a year ago
4
a year ago
Perhaps Caro’s most influential work during his years at Newsday was the investigative series, “Misery Acres,” a withering expose of fraud.
Anecdotal Evidence
'I See Only Their Marvelous Works' “How pleasant it is to respect people! When I see books, I am not concerned with how the authors...
11 months ago
18
11 months ago
“How pleasant it is to respect people! When I see books, I am not concerned with how the authors loved or played cards; I see only their marvelous works.”  A reader reprimands me for dismissing Ezra Pound from serious consideration. “We can’t imagine modernism without him,” he...
The Marginalian
Practical Mysticism: Evelyn Underhill’s Stunning Century-Old Manifesto for Secular Transcendence and... "Because mystery is horrible to us, we have agreed for the most part to live in a world of labels;...
a year ago
61
a year ago
"Because mystery is horrible to us, we have agreed for the most part to live in a world of labels; to make of them the current coin of experience, and ignore their merely symbolic character, the infinite gradation of values which they misrepresent."
The Perry Bible...
The Good Knight The post The Good Knight appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
7 months ago
Josh Thompson
How to take payments via Stripe on a Static Site I’ve had rolling around my head an idea of selling small how-to guides and resources. Things that I...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
I’ve had rolling around my head an idea of selling small how-to guides and resources. Things that I wish existed, but have never been able to find. For example, I’ve read a bunch of books that talk about good Object-Oriented design, or refactoring code, or writing better tests....
Josh Thompson
Notes from 'Why We Sleep' I first read Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams about two years ago. It...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
I first read Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams about two years ago. It immediately led me to prioritize sleep over almost everything else. Most of us don’t get enough sleep, and are worse for it. Usually when the topic of sleep comes up, I say Hey, there’s...
Ben Borgers
Building henrynitzberg.com
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Life of Trees: A Poem "I want to sleep and dream the life of trees, beings from the muted world..."
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Still to Suruiue in My Immortall Song' Many of the best things in life, so long as they persist, are accompanied by a shadow of...
2 weeks ago
19
2 weeks ago
Many of the best things in life, so long as they persist, are accompanied by a shadow of their disappearance. If fortunate, we learn this lesson early. Their transitoriness becomes part of their charm, whether a cat, a garden or a brother. We are grateful and enjoy them...
The Elysian
You’d still work if you didn’t have to But it would feel more like play.
5 months ago
The American Scholar
Parque de la Música The post Parque de la Música appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
Ben Borgers
War Room “Bib”
a year ago
Escaping Flatland
How to think in writing Part 1: The thought behind the thought
8 months ago
The American Scholar
Lift Off The post Lift Off appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
Josh Thompson
"A delicate mix of chess... and bear wrestling" Over the last few weeks I’ve found myself needing to break down “why” of sport climbing (I’ll refer...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Over the last few weeks I’ve found myself needing to break down “why” of sport climbing (I’ll refer to sport as “lead” climbing from here on out. Sorry, trad climbers). If someone is enjoying top roping, (or bouldering) why should they take on the work of learning to lead climb,...
ribbonfarm
Harberger Tax It’s always nice to see trails of thought connect up. An idea I first encountered and really liked...
9 months ago
6
9 months ago
It’s always nice to see trails of thought connect up. An idea I first encountered and really liked in a 2014 Steve Randy Waldman (interfluidity) post has apparently since acquired a name and a more extended provenance. Waldman’s post, Tax price, not value, presents the idea as a...
Josh Thompson
Social skills are like any other skills Learning social skills are no different from learning cooking skills, or handstand skills. It...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Learning social skills are no different from learning cooking skills, or handstand skills. It helps to have exposure at a young age, but with time and effort, you can learn, and even master, cooking, handstands, and social skills. Why do social skills matter? Most people get...
The American Scholar
Facing the Facts An antiquated take on antiquity The post Facing the Facts appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
Ben Borgers
Daily Habits
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'His Empty Heart is Full at Length' Two-hundred-fifty years ago, in the late summer and fall of 1773, Dr. Johnson and Boswell made their...
a year ago
14
a year ago
Two-hundred-fifty years ago, in the late summer and fall of 1773, Dr. Johnson and Boswell made their grand tour of Scotland, including the Hebrides, and both would publish accounts of their adventures. Johnson’s A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland appeared in...
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
35
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...
Josh Thompson
The Present You It seems most of the decisions in life are made in favor of the present you, or the future you. I...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
It seems most of the decisions in life are made in favor of the present you, or the future you. I wish the future me could sit beside the present me, and discuss how I was going about my day. Instead, it’s a rather one-sided conversation. There are obvious choices, like food,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'For My Small Ailments' Empathy, in some quarters, is becoming quite fashionable. Clearly, my doctor has been...
10 months ago
18
10 months ago
Empathy, in some quarters, is becoming quite fashionable. Clearly, my doctor has been benefiting from professional development. When he enters the examination room we shake hands, he moves a chair to face me and sits almost knee-to-knee. This is to eliminate any suggestion of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Humour Is Reason Itself' The saddest man I know wishes more than anything to be thought of as a comedian, a jokester, the...
3 weeks ago
22
3 weeks 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
Sidekiq and Background Jobs for Beginners I’ve recently had to learn more about background jobs (using Sidekiq, specifically) for some bugs I...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
I’ve recently had to learn more about background jobs (using Sidekiq, specifically) for some bugs I was working on. I learned a lot. Much of it was extremely basic. Anyone who knows much at all about Sidekiq will say “oh, duh, of course that’s true”, but at the time, it wasn’t...
The Marginalian
We Are the Music, We Are the Spark: Pioneering Biologist Ernest Everett Just on What Makes Life... "Life is exquisitely a time-thing, like music."
a year ago
The Marginalian
Alone Together: An Illustrated Celebration of the Art of Shared Solitude “One can never be alone enough to write,” Susan Sontag lamented in her diary. “Oh comforting...
a year ago
14
a year ago
“One can never be alone enough to write,” Susan Sontag lamented in her diary. “Oh comforting solitude, how favorable thou art to original thought!” the founding father of neuroscience exulted in considering the ideal environment for creative breakthrough. All creative people,...
The Marginalian
The New Science of Plant Intelligence and the Mystery of What Makes a Mind "Every thought that has ever passed through your brain was made possible by plants."
7 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Sacrifice and Doom' Scholars of Russian literature tell us the edition of Anton Chekhov’s letters published between 1944...
3 months ago
29
3 months ago
Scholars of Russian literature tell us the edition of Anton Chekhov’s letters published between 1944 and 1951 was heavily censored by Soviet editors, filled with ellipses that signify an excised word, phrase or sentence. Nothing surprising here. Censorship is an obligatory tool...
The Marginalian
Wonder-Sighting on Planet Earth: The Space Telescope Eye of the Scallop Inside Earth's most alien vision.
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'But, Take It From This Famous Pote [sic]' Isaac Waisberg of IWP Books has published his latest anthology of Horace translations, this time a...
11 months ago
16
11 months ago
Isaac Waisberg of IWP Books has published his latest anthology of Horace translations, this time a generous 417 versions of Ode I.5, the “Ode to Pyrrha,” dating from 1621 to 2007. The one I’m familiar with is John Milton’s, described by the poet as “rendered almost word for word...
The Marginalian
Audubon on Other Minds and the Secret Knowledge of Animals “In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with...
4 months ago
40
4 months ago
“In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear,” Henry Beston observed of other animals two generations before naturalist Sy Montgomery...
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...
6 months ago
45
6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Peter Quince at the Clavier” by Wallace Stevens appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Bards Behind Bars Reading Sartre aloud inside a maximum-security prison The post Bards Behind Bars appeared first on...
7 months ago
22
7 months ago
Reading Sartre aloud inside a maximum-security prison The post Bards Behind Bars appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
A Shelter in Time: John Berger on the Power of Music "Songs are like rivers: each follows its own course, yet all flow to the sea, from which everything...
a year ago
The Marginalian
Trauma, Growth, and How to Be Twice as Alive: Tove Jansson on the Worm and the Art of Self-Renewal "Nothing is easy when you might come apart in the middle at any moment."
5 months 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
13
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....
ribbonfarm
Protocol Entrepreneurship I’m running the Summer of Protocols program for the Ethereum Foundation again this year. Here is the...
10 months ago
4
10 months ago
I’m running the Summer of Protocols program for the Ethereum Foundation again this year. Here is the Call for Applications. I’d appreciate any help getting it in front of the right candidates. The core of it is what we’re calling Protocol Improvement Grants (PIGs): 90k for a team...
Josh Thompson
Focus: One Thing at a Time The pressure to be working on more than one thing at a time is enormous. This pressure comes from no...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
The pressure to be working on more than one thing at a time is enormous. This pressure comes from no one but me. And before I dismiss this tendency as “proof that I work too hard”, I must take another tact. It comes from a need to satisfy my ego. It is much easier to say “I did...
The American Scholar
“I Have Had My Vision” Three prompts The post “I Have Had My Vision” appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
Wuthering...
Books Read in June 2024 - "Why can't we steal the calm vegetable clairvoyance of these great rooted... Three weeks in Portugal meant less and different reading. FICTION Wolf Solent (1929), John Cowper...
6 months ago
62
6 months ago
Three weeks in Portugal meant less and different reading. FICTION Wolf Solent (1929), John Cowper Powys – among the most eccentric novels I have ever read, up there with his contemporaries D. H. Lawrence and Ronald Firbank!  I feel I should write about it; I feel I should read...
The American Scholar
A Poet of the Soil The legacy of a writer who struggled with his celebrity The post A Poet of the Soil appeared first...
3 months ago
49
3 months ago
The legacy of a writer who struggled with his celebrity The post A Poet of the Soil appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Fry Your Pizza Here’s a problem many of us first-worlders have: cold pizza. There are two options. Microwave it, or...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
Here’s a problem many of us first-worlders have: cold pizza. There are two options. Microwave it, or throw it in the toaster oven or regular oven. A microwave makes it soggy, and a regular oven takes forever to heat it up. (If you’re willing to eat it cold, may god have mercy on...
The American Scholar
Ups and Downs The post Ups and Downs appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
sbensu
Pricing APIs Lessons from AWS S3 and others on how to price APIs.
11 months ago
sbensu
Lieutenants are the limiting reagent Why don't software companies ship more products? Why do they move more slowly as they grow? What do...
a year ago
4
a year ago
Why don't software companies ship more products? Why do they move more slowly as they grow? What do we mean when we say "this company lacks focus"?
The American Scholar
Bony Ramirez Beautiful parasites The post Bony Ramirez appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The American Scholar
My Cousin Manya One survivor’s story The post My Cousin Manya appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
Josh Thompson
VCR's debug_logger and `git diff` I recently added the vcr gem to one of our repositories, and was adding tests for an external...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
I recently added the vcr gem to one of our repositories, and was adding tests for an external API. One of my tests was passing, and I wanted to commit the VCR cassette, along with the test/code that went with it. I had thought I’d rebuilt the VCR cassette a few minutes before,...
sbensu
How to: friction logs Friction logs are a technique to improve your own products and understand others. You use the...
a year ago
6
a year ago
Friction logs are a technique to improve your own products and understand others. You use the produdct the way a real user would and write down every single moment you experience some form of negative emotion.
Josh Thompson
Trip Report: New River Gorge Kristi and I are spending a few weeks in Fayetteville, WV, home of the New River Gorge. There’s...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Kristi and I are spending a few weeks in Fayetteville, WV, home of the New River Gorge. There’s fantastic climbing here. I climbed with good friends, and was absolutely humbled by how strong they all are. (My defense, at least for the next few weeks, is that I’ve not climbed...
The Elysian
My TEDx talk about the future of fiction And publishing.
6 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'What Will Become of My Diary?' “During the morning hours of the first of September 1939, war broke out between Germany and Poland...
4 months ago
38
4 months ago
“During the morning hours of the first of September 1939, war broke out between Germany and Poland and indirectly between Germany and Poland’s allies, England and France. This war will indeed bring destruction upon human civilization which merits annihilation and destruction....
Ben Borgers
5% of things go wrong
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Shitcan the Sass' George Turberville writes in his epilogue to Epitaphes, Epigrams, Songs and Sonets (1567): “I write...
7 months ago
40
7 months ago
George Turberville writes in his epilogue to Epitaphes, Epigrams, Songs and Sonets (1567): “I write but of familiar stuffe because my stile is lowe.” Today we call him a master of the “plain style,” the opposite of ornate poeticizing, along with his contemporaries George...
Wuthering...
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr's La plus secrète mémoire des hommes - one of his objectives was to be original... La plus secrète mémoire des hommes (2021) by Senegalese novelist Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, published in...
8 months ago
62
8 months ago
La plus secrète mémoire des hommes (2021) by Senegalese novelist Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, published in English as The Most Secret History of Men (2023), is the first imitation of Roberto Bolaño I have seen outside of Latin American literature.  Many reviews note that Sarr’s novel is...
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
26
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 American Scholar
This Woman’s Work Susannah Gibson opens the parlor doors on 18th-century feminism The post This Woman’s Work appeared...
3 months ago
26
3 months ago
Susannah Gibson opens the parlor doors on 18th-century feminism The post This Woman’s Work appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Make Hard Things Easier by Removing Friction Friction resists movement. Lots of things count as (negative) friction. Anything that consumes...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
Friction resists movement. Lots of things count as (negative) friction. Anything that consumes resources (time, energy, money, physical goods.) Anything that causes negative feelings (shame, doubt, guilt, fear.) Anything that could have a downside (losing money, respect, your...
The Marginalian
How to Triumph Over the Challenges of the Creative Life: Audubon’s Antidote to Despair We move through the world as surfaces shimmering with the visibilia of our accomplishments, the...
3 months ago
45
3 months ago
We move through the world as surfaces shimmering with the visibilia of our accomplishments, the undertow of our suffering invisible to passers-by. The selective collective memory we call history contributes to this willful blindness, obscuring the tremendous personal cost behind...
This Space
A modern heretic Literature can be defined by the sense of the imminence of a revelation which does not in fact...
over a year ago
48
over a year ago
Literature can be defined by the sense of the imminence of a revelation which does not in fact occur. I used this line, apparently from Borges, as an epigram to an essay in the early days of online writing. I can't remember what book it came from and after searching I found a...
Ben Borgers
FileCopy
a month ago
This Space
39 Books: 2023 This is the 39th and final post of this series. As the introduction explains, I began seeking a...
7 months ago
76
7 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...
This Space
39 Books: 2008 On January 19 of this year, I received a traumatic brain injury that for 16 years has limited my...
7 months ago
67
7 months ago
On January 19 of this year, I received a traumatic brain injury that for 16 years has limited my capacity to read. It was also the year I read two novels in which the legacy of violence presses on the form they take. Horacio Castellanos Moya's Senselessness spirals in Bernhardian...
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
30
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."
The American Scholar
In Reprise: Next, Line Please A new poetry prompt for players new and old The post In Reprise: Next, Line Please appeared first on...
2 months ago
30
2 months ago
A new poetry prompt for players new and old The post In Reprise: Next, Line Please appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Highest Kind of Verbal Exercise' John Updike published “Kenneths” in the July 5, 1958 issue of The New Yorker and collected it in his...
6 months ago
59
6 months ago
John Updike published “Kenneths” in the July 5, 1958 issue of The New Yorker and collected it in his second book of poems, Telephone Poles (1963):  “Rexroth and Patchen and Fearing—their mothers Perhaps could distinguish their sons from the others, But I am unable. My inner eye...
This Space
At home he’s a tourist: The Moment by Peter Holm Jensen Such a modest, self-effacing title, barely relieved by the blanched map on the cover. In everyday...
over a year ago
52
over a year ago
Such a modest, self-effacing title, barely relieved by the blanched map on the cover. In everyday speech, a word or two is usually added to supplement the weedy noun: people say “At this moment in time”, which is when I ask: can a moment be in anything else; a moment in lampposts...
The American Scholar
Amy Wetsch Life, magnified The post Amy Wetsch appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 days ago
Ben Borgers
Bagel Institute
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Have Less Energy to Do Wrong' On his thirtieth birthday – February 22, 1894 – Jules Renard writes in his journal: “Thirty years...
10 months ago
19
10 months ago
On his thirtieth birthday – February 22, 1894 – Jules Renard writes in his journal: “Thirty years old! Now I’m convinced I shall not escape death.”  At thirty I was still immortal, blundering through life, plan-less but confident I could transcend mere death. I don’t remember my...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Are All Potential Recruits for Anarchy' It’s an honor to be published in The New Criterion, a journal I started reading in 1986, four years...
7 months ago
57
7 months ago
It’s an honor to be published in The New Criterion, a journal I started reading in 1986, four years after it was founded by the late Hilton Kramer and Samuel Lipman. To share pages in the June issue with Gary Saul Morson, Victor Davis Hanson and other gifted writers is...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Be Able to Call It a Poem' A few poets are born into each generation. A measure of the rareness of their gift is...
a week ago
19
a week ago
A few poets are born into each generation. A measure of the rareness of their gift is the proliferation of wannabes who make poetic gestures, relish the title “poet” and write undistinguished prose. I was given an issue of American Poetry Review, a magazine I haven’t looked at in...
Anecdotal Evidence
'As Sensitive As Anyone Else' “In common with James Jones, Gina Berriault knows that ill-educated or inarticulate people are as...
8 months ago
33
8 months ago
“In common with James Jones, Gina Berriault knows that ill-educated or inarticulate people are as sensitive as anyone else. She renders their speech with a fine and subtle ear for the shy or strident inaccuracies, for the bewilderment of missed points and for the dim, sad rhythms...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Beyond the Language of the Living' “After someone dies I find it hard to delete their contact from my phone. It feels cruel somehow, as...
4 months ago
46
4 months ago
“After someone dies I find it hard to delete their contact from my phone. It feels cruel somehow, as if it was a final obliteration.”  I didn’t know others felt this way, and dismissed it as my indulgence in sentimentality. Rabbi David Wolpe’s admission comes as reassurance. I...
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
Josh Thompson
Two Things That Are Helping Me (Finally) Learn Spanish Kristi and I are in Costa Rica for the month of January. We spent two months in Buenos Aires this...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
Kristi and I are in Costa Rica for the month of January. We spent two months in Buenos Aires this summer. That means in the space of six months, I’ll have spent three months in a Spanish-speaking country, yet I’ve not made significant progress on my spanish. That’s not to say...
The American Scholar
Acting Out One tortuous journey from stage to screen The post Acting Out appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
39
7 months ago
One tortuous journey from stage to screen The post Acting Out appeared first on The American Scholar.
sbensu
Love's Executioner (book) Countertransference applies to regular conversation.
a month ago
Steven Scrawls
You Are Not Incompressible You Are Not Incompressible can be summarised as: walking, walking, walking, bit of fighting...
6 months ago
7
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...
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...
9 months ago
6
9 months ago
I’ve been slow-reading Bettany Hughes’ Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities for months now, ever since I visited the city (on Kindle, so I didn’t realize when I started that it’s 600 pages plus another 250 odd notes). It’s dense and absorbing and I’ll probably do a reflections post...
The Marginalian
Nobel-Winning Poet Joseph Brodsky on the Remedy for Existential Boredom "Try to stay passionate, leave your cool to constellations. Passion, above all, is a remedy against...
6 months ago
43
6 months ago
"Try to stay passionate, leave your cool to constellations. Passion, above all, is a remedy against boredom. Another one, of course, is pain... passion's frequent aftermath."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Companionable Room' I had a minor problem with the university library’s catalog. When I requested two books stored...
11 months ago
15
11 months ago
I had a minor problem with the university library’s catalog. When I requested two books stored off-site in the Library Service Center I got this message: “No items can fulfill the submitted request.” That made no sense and I couldn’t figure out a way around the roadblock, so I...
The Elysian
Can we create a wise & enlightened citizenry? We'll need to address cognitive biases if we want to reach Plato's ideal.
9 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Bright Books! the Perspectives to Our Weak Sights' April is the kindest and cruelest month.  Think of the births: George Herbert (April 3, 1593),...
8 months ago
66
8 months ago
April is the kindest and cruelest month.  Think of the births: George Herbert (April 3, 1593), Shakespeare (April 23, 1564), Henry Vaughan (April 17, 1621), Daniel Defoe (April 24, 1731), Edward Gibbon (April 27, 1737), William Hazlitt (April 10, 1778), Anthony Trollope (April...
The American Scholar
Paolo Arao Acts of devotion The post Paolo Arao appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
Josh Thompson
December Review, January Goals This is a follow-up from last month’s goals 1. Deepen Knowledge of Back-end Development I finished...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
This is a follow-up from last month’s goals 1. Deepen Knowledge of Back-end Development I finished OverTheWire’s Bandit series, except the last lesson, which didn’t make sense. (It does now! Turns out login shells and “regular” shells are different. I’ll take another spin at it...
Anecdotal Evidence
"The Saint’s Strange Way to Practice Death" Among the road kill I’ve tallied on Houston streets, the most common casualty is the...
10 months ago
19
10 months ago
Among the road kill I’ve tallied on Houston streets, the most common casualty is the strangely spelled opossum (from the Powhatan). The least common, incidentally, is the armadillo, with two KIAs sighted in twenty years, both being pecked at by crows. Natives here seem uncommonly...
The Marginalian
From Stardust to Sapiens: A Stunning Serenade to Our Cosmic Origins and Our Ongoing Self-Creation We were never promised any of it — this world of cottonwoods and clouds — when the Big Bang set the...
a year ago
10
a year ago
We were never promised any of it — this world of cottonwoods and clouds — when the Big Bang set the possible in motion. And yet here we are, atoms with consciousness, each of us a living improbability forged of chaos and dead stars. Children of chance, we have made ourselves into...
Wuthering...
What books am I reading this summer in the Greek philosophy readalong? Some details. Now that we are almost done with Plato, the bulkiest figure in my little Greek philosophy readalong,...
a year ago
51
a year ago
Now that we are almost done with Plato, the bulkiest figure in my little Greek philosophy readalong, I thought it would be a good idea to revisit, clarify, and puzzle over the texts that will take us to the end of the project, now that I have given the matter a little more...
The Elysian
Your ideas for improving capitalism A collection of responses to my writing prompt.
2 months ago
The Marginalian
How to Miss Loved Ones Better: The Psychology of Waiting and Withstanding Absence On "the capacity to bear frustration without turning against one’s needy self, or against the person...
4 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Consider Seriously My Condition' Soon after he is shipwrecked on an island off the coast of Venezuela and has finished...
a year ago
33
a year ago
Soon after he is shipwrecked on an island off the coast of Venezuela and has finished salvaging everything useful from the wreckage, Robinson Crusoe builds a calendar:  “After I had been there about ten or twelve days, it came into my thoughts that I should lose my reckoning of...
This Space
Drowning is Fine by Darren Allen For reasons unclear to me at the time I re-read several novels by Aharon Appelfeld, the author born...
over a year ago
42
over a year ago
For reasons unclear to me at the time I re-read several novels by Aharon Appelfeld, the author born in 1932 to a German-speaking Jewish family in what was also Paul Celan’s hometown, Czernowitz, then in Romania, now in Ukraine, and who wrote exclusively in Hebrew after he had...
Josh Thompson
Content but Restless There is tension between being content with what you have, and striving for more. We have all heard...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
There is tension between being content with what you have, and striving for more. We have all heard the “serenity prayer”: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference. This prayer is...
The Elysian
Do we still want the future desired by the past? Why three socialist utopian novels are still relevant 100 years later.
3 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Amuse and Gratify Her Own Self' In her first collection, A Good Time Was Had By All (1937), Stevie Smith includes a couplet already...
a year ago
17
a year ago
In her first collection, A Good Time Was Had By All (1937), Stevie Smith includes a couplet already suggesting themes that would go on preoccupying her:   “All things pass Love and mankind is grass”.   In scripture, grass is the default metaphor for the transience of life. In the...
The Elysian
What my cooperative media ecosystem could look like My vision for a federated nation of independent writer states.
3 days ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Maintaining a Stable and Orderly Civilization' On the same day I removed all the books from one of the bookcases, dusted the shelves...
7 months ago
52
7 months ago
On the same day I removed all the books from one of the bookcases, dusted the shelves and reorganized the volumes, one of our cats leaped into an open cupboard in the kitchen. One of the four pegs supporting the middle shelf was missing and Trane’s weight tipped it enough so a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'They Will Leave Behind Trenches' “You wouldn’t give up utopia it was too nourishing seductive / For mommy’s boys the heirs of fortune...
2 months ago
39
2 months ago
“You wouldn’t give up utopia it was too nourishing seductive / For mommy’s boys the heirs of fortune heirs / To the bloody myths of the twentieth city.”  Today is the centenary of Polish poet and essayist Zbigniew Herbert. The Anglophone world has been fortunate. Herbert’s poems...
Josh Thompson
How To Take Back Your Attention On The Internet with uBlock note: this page has 17Mb of gifs and images. I don’t really want to take the time to manually trim...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
note: this page has 17Mb of gifs and images. I don’t really want to take the time to manually trim the gifs from >3Mb/each to <1Mb each, so I didn’t. If you’re on mobile, or trying to conserve data, you might want to come back to this one later. I value my attention and focus. I...
The Marginalian
Albert Camus on How to Live Whole in a Broken World Born into a World War to live through another, Albert Camus (November 7, 1913–January 4, 1960) died...
6 months ago
42
6 months ago
Born into a World War to live through another, Albert Camus (November 7, 1913–January 4, 1960) died in a car crash with an unused train ticket to the same destination in his pocket. Just three years earlier, he had become the second-youngest laureate of the Nobel Prize, awarded...
ben-mini
Commoditize Your Complements To the man who coined the phrase, “nothing in life is free”… have you been on GitHub...
4 months ago
8
4 months ago
To the man who coined the phrase, “nothing in life is free”… have you been on GitHub lately? Open-source is software that anyone can freely view, use, modify, and share because its code is publicly available on sites like Github and Huggingface. My last coding project alone was...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not At All Reliable for Climbing On' Decades ago I interviewed a guy who had climbed all forty-six of the high peaks in New...
9 months ago
17
9 months ago
Decades ago I interviewed a guy who had climbed all forty-six of the high peaks in New York’s Adirondack Mountains in his bare feet. Surprisingly, he completed the shoeless stunt without serious injury. It was one of those Ripley’s-Believe-It-or-Not accomplishments that seems...
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
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Used to Stand in Front of the Windows' In my dream I was staring through the window of a bookstore, worried that sunlight would bleach the...
12 months ago
24
12 months ago
In my dream I was staring through the window of a bookstore, worried that sunlight would bleach the color from the cover of a book. At the center of a display that seemed to be made of cotton gauze was not just any book but a first edition of Ulysses. In the rare books collection...
Blog -...
Welcome to Anchor Point Blog I am starting this blog for one primary reason: my belief that self-discovery does not have to be...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
I am starting this blog for one primary reason: my belief that self-discovery does not have to be a solo journey. Through this blog men can connect to resources that will help to enhance their personal development. Many of these resources have deeply impacted my growth, and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Seeing Means Going Over the Details' Isaac Waisberg, the internet’s librarian-in-chief, has published two passages by...
a year ago
52
a year ago
Isaac Waisberg, the internet’s librarian-in-chief, has published two passages by Émile-Auguste Chartier (1868-1951), the French proto-blogger better known as Alain. He was a professor of philosophy whose students included Raymond Aron and Simone Weil. Both excerpts are taken from...
Ben Borgers
School But Online
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Pick Up a Machete and Start Exploring' A splendid day for American literature: born on March 1 are Ralph Ellison (1914), Howard Nemerov...
10 months ago
24
10 months ago
A splendid day for American literature: born on March 1 are Ralph Ellison (1914), Howard Nemerov (1920) and Richard Wilbur (1921). I’m reminded of how important contemporary American writers were to me when I was young, in the 60s and 70s. Everything was new and promising, and I...
Escaping Flatland
Bring everything into the conversation layer A conversation is not an interface that lets you get to know each other; it is an interface that...
2 days ago
21
2 days ago
A conversation is not an interface that lets you get to know each other; it is an interface that lets you savor and get enriched by the Otherness of each other. The richer the conversation becomes, the more this Otherness can be expressed and explored.
ribbonfarm
There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm I’m a little late to the party, but I just finished the wonderfully imaginative There Is No...
8 months ago
5
8 months ago
I’m a little late to the party, but I just finished the wonderfully imaginative There Is No Antimemetics Division (2020) by qntm. The premise is that our world is full of things with antimemetic properties. An antimeme is “an idea with self-censoring properties; an idea which, by...
Escaping Flatland
Swimming in July Just the pure physical joy of thrashing your arms around in water. To fill the kid’s buckets and...
5 months ago
58
5 months ago
Just the pure physical joy of thrashing your arms around in water. To fill the kid’s buckets and throw it at the sun—the way the water falls apart into drops, and then into mist, the way a rainbow appears for a second and is gone.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Books, Books, Books' The name I remembered but not what he had written, which is hardly unusual when the writer...
a year ago
10
a year ago
The name I remembered but not what he had written, which is hardly unusual when the writer in question was first encountered in childhood and his readability hasn’t survived into adulthood. Very young children pay attention to the work, not its author. In this case, “Wynken,...
Ben Borgers
I’m a Sucker for the Brand
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Double Flame: Octavio Paz on Love “Love is a bet, a wild one, placed on freedom. Not my own; the freedom of the Other… A knot made of...
a year ago
43
a year ago
“Love is a bet, a wild one, placed on freedom. Not my own; the freedom of the Other… A knot made of two intertwined freedoms.” We love to forget ourselves, but also to remember what we are: mortal creatures lustful of meaning, radiant with life, eternally alone and eternally...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Fragility of Happiness' Christopher Carduff, books editor at the Wall Street Journal, asked me to review a new translation...
a year ago
11
a year ago
Christopher Carduff, books editor at the Wall Street Journal, asked me to review a new translation of a Russian novel due for publication in November. The proofs arrived on Thursday and I sent Chris an email letting him know I was already reading the book. The email bounced back...
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
37
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...
Josh Thompson
A Five-Hour Experiment Josh Kaufman wrote an excellent book called The First 20 Hours. In it, he carefully plots out a...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
Josh Kaufman wrote an excellent book called The First 20 Hours. In it, he carefully plots out a handful of experiments to acquire a reasonable amount of skill in a new thing in twenty hours. He studied yoga, windsurfing, programming, Colemak typing, a form of Chinese chess...
Josh Thompson
My Good Friends (Who Don't Know Me) Rumor has it you become like those you spend time with. Or “birds of a feather flock together”, or...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
Rumor has it you become like those you spend time with. Or “birds of a feather flock together”, or “you are what you eat”. Maybe that last one was Hannibal Lector, having an old friend for dinner. Anyway, the person that you are is influenced by the people you spend time with....
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 356 ...
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Our Instinctual Taste for Periodicity and Return' I got a kick out of Damian at A Sunday of Liberty reveling in a rhyme that seems...
a year ago
16
a year ago
I got a kick out of Damian at A Sunday of Liberty reveling in a rhyme that seems genetically implanted in American kids, regardless of age or geography:  “Greasy, grimy gopher guts! Little dirty birdie feet!”   As in any folk tradition, variants abound. This is the version I grew...
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 363 ...
3 days ago
Josh Thompson
Job Hunting Recommendations for Early-Career Software Developers I’ve distilled a number of conversations into this post. Some of it is specific to getting a remote...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
I’ve distilled a number of conversations into this post. Some of it is specific to getting a remote job and working remotely, but all of it is applicable for any kind of software-related role. It’s probably applicable to non-software roles, but this is where most of my exprience...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Possible Verdicts Are Five' As binary thinking -- a rush to judgment about books, food, our fellow humans and just about...
a year ago
12
a year ago
As binary thinking -- a rush to judgment about books, food, our fellow humans and just about everything else -- becomes harsher and more fashionable, interesting conversation withers. Have you noticed how quickly people dismiss a subject before it has been pondered and probed?...
ribbonfarm
Ribbonfarm is Retiring After several years of keeping it going in semi-retired, keep-the-lights-on (KTLO) mode, I’ve...
3 months ago
8
3 months ago
After several years of keeping it going in semi-retired, keep-the-lights-on (KTLO) mode, I’ve decided to officially fully retire this blog. The ribbonfarm.com domain and all links will remain active, but there will be no new content after November 13th, 2024, which happens to be...
The Elysian
Humanity from the perspective of robots Talking points for our literary salon next week.
8 months ago
Ben Borgers
Pluto was 2006??
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The War Had Won' “The war had taken his innocence and replaced it with something else. That something – ‘the destined...
a year ago
16
a year ago
“The war had taken his innocence and replaced it with something else. That something – ‘the destined anguish’ - revealed itself gradually and became a presence in his poetry for the rest of his life.”  Margi Blunden, speaking in 2014, is remembering her father, the poet and Great...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Line or Two Worth Keeping All Too Rare' “He has never been much of a poet for opening magic casements -- ordinary dirty storm windows,...
a year ago
11
a year ago
“He has never been much of a poet for opening magic casements -- ordinary dirty storm windows, rather.”  That’s X.J. Kennedy on Kingsley Amis, clearly seeing his own reflection in that dirty window. Both are proof that the best writers of light verse or comic poetry are serious...
Ben Borgers
JumboCode plans for Head of Engineering
a year ago
Escaping Flatland
Don’t sacrifice the wrong thing I began emailing essays into the void on 30 May 2021, 53 days before Rebecka, our youngest daughter...
7 months ago
79
7 months ago
I began emailing essays into the void on 30 May 2021, 53 days before Rebecka, our youngest daughter was born. This writing experiment has followed roughly the same trajectory as the baby. In 2021, Escaping Flatland's prime achievement was putting a few toys in its mouth (a...
sbensu
Breaking changes in JSON APIs A collection of common breaking changes to JSON APIs for you to keep in mind as you design.
a year ago
The American Scholar
All Talk Ease of communication will not save us The post All Talk appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
9
a month ago
Ease of communication will not save us The post All Talk appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Last Laugh The post Last Laugh appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
Ben Borgers
Productivity YouTubers
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Letter to Two Climbers (Part 2) Hello again, it’s me! We met climbing a few days ago. I wrote you a letter, but didn’t want to leave...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Hello again, it’s me! We met climbing a few days ago. I wrote you a letter, but didn’t want to leave it on such a pessimistic note. First, I commend you both for getting out there. You both invested a lot in making that weekend happen. You acquired the correct tools, and spent...
This Space
39 Books: 1996 It's a commonplace that in reading novels one can escape the ravages of time. In 1994, I borrowed my...
8 months ago
39
8 months ago
It's a commonplace that in reading novels one can escape the ravages of time. In 1994, I borrowed my student housemate's innocent-looking hardback edition of Nicholson Baker's The Fermata in which Arno Strine writes about how he can actually stop time. The title refers to the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Single Line of Calm' Judged solely as a liquid asset, the most valuable book I ever held was a history of Argentina...
a month ago
17
a month ago
Judged solely as a liquid asset, the most valuable book I ever held was a history of Argentina borrowed from the public library in Schenectady, N.Y. At home I discovered the previous reader had marked his place with a twenty-dollar bill. I returned the book but not the cash. It...
The Marginalian
Between Matter and Spirit: Psychoanalyst Allen Wheelis on the Substance of What We Are "We are carriers of spirit... into a future unknown, unknowable, and in continual creation."
a year ago
The Marginalian
John Quincy Adams on Impostor Syndrome and the True Measure of Success “You will never get any more out of life than you expect,” Bruce Lee wrote to himself. All...
7 months ago
62
7 months ago
“You will never get any more out of life than you expect,” Bruce Lee wrote to himself. All expectation is a story of the possible. Every person lives inside a story of who they are, what they are worth, and what is possible for their life, and suffers in proportion to how...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Old Man or Young Man Mad About Literature' Sometimes an eccentric judgment – one that reflects the critic’s discernment, not merely his wish to...
8 months ago
33
8 months ago
Sometimes an eccentric judgment – one that reflects the critic’s discernment, not merely his wish to provoke and attract attention – proves useful to the common reader. Take a sentence from Ford Madox Ford's final book, The March of Literature (1939): “The modern English language...
Ben Borgers
The Cost of Building an Idea
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Moon and the Yew Tree: Patti Smith Reads Sylvia Plath’s Haunting Portrait of Depression "This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary."
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Dead Wall or a Thick Mist' Reading occasionally reveals a pleasing convergence of thought between one writer, separated by...
a year ago
15
a year ago
Reading occasionally reveals a pleasing convergence of thought between one writer, separated by centuries and continents, and another. The happy reader is their ambassador and beneficiary. I was again reading Nabokov’s brief, death-haunted novel from 1972, Transparent Things. Its...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Right Things in the Right Order' “But surely the stories of Chekhov or the paintings of de Chirico move us not only because they are...
a year ago
14
a year ago
“But surely the stories of Chekhov or the paintings of de Chirico move us not only because they are so well done, but because in each case the artist has arranged exactly the right things in the right order. The choice of subject matter has been at least half of the achievement....
Ben Borgers
JumboCode+
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'I’m Tickled to Death When They Call Me Comic' Like porkchops, fame is highly perishable. Writers once read by millions – think of James Michener...
9 months ago
20
9 months ago
Like porkchops, fame is highly perishable. Writers once read by millions – think of James Michener and, at a far more accomplished level, James Gould Cozzens – have evaporated from literary memory. Newspaper writing and journalism in general are especially biodegradable. Who...
The American Scholar
“What a Strange Path” Three new prompts The post “What a Strange Path” appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 weeks ago
The Marginalian
The Other Significant Others: Living and Loving Outside the Confines of Conventional Friendship and... "While we weaken friendships by expecting too little of them, we undermine romantic relationships by...
10 months ago
Josh Thompson
Turing Prep appendix: Troubleshooting Errors Pretty much any time I hear the same question twice, I will try to add a section here for it, and...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
Pretty much any time I hear the same question twice, I will try to add a section here for it, and make it as findable by future students as possible. Do you have a question not answered here? PLEASE send me a DM in Slack or @ me (I’m josh_t in the Turing slack). I’ll take a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'You Must Start Rewriting in Your Head' “Rhythm is never effortless. To achieve it, you must start rewriting in your head and then continue...
11 months ago
19
11 months ago
“Rhythm is never effortless. To achieve it, you must start rewriting in your head and then continue rewriting on the page. The hallmark of a seductive style is to extend natural speech rhythm over the distance of a complex sentence.” When I applied for my first job on a...
The American Scholar
In the Endless Arctic Light A journey to the far north of Norway means confronting our changing climate The post In the Endless...
a month ago
15
a month ago
A journey to the far north of Norway means confronting our changing climate The post In the Endless Arctic Light appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Be Made Out of Emotions, Colors, Life Itself' “[Robert Conquest] and his two closest friends, Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin, proved their...
5 months ago
45
5 months ago
“[Robert Conquest] and his two closest friends, Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin, proved their vocation by playing the games with language and perception that poets play, three Musketeers at a time when not much else was disturbing the quiet little cemetery of English...
Wuthering...
Many of Plato's early Socratic dialogues - It was quite lovely. I’ve been enjoying Plato’s dialogues recently.  I’d read some of them before, at university or...
a year ago
41
a year ago
I’ve been enjoying Plato’s dialogues recently.  I’d read some of them before, at university or during my last Greek phase 25 years ago, and this time I hope to read almost all of them. I will make some notes on them in a few posts.  Give them a tag if nothing else, and make some...
The Marginalian
The Merger Self, the Seeker Self, and the Lifelong Challenge of Balancing Intimacy and Independence Each time I see a sparrow inside an airport, I am seized with tenderness for the bird, for living so...
8 months ago
60
8 months ago
Each time I see a sparrow inside an airport, I am seized with tenderness for the bird, for living so acutely and concretely a paradox that haunts our human lives in myriad guises — the difficulty of discerning comfort from entrapment, freedom from peril. It is a paradox rooted in...
This Space
"When now?" Out of curiosity, I read a few novels that over the last year have received the highest praise on...
over a year ago
52
over a year ago
Out of curiosity, I read a few novels that over the last year have received the highest praise on social media and literary podcasts, and have appeared multiple times in newspaper Books of the Year choices and on prize shortlists, and one that even won a prize. I wanted to see...
This Space
39 Books: 1985 The first novel I read was Twice Shy by Dick Francis, reportedly the Queen Mother's favourite...
8 months ago
57
8 months ago
The first novel I read was Twice Shy by Dick Francis, reportedly the Queen Mother's favourite novelist (which tells you all you need to know about the intellectual energies of British Royal Family). It was the hardback edition below and tells the story of an Olympic champion...
The Elysian
Asia and the future of the nation state A discussion with Benjamin Perry.
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Soul of Reading!' Don’t invariably mistake a digression for sloppy storytelling. True, a clumsy storyteller will...
3 months ago
25
3 months ago
Don’t invariably mistake a digression for sloppy storytelling. True, a clumsy storyteller will digress out of sheer rambling confusion and indifference to his audience. My father was like that. We arrived at some destination and he would promptly relate the details of the...
The Elysian
Let's read the Terra Ignota series together Our summer reading is Ada Palmer's feat of utopian worldbuilding.
6 months ago
Steven Scrawls
Doomr Most of my creations can be contained within an RSS feed; Doomr cannot. You'll want to check the...
11 months ago
4
11 months ago
Most of my creations can be contained within an RSS feed; Doomr cannot. You'll want to check the website for this one.
Ben Borgers
A Sixth Sense for Errors
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Turning from Peril to Possibility: Ecological Superhero Christiana Figueres on the Spirituality of... Few things have maimed the spirit of Western civilization more than the myth of our expulsion from...
a year ago
42
a year ago
Few things have maimed the spirit of Western civilization more than the myth of our expulsion from the Garden of Eden — a deeply damaging story about human nature, damning us and our relationship to nature. Unthinkingly, we have perpetuated this story in our present narrative...
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
61
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...
Wuthering...
Notes on Aristotle's Poetics - What are the conditions on which the tragic effect depends? Aristotle did not invent literary criticism with Poetics(late 4th c. BCE, maybe) – we just read The...
over a year ago
41
over a year ago
Aristotle did not invent literary criticism with Poetics(late 4th c. BCE, maybe) – we just read The Frogs – but for centuries it was the base of Western literary criticism, not a source of insight but rather a set of rules.  The Unities, the Tragic Flaw, catharsis, the ranking of...
The Marginalian
Beyond Either/Or: Kierkegaard on the Passion for Possibility and the Key to Resetting Relationships "Were I to wish for anything I would not wish for wealth and power, but for the passion of the...
5 months ago
35
5 months ago
"Were I to wish for anything I would not wish for wealth and power, but for the passion of the possible, that eye which everywhere, ever young, ever burning, sees possibility."
Ben Borgers
iPad Impatience
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
3:00 a.m. Radio
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Ordinary Life Where Things Make Sense' An old friend back in upstate New York and I were texting. We worked years ago as reporters for the...
a year ago
10
a year ago
An old friend back in upstate New York and I were texting. We worked years ago as reporters for the same newspaper. She was married then to her second husband, who had multiple sclerosis and died slowly and horribly. When she had to  go out of town, I would stay with him...
Ben Borgers
How /swipes Works
over a year ago
The Elysian
Week 6: Examples of Pitches
9 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Gleams Like a Warm Homestead Light' Here is epigram 1.33 by Marcus Valerius Martialis (c. 38-102 A.D.), better known in English as...
2 months ago
33
2 months ago
Here is epigram 1.33 by Marcus Valerius Martialis (c. 38-102 A.D.), better known in English as Martial:  “In private she mourns not the late-lamented; If someone’s by, her tears leap forth on call. Sorrow, my dear, is not so easily rented. They are true tears that without witness...
The American Scholar
A Story for Christmas The post A Story for Christmas appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
The Elysian
Could AI make us wise? An alternative to the internet making us stupid.
9 months ago
The American Scholar
As I Walked Out One Morning The post As I Walked Out One Morning appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
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
33
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...
Josh Thompson
Cheap fix to night-time teeth grinding A few years ago, I found out I grind me teeth at night. Kristi says it sounds like I’m chewing...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
A few years ago, I found out I grind me teeth at night. Kristi says it sounds like I’m chewing marbles. Others who grind their teeth give themselves headaches, or wake themselves up at night. You can’t really stop yourself from grinding your teeth, since you’re asleep. You can...
The American Scholar
“The Imaginary Iceberg” by Elizabeth Bishop Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Imaginary Iceberg” by Elizabeth Bishop appeared first on...
8 months ago
28
8 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Imaginary Iceberg” by Elizabeth Bishop appeared first on The American Scholar.
Steven Scrawls
Quicksilver and Clay Quicksilver and Clay Like everyone else, I walk around the world in a body made of quicksilver and...
12 months ago
6
12 months ago
Quicksilver and Clay Like everyone else, I walk around the world in a body made of quicksilver and clay. The pieces of my body—my sense of humor, my beliefs, my opinions and artistic sensibilities and worldviews, everything—combine to present a cohesive self to be...
The Marginalian
Blue Is the Color of Desire: The Science, Poetry, and Wonder of the Bowerbird For all the enchantment the color blue has cast upon humanity, no animal has fallen under its spell...
a year ago
59
a year ago
For all the enchantment the color blue has cast upon humanity, no animal has fallen under its spell more hopelessly than the bowerbird, whose very survival hinges on blue. In a small clearing on the forest floor, the male weaves twigs and branches into an elaborate bower, which...
Ben Borgers
elk.sh
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
2020 Annual Review please note: i’m publishing this far after it was drafted, which was in January 2021. It’s being...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
please note: i’m publishing this far after it was drafted, which was in January 2021. It’s being published in June 2022 - I’m trying to back-fill ‘annual reviews’, I never finished this one or published it, until now. Is it even possible to mention a 2020 review without somehow...
Josh Thompson
On Cleaner Controllers A few days ago, I worked on a project that was mostly about serving up basic store data (modeled...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
A few days ago, I worked on a project that was mostly about serving up basic store data (modeled after Etsy) to an API. We had a few dozen end-points, and all responses were in JSON. Most of the action happened inside of our controllers, and as you might imagine, our routes.rb...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Poem Calls For a Formal Reading' I swore off poetry readings a long time ago for reasons of health. The atmosphere of pressurized...
6 months ago
37
6 months ago
I swore off poetry readings a long time ago for reasons of health. The atmosphere of pressurized solipsism makes it difficult for me to breathe. Sugary adulation induces diabetic comas. Free verse is emetic and I’m allergic to hipsters but Thursday evening I broke my vow and went...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Joker; One Who Breaks a Jest' When I encountered the word witcracker in Much Ado About Nothing, I marked it for further use and...
a year ago
12
a year ago
When I encountered the word witcracker in Much Ado About Nothing, I marked it for further use and found myself silently singing it to the tune of “Matchmaker,Matchmaker” from Fiddler on the Roof: “Witcracker, witcracker, / Make me a wit . . .” In Shakespeare’s Act V, Scene 4,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Bubbles and Chuckles Along' “Persistently obscure writers will usually be found to be defective human beings.”  A truth I had...
2 months ago
33
2 months ago
“Persistently obscure writers will usually be found to be defective human beings.”  A truth I had been waiting to hear for much of my life. Willful obscurity (which is not the same as complexity) is favored by writers contemptuous of readers. Avant-gardistes often fancy...
Anecdotal Evidence
''He Knew It Was All Wrong for the Season' Once I listened to a guy who had decided to stop drinking while sitting alone in a diner eating his...
2 weeks ago
18
2 weeks ago
Once I listened to a guy who had decided to stop drinking while sitting alone in a diner eating his Christmas dinner, separated from his wife and children. He recalled the moment with good humor. What had depressed him was eating canned corn. He had grown up associating good food...
Josh Thompson
How to complete a project Most of us have goals. And we usually don’t reach any of them. The Minimum Viable Product “concept”...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Most of us have goals. And we usually don’t reach any of them. The Minimum Viable Product “concept” has helped me with some goals, and it could be helpful to you. It’s a simple concept: When starting something new, figure out what the minimum investment would get you the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Dead in Their Silences Keep Me in Memory' Edwin Muir (1887-1959) I first knew as the translator with his wife Willa of Kafka’s novels...
a year ago
11
a year ago
Edwin Muir (1887-1959) I first knew as the translator with his wife Willa of Kafka’s novels and stories. I remember chancing on The Castle at the public library in the mid-sixties, knowing nothing about Kafka. Only now do I appreciate the debts incurred – to Kafka, to the Muirs....
The American Scholar
“The Pulley” by George Herbert Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Pulley” by George Herbert appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
42
3 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Pulley” by George Herbert appeared first on The American Scholar.
sbensu
High Variance Management How should you manage a team that is trying to achieve results out of the ordinary?
a year ago
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
20
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 American Scholar
The Diagnostician of Despair Why Rousseau believed that Enlightenment values would lead us to ruin The post The Diagnostician of...
3 weeks ago
25
3 weeks ago
Why Rousseau believed that Enlightenment values would lead us to ruin The post The Diagnostician of Despair appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Poets Who Are Plain and Gladsome' Being or pretending to be a philistine is great fun. It was one of Philip Larkin’s favorite ruses...
9 months ago
36
9 months ago
Being or pretending to be a philistine is great fun. It was one of Philip Larkin’s favorite ruses (“Books are a load of crap”). It’s certain to rile the pompous and pretentious, so all you have to do is sit back and enjoy the sputtering. I’ve happened on a first-rate anthology of...
The Marginalian
The Dalai Lama’s Ethical and Ecological Philosophy for the Next Generation, Illustrated "We are all interconnected in the universe, and from this, universal responsibility arises......
a year ago
56
a year ago
"We are all interconnected in the universe, and from this, universal responsibility arises... Everyone has the responsibility to develop a happier world."
Astral Codex Ten
Indulge Your Internet Addiction By Reading About Internet Addiction ...
a month ago
Steven Scrawls
Supposedly-Deceased Intellectuals Found Living at Resort ‘Small Village’ of Supposedly-Deceased Intellectuals Found Alive, Thriving at Caribbean...
5 months ago
4
5 months ago
‘Small Village’ of Supposedly-Deceased Intellectuals Found Alive, Thriving at Caribbean Resort Gabriel Martinez, a 35-year-old confectioner living in the Cayman Islands, thought he was posting a simple promotional photo when he snapped a picture of his ‘cocoa-banana-surprise’ and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Was Only Coming True' In the final year of his life, Clive James published a book-length poem, The River in the Sky...
a year ago
67
a year ago
In the final year of his life, Clive James published a book-length poem, The River in the Sky (2018), a dying man’s last fling. The title refers to the Japanese phrase for the Milky Way. It’s mostly autobiography, a book of well-rehearsed memories, largely unstructured, much of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Belonged Essentially to the Order of Wags' A gift I prize is seeing the humor in writers not taxonomically labeled “Humorists.” If you tell me...
10 months ago
55
10 months ago
A gift I prize is seeing the humor in writers not taxonomically labeled “Humorists.” If you tell me a piece by S.J. Pearlman has made you laugh my response is, “Enjoy yourself.” I don’t find Pearlman as funny as I did when I was a kid, though I’m happy for you. But if you tell me...
The American Scholar
The Baritone as Democrat How Lawrence Tibbett prophesied the Metropolitan Opera crisis of today The post The Baritone as...
a month ago
29
a month ago
How Lawrence Tibbett prophesied the Metropolitan Opera crisis of today The post The Baritone as Democrat appeared first on The American Scholar.
ben-mini
Building FirstMover I had one month to find a place to live in Manhattan. I reached out to friends for tips, and nearly...
3 months ago
7
3 months ago
I had one month to find a place to live in Manhattan. I reached out to friends for tips, and nearly all of them pointed me to StreetEasy, the Zillow-owned NYC real estate search platform. Some of my more Type-A friends gave me extra helpful advice: Narrow your search to 2-4...
The Marginalian
Winnicott on the Qualities of a Healthy Mind and a Healthy Relationship "A sign of health in the mind is the ability of one individual to enter imaginatively and yet...
4 months ago
43
4 months ago
"A sign of health in the mind is the ability of one individual to enter imaginatively and yet accurately into the thoughts and feelings and hopes and fears of another person; also to allow the other person to do the same to us."
Josh Thompson
Act a Fool, or: Motion vs. Action If you’ve started reading this article, but have only two minutes, don’t read what I’m writing. Go...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
If you’ve started reading this article, but have only two minutes, don’t read what I’m writing. Go read this article by James clear. It’s called “ The Mistake Smart People Make: Being In Motion vs. Taking Action”. I’ve linked it a third time here. Go read it. James starts with...
The Marginalian
A Parliament of Owls and a Murder of Crows: How Groups of Birds Got Their Names, with Wondrous... Language is an instrument of great precision and poignancy — our best tool for telling each other...
a year ago
15
a year ago
Language is an instrument of great precision and poignancy — our best tool for telling each other what the world is and what we are, for conveying the blueness of blue and the wonder of being alive. But it is also a thing of great pliancy and creativity — a living reminder that...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Leave Him, Full of Envy' Without resorting to clues, who do you think Eugenio Montale is talking about:  “He is a strong,...
a year ago
13
a year ago
Without resorting to clues, who do you think Eugenio Montale is talking about:  “He is a strong, cordial, human man, whom one seems to have always known.”   One hint: it’s a poet. Among major poets, the pickings are slim. Strong? Scratch Cavafy. Cordial? There goes Frost. “Human...
The American Scholar
The Importance of Being Different A travel writer’s education The post The Importance of Being Different appeared first on The...
8 months ago
79
8 months ago
A travel writer’s education The post The Importance of Being Different appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Reading with RSS
over a year ago
Wuthering...
The Story of the Stone, volume 3 - melodrama, drinking games, and "a convocation of bees and... I am two-thirds through Cao Xueqin’s enormous The Story of the Stone (c. 1760), volume 3 of the...
a month ago
29
a month ago
I am two-thirds through Cao Xueqin’s enormous The Story of the Stone (c. 1760), volume 3 of the David Hawkes translation, and the next twenty chapters have arrived at the library so I had better write this chunk up. In this big middle section a number of minor or even...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Man of the World Among Ascetics' T.S. Eliot died sixty years today. It’s a date marked on my internal calendar. My junior-high...
5 days ago
10
5 days ago
T.S. Eliot died sixty years today. It’s a date marked on my internal calendar. My junior-high school had a bookstore housed in a closet of a room off the cafeteria. I must have read about Eliot’s death in the newspaper and a few days later bought a paperback copy of his Selected...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Dull Night in a Buffalo Hotel' When writing journalism, H.L. Mencken occasionally practiced what I think of as an informal form of...
8 months ago
36
8 months ago
When writing journalism, H.L. Mencken occasionally practiced what I think of as an informal form of Impressionism. He would organize isolated bits of description, usually snapshots of people, without explicit narration or formal structure. The effect, sometimes satirical, was...
Steven Scrawls
Care doesn't scale Care Doesn’t Scale I met a social worker whose job was to look after four orphaned children. She’d...
2 months ago
8
2 months ago
Care Doesn’t Scale I met a social worker whose job was to look after four orphaned children. She’d alternate with her coworkers spending 24 hours at a time living with the kids, effectively acting as their parent. The children, unsurprisingly, had a lot of trauma and so her job...
Steven Scrawls
Word Rot Word Rot Unless you are extraordinarily unfortunate, every problem you ever face will have been...
a year ago
7
a year ago
Word Rot Unless you are extraordinarily unfortunate, every problem you ever face will have been faced in some form by someone who came before you. That person may have already shared the story of that challenge, and that story might have melded with other tales to form collective...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Deaf Unto the Suggestions of Tale-bearers' “Though the Quickness of thine Ear were able to reach the noise of the Moon, which some think it...
10 months ago
52
10 months ago
“Though the Quickness of thine Ear were able to reach the noise of the Moon, which some think it maketh in it rapid revolution; though the number of thy Ears should equal Argus his Eyes . . .”  The first surgery on my left ear was fifty years ago, prompted by a perpetually...
The American Scholar
A Messy Mix The post A Messy Mix appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago