Full Width [alt+shift+f] Shortcuts [alt+shift+k]
Sign Up [alt+shift+s] Log In [alt+shift+l]
Top Categories > literature
#all #programming #technology #startups #history #life #science #literature #architecture #creative #design #finance #travel #comics #AI #indiehacker #cartography Muted Categories [alt+←][alt+→]
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
16
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...
The American Scholar
America the Beautiful The poem that became a hymn to the nation came about in troubled, polarizing times The post America...
a week ago
11
a week ago
The poem that became a hymn to the nation came about in troubled, polarizing times The post America the Beautiful appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Asteroid Hunters The scientists and engineers who defend our planet day and night from potentially hazardous space...
4 months ago
16
4 months ago
The scientists and engineers who defend our planet day and night from potentially hazardous space rocks The post Asteroid Hunters appeared first on The American Scholar.
sbensu
How to: friction logs Friction logs are a technique to improve your own products and understand others. You use the...
a year ago
20
a year ago
Friction logs are a technique to improve your own products and understand others. You use the produdct the way a real user would and write down every single moment you experience some form of negative emotion.
The Marginalian
Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” Brought to Life in a Spanish Flashmob of 100 Musicians A touchingly human reminder of our capacity for ecstasy, transcendence, and collective felicity.
over a year ago
The Perry Bible...
Blocked The post Blocked appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
3 months ago
Astral Codex Ten
AI Futures: Blogging And AMA ...
2 months ago
Ben Borgers
My Office Makes Me Feel Stupid
over a year ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Phosphor Icons Phosphor is a flexible icon family for interfaces, diagrams, presentations — whatever, really. Visit...
10 months ago
20
10 months ago
Phosphor is a flexible icon family for interfaces, diagrams, presentations — whatever, really. Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
Josh Thompson
The advantage of low friction goals If you have a project, make it easy to take small steps. I’m trying to publish something every day...
over a year ago
14
over a year ago
If you have a project, make it easy to take small steps. I’m trying to publish something every day for a month. Normally, I would sit down at my computer, open a text editor, write something, the copy it into Squarespace, and customize the post from there. “Customization”...
Ben Borgers
Preschooler > AI
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Late Night Sprints
over a year ago
This Space
The disaster of writing: My Weil by Lars Iyer "When a plane crashes, a bomb explodes, a city floods or a pandemic begins, Lucy Easthope's phone...
a year ago
36
a year ago
"When a plane crashes, a bomb explodes, a city floods or a pandemic begins, Lucy Easthope's phone starts to ring" says the blurb to her recent book subtitled Stories of Love, Loss and Hope from an Expert in Disaster, and goes on to report rapturous praise from critics and...
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
34
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...
The Elysian
Asia and the future of the nation state A discussion with Benjamin Perry.
8 months 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...
a year ago
86
a year 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 American Scholar
Hiding in Plain Sight What happens when a progressive city is forced to reckon with its connections to an unjust past? The...
a month ago
5
a month ago
What happens when a progressive city is forced to reckon with its connections to an unjust past? The post Hiding in Plain Sight appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Forgiveness Shortly after I began the year with some blessings, a friend sent me Lucille Clifton’s spare,...
5 months ago
74
5 months ago
Shortly after I began the year with some blessings, a friend sent me Lucille Clifton’s spare, splendid poem “blessing the boats.” We had met at a poetry workshop and shared a resolution to write more poetry in the coming year, so we began taking turns each week choosing a line...
Ben Borgers
Fancy Quotation Marks
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Betsy, Mary, and Trish The post Betsy, Mary, and Trish appeared first on The American Scholar.
a year ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Transitioning from the Attention Era to the Automation Era This new era – the Automation Era – is marked by platforms managing the content and connections for...
7 months ago
16
7 months ago
This new era – the Automation Era – is marked by platforms managing the content and connections for you, so you can spend your attention elsewhere. Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Have the Heart Partially Erased' “Hatred, suspicion, malice and madness seem to be reaching new highs everywhere. . . . Perhaps...
4 months ago
29
4 months ago
“Hatred, suspicion, malice and madness seem to be reaching new highs everywhere. . . . Perhaps madness, like cancer, is a way of life trying to transcend itself.”  This might be a template for next week’s column, a pundit’s lamentation ready for copying-and-pasting. In fact,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I’m Less Inclined to Carp' My nephew and I have long, spontaneous telephone conversations that begin with the usual...
5 months ago
27
5 months ago
My nephew and I have long, spontaneous telephone conversations that begin with the usual drab pleasantries: “How are you doing?” “Fine. You?” An hour later we’re saying goodbye, but not before Abe tells me he's smitten by P.G. Wodehouse. These talks usually take place Sunday...
The Marginalian
Nikolai Vavilov and the Living Library of Resilience: The Story of the World’s First Seed Bank and... The most moving story of self-sacrifice in the history of science.
over a year ago
The Elysian
Three classic utopian novels—now collectibles More than 100 years ago, three thinkers imagined what a utopian future might look like in the year...
10 months ago
61
10 months ago
More than 100 years ago, three thinkers imagined what a utopian future might look like in the year 2000. Now, their novels are available as a collectible set.
The Marginalian
Mars and Our Search for Meaning: A Planetary Scientist’s Love Letter to Life "It is the search for infinity, the search for evidence that our capacious universe might hold life...
a year ago
26
a year ago
"It is the search for infinity, the search for evidence that our capacious universe might hold life elsewhere, in a different place or at a different time or in a different form."
Astral Codex Ten
Everything-Except-Book Review Contest 2025 ...
4 months ago
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...
a year ago
28
a year 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...
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 378.5 ...
2 months ago
This Space
39 Books: 2011 How does one respond to Nietzsche's revelation at Sils Maria? I read Pierre Klossowski's Nietzsche...
a year ago
90
a year ago
How does one respond to Nietzsche's revelation at Sils Maria? I read Pierre Klossowski's Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle because the thought of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same occurred to me as a literary concept, perhaps the ultimate experience of the literary, but needed...
This Space
Further in the opposite direction Modernity is supposed to be the moment when religious claims and systems of authority reveal...
a year ago
54
a year ago
Modernity is supposed to be the moment when religious claims and systems of authority reveal themselves to be human-all-too-human fictions that lack divine legitimation. Religion is supposed to wither away. But this itself...can be understood as a religious claim: the very...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Person With No Public Appeal' Interviews with writers are now accepted as a discrete literary form, like rondeaus and...
a month ago
9
a month ago
Interviews with writers are now accepted as a discrete literary form, like rondeaus and villanelles, probably for the same reason people read the biographies of writers whose work they have never read. I suppose the Paris Review encouraged the trend starting in the Fifties by...
Josh Thompson
Climbing in Cuba, 2019 A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go climbing in Cuba. Mark and Dave, walking back from...
over a year ago
13
over a year ago
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go climbing in Cuba. Mark and Dave, walking back from climbing outside Viñales Locals crag, called “The roof of the world”. Stunning routes. because it was so hot, we spent a lot of time in this cave. Kristi and I tend to stick...
The Marginalian
Winnicott on the Psychology of Democracy, the Most Dangerous Type of Person, and the Unconscious... In the late morning of the first day of August in 2023, exactly twenty summers after I arrived in...
9 months ago
63
9 months ago
In the late morning of the first day of August in 2023, exactly twenty summers after I arrived in Philadelphia as a lone teenager from a country thirteen centuries America’s senior, I experienced that wonderful capacity for self-surprise as tears came streaming down my face in a...
This Space
39 Books: 2023 This is the 39th and final post of this series. As the introduction explains, I began seeking a...
a year ago
112
a year ago
This is the 39th and final post of this series. As the introduction explains, I began seeking a return to the short-form of the early days of blogging. And it started off well, with each entry written in no time, sometimes stirring up the sediment of initial enchantment. As I got...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Poems Can Be True in Different Ways' Something seems to be stirring out there. I’m too cautious and cynical to proclaim a renaissance in...
5 months ago
19
5 months ago
Something seems to be stirring out there. I’m too cautious and cynical to proclaim a renaissance in formalist poetry but the prognosis is promising. Clarence Caddell, an Australian, has published the second issue of The Borough: A Journal of Poetry. I wrote about the first issue...
Astral Codex Ten
How To Stop Worrying And Learn To Love Lynn's National IQ Estimates ...
6 months ago
Josh Thompson
Primitive Obsession & Exceptional Values I’ve been working through Avdi Grimes’ Mastering the Object Oriented Mindset course. One of the...
over a year ago
17
over a year ago
I’ve been working through Avdi Grimes’ Mastering the Object Oriented Mindset course. One of the topics was using “whole values”, instead of being “primative obsessed”. The example Avdi gave was clear as day. He used a course with a duration attribute to show the...
The American Scholar
Song for the Earth Finding a message for today in the music of Gustav Mahler The post Song for the Earth appeared first...
3 months ago
34
3 months ago
Finding a message for today in the music of Gustav Mahler The post Song for the Earth appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Testing Rake Tasks in Rails I recently wrote a rake task to update some values we’ve got stored in the database. The rake task...
over a year ago
18
over a year ago
I recently wrote a rake task to update some values we’ve got stored in the database. The rake task itself isn’t important in this post, but testing it is. We’ve got many untested rake tasks in the database, so when our senior dev suggested adding a test, I had to build ours from...
sbensu
Default blind In a software business, it is hard to even know what is going on.
9 months ago
Ben Borgers
Winter break project list [2024]
6 months ago
Wuthering...
The sophists and their rehabilitation - they clearly cause the ruin and corruption of their... I have been pursuing the sophists, the great antagonists of Socrates and Plato.  Minimized for...
over a year ago
53
over a year ago
I have been pursuing the sophists, the great antagonists of Socrates and Plato.  Minimized for centuries in the history of philosophy as, following Plato (but not Socrates), hucksters, they, or some of them, are now taken seriously as an intermediate step between the cosmological...
Ben Borgers
The real reason for my multiple majors
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Pleasure of Being Left Alone "An exquisite peace obtains: a drowsy, golden peace, flowing honey-sweet over my dwelling, soaking...
a year ago
85
a year ago
"An exquisite peace obtains: a drowsy, golden peace, flowing honey-sweet over my dwelling, soaking it, dripping like music from the walls... A peace for gods; a divine emptiness."
The Marginalian
Doris: A Watercolor Serenade to the Courage of Authenticity and the Art of Connection “There is no insurmountable solitude,” Pablo Neruda asserted in his stirring Nobel Prize acceptance...
a year ago
39
a year ago
“There is no insurmountable solitude,” Pablo Neruda asserted in his stirring Nobel Prize acceptance speech. “All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Travel Is No Cure for the Mind Who we are inside a venue matters far more than the venue itself. Instead of having the wanderlust...
6 months ago
20
6 months ago
Who we are inside a venue matters far more than the venue itself. Instead of having the wanderlust of travel guide our search for meaning, we have to look within and embrace the only thing that is present now. The only thing that actually exists today. — Lawrence Yeo I do love...
The Elysian
Yes, Taylor Swift is just as genius as Mary Shelley The video from our live event.
9 months ago
Josh Thompson
Input metrics vs. Output metrics It’s tempting to track results, when trying to accomplish something. If you’re working on any...
over a year ago
14
over a year ago
It’s tempting to track results, when trying to accomplish something. If you’re working on any project of sufficient size, the results will come slowly, fitfully, and sometimes not at all. So, don’t track results, track your efforts. (Yes, how very American of me. I don’t believe...
The American Scholar
Rage, Muse The novels that revisit Greek myths, giving voice to the women who were scorned, wronged, or...
11 months ago
73
11 months ago
The novels that revisit Greek myths, giving voice to the women who were scorned, wronged, or forgotten The post Rage, Muse appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Indiana Absurd Tiffany Tsao on translating a beguiling Indonesian short-story collection The post Indiana Absurd...
a year ago
53
a year ago
Tiffany Tsao on translating a beguiling Indonesian short-story collection The post Indiana Absurd appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Web of Thoughts
over a year ago
ben-mini
Old School Business In a prior role, I experienced friction with my sales team’s leadership: They emphasized the needs...
a year ago
17
a year ago
In a prior role, I experienced friction with my sales team’s leadership: They emphasized the needs of the economic buyer and neglected the end-users. They withheld key performance indicators from prospects (i.e. pricing, number of customers, customer satisfaction). They demeaned...
Ben Borgers
Tufts Meal Plans Are a Scam
over a year ago
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...
a year ago
84
a year 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
Kafka’s Creative Block and the Four Psychological Hindrances That Keep the Talented from Manifesting... The most paradoxical thing about creative work is that it is both a way in and a way out, that it...
8 months ago
60
8 months ago
The most paradoxical thing about creative work is that it is both a way in and a way out, that it plunges you into the depths of your being and at the same time takes you out of yourself. Writing is the best instrument I have for metabolizing my experience and clarifying my own...
Ben Borgers
Reading with RSS
over a year ago
Steven Scrawls
Easy Questions, Part 2: Delusional Desires in Fiction Easy Questions, Part 2: Delusional Desires in Fiction In Part 1, I examined a few common tropes in...
a year ago
19
a year ago
Easy Questions, Part 2: Delusional Desires in Fiction In Part 1, I examined a few common tropes in stories and suggested that some stories might explore certain questions not because those questions are interesting, but because engaging with those questions allows the story to...
The American Scholar
Ask Already The post Ask Already appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
Ben Borgers
Professorship Bias
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Kyung Kim Far over the misty mountains The post Kyung Kim appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
The Marginalian
18 Life-Learnings from 18 Years of The Marginalian Somewhere along the way, you realize that no one will teach you how to live your own life — not your...
8 months ago
57
8 months ago
Somewhere along the way, you realize that no one will teach you how to live your own life — not your parents or your idols, not the philosophers or the poets, not your liberal arts education or your twelve-step program, not church or therapy or Tolstoy. No matter how valuable any...
Ben Borgers
Read the Dang Thing Out Loud
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Wanted Only Time' My brother’s yahrzeit – the first anniversary of his death last summer – is approaching. His death...
a month ago
15
a month ago
My brother’s yahrzeit – the first anniversary of his death last summer – is approaching. His death was the most intimate I have experienced. I spent most of the last two weeks of his life with him, in hospital and hospice, and observed the moment of his death.  Ken could be...
The Marginalian
Shame and the Secret Chambers of the Self: Pioneering Sociologist and Philosopher Helen Merrell Lynd... "Experiences of shame throw a flooding light on what and who we are and what the world we live in...
a year ago
This Space
39 Books: 2000 In 1998 my friend John Harris mentioned that he was travelling to the US so I asked if he could pick...
a year ago
90
a year ago
In 1998 my friend John Harris mentioned that he was travelling to the US so I asked if he could pick up a copy of the new translation of Peter Handke's My Year in the No-man's Bay, not available over here. He was the first to tell me about this new website called Amazon. This is...
The Elysian
Going from research to writing Our third "research with me" session.
4 months ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Future Web It’s idealistic and very millennial of me to reminiscence the early days of Web innocence, unbound...
6 months ago
33
6 months ago
It’s idealistic and very millennial of me to reminiscence the early days of Web innocence, unbound creativity it hosted and wonderful lack of monetisation of virtually every aspect of being online. We can’t turn back time. But, individually and collectively, we can strive for...
The Marginalian
Miss Leoparda: A Painted Parable of the Third Way and How to Change the World When told that there are only two options on the table and when both are limiting, most people,...
4 months ago
30
4 months ago
When told that there are only two options on the table and when both are limiting, most people, conditioned by the option dispensary we call society, will choose the lesser of the two limitations. Some will try to find a third option to put on the table; they may or may not...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ To Comprehend To stand in a landscape that is hard to comprehend is to know that not all that should be celebrated...
over a year ago
10
over a year ago
To stand in a landscape that is hard to comprehend is to know that not all that should be celebrated is human-made. To understand that to get here, it took hundreds, thousands, millions of denominations of time to render this environment is a lesson in a slow life that we’ve...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Apple Maps on the web launches in beta Today, Apple Maps on the web is available in public beta, allowing users around the world to access...
11 months ago
24
11 months ago
Today, Apple Maps on the web is available in public beta, allowing users around the world to access Maps directly from their browser. Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
Wuthering...
Books I read in November 2023 Recovery from surgery leads to a long list of books. (Everything is going well, by the way,...
a year ago
79
a year ago
Recovery from surgery leads to a long list of books. (Everything is going well, by the way, thanks).  My idea of a “comfort read” is a book on a subject about which I do not know much – start me over at the beginning – thus my enthusiastic Indian literature project, which is...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Bookmark to Bear Recently, I discovered that the creator of Pinboard posted transphobic views from that account on...
10 months ago
13
10 months ago
Recently, I discovered that the creator of Pinboard posted transphobic views from that account on (RIP) Twitter. This is disappointing, and a little digging revealed that it wasn't his first time espousing such views. I don't have time nor tolerance for this. I swiftly exported...
Josh Thompson
2016 - Biggest Lesson, Most Dangerous Books I don’t do New Years resolutions, but I like to think back on the last year. I’ll touch on two...
over a year ago
13
over a year ago
I don’t do New Years resolutions, but I like to think back on the last year. I’ll touch on two things: The most important thing I’ve learned this year: Tactical Silence Most dangerous books of 2016 Tactical Silence I suspect that a year from now, I’m going to look back and say...
ribbonfarm
Bangalore Meetup Report Did a ribbonfarm meetup in Bangalore last night, the first ever in India. Thanks to Abhishek Agarwal...
a year ago
19
a year ago
Did a ribbonfarm meetup in Bangalore last night, the first ever in India. Thanks to Abhishek Agarwal for organizing. I think this is the first meetup I’ve done since the last Refactor Camp in 2019. It was kinda last minute, which is why I only posted on Substack rather than here...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Conception of Life As an Enchanted State' On summer mornings in the mid-nineteen-sixties, I would follow the path behind our house through a...
a month ago
15
a month ago
On summer mornings in the mid-nineteen-sixties, I would follow the path behind our house through a growth of poplars and sassafras to the place where the white oaks and tulip trees took over. The path ended at the top of the hill where we went sledding in winter. Most mornings...
sbensu
Math intuitions on variance This is a supplement to High Variance Management, where I build some intuition on the different...
over a year ago
22
over a year ago
This is a supplement to High Variance Management, where I build some intuition on the different probability distributions involved.
Josh Thompson
On Cleaner Controllers A few days ago, I worked on a project that was mostly about serving up basic store data (modeled...
over a year ago
13
over a year ago
A few days ago, I worked on a project that was mostly about serving up basic store data (modeled after Etsy) to an API. We had a few dozen end-points, and all responses were in JSON. Most of the action happened inside of our controllers, and as you might imagine, our routes.rb...
Josh Thompson
Load Testing your app with Siege Last time, I dug into using Apache Benchmark to do performance testing on a page that requires...
over a year ago
17
over a year ago
Last time, I dug into using Apache Benchmark to do performance testing on a page that requires authentication to access. Today, we’ll figure out how to use siege to visit many unique URLs on our page, and to get benchmarks on that process. I’ll next figure out performance...
The Marginalian
How to Say Goodbye: An Illustrated Field Guide to Accompanying a Loved One at the End of Life "If you don't know what to say, start by saying that... That opens things up."
a year ago
This Space
39 Books: 2015 In the Spring of 1997, I visited a friend in Kassel, a city in the middle of Germany, home of the...
a year ago
82
a year ago
In the Spring of 1997, I visited a friend in Kassel, a city in the middle of Germany, home of the Brothers Grimm and Franz Rosenzweig, and not very far from Weimer, hence the visit to the Goethehaus mentioned in the entry for 1989. I hadn't heard of it before and nor had my...
Ben Borgers
Driving School Corruption
over a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 362.5 ...
6 months ago
Escaping Flatland
Socratic dialogue with kids I’m simply trying to understand how she thinks. When she answers in a way that does not match my...
a year ago
29
a year ago
I’m simply trying to understand how she thinks. When she answers in a way that does not match my understanding—that is interesting to me.
The Marginalian
Swan Sky: A Bittersweet Vintage Japanese Meditation on Love, Loss, and the Eternal Consolations of... To me, what makes the majestic migration of birds so moving is that it is a living spell against...
a year ago
93
a year ago
To me, what makes the majestic migration of birds so moving is that it is a living spell against abandonment. No one is leaving and no one is being left in this unison of movement along a vector of common purpose. It is the only instance I know of a transition that is not a...
Ben Borgers
Building an e-ink picture frame that displays an iCloud photo album
a year ago
The American Scholar
All Talk Ease of communication will not save us The post All Talk appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
27
7 months ago
Ease of communication will not save us The post All Talk appeared first on The American Scholar.
ribbonfarm
Harberger Tax It’s always nice to see trails of thought connect up. An idea I first encountered and really liked...
a year ago
23
a year ago
It’s always nice to see trails of thought connect up. An idea I first encountered and really liked in a 2014 Steve Randy Waldman (interfluidity) post has apparently since acquired a name and a more extended provenance. Waldman’s post, Tax price, not value, presents the idea as a...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Album Whale While we appreciate Apple Music and Spotify suggesting new music for us, we miss the good ol’ days...
7 months ago
16
7 months ago
While we appreciate Apple Music and Spotify suggesting new music for us, we miss the good ol’ days when recommendations came from friends. In those days of yore, we had to think about which albums we’d recommend, and what those albums say about us. Each album came with a personal...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Inclusive Design Principles These Inclusive Design Principles are about putting people first. It's about designing for the needs...
10 months ago
17
10 months ago
These Inclusive Design Principles are about putting people first. It's about designing for the needs of people with permanent, temporary, situational, or changing disabilities — all of us really. Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
Josh Thompson
Krav Maga, or "Crush Balls, Gouge Eyes, and Break Bones" In the last few weeks, I have been physically attacked dozens of times. Usually the attacker was...
over a year ago
17
over a year ago
In the last few weeks, I have been physically attacked dozens of times. Usually the attacker was just trying to choke me, but sometimes he was trying to throw me to the ground. After a few minutes of fighting, I would attack him. Then we’d both shake hands, say “thank you”, and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Great Euthanasia' I can’t think of another poet who wrote so often or so amusingly about death as Thomas Disch. I once...
a week ago
9
a week ago
I can’t think of another poet who wrote so often or so amusingly about death as Thomas Disch. I once tried tallying his death-themed poems and lost count. Here’s a sample: “How to Behave When Dead,” “Symbols of Love and Death,” “In Defense of Forest Lawn,” “At the Tomb of the...
The American Scholar
Changing the Lens Exploding the Canon, Episode 5 (Finale) The post Changing the Lens appeared first on The American...
a year ago
86
a year ago
Exploding the Canon, Episode 5 (Finale) The post Changing the Lens appeared first on The American Scholar.
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Pound, rub, pound It’s something like midnight. A four-and-a-half-pound senior Chihuahua is tucked into her blanket...
over a year ago
11
over a year ago
It’s something like midnight. A four-and-a-half-pound senior Chihuahua is tucked into her blanket and snuggled up next to my left rib cage inside my sleeping bag. Jen is asleep beside us. It’s 35°F. We have myriad layers happening: Jen wears a down jacket inside her sleeping bag...
The American Scholar
The Support Ship The post The Support Ship appeared first on The American Scholar.
11 months ago
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
17
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
Parque de la Música The post Parque de la Música appeared first on The American Scholar.
10 months ago
This Space
Books of the year 2024 In order of being read. Giorgio Agamben – What I saw, heard, learned… One night, along Venice’s...
7 months ago
94
7 months ago
In order of being read. Giorgio Agamben – What I saw, heard, learned… One night, along Venice’s Zattere, watching the putrid water lap at the city’s foundations, I saw that we exist solely in the intermittence of our being, and that what we call I is just a shadow...
The American Scholar
White Easter The post White Easter appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
ribbonfarm
History is More Like Science Fiction Than Fantasy I’ve been slow-reading Bettany Hughes’ Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities for months now, ever since I...
a year ago
22
a year ago
I’ve been slow-reading Bettany Hughes’ Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities for months now, ever since I visited the city (on Kindle, so I didn’t realize when I started that it’s 600 pages plus another 250 odd notes). It’s dense and absorbing and I’ll probably do a reflections post...
The Marginalian
Gary Snyder on How to Unbreak the World "What we’d hope for on the planet is creativity and sanity, conviviality, the real work of our hands...
5 months ago
48
5 months ago
"What we’d hope for on the planet is creativity and sanity, conviviality, the real work of our hands and minds."
The American Scholar
Tunneling to Freedom In The Great Escape (1963), the true story of a harrowing breakout from a German POW camp The post...
a year ago
80
a year ago
In The Great Escape (1963), the true story of a harrowing breakout from a German POW camp The post Tunneling to Freedom appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Take His Experience Along With Him' We shouldn’t be surprised that bookish tastes change across time. They mature, just as some of us...
4 months ago
27
4 months ago
We shouldn’t be surprised that bookish tastes change across time. They mature, just as some of us do. The books we choose to read and reread follow a path parallel to our experience and maturity. This isn’t to imply “progress.” It’s not as though all of us shed bad taste and move...
Wuthering...
Heraclitus and Empedocles - Everything flows - eyes roamed alone My rummage through the early Greek philosophers has been rewarding, but it is a strange exercise. ...
over a year ago
74
over a year ago
My rummage through the early Greek philosophers has been rewarding, but it is a strange exercise.  “Readers of this book will, I suspect, be frequently perplexed and sometimes annoyed” write Jonathan Barnes in Early Greek Philosophy, a collection with commentary of the most...
The Marginalian
The Light in the Abyss Between Us Bless consciousness, for making blue different to me than it is to you. I remember the moment a...
6 months ago
50
6 months ago
Bless consciousness, for making blue different to me than it is to you. I remember the moment a friend’s son came home from school to recount with something between shock and exhilaration how he realized while talking to a classmate that the notion of a mental image is not merely...
The Elysian
Hint #2 I'm publishing a new print collection in two weeks.
10 months ago
The Elysian
How we achieve the borderless future of Terra Ignota On Ada Palmer’s utopian sci-fi series and an exploration of how we might bring it to life.
2 months ago
The Marginalian
The Work of Wonder: Phillip Glass on Art, Science, and the Most Important Quality of a Visionary Epoch after epoch, we humans have tried to raise ourselves above other animals with distinctions...
a year ago
34
a year ago
Epoch after epoch, we humans have tried to raise ourselves above other animals with distinctions that have turned out false — consciousness is not ours alone, nor is grief, nor is play. If there is anything singular about us, it is our capacity to be wonder-smitten by the world...
Wuthering...
Orestes by Euripides - And what had seemed so right, / as soon as done, became / evil, monstrous,... I want to invite anyone interested to join me in reading Aristotle’s Poetics, the foundation of...
over a year ago
65
over a year ago
I want to invite anyone interested to join me in reading Aristotle’s Poetics, the foundation of Western literary criticism, influential to the present day and bizarrely dominant, almost sacred, for centuries.  I hope to write about it at the end of the month, having just reread...
The American Scholar
Food for Thought A pragmatic approach to one of humanity’s gravest threats The post Food for Thought appeared first...
4 months ago
16
4 months ago
A pragmatic approach to one of humanity’s gravest threats The post Food for Thought appeared first on The American Scholar.
Astral Codex Ten
Why Worry About Incorrigible Claude? ...
6 months ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Let This Be a Moment A moment when you discover that legacy media is not in your best interest, being fueled by...
7 months ago
19
7 months ago
A moment when you discover that legacy media is not in your best interest, being fueled by advertising and bureaucratic bullshit. If you've worked anywhere, you should understand that no organization is immune to this. A moment when you might consider stepping out of your shoes...
Josh Thompson
Can You Recover From Months (YEARS!) of Not Climbing? A few weeks ago, I headed into the gym thinking that I felt a little off-kilter. I’d not climbed in...
over a year ago
14
over a year ago
A few weeks ago, I headed into the gym thinking that I felt a little off-kilter. I’d not climbed in a week, I though, and maybe I was getting weaker or something. Turns out that wasn’t the problem - I had actually been climbing too much, and was feeling it. This is an odd...
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 375.5 ...
3 months ago
Ben Borgers
It Does Have to Be Every Day
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
December Review, January Goals This is a follow-up from last month’s goals 1. Deepen Knowledge of Back-end Development I finished...
over a year ago
18
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...
The American Scholar
As I Walked Out One Morning The post As I Walked Out One Morning appeared first on The American Scholar.
9 months ago
Astral Codex Ten
Claude Fights Back ...
6 months ago
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
16
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 American Scholar
A Toothsome Tale Bill Schutt chomps through millennia to share the story of our pearly whites The post A Toothsome...
10 months ago
38
10 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
Recommended Reading I’ve read many books over the years. Thousands. Here’s a few that I find myself...
a year ago
23
a year 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:...
Josh Thompson
Change your MAC address with a shell script For a while, I’ve had notes from Change or Spoof a MAC Address in Windows or OS X saved, so if I am...
over a year ago
19
over a year ago
For a while, I’ve had notes from Change or Spoof a MAC Address in Windows or OS X saved, so if I am using a wifi connection that limits me to thirty minutes or an hour or whatever, I can “spoof” a new MAC address, and when I re-connect to the wifi, the access point thinks I’m on...
Ben Borgers
App Identity
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Things That Might Have Been and Were Not' An old friend has grown uncharacteristically introspective and is finding much to regret. It’s a...
4 days ago
7
4 days ago
An old friend has grown uncharacteristically introspective and is finding much to regret. It’s a function of age. A widower in retirement from teaching high school, he seems no longer the buoyant social creature I’ve always known. In fact, I envied his gregariousness when we...
Josh Thompson
Avoid a car accident with a $3 tool TL;DR: Buy a blind spot mirror for your car. They are $2, and can keep you from getting in an...
over a year ago
14
over a year ago
TL;DR: Buy a blind spot mirror for your car. They are $2, and can keep you from getting in an accident. Not a lot of people have them, though they’re awesome. I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about how to make driving safer. Step 1 to making driving safer is “don’t...
Ben Borgers
Getir Colors
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Three Poems The post Three Poems appeared first on The American Scholar.
10 months ago
Ben Borgers
Doubly Parasocial Relationships
over a year ago
This Space
The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard I began reading The Morning Star without any prior knowledge of the contents, just as I had begun...
over a year ago
77
over a year ago
I began reading The Morning Star without any prior knowledge of the contents, just as I had begun reading every other book of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s since receiving an ARC of the first volume of My Struggle long before he shone above us like the morning star in this novel. This...
Escaping Flatland
Living 80 years, you can have 8 lives Highlights from the cutting room floor, pt. 2
7 months ago
The American Scholar
“I Have Had My Vision” Three prompts The post “I Have Had My Vision” appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
The American Scholar
A Blast of a Time The scientific underpinnings of Armageddon The post A Blast of a Time appeared first on The American...
a month ago
6
a month ago
The scientific underpinnings of Armageddon The post A Blast of a Time appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Why Your Belayer is Keeping You from Climbing Hard(er) Since climbing regularly again (!!!), I’ve observed lots of belaying in the gym. I can’t walk up to...
over a year ago
19
over a year ago
Since climbing regularly again (!!!), I’ve observed lots of belaying in the gym. I can’t walk up to a stranger and say “Excuse me, sir, I noticed that your poor belaying is totally crippling your climber’s ability to try hard, and actively eliminating any hope you had of...
Ben Borgers
2023 in review
a year ago
Josh Thompson
MySQL concatenation and casting I recently set up my environment for working through SQL for Mere Mortals. I’ll record some...
over a year ago
19
over a year ago
I recently set up my environment for working through SQL for Mere Mortals. I’ll record some interested tidbits here as I go. Chapter 5: Concatenation without the || operator I use MySQL at work, and MySQL doesn’t support the || operator for string concatenation. So, in the book,...
Josh Thompson
Denver Botanic Gardens - What, How, Why I recently got access to a delightful amenity, based on where I live. I’ve been sharing it with...
a year ago
20
a year ago
I recently got access to a delightful amenity, based on where I live. I’ve been sharing it with others as quickly as possible, because they too have access to it. From here on out, when I reference “botanic gardens” or “the gardens”, I’m referencing the Denver Botanic Gardens,...
Ben Borgers
Teaching Enthusiasm
over a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
Highlights From The Comments On Tegmark's Mathematical Universe ...
4 months ago
The Marginalian
17 Life-Learnings from 17 Years of The Marginalian The Marginalian was born on October 23, 2006, under an outgrown name, to an outgrown self that feels...
a year ago
61
a year ago
The Marginalian was born on October 23, 2006, under an outgrown name, to an outgrown self that feels to me now almost like a different species of consciousness. (It can only be so — if we don’t continually outgrow ourselves, if we don’t wince a little at our former ideas, ideals,...
The Marginalian
The Wondrous Birds of the Himalayas and the Forgotten Victorian Woman Whose Illustrations Rewilded... Bridging Blake and Darwin with a single-hair brush.
over a year ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Because the night belongs to us Day 18: Sept 27, 2023 — It’s our last full day. We extend our stay by two additional days due to my...
a year ago
17
a year ago
Day 18: Sept 27, 2023 — It’s our last full day. We extend our stay by two additional days due to my work obligations, so I need to be stationed somewhere. It’s also a good excuse to have extra family time. I have a call with Simon Collison to discuss True Ventures design work and...
Astral Codex Ten
1DaySooner's Trump II Health Policy Proposals ...
5 months ago
This Space
Kafka's great fire The centenary of Kafka's death was marked twelve years late. His diary records it in September...
a year ago
96
a year ago
The centenary of Kafka's death was marked twelve years late. His diary records it in September 1912: This story, The Judgment, I wrote at one sitting during the night of the 22nd-23rd, from ten o'clock at night to six o'clock in the morning. I was hardly able to pull my legs...
Naz Hamid
Hustle to Flow A meditation on entering flow state. A snack beckons. I stand up and head a few feet away to the...
3 months ago
27
3 months ago
A meditation on entering flow state. A snack beckons. I stand up and head a few feet away to the kitchen area. A hojicha latte is on my mind, and also a bite. My brain is at operational capacity, and I am in a flow state. The metabolic need feels high, and I need to keep my...
Ben Borgers
Listserv
over a year ago
Steven Scrawls
The Controversial Aftermath of the 777Linguine Interview The Controversial Aftermath of the 777Linguine Interview Longtime fans of popular EDM “angststep”...
a year ago
28
a year ago
The Controversial Aftermath of the 777Linguine Interview Longtime fans of popular EDM “angststep” artist 777Linguine are “shocked” and “betrayed” after his polarizing statements yesterday that his latest album, NOMORETEARS2CRY, was written and recorded in a time of “profound...
Ben Borgers
Personal Software
over a year ago
The Elysian
How we’re profit sharing on Metalabel A financial analysis of our first cooperative media project + where we could go from here.
2 months ago
The Marginalian
The Cosmogony of You We live in a state of perpetual dissociation from the almost unbearable wonder of being alive....
7 months ago
53
7 months ago
We live in a state of perpetual dissociation from the almost unbearable wonder of being alive. Wonder is always an edge state, its edge so sharp it threatens to rupture the mundane and sever us from what we mistake for reality — the TV, the townhouse, the trauma narrative. If we...
The Marginalian
The Dictionary Story: A Love Letter to Language Tucked Into a Delightful Fable about the Difficult... “Words belong to each other,” Virginia Woolf rasped in the only surviving recording of her voice — a...
8 months ago
45
8 months ago
“Words belong to each other,” Virginia Woolf rasped in the only surviving recording of her voice — a love letter to language as an instrument of thought and a medium of being. “Words are events, they do things, change things,” Ursula K. Le Guin wrote a generation after her. To...
Ben Borgers
There’s No Personal Space in College
over a year ago
Wuthering...
What I Read in March 2025 – Some day, he thought, I must use such a scene to start a good, thick... FICTION The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1904), Arthur Conan Doyle – My emergency book, the book on my...
3 months ago
30
3 months ago
FICTION The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1904), Arthur Conan Doyle – My emergency book, the book on my phone, for when I need to read in the dark, or it is raining at the bus stop, or similar dire situations.  I have been dipping into it for two years or more, but decided to finish...
ribbonfarm
Intellectual Menopause I ran across the alarming phrase intellectual menopause a few months ago in John Gall’s...
11 months ago
27
11 months ago
I ran across the alarming phrase intellectual menopause a few months ago in John Gall’s Systemantics, and it naturally stuck in my brain given I’m pushing 50 and getting predictably angsty about it. The phrase conjures up visions of a phenomenon much more profound and unfunny...
Escaping Flatland
Remember, remember (This might be a distressing read, so let me just say at the start that it ends ok and we are fine...
4 months ago
33
4 months ago
(This might be a distressing read, so let me just say at the start that it ends ok and we are fine now.)
The Marginalian
The Art of Befriending Time and Change: Debbie Millman’s Illustrated Love Letter to Gardening as a... You may or may not find the meaning of life while pacing a flower bed, but each time you plunge your...
2 months ago
9
2 months ago
You may or may not find the meaning of life while pacing a flower bed, but each time you plunge your bare hands into the hummus of the Earth and run your fingers through the roots of something that hungers for the sun, you are resisting the dying of the light and saying “yes” to...
The Marginalian
A Lighthouse for Dark Times This is the elemental speaking: It is during phase transition — when the temperature and pressure of...
8 months ago
56
8 months ago
This is the elemental speaking: It is during phase transition — when the temperature and pressure of a system go beyond what the system can withstand and matter changes from one state to another — that the system is most pliant, most possible. This chaos of particles that...
The American Scholar
When True Crime Became All Too Real How my family survived a harrowing home invasion The post When True Crime Became All Too Real...
a month ago
6
a month ago
How my family survived a harrowing home invasion The post When True Crime Became All Too Real appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The War with What He Does Not Understand' “. . . I am closer to the ‘life of the spirit’ than you are. You are talking about the right of one...
2 months ago
22
2 months ago
“. . . I am closer to the ‘life of the spirit’ than you are. You are talking about the right of one or another type of knowledge to exist, whereas I’m talking about peace, not rights. I want people not to see war where there isn’t any. Different branches of knowledge have always...
The Marginalian
Octavia Butler on Religion and the Spirituality of Symbiosis "On many levels, we wind up being strengthened by what we join, or what joins us, as well as by what...
a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
Come On, Obviously The Purpose Of A System Is Not What It Does ...
3 months ago
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 364 ...
6 months ago
Josh Thompson
Redefining Success It’s been pretty quiet around here lately. It’s been almost a month since my last entry. I thought...
over a year ago
17
over a year ago
It’s been pretty quiet around here lately. It’s been almost a month since my last entry. I thought about writing something here almost every day, but here is why I didn’t: I want to produce “content” that is helpful and relevant to those who might read it. I felt like nothing I...
The Marginalian
On Love: Saint Paul and the Egret Among the myriad things that didn’t have to exist — music, minds, the meadow lark — none is more...
6 months ago
53
6 months ago
Among the myriad things that didn’t have to exist — music, minds, the meadow lark — none is more symphonic, more defiant of logic, more capable of winging existence with life than love. Biologically, we could have done without it, could have spent the eons fertilizing cells...
The Elysian
How WeFunder democratizes business ownership A discussion with Jonny Price, president of WeFunder.
3 months ago
The Marginalian
The Lost Drop: An Illustrated Celebration of the Wonder of the Water Cycle and the Interconnected... I remember when I first learned about the water cycle, about how it makes of our planet a living...
a year ago
57
a year ago
I remember when I first learned about the water cycle, about how it makes of our planet a living world and binds the fate of every molecule to that of every other. I remember feeling in my child-bones the profound interconnectedness of life as I realized I was breathing the...
The Marginalian
May Sarton on Writing, Gardening, and the Importance of Patience Over Will in Creative Work "Gardening is like poetry in that it is gratuitous, and also that it cannot be done on will alone."
over a year ago
The Elysian
Hint #3 I'm publishing a new print collection in one week.
10 months ago
ben-mini
Buying a House Two days ago, I decided I want to buy my first house. My goal is to purchase it before the summer of...
9 months ago
40
9 months ago
Two days ago, I decided I want to buy my first house. My goal is to purchase it before the summer of 2025. Why are you buying a house? To make money. I see this as an opportunity in a space that many friends and family consider a safe, high-return bet (if done right). When...
The Marginalian
Of Wonder, the Courage of Uncertainty, and How to Hear Your Soul: The Best of The Marginalian 2023 Hindsight is our finest instrument for discerning the patterns of our lives. To look back on a year...
a year ago
27
a year ago
Hindsight is our finest instrument for discerning the patterns of our lives. To look back on a year of reading, a year of writing, is to discover a secret map of the mind, revealing the landscape of living — after all, how we spend our thoughts is how we spend our lives. In...
The Elysian
Yes, it can be profitable to sell print magazines and books Collectable print projects don't have to be an expensive vanity project.
3 months ago
Ben Borgers
Batching
over a year ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ 2023 in the Rearview End-of-year recaps and reviews haven't been something I do. Generally, my mindset is about embracing...
a year ago
15
a year ago
End-of-year recaps and reviews haven't been something I do. Generally, my mindset is about embracing the present, with a gentle forward momentum towards what comes next. Years ago, I heard an Imam once speak about not having regrets. I took that to heart at the time and have...
The American Scholar
Such as It Is The post Such as It Is appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
The Marginalian
What We Look for When We Are Looking: John Steinbeck on Wonder and the Relational Nature of the... Searching for "that principle which keys us deeply into the pattern of all life."
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
FileCopy
7 months ago
Escaping Flatland
Without looking it up, what do you think? + links
8 months ago
The Marginalian
How to Make America Great: A Visionary Manifesto from the Woman Who Ran for President in 1872 In 1872, half a century before American women could vote, Victoria Woodhull (September 23, 1838–June...
5 months ago
61
5 months ago
In 1872, half a century before American women could vote, Victoria Woodhull (September 23, 1838–June 9, 1927) ran for President, with Frederick Douglass as her running mate. Papers declared her candidacy “a brazen imposture, to be extinguished by laughter rather than by law.”...
The Marginalian
The Power of a Thin Skin "To be thin-skinned is to feel keenly, to perceive things that might go unseen, unnoticed, that...
a year ago
28
a year ago
"To be thin-skinned is to feel keenly, to perceive things that might go unseen, unnoticed, that others might prefer not to notice."
Wuthering...
The key to Finnegans Wake - there is a limit to all things so this will never do Over the last month I read Finnegans Wake (1939).  I first read some bits of it in college, in a...
2 months ago
16
2 months ago
Over the last month I read Finnegans Wake (1939).  I first read some bits of it in college, in a Norton Anthology of British Literature, and other, although mostly the same, bits occasionally, mostly to remind myself what they looked like.  Anyone interested in literature should...
Josh Thompson
On Leaving Evangelicalism And Opposing It Content warning & summary This paper talks about ethics, ethical behavior, violence, abuse,...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
Content warning & summary This paper talks about ethics, ethical behavior, violence, abuse, complicency, domination and oppression. It’s a condimnation of evangelicalism, but not, necessarily, any particular evangelical. There are those within evangelicalism who are ethical,...
The American Scholar
The March Down Main The post The March Down Main appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
The American Scholar
Camouflage The post Camouflage appeared first on The American Scholar.
a year ago
Ben Borgers
Prototyping an AI-powered note-taking app
over a year ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ We're definitely in Kansas, Dorothy Day 9: Sept 18, 2023 — One more person to see before we leave Colorado. Matt Jacobs is a longtime...
a year ago
11
a year ago
Day 9: Sept 18, 2023 — One more person to see before we leave Colorado. Matt Jacobs is a longtime friend formerly of New York and Brooklyn, but now lives in Denver with his family. He’s another part of the bevy of people we know who’ve relocated to this great state. We meet at...
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...
11 months ago
48
11 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...
Josh Thompson
Simplify, simplify, simplify Kristi and I stumbled upon the realization that we’ve become minimalists. And it is exciting. We...
over a year ago
19
over a year ago
Kristi and I stumbled upon the realization that we’ve become minimalists. And it is exciting. We live in a one-bedroom apartment. It is spacious, for a one-bedroom, but compared to anything larger than a one-bedroom apartment, it is small. We managed to pack it full of stuff in...
Escaping Flatland
Self-help for cocoons and what's on my mind
a year ago
The Marginalian
An Illustrated Ode to Love’s Secret Knowledge When Dante wrote of “the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars,” he was shining a sidewise...
10 months ago
65
10 months ago
When Dante wrote of “the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars,” he was shining a sidewise gleam on the secret knowledge of the universe, the knowledge by which everything coheres. All love is an outstretched hand of curiosity reaching for knowledge — a tender...
Ben Borgers
Building henrynitzberg.com
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Taking the Plunge with Colemak This entire post is written in Colemak. I am aiming to write at least 100 words, and this is...
over a year ago
17
over a year ago
This entire post is written in Colemak. I am aiming to write at least 100 words, and this is certainly harder than copying someone else’s words. I have completed a few hours of dedicated practice, and it is quite possible that I am jumping the gun, and will quickly revert to...
The Marginalian
Václav Havel on How to Live with Your Greatest Failure Few things in life are more devastating than to give something your all and still fail. Not the...
2 months ago
19
2 months ago
Few things in life are more devastating than to give something your all and still fail. Not the “fail better” of startup culture, not the “fail forward” of self-help, not the failure that is childhood’s fulcrum of learning, not the inspired mistakes that propel creative risk, but...
Wuthering...
Books I Read in October 2023 The five-day hospital stay breaking the month in half is likely invisible to anyone but me, but that...
a year ago
101
a year ago
The five-day hospital stay breaking the month in half is likely invisible to anyone but me, but that is why the fiction list is so mystery-heavy, and for that matter so long.  Many of these books, the post-surgery group, are not just short but light, well-suited for the invalid's...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Rest Is Silence' Here I pause to remember a forgotten poet who remembered a slightly less forgotten poet – a reminder...
3 months ago
28
3 months ago
Here I pause to remember a forgotten poet who remembered a slightly less forgotten poet – a reminder that all of us are eminently forgettable, regardless of our purported virtues. Walter de la Mare died on June 22, 1956, at age eighty-three. The journal Poetry assigned William...
The Marginalian
Turning to Stone: A Geologist’s Love Letter to the Wisdom of Rocks Among the great salvations of my childhood were the rocks and minerals lining the bookshelves of our...
11 months ago
69
11 months ago
Among the great salvations of my childhood were the rocks and minerals lining the bookshelves of our next door neighbor — a geologist working for the Bulgarian Ministry of Environment and Water. I spent long hours casting amethyst refractions on the ceiling, carving words into...
The Marginalian
War, Peace, and Possible Futures: George Saunders on Storytelling the World’s Fate and the Antidote... "War is large-scale murder, us at our worst, the stupidest guy doing the cruelest thing to the...
a year ago
The Marginalian
An Introvert’s Field Guide to Friendship: Thoreau on the Challenges and Rewards of the Art of... "We only need to be as true to others as we are to ourselves that there may be ground enough for...
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Let Them at Any Rate Be Your Acquaintances' “Nothing makes a man more reverent than a library.”  An interesting gauge of human sensibility, a...
3 weeks ago
11
3 weeks ago
“Nothing makes a man more reverent than a library.”  An interesting gauge of human sensibility, a sort of litmus test to judge personality and values, might be to place your subject in a large, well-stocked library (or bookstore), wire him for blood pressure, heart rate, skin...
The Marginalian
How to Own Your Human-Heartedness: Alan Watts on the Confucian Concept of Jen and the Dangers of... "Trust in human nature is acceptance of the good-and-bad of it, and it is hard to trust those who do...
a year ago
The Elysian
Further reading on employee ownership My notes from the margins of my research.
10 months ago
The American Scholar
Numbers Game A novelist’s indictment of how we account for our history The post Numbers Game appeared first on...
a year ago
45
a year ago
A novelist’s indictment of how we account for our history The post Numbers Game appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Why I use a Kindle Amazon’s e-reader is extremely functional. Most reasons to not use one focus either on practical...
over a year ago
12
over a year ago
Amazon’s e-reader is extremely functional. Most reasons to not use one focus either on practical issues (depending on something with a battery) or on aesthetic reasons. These are valid issues, of course, but these pale in comparison to the many, many reasons to use a...
Ben Borgers
How /swipes Works
over a year ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ A Second Shot It sunk in. Both the needle and the fact that life had indeed changed. I turned to my left and...
over a year ago
12
over a year ago
It sunk in. Both the needle and the fact that life had indeed changed. I turned to my left and looked at her. She, the same Black woman who had administered the first, and this time I tucked her name away into my memory, having forgotten it in the excitement and overwhelming...
Astral Codex Ten
Testing AI's GeoGuessr Genius Seeing a world in a grain of sand
2 months ago
The American Scholar
Island Royalty A new biography of a Caribbean revolutionary The post Island Royalty appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
25
7 months ago
A new biography of a Caribbean revolutionary The post Island Royalty appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Divinations of the First Light: A Cosmic Poem for the Vera Rubin Observatory At the end of her trailblazing life, having swung open the gate of the possible for women in science...
2 weeks ago
12
2 weeks ago
At the end of her trailblazing life, having swung open the gate of the possible for women in science with her famous comet discovery, astronomer Maria Mitchell confided in one of her Vassar students that she would rather have authored a great poem than discovered a comet. A...
The Elysian
Should we create more US states? Inside the growing movement to redraw state lines, and why it might be better for liberals and...
3 months ago
32
3 months ago
Inside the growing movement to redraw state lines, and why it might be better for liberals and conservatives alike.
Anecdotal Evidence
'What a Delight in Being a Discoverer!' The library catalogue said Walter Savage Landor’s Poems, the 1964 Centaur Press edition selected and...
3 months ago
30
3 months ago
The library catalogue said Walter Savage Landor’s Poems, the 1964 Centaur Press edition selected and introduced by Geoffrey Grigson, had not been checked out by another patron (hardly surprising) and should be on the shelf. I couldn’t find it. Not a good sign. That could mean the...
The Elysian
No one buys books Everything we learned about the publishing industry from Penguin vs. DOJ.
a year ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 My Mom Taught Me But really, my mom loved to shop and I’ve inherited that skill. I’ll call it a skill because Mom...
10 months ago
12
10 months ago
But really, my mom loved to shop and I’ve inherited that skill. I’ll call it a skill because Mom knew quality. She loved things made by hand. By real people. Things that were made well and lasted. — Dan Cederholm Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Marginalia: Search Engine This is an independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to...
7 months ago
20
7 months ago
This is an independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren't aware of in favor of the sort of sites you probably already knew existed. More like this, please. Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
The American Scholar
The Murderer as Everyman Arthur Fleck’s rise and fall The post The Murderer as Everyman appeared first on The American...
4 months ago
Astral Codex Ten
The Populist Right Must Own Tariffs ...
2 months ago
This Space
39 Books: 2004 Bought for an eye-watering £13 in the LRB Bookshop three months before this blog began, Once Again...
a year ago
58
a year ago
Bought for an eye-watering £13 in the LRB Bookshop three months before this blog began, Once Again for Thucydides is another example in this series of how a book of under 100 pages can be worth as much as any number of maximalist breeze blocks. But do I really want to make such...
Wuthering...
What I read in January 2025 - You must understand that truth is fiction, and fiction truth. Farewell to The Story of the Stone and a valuable browse in Chinese literature.  I’ll do it again...
5 months ago
37
5 months ago
Farewell to The Story of the Stone and a valuable browse in Chinese literature.  I’ll do it again someday. FICTION The Peony Pavilion (1598), Tang Xianzu – written up back here. The Story of the Stone, Vol. 5: The Dreamer Wakes (c. 1760), Cao Xueqin & Gao E – some notes here. ...
Josh Thompson
Rails Migration: When you can't add a uniqueness constraint because you already have duplicates I get to occasionally contribute to the Wombat Security dev blog. I wrote the following for...
over a year ago
17
over a year ago
I get to occasionally contribute to the Wombat Security dev blog. I wrote the following for development.wombatsecurity.com. This post has been updated to reflect some lessons learned while running this migration in production. Don’t leave a column without an index at any point in...
The American Scholar
Riding With Mr. Washington How my great-grandfather invented himself at the end of Reconstruction The post Riding With Mr....
10 months ago
49
10 months ago
How my great-grandfather invented himself at the end of Reconstruction The post Riding With Mr. Washington appeared first on The American Scholar.
Astral Codex Ten
"Deros And The Ur-Abduction" In Asterisk ...
3 months ago
The Elysian
Building an operating system for Earth How we went from an architecture of collapse to a simulation for survival
yesterday
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
42
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 American Scholar
Raspberry Heaven A yearly back-yard harvest opens a door to the divine The post Raspberry Heaven appeared first on...
4 months ago
13
4 months ago
A yearly back-yard harvest opens a door to the divine The post Raspberry Heaven appeared first on The American Scholar.
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Viva Las Vegas Day 25: Oct 4, 2023 — Today’s 8:30 a.m. Zoom motivates us awake. I’m fortunate to be able to work...
a year ago
17
a year ago
Day 25: Oct 4, 2023 — Today’s 8:30 a.m. Zoom motivates us awake. I’m fortunate to be able to work from the road, though it does require some planning and commitment. Planning in being present with reliable cell service, and commitment in doing the work I’m paid to do and to...
The American Scholar
The Importance of Being Different A travel writer’s education The post The Importance of Being Different appeared first on The...
a year ago
The American Scholar
Crystal Ball The post Crystal Ball appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
Ploum.net
Ne venez pas dire que vous n’étiez pas prévenus… Ne venez pas dire que vous n’étiez pas prévenus… …c’est juste que vous pensiez ne pas être...
5 months ago
20
5 months ago
Ne venez pas dire que vous n’étiez pas prévenus… …c’est juste que vous pensiez ne pas être concernés Depuis des décennies, je fais partie de ces gens qui tentent d’alerter sur les terrifiantes possibilités qu’offre l’aveuglement technologique dans lequel nous sommes plongés. Je...
Astral Codex Ten
You Can Keep Having An Opinion Even When The Government Also Has It ...
2 months ago
The Marginalian
Thich Nhat Hanh on True Love and the Five Rivers of Self-Knowledge “For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks… the work...
a year ago
37
a year ago
“For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks… the work for which all other work is but preparation,” Rilke wrote to his young correspondent. The great difficulty of loving arises from the great difficulty of bridging the abyss between...
Astral Codex Ten
Book Review: The Rise Of Christianity ...
8 months ago
The Elysian
Am I an anarchist? Letters to an anarchist, part seven.
7 months ago
The American Scholar
Teach the Conflicts It’s natural—and right—to foster The post Teach the Conflicts appeared first on The American...
9 months ago
73
9 months ago
It’s natural—and right—to foster The post Teach the Conflicts appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Pain and the God Within You: Carl Jung on the Relationship Between Psychological Suffering and... When AI first began colonizing language — which is still our best instrument for bridging the abyss...
a month ago
26
a month ago
When AI first began colonizing language — which is still our best instrument for bridging the abyss between us, a container for thought and feeling that shapes the contents — I asked chatGPT to compose a poem about a solar eclipse in the style of Walt Whitman. It returned a...
Ben Borgers
Mornings Set the Tone
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
October 2016 Goals In the last year, I’ve fluctuated between writing every day for 30 days and not posting once in...
over a year ago
15
over a year ago
In the last year, I’ve fluctuated between writing every day for 30 days and not posting once in two months. Frankly, neither of those is good for me. I like writing because it clarifies my own thoughts. Sometimes it seems useful to others. I like to be useful (“utility” can...
Ben Borgers
I Miss Google Classroom
over a year ago
ben-mini
Modality Switching Online I hate it when my dad leaves me a voicemail. Whenever I open my phone and see the pending voicemail,...
a year ago
18
a year ago
I hate it when my dad leaves me a voicemail. Whenever I open my phone and see the pending voicemail, I roll my eyes. He tends to meander. My dad’s messages can range from 40 seconds to 2 minutes. He typically wants to inform me of something, like an upcoming family event or an...
Josh Thompson
Maybe "Now" Is Not the Right Time Recently I deleted a bunch of old notes I had in Evernote. Some of the notes were almost immediately...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
Recently I deleted a bunch of old notes I had in Evernote. Some of the notes were almost immediately unneeded, like old receipts and confirmations.  Much of the rest was notes related to goals (“Checklist to move out of MD Apartment”, “Planning trip to Buenos Aires”) or to...
Josh Thompson
Things You Can't Do from Behind a Computer, pt. 1 Meet people. Over the last nine or ten months, I can clearly remember a handful of conversations I...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
Meet people. Over the last nine or ten months, I can clearly remember a handful of conversations I had. I initiated each conversation with someone that I wanted to learn from. Most I had some prior relationship with (I.E. I had met them, or I knew someone who knew them). This was...
Ben Borgers
Website Rewrite
over a year ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 What Listening Does — An Untaught Life Skill Simply put, listening is hard; it’s work. Our minds, much like our bodies are rarely still or at...
10 months ago
12
10 months ago
Simply put, listening is hard; it’s work. Our minds, much like our bodies are rarely still or at ease — a condition that leads to listening poorly, which is one step away from equally poor thinking and decision making. — Scott Boms Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
The American Scholar
After the Fallout On jellyfish babies, my father’s pain, and the legacy of nuclear testing in the Pacific The post...
2 months ago
31
2 months ago
On jellyfish babies, my father’s pain, and the legacy of nuclear testing in the Pacific The post After the Fallout appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
From Las Cosas Nuevas by Ennio Moltedo The post From <em>Las Cosas Nuevas</em> by Ennio Moltedo appeared first on The American Scholar.
a year ago
The American Scholar
“The Jester’s Magma” The post “The Jester’s Magma” appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
Astral Codex Ten
Subscrive Drive '25 + Free Unlocked Posts ...
6 months 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. ...
11 months ago
76
11 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 Elysian
This Chinese philosopher reformed politics in one generation Mòzǐ replaced his corrupt government with a humanist one.
6 months ago
Wuthering...
Books I Read in September 2023 Despite all evidence I hope to wrap up the Greek philosophy project within the next couple of...
a year ago
77
a year ago
Despite all evidence I hope to wrap up the Greek philosophy project within the next couple of weeks.  A medical deadline approaches.  That will help. As usual, I read good books.   PHILOSOPHY & SELF-HELP Letters from a Stoic (c. 60), Seneca - good timing for some...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Dookie Demastered THE LANDMARK 1994 ALBUM. 15 TRACKS DEMASTERED IN 15 FORMATS. THE WAY IT WAS NEVER MEANT TO BE...
8 months ago
17
8 months ago
THE LANDMARK 1994 ALBUM. 15 TRACKS DEMASTERED IN 15 FORMATS. THE WAY IT WAS NEVER MEANT TO BE HEARD. These are all brilliant. I'm partial to the wax cylinder version of When I Come Around, my favorite track from Dookie. Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
The Marginalian
Leonard Cohen on the Antidote to Anger and the Meaning of Resistance One of the commonest and most corrosive human reflexes is to react to helplessness with anger. We do...
12 months ago
81
12 months ago
One of the commonest and most corrosive human reflexes is to react to helplessness with anger. We do it in our personal lives and we do it in our political lives. We are living through a time of uncommon helplessness and uncertainty, touching every aspect of our lives, and in...
Wuthering...
Books I read in January 2024 - as long, indeed, as this book, which hardly anyone will read by... The best book I read was Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which will also be the best thing I read in...
a year ago
81
a year ago
The best book I read was Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which will also be the best thing I read in February.  I gotta catch up on my posts. One big book down, and as a result my list of January books is more sensible. TRAVEL, let’s call it Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941), Rebecca...
The Marginalian
What Rises from the Ruins: Katherine Anne Porter on the Power of the Artist and the Function of Art... "We understand very little of what is happening to us at any given moment."
a year ago
Josh Thompson
On Learning As a student at Turing, I’ve recently been thinking about learning how to learn, specifically in the...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
As a student at Turing, I’ve recently been thinking about learning how to learn, specifically in the context of software development. I am a bit hyperactive when it comes to trying to learn new things. Over the years, I’ve done plenty of ineffective learning, and at least a...
Robert Caro
In Florida, the Pitch Is High and Hard A special Senate committee has opened an investigation into these “Misery Acres” that take dollars...
over a year ago
15
over a year ago
A special Senate committee has opened an investigation into these “Misery Acres” that take dollars from people who cannot afford it.
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Follow vs. Block In the beginning, you followed someone to see their content in your feed. Now, you block someone to...
a year ago
12
a year ago
In the beginning, you followed someone to see their content in your feed. Now, you block someone to remove them from your feed. That’s the price of an endless algorithmic feed designed to keep you in-app or on-platform, entertained, and eventually (if not already) monetized. A...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Peaceabale Morning' Boys of my age grew up fighting Nazis and Japs. We inherited our fathers’ war and were too old to...
a month ago
13
a month ago
Boys of my age grew up fighting Nazis and Japs. We inherited our fathers’ war and were too old to “play Army” – always the phrase – by the time Vietnam heated up. A German refugee, Mrs. Becker, lived next door and we were ordered to kill only Japs if we were playing near her...
The Marginalian
Kierkegaard on the Value of Despair "To despair over oneself, in despair to want to be rid of oneself, is the formula for all despair."
over a year ago
This Space
39 Books: 1986 In my second year of reading, I read four novels by DM Thomas, beginning with his most famous, The...
a year ago
48
a year ago
In my second year of reading, I read four novels by DM Thomas, beginning with his most famous, The White Hotel, in the edition below with its very 1980s cover design. I look at the single-word titles of the others and can remember absolutely nothing about them. Both the title...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Most Noteworthy Action of Human Life' I dreamed my late brother was here in Houston, a city he never visited. He was phobic about flying...
4 months ago
28
4 months ago
I dreamed my late brother was here in Houston, a city he never visited. He was phobic about flying and traveled by air only twice in his life, when very young. We were seated across from each other, on the couches by the front window. What I remember of the dream is brief, little...
sbensu
The Perfectionists (book) A great book that covers the ideas and people behind modern industry.
11 months ago
Josh Thompson
Friends Don't Let Friends Shortrope The first in a series about how to be a better belayer. Short rope [shawrt-rohp] verb The act of...
over a year ago
17
over a year ago
The first in a series about how to be a better belayer. Short rope [shawrt-rohp] verb The act of not giving sufficient rope to your climber. Getting short roped is bad. It’s not necessarily dangerous, nor does it cause you to take a whip (it can, of course) but the real reason...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 /now – June 8, 2024 I do the work I do for a living in no small part because I had access to an internet connection as a...
11 months ago
11
11 months ago
I do the work I do for a living in no small part because I had access to an internet connection as a teenager. That connection helped shape me and open up my world. What art, creativity, skill, and sure, economic potential, is going untapped right now in Rural America because a...
Josh Thompson
Notes on, and quotes from: The Politics of Jesus (Yoder, 1972, 1994) As I’ve done many times before, compiling some notes about some long quotes from some books. In the...
over a year ago
18
over a year ago
As I’ve done many times before, compiling some notes about some long quotes from some books. In the modern world, we’re loath to read long, complicated passeges of text. I hope to get some of you to eventually order your own copy of The Politics of Jesus. On my website you can...
The Marginalian
Thank You, Everything: An Illustrated Love Letter to the World We forget that none of this had to exist — that we weren’t owed mountains and music by the universe....
7 months ago
66
7 months ago
We forget that none of this had to exist — that we weren’t owed mountains and music by the universe. And maybe we have to forget — or we would be too stupefied with gratitude for every raindrop and every eyelash to get through the daily tasks punctuating the unbidden wonder of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Read During Every Possible Free Moment' A reader asks, “How did you learn to read so fast?” The answer is simple: I didn’t. I have always...
3 months ago
32
3 months ago
A reader asks, “How did you learn to read so fast?” The answer is simple: I didn’t. I have always read slowly, often taking notes, which makes it even slower. This frustrated me when I was young, and I briefly contemplated enrolling in one of Evelyn Wood’s...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Essays in Flesh and Bone' One of my friends is reliably cheerful. We should all have friends like him. His emails and...
yesterday
4
yesterday
One of my friends is reliably cheerful. We should all have friends like him. His emails and telephone calls are never annoyingly cloying, in the sense that they knock me out of whatever self-centered snit I’m nursing. Without ever saying so, he reminds me that I have it pretty...
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
17
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 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...
over a year ago
50
over 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
Turing Prep Chapter 1: Make Mod 1 Easier Than It Otherwise Would Be Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
15
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...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Balancing Tools and Culture A few weeks ago, a timely project at work rallied almost everyone to be “all hands on deck.” My...
a year ago
13
a year ago
A few weeks ago, a timely project at work rallied almost everyone to be “all hands on deck.” My immediate team uses Slack, having transitioned away from another longstanding project management platform [1]. The larger team has used this platform for years, and it contains a...
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
19
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...
Wuthering...
Menander's Dyskolos - each man would hold a moderate share and be content This week it’s Menander’s Dyskolos, or The Grouch, or The Misanthrope (316 BCE), which may or may...
over a year ago
54
over a year ago
This week it’s Menander’s Dyskolos, or The Grouch, or The Misanthrope (316 BCE), which may or may not have inspired the title of Molière’s great play, and nothing more than the title since the play was, like all of Menander’s plays, long lost.  A fairly complete Dyskolos was the...
sbensu
The secondary market in gift cards This post by patio11 covers a few things that I learned working with gift cards over the years.
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Enchantment and the Courage of Joy: René Magritte on the Antidote to the Banality of Pessimism "Life is wasted when we make it more terrifying, precisely because it is so easy to do so."
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
New in Superadmin: styling, images, rich text
over a year ago
This Space
39 Books: 2001 In 1995 I found this hardback edition in the British History section of a Brighton bookshop six...
a year ago
88
a year ago
In 1995 I found this hardback edition in the British History section of a Brighton bookshop six years after the French original was cited by Gabriel Josipovici as one of his books of the year: "a beautifully controlled examination of the effect on [Roubaud] of his wife's death...
ribbonfarm
Imagination vs. Creativity I like to make a distinction between imagination and creativity that you may or may not agree with....
a year ago
30
a year ago
I like to make a distinction between imagination and creativity that you may or may not agree with. Imagination is the ability to see known possibilities as being reachable from a situation. Creativity is the ability to manufacture new possibilities out of a situation. The two...
The Marginalian
The Ant, the Grasshopper, and the Antidote to the Cult of More: A Lovely Vintage Illustrated Poem... “Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily...
a year ago
23
a year ago
“Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily Dickinson lamented in a love letter. In his splendid short poem about the secret of happiness, Kurt Vonnegut exposed the taproot of our modern suffering as the gnawing sense that what we...
The Marginalian
Your Soul Is a Blue Marble: How to See with an Astronaut’s Eyes When the first hot air balloonists ascended into the skies of the eighteenth century, they saw...
5 months ago
50
5 months ago
When the first hot air balloonists ascended into the skies of the eighteenth century, they saw rivers crossing borders and clouds passing peacefully over battlefields. They saw the planet not as a patchwork of plots and kingdoms but as a vast living organism veined with valleys...
The American Scholar
In the Matter of the Commas For the true literary stylist, this seemingly humble punctuation mark is a matter of precision,...
2 months ago
29
2 months ago
For the true literary stylist, this seemingly humble punctuation mark is a matter of precision, logic, individuality, and music The post In the Matter of the Commas appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Imperfecta Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the...
a year ago
77
a year ago
Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the emerging era of gene editing The post Imperfecta appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
On “Incrementally Correct Personal Websites”
over a year ago
The Marginalian
How People Change: Psychoanalyst Allen Wheelis on the Essence of Freedom and the Two Elements of... "We create ourselves. The sequence is suffering, insight, will, action, change."
over a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
OpenAI Nonprofit Buyout: Much More Than You Wanted To Know ...
4 months ago
The Elysian
Democrats Need a Mamdani-Type to Win If you're still talking about his rent freeze and grocery policies, you're missing the point.
2 weeks ago
The Elysian
If you have a social mission, go into business An interview with Frederick Freundlich about working at Mondragon, participating in a cooperative,...
4 months ago
32
4 months ago
An interview with Frederick Freundlich about working at Mondragon, participating in a cooperative, and building social companies.
This Space
39 Books in one For anyone interested (you there in the phone box), here's a PDF of the 39 Books series. 39 Books:...
a year ago
112
a year ago
For anyone interested (you there in the phone box), here's a PDF of the 39 Books series. 39 Books: PDF As the introduction explained, the books were chosen from those on my books-read lists that I hadn't written about before. I thought it might be instructive to contrast the...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ No One Above the Law "Malaysia." I stood up, and maybe one or two other people did too. It wasn't like the large groups...
8 months ago
10
8 months ago
"Malaysia." I stood up, and maybe one or two other people did too. It wasn't like the large groups of newly minted American citizens from other countries announced, such as China, India, or the Philippines. But it was a moment I was proud of, and when my country of origin was...
Ben Borgers
IKEA Backpack
over a year ago
The Elysian
Every company should be owned by its employees Central States Manufacturing as a model for employee-ownership.
11 months ago
Naz Hamid
Your Site Is a Home Create a home that gives you energy. In meatspace, if you’re fortunate, you likely reside somewhere....
4 months ago
37
4 months ago
Create a home that gives you energy. In meatspace, if you’re fortunate, you likely reside somewhere. How that looks varies from person-to-person. For some, they own. For others, they rent. For those who don’t subscribe to a stationary life, it may be a vehicle, van, or camper. Or...
Josh Thompson
Migrating my Jekyll site to Netlify Troubleshooting Netilify deploy Ugggh I moved intermediateruby.com to Netlify a few months ago in...
over a year ago
17
over a year ago
Troubleshooting Netilify deploy Ugggh I moved intermediateruby.com to Netlify a few months ago in like 10 minutes, so my primary site, josh.works, should take maybe 20, right? I’m a few hours deep. Here’s what I get when Netlify tries to build: I should have done the following...
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Is Only Man' “You either fell under his spell and loved the wild ride of his prose, or you shunned or ignored...
a month ago
20
a month ago
“You either fell under his spell and loved the wild ride of his prose, or you shunned or ignored it.”   Infatuation of the literary sort is likely possible only among the young. That’s my experience. I have discovered good writers in recent decades – Yvor Winters, C.H. Sisson –...
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...
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Milan Kundera on the Power of Coincidences and the Musicality of How Chance Composes Our Lives "Human lives... are composed like music. Guided by his sense of beauty, an individual transforms a...
a year ago
22
a year ago
"Human lives... are composed like music. Guided by his sense of beauty, an individual transforms a fortuitous occurrence... into a motif, which then assumes a permanent place in the composition of the individual's life."
The Marginalian
Nick Cave on the Two Pillars of a Meaningful Life "Cultivating a questioning mind, of which conversation is the chief instrument, enriches our...
a year ago
24
a year ago
"Cultivating a questioning mind, of which conversation is the chief instrument, enriches our relationship with the world."
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Show the Poetry of the Commonplace' A friend in Schenectady, N.Y. worked as a lineman for the telephone company for almost half a...
4 months ago
30
4 months ago
A friend in Schenectady, N.Y. worked as a lineman for the telephone company for almost half a century, into his seventies. He was the guy who strapped on a belt and spikes and climbed those sliver-making poles, and later showed rookie linemen the ropes. On the side, Bob was an...
The American Scholar
Diana Antohe Threads of memory and home The post Diana Antohe appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The Elysian
Join us for a discussion about CITY STATE A literary salon discussion about autonomous governance.
3 months ago
The Marginalian
The Art of Lying Fallow: Psychoanalyst Masud Khan on the Existential Salve for the Age of Cultish... On inviting the state of being that "allows for that larval inner experience which distinguishes...
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Letter to Two Climbers (Part 2) Hello again, it’s me! We met climbing a few days ago. I wrote you a letter, but didn’t want to leave...
over a year ago
12
over a year ago
Hello again, it’s me! We met climbing a few days ago. I wrote you a letter, but didn’t want to leave it on such a pessimistic note. First, I commend you both for getting out there. You both invested a lot in making that weekend happen. You acquired the correct tools, and spent...
The American Scholar
A Giant of a Man The legacy of Willie Mays and the Birmingham ballpark where he first made his mark The post A Giant...
9 months ago
41
9 months ago
The legacy of Willie Mays and the Birmingham ballpark where he first made his mark The post A Giant of a Man appeared first on The American Scholar.