Full Width [alt+shift+f] Shortcuts [alt+shift+k]
Sign Up [alt+shift+s] Log In [alt+shift+l]
Top Categories > literature
#all #programming #history #startups #technology #science #life #literature #architecture #travel #creative #design #comics #finance #cartography #AI #indiehacker Muted Categories [alt+←][alt+→]
Anecdotal Evidence
'She Exhibits the Unrepentant Bad Taste Which Belongs to Good Taste in Its Good Sense' “Most poetry is as poor as most fiction or most biography, or most books. But it is often...
7 months ago
54
7 months ago
“Most poetry is as poor as most fiction or most biography, or most books. But it is often so aggressively, so conceitedly poor and undistinguished that readers cannot be altogether blamed for not bothering with the new books as they come out, and I am always hesitant to make them...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Wish He Would Explain His Explanation' On this date, April 10, in 1816, Coleridge and Lord Byron met for the only time, at the latter’s...
9 months ago
32
9 months ago
On this date, April 10, in 1816, Coleridge and Lord Byron met for the only time, at the latter’s house in Piccadilly. Earlier, Coleridge had a friend deliver to Byron a copy of his latest and last play, Zapolya, and a letter explaining that for the previous fifteen years he had...
Anecdotal Evidence
'As Sensitive As Anyone Else' “In common with James Jones, Gina Berriault knows that ill-educated or inarticulate people are as...
8 months ago
33
8 months ago
“In common with James Jones, Gina Berriault knows that ill-educated or inarticulate people are as sensitive as anyone else. She renders their speech with a fine and subtle ear for the shy or strident inaccuracies, for the bewilderment of missed points and for the dim, sad rhythms...
Anecdotal Evidence
''In Prose, Plain as Pike, Pillory' Austin Clarke (1896-1974) was an Irish poet of the generation after Yeats, the slightly...
3 months ago
40
3 months ago
Austin Clarke (1896-1974) was an Irish poet of the generation after Yeats, the slightly older contemporary of Louis MacNeice and Patrick Kavanagh. In 1968 he published A Sermon on Swift and Other Poems, and the 117-line title poem appeared in The Massachusetts Review in 1970....
Anecdotal Evidence
'Living Through Radical Change' Ten years ago, Joseph Epstein wrote to his friend Frederic Raphael:  “I have myself long ago put...
8 months ago
54
8 months ago
Ten years ago, Joseph Epstein wrote to his friend Frederic Raphael:  “I have myself long ago put aside any thought about writing an autobiography. . . . When I became, almost without conscious decision, a bookish and a scribbling man, the larger sense of adventure went out of my...
This Space
39 Books: 1993 I've written about Gert Hofmann's novels a few times, most recently Veilchenfeld (Our Philosopher in...
8 months ago
35
8 months ago
I've written about Gert Hofmann's novels a few times, most recently Veilchenfeld (Our Philosopher in the US edition), but not his short stories. In the year Hofmann died aged only 62, I bought and read Balzac's Horse and other stories in the wonderful Minerva paperback imprint....
The Marginalian
The Transcendent Brain: The Poetic Physicist Alan Lightman on Spirituality for the Science-Spirited A largehearted invitation to "stand on the precipice between the known and the unknown, without...
a year ago
34
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."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Honest Before Anything Else' A reader doesn’t understand how tastes in books and writers might evolve across a lifetime, how...
2 weeks ago
21
2 weeks ago
A reader doesn’t understand how tastes in books and writers might evolve across a lifetime, how indifference might replace enthusiasm and love, indifference. He mentions Hart Crane, a poet I’m unlikely ever to reread. I swooned over The Bridge in high school, spurred on by our...
The Marginalian
Moonlight and the Magic of the Unnecessary Every night, for every human being that ever was and ever will be, the Moon rises to remind us how...
10 months ago
56
10 months ago
Every night, for every human being that ever was and ever will be, the Moon rises to remind us how improbably lucky we are, each of its craters a monument of the odds we prevailed against to exist, a reliquary of the violent collisions that forged our rocky planet lush with life...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Kind of Masochism Afoot in Modern Aesthetics' “Is there a kind of masochism afoot in modern aesthetics whereby the leaden and the dull acquire...
5 months ago
57
5 months ago
“Is there a kind of masochism afoot in modern aesthetics whereby the leaden and the dull acquire significance simply because the beaten spirit would seem to claim more seriousness than a more robust struggle with the exigencies of things?”  This elegantly crafted question, at...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Death Is Divestment, Death Is Communion' “Whenever in my dreams I see the dead, they always appear silent, bothered, strangely depressed,...
6 months ago
56
6 months ago
“Whenever in my dreams I see the dead, they always appear silent, bothered, strangely depressed, quite unlike their dear, bright selves. I am aware of them, without any astonishment, in surroundings they never visited during their earthly existence, in the house of some friend of...
Ben Borgers
Did MCAS Matter?
over a year ago
The Marginalian
O Sweet Spontaneous: E.E. Cummings’s Love-Poem to Earth and the Glory of Spring The ultimate anthem of resistance to the assaults on life.
a year ago
The American Scholar
Tramping With Virginia A seminal essay about walking the streets of London can present challenges in the classrooms of...
8 months ago
59
8 months ago
A seminal essay about walking the streets of London can present challenges in the classrooms of today The post Tramping With Virginia appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Rhyme, Not Repetition All that’s past isn’t necessarily present The post Rhyme, Not Repetition appeared first on The...
7 months ago
25
7 months ago
All that’s past isn’t necessarily present The post Rhyme, Not Repetition appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Anki and Memorization with Spaced Repetition Software This is not meant to be read in isolation. Memorization is almost useless without doing work ahead...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
This is not meant to be read in isolation. Memorization is almost useless without doing work ahead of time to grasp the material. For the full context, start with Learning how to Learn I’ve not been able to find any comprehensive guides to using Anki to learn programming, so this...
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
7
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
“Three Things Enchanted Him …” by Anna Akhmatova Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Three Things Enchanted Him …” by Anna Akhmatova appeared...
2 months ago
37
2 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Three Things Enchanted Him …” by Anna Akhmatova appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
"When now?" Out of curiosity, I read a few novels that over the last year have received the highest praise on...
over a year ago
52
over a year ago
Out of curiosity, I read a few novels that over the last year have received the highest praise on social media and literary podcasts, and have appeared multiple times in newspaper Books of the Year choices and on prize shortlists, and one that even won a prize. I wanted to see...
ben-mini
Building FirstMover I had one month to find a place to live in Manhattan. I reached out to friends for tips, and nearly...
3 months ago
7
3 months ago
I had one month to find a place to live in Manhattan. I reached out to friends for tips, and nearly all of them pointed me to StreetEasy, the Zillow-owned NYC real estate search platform. Some of my more Type-A friends gave me extra helpful advice: Narrow your search to 2-4...
The Elysian
Join our upcoming literary salon discussions Our calendar of upcoming events.
3 months ago
sbensu
Math intuitions on variance This is a supplement to High Variance Management, where I build some intuition on the different...
a year ago
8
a year ago
This is a supplement to High Variance Management, where I build some intuition on the different probability distributions involved.
This Space
Ultimate things: The Aphorisms of Franz Kafka Although we are unmusical, we have a tradition of singing     Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse...
over a year ago
37
over a year ago
Although we are unmusical, we have a tradition of singing     Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk The first reason to celebrate Shelley Frisch’s new translation into English of Kafka’s short prose written in the village of Zürau, now Siřem in the Czech Republic, is that...
Anecdotal Evidence
'They’ve No Clue of My Reality' “We are all well and in good spirits, have enough to eat. I have not yet eaten the cake you sent me....
11 months ago
22
11 months ago
“We are all well and in good spirits, have enough to eat. I have not yet eaten the cake you sent me. I do not have to do guard duty as I am an officer, think of sergeant Peck, sounds pretty big don’t it, eh?”  That’s Marcus Peck, a soldier from Sand Lake, N.Y., who answered...
Wuthering...
Books I read in December 2023 - No one’s worse than you, she says Lots of short fantasy fiction this month, perhaps everything in the first section except the May...
a year ago
37
a year ago
Lots of short fantasy fiction this month, perhaps everything in the first section except the May Sarton novel and Eugene O’Neill play, balanced by a complementary pair of Holocaust memoirs. NOVELS, STORIES & A PLAY Ocean of Story, Vol. 1 (11th cent.),  Somadeva, tr. C. H....
Anecdotal Evidence
'Life Is Slow Dying' One of Philip Larkin’s most technically adept poems, “Here,” is never self-consciously flashy,...
a year ago
9
a year ago
One of Philip Larkin’s most technically adept poems, “Here,” is never self-consciously flashy, though the first of its three sentences is twenty-five lines long. Its earliest readers perhaps flipped past it in The Whitsun Weddings (1964) -- it’s the first poem in the collection –...
Josh Thompson
Everything I Do and Think I've Read in a Book (or, exploring the relationship between books and... Here’s yet another big post on money and income and saving and reading. I tried to write everything...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Here’s yet another big post on money and income and saving and reading. I tried to write everything on my mind in one massive letter, so I could write a really detailed answer once, rather than a less-useful but less-thoughtful email that I can never reuse. Hey there, I’m...
The Marginalian
Bunny & Tree: A Tender Wordless Parable of Friendship and the Improbable Saviors That Make Life... Traversing the landscape of life on the wings of trust.
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Let Us See Them There in the Shadows' A childhood acquaintance has died. We were never close. In fact, I didn’t know he was still alive...
6 months ago
43
6 months ago
A childhood acquaintance has died. We were never close. In fact, I didn’t know he was still alive until a friend told me he was dead. What I remember is his face, his general demeanor, roughly the sort of behavior I could expect of him. I last saw him more than half a century...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Anticipating Since Morning a Successful Hunt' The neighbors had several tall ash trees growing in their backyard behind the garage and the trunks...
10 months ago
25
10 months ago
The neighbors had several tall ash trees growing in their backyard behind the garage and the trunks were a favorite perch for Polyphemus and especially cecropia moths. These are large insects, beautifully colored, with “eyes” on their wings. To budding lepidopterists they were...
The American Scholar
Jane Skafte The language of trees The post Jane Skafte appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
The Marginalian
Let the Last Thing Be Song "When I die, I want to be sung across the threshold."
6 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Top Thing of the World' John Keats’ meditation on a reader’s paradise:  “I had an idea that a Man might pass a very pleasant...
2 months ago
23
2 months ago
John Keats’ meditation on a reader’s paradise:  “I had an idea that a Man might pass a very pleasant life in this manner. Let him on a certain day read a certain Page of full Poesy or distilled Prose, and let him wander with it, and muse upon it and reflect from it, and dream...
The Marginalian
John Quincy Adams on Impostor Syndrome and the True Measure of Success “You will never get any more out of life than you expect,” Bruce Lee wrote to himself. All...
7 months ago
62
7 months ago
“You will never get any more out of life than you expect,” Bruce Lee wrote to himself. All expectation is a story of the possible. Every person lives inside a story of who they are, what they are worth, and what is possible for their life, and suffers in proportion to how...
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
Anecdotal Evidence
'They Never Settle Down' A reader has happened on an unfamiliar word while reading Dimitri Obolensky’s The Byzantine...
a month ago
24
a month ago
A reader has happened on an unfamiliar word while reading Dimitri Obolensky’s The Byzantine Commonwealth: Eastern Europe, 500-1453 (1971), one he finds “especially amusing”:  “Cosmas [Indicopleustes] tells us of monks who, ignoring their vows, live unchastely, engage in trade and...
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
6
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
Awakened Cosmos: Poetry as Spiritual Practice "Poetry is the cosmos awakened to itself."
9 months ago
The American Scholar
“The Testimony of J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Fiction” by Ai The post “The Testimony of J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Fiction” by Ai appeared first on The American...
2 months ago
The Marginalian
Sheltering the Heroes Among Us: John Berger on Art as Resistance and Redemption of Justice "The powerful fear art, whatever its form... because it makes sense of what life’s brutalities...
a month ago
30
a month ago
"The powerful fear art, whatever its form... because it makes sense of what life’s brutalities cannot, a sense that unites us... becomes a meeting-place of the invisible, the irreducible, the enduring."
Ben Borgers
Half a Slice of Apple Pie
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Other Significant Others: Living and Loving Outside the Confines of Conventional Friendship and... "While we weaken friendships by expecting too little of them, we undermine romantic relationships by...
10 months ago
Ben Borgers
Un-figure-out-able Software
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Give Him the Darkest Inch Your Shelf Allows' Its 1,498 pages tip the scales at 3.2 pounds: Collected Poems of Edwin Arlington Robinson,...
8 months ago
52
8 months ago
Its 1,498 pages tip the scales at 3.2 pounds: Collected Poems of Edwin Arlington Robinson, originally published in 1929. At Kaboom Books I bought the twelfth printing, from 1959. The dustjacket is a little frayed around the edges but the book is otherwise sturdy. It collects the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Belonged Essentially to the Order of Wags' A gift I prize is seeing the humor in writers not taxonomically labeled “Humorists.” If you tell me...
10 months ago
55
10 months ago
A gift I prize is seeing the humor in writers not taxonomically labeled “Humorists.” If you tell me a piece by S.J. Pearlman has made you laugh my response is, “Enjoy yourself.” I don’t find Pearlman as funny as I did when I was a kid, though I’m happy for you. But if you tell me...
The Marginalian
The Value of Being Wrong: Lewis Thomas on Generative Mistakes In praise of our "property of error, spontaneous, uncontrolled, and rich in possibilities."
a year ago
The Marginalian
A Heron’s Antidote to Fear of Death They didn’t imagine it, the dying dinosaurs, that they would grow wings and become birds, become the...
a month ago
18
a month ago
They didn’t imagine it, the dying dinosaurs, that they would grow wings and become birds, become the laboratory in which evolution invented dreams and the cathedral in which it invented faith. “There is grandeur in this view of life,” Darwin consoled himself as his beloved...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Matter of Nobody’s Style But Her Own' “It is not only the pianos that have vanished (the sound of the pianos along the streets in spring...
11 months ago
14
11 months ago
“It is not only the pianos that have vanished (the sound of the pianos along the streets in spring evenings when the windows were opened) but the world in which they sounded, and the young ears they sounded for. I shall never forget how beautiful they were or what they meant to...
The Elysian
Please come up with wildly speculative futures Inside my writing philosophy.
9 months ago
This Space
Dead Souls by Sam Riviere Even before one begins reading Sam Riviere’s first novel there is despondency as one registers that...
over a year ago
35
over a year ago
Even before one begins reading Sam Riviere’s first novel there is despondency as one registers that the title is a duplication of the English translation of Nikolai Gogol’s Мёртвые души, the novel in which a character seeks to buy dead serfs from their owners but who have yet to...
The American Scholar
“The Horses” by Ted Hughes Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Horses” by Ted Hughes appeared first on The American...
3 days ago
The American Scholar
A Stranger in the Seven Hills A refugee’s experience in the Eternal City The post A Stranger in the Seven Hills appeared first on...
4 months ago
22
4 months ago
A refugee’s experience in the Eternal City The post A Stranger in the Seven Hills appeared first on The American Scholar.
sbensu
Risk-takers decide faster Unsurprising connection between risk and speed.
2 months ago
The Marginalian
Octavio Paz on Freedom "Without freedom, what we call a person does not exist."
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Censure of Knaves and Fools' “Mr. Michael Johnson was a man of large and robust body, and of a strong and active mind; yet, as in...
3 months ago
23
3 months ago
“Mr. Michael Johnson was a man of large and robust body, and of a strong and active mind; yet, as in the most solid rocks veins of unsound substance are often discovered, there was in him a mixture of that disease, the nature of which eludes the most minute enquiry, though the...
The Elysian
Yes, Taylor Swift is just as genius as Mary Shelley The video from our live event.
3 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Read a Little, Listen to a Little Music' “To tend the world: read a little, listen to a little music.”  I was slow to warm to the late Adam...
a year ago
12
a year ago
“To tend the world: read a little, listen to a little music.”  I was slow to warm to the late Adam Zagajewski. I still prefer his essays to his poems, which often seem sentimental and formless, as though he demanded too little of himself when writing poetry. Only in the five...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Books in the Running Brooks' One of my favorite literary analogies: “The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden...
11 months ago
19
11 months ago
One of my favorite literary analogies: “The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed and diligently planted, varied with shades, and scented with flowers; the composition of Shakespeare is a forest, in which oaks extend their branches, and pines tower in...
The American Scholar
“How Happy Is the Little Stone” by Emily Dickinson Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “How Happy Is the Little Stone” by Emily Dickinson appeared...
7 months ago
62
7 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “How Happy Is the Little Stone” by Emily Dickinson appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Tufts & Change Makers
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
War Room “Bib”
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Death Is Not Far From Me' It’s in the nature of most writers to come up with their own rules and obey them when it serves...
10 months ago
30
10 months ago
It’s in the nature of most writers to come up with their own rules and obey them when it serves their purposes. Even the strictest formalist bends a little in the service of what works aesthetically. The byproduct of that decision-making process is “style.” Good work can come out...
Ben Borgers
Gamelan Music
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Blue Is the Color of Desire: The Science, Poetry, and Wonder of the Bowerbird For all the enchantment the color blue has cast upon humanity, no animal has fallen under its spell...
a year ago
59
a year ago
For all the enchantment the color blue has cast upon humanity, no animal has fallen under its spell more hopelessly than the bowerbird, whose very survival hinges on blue. In a small clearing on the forest floor, the male weaves twigs and branches into an elaborate bower, which...
The Perry Bible...
Turn That Frown The post Turn That Frown appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
5 months ago
The Elysian
Can we create a wise & enlightened citizenry? We'll need to address cognitive biases if we want to reach Plato's ideal.
9 months ago
Robert Caro
An Interview With Robert Caro and Kurt Vonnegut Kurt greeted us in his beautiful 19th century house and in his bare feet (of which more later). As...
a year ago
6
a year ago
Kurt greeted us in his beautiful 19th century house and in his bare feet (of which more later). As the interview progressed it grew sort of
The American Scholar
“To David, About His Education” by Howard Nemerov Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “To David, About His Education” by Howard Nemerov appeared...
2 months ago
36
2 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “To David, About His Education” by Howard Nemerov appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Donating forks to the dining hall
7 months ago
Josh Thompson
Fry Your Pizza Here’s a problem many of us first-worlders have: cold pizza. There are two options. Microwave it, or...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
Here’s a problem many of us first-worlders have: cold pizza. There are two options. Microwave it, or throw it in the toaster oven or regular oven. A microwave makes it soggy, and a regular oven takes forever to heat it up. (If you’re willing to eat it cold, may god have mercy on...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Every Departure Destroys a Class of Sympathies' As a boy I was spared most deaths. I've read of people who lose parents, siblings and close friends...
5 months ago
52
5 months ago
As a boy I was spared most deaths. I've read of people who lose parents, siblings and close friends when young, and wonder how they adapt to unprecedented loss. They have nothing to compare it to. The death that hit me hardest was President Kennedy’s, a month after my eleventh...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Live Missing Something' Four years late, I’ve read Gary Saul Morson’s “Poet of Loneliness,” his review of Fifty-Two Stories...
9 months ago
29
9 months ago
Four years late, I’ve read Gary Saul Morson’s “Poet of Loneliness,” his review of Fifty-Two Stories (Knopf, 2020), a Chekhov translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. I ordered the collection early in the COVID-19 lockdown and will always associate it with the other...
The Marginalian
The Poetic Science of the Ghost Pipe: Emily Dickinson and the Secret of Earth’s Most Supernatural... "That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet."
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Some Spirit That Didn’t Wobble' “As a youngster I came to the classics simply by following the clues of other writers. Cooper,...
a year ago
31
a year ago
“As a youngster I came to the classics simply by following the clues of other writers. Cooper, Stevenson, Whitman, even Edgar Rice Burroughs seemed to lead, allusion by allusion, back to a body of writing that was solider and wiser, some spirit that didn’t wobble, wasn’t under...
The American Scholar
Bridges The post Bridges appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
Josh Thompson
On Leaving Evangelicalism And Opposing It Content warning & summary This paper talks about ethics, ethical behavior, violence, abuse,...
a year ago
6
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 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
Wuthering...
Books I read in March 2024 - Literature was a game of pillaging, and this book showed it. A nice little run at Persian literature this month.  And I am reading in Portuguese again,...
9 months ago
31
9 months ago
A nice little run at Persian literature this month.  And I am reading in Portuguese again, slowly, slowly. PERSIAN LITERATURE, MOSTLY CLASSICAL Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings (1110),  Abolqasem Ferdowsi – See here for notes on this big epic in Dick Davis’s translation. The...
Ben Borgers
3blue1brown.elk.sh
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A University Education, Uncorrupted' A human being is “born an heir to an inheritance to which he can succeed only in a process...
a month ago
34
a month ago
A human being is “born an heir to an inheritance to which he can succeed only in a process of learning.” Aristotle didn't get it quite right when he thought we could be defined by our capacity for speech and even, on occasion, rational discourse. No, it’s learning that makes us...
Anecdotal Evidence
'On the Cello of Shared Grief' With the deaths of certain writers our reaction is shamefully selfish: Why did he do that to me? No...
3 weeks ago
21
3 weeks ago
With the deaths of certain writers our reaction is shamefully selfish: Why did he do that to me? No thought for family or friends, or even other readers, merely one’s sense of personal betrayal. That’s how I felt seven years ago when Richard Wilbur died at age ninety-six, as...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Although Too Many Readers Have Forgotten' My education continues. Here is “Artillery” (Hazards, 1930) by the English poet Wilfrid Wilson...
a month ago
23
a month ago
My education continues. Here is “Artillery” (Hazards, 1930) by the English poet Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, previously unknown to me:  “All night I sat beside the bed And watched that senseless moaning head Backwards and forwards toss and toss, When suddenly he sat upright And...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Remarkable Literary Judgment' She was twelve or thirteen, a girl in a hooded sweatshirt seated beside a woman I assume was her...
5 months ago
27
5 months ago
She was twelve or thirteen, a girl in a hooded sweatshirt seated beside a woman I assume was her mother. She sat on the aisle two rows ahead of me. The cabin of the plane glowed with screens while she was reading Andrew R. MacAndrew’s 1961 translation of Dead Souls, the Signet...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Little Towns Should Have Had Their Chroniclers' Every St. Patrick’s Day my mother pinned on my shirt before I walked to school a green and white...
9 months ago
22
9 months ago
Every St. Patrick’s Day my mother pinned on my shirt before I walked to school a green and white knitted shamrock and reminded me of the origin of my first name. Her father was born in County Cork, as were her mother’s parents. I waited until the third grade to rebel against...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Magnetism, an Ardor, a Refusal to Be False' In “The Madonna of the Future,” an 1873 story by Henry James, an American painter in Florence tells...
a year ago
13
a year ago
In “The Madonna of the Future,” an 1873 story by Henry James, an American painter in Florence tells the narrator, “If you but knew the rapture of observation! I gather with every glance some hint for light, for color or relief!  When I get home, I pour out my treasures into the...
The American Scholar
Numbers Game A novelist’s indictment of how we account for our history The post Numbers Game appeared first on...
7 months ago
32
7 months ago
A novelist’s indictment of how we account for our history The post Numbers Game appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Uses of the Erotic: Audre Lorde on the Relationship Between Eros, Creativity, and Power "There is, for me, no difference between writing a good poem and moving into sunlight against the...
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'At the Five and Ten Cent Store' Irving Berlin was Jewish and gave us the soundtrack for our American holidays,...
a month ago
19
a month ago
Irving Berlin was Jewish and gave us the soundtrack for our American holidays, including Thanksgiving Day: “My needs are small, I buy ’em all / At the five and ten cent store. / Oh, I've got plenty to be thankful for.” Bing Crosby, a serious Roman Catholic, introduced “I’ve Got...
Wuthering...
Heraclitus and Empedocles - Everything flows - eyes roamed alone My rummage through the early Greek philosophers has been rewarding, but it is a strange exercise. ...
a year ago
53
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'All Is Not Dead' Sadness nicely coexists with happiness this time of year. Christmas is over. Memories abound. We...
a week ago
16
a week ago
Sadness nicely coexists with happiness this time of year. Christmas is over. Memories abound. We underestimate ourselves when it comes to emotional capacity. Only the insane know one emotion at a time, which is why bliss and clinical depression are rare states and why Joseph...
The American Scholar
The Given Child To what lengths would a mother go to ensure her family’s survival in a remote Himalayan village? The...
7 months ago
22
7 months ago
To what lengths would a mother go to ensure her family’s survival in a remote Himalayan village? The post The Given Child appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
`Medusa` mythical creature: part 1 Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...
This Space
39 Books: 2003 This year I read Robert Antelme's The Human Race for the first time. I was nonplussed. The strange...
8 months ago
69
8 months ago
This year I read Robert Antelme's The Human Race for the first time. I was nonplussed. The strange title, closer to popular sociology than memoir, should have been a warning. This was not quite the horror story one imagines of memoirs from those who survived Nazi concentration...
Ben Borgers
Kid Money
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'His Own Exclusive Object' I’ve accumulated some of the accoutrements of age – bifocals, cane, hearing aids. None embarrasses...
4 months ago
31
4 months ago
I’ve accumulated some of the accoutrements of age – bifocals, cane, hearing aids. None embarrasses me and all make life less annoying. I’ve never been seriously ill. I take my handful of vitamins and meds in the morning. I no longer drink and never smoked. Among the last things I...
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
13
a year ago
“Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily Dickinson lamented in a love letter. In his splendid short poem about the secret of happiness, Kurt Vonnegut exposed the taproot of our modern suffering as the gnawing sense that what we...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Have Finally Written on Politics" The April 1970 issue of the now-defunct New American Review included one of those self-important...
a year ago
10
a year ago
The April 1970 issue of the now-defunct New American Review included one of those self-important symposia beloved by editors, this one titled “The Writer’s Situation.” A surprising participant was J.V. Cunningham, who seldom played the conventional literary game. A poet, critic,...
The American Scholar
Up Close The post Up Close appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
Ben Borgers
School But Online
over a year ago
ribbonfarm
Intellectual Menopause I ran across the alarming phrase intellectual menopause a few months ago in John Gall’s...
4 months ago
4
4 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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Take Measure of the Loss' The youngest poet included by Yvor Winters and Kenneth Fields in Quest for Reality: An Anthology of...
11 months ago
19
11 months ago
The youngest poet included by Yvor Winters and Kenneth Fields in Quest for Reality: An Anthology of Short Poems in English (1969) was M. Scott Momaday, a former Winters graduate student at Stanford who was then thirty-five years old. Winters, who died in 1968, also considered...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Curiosity to Inquire Into All Things' “Concupiscence of experience, boundless curiosity to set our foot everywhere, to enter...
2 months ago
30
2 months ago
“Concupiscence of experience, boundless curiosity to set our foot everywhere, to enter every possible situation. Montaigne.”  I could have signed my name to that when I was twenty. I wanted to visit every country in the world, even the most dangerous. I made plans to move to...
Josh Thompson
Change The more things change, the more they stay the same. Or something like that. Sometimes change is for...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Or something like that. Sometimes change is for the better, and sometimes its for the worse. I don’t know if there’s always a difference. Recently, Kristi and I have seen lots of change; I’d say its for the better, but it’s not...
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 360 ...
3 weeks ago
Josh Thompson
20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don't Get Jason Nazar recently wrote an article titled 20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don’t Get. Please read it, but...
over a year ago
8
over a year ago
Jason Nazar recently wrote an article titled 20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don’t Get. Please read it, but with a big grain of salt. Nazar opens with the statement “I made a lot of mistakes along the way, and I see this generation making their own.” This seems to be an aspirational...
Josh Thompson
Simplify, simplify, simplify Kristi and I stumbled upon the realization that we’ve become minimalists. And it is exciting. We...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
Kristi and I stumbled upon the realization that we’ve become minimalists. And it is exciting. We live in a one-bedroom apartment. It is spacious, for a one-bedroom, but compared to anything larger than a one-bedroom apartment, it is small. We managed to pack it full of stuff in...
Josh Thompson
Tour of D3 for Clueless Folk Like Me D3 stands for Data Driven Documents, and it’s the coolest thing ever. Check out a few...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
D3 stands for Data Driven Documents, and it’s the coolest thing ever. Check out a few examples: Animated, interactive curves(dynamic) OMG Particles II(dynamic) simple map of the us(static) <= very little code Radial Dendrogram(static) circle wave(dynamic) Force-directed...
This Space
39 Books: 1992 Poetry is a notable absence in my book lists. I assumed at this time that because novels excited my...
8 months ago
42
8 months ago
Poetry is a notable absence in my book lists. I assumed at this time that because novels excited my attention, poetry should do too. Under this assumption I bought and read Wallace Stevens' Collected Poems in this chunky Faber edition, adding an ugly plastic cover.* Many of...
Blog -...
Book Review - The Island Within With The Island Within, Nelson has crafted a flawless narrative that has no beginning and no end,...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
With The Island Within, Nelson has crafted a flawless narrative that has no beginning and no end, and perhaps, to the unmindful, no meaning. To those who remain anchored emerges buried treasure from every line. I kept being drawn back in, not as an addiction, but, as I...
The American Scholar
A Forgotten Turner Classic Who was George Eyser, the one-legged German-American gymnast who astounded at the Olympic Games? The...
7 months ago
25
7 months ago
Who was George Eyser, the one-legged German-American gymnast who astounded at the Olympic Games? The post A Forgotten Turner Classic appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
10
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."
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Successfully Pretend I Am a Human Being' A longtime reader is convinced we are enduring an imagination deficit. “Everywhere,” she writes, “I...
10 months ago
25
10 months ago
A longtime reader is convinced we are enduring an imagination deficit. “Everywhere,” she writes, “I see clichés taking over. Obviously in public life with politicians and journalists. That’s nothing new but in the arts too, music and writing. It’s as though AI created them.” No...
Josh Thompson
Let Me Fix [some of] Your Parking Problems Hi there! I’m Josh, and I’m your local neighborhood advocate for overlooked spaces. Today, we’ll be...
a year ago
5
a year ago
Hi there! I’m Josh, and I’m your local neighborhood advocate for overlooked spaces. Today, we’ll be focusing on parking lots. Your parking lot has a job to do, and every day, every night, rain or shine, hot or cold, clear, rainy, or snowy, your parking lot does the best it can at...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I’m Tickled to Death When They Call Me Comic' Like porkchops, fame is highly perishable. Writers once read by millions – think of James Michener...
9 months ago
20
9 months ago
Like porkchops, fame is highly perishable. Writers once read by millions – think of James Michener and, at a far more accomplished level, James Gould Cozzens – have evaporated from literary memory. Newspaper writing and journalism in general are especially biodegradable. Who...
Josh Thompson
Setting up Application Performance Monitoring in DataDog in your Rails App When I write guides to things, I write them first and foremost for myself, and I tend to work...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
When I write guides to things, I write them first and foremost for myself, and I tend to work through things in excruciating detail. You might find this to be a little too in-depth, or you might appreciate the detail. Either way, if you want a step-by-step guide, this should do...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Painstakingly Logical and Precise' A thought that never occurred to me but feels self-evidently right:  “In the course of a reading...
5 months ago
45
5 months ago
A thought that never occurred to me but feels self-evidently right:  “In the course of a reading life, one often stumbles on excellent prose writers never before encountered; such discoveries, however, are less likely in poetry. First-rate poetry is a more manageable quantity....
Josh Thompson
How to Ask Questions of Experts To Gain More than Just Answers Recently, I co-led a session at Turing with Regis Boudinot, a Turing grad who works at GitLab. We...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Recently, I co-led a session at Turing with Regis Boudinot, a Turing grad who works at GitLab. We discussed two things: asking good questions having a good workflow After the session, I promised an overview of what we discussed. Here’s that overview for “Asking good questions”....
Josh Thompson
Don't Focus on the Present If you accept the premise that training  cycles are the method by which you will improve your...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
If you accept the premise that training  cycles are the method by which you will improve your climbing, you  should be able to focus less on the day-by-day fluctuation in your performance. At least, I should be able to, since I accept that premise. Yet I still struggle to not be...
ribbonfarm
Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities by Bettany Hughes I started reading Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities by Bettany Hughes while I was in Istanbul last...
9 months ago
6
9 months ago
I started reading Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities by Bettany Hughes while I was in Istanbul last November and finally finished it last week. It’s a really solid and absorbing book, and far too dense and rich with detail to zip through, which is why I read it a dozen or so pages...
The American Scholar
Camouflage The post Camouflage appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 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
7
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Scabrous Memory Writhes Here, Underneath' I’ve just learned that some thirty percent of Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city, is paved,...
a month ago
28
a month ago
I’ve just learned that some thirty percent of Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city, is paved, covered in concrete and asphalt. That doesn’t count buildings and other structures. It amounts to roughly 384 square miles of ground surface that is “case-hardened, carapaced,” to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Kind of Things I Love' At the end of her Friday post on Orson Welles and his Chimes at Midnight, Di Nguyen at the Little...
a year ago
18
a year ago
At the end of her Friday post on Orson Welles and his Chimes at Midnight, Di Nguyen at the Little White Attic appends a bookish cri de coeur, one I have echoed many times:  “I increasingly feel at odds with modern culture,” she begins. “I’m indifferent to contemporary music,...
The Marginalian
Poetic Ecology and the Biology of Wonder "The real disconnect is not between our human nature and all the other beings; it is between our...
a year ago
62
a year ago
"The real disconnect is not between our human nature and all the other beings; it is between our image of our nature and our real nature."
The Elysian
Let's read the Terra Ignota series together Our summer reading is Ada Palmer's feat of utopian worldbuilding.
6 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Our Instinctual Taste for Periodicity and Return' I got a kick out of Damian at A Sunday of Liberty reveling in a rhyme that seems...
a year ago
16
a year ago
I got a kick out of Damian at A Sunday of Liberty reveling in a rhyme that seems genetically implanted in American kids, regardless of age or geography:  “Greasy, grimy gopher guts! Little dirty birdie feet!”   As in any folk tradition, variants abound. This is the version I grew...
Anecdotal Evidence
'About As Approachable As a Porcupine' The large bay window facing the garden in front of our house is better than television....
2 months ago
38
2 months ago
The large bay window facing the garden in front of our house is better than television. No commercials, no dependency on internet whims, no bills to pay. That’s where I do most of my reading (best lighting in the house). From the couch I watch the show in the garden. Butterflies,...
Escaping Flatland
A summary of what I wrote in 2023 In 2023, I published 37 essays. I’ve spent the better part of the morning going through it all to...
a year ago
15
a year ago
In 2023, I published 37 essays. I’ve spent the better part of the morning going through it all to see what the themes were—it is quite surprising to notice what emerges when you allow yourself to follow your curiosity and intuition for a full year. I wrote a summary of the...
This Space
39 Books: 1996 It's a commonplace that in reading novels one can escape the ravages of time. In 1994, I borrowed my...
8 months ago
39
8 months ago
It's a commonplace that in reading novels one can escape the ravages of time. In 1994, I borrowed my student housemate's innocent-looking hardback edition of Nicholson Baker's The Fermata in which Arno Strine writes about how he can actually stop time. The title refers to the...
The American Scholar
New Year, Old Year The post New Year, Old Year appeared first on The American Scholar.
a week ago
Ben Borgers
Planning my week
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Be at Home in Other Places' At his day job my current barber is a counselor working with street people who have alcohol and/or...
a month ago
14
a month ago
At his day job my current barber is a counselor working with street people who have alcohol and/or drug problems. Like most in that field, he values his clients and dislikes the bosses, who live by the dictates of bureaucracy. Barbers are like bartenders. The good ones usually...
The Marginalian
The Messiah in the Mountain: Darwin on Wonder and the Spirituality of Nature Here we are, matter yearning for meaning, each of us a fragile constellation of chemistry and chance...
7 months ago
67
7 months ago
Here we are, matter yearning for meaning, each of us a fragile constellation of chemistry and chance hurtling through a cold cosmos that has no accord for our wishes, takes no interest in our dreams. “I can’t but believe that all that majesty and all that beauty, those fated and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Will Your Birds Be Always Wingless Birds' A questionnaire sent to Louis MacNeice in 1934 – that “low dishonest decade” was big on...
8 months ago
56
8 months ago
A questionnaire sent to Louis MacNeice in 1934 – that “low dishonest decade” was big on questionnaires to writers – asked, “Do you take your stand with any political or politico-economic party or creed?” The Irishman replied: “No. In weaker moments I wish I could.” Never a...
The Elysian
Week 5: Write one (pitchable) think piece
9 months ago
This Space
Kevin Hart and the outside There are two reasons why listening to Kevin Hart's interview on the Hermitix podcast, and reading...
a year ago
62
a year ago
There are two reasons why listening to Kevin Hart's interview on the Hermitix podcast, and reading his new collection and The Dark Gaze for the second time, has helped me to recognise what I have forgotten, missed, misconstrued or misunderstood in Maurice Blanchot's writing or,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Prejudice Against Humor?' “What is the origin of the prejudice against humor? Why is it so dangerous, if you would keep the...
11 months ago
14
11 months ago
“What is the origin of the prejudice against humor? Why is it so dangerous, if you would keep the public confidence, to make the public laugh? Is it because humor and sound sense are essentially antagonistic? Has humanity found by experience that the man who sees the fun of life...
The American Scholar
Hot and Cold The post Hot and Cold appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'More Interesting to Me Than the Future' “The past has always been more interesting to me than the future, just as I have found pessimists...
5 months ago
38
5 months ago
“The past has always been more interesting to me than the future, just as I have found pessimists more amusing than optimists and failures more attractive than successes. I do not say that my preferences are based upon universal principles or that everyone should share them; in...
Josh Thompson
2017 In Review & Thoughts on 2018 Note: this “annual review” covers three topics. Click on one to skip to it: Looking back on...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Note: this “annual review” covers three topics. Click on one to skip to it: Looking back on 2017 thoughts on going into 2018 book recommendations from the 79 books I read last year I’ve got mixed feelings on annual reviews. I steadfastly refuse to set New Years’ resolutions, and...
The American Scholar
Amy Wetsch Life, magnified The post Amy Wetsch appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 days ago
Josh Thompson
Elixir/Phoenix part deux I planned on working through this tutorial for building a slack clone, but half-way through the...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
I planned on working through this tutorial for building a slack clone, but half-way through the set-up instructions, after I installed Elixir and Phoenix, I took a long detour through the basic set-up guide. Built some custom routes, along with controllers/views/templates,...
The Marginalian
The Half-Life of Hope After breaking out of timidity with “Spell Against Indifference,” an offering of another poem — this...
a year ago
17
a year ago
After breaking out of timidity with “Spell Against Indifference,” an offering of another poem — this one inspired by a lovely piece of science news that touched me with its sonorous existential echoes. THE HALF-LIFE OF HOPE by Maria Popova Walking beneath the concrete canopy...
sbensu
Lieutenants are the limiting reagent Why don't software companies ship more products? Why do they move more slowly as they grow? What do...
a year ago
4
a year ago
Why don't software companies ship more products? Why do they move more slowly as they grow? What do we mean when we say "this company lacks focus"?
Josh Thompson
Parenting: A Place for Sources And Stories As some of us are or might be, I “am a parent”, or I “have a child”, or something like that. This is...
7 months ago
6
7 months ago
As some of us are or might be, I “am a parent”, or I “have a child”, or something like that. This is complex for me to write and engage with, because something that is certainly true for all of us is that we “have a parent” or we “have been a child”. To talk about any of it is to...
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 356 ...
a month ago
The Elysian
I’d rather have an investor than a publishing contract In pursuit of a better book deal (and record deal and podcast deal...)
8 months ago
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
4
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 Marginalian
The Great Blue Heron, Signs vs. Omens, and Our Search for Meaning One September dawn on the verge of a significant life change, sitting on my poet friend’s dock, I...
4 months ago
41
4 months ago
One September dawn on the verge of a significant life change, sitting on my poet friend’s dock, I watched a great blue heron rise slow and prehistoric through the morning mist, carrying the sky on her back. In the years since, the heron has become the closest thing I have to what...
Ben Borgers
Is Advice Flawed?
over a year ago
sbensu
Notes on UX and LLM integrations I analyze 8 apps (ChatGPT, Notion, Perplexity, etc.) that use or integrate LLM and try to break down...
a year ago
7
a year ago
I analyze 8 apps (ChatGPT, Notion, Perplexity, etc.) that use or integrate LLM and try to break down when and why they work well, or poorly.
Josh Thompson
Anarchy (or, less provocatively, Mutuality and Co-Creation) In 2017, I read The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the...
8 months ago
7
8 months ago
In 2017, I read The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey; everything and nothing changed. Lots changed because all of I sudden, I could clearly label a dynamic that had always irked me. I could see that some people would avoid...
The Marginalian
How to Apologize: Reflections on Forgiveness, Self-Forgiveness, and the Paradox of Doing the Right... "It's permitted to receive solace for whatever you did or didn't do, pitiful, beautiful human."
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Entertain As Well As Illuminate' “Here’s a thought: literary criticism ought to entertain as well as illuminate.”  Bracing words to...
a year ago
13
a year ago
“Here’s a thought: literary criticism ought to entertain as well as illuminate.”  Bracing words to encounter while writing a book review. The writer is the poet David Mason. Quoted is the opening sentence of his review/essay “Two Poet-Critics,” devoted to Clive James and John...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Leave Him, Full of Envy' Without resorting to clues, who do you think Eugenio Montale is talking about:  “He is a strong,...
a year ago
13
a year ago
Without resorting to clues, who do you think Eugenio Montale is talking about:  “He is a strong, cordial, human man, whom one seems to have always known.”   One hint: it’s a poet. Among major poets, the pickings are slim. Strong? Scratch Cavafy. Cordial? There goes Frost. “Human...
The Perry Bible...
The Hare and the Tortoise The post The Hare and the Tortoise appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Only Little People Frightened By the Long Night' The calendar and tradition assure us that Halloween is October 31 but the voice of the people in our...
a year ago
14
a year ago
The calendar and tradition assure us that Halloween is October 31 but the voice of the people in our neighborhood as expressed through the “group chat” I have never looked at moved the celebration to October 29. The reasons are unclear. What this means in practical terms is two...
This Space
A review from abroad In April 2016, a review by Alexander Carnera of my book This Space of Writing appeared in the...
over a year ago
40
over a year ago
In April 2016, a review by Alexander Carnera of my book This Space of Writing appeared in the Norwegian edition of Le Monde diplomatique as a supplement to the delightfully named Norwegian newspaper Klassekampen. Even though I can't read Danish, it was not only a highlight of the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Intensely Cultivated and Painstakingly Honest' In the brief foreword to her first prose collection, Predilections (1955), Marianne Moore writes as...
a month ago
28
a month ago
In the brief foreword to her first prose collection, Predilections (1955), Marianne Moore writes as good an apologia for her manner of writing, among others, as I’ve ever encountered: “Silence is more eloquent than speech – a truism; but sometimes something that someone...
The American Scholar
Magic Men The post Magic Men appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The American Scholar
In the Endless Arctic Light A journey to the far north of Norway means confronting our changing climate The post In the Endless...
a month ago
15
a month ago
A journey to the far north of Norway means confronting our changing climate The post In the Endless Arctic Light appeared first on The American Scholar.
Steven Scrawls
Word Rot Word Rot Unless you are extraordinarily unfortunate, every problem you ever face will have been...
a year ago
7
a year ago
Word Rot Unless you are extraordinarily unfortunate, every problem you ever face will have been faced in some form by someone who came before you. That person may have already shared the story of that challenge, and that story might have melded with other tales to form collective...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Echo of a Song a Stranger Sang' I’m reminded of my age only when someone holds a door open for me (That’s my job!) or performs some...
3 months ago
20
3 months ago
I’m reminded of my age only when someone holds a door open for me (That’s my job!) or performs some other courtesy. I was returning to my car from the university library, carrying a canvas tote bag of books, walking with the aid of my cane, as usual, when a young man asked if he...
Josh Thompson
Paths In Which I Am Interested this is still in draft status this page serves as a placeholder for various paths I’m interested...
6 months ago
6
6 months ago
this is still in draft status this page serves as a placeholder for various paths I’m interested in. I hope to bring attention to “linear parks”, or a park that functions more in size and shape to a street, crossing blocks of distance, but maintaining park vibes throughout. Path...
Ben Borgers
One Year Ago Email
over a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 361 ...
2 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Beyond the Language of the Living' “After someone dies I find it hard to delete their contact from my phone. It feels cruel somehow, as...
4 months ago
46
4 months ago
“After someone dies I find it hard to delete their contact from my phone. It feels cruel somehow, as if it was a final obliteration.”  I didn’t know others felt this way, and dismissed it as my indulgence in sentimentality. Rabbi David Wolpe’s admission comes as reassurance. I...
ribbonfarm
Sons of the Soil, Migrants, and Civil War, We read an interesting paper today (ht Sachin Benny with an assist from ChatGPT) in the Yak...
8 months ago
4
8 months ago
We read an interesting paper today (ht Sachin Benny with an assist from ChatGPT) in the Yak Collective weekly governance study group (Fridays at 9 AM Pacific). Sons of the Soil, Migrants, and Civil War, by James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin (World Development, V 39, No. 2,...
The American Scholar
The Baritone as Democrat How Lawrence Tibbett prophesied the Metropolitan Opera crisis of today The post The Baritone as...
a month ago
29
a month ago
How Lawrence Tibbett prophesied the Metropolitan Opera crisis of today The post The Baritone as Democrat appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The World's an End' In recent years John Dryden has become one of my reliable poets. He impresses me as a sane adult,...
4 months ago
43
4 months ago
In recent years John Dryden has become one of my reliable poets. He impresses me as a sane adult, with equal emphasis on both of those words. No dabbling in drugs and madness. I brought a volume of his poems with me to Cleveland where I’m visiting my brother in hospice. No...
ben-mini
Making My SQL Skills Obsolete Quick Update: I updated my domain to ben-mini.com! All old URLs and the RSS feed under...
2 weeks ago
35
2 weeks ago
Quick Update: I updated my domain to ben-mini.com! All old URLs and the RSS feed under ben-mini.github.io will automatically redirect, so no changes are needed on your end. By far, the most useful LLM app I’ve made is the Kibu Schema God: I try not to make my posts too...
Wuthering...
On the greatness of The Story of the Stone - it is in a vigorous, somewhat staccato style Some notes on The Story of the Stone, Volume 1: The Golden Days (c. 1760 or maybe 1792) by Cao...
3 months ago
40
3 months ago
Some notes on The Story of the Stone, Volume 1: The Golden Days (c. 1760 or maybe 1792) by Cao Xueqin, the first of the five volumes of the Penguin edition of the greatest Chinese novel. I don’t like writing about a book before I have finished it, but in a sense I did finish a...
The Elysian
A grassroots political party for the middle The Forward Party, citizen's assemblies, and a creating better independence movement in the US.
3 weeks ago
The Marginalian
A Republic of the Sensitive: E.M. Forster on the Personal and Political Power of Empaths and the... "I believe in... an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to...
2 months ago
29
2 months ago
"I believe in... an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet."
Josh Thompson
Quotes from 'Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving', by Pete Walker I’ve found Pete Walker’s Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving to be deeply helpful. Some of you,...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
I’ve found Pete Walker’s Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving to be deeply helpful. Some of you, many of you, have blessed me and cared for me in kind ways, sometimes with very little knowledge of what was going on, or why I was the way that I was. Thank you. I’ve been...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Even Erudition is Possible Outside Academe' A reader tells me he earned his B.A. in English several years ago and now he works for a non-profit...
5 months ago
27
5 months ago
A reader tells me he earned his B.A. in English several years ago and now he works for a non-profit that pushes “arts education,” whatever that might be. I don’t take him for an idealist. He’s bright, personable, an ambitious reader and bored. Our culture doesn’t know what to do...
Ben Borgers
Parking Tickets Wrapped 2024
3 days ago
Ben Borgers
5 Pages a Day
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
No New Books I’ve promised myself that I won’t add any more books to my Kindle, either by purchasing them from...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
I’ve promised myself that I won’t add any more books to my Kindle, either by purchasing them from Amazon, or downloading them online, or renting them from a Library. Why? I’ve let reading about doing things stand in the way of doing the things. No amount of educational literature...
The Elysian
What my cooperative media ecosystem could look like My vision for a federated nation of independent writer states.
4 days ago
sbensu
Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union Notes from reading the book by Zubok
10 months ago
The Marginalian
The Merger Self, the Seeker Self, and the Lifelong Challenge of Balancing Intimacy and Independence Each time I see a sparrow inside an airport, I am seized with tenderness for the bird, for living so...
8 months ago
60
8 months ago
Each time I see a sparrow inside an airport, I am seized with tenderness for the bird, for living so acutely and concretely a paradox that haunts our human lives in myriad guises — the difficulty of discerning comfort from entrapment, freedom from peril. It is a paradox rooted in...
This Space
The end of literature, part five "Stupid" and "a marketing exercise" were the first two descriptions I saw of the New York Times' 100...
5 months ago
61
5 months ago
"Stupid" and "a marketing exercise" were the first two descriptions I saw of the New York Times' 100 Best Books of the 21st Century polled from hundreds of "literary luminaries" offering ten choices each, and while it is both of those things, "parochial" is the first word that...
Ben Borgers
Daily Habits
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Fred Roger's Method For Writing Scripts Someone said: People think this is silly, but read about Fred rogers’ method for writing a script...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
Someone said: People think this is silly, but read about Fred rogers’ method for writing a script for his show. The rules aren’t fully applicable to presentations, but the attention to detail and to the Interpretation of the audience is. Don’t use any words carelessly. I...
This Space
"Every day I have to invoke the absent god again"* I really enjoy this YouTube channel despite my general lack of interest in films. The presenter’s...
over a year ago
37
over a year ago
I really enjoy this YouTube channel despite my general lack of interest in films. The presenter’s restrained voice-over is ideal for one approaching its concerns; imagine a lullaby sung by Werner Herzog. I envy him the medium for its music, its visuals, even its potential for...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Dense, Democratic, Vulgar' When high summer arrives  -- in Texas, long before this Thursday’s equinox – I think of Saratoga...
6 months ago
43
6 months ago
When high summer arrives  -- in Texas, long before this Thursday’s equinox – I think of Saratoga Springs, N.Y., where we bought our first house and lived for seven years. The Saratoga Race Course was less than a mile away. So were Yaddo and Broadway, the main drag downtown. We...
Wuthering...
Books I Read in June 2023 If only I had the will to write something.  But I can read. PHILOSOPHY Fragments or Sayings or...
a year ago
64
a year ago
If only I had the will to write something.  But I can read. PHILOSOPHY Fragments or Sayings or Tall Tales (4th C. BCE), Diogenes the Cynic, tr. Guy Davenport Cynics (2008), William Desmond - for an entry in a series aimed at students, surprisingly well written.  It helps that...
Ben Borgers
Best Type of Bathroom Lock
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'For Grief and Lost Belief' In the U.S., Memorial Day is observed on the final Monday in May – this year, May 27....
7 months ago
62
7 months ago
In the U.S., Memorial Day is observed on the final Monday in May – this year, May 27. Formerly called Decoration Day, it started after the Civil War as commemoration of the nation’s war dead. The meaning and observance of holidays tend to dilute with time. When I was a boy, the...
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
12
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."
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Suppose Age Brings Context' An old friend and former blogger in England has been reading Anthony Hecht and detects what he calls...
3 months ago
31
3 months ago
An old friend and former blogger in England has been reading Anthony Hecht and detects what he calls “a very faint ghost of Hart Crane at times.” It’s not a connection I have ever made but I recognize a certain lushness of diction in both of them.  “[I]t's a similar sense of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Amateurism (in the Original Sense of the Term)' Autodidact as a noun and adjective arrived in English in 1534 via French, from a Latinized form of...
12 months ago
17
12 months ago
Autodidact as a noun and adjective arrived in English in 1534 via French, from a Latinized form of the Greek for “self-taught.” The range of the word’s uses in our university-smitten age is vast. Some academics apply it to anyone without an advanced degree who presumes to have...
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."
a year ago
The Perry Bible...
Clicked The post Clicked appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
a month ago
Ben Borgers
Meaningful Conversation
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
On Feedback Most of what makes us who we are is based on some sort of feedback obtained earlier in our life. By...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
Most of what makes us who we are is based on some sort of feedback obtained earlier in our life. By my best estimation, there are two types of feedback: Explicit feedback , which comes in a little box labeled “this is feedback”, and is hard to miss. Implicit feedback , which is...
Josh Thompson
OK, some new books Yesterday, I proclaimed “ No new books”. I spent a lot of time today thinking about that...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
Yesterday, I proclaimed “ No new books”. I spent a lot of time today thinking about that proclamation. Do I really want to limit myself to just the books that I’ve already picked for myself? Yes. Maybe. There’s a kind of book I don’t want to read any more of. That’s the “get...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I'd Walk in Heaven With My Feet on Earth' “If love of beauty were the same as faith, / I’d walk in heaven with my feet on earth.” The...
a year ago
17
a year ago
“If love of beauty were the same as faith, / I’d walk in heaven with my feet on earth.” The late Terry Teachout once described himself as a “Midwestern aesthete,” an identification I have happily claimed. I sense that a love of beauty has grown scarce and too often earns contempt...
Ben Borgers
Social Jealousy
over a year ago
The Elysian
Social Development > Self-Development We need one much more than the other.
a week ago
Josh Thompson
Cheap fix to night-time teeth grinding A few years ago, I found out I grind me teeth at night. Kristi says it sounds like I’m chewing...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
A few years ago, I found out I grind me teeth at night. Kristi says it sounds like I’m chewing marbles. Others who grind their teeth give themselves headaches, or wake themselves up at night. You can’t really stop yourself from grinding your teeth, since you’re asleep. You can...
The Marginalian
Joy as a Force of Resistance and a Halo of Loss, with a Nick Cave Song and a Lisel Mueller Poem In this world heavy with robust reasons for despair, joy is a stubborn courage we must not...
4 months ago
33
4 months ago
In this world heavy with robust reasons for despair, joy is a stubborn courage we must not surrender, a fulcrum of personal power we must not yield to cynicism, blame, or any other costume of helplessness. “Experience of conflict and a load of suffering has taught me that what...
Ben Borgers
Stickies: Spatial note-taking
a year ago
Ben Borgers
Professorship Bias
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
How I got scammed on Facebook Marketplace
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Nothing Makes a Man More Reverent' I have never thought of reading as a “hobby.” I put the word in quotes because I sense a patronizing...
a month ago
23
a month ago
I have never thought of reading as a “hobby.” I put the word in quotes because I sense a patronizing tinge to the word. A hobby is a lesser pastime than a job, something frivolous, a “leisure activity” that most people in the past couldn’t afford because they had to earn a...
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...
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Curious Examiner of the Human Mind' On June, 25, 1763, Boswell and Dr. Johnson dined at the Mitre Tavern on Fleet Street. The friends...
6 months ago
55
6 months ago
On June, 25, 1763, Boswell and Dr. Johnson dined at the Mitre Tavern on Fleet Street. The friends had met for the first time just a month earlier at Thomas Davies’ bookshop on Russell Street. Johnson starts the conversation with a dismissal of Thomas Gray (1716-71). In the...
Ben Borgers
Trash Bags in the Laundry Room
over a year ago
Wuthering...
The Story of the Stone, fairy tale and realism - Not so wonderful, really, is it? I left the characters of The Story of the Stone as they were buying drapes and tablecloths for a...
3 months ago
43
3 months ago
I left the characters of The Story of the Stone as they were buying drapes and tablecloths for a party.  I will rejoin the party planning momentarily. The Story of the Stone is a massive domestic novel about an extended family.  The main plot is the teenage love triangle, but...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not Simply Bad Prose' “It is not simply bad prose—a tank is not a badly constructed automobile.” Gilbert Highet (1906-78)...
11 months ago
38
11 months ago
“It is not simply bad prose—a tank is not a badly constructed automobile.” Gilbert Highet (1906-78) was a Scottish-born, Oxford-educated American classicist who taught at Columbia for thirty-three years and managed to become a bona fide pop-culture “celebrity.” In 1952 he was...
Ben Borgers
Stories for College Applications
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Overcome (some) barriers in work with this magic phrase You’re sending an email to your boss about some decision point you’re facing. How should you word...
over a year ago
8
over a year ago
You’re sending an email to your boss about some decision point you’re facing. How should you word it? Compare this wording: Let me know if my criteria are sound, or if you have any concerns. I’d like to get started as soon as possible. To this wording: Unless I hear otherwise,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Essence of Good Talk' A longtime reader of this blog stopped by the house on Saturday, we talked and the...
a year ago
8
a year ago
A longtime reader of this blog stopped by the house on Saturday, we talked and the afternoon evaporated. Neither of us brought a script. “Improvisation is the essence of good talk,” writes Max Beerbohm in “Lytton Strachey” (1943). “Heaven defend us from the talker who doles out...
The Marginalian
To Be a Person: Jane Hirshfield’s Playful and Poignant Poem About Bearing Our Human Condition "To be a person may be possible then, after all."
a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
Claude Fights Back ...
3 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Art Must Be Giving Pleasure' On May 14, 1947, after giving seven months of lectures on the sonnets and all but two of...
a year ago
14
a year ago
On May 14, 1947, after giving seven months of lectures on the sonnets and all but two of Shakespeare’s plays at the New School of Social Research in New York City, W.H. Auden delivered a concluding lecture. He roots Shakespeare’s vision in the notion of original sin and what he...
The Marginalian
The Dalai Lama’s Ethical and Ecological Philosophy for the Next Generation, Illustrated "We are all interconnected in the universe, and from this, universal responsibility arises......
a year ago
56
a year ago
"We are all interconnected in the universe, and from this, universal responsibility arises... Everyone has the responsibility to develop a happier world."
The Marginalian
What It’s Like to Be a Falcon: The Peregrine as a Portal to a Way of Seeing and a State of Being "You cannot know what freedom means till you have seen a peregrine loosed into the warm spring sky...
8 months ago
66
8 months ago
"You cannot know what freedom means till you have seen a peregrine loosed into the warm spring sky to roam at will through all the far provinces of light."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Jell-O Once a Week' On Thursday I slipped my brother some Montaigne without him knowing the source. It...
5 months ago
44
5 months ago
On Thursday I slipped my brother some Montaigne without him knowing the source. It wasn’t plagiarism, exactly, and it was paraphrased. It’s a well-known passage from the essay “That to philosophize is to learn to die,” one that always reminds me of Spinoza:  “It is uncertain...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Moved—Stopp’d--Shall I Go On?—No' The professor asked me to write a paper on Tristram Shandy, the novel she had introduced to us in...
a month ago
23
a month ago
The professor asked me to write a paper on Tristram Shandy, the novel she had introduced to us in her eighteenth-century English fiction class. It was her favorite novel. Its bawdy humor matched her own. For me it was love at first sight – for the novel, I mean. I was already a...
Ben Borgers
Thursday, January 20, 2022
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...
8 months ago
58
8 months ago
In 1995 I found this hardback edition in the British History section of a Brighton bookshop six years after the French original was cited by Gabriel Josipovici as one of his books of the year: "a beautifully controlled examination of the effect on [Roubaud] of his wife's death...
Ben Borgers
5% of things go wrong
a year ago
The Marginalian
The Galapagos and the Meaning of Life: A Young Woman’s Bittersweet Experiment in Inner Freedom “We may think we are domesticated but we are not,” Jay Griffiths wrote in her homily on not wasting...
2 months ago
22
2 months ago
“We may think we are domesticated but we are not,” Jay Griffiths wrote in her homily on not wasting our wildness, insisting on the “primal allegiance” the human spirit has to the wild. A decade after artist Rockwell Kent headed to a remote Alaskan island “to stand face to face...
Ben Borgers
JumboCode plans for Head of Engineering
a year ago
The Elysian
No one buys books Everything we learned about the publishing industry from Penguin vs. DOJ.
8 months ago
The Marginalian
Alain de Botton on the Qualities of a Healthy Mind "A healthy mind knows how to hope; it identifies and then hangs on tenaciously to a few reasons to...
a year ago
Ben Borgers
Stubborn Consistency [100 daily blog posts]
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
On “Incrementally Correct Personal Websites”
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Ordinary Life Where Things Make Sense' An old friend back in upstate New York and I were texting. We worked years ago as reporters for the...
a year ago
10
a year ago
An old friend back in upstate New York and I were texting. We worked years ago as reporters for the same newspaper. She was married then to her second husband, who had multiple sclerosis and died slowly and horribly. When she had to  go out of town, I would stay with him...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Occasion for Festive Processions" “Others will balk at his sometimes extravagant vocabulary; words such as ‘amphisbaenic’ or ‘labarum’...
6 months ago
51
6 months ago
“Others will balk at his sometimes extravagant vocabulary; words such as ‘amphisbaenic’ or ‘labarum’ or ‘ithyphallic’ will send them ‘scurrying’ to their dictionaries (why do they always ‘scurry’ or even ‘scuttle’? A new word, rightly used, should be an occasion for festive...
Ben Borgers
College CS Classes Are Tragically Dull
over a year ago
Wuthering...
Books I Read in July 2023 How embarrassing that I did not write a thing this month, but I promise I had a good excuse. ...
a year ago
56
a year ago
How embarrassing that I did not write a thing this month, but I promise I had a good excuse.  Posts on Cynicism, Epicureanism, and Stoicism will appear this month, I swear, or at least hope.  My eventual excuse this month will be, I am afraid, even better. Still, I...
Josh Thompson
Find out how much money you've made (in your entire life) This post went by on the Personal Finance subreddit today: https://www.ssa.gov/myaccount/ After...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
This post went by on the Personal Finance subreddit today: https://www.ssa.gov/myaccount/ After creating an account / logging in, click on Earnings, then add the columns. If you have been working for many years, try copying/pasting the column in excel and using the sum...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Line or Two Worth Keeping All Too Rare' “He has never been much of a poet for opening magic casements -- ordinary dirty storm windows,...
a year ago
11
a year ago
“He has never been much of a poet for opening magic casements -- ordinary dirty storm windows, rather.”  That’s X.J. Kennedy on Kingsley Amis, clearly seeing his own reflection in that dirty window. Both are proof that the best writers of light verse or comic poetry are serious...
The Marginalian
Louise Erdrich on the Deepest Meaning of Resistance "Resist loss of the miraculous by lowering your standards for what constitutes a miracle. It is all...
a month ago
This Space
39 Books: 2002 The quiet joy of short, constrained memoirs. I borrowed a copy of this book in 2002 and then found a...
8 months ago
57
8 months ago
The quiet joy of short, constrained memoirs. I borrowed a copy of this book in 2002 and then found a copy in a remaindered shop for £5. Anne Atik got to know Beckett in the late 1950s through the artist Avigdor Arikha, later her husband. Beckett's circle of friends included as...
The American Scholar
Adventures With Jean Striking up a friendship with an older writer meant accepting the risk of getting hurt The post...
4 months ago
24
4 months ago
Striking up a friendship with an older writer meant accepting the risk of getting hurt The post Adventures With Jean appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Bubble Girl The kidnapping that once riveted the nation The post Bubble Girl appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
18
7 months ago
The kidnapping that once riveted the nation The post Bubble Girl appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Nobel-Winning Poet Joseph Brodsky on the Remedy for Existential Boredom "Try to stay passionate, leave your cool to constellations. Passion, above all, is a remedy against...
6 months ago
43
6 months ago
"Try to stay passionate, leave your cool to constellations. Passion, above all, is a remedy against boredom. Another one, of course, is pain... passion's frequent aftermath."
Josh Thompson
Issues related to the city of Golden While I was biking around recently, I saw notes about an upcoming neighborhood meeting about some...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
While I was biking around recently, I saw notes about an upcoming neighborhood meeting about some rezoning, a big lot in downtown Golden. I went to the meeting (Thursday, July 22) and learned a lot. Here’s the lot in question: I have ridden my bike past this property hundreds of...
ribbonfarm
News from the Universe I did not expect to see auroras in the Seattle area. Or ever in my life without a special...
8 months ago
6
8 months ago
I did not expect to see auroras in the Seattle area. Or ever in my life without a special bucket-list effort I had no particular intention of making. Though now I might. It feels a bit like I’ve just seen giraffes in the wild without going to Africa. You’ve probably seen some of...
Ben Borgers
Monday, January 17, 2022
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Of Stars, Seagulls, and Love: Loren Eiseley on the First and Final Truth of Life Somewhere along the way of life, we learn that love means very different things to different people,...
5 months ago
48
5 months ago
Somewhere along the way of life, we learn that love means very different things to different people, and yet all personal love is but a fractal of a larger universal love. Some call it God. I call it wonder. Dante called it “the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars.”...
The Elysian
Free speech in the age of social media A discussion about misinformation, echo chambers, media spin, social trolling, and how we can create...
4 weeks ago
17
4 weeks ago
A discussion about misinformation, echo chambers, media spin, social trolling, and how we can create something better.
Ben Borgers
Late Night Sprints
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Wonder Beyond Why: The Majesty and Mystery of the Birds-of-Paradise “To go all the way from a clone of archaebacteria, in just 3.7 billion years, to the B-Minor Mass...
a year ago
13
a year ago
“To go all the way from a clone of archaebacteria, in just 3.7 billion years, to the B-Minor Mass and the Late Quartets, deserves a better technical term for the record than randomness,” the poetic scientist Lewis Thomas wrote in his forgotten masterpiece of perspective. This is...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Thoughts Wait Here for Future Readers' In Another Beauty (trans. Clare Cavanagh, 2000), the late Adam Zagajewski revisits his alma mater,...
a year ago
14
a year ago
In Another Beauty (trans. Clare Cavanagh, 2000), the late Adam Zagajewski revisits his alma mater, the Jagiellonka Library in Kraków, and calls it a “botanical garden of ideas,” a metaphor worthy of the librarian Borges. I briefly visited the Jagiellonka, as it’s known, in 2012...
The Elysian
Week 7: Boost your essays all over the internet
8 months ago
The Marginalian
The Bird in the Heart: Terry Tempest Williams on the Paradox of Transformation and How to Live with... "We can change, evolve, and transform our own conditioning. We can choose to move like water rather...
11 months ago
Josh Thompson
2018 Reading Review & Recommendations I read many books in 2018. I’m listing them out here, along with recommendations. Here’s the...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
I read many books in 2018. I’m listing them out here, along with recommendations. Here’s the recommendation “key”: 👍 = I recommend this book. (This metric is intentionally fuzzy.) 😔 = This book influenced my mental model of the world/reality/myself 🏢 = Book topic is...
Anecdotal Evidence
'On the Marge of Lake Lebarge' Memory has no conscience and little sense of good taste. It’s our most intimate capacity yet often...
11 months ago
15
11 months ago
Memory has no conscience and little sense of good taste. It’s our most intimate capacity yet often feels alien, as though we were recalling the memories of someone else. In the past, of course, we were someone else. As a kid I watched ridiculous amounts of television, which is...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Hope This Explanation Is Wrong' One of life’s unsolved puzzles, especially for readers and writers: How can certain arrangements of...
4 months ago
41
4 months ago
One of life’s unsolved puzzles, especially for readers and writers: How can certain arrangements of words encountered in childhood or youth, and revisited regularly for a lifetime, still inspire delight, while others, in effect, evaporate before we hear them? In the latter...
The American Scholar
In Reprise: Next, Line Please A new poetry prompt for players new and old The post In Reprise: Next, Line Please appeared first on...
2 months ago
30
2 months ago
A new poetry prompt for players new and old The post In Reprise: Next, Line Please appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Birds, Loves, and Obscure Sorrows: The Best of The Marginalian 2024 Hindsight is how we connect the dots that figure our lives. To look back on even a single year is to...
2 weeks ago
17
2 weeks ago
Hindsight is how we connect the dots that figure our lives. To look back on even a single year is to see clearly the contour of who we are in its points of attention and priority. “How we spend our days,” Annie Dillard wrote, “is how we spend our lives.” How we spend our minds is...
The American Scholar
The Writing on the Wall Augustine Sedgewick on his discovery of Henry David Thoreau’s connection to slavery The post The...
2 months ago
34
2 months ago
Augustine Sedgewick on his discovery of Henry David Thoreau’s connection to slavery The post The Writing on the Wall appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Website redesign, December 2024
2 weeks ago
ribbonfarm
There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm I’m a little late to the party, but I just finished the wonderfully imaginative There Is No...
8 months ago
5
8 months ago
I’m a little late to the party, but I just finished the wonderfully imaginative There Is No Antimemetics Division (2020) by qntm. The premise is that our world is full of things with antimemetic properties. An antimeme is “an idea with self-censoring properties; an idea which, by...
The Perry Bible...
Us The post Us appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'For Now I Am As Lilliputian As All the Rest' “My mood is like the weather,” Chekhov writes on April 8, 1889. “I’m not doing any work, just...
9 months ago
59
9 months ago
“My mood is like the weather,” Chekhov writes on April 8, 1889. “I’m not doing any work, just reading or pacing up and down. However, I don’t really mind having the time to read. It’s more enjoyable than writing. I feel that if I could live another forty years and spend the whole...
The Marginalian
The Warped Side of Our Universe: A Painted Epic Poem about the Dazzling Science of Spacetime The first English use of the word space to connote the cosmic expanse appears in line 650 of Book I...
a year ago
16
a year ago
The first English use of the word space to connote the cosmic expanse appears in line 650 of Book I of Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost: “Space may produce new Worlds,” he wrote, and grow rife with them. In the centuries since Milton, who lived through the golden dawn of...
Josh Thompson
A Retrospective on Seven Months at Turing Collection of thoughts on Turing It’s the last week of Turing. I went through the backend software...
over a year ago
5
over a year ago
Collection of thoughts on Turing It’s the last week of Turing. I went through the backend software engineering program, and it’s been a journey. In no particular order, I’m throwing down thoughts in three general categories: What went well What didn’t go well What I might have...
The American Scholar
This Woman’s Work Susannah Gibson opens the parlor doors on 18th-century feminism The post This Woman’s Work appeared...
3 months ago
26
3 months ago
Susannah Gibson opens the parlor doors on 18th-century feminism The post This Woman’s Work appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
46
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Hard to Find a Name in Human Speech' After a stop in Hong Kong during his four-thousand-mile journey back to Moscow from Sakhalin Island,...
a year ago
13
a year ago
After a stop in Hong Kong during his four-thousand-mile journey back to Moscow from Sakhalin Island, Chekhov’s ship encountered rough weather and high seas. Before reaching Singapore, two men had died and their bodies were thrown overboard:  “When you see a dead man wrapped in...
The Elysian
Writing Prompt: Fix Capitalism By September 30th.
4 months ago
Ben Borgers
War Room: Expansion features
a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 358 ...
a month ago
Escaping Flatland
How to think in writing Part 1: The thought behind the thought
8 months ago
Josh Thompson
Feedback pt. 2 Traditional Feedback is Explicit Feedback is the means by which any system makes changes. From the...
over a year ago
4
over a year ago
Traditional Feedback is Explicit Feedback is the means by which any system makes changes. From the gene pool to the swimming pool, feedback works to eliminate the insufficient and improve the sufficient. (See what I did with the “pool” thing?) Your car gives you feedback if the...
Josh Thompson
Give it 30 days Do you have any big audacious goal you want to accomplish? If you think back to Jan 1, 2016, what...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
Do you have any big audacious goal you want to accomplish? If you think back to Jan 1, 2016, what were your goals? Lose weight/get in shape Make more money/start budgeting Learn a language Learn a skill Read more Stop doing something (smoking, drinking) Statistically, all of...
Josh Thompson
Recommended books from 2017 I read many books in 2017. I’m listing them out here, along with recommendations. Here’s the...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
I read many books in 2017. I’m listing them out here, along with recommendations. Here’s the recommendation “key”: 👍 = I recommend this book. This is intentionally fuzzy. 😔 = This book influenced my mental model of the world/reality/myself 🏢 = Book topic is architecture and/or...
sbensu
The Market for Takes Solving for the Twitter equilibrium
5 months ago
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...
a month ago
24
a month 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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Most Perverse Gesture' “Books are friends, oracles, household gods, characters in the ongoing drama of our...
a year ago
12
a year ago
“Books are friends, oracles, household gods, characters in the ongoing drama of our minds.” Understandably, Lance Marrow gets a little sentimental about books and their needless destruction. We resist soft-headed fetishism but for some of us, discarding or destroying books, even...
Wuthering...
Jeremy Denk plays Charles Ives and Blind Tom Wiggins - a pleasing conjunction of Wuthering... More Massachusetts semi-literay adventures. Last weekend I was at Tanglewood in Lenox,...
4 months ago
44
4 months ago
More Massachusetts semi-literay adventures. Last weekend I was at Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts, enjoying Jeremy Denk’s performance of insurance executive Charles Ives’s Concord Sonata (c. 1913).  It was a pleasing congruence of Wuthering Expectations themes.  I have nothing...
Steven Scrawls
Supposedly-Deceased Intellectuals Found Living at Resort ‘Small Village’ of Supposedly-Deceased Intellectuals Found Alive, Thriving at Caribbean...
5 months ago
4
5 months ago
‘Small Village’ of Supposedly-Deceased Intellectuals Found Alive, Thriving at Caribbean Resort Gabriel Martinez, a 35-year-old confectioner living in the Cayman Islands, thought he was posting a simple promotional photo when he snapped a picture of his ‘cocoa-banana-surprise’ and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'And in the Darkness Comes the Light' Chard Powers Smith (1894-1977) was a latecomer to the protracted Era of American Writers with Three...
a year ago
13
a year ago
Chard Powers Smith (1894-1977) was a latecomer to the protracted Era of American Writers with Three Names, coming decades after John Greenleaf Whittier, James Russell Lowell and William Dean Howells. Smith is probably more thoroughly forgotten than the others, though in 1939 he...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Arid Interrogation' As boys, in our imaginations we tested ourselves. Would we prove courageous in combat? Our fathers...
4 months ago
46
4 months ago
As boys, in our imaginations we tested ourselves. Would we prove courageous in combat? Our fathers had, so we believed, during World War II. Could we withstand torture? These virtues, touched with Hollywood melodrama, seemed like essential aspects of maturity. We wanted to be...
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
6
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...
This Space
39 Books: 1998 I said I'd come back to "not writing".  A few months ago I watched Unstuck in Time, a long but...
8 months ago
56
8 months ago
I said I'd come back to "not writing".  A few months ago I watched Unstuck in Time, a long but captivating documentary on the life of Kurt Vonnegut and his friendship with the film's maker, Robert Weide. In his final years, Vonnegut moved to the country and stopped writing. His...
Ben Borgers
gerp
over a year ago
This Space
The opposite direction The arrival of Douglas Robertson’s new translation of Thomas Bernhard’s Die Billigesser in a compact...
over a year ago
37
over a year ago
The arrival of Douglas Robertson’s new translation of Thomas Bernhard’s Die Billigesser in a compact paperback from Spurl Editions came just as I had given up hope of ever discussing what I believed had long fascinated me about a feature of Bernhard's prose-texts. A fascination...
Anecdotal Evidence
'With Squeaky Wit the Light, Improper Verse' Without context or other clue, who do you think might have written this tart...
7 months ago
46
7 months ago
Without context or other clue, who do you think might have written this tart little couplet?:  “With squeaky wit the light, improper verse Falls on the heavy lunch and makes it worse.”   I first encountered him in the eighth grade, in English class. He was sold to us as the “poet...
Josh Thompson
Three Levels of Competence Raise your hand if you’d like to be better at climbing. Yeah. Me too. I’ve spent an unusual amount...
over a year ago
6
over a year ago
Raise your hand if you’d like to be better at climbing. Yeah. Me too. I’ve spent an unusual amount of time working with beginners, to help them improve at climbing. I’ve also worked a lot with (what I would consider to be) intermediate climbers, so can get better. I’ve certainly...
The American Scholar
Rap Rap Rap The post Rap Rap Rap appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Implacable, Bewildered, It Moves Among Us' Some sixteen years ago David Ferry thanked me for a post I had written about some of the lines by...
a year ago
12
a year ago
Some sixteen years ago David Ferry thanked me for a post I had written about some of the lines by Dr. Johnson interpolated into his poems. That email is long gone but I remember being touched by his buoyant sense of gratitude. That a man in his eighties, much honored as a poet,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'It's on the Russian Level' “I’m not a great reader of fiction. I read through all of Jane Austen with pleasure. I read through...
5 months ago
32
5 months ago
“I’m not a great reader of fiction. I read through all of Jane Austen with pleasure. I read through George Eliot at school, but I was too young to appreciate her then. But about a year ago I read Middlemarch. Most marvellous book. Best thing in nineteenth-century English fiction,...
The Elysian
Writing Prompt: How do we create the next Renaissance? Something I’ve been thinking a lot about is: How can we fund the next Renaissance? How can we create...
8 months ago
28
8 months ago
Something I’ve been thinking a lot about is: How can we fund the next Renaissance? How can we create a world where artists are better funded and…
The American Scholar
Poco a Poco The post Poco a Poco appeared first on The American Scholar.
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....
a month ago
23
a month 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 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.
8 months ago
Ben Borgers
Dark Sky
over a year ago
The Elysian
The unbearable necessity of being online On loving and loathing the internet as an artist and why we need to be here anyway.
9 months ago
Wuthering...
Iphigeneia in Aulis by Euripides - even babies sense the dread of evil to come The final Euripides play is Iphigeneia in Aulis, performed with The Bacchae in 405 BCE.  I normally...
over a year ago
53
over a year ago
The final Euripides play is Iphigeneia in Aulis, performed with The Bacchae in 405 BCE.  I normally write “Iphigenia,” but I read the 1978 W. S. Merwin and George E. Dimock, Jr. translation titled which goes with “Iphigeneia,” so I will switch to that spelling for this post. ...
Wuthering...
Books Read in June 2024 - "Why can't we steal the calm vegetable clairvoyance of these great rooted... Three weeks in Portugal meant less and different reading. FICTION Wolf Solent (1929), John Cowper...
6 months ago
62
6 months ago
Three weeks in Portugal meant less and different reading. FICTION Wolf Solent (1929), John Cowper Powys – among the most eccentric novels I have ever read, up there with his contemporaries D. H. Lawrence and Ronald Firbank!  I feel I should write about it; I feel I should read...
Wuthering...
Lucretius brings to light in Latin verse the dark discoveries of the Greeks During the Hellenistic period, Epicureanism and Stoicism replaced Plato and Aristotle as the...
a year ago
13
a year ago
During the Hellenistic period, Epicureanism and Stoicism replaced Plato and Aristotle as the dominant philosophical movements (Plato would make a big comeback; Aristotle would have to wait for the great Arabic philosophers).  Both movements were popular in the Roman Republic as...
Josh Thompson
Waking Up Early, Part 3 I’ve written about my attempts to wake up early before. Most recently, I promised to take a sleep...
over a year ago
7
over a year ago
I’ve written about my attempts to wake up early before. Most recently, I promised to take a sleep log, to track trends. Fortunately, I did not intend to try to wake up early, because I didn’t. Here’s what I learned in the last three weeks: Benadryl messes with your ability to...