Josh Thompson
December Review, January Goals
This is a follow-up from last month’s goals
1. Deepen Knowledge of Back-end Development
I finished...
over a year ago
This is a follow-up from last month’s goals
1. Deepen Knowledge of Back-end Development
I finished OverTheWire’s Bandit series, except the last lesson, which didn’t make sense. (It does now! Turns out login shells and “regular” shells are different. I’ll take another spin at it...
Anecdotal Evidence
'And Here the Nothingness Shows Through'
I watched an
old favorite, Laurel and Hardy’s 1933 short Me and My Pal. It’s Oliver’s wedding day...
8 months ago
I watched an
old favorite, Laurel and Hardy’s 1933 short Me and My Pal. It’s Oliver’s wedding day and his best man, Stanley, gives him
a jigsaw puzzle as a wedding gift. Oliver dismisses it at first as “childish
balderdash” and promptly gets hooked putting it together along with,...
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
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,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Dark But Festive'
I grew up in
the Age of Magazines. My parents, who were not book readers, subscribed at
various...
7 months ago
I grew up in
the Age of Magazines. My parents, who were not book readers, subscribed at
various times to Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, Time, Life, Look, Saturday Evening Post and National Geographic, not to mention those periodicals subscribed to by my
mother (McCall’s,...
Steven Scrawls
The Firefly Artist
The Firefly Artist
Note: it’s a metaphor. I’m not calling for mass firefly
imprisonment.
Two hours...
a year ago
The Firefly Artist
Note: it’s a metaphor. I’m not calling for mass firefly
imprisonment.
Two hours after dusk, a crowd gathered by the dozens, by the
hundreds, to see the firefly artist’s yearly performance. They spread
out blankets in the clearing, sharing snacks by the light of...
The American Scholar
Our Pets, Our Plates
In defense of the furred and the hoofed
The post Our Pets, Our Plates appeared first on The American...
6 months ago
In defense of the furred and the hoofed
The post Our Pets, Our Plates appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Love’s Work: Philosopher Gillian Rose on the Value of Getting It Wrong
"You may be weaker than the whole world but you are always stronger than yourself. Let me send my...
a year ago
"You may be weaker than the whole world but you are always stronger than yourself. Let me send my power against my power... Let me discover what it is that I want and fear from love. Power and love, might and grace."
Josh Thompson
Type. Publish. Done.
Yesterday I read How the Hell do I Prioritize Work, Blog & Find Balance.
The author of the letter is...
over a year ago
Yesterday I read How the Hell do I Prioritize Work, Blog & Find Balance.
The author of the letter is a busy, accomplished guy and still manages to write regularly.
He said, in short:
I sit down, and I write. I’ve done it a lot, so I’m not bad at it. I don’t often proof read my...
The Perry Bible...
The Good Knight
The post The Good Knight appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
6 months ago
The post The Good Knight appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
Ben Borgers
College CS Classes Are Tragically Dull
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Cancer
The post Cancer appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The post Cancer appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
A Design Improvement for Our Communal Showers
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
RailsConf Presentation: 'Junior' Developers are a Solution to Many of your Problems
Did this talk resonate and you want to implement some of the ideas at your company? I might be able...
over a year ago
Did this talk resonate and you want to implement some of the ideas at your company? I might be able to help. Shoot me an email at joshthompson@hey.com or book some time to talk at https://calendly.com/joshthompson/coffee.
This talk is available on railsconf.org, here:...
Escaping Flatland
Don’t sacrifice the wrong thing
I began emailing essays into the void on 30 May 2021, 53 days before Rebecka, our youngest daughter...
6 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...
Josh Thompson
Career advice for Millenials. (ugh. I hate this title)
Hah! You thought
I had career advice?
Not quite.
Christian Bonilla writes one of the best blogs...
over a year ago
Hah! You thought
I had career advice?
Not quite.
Christian Bonilla writes one of the best blogs I’ve ever read at
Smart Like How. Please click over there, and read a few of his posts.
He talks about being
data savy even if you’re not a data scientist. He covers
how to suceed...
The Marginalian
Oliver Sacks on Despair and the Meaning of Life
"The meaning of life... clearly has to do with love — what and whom and how one can love."
a month ago
"The meaning of life... clearly has to do with love — what and whom and how one can love."
The American Scholar
Ideology as Anatomy
How shifting ideas about women’s bodies have affected their lives
The post Ideology as Anatomy...
2 weeks ago
How shifting ideas about women’s bodies have affected their lives
The post Ideology as Anatomy appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Old Collections Persist Somewhere'
Speaking of
anthologies, I again picked up Books and
Libraries (2021), published as part of the...
a year ago
Speaking of
anthologies, I again picked up Books and
Libraries (2021), published as part of the Everyman's Library Pocket Poets
Series. I’ve browsed in several of these attractively compact volumes and they are
a very mixed bag, as any thematic anthology must be. You can sense...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Books I Have Liked'
One way to
classify readers is by their choice of reading matter across time. Some are
specialists....
2 weeks ago
One way to
classify readers is by their choice of reading matter across time. Some are
specialists. They read deeply but narrowly, only science fiction or the Latin
classics in translation. That strategy is alien to me because by nature I’m an
omnivore, moving from Henry James to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Never Relied on His Sensibility Alone'
In 1937,
Desmond MacCarthy delivered a lecture at Cambridge on Leslie Stephen, author of
the...
2 weeks ago
In 1937,
Desmond MacCarthy delivered a lecture at Cambridge on Leslie Stephen, author of
the three-volume Hours in a Library
(1874-7) and father of Virginia Woolf. For a
century England had specialized in producing formidably well-read, non-academic
literary critics. In addition...
The American Scholar
Bastienne Schmidt
The fabric of life
The post Bastienne Schmidt appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
The fabric of life
The post Bastienne Schmidt appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'No Secret Element of Gusto Warms Up the Sermon'
Gusto is one
of my favorite virtues, especially among writers. Italo Svevo has it. John
Steinbeck...
a month ago
Gusto is one
of my favorite virtues, especially among writers. Italo Svevo has it. John
Steinbeck does not. A.J. Liebling has it. Woodward and Bernstein have never
heard of it. Gusto is taking pleasure in the job at hand. About writers it
suggests energy and enjoyment in playing...
Ben Borgers
On “Incrementally Correct Personal Websites”
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Moralizing Purge of the Past'
"I think we
are living through a moralizing purge of the past, similar to the one that
early...
8 months ago
"I think we
are living through a moralizing purge of the past, similar to the one that
early Christianity inflicted on the same pagan learning. There will be another
Dark Ages in our lifetimes; and another Renaissance, too, but not one that we
will live to see.”
I’m...
Anecdotal Evidence
'In Itself and Forever Shipwreck'
I’ve just
finished rereading William Maxwell’s final novel, So Long, See You Tomorrow, published in...
a year ago
I’ve just
finished rereading William Maxwell’s final novel, So Long, See You Tomorrow, published in two issues of The New Yorker in 1979 and as a book the
following year. I read it in the magazine and I’ve since read the book –
Maxwell’s finest, written when he was seventy years...
The Elysian
Please come up with wildly speculative futures
Inside my writing philosophy.
8 months ago
Inside my writing philosophy.
The American Scholar
Paolo Arao
Acts of devotion
The post Paolo Arao appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
Acts of devotion
The post Paolo Arao appeared first on The American Scholar.
sbensu
Incentives as selection effects
When you apply a new incentive, you select for a new population that prefers the incentive.
6 months ago
When you apply a new incentive, you select for a new population that prefers the incentive.
Josh Thompson
Who inspires you, and is still alive?
There are lots of dead people that we look up to. But people that are alive, and not world-wide...
over a year ago
There are lots of dead people that we look up to. But people that are alive, and not world-wide famous are a bit more knowable. Some of them will even reply to tweets you send them!
So, here are a few people that I follow and have received TONS of amazing wisdom from. (I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'They’ve No Clue of My Reality'
“We are all
well and in good spirits, have enough to eat. I have not yet eaten the cake you
sent me....
10 months ago
“We are all
well and in good spirits, have enough to eat. I have not yet eaten the cake you
sent me. I do not have to do guard duty as I am an officer, think of sergeant
Peck, sounds pretty big don’t it, eh?”
That’s
Marcus Peck, a soldier from Sand Lake, N.Y., who answered...
Blog -...
Book Review - Shots from the Hip
In the fields of Taoism, herbalism, and Chinese culture, Daniel Reid is a
legendary author who has...
over a year ago
In the fields of Taoism, herbalism, and Chinese culture, Daniel Reid is a
legendary author who has written books that have changed the course of
lives. His most recent publication is a two-book memoir entitled Shots from
the Hip, a colourful account of his many exotic...
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 358.5
...
2 weeks ago
Josh Thompson
Circles of Influence
I was listening to a podcast today, where they said if you have problems knowing what to write...
over a year ago
I was listening to a podcast today, where they said if you have problems knowing what to write about, or you’ve hit a block, write about something that angers you.
This is easy. I could write about any number of things that we’ve all read in a newspaper, and get good and angry...
sbensu
Team-oriented, outcome-oriented
Some people care about helping their team. Others care about achieving outcomes. It is important to...
a year ago
Some people care about helping their team. Others care about achieving outcomes. It is important to know who is who.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Now You Are Elsewhere'
I came late
to the poet Henri Coulette, long after his death in 1988 at age sixty, and
promptly fell...
9 months ago
I came late
to the poet Henri Coulette, long after his death in 1988 at age sixty, and
promptly fell for his charms. Chief among them are elegance, technical
virtuosity, wit and devotion to his native turf, Southern California. Like one
of his favorite writers, Raymond Chandler,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Misrepresenting the Past and Its Culture'
I was still
a kid when Marshall McLuhan became the sage du
jour in the sixties. Television was a...
a year ago
I was still
a kid when Marshall McLuhan became the sage du
jour in the sixties. Television was a “cool” medium, according to Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964).
The cooler the medium, McLuhan wrote, “the more someone has to uncover and
engage in the media” and...
sbensu
Twitter's Sith and Jedi
In Star Wars, hate gives the Sith power from the dark side of the Force beyond what the Jedi can...
10 months ago
In Star Wars, hate gives the Sith power from the dark side of the Force beyond what the Jedi can reach. But when they lean into hate, they lose their soul to it. Twitter offers the same bargain as the Force.
Wuthering...
The Making of Americans as conceptual art - I have already made several diagrams
Sometime I will be able to make a diagram. I have already made several diagrams. I will sometime...
6 months ago
Sometime I will be able to make a diagram. I have already made several diagrams. I will sometime make a complete diagram and that will be a very long book... (580)
I am going to write about The Making of Americans as
conceptual art, art where how it is made is a central part...
The Marginalian
The Half-Life of Hope
After breaking out of timidity with “Spell Against Indifference,” an offering of another poem — this...
a year ago
After breaking out of timidity with “Spell Against Indifference,” an offering of another poem — this one inspired by a lovely piece of science news that touched me with its sonorous existential echoes. THE HALF-LIFE OF HOPE by Maria Popova Walking beneath the concrete canopy...
Josh Thompson
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
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.”...
Josh Thompson
No New Books
I’ve promised myself that I won’t add any more books to my Kindle, either by purchasing them from...
over a year ago
I’ve promised myself that I won’t add any more books to my Kindle, either by purchasing them from Amazon, or downloading them online, or renting them from a Library.
Why?
I’ve let reading about doing things stand in the way of doing the things. No amount of educational literature...
Escaping Flatland
Reading challenging books with kids is fun and probably useful
I was looking through my diary from the summer of 2020 and found this entry about Maud, then three...
8 months ago
I was looking through my diary from the summer of 2020 and found this entry about Maud, then three years old, in late toddlerhood. 25th of July 2020. I was doing the dishes. Maud came in. “I have looked a little in books,” she said.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Scabrous Memory Writhes Here, Underneath'
I’ve just
learned that some thirty percent of Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city, is
paved,...
2 weeks ago
I’ve just
learned that some thirty percent of Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city, is
paved, covered in concrete and asphalt. That doesn’t count buildings and other
structures. It amounts to roughly 384 square miles of ground surface that is “case-hardened,
carapaced,” to...
The Marginalian
A Heron’s Antidote to Fear of Death
They didn’t imagine it, the dying dinosaurs, that they would grow wings and become birds, become the...
2 weeks ago
They didn’t imagine it, the dying dinosaurs, that they would grow wings and become birds, become the laboratory in which evolution invented dreams and the cathedral in which it invented faith. “There is grandeur in this view of life,” Darwin consoled himself as his beloved...
The American Scholar
The March Down Main
The post The March Down Main appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The post The March Down Main appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Consolations of Chronodiversity: Geologist Turned Psychologist Ruth Allen on the 12 Kinds of...
“I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars,” Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska wrote in her...
3 months ago
“I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars,” Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska wrote in her lovely poem “Possibilities.” Our preferences, of course, hardly matter to time — we live here suspended between the time of insects and the time of stars, our transient lives...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not More Respected, Though Less Loved'
In the late
summer and autumn of 1773, Johnson and Boswell visited Scotland, the latter’s...
a year ago
In the late
summer and autumn of 1773, Johnson and Boswell visited Scotland, the latter’s birthplace
and the butt of many jokes by the former. The journey lasted eighty-three days
and both men published books recounting their adventures. Johnson’s A Journey to the Western Islands...
The American Scholar
Insisting on the Positive
A popular historian’s philosophical musings
The post Insisting on the Positive appeared first on The...
3 months ago
A popular historian’s philosophical musings
The post Insisting on the Positive appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Death Is Not Far From Me'
It’s in the
nature of most writers to come up with their own rules and obey them when it
serves...
9 months ago
It’s in the
nature of most writers to come up with their own rules and obey them when it
serves their purposes. Even the strictest formalist bends a little in the
service of what works aesthetically. The byproduct of that decision-making
process is “style.” Good work can come out...
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...
10 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...
Ben Borgers
It's Fun to Do Things with Care
over a year ago
This Space
39 Books: 2005
Four years later, browsing in Waterstones, I picked a book from a table and read "What will we do to...
7 months ago
Four years later, browsing in Waterstones, I picked a book from a table and read "What will we do to disappear?" – the epigram to Enrique Vila-Matas's novel Montano's Malady. It's a line taken from Maurice Blanchot's Infinite Conversation, so I had to buy it. Later that year,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Related But Detached'
I’ve seen Hamlet on the stage only once, in 1971.
The prince was played by Dame Judith Anderson,...
10 months ago
I’ve seen Hamlet on the stage only once, in 1971.
The prince was played by Dame Judith Anderson, unconvincing in her early seventies.
Wrong sex, wrong age, wrong play – a stillborn theatrical stunt. My reaction was perhaps the
worst that staged Shakespeare can inspire – boredom...
Josh Thompson
Recommended Reading
I’ve read many books over the years. Thousands. Here’s a few that I find myself...
6 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:...
The Marginalian
Maira Kalman on How to Live with Remorse and Make of It a Portal of Creative Vitality
Each time we have tried to elevate ourselves above the other animals by claiming singular possession...
10 months ago
Each time we have tried to elevate ourselves above the other animals by claiming singular possession of some faculty, we have been humbled otherwise: Language, it turns out, is not ours alone, nor is the use of tools, nor is music. Elephants grieve, octopuses remember and...
The American Scholar
Red Tide Warning
Living on Florida’s Gulf Coast means having to coexist with pervasive and toxic algal blooms—and...
7 months ago
Living on Florida’s Gulf Coast means having to coexist with pervasive and toxic algal blooms—and neighbors who don’t always believe what they see
The post Red Tide Warning appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Is Wonderful to Be a Writer'
I met the Israeli novelist
Aharon Appelfeld in 1987 on the same day I met Raul Hilberg and Cynthia...
7 months ago
I met the Israeli novelist
Aharon Appelfeld in 1987 on the same day I met Raul Hilberg and Cynthia Ozick.
I had read Appelfeld’s first novel, Badenheim
1939 (1978; trans. 1980), several years earlier and found it disturbing in
a novel way. The action takes place on the cusp of...
The Marginalian
In the Dark: A Lyrical Illustrated Invitation to Find the Light Behind the Fear
The mind is a camera obscura constantly trying to render an image of reality on the back wall of...
a year ago
The mind is a camera obscura constantly trying to render an image of reality on the back wall of consciousness through the pinhole of awareness, its aperture narrowed by our selective attention, honed on our hopes and fears. In consequence, the projection we see inside the dark...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Scrawls With a Lavish Hand Its Signature'
“Where the wind listeth, there the sailboats list, / Water is
touched with a light case of hives /...
2 months ago
“Where the wind listeth, there the sailboats list, / Water is
touched with a light case of hives / Or wandering gooseflesh.”
Carl George is the sort of scientist whose company I most enjoy. He is a generalist, what
used to be called a naturalist. Now an emeritus professor of...
The Marginalian
Look Up: The Illustrated Story of Astronomer Henrietta Leavitt, Who Laid the Groundwork for...
How a brilliant woman rose against the tide of her time to fathom the mysteries of space.
a year ago
How a brilliant woman rose against the tide of her time to fathom the mysteries of space.
sbensu
Designing for support teams
Support agents spend their entire lives using the same software. Their needs are very different from...
10 months ago
Support agents spend their entire lives using the same software. Their needs are very different from consumer software. Here are some things to keep in mind.
Astral Codex Ten
The Early Christian Strategy
...
a month ago
Josh Thompson
`ls` command to show directory contents
I like to use the tree command on my local machine when trying to peek into the structure and...
over a year ago
I like to use the tree command on my local machine when trying to peek into the structure and contents of a given directory.
tree -L 2
will [L]ist recursively everything [2] levels deep from your current directory. The output is nicely formatted like this:
> tree -L 2
.
├──...
The American Scholar
A Toothsome Tale
Bill Schutt chomps through millennia to share the story of our pearly whites
The post A Toothsome...
3 months ago
Bill Schutt chomps through millennia to share the story of our pearly whites
The post A Toothsome Tale appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Five Days to Inbox Zero: How to Get Control of your Email
Email is a constant in our lives, yet it can be so overwhelming that it becomes almost 100%...
over a year ago
Email is a constant in our lives, yet it can be so overwhelming that it becomes almost 100% ineffective.
I discussed with a friend the other day why they should switch from Yahoo to Gmail, and how to reduce the useless emails they receive. Below is how I suggested they move from...
Josh Thompson
Make Hard Things Easier by Removing Friction
Friction resists movement.
Lots of things count as (negative) friction.
Anything that consumes...
over a year ago
Friction resists movement.
Lots of things count as (negative) friction.
Anything that consumes resources (time, energy, money, physical goods.)
Anything that causes negative feelings (shame, doubt, guilt, fear.)
Anything that could have a downside (losing money, respect, your...
Ben Borgers
Stubborn Consistency [100 daily blog posts]
over a year ago
Wuthering...
Books I read, and desks I saw, in July - hoping he might tell me, / tell me what the waves don't...
Right, July, July, so long ago. I was on the road a little bit, making
literary pilgrimages. ...
4 months ago
Right, July, July, so long ago. I was on the road a little bit, making
literary pilgrimages. Pittsfield,
Massachusetts, for example, to Herman Melville’s Arrowhead:
On this spot, not at this exact desk but in front of this
exact window, Herman Melville wrote Moby-Dick,...
The Marginalian
Working Out, Working In: Applying the Six Principles of Athletic Training to Writing and Creative...
The highest and hardest task of life may be to become entirely ourselves — to continually purify and...
a year ago
The highest and hardest task of life may be to become entirely ourselves — to continually purify and clarify who and what we are, shedding the shoulds of culture, convention, and expectation to discover the innermost musts: those deepest and truest callings of the authentic self,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Word Can Open Like a Tomb to Reveal Its Past'
The poet William
Wenthe opens his essay “The Glamour of Words” with a provocative memory. It was
the...
8 months ago
The poet William
Wenthe opens his essay “The Glamour of Words” with a provocative memory. It was
the anniversary of Charles Dickens’ death and he was in the Poets’ Corner of
Westminster Abbey, where Dickens is interred and his sister is speaking to mark
the occasion. Wenthe looks...
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
“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...
Ben Borgers
Un-figure-out-able Software
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
How I Sent Texts for Assassins
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Like to Think of Pasteur in Elysium'
In 1985, the
year Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo, the scholar
and...
7 months ago
In 1985, the
year Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo, the scholar
and translator Clarence Brown published The
Portable Twentieth-Century Russian Reader, a selection ranging from Tolstoy
and Chekhov to Voinovich and Sokolov. In the introduction he...
The Marginalian
The Courage to Be Yourself: Virginia Woolf on How to Hear Your Soul
"Beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme difficulty of being oneself."
a year ago
"Beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme difficulty of being oneself."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Nothingness Is Our Need'
One of R.L.
Barth’s sisters-in-law found a tote bag containing poems and drafts in a
cupboard, most...
6 months ago
One of R.L.
Barth’s sisters-in-law found a tote bag containing poems and drafts in a
cupboard, most dating back to his time at Stanford in the late
nineteen-seventies. He found epigrams (his trademark form as a poet) and some Martial
translations. The bag also held “one fugitive...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Immense Special Talent'
D.G. Myers
and I met in person only once, in March 2012, when David came to Houston to see
his...
2 months ago
D.G. Myers
and I met in person only once, in March 2012, when David came to Houston to see
his oncologist. We had lunch in a Mexican restaurant and talked for hours, then
I drove him to the hospital. He gave me the Library of America’s collection of
Henry James’ writings on...
sbensu
Risk-takers decide faster
Unsurprising connection between risk and speed.
a month ago
Unsurprising connection between risk and speed.
Josh Thompson
My Thoughts on Eric Weinstein's Thoughts on Pia Kalani's Thoughts
Context for two sentances
It’s August 8, 2020.
The news is full of coronavirus, schools, employment,...
over a year ago
Context for two sentances
It’s August 8, 2020.
The news is full of coronavirus, schools, employment, police brutality, a vaccine, elections, so much politics, China, Tik-Tok, the Twitter-dm-hack-bitcoin-scam-or-was-it-dm-content hack happened.
Tiger King, Cheer, Filthy Rich are...
The Marginalian
The Majesty and Mystery of Night Migration, in a Stunning Poem Turned to Music
“Night, when words fade and things come alive,” Little Prince author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote...
a year ago
“Night, when words fade and things come alive,” Little Prince author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote in his love letter to the hours of darkness, composed while flying alone over the Sahara Desert. No aliveness animates the nocturne with more grandeur than the migration of birds....
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Were Nothing in Ourselves Nothing More'
“[H]e gave
us some of the best poems of our times. And, after all, one must thank a man
for what he...
a year ago
“[H]e gave
us some of the best poems of our times. And, after all, one must thank a man
for what he has done and not condemn him for his failures.”
A timely,
guilt-inducing reminder. It’s easy to scold a writer for not producing a masterpiece
each time he goes to work. Good...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Passing Tribute of a Sigh'
“The
cemetery lives an intense, passion-filled life.”
Anyone who
has walked a cemetery and paid...
a year ago
“The
cemetery lives an intense, passion-filled life.”
Anyone who
has walked a cemetery and paid respectful attention -- and I mean as a tourist,
when the visit is not obligatory – will understand. Once I tramped the
beautifully landscaped Vale Cemetery (1857) in downtown...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Mouldering Boots of Other Days'
The triolet,
like its cousins the rondeau, rondel, and rondelet, is an intricate French
verse form,...
9 months ago
The triolet,
like its cousins the rondeau, rondel, and rondelet, is an intricate French
verse form, usually eight lines long and written in iambic tetrameter. The
first line is repeated as the fourth and seventh lines. Among English-language
poets, Robert Bridges and Thomas Hardy...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Chronic Independence of Mind'
“A chronic
independence of mind is unpardonable in any age; in our own it has certainly
been safer...
a month ago
“A chronic
independence of mind is unpardonable in any age; in our own it has certainly
been safer to praise independence than to exemplify it.”
Bracing
words from one of literature’s inveterate outsiders, English poet and critic C.H.
Sisson (1914-2003). He’s writing about...
Josh Thompson
October 2016 Review
October 2016 Review
This month’s review. In another few days I’ll post the goals for November.
I...
over a year ago
October 2016 Review
This month’s review. In another few days I’ll post the goals for November.
I had
three goals for October, as of about 12 days ago:
October goals:
Programming
I wanted to finish a certain Rails Tutorial, and move on to the next one. This project I made zero...
The Perry Bible...
Hacked
The post Hacked appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
8 months ago
The post Hacked appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
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
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
The Diagnostician of Despair
Why Rousseau believed that Enlightenment values would lead us to ruin
The post The Diagnostician of...
3 days ago
Why Rousseau believed that Enlightenment values would lead us to ruin
The post The Diagnostician of Despair appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Warped Side of Our Universe: A Painted Epic Poem about the Dazzling Science of Spacetime
The first English use of the word space to connote the cosmic expanse appears in line 650 of Book I...
a year ago
The first English use of the word space to connote the cosmic expanse appears in line 650 of Book I of Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost: “Space may produce new Worlds,” he wrote, and grow rife with them. In the centuries since Milton, who lived through the golden dawn of...
The American Scholar
“Spring” by J. R. Solonche
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Spring” by J. R. Solonche appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Spring” by J. R. Solonche appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'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...
9 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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Is the Past That Cast the Stars'
I and the
first issue of Mad magazine arrived
in October 1952. A decade or so later I was a devoted...
a year ago
I and the
first issue of Mad magazine arrived
in October 1952. A decade or so later I was a devoted reader. That same month, Poetry, a journal I would start reading
a few years after Mad, published its fortieth anniversary issue. Included is the work of more than fifty poets,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not Simply Bad Prose'
“It is not simply
bad prose—a tank is not a badly constructed automobile.”
Gilbert
Highet (1906-78)...
10 months ago
“It is not simply
bad prose—a tank is not a badly constructed automobile.”
Gilbert
Highet (1906-78) was a Scottish-born, Oxford-educated American classicist who
taught at Columbia for thirty-three years and managed to become a bona fide pop-culture
“celebrity.” In 1952 he was...
This Space
Books of the year 2024
In order of being read.
Giorgio Agamben – What I saw, heard, learned…
One night, along Venice’s...
a week 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...
sbensu
High Variance Management
How should you manage a team that is trying to achieve results out of the ordinary?
a year ago
How should you manage a team that is trying to achieve results out of the ordinary?
Anecdotal Evidence
'Won’t You Turn Your Radio Down'
Most of the
surfaces in the radio station, not counting the DJs and turntables, are plastered
with...
a year ago
Most of the
surfaces in the radio station, not counting the DJs and turntables, are plastered
with yellow-on-black KTRU bumper stickers. In some cases, students have cut up
the stickers and rearranged the letters into the same timeless obscenities we
scrawled on the walls of the...
This Space
The criticism of Lessons, the lessons of criticism
I give thanks to Ryan Ruby for his review of Lessons, Ian McEwan’s latest novel. It brings to our...
over a year ago
I give thanks to Ryan Ruby for his review of Lessons, Ian McEwan’s latest novel. It brings to our attention that rare thing, joy of joys, a novel telling the story of a life remarkably similar to the author’s own set against the backdrop of recent history. Ruby shows how the...
The Marginalian
Flowers for Things I Don’t Know How to Say: A Tender Painted Lexicon of Consolation and Connection
“To be a Flower is profound Responsibility,” Emily Dickinson wrote. From the moment she pressed the...
7 months ago
“To be a Flower is profound Responsibility,” Emily Dickinson wrote. From the moment she pressed the first wildflower into her astonishing teenage herbarium until the moment Susan pinned a violet to her alabaster chest in the casket, she filled her poems with flowers and made of...
This Space
39 Books: 2013
I reread books like Aharon Appelfeld's A Table for One and Anne Atik's How It Was as if returning to...
7 months ago
I reread books like Aharon Appelfeld's A Table for One and Anne Atik's How It Was as if returning to a particular bench with a view of the sea. On first glance A Table for One promises only banal, coffee-table memories and reflections, and that would be almost right:
Real...
The Marginalian
Nature’s Oldest Mandolin: The Poetic Science of How Cicadas Sing
“The use of music,” Richard Powers wrote, “is to remind us how short a time we have a body” — a...
7 months ago
“The use of music,” Richard Powers wrote, “is to remind us how short a time we have a body” — a truth nowhere more bittersweet than in the creature whose body is the oldest unchanged musical instrument on Earth: a tiny mandolin silent for most of its existence, then sonorous with...
Josh Thompson
Gratitude 3x/day
Earlier this year, I read
The Miracle Morning, which promises (paraphrasing here):
If you do these...
over a year ago
Earlier this year, I read
The Miracle Morning, which promises (paraphrasing here):
If you do these seven things every morning you’ll be the most amazing person you’ve ever met.
OK, it’s not exactly that bold, but it’s not far off. It wasn’t a terrible book, it had lots of good...
The American Scholar
Sienna Martz
Sculpting the detritus of fast fashion
The post Sienna Martz appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
Sculpting the detritus of fast fashion
The post Sienna Martz appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Reticent Humor'
“For nearly
twenty years after the publication of The
Children of the Night in 1896, poetry...
a year ago
“For nearly
twenty years after the publication of The
Children of the Night in 1896, poetry comprised the only notable American literature.”
A
provocative statement that sends one scrambling for counter-examples, which
aren’t difficult to find. Between 1896 and 1916 appeared...
The American Scholar
Good Intentions
The post Good Intentions appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The post Good Intentions appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Love of Reading Is Caught, Not Taught'
I’ve used “home
library” to describe the accumulation of books in our house but it’s starting
to...
2 months ago
I’ve used “home
library” to describe the accumulation of books in our house but it’s starting
to sound a little pretentious. For now I’ll keep it at “books.” Nadya Williams
titles her essay “Home Libraries Will Save Civilization,” which, I understand, is
more reader-enticing than...
This Space
39 Books: 1991
One the first books I found in a bookshop* upon moving to Brighton was Rosalind Belben's novel Is...
7 months ago
One the first books I found in a bookshop* upon moving to Brighton was Rosalind Belben's novel Is Beauty Good. I had seen it two years earlier chosen in a newspaper books of the year listing alongside Jacques Roubaud's Le Grand Incendie de Londres and Thomas Bernhard's Old...
The Marginalian
On Giving Up: Adam Phillips on Knowing What You Want, the Art of Self-Revision, and the Courage to...
"Not being able to give up is not to be able to allow for loss, for vulnerability; not to be able to...
7 months ago
"Not being able to give up is not to be able to allow for loss, for vulnerability; not to be able to allow for the passing of time, and the revisions it brings."
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Other Thermopylae, the Alamo'
A reader asks for impressions of Texas, a place
she, a lifelong Northerner, has never visited....
6 months ago
A reader asks for impressions of Texas, a place
she, a lifelong Northerner, has never visited. Twenty years ago last month I
saw Texas for the first time, and the first surprise, seen from the air, was
abundant greenery. I was expecting desert and tumbleweeds. Houston is...
Josh Thompson
STOP YELLING ON THE INTERNET, or, A Better Use for the Caps Lock Key
My current project is to learn to type using an alternative keyboard layout called Colemak.
QWERTY...
over a year ago
My current project is to learn to type using an alternative keyboard layout called Colemak.
QWERTY has problems. Here are a few, shamelessly borrowed from
Colemak.com
It places very rare letters in the best positions, so your fingers have to move a lot more.
It suffers from a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Time Is Tight'
My brother is
dying as he lived – stubbornly. He has been in hospice for two weeks and is...
4 months ago
My brother is
dying as he lived – stubbornly. He has been in hospice for two weeks and is failing
incrementally. On Monday we were swapping memories and he stopped talking on
Tuesday, the same day he stopped eating. He lies on his back on the hospice
bed, mouth open, eyes staring...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Let One Book Lead Him to Another'
I have not
run the analytics but I believe the Joseph Epstein essay with the longest shelf
life and...
6 months ago
I have not
run the analytics but I believe the Joseph Epstein essay with the longest shelf
life and largest number of citations is “Joseph Epstein’s Lifetime Reading Plan,” published in The American Scholar in
1983 and collected four years later in Once More Around
the Block. A...
The Marginalian
On Change and Denial
"It’s strange to feel change coming. It’s easy to ignore. An underlying restlessness seems to...
6 months ago
"It’s strange to feel change coming. It’s easy to ignore. An underlying restlessness seems to accompany it like birds flocking before a storm."
The Marginalian
Dead Stars: Poet Laureate Ada Limón’s Stunning Love Poem to Life
"We’ve come this far, survived this much. What would happen if we decided to survive more? To love...
a year ago
"We’ve come this far, survived this much. What would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?"
Anecdotal Evidence
'On a Certain Street There Is a Certain Door'
Borges
titled a sonnet in The Gold of the Tigers,
his 1972 collection, "J.M.":
“On a
certain street...
6 months ago
Borges
titled a sonnet in The Gold of the Tigers,
his 1972 collection, "J.M.":
“On a
certain street there is a certain door
shut with
its bell and its exact address
and with a
flavor of lost Paradise,
which in the
early evening I can never
open to
enter. The day’s work at its...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Recon Patrol Is a Small Unit'
“A 21-year
old Marine Corporal leading his first patrol — a 10-man Reconnaissance Team —
kept a cool...
4 months ago
“A 21-year
old Marine Corporal leading his first patrol — a 10-man Reconnaissance Team —
kept a cool head in a tight situation.”
Long before
he was a poet and publisher, R.L. Barth in 1968-69 was a Marine serving as a
patrol leader in the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion in Vietnam....
Wuthering...
Daryl Hine's Ovid's Heroines - I, who could a dragon hypnotize
An anti-Valentine’s Day book now, Ovid’s Heroides
(25-16 BCE, somewhere in there), a collection of...
10 months ago
An anti-Valentine’s Day book now, Ovid’s Heroides
(25-16 BCE, somewhere in there), a collection of fictional letters in verse written
by mythical heroines to their no-good boyfriends and husbands. Many end in suicide. Dido castigating Aeneas, Phaedra mourning...
Ben Borgers
I Keep Rewriting My Personal Website
over a year ago
The American Scholar
In the Mushroom
True foraging isn’t the domain of the weekend warrior; it’s serious, serious business
The post In...
2 weeks ago
True foraging isn’t the domain of the weekend warrior; it’s serious, serious business
The post In the Mushroom appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Waking Up Early 2.0
A few months ago, I wrote about
waking up early.
I tracked my progress for almost a month, and most...
over a year ago
A few months ago, I wrote about
waking up early.
I tracked my progress for almost a month, and most of the days I woke up between 4:45 and 6:00. My “must be up by” time is 7:30a, so waking up more than an hour and a half early counts as a huge win.
From mid-may until June 7, I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Beautiful Lighthearted Perfection'
Who is the
quintessential American? Who embodies E
pluribus unum? Who, at the intergalactic council,...
11 months ago
Who is the
quintessential American? Who embodies E
pluribus unum? Who, at the intergalactic council, might represent our
nation (and species, for that matter)? I nominate Louis Armstrong. Other names
come to mind: Abraham Lincoln, Jacques Barzun, Ralph Ellison, perhaps...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Joker; One Who Breaks a Jest'
When I
encountered the word witcracker in Much Ado About Nothing, I marked it for
further use and...
a year ago
When I
encountered the word witcracker in Much Ado About Nothing, I marked it for
further use and found myself silently singing it to the tune of “Matchmaker,Matchmaker” from Fiddler on the Roof:
“Witcracker, witcracker, / Make me a wit . . .” In Shakespeare’s Act V, Scene 4,...
The Marginalian
The Poetry of Reality: Robert Louis Stevenson on What Makes Life Worth Living
"The true realism, always and everywhere, is that of the poets: to find out where joy resides, and...
a year ago
"The true realism, always and everywhere, is that of the poets: to find out where joy resides, and give it a voice far beyond singing."
Anecdotal Evidence
'More Talkative But Less Writative'
Lately I’ve been
reading the Swift/Pope correspondence. Long ago I adopted the author of Gulliver’s...
a year ago
Lately I’ve been
reading the Swift/Pope correspondence. Long ago I adopted the author of Gulliver’s Travels as the most useful
model for prose style in English. It’s not the only way to write but it’s the best
if we judge clarity the supreme virtue. Sloppy prose, unless...
The Marginalian
Between Matter and Spirit: Psychoanalyst Allen Wheelis on the Substance of What We Are
"We are carriers of spirit... into a future unknown, unknowable, and in continual creation."
a year ago
"We are carriers of spirit... into a future unknown, unknowable, and in continual creation."
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Pure Essay'
“A good deal
that he wrote took the form of the ‘pure’ essay, written, as Lord David Cecil
says,...
7 months ago
“A good deal
that he wrote took the form of the ‘pure’ essay, written, as Lord David Cecil
says, ‘not to instruct or edify but only to produce aesthetic satisfaction.’ I
do not know why it should be so, but today the ‘pure’ essay is a literary genre
to which no reader under sixty...
This Space
The enigma for criticism
To this day, I can learn only from bad films. The good ones I watch in the same spirit in which I...
a year ago
To this day, I can learn only from bad films. The good ones I watch in the same spirit in which I watched when I was a kid. The great ones, even when I see them many times, are just an enigma.
Werner Herzog describes a few "bad films" in his autobiography, all from his...
The American Scholar
The Given Child
To what lengths would a mother go to ensure her family’s survival in a remote Himalayan village?
The...
6 months ago
To what lengths would a mother go to ensure her family’s survival in a remote Himalayan village?
The post The Given Child appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
How to Run Your Rails App in Profiling Mode
Last time, I wrote about setting up DataDog for your Rails application. Even when “just” running the...
over a year ago
Last time, I wrote about setting up DataDog for your Rails application. Even when “just” running the app locally, it is sending data to DataDog.
This is super exciting, because I’m getting close to being able to glean good insights from DataDog’s Application Performance...
The American Scholar
Bubble Girl
The kidnapping that once riveted the nation
The post Bubble Girl appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
The kidnapping that once riveted the nation
The post Bubble Girl appeared first on The American Scholar.
Escaping Flatland
Advice from my editor
A sculptural representation of JS Bach’s Fugue in E Flat Minor by Henrik Neugeboren “I can’t make...
6 months ago
A sculptural representation of JS Bach’s Fugue in E Flat Minor by Henrik Neugeboren “I can’t make myself finish this one,” Johanna said one night when we were reading together in bed. She was working her way through a 6021-word essay draft about identities as interfaces that I...
Ben Borgers
Building an e-ink picture frame that displays an iCloud photo album
11 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Thoughts Wait Here for Future Readers'
In Another Beauty (trans. Clare Cavanagh,
2000), the late Adam Zagajewski revisits his alma mater,...
a year ago
In Another Beauty (trans. Clare Cavanagh,
2000), the late Adam Zagajewski revisits his alma mater, the Jagiellonka
Library in Kraków, and calls it a “botanical garden of ideas,” a metaphor
worthy of the librarian Borges. I briefly visited the Jagiellonka, as it’s
known, in 2012...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Bring on the Vitamines'
When I returned
to college in 2002, thirty years after dropping out a year before graduating, I
took...
3 days ago
When I returned
to college in 2002, thirty years after dropping out a year before graduating, I
took a class in something called “psychological anthropology.” The teacher was
personable and the class was a sort of catch basin of random learning. We could
write about any stray...
Wuthering...
The Story of the Stone, volume 2 - all agreed that this was the definitive poem on the subject of...
I have continued on with The Story of the Stone, the
2,500 page 18th century Chinese novel by, or...
a month ago
I have continued on with The Story of the Stone, the
2,500 page 18th century Chinese novel by, or mostly by, Cao Xueqin. Here I will write about the second volume of
the David Hawkes translation, The Crab-flower Club. Last time, after reading the first fifth of
the novel, I...
sbensu
Vibes are music, arguments are lyrics
Losing My Religion is not about religion and Arguments are not about arguments
5 months ago
Losing My Religion is not about religion and Arguments are not about arguments
Anecdotal Evidence
'Look for Truth, for Knowledge, for Wisdom'
“The library
is, and always has been, the heart of a college. . . . For professors--professors
of...
a year ago
“The library
is, and always has been, the heart of a college. . . . For professors--professors
of the humanities, at any rate--as much as students, are the creatures of the
library. Just as the laboratory is the domain of the sciences, so the library
is the domain of the...
Josh Thompson
Quitting the shallow for the deep
Deep work over shallow
TL;DR: I’m off social media, but want to keep a functioning Twitter URL. So,...
over a year ago
Deep work over shallow
TL;DR: I’m off social media, but want to keep a functioning Twitter URL. So, it redirects here.
This year’s “best book I’ve read” label might go to Cal Newport’s Deep Work.
Here’s the gist:
One of the most valuable skills in our economy is becoming...
The Marginalian
How to Befriend Time: The Gospel of Pete Seeger and Nina Simone
"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven."
a year ago
"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven."
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Was Spared That Annoyance'
As expected,
Beryl made landfall near Matagorda early Monday as a Category 1 hurricane.
Sustained...
5 months ago
As expected,
Beryl made landfall near Matagorda early Monday as a Category 1 hurricane.
Sustained winds hit 80 m.p.h. By 7 a.m. we could hear a hum like a dentist’s
drill when the wind gusted. Trees fell and we watched water fill the street,
top the curb and slosh on the lawn....
The American Scholar
Others
Too many people in the world isn’t the problem—people are the problem
The post Others appeared first...
3 months ago
Too many people in the world isn’t the problem—people are the problem
The post Others appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Why schedule something that doesn't exist?
The first thing I did when making this post is I set it to be published tomorrow.
Then, I left the...
over a year ago
The first thing I did when making this post is I set it to be published tomorrow.
Then, I left the room for a bit. I didn’t have anything to say. Or, I didn’t think I did.
Yet, all over my computer, and in various list trackers and note-taking apps, I’ve got dozens of ideas to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Brave Respect the Brave'
In
observance of Memorial Day, R.L. Barth sent me a poem by Ambrose Bierce, one I
had never read...
6 months ago
In
observance of Memorial Day, R.L. Barth sent me a poem by Ambrose Bierce, one I
had never read before, “To E.S. Salomon” (Black Beetles in Amber, 1892). Here is the memorably pertinent third stanza:
“The brave
respect the brave. The brave
Respect
the dead; but you -- you...
The American Scholar
Kinship and Contradictions
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz on the complexities of Native American identity
The post Kinship and...
a week ago
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz on the complexities of Native American identity
The post Kinship and Contradictions appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Pry-ing into a Stack Trace
I was recently working on a feature, committed what I thought was clean code, and started getting...
over a year ago
I was recently working on a feature, committed what I thought was clean code, and started getting errors. I git stashed, and re-ran my tests, and still got errors. Here’s the full stacktrace:
> b ruby -Itest test/models/model_name_redacted_test.rb -n=/errors/
# Running tests...
Josh Thompson
20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don't Get
Jason Nazar recently wrote an article titled
20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don’t Get.
Please read it, but...
over a year ago
Jason Nazar recently wrote an article titled
20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don’t Get.
Please read it, but with a big grain of salt.
Nazar opens with the statement “I made a lot of mistakes along the way, and I see this generation making their own.”
This seems to be an aspirational...
Josh Thompson
Lifestyle Design (AKA Intentional Habit Building)
The top New Years resolutions indicate that Americans know they need to make changes. The top three...
over a year ago
The top New Years resolutions indicate that Americans know they need to make changes. The top three resolutions always relate to getting in shape, eating better, spending time better, and spending money better.
Everyone is aware that change is good, even necessary, but given the...
This Space
More and less: Veilchenfeld by Gert Hofmann
Gert Hofmann's Veilchenfeld is the latest of his novels to be published in English translation, and...
over a year ago
Gert Hofmann's Veilchenfeld is the latest of his novels to be published in English translation, and the first translated by Eric Mace-Tessler. Tom Conaghan at Review31 has given it an appreciative review, recognising that Hofmann's presentation of a civilisation's descent into...
Escaping Flatland
A summary of what I wrote in 2024
A man sets out to draw the world.
a week ago
A man sets out to draw the world.
Josh Thompson
Turing Prep appendix: Troubleshooting Errors
Pretty much any time I hear the same question twice, I will try to add a section here for it, and...
over a year ago
Pretty much any time I hear the same question twice, I will try to add a section here for it, and make it as findable by future students as possible.
Do you have a question not answered here? PLEASE send me a DM in Slack or @ me (I’m josh_t in the Turing slack). I’ll take a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Painstakingly Logical and Precise'
A thought
that never occurred to me but feels self-evidently right:
“In the
course of a reading...
4 months ago
A thought
that never occurred to me but feels self-evidently right:
“In the
course of a reading life, one often stumbles on excellent prose writers never
before encountered; such discoveries, however, are less likely in poetry.
First-rate poetry is a more manageable quantity....
Josh Thompson
Bollards: Why & What
author’s note: it’s always fun to see your own stuff on the Hacker News front page! This very post...
7 months ago
author’s note: it’s always fun to see your own stuff on the Hacker News front page! This very post sparked >450 comments worth of conversation! I didn’t even know this got posted until days later!
What are bollards
The what and the why in a single image:
The what and why in a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'And the Third Is To Be Kind.'
A Palpable Elysium: Portraits of Genius and
Solitude
(David R. Godine, 2002) is a collection of the...
a year ago
A Palpable Elysium: Portraits of Genius and
Solitude
(David R. Godine, 2002) is a collection of the late publisher/poet’s
photographs of artists well-known and obscure. Williams was no snob when it
came to talent and genius. He photographs Stevie Smith, Guy Davenport...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Smart Dinner Jacket and Patent Leather Pumps'
I was never
strictly a crime reporter but several times I covered the cops-and-courts beat,
which...
a year ago
I was never
strictly a crime reporter but several times I covered the cops-and-courts beat,
which was more genteel and less interesting than it sounds. Reading the police
blotter each morning or scanning new filings in the county clerk’s office left this
reporter feeling less...
sbensu
The battlefield where arguments fight
A lot of speech is about convincing others of what type of arguments have merit
10 months ago
A lot of speech is about convincing others of what type of arguments have merit
Josh Thompson
Turing Prep Chapter 4: Arrays, Hashes, and Nested Collections
Preparing for Turing Series Index
What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
Preparing for Turing Series Index
What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Impetuous Eagerness to Subvert'
Dr. Johnson describes
the poet and physician Mark Akenside: “He
certainly retained an unnecessary...
6 months ago
Dr. Johnson describes
the poet and physician Mark Akenside: “He
certainly retained an unnecessary and outrageous zeal for what he called and
thought liberty; a zeal which sometimes disguises from the world, and not
rarely from the mind which it possesses, an envious desire of...
Ben Borgers
The Land of Endless Socialization
over a year ago
The American Scholar
American Horror Story
Jeremy Dauber on our obsession with fear
The post American Horror Story appeared first on The...
a month ago
Jeremy Dauber on our obsession with fear
The post American Horror Story appeared first on The American Scholar.
Robert Caro
An Interview With Robert Caro and Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt greeted us in his beautiful 19th century house and in his bare feet (of which more later). As...
a year ago
Kurt greeted us in his beautiful 19th century house and in his bare feet (of which more later). As the interview progressed it grew sort of
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 359.5
...
a week ago
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
“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
'The Sum of All the Losses'
Abraham Lincoln
was six feet, four inches tall, making him the tallest of U.S. presidents (LBJ
was...
a month ago
Abraham Lincoln
was six feet, four inches tall, making him the tallest of U.S. presidents (LBJ
was half an inch shorter). The crown of his trademark top hat – a stovepipe, it
was called -- measured twelve inches in height. Allowing for the silk hat settling on his head, the...
The American Scholar
Bubble Girl
The kidnapping that once riveted the nation
The post Bubble Girl appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
The kidnapping that once riveted the nation
The post Bubble Girl appeared first on The American Scholar.
sbensu
Industrial macros
Most industry codebases use macros, aka code-generation to solve practical problems like talking to...
6 months ago
Most industry codebases use macros, aka code-generation to solve practical problems like talking to the database.
Josh Thompson
How to complete a project
Most of us have goals. And we usually don’t reach any of them.
The
Minimum Viable Product “concept”...
over a year ago
Most of us have goals. And we usually don’t reach any of them.
The
Minimum Viable Product “concept” has helped me with some goals, and it could be helpful to you.
It’s a simple concept: When starting something new, figure out what the minimum investment would get you the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'O Wonderful Nonsense of Lotions of Lucky Tiger'
I’m loyal to
my barbers because they have always been loyal to me. I don’t have to remind
them of...
11 months ago
I’m loyal to
my barbers because they have always been loyal to me. I don’t have to remind
them of what I want. Every fourth Saturday I visit, like a ritual. I sit in the
chair, he pins the sheet around my neck – and we talk. No micromanaging. I can
forget I’m getting a haircut...
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
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?...
The Marginalian
There’s a Ghost in the Garden: A Subtle and Soulful Illustrated Fable about Memory and Mystery
One of the things no one tells us as we grow up is that we will be living in a world rife with...
a month ago
One of the things no one tells us as we grow up is that we will be living in a world rife with ghosts — all of our disappointed hopes and our outgrown dreams, all the abandoned novels and unproven theorems, all the people we used to love, all the people we used to be. A ghost is...
The Marginalian
The Two Souls Within: Hermann Hesse on the Dual Life of the Creative Spirit
"Like a precious, fleeting foam over the sea of suffering arise all those works of art, in which a...
11 months ago
"Like a precious, fleeting foam over the sea of suffering arise all those works of art, in which a single individual lifts himself for an hour so high above his personal destiny that his happiness shines like a star and appears to all who see it as something eternal and as a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'All Sorts of Characters in the World'
“His poems
are not much read now.” Sad words, often deserved but occasionally unjust. Of
course,...
a year ago
“His poems
are not much read now.” Sad words, often deserved but occasionally unjust. Of
course, much of poetry is no longer read, not even by those who consider
themselves poets. Who besides eccentrics and cranks reads Pope, Tennyson and
Longfellow? The opening question is posed...
The Marginalian
17 Life-Learnings from 17 Years of The Marginalian
The Marginalian was born on October 23, 2006, under an outgrown name, to an outgrown self that feels...
a year ago
The Marginalian was born on October 23, 2006, under an outgrown name, to an outgrown self that feels to me now almost like a different species of consciousness. (It can only be so — if we don’t continually outgrow ourselves, if we don’t wince a little at our former ideas, ideals,...
The Marginalian
Delight Between Science and Magic: Euler’s Disk and the Sound of the Singularity
One afternoon in the late 1980s, sitting in the company cafeteria, aerospace engineer Joseph Bendik...
3 weeks ago
One afternoon in the late 1980s, sitting in the company cafeteria, aerospace engineer Joseph Bendik found himself so bored that he took a coin out of his pocket and began spinning it atop the table. In a testament to the eternal paradox of boredom and wonder as two sides of the...
This Space
"Every day I have to invoke the absent god again"*
I really enjoy this YouTube channel despite my general lack of interest in films. The presenter’s...
over a year ago
I really enjoy this YouTube channel despite my general lack of interest in films. The presenter’s restrained voice-over is ideal for one approaching its concerns; imagine a lullaby sung by Werner Herzog. I envy him the medium for its music, its visuals, even its potential for...
This Space
“Can there be a pure narrative?”
The question opening Maurice Blanchot’s essay The Experience of Proust* has always drawn me back,...
over a year ago
The question opening Maurice Blanchot’s essay The Experience of Proust* has always drawn me back, not to secure a yes or a no, but to keep the question of pure narrative open in its initial uncertainty, perhaps, rather, in its impossibility, as it appears to make reading and...
The Marginalian
An Ecology of Intimacies
At its best, an intimate relationship is a symbiote of mutual nourishment — a portable ecosystem of...
9 months ago
At its best, an intimate relationship is a symbiote of mutual nourishment — a portable ecosystem of interdependent growth, undergirded by a mycelial web of trust and tenderness. One is profoundly changed by it and yet becomes more purely oneself as projections give way to...
The Elysian
I'd like to open a Singapore franchise please?
Franchise Cities as an alternative to Charter Cities.
9 months ago
Franchise Cities as an alternative to Charter Cities.
This Space
39 Books: 2002
The quiet joy of short, constrained memoirs. I borrowed a copy of this book in 2002 and then found a...
7 months ago
The quiet joy of short, constrained memoirs. I borrowed a copy of this book in 2002 and then found a copy in a remaindered shop for £5.
Anne Atik got to know Beckett in the late 1950s through the artist Avigdor Arikha, later her husband. Beckett's circle of friends included as...
Anecdotal Evidence
'And Hears of Life's Intent'
“. . . I’ve had it. No more pronouncements on lousy
verse. No more hidden competition. No
more...
a year ago
“. . . I’ve had it. No more pronouncements on lousy
verse. No more hidden competition. No
more struggling not to be square.
Etc.”
Louise Bogan
is writing to her friend Ruth Limmer on October 1, 1969, announcing her
retirement as poetry reviewer from The
New Yorker after...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Take Measure of the Loss'
The youngest
poet included by Yvor Winters and Kenneth Fields in Quest for Reality: An Anthology of...
10 months ago
The youngest
poet included by Yvor Winters and Kenneth Fields in Quest for Reality: An Anthology of Short Poems in English (1969)
was M. Scott Momaday, a former Winters graduate student at Stanford who was
then thirty-five years old. Winters, who died in 1968, also considered...
Josh Thompson
What I've learned from cooking in 36 kitchens in the last year
Since we’ve been on the road full-time for the last year, Kristi and I have prepared meals for...
over a year ago
Since we’ve been on the road full-time for the last year, Kristi and I have prepared meals for (usually) ourselves and (sometimes) others in 36 (!!!) kitchens.
Sometimes we’ve used a kitchen for just one night, sometimes it’s every night for two months.
Needless to say, we’ve...
Anecdotal Evidence
'My Soul, Beyond Distant Death"
More than
any secular writer I can think of, Vladimir Nabokov hints at the existence of
an...
2 months ago
More than
any secular writer I can think of, Vladimir Nabokov hints at the existence of
an afterlife. He never preaches and makes no theological assertions. His frequent
use of the word “paradise” is often ambiguous, blurring its mundane,
metaphorical meaning – an earthly place...
The Marginalian
How We Render Reality: Attention as an Instrument of Love
"Since our consciousness plays some part in what comes into being, the play of attention can both...
a year ago
"Since our consciousness plays some part in what comes into being, the play of attention can both create and destroy, but it never leaves its object unchanged."
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Result of Education Carried on By Curiosity'
“His
curiosity was so pure it seemed almost childlike.”
Vladimir
Nabokov is describing his friend...
8 months ago
“His
curiosity was so pure it seemed almost childlike.”
Vladimir
Nabokov is describing his friend in exile, Iosif Hessen (1866-1943), and makes
him sound like an extraordinary fellow. He continues in the obituary he wrote
for his friend:
“He was
living proof of the fact that a...
Josh Thompson
MacOS: Keyboard Shortcut to Toggle Bookmarks Bar in Firefox
A few weeks ago, after Firefox Quantum came out, I decided to try making Firefox my daily browser,...
over a year ago
A few weeks ago, after Firefox Quantum came out, I decided to try making Firefox my daily browser, instead of Chrome.
Turns out, Firefox is great! It was a near-seamless transition, and Firefox has a much lower memory footprint, as well as features Chrome does not have, like...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A University Education, Uncorrupted'
A human being
is “born an heir to an inheritance to which he can succeed only in a process...
a week ago
A human being
is “born an heir to an inheritance to which he can succeed only in a process of
learning.” Aristotle didn't get it quite right when he thought we could be defined by our capacity
for speech and even, on occasion, rational discourse. No, it’s learning that
makes us...
Josh Thompson
How to Move
Kristi and I are moving to Colorado in July. We’ve taken three broad steps to make this move...
over a year ago
Kristi and I are moving to Colorado in July. We’ve taken three broad steps to make this move happen:
We both are in process with new jobs
I just started working remotely for Litmus, which means I can seamlessly transition to Colorado this summer. Kristi spent a few days last week...
Josh Thompson
Growing in your first software development job
I started my first software developer role a year ago. (November 2017)
This is tremendously...
over a year ago
I started my first software developer role a year ago. (November 2017)
This is tremendously exciting, of course, but introduces its own set of challenges, like:
I finished Turing and I’ve got a job! Oh snap. I just finished a grueling program, and my reward is I’m fit to sit at...
The American Scholar
Hot and Cold
The post Hot and Cold appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
The post Hot and Cold appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Art of Withstanding Abandonment: The Patience of the Penguin and How Evolution Invented Faith
“Let us love this distance which is wholly woven of friendship, for those who do not love each other...
4 months ago
“Let us love this distance which is wholly woven of friendship, for those who do not love each other are not separated,” Simone Weil wrote in her soulful meditation on the paradox of closeness and separation. To be separated from a loved one — in space or in silence, by choice or...
Wuthering...
Let's read Ovid's Metamorphoses! And perhaps more.
Who would like to read Ovid’s Metamorphoses (8 CE)
with me? We have had some discussion of
this...
a year ago
Who would like to read Ovid’s Metamorphoses (8 CE)
with me? We have had some discussion of
this good idea, and I feel I am up to it now.
Up to writing about it.
Metamorphoses is a compendium of Greek myths that feature
transformation, which turns out to be hundreds of pages...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Balance Sheet of Conscience'
“Strange as this
may sound, as soon as I saw the first Soviet airplanes on September 17, 1939, I
had...
a year ago
“Strange as this
may sound, as soon as I saw the first Soviet airplanes on September 17, 1939, I
had no doubt at all that I’d end up in a camp, and yet I wasn’t much interested
in them. Could I have been wearied in advance, by the monotony and dullness of
mass atrocities?”
That...
Josh Thompson
A Small Goal is Better than a Grand Plan
We all have grand plans. Who’s future projection of themselves goes something like this: “One day,...
over a year ago
We all have grand plans. Who’s future projection of themselves goes something like this: “One day, when I’m rich (goal one), location independent (goal two), and married to a fabulous woman (goal three), I will travel the world (goal four) while exploring my hobby of ___ (goal...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Well-known Types of Miracle'
It’s grim
out there and getting grimmer. Two poems encountered on the same day provided a
touch of...
7 months ago
It’s grim
out there and getting grimmer. Two poems encountered on the same day provided a
touch of buoyancy. The first was originally written in Russian by Vladimir
Nabokov on May 6, 1923:
“No, life is
no quivering quandary!
Here under
the moon things are bright and dewy.
We are...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Everyone He Knew Something About'
A reader who
enjoys the novels of Sinclair Lewis tells me she is put off by the length and
dullness...
2 months ago
A reader who
enjoys the novels of Sinclair Lewis tells me she is put off by the length and
dullness of Mark Schorer’s 1961 biography of the Nobel laureate. I haven’t read
Lewis since high school and have never read Schorer’s 867-page behemoth but I
sympathize. I remember reading...
Wuthering...
The Story of the Stone, volume 4 - It was an eerie, desolate night.
At the two-thirds mark, after 80 chapters of the 120, three
big changes hit The Story of the Stone...
16 hours ago
At the two-thirds mark, after 80 chapters of the 120, three
big changes hit The Story of the Stone (c. 1760 / 1791). First, David Hawkes, the original translator
of the Penguin edition, dies; John Minford finishes the job. Second, the author of the novel, Cao Xueqin,
dies,...
This Space
The end of literature, part three
On the evening of December 12th, 2019 a numbed grief descended over the land, and has lain there...
over a year ago
On the evening of December 12th, 2019 a numbed grief descended over the land, and has lain there ever since. At that time a mild alternative to barbarism was being put to death. Back in 2015 when, against all odds, a lifelong socialist and campaigner against racism and...
The Marginalian
Favorite Books of the Year: Art, Science, Poetry, Psychology, Children’s, and More
Because I read for the same reason I write — to fathom my life and deepen my living — looking back...
5 days ago
Because I read for the same reason I write — to fathom my life and deepen my living — looking back on a year of life has always been looking back on a year of reading. This year was different — a time of such profound pain and profound transformation that it fused reading and...
This Space
A rare sort of writer
Today is Gabriel Josipovici's 80th birthday. To mark the occasion, I'll link to various posts I've...
over a year ago
Today is Gabriel Josipovici's 80th birthday. To mark the occasion, I'll link to various posts I've written over the years – after a brief interlude.
I read him first in July 1988 after borrowing The Lessons of Modernism from the second floor of Portsmouth Central Library because...
Josh Thompson
Cultivate Curiosity, or 'Reasons to be More Childlike'
I’ve had an idea rolling around my head.
I suspect that “being curious” will correlate well with...
over a year ago
I’ve had an idea rolling around my head.
I suspect that “being curious” will correlate well with positive outcomes in my life, on pretty much any time horizon, be it days, weeks, or decades. Curiosity feels like a tolerable antidote to boredom, though boredom in and of itself is...
Ben Borgers
Thursday, January 20, 2022
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Time and the Soul: Philosopher Jacob Needleman on Our Search for Meaning
"The real significance of our problem with time... is a crisis of meaning... The root of our modern...
10 months ago
"The real significance of our problem with time... is a crisis of meaning... The root of our modern problem with time is neither technological, sociological, economic nor psychological. It is metaphysical. It is a question of the meaning of human life itself."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Death Is Divestment, Death Is Communion'
“Whenever in
my dreams I see the dead, they always appear silent, bothered, strangely
depressed,...
5 months ago
“Whenever in
my dreams I see the dead, they always appear silent, bothered, strangely
depressed, quite unlike their dear, bright selves. I am aware of them, without
any astonishment, in surroundings they never visited during their earthly
existence, in the house of some friend of...
Ben Borgers
Why Do We Still Use Snapchat?
over a year ago
Wuthering...
Books I read in February 2024 - if there is truth in poets' prophesies, then in my fame forever will...
Persian literature in March: the epic Shahnameh in
Dick Davis’s mostly prose translation, plus the...
9 months ago
Persian literature in March: the epic Shahnameh in
Dick Davis’s mostly prose translation, plus the classical poets he translated in
Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz, plus some Rumi and at least
one contemporary Iranian novel, Mahmoud Dowlatabadi’s The Colonel
(2009). ...
The Marginalian
Batter My Heart: Love, the Divine Within, and How Not to Break Our Your Own Heart
There are many things we mistake for love — infatuation, admiration, need — but there is no error of...
4 months ago
There are many things we mistake for love — infatuation, admiration, need — but there is no error of the heart graver than making another our higher power. This may seem inevitable — because to love is always to see the divine in each other, because all love is a yearning for the...
The American Scholar
The Patron Subjects
Who were the Wertheimers, the family that sat for a dozen of John Singer Sargent’s paintings?
The...
a month ago
Who were the Wertheimers, the family that sat for a dozen of John Singer Sargent’s paintings?
The post The Patron Subjects appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
39 Books: 2016
I love it when people announce that "if Shakespeare was alive today, he'd be writing Eastenders", or...
7 months ago
I love it when people announce that "if Shakespeare was alive today, he'd be writing Eastenders", or Game of Thrones or crime fiction, according to one and another variation. The innocence of the claim is charming, giving voice to the desperation to give weight to ephemera. But I...
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...
4 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."
The Marginalian
The Universe in Verse Book
"We need science to help us meet reality on its own terms, and we need poetry to help us broaden and...
7 months ago
"We need science to help us meet reality on its own terms, and we need poetry to help us broaden and deepen the terms on which we meet ourselves and each other. At the crossing point of the two we may find a way of clarifying our experience and of sanctifying it."
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
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Sodding Good and Touching Was the Poem'
Kingsley
Amis’ daughter Sally was born on January 17, 1954, two days after her father
published his...
11 months ago
Kingsley
Amis’ daughter Sally was born on January 17, 1954, two days after her father
published his first and finest novel, Lucky
Jim. Three days later, Philip Larkin completed “Born Yesterday” (The Less Deceived, 1955) and dedicated it
to the little girl:
“Tightly-folded
bud,
I...
The American Scholar
What Do You Want to Know For?
The post What Do You Want to Know For? appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
The post What Do You Want to Know For? appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Kate Sessions and the Devotion to Delight: The Forgotten Woman Who Covered California with Trees and...
In May 1941, next to news of the Nazi savagely bombing London, The Los Angeles Times published a...
a year ago
In May 1941, next to news of the Nazi savagely bombing London, The Los Angeles Times published a memorial profile of “California’s Mother of Gardens” — a hopeful antidote to the undoing of the human world, celebrating the woman who covered Southern California with the loveliest...
This Space
39 Books: 2012
Of all the books in this series, this was the one I most wanted to write about and also the one I...
7 months ago
Of all the books in this series, this was the one I most wanted to write about and also the one I knew would be impossible to write about, at least in a couple of distracted hours. Imagine this: through mathematical calculation, close reading and literary detective work, a...
The Marginalian
Loving the Tree of Life: Annie Dillard on How to Bear Your Mortality
"We live and move by splitting the light of the present, as a canoe’s bow parts water."
a year ago
"We live and move by splitting the light of the present, as a canoe’s bow parts water."
Anecdotal Evidence
'What American Beauty Should Be'
An old
friend called and reminded me of the September almost forty years ago when we
hiked along...
3 months ago
An old
friend called and reminded me of the September almost forty years ago when we
hiked along Otter Creek in southern Vermont near Dorset. Often we hiked in Otter Creek, which is filled with granite
boulders. It was less hiking than climbing horizontally. Between the stones...
Anecdotal Evidence
"The Pensive Citadel"
My review of
The Pensive Citadel by Victor
Brombert is published in the December issue of The New...
a year ago
My review of
The Pensive Citadel by Victor
Brombert is published in the December issue of The New Criterion.
Josh Thompson
Customer Success: American Airlines Case Study
Continuing the theme of “what the heck do I do for work”,
I’m writing about Customer Success as I...
over a year ago
Continuing the theme of “what the heck do I do for work”,
I’m writing about Customer Success as I see it. My words are my own, I don’t speak for the industry as a whole, or even for Litmus. I’m just trying to sharpen my own thinking.
Last time, I argued that customer success is...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Artist Knows He Is Ready'
A young
reader complains that he’s “good with words” but doesn’t know what to write
about. It sounds...
7 months ago
A young
reader complains that he’s “good with words” but doesn’t know what to write
about. It sounds as though he seizes up when he sits down at the keyboard. To
call his condition “writer’s block” would be premature. He’s too inexperienced
for that to be happening already. The...
Escaping Flatland
On feeling connected
generosity is potency
2 months ago
Josh Thompson
12 Lessons Learned While Publishing Something Every Day for a Month
A month ago, I decided to publish something every day for at least thirty days.
I read a few others...
over a year ago
A month ago, I decided to publish something every day for at least thirty days.
I read a few others who did something similar, and discussed all the benefits. I’ve found myself struggling with creating something and then making it public. (Public here, on another project, or at...
Anecdotal Evidence
Arthur Krystal
My review of
two books by Arthur Krystal -- A Word or
Two Before I Go: Essays Then and Now and Some...
5 months ago
My review of
two books by Arthur Krystal -- A Word or
Two Before I Go: Essays Then and Now and Some Unfinished Chaos: The Lives of F. Scott Fitzgerald – is
published in Ron Slate’s On the Seawall.
Steven Scrawls
You Are Not Incompressible
You Are Not Incompressible
can be summarised as: walking, walking, walking, bit of fighting...
6 months ago
You Are Not Incompressible
can be summarised as: walking, walking, walking, bit of fighting with
orcs, walking, walking, walking, anguish, walking, walking, walking, bit
more fighting with orcs, walking, walking, walking.
—Goodreads review of “The Lord of the Rings”
Im returning...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Curiosity to Inquire Into All Things'
“Concupiscence
of experience, boundless curiosity to set our foot everywhere, to enter...
a month ago
“Concupiscence
of experience, boundless curiosity to set our foot everywhere, to enter every
possible situation. Montaigne.”
I could have
signed my name to that when I was twenty. I wanted to visit every country in
the world, even the most dangerous. I made plans to move to...
The Marginalian
The Work of Art: Inside the Creative Process of Beloved Artists, Poets, Musicians, and Other Makes...
“The true artist,” Beethoven wrote in his touching letter of advice to a young girl aspiring to be...
7 months ago
“The true artist,” Beethoven wrote in his touching letter of advice to a young girl aspiring to be an artist, “is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.” The choreographer Martha Graham called this particular shade of...
The Marginalian
bell hooks on Love
"We can never go back... We can go forward. We can find the love our hearts long for, but not until...
a year ago
"We can never go back... We can go forward. We can find the love our hearts long for, but not until we let go grief about the love we lost long ago... All awakening to love is spiritual awakening."
The Marginalian
Magnolias and the Meaning of Life: Science, Poetry, Existentialism
On cruelty, kindness, and the song of life.
a year ago
On cruelty, kindness, and the song of life.
Josh Thompson
Resources for People with Jobs
RESOURCES FOR PEOPLE WITH JOBS
You spend most of your waking hours at work. So, spend a few of those...
over a year ago
RESOURCES FOR PEOPLE WITH JOBS
You spend most of your waking hours at work. So, spend a few of those waking hours when you’re
not at work thinking about how to improve the hours that you
are working. Often, improving your work means you can improve your work conditions and...
The Marginalian
The Transcendent Brain: The Poetic Physicist Alan Lightman on Spirituality for the Science-Spirited
A largehearted invitation to "stand on the precipice between the known and the unknown, without...
a year ago
A largehearted invitation to "stand on the precipice between the known and the unknown, without fear, without anxiety, but instead with awe and wonder at this strange and beautiful cosmos we find ourselves in."
Josh Thompson
Exploring source code via Griddler and Griddler-Mailgun
Proofpoint had a two-day “hack day” recently. My coworker John and I teamed up on a cool little...
over a year ago
Proofpoint had a two-day “hack day” recently. My coworker John and I teamed up on a cool little feature. I’ll give some context in a moment, but this post isn’t about the hack day, or email - it’s about exploring source code.
Here’s the context:
In my day-to-day, I work on a...
The Marginalian
Comet & Star: A Cosmic Fable about the Rhythms and Consolations of Friendship
People pass through our lives and change us, tilting our orbit with their own. Sometimes, if the...
2 months ago
People pass through our lives and change us, tilting our orbit with their own. Sometimes, if the common gravitational center is strong enough, they return, they stay. Sometimes they travel on. But they change us all the same. The great consolation of the cosmic order is the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Neither Angels Nor Devils'
A favorite
story about Dr. Johnson reminded me of something the late critic John Simon had
written...
10 months ago
A favorite
story about Dr. Johnson reminded me of something the late critic John Simon had
written on his blog five years ago. In a post titled “Curse Words,” abbreviated
by Simon throughout as “CW,” he reviews profanity as used in various settings
and languages, including Croat,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'But, Take It From This Famous Pote [sic]'
Isaac
Waisberg of IWP Books has published his latest anthology of Horace translations,
this time a...
11 months ago
Isaac
Waisberg of IWP Books has published his latest anthology of Horace translations,
this time a generous 417 versions of Ode I.5, the “Ode to Pyrrha,” dating from 1621 to 2007. The one I’m familiar with is John Milton’s, described
by the poet as “rendered almost word for word...
The Marginalian
The Moon and the Yew Tree: Patti Smith Reads Sylvia Plath’s Haunting Portrait of Depression
"This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary."
a year ago
"This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary."
Josh Thompson
Boulder Ruby Group meetup notes
Move Slow and Improve Things: Performance Improvement in a Rails App
Boulder Ruby Group Monthly...
over a year ago
Move Slow and Improve Things: Performance Improvement in a Rails App
Boulder Ruby Group Monthly Meetup @Recurly Offices, Feb 13, 2018
Slides are available here on Dropbox
Git Push, Git Paid
Here’s the “Git Push, Git Paid” t-shirt I mentioned:
Thoughtbot designed these, and it...
Josh Thompson
Fred Roger's Method For Writing Scripts
Someone said:
People think this is silly, but read about Fred rogers’ method for writing a script...
over a year ago
Someone said:
People think this is silly, but read about Fred rogers’ method for writing a script for his show. The rules aren’t fully applicable to presentations, but the attention to detail and to the Interpretation of the audience is. Don’t use any words carelessly.
I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Fond of Books and Fond of Reading'
A friend has
loaned me his copy of Maurice Baring’s Have You Anything to Declare? (1936),
subtitled...
8 months ago
A friend has
loaned me his copy of Maurice Baring’s Have You Anything to Declare? (1936),
subtitled A Note Book with Commentaries. This
is the 1950 edition published by William Heinemann and comes with an indecipherable
pencil inscription on the front end paper that may be...
Josh Thompson
Talent is Overrated
Talent is Overrated
In Talent is Overrated, the author argues that world-class performers are not...
over a year ago
Talent is Overrated
In Talent is Overrated, the author argues that world-class performers are not genetically gifted. The difference between world-class performers and the rest of us? Lots of deliberate practice. (Read the article.)
I have no interest in becoming Mozart, or Tiger...
The Marginalian
The Proper Object of Love: Iris Murdoch on the Angst of Not Knowing Ourselves and Each Other
One of the hardest things to learn in life is that the heart is a clock too fast not to break. We...
4 months ago
One of the hardest things to learn in life is that the heart is a clock too fast not to break. We lurch into loving, only to discover again and again that it takes a long time to know people, to understand people — and “understanding is love’s other name.” Even without...
Josh Thompson
Be Gentle to You
There are many types of people in the world, all with different approaches to “getting stuff done”....
over a year ago
There are many types of people in the world, all with different approaches to “getting stuff done”. My approach to doing stuff is different from my wife’s approach. (Who’da thunk?)
These two years of marriage have revealed much. One of these “revelations” was this: my sense of...
The Marginalian
Let Your Heart Be Broken
"The miracle is that we rise again out of suffering... The miracle is that we create ourselves...
a year ago
"The miracle is that we rise again out of suffering... The miracle is that we create ourselves anew."
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Whole Poem Becomes Molten with Activity'
I’m in debt
to anthologies for much of my education. When you’re young and hungry and
everything is...
a year ago
I’m in debt
to anthologies for much of my education. When you’re young and hungry and
everything is new, such collections are like well-stocked cafeterias. You push
your tray down the line and sample what looks good. Once seated, if a friend
recommends a dish you avoided, you can...
The American Scholar
Ground Truth
A story of dirt, dollars, and death
The post Ground Truth appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
A story of dirt, dollars, and death
The post Ground Truth appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Comfort, Solace, Inspiration'
“A few
books, however,” writes Michael Dirda, “become lifelong companions, works we
regularly turn...
a year ago
“A few
books, however,” writes Michael Dirda, “become lifelong companions, works we
regularly turn to for comfort, solace, inspiration.” The reviewer identifies a slightly
different category, “the books we find ourselves crazy about and hope to
revisit someday,” as distinguished,...
The Marginalian
The Sunflower and the Soul: Wendell Berry on the Collaborative Nature of the Universe and the Cure...
"We are not the authors of ourselves. That we are not is a religious perception, but it is also a...
5 months ago
"We are not the authors of ourselves. That we are not is a religious perception, but it is also a biological and a social one. Each of us has had many authors, and each of us is engaged, for better or worse, in that same authorship. We could say that the human race is a great...
Josh Thompson
Setting up Application Performance Monitoring in DataDog in your Rails App
When I write guides to things, I write them first and foremost for myself, and I tend to work...
over a year ago
When I write guides to things, I write them first and foremost for myself, and I tend to work through things in excruciating detail. You might find this to be a little too in-depth, or you might appreciate the detail. Either way, if you want a step-by-step guide, this should do...
Josh Thompson
On Boldness In Climbing
Climb boldly. I’ve tried to write about this many times, and have thousands of words scattered...
over a year ago
Climb boldly. I’ve tried to write about this many times, and have thousands of words scattered across my computer about this topic. I always felt like I wasn’t communicating it quite right. I wasn’t happy with it.
So I said “screw it, I’ll explain it like I would if I were...
Anecdotal Evidence
"The Saint’s Strange Way to Practice Death"
Among the road
kill I’ve tallied on Houston streets, the most common casualty is the...
9 months ago
Among the road
kill I’ve tallied on Houston streets, the most common casualty is the strangely
spelled opossum (from the Powhatan). The least common, incidentally, is the
armadillo, with two KIAs sighted in twenty years, both being pecked at by
crows. Natives here seem uncommonly...
The Marginalian
Notes on Complexity: A Buddhist Scientist on the Murmuration of Being
"You are this body, and you are these molecules, and you are these atoms, and you are these quantum...
a year ago
"You are this body, and you are these molecules, and you are these atoms, and you are these quantum entities, and you are the quantum foam, and you are the energetic field of space-time, and, ultimately, you are the fundamental awareness out of which all these emerge."
Ben Borgers
Automatic Dark Mode Colors Don’t Work
over a year ago
The Marginalian
How Emotions Are Made
"Emotions are not reactions to the world; they are your constructions of the world."
10 months ago
"Emotions are not reactions to the world; they are your constructions of the world."
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Particular Adroitness and Off-hand Readiness'
For years, with plenty of interruptions, I’ve
tried working my way through John Dryden’s prolific...
a year ago
For years, with plenty of interruptions, I’ve
tried working my way through John Dryden’s prolific output – poems, plays,
translations, essays, letters. Much of it is lost on me, especially among the plays. His
verse and essays are what I most enjoy, but a play, Amphitryon,or the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Garish, Clownish, Bizarre, Stills Blocks Away'
Thirty years
ago I lived briefly in Latham, N.Y., north of Albany along the Mohawk River. The
river...
a year ago
Thirty years
ago I lived briefly in Latham, N.Y., north of Albany along the Mohawk River. The
river there is serpentine and the city paved a walking path along its southern
shore that smoothed out some of the curves. Every day I walked two miles along
the asphalt trail, turned...
Wuthering...
The Frogs by Aristophanes - Brilliant! Brilliant! Wish I knew what you were talking about!
The Frogs by Aristophanes is this week’s play. It was performed in what now look like the waning...
over a year ago
The Frogs by Aristophanes is this week’s play. It was performed in what now look like the waning days of Athens, just before their conquest by Sparta, and in particular the last days of Athenian tragedy, with Euripides and Sophocles both recently dead. In what may be the most...
Wuthering...
The Female Quixote by Charlotte Lennox - counting the pages, he was quite terrified at the number,...
Di at The little white attic is chasing Don Quixote through
the 18th century, so she read,...
a week ago
Di at The little white attic is chasing Don Quixote through
the 18th century, so she read, obviously, The Female Quixote (1852) by
Charlotte Lennox. I had not read it, so
I trailed along.
An archetypal novelistic heroine, young Arabella has had her
brain addled by novels:
From...
The Marginalian
Uses of the Erotic: Audre Lorde on the Relationship Between Eros, Creativity, and Power
"There is, for me, no difference between writing a good poem and moving into sunlight against the...
a year ago
"There is, for me, no difference between writing a good poem and moving into sunlight against the body of a woman I love."
Escaping Flatland
Garlic and gravel
fragments
5 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'But Johnson Fought Back'
Epigraphs to
books are often superfluous. They can come off as cute or pretentious. They add...
3 months ago
Epigraphs to
books are often superfluous. They can come off as cute or pretentious. They add little
or nothing to the manner in which we read the book and often amount to our
author showing off, touting his own vast reading or giving himself an unearned
endorsement. The most...
sbensu
Hiring from Big Tech
Some brief notes about the subject
8 months ago
Some brief notes about the subject
Anecdotal Evidence
'Greatness Is Difficult'
“It is
dangerous to admire a great man for his sins: we may too easily adopt his sins
for our own...
a year ago
“It is
dangerous to admire a great man for his sins: we may too easily adopt his sins
for our own out of admiration for his genius; and when the inevitable reaction
occurs, the great man’s reputation is likely to suffer unduly.”
Among writers, Dr. Johnson
is the first fallible...
Josh Thompson
A message for high schoolers
tl;dr: Before you start looking at colleges, be able to discuss coherently the following three...
over a year ago
tl;dr: Before you start looking at colleges, be able to discuss coherently the following three topics:
Credentialism
Signaling
Opportunity cost
If you can wrap your head around that, you’ll be ahead of most of your peers. I’ve got a few links for you farther down in this...
The Marginalian
The Science and Poetry of Anthotypes: Emily Dickinson’s Herbarium, Recreated in Hauntingly Beautiful...
On September 20, 1845, the polymathic Scottish mathematician Mary Somerville — the woman for whom...
11 months ago
On September 20, 1845, the polymathic Scottish mathematician Mary Somerville — the woman for whom the word scientist was coined — sent a letter to the polymathic English astronomer John Herschel, who six years earlier had coined the word photography for the radical invention of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Magnetism, an Ardor, a Refusal to Be False'
In “The Madonna of the Future,” an 1873 story by Henry James, an American painter in
Florence tells...
a year ago
In “The Madonna of the Future,” an 1873 story by Henry James, an American painter in
Florence tells the narrator, “If you but knew the rapture of observation! I
gather with every glance some hint for light, for color or relief! When I get home, I pour out my treasures into
the...
The Marginalian
Sheltering the Heroes Among Us: John Berger on Art as Resistance and Redemption of Justice
"The powerful fear art, whatever its form... because it makes sense of what life’s brutalities...
a month ago
"The powerful fear art, whatever its form... because it makes sense of what life’s brutalities cannot, a sense that unites us... becomes a meeting-place of the invisible, the irreducible, the enduring."
The American Scholar
Betsy, Mary, and Trish
The post Betsy, Mary, and Trish appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
The post Betsy, Mary, and Trish appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Mocks & Stubs & Exceptions in Ruby
Some of my recent work has been around improving error handling and logging.
We had some tasks that,...
over a year ago
Some of my recent work has been around improving error handling and logging.
We had some tasks that, if they failed to execute correctly, were supposed to raise exceptions, log themselves, and re-queue, but they were not.
The class in which I was working managed in large part API...
This Space
The end of literature, part five
"Stupid" and "a marketing exercise" were the first two descriptions I saw of the New York Times' 100...
5 months ago
"Stupid" and "a marketing exercise" were the first two descriptions I saw of the New York Times' 100 Best Books of the 21st Century polled from hundreds of "literary luminaries" offering ten choices each, and while it is both of those things, "parochial" is the first word that...
Anecdotal Evidence
'On the Cello of Shared Grief'
With the deaths
of certain writers our reaction is shamefully selfish: Why did he do that to me? No...
5 days ago
With the deaths
of certain writers our reaction is shamefully selfish: Why did he do that to me? No thought for family or friends, or
even other readers, merely one’s sense of personal betrayal. That’s how I felt
seven years ago when Richard Wilbur died at age ninety-six, as...
Wuthering...
Iphigeneia in Aulis by Euripides - even babies sense the dread of evil to come
The final Euripides play is Iphigeneia in Aulis, performed with The Bacchae in 405 BCE. I normally...
over a year ago
The final Euripides play is Iphigeneia in Aulis, performed with The Bacchae in 405 BCE. I normally write “Iphigenia,” but I read the 1978 W. S. Merwin and George E. Dimock, Jr. translation titled which goes with “Iphigeneia,” so I will switch to that spelling for this post.
...
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...
5 months ago
"In our age, to have the courage for direct speech to God (for prayer) we must either not know what poems are, or forget."
The Marginalian
Hermann Hesse on Discovering the Soul Beneath the Self and the Key to Finding Peace
"Self-hate is really the same thing as sheer egoism, and in the long run breeds the same cruel...
10 months ago
"Self-hate is really the same thing as sheer egoism, and in the long run breeds the same cruel isolation and despair."
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