Anecdotal Evidence
'These Pieces of Moral Prose'
“Where did
you get your humility? I thought that was an extinct virtue.”
Creating
anything...
7 months ago
“Where did
you get your humility? I thought that was an extinct virtue.”
Creating
anything worthwhile, whether joke, villanelle or pot of lentil soup, calls
for pride and humility. Pride because one presumes to add to the world’s bounty
and impose it on others; humility because...
sbensu
Industrial macros
Most industry codebases use macros, aka code-generation to solve practical problems like talking to...
6 months ago
Most industry codebases use macros, aka code-generation to solve practical problems like talking to the database.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Richly, Sometimes Dreamily, Melodic'
A friend has
given me an unexpected gift: a first American edition of Poems for Children (Henry Holt...
9 months ago
A friend has
given me an unexpected gift: a first American edition of Poems for Children (Henry Holt and Co., 1930), with a printed note
before the title page:
“Three
hundred copies of ‘Poems for Children’ have been specially printed and bound,
and have been signed by the...
The Marginalian
Befriending a Blackbird
Friendship is a lifeline twined of truth and tenderness. That we extend it to each other is...
6 months ago
Friendship is a lifeline twined of truth and tenderness. That we extend it to each other is benediction enough. To extend it across the barrier of biology and sentience, to another creature endowed with a wholly other consciousness, partakes of the miraculous. Born in England in...
The American Scholar
The Source
The post The Source appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The post The Source appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
Let's read Ovid's Metamorphoses! And perhaps more.
Who would like to read Ovid’s Metamorphoses (8 CE)
with me? We have had some discussion of
this...
a year ago
Who would like to read Ovid’s Metamorphoses (8 CE)
with me? We have had some discussion of
this good idea, and I feel I am up to it now.
Up to writing about it.
Metamorphoses is a compendium of Greek myths that feature
transformation, which turns out to be hundreds of pages...
Ben Borgers
There’s No Personal Space in College
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Art of Allowing Change: Neurobiologist Susan R. Barry’s Moving Correspondence with Oliver Sacks...
There is a thought experiment known as Mary’s Room, brilliant and haunting, about the abyss between...
10 months ago
There is a thought experiment known as Mary’s Room, brilliant and haunting, about the abyss between felt experience and our mental models of it, about the nature of knowledge, the mystery of consciousness, and the irreducibility of aliveness: Living in a black-and-white chamber,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Open-ended Project'
Two writers
separated by language, experience and two and a half centuries make...
10 months ago
Two writers
separated by language, experience and two and a half centuries make complementary
observations about memory. Here is Dr. Johnson in The Idler essay he published on this date, February 17, in 1759:
“The two
offices of memory are collection and distribution; by one...
Josh Thompson
Write Less Say More
I recently read a short piece about
using software to improve your own writing. To paraphrase one...
over a year ago
I recently read a short piece about
using software to improve your own writing. To paraphrase one of the suggestions: “do away with weasel words, the passive voice, adverbs, cliches.”
I’m adding “complex sentences” to the list.
Out of curiosity, I looked through things that...
The American Scholar
Camouflage
The post Camouflage appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
The post Camouflage appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Read You As I Listen to Rare Music'
Rare is the
writer who captures our imagination when we’re young and still assembling our
personal...
4 months ago
Rare is the
writer who captures our imagination when we’re young and still assembling our
personal canons, and remains rereadable for the rest of our lives. For me that
would include Swift, Defoe and a third English novelist, a rather exotic import
from Poland: Joseph Conrad. I...
Wuthering...
Books finished in April 2023
I continue the practice of posting a list as a substitute for real writing.
Coming soon: a long...
a year ago
I continue the practice of posting a list as a substitute for real writing.
Coming soon: a long overdue loot at Seneca's plays, a glance at Gide's Counterfeiters, and some messing around with Plato's Republic.
If I did not write in April, I at least read:
GREEK PHILOSOPHY
The...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Does Not Make a Nice Old Man'
A friend who
is a great admirer of Thomas Carlyle sent me an excerpt from a letter the Scotsman...
9 months ago
A friend who
is a great admirer of Thomas Carlyle sent me an excerpt from a letter the Scotsman wrote to his mother on September 12, 1843:
“I spent a
forenoon with Jeffery who is very thin and fretful I think; being at any rate
weakly, he is much annoyed at present by a hurt on...
This Space
39 Books: 1987
From two books in the first year of reading and twenty-four in the second, I read eighty-six in the...
8 months ago
From two books in the first year of reading and twenty-four in the second, I read eighty-six in the third, including a lot more non-fiction. This was due to cycling to libraries in adjacent towns where the selection was wider. One of them had my first non-novel choice: this...
Wuthering...
Ovid's Metamorphoses, Canto I, "Of shapes transformde to bodies straunge"
Some notes on Canto I of Ovid’s Metamorphosis (8 CE). Just some of the things I am looking for...
a year ago
Some notes on Canto I of Ovid’s Metamorphosis (8 CE). Just some of the things I am looking for or
enjoying while reading Ovid’s epic of “forms changed / into new bodies.” (tr. Charles Martin, 2004, p. 15). Or, per Arthur Golding (1567, p. 3 of the
Paul Dry paperback) “Of...
Josh Thompson
Write It Now
The original post
note from October 5, 2021: This was typed up/published in about 20 minutes, took...
over a year ago
The original post
note from October 5, 2021: This was typed up/published in about 20 minutes, took 2x as long as I wish it had. I could make it 10x better with another hour of work, but I only have 20 minutes.
I’m a fan of “conceptual frameworks”
This concept has been important...
Anecdotal Evidence
'In a More Just World'
Our youngest
son’s bedroom has lately turned into an overstuffed warehouse. Last year, as a
junior...
2 months ago
Our youngest
son’s bedroom has lately turned into an overstuffed warehouse. Last year, as a
junior at Rice, he lived off-campus in an apartment. This year he’s back in a
dormitory so most of his “housewares” – clothing, dishes and utensils, tchotchkes
– have been heaped in his...
The Marginalian
The Majesty and Mystery of Night Migration, in a Stunning Poem Turned to Music
“Night, when words fade and things come alive,” Little Prince author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote...
a year ago
“Night, when words fade and things come alive,” Little Prince author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote in his love letter to the hours of darkness, composed while flying alone over the Sahara Desert. No aliveness animates the nocturne with more grandeur than the migration of birds....
The Marginalian
The Pleasure of Being Left Alone
"An exquisite peace obtains: a drowsy, golden peace, flowing honey-sweet over my dwelling, soaking...
6 months ago
"An exquisite peace obtains: a drowsy, golden peace, flowing honey-sweet over my dwelling, soaking it, dripping like music from the walls... A peace for gods; a divine emptiness."
The American Scholar
The Rescuer
In search of the Underground Railroad’s legendary conductor
The post The Rescuer appeared first on...
6 months ago
In search of the Underground Railroad’s legendary conductor
The post The Rescuer appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Science of What Made You You, with a Dazzling Poem Read by David Byrne
"Look at the clever things we have made out of a few building blocks — O fabulous continuum."
3 months ago
"Look at the clever things we have made out of a few building blocks — O fabulous continuum."
Ben Borgers
Things Go Downhill After We Leave
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
On Scooters as a class of vehicle/tool
Introduction
Often when I say “scooter”, especially in the united states, the person thinks of...
4 days ago
Introduction
Often when I say “scooter”, especially in the united states, the person thinks of something different than what I mean. Here’s Denver’s Sportique Scooters, here’s one of their recent posts:
So that is the kind of vehicle I’m talking about when I say “scooter”.
I...
Blog -...
Book Review - Showboat: The Life of Kobe Bryant
In the book Showboat: The Life of Kobe Bryant, author Roland Lazenby
meticulously shares the...
over a year ago
In the book Showboat: The Life of Kobe Bryant, author Roland Lazenby
meticulously shares the journey of Kobe Bryant, from ancestral influences
up through his final game in the NBA. He is a clear fan of Kobe’s
inarguable work ethic, but he allows readers to reinforce their...
The Marginalian
Albert Camus on How to Live Whole in a Broken World
Born into a World War to live through another, Albert Camus (November 7, 1913–January 4, 1960) died...
6 months ago
Born into a World War to live through another, Albert Camus (November 7, 1913–January 4, 1960) died in a car crash with an unused train ticket to the same destination in his pocket. Just three years earlier, he had become the second-youngest laureate of the Nobel Prize, awarded...
This Space
39 Books: 2000
In 1998 my friend John Harris mentioned that he was travelling to the US so I asked if he could pick...
7 months ago
In 1998 my friend John Harris mentioned that he was travelling to the US so I asked if he could pick up a copy of the new translation of Peter Handke's My Year in the No-man's Bay, not available over here. He was the first to tell me about this new website called Amazon. This is...
The Marginalian
Wonder-Sighting on Planet Earth: The Space Telescope Eye of the Scallop
Inside Earth's most alien vision.
a year ago
Inside Earth's most alien vision.
Ben Borgers
Work-Life Separation in College
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Where Silence Suddenly Erupts in Speech'
Zbigniew Herbert
visited Western Europe for the first time in 1958-59: France, then England,
Italy,...
a year ago
Zbigniew Herbert
visited Western Europe for the first time in 1958-59: France, then England,
Italy, France again and back to Poland. His budget was tight but Herbert was
no hedonistic tourist. Nor was he a stuffy academic or critic. The essays in Barbarian in the Garden (1962;...
This Space
39 Books: 1999
I've always preferred the Serpent's Tail edition of Pessoa's Book of Disquiet over the others...
7 months ago
I've always preferred the Serpent's Tail edition of Pessoa's Book of Disquiet over the others published around the same time, such as from Quartet Encounters and Carcanet, the latter with a fussy variant on the title: The Book of Disquietude. But this one is the most pleasurable...
The Marginalian
How Emotions Are Made
"Emotions are not reactions to the world; they are your constructions of the world."
10 months ago
"Emotions are not reactions to the world; they are your constructions of the world."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Well-known Types of Miracle'
It’s grim
out there and getting grimmer. Two poems encountered on the same day provided a
touch of...
7 months ago
It’s grim
out there and getting grimmer. Two poems encountered on the same day provided a
touch of buoyancy. The first was originally written in Russian by Vladimir
Nabokov on May 6, 1923:
“No, life is
no quivering quandary!
Here under
the moon things are bright and dewy.
We are...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Whole Point of Literature'
I learned of
some twits who see no reason to read Tolstoy because he was such a terrible...
a month ago
I learned of
some twits who see no reason to read Tolstoy because he was such a terrible human
being, as though this constituted recently declassified information. Such an understanding
of literature and literary history, if followed to its logical conclusion, will
result in a...
This Space
39 Books: 2006
My choice for 2003 began with indecision, as I couldn't imagine writing about Robert Antelme's The...
7 months ago
My choice for 2003 began with indecision, as I couldn't imagine writing about Robert Antelme's The Human Race. Instead I wondered if I could say something about Timothy Hyman's Sienese Painting. While I have little or no feeling for art, I am drawn to reading about it. The book's...
Josh Thompson
Success is not support
We did a high-level “Customer Success” overview yesterday. Today, lets contrast customer support and...
over a year ago
We did a high-level “Customer Success” overview yesterday. Today, lets contrast customer support and customer success.
Support vs. Success
First, what’s the difference between “customer support” and “customer success”?
Lincoln Murphey says:
Customer Success is proactively working...
Josh Thompson
2019 Annual Review
It’s that time of the year. I always really enjoy reading other people’s annual reviews, and I find...
over a year ago
It’s that time of the year. I always really enjoy reading other people’s annual reviews, and I find value in writing my own.
Previous reviews: 2018, 2017,
2016, 2015
My review breaks down into a few broad categories:
Travel
Relationships & Community
Leadville Trail...
Wuthering...
Wealth by Aristophanes - gout here, pot bellies there, ... obesity beyond all bounds
We saw Sophocles and Euripides end their long careers with masterpieces, but we do not have that...
over a year ago
We saw Sophocles and Euripides end their long careers with masterpieces, but we do not have that luck with Aristophanes. Wealth (388 BCE) is thin, scattershot, perhaps even a bit defeated or exhausted.
The conceit is as usual excellent. Plutus, the god of wealth, is freed...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Recon Patrol Is a Small Unit'
“A 21-year
old Marine Corporal leading his first patrol — a 10-man Reconnaissance Team —
kept a cool...
4 months ago
“A 21-year
old Marine Corporal leading his first patrol — a 10-man Reconnaissance Team —
kept a cool head in a tight situation.”
Long before
he was a poet and publisher, R.L. Barth in 1968-69 was a Marine serving as a
patrol leader in the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion in Vietnam....
Anecdotal Evidence
'On Satan’s Chamberlains Highseated in Berlin'
In 2011, in
an antiques-cum-junk shop here in Houston, I found a copy of an anthology, The Spirit of...
a year ago
In 2011, in
an antiques-cum-junk shop here in Houston, I found a copy of an anthology, The Spirit of Man, published as a
wartime morale booster in 1916, edited by the Poet Laureate, Robert
Bridges. It’s the fourth edition, from 1923. I knew the title because of the
contribution...
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...
9 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...
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
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...
The American Scholar
A Ray of Sunshine
The post A Ray of Sunshine appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The post A Ray of Sunshine appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
The end of literature, part four
This tweet has been seen thousands of times since it was posted on the 82nd anniversary of Britain...
over a year ago
This tweet has been seen thousands of times since it was posted on the 82nd anniversary of Britain and France declaring war on Germany. Not that the coincidence means much. At least, no more than what the general population, interest and powerful mean here, or indeed what poetry...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Everything is Singing, Blooming and Sparkling'
In a May 4, 1889 letter to his friend and editor
Alexi Suvorin, Chekhov complains of taking no...
7 months ago
In a May 4, 1889 letter to his friend and editor
Alexi Suvorin, Chekhov complains of taking no interest in “reviews,
conversations about literature, gossip, successes, failures, high royalties,”
and adds:
“[I]n short, I’ve become a damn fool. My soul
seems to be stagnating. I...
ribbonfarm
Arbitrariness Costs
I’ve long held that civilization is the process of turning the incomprehensible into the arbitrary....
7 months ago
I’ve long held that civilization is the process of turning the incomprehensible into the arbitrary. The incomprehensible can be scary but the arbitrary tends to be merely exhausting. Unless the stakes are high, such as in paperwork around taxes or passports and visas. Then the...
The American Scholar
Betsy, Mary, and Trish
The post Betsy, Mary, and Trish appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
The post Betsy, Mary, and Trish appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
Thales, the first philosopher - what is philosophy, anyways?
He [Thales of Miletus] held that the original substance of all things is water, and that the world...
a year ago
He [Thales of Miletus] held that the original substance of all things is water, and that the world is animate and full of deities. They say he discovered the seasons of the year, and divided the day into 365 days. (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, p. 12,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Nor, Quitted Once, Can It Be Quite Recalled'
I think we have
fetishized age thirteen. It’s linguistic: the first -teen, as though that were some...
3 weeks ago
I think we have
fetishized age thirteen. It’s linguistic: the first -teen, as though that were some rite of passage. I remember awaiting
that age with trepidation, uncertain what was expected of me. I knew
contemporaries who were already shaving and one who was pregnant. (Where...
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
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'On the Cello of Shared Grief'
With the deaths
of certain writers our reaction is shamefully selfish: Why did he do that to me? No...
5 days ago
With the deaths
of certain writers our reaction is shamefully selfish: Why did he do that to me? No thought for family or friends, or
even other readers, merely one’s sense of personal betrayal. That’s how I felt
seven years ago when Richard Wilbur died at age ninety-six, as...
The Marginalian
Your Voice Is a Garden: Margaret Watts Hughes’s Wondrous Victorian Visualizations of Sound
“I hear bravuras of birds… I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice,” Walt Whitman...
4 months ago
“I hear bravuras of birds… I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice,” Walt Whitman exulted in his ode to the “puzzle of puzzles” we call Being. How puzzling indeed, and how miraculous, that of the cold silence of spacetime voice emerged, in all its warm loveliness —...
The Marginalian
Starlings and the Magic of Murmurations: A Stunning Watercolor Celebration of One of Earth’s Living...
Biking back to my rented cottage from CERN one autumn evening, having descended into the underworld...
a year ago
Biking back to my rented cottage from CERN one autumn evening, having descended into the underworld of matter for a visit to the world’s largest high-energy particle collider, a sight stopped me up short on the shore of Lake Geneva: In the orange sky over the orange water, a...
The Elysian
I'm not going to have kids to save the economy
Not on my list of reasons to have children.
8 months ago
Not on my list of reasons to have children.
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...
7 months ago
It's a commonplace that in reading novels one can escape the ravages of time. In 1994, I borrowed my student housemate's innocent-looking hardback edition of Nicholson Baker's The Fermata in which Arno Strine writes about how he can actually stop time. The title refers to the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I’d Be the Man Dares Clearly Sing'
I have no
musical talent apart from a sometimes annoying gift for remembering lyrics, and
not always...
7 months ago
I have no
musical talent apart from a sometimes annoying gift for remembering lyrics, and
not always the good stuff. I know all the words to a radio jingle for a car
dealer in Cleveland, circa 1964, among other clutter. A related symptom is the long-lasting
earworm. Much of this...
sbensu
Interfaces for logical migrations
This post explains how you can use interfaces to make data model and database migrations easier.
a year ago
This post explains how you can use interfaces to make data model and database migrations easier.
The American Scholar
Rage, Muse
The novels that revisit Greek myths, giving voice to the women who were scorned, wronged, or...
4 months ago
The novels that revisit Greek myths, giving voice to the women who were scorned, wronged, or forgotten
The post Rage, Muse appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Now You Are Elsewhere'
I came late
to the poet Henri Coulette, long after his death in 1988 at age sixty, and
promptly fell...
9 months ago
I came late
to the poet Henri Coulette, long after his death in 1988 at age sixty, and
promptly fell for his charms. Chief among them are elegance, technical
virtuosity, wit and devotion to his native turf, Southern California. Like one
of his favorite writers, Raymond Chandler,...
Escaping Flatland
Self-help for cocoons
and what's on my mind
9 months ago
The Elysian
Could AI make us wise?
An alternative to the internet making us stupid.
8 months ago
An alternative to the internet making us stupid.
The Marginalian
Between Mathematics and the Miraculous: The Stunning Pendulum Drawings of Swiss Healer and Artist...
Emma Kunz (May 23, 1892–January 16, 1963) was forty-six and the world was aflame with war when she...
7 months ago
Emma Kunz (May 23, 1892–January 16, 1963) was forty-six and the world was aflame with war when she became an artist. She had worked at a knitting factory and as a housekeeper. She had written poetry, publishing a collection titled Life in the interlude between the two World Wars....
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Important Medium''
I grew up in a place I’ve been told for most of my life should
embarrass me. When I went to college...
2 months ago
I grew up in a place I’ve been told for most of my life should
embarrass me. When I went to college and someone asked where I came from, invariably
I said “Cleveland” not “Parma Heights,” a suburb on the West Side of that city.
By age seventeen I was already sensitive to the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Sacrifice and Doom'
Scholars of
Russian literature tell us the edition of Anton Chekhov’s letters published
between 1944...
2 months ago
Scholars of
Russian literature tell us the edition of Anton Chekhov’s letters published
between 1944 and 1951 was heavily censored by Soviet editors, filled with
ellipses that signify an excised word, phrase or sentence. Nothing surprising
here. Censorship is an obligatory tool...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Time Is Tight'
My brother is
dying as he lived – stubbornly. He has been in hospice for two weeks and is...
4 months ago
My brother is
dying as he lived – stubbornly. He has been in hospice for two weeks and is failing
incrementally. On Monday we were swapping memories and he stopped talking on
Tuesday, the same day he stopped eating. He lies on his back on the hospice
bed, mouth open, eyes staring...
The Marginalian
Octavia Butler’s Advice on Writing
"No matter how tired you get, no matter how you feel like you can’t possibly do this, somehow you...
a year ago
"No matter how tired you get, no matter how you feel like you can’t possibly do this, somehow you do."
Anecdotal Evidence
'They Are Wary of My Plain-speaking'
A reader alerts
me to a parlor game proposed by The
Guardian in 2017: Which books do I wish my...
10 months ago
A reader alerts
me to a parlor game proposed by The
Guardian in 2017: Which books do I wish my younger self had read? Julian
Barnes suggests volumes devoted to “the true nature of war, empire and race,”
which sounds a bit like retrospective virtue-signaling. William Boyd’s...
Josh Thompson
Illdefined Success is Unattainable
We all probably have a few projects floating around our head, but they seem daunting.
If it doesn’t...
over a year ago
We all probably have a few projects floating around our head, but they seem daunting.
If it doesn’t seem daunting, it’s not much of a project, and you should either ramp it up until it’s daunting, or discard it.
So - we have a daunting project. Now what? If you’re like me, you’ll...
Escaping Flatland
Life update
+ open thread and a few fragments of essays
11 months ago
+ open thread and a few fragments of essays
Anecdotal Evidence
'Steeplejacks Top Out the Chrysler Building,'
A friend
sent me a link to a 1978 BBC documentary about a working-class hero in England.
I had never...
6 months ago
A friend
sent me a link to a 1978 BBC documentary about a working-class hero in England.
I had never heard of Fred Dibnah, practitioner of a trade I didn’t know was still
extant: steeplejack. In the words of the OED:
“a person who climbs steeples or tall chimneys to repair them.”...
Anecdotal Evidence
'His Own Exclusive Object'
I’ve
accumulated some of the accoutrements of age – bifocals, cane, hearing aids.
None embarrasses...
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 American Scholar
Going for Gold
Joshua Prager on a forgotten Olympic gymnast whose 1904 record still hasn’t been beaten
The post...
4 months ago
Joshua Prager on a forgotten Olympic gymnast whose 1904 record still hasn’t been beaten
The post Going for Gold appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A General Effect of Pleasing Impression'
Back in the Golden Age of Blogging, the decline of
which roughly coincided with the arrival of...
a year ago
Back in the Golden Age of Blogging, the decline of
which roughly coincided with the arrival of Anecdotal Evidence in 2006, literary
memes were far more popular. Some were trivial parlor games, a way for certain readers
to safely show off without having ever opened a book....
The Marginalian
Bertrand Russell on the Salve for Our Modern Helplessness and Overwhelm
"A way of life cannot be successful so long as it is a mere intellectual conviction. It must be...
a year ago
"A way of life cannot be successful so long as it is a mere intellectual conviction. It must be deeply felt, deeply believed, dominant even in dreams."
Josh Thompson
A Small Goal is Better than a Grand Plan
We all have grand plans. Who’s future projection of themselves goes something like this: “One day,...
over a year ago
We all have grand plans. Who’s future projection of themselves goes something like this: “One day, when I’m rich (goal one), location independent (goal two), and married to a fabulous woman (goal three), I will travel the world (goal four) while exploring my hobby of ___ (goal...
Anecdotal Evidence
'O Friend Unseen, Unborn, Unknown'
Rabbi David Wolpe tells me Monday’s post reminds him of a poem, “To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence,”...
3 weeks ago
Rabbi David Wolpe tells me Monday’s post reminds him of a poem, “To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence,” by a poet I knew only by name: James Elroy Flecker. “I've always been
moved,” David said, “especially by the penultimate stanza”:
“O friend
unseen, unborn, unknown,
Student of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'At the Center of Our Mediterranean Civilization'
My youngest
son, age twenty-one, is spending much of his summer in Paris as part of a
university...
5 months ago
My youngest
son, age twenty-one, is spending much of his summer in Paris as part of a
university study program. He’ll be a senior in the fall. I first visited Paris (and
Europe) in 1973, age twenty, and stayed in a hotel on the Rue de Maubeuge, 10th
arrondissement. Headlines in...
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
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...
Idle Words
The Lunacy of Artemis
In August 2020, the New York Times asked me to write an op-ed for a special feature on...
7 months ago
In August 2020, the New York Times asked me to write an op-ed for a special feature on authoritarianism and democracy. They declined to publish my submission, which I am sharing here instead.
A little over 51 years ago, a rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral carrying three...
sbensu
Incentives as selection effects
When you apply a new incentive, you select for a new population that prefers the incentive.
6 months ago
When you apply a new incentive, you select for a new population that prefers the incentive.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Title Is Apt and Not a Whit Pretentious'
I hadn’t
opened my copy of Raymond Sokolov’s Wayward
Reporter: The Life of A.J. Liebling (Harper and...
a week ago
I hadn’t
opened my copy of Raymond Sokolov’s Wayward
Reporter: The Life of A.J. Liebling (Harper and Row, 1980) in a long time.
It’s a rather skimpy biography, though the only one we have, so I hope someone,
someday writes a life worthy of Liebling’s gifts. When I was a...
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
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...
Wuthering...
Some lesser works of Sōseki and Tanizaki - deep in the earth directly beneath Lady Kikyō’s toilet
Dolce Bellezza is running her 17th Japanese Literature Challenge. Amazing, well done, etc.
I read...
11 months ago
Dolce Bellezza is running her 17th Japanese Literature Challenge. Amazing, well done, etc.
I read some short works for it, which I will pile up here: three
short works by Natsume Sōseki, collected in a Tuttle volume that looks like it
is titled Ten Nights of Dream Hearing...
Ben Borgers
Understanding CalcYouLater Subconsciously
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
The Land of Endless Socialization
over a year ago
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
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
'He Is Some Twentie Sev’rall Men at Least'
Whitman “contained multitudes,” of course, while George Herbert says of a man: “He is some...
7 months ago
Whitman “contained multitudes,” of course, while George Herbert says of a man: “He is some twentie
sev’rall men at least / Each sev’rall houre.” What sounds self-dramatizing in
the American simply acknowledges our inconstancy, our fickle nature, in Herbert’s
poem “Giddinesse.” In...
Anecdotal Evidence
''In Prose, Plain as Pike, Pillory'
Austin
Clarke (1896-1974) was an Irish poet of the generation after Yeats, the slightly...
2 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....
This Space
39 Books: 2021
I lived in Brighton for 30 years. One of the many painful aspects of leaving in 2021 was losing the...
6 months ago
I lived in Brighton for 30 years. One of the many painful aspects of leaving in 2021 was losing the many second-hand bookshops, all within walking distance. Many have closed over the years, such as Sandpiper, a remaindered bookshop in Kensington Gardens. It had a backroom in...
Anecdotal Evidence
'With All Its Philistinism and Coarseness'
My roommate freshman year was
the son of a Slovak father and an Austrian mother who had emigrated to...
a month ago
My roommate freshman year was
the son of a Slovak father and an Austrian mother who had emigrated to the U.S.
after World War II. Mike was trilingual from birth, without an accent unless it
was a Cleveland accent that I couldn’t hear because it was mine as well. His
tastes often...
The Marginalian
D.H. Lawrence on the Hypocrisies of Social Change and What It Actually Takes to Shift the Status Quo
"We have created a great, almost overwhelming incubus of falsity and ugliness on top of us, so that...
a year ago
"We have created a great, almost overwhelming incubus of falsity and ugliness on top of us, so that we are almost crushed to death. Now let us move it."
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Is My Ambition Here'
Does anyone
still read “Invictus”? Is it part of any school’s curriculum? It was as late as 1965,...
a year ago
Does anyone
still read “Invictus”? Is it part of any school’s curriculum? It was as late as 1965, when Miss Wagy had
us memorize it in eighth-grade English. The poem is irresistible for recitation,
whether privately in times of self-doubt or at the Kiwanis luncheon: “I am...
The American Scholar
Facing the Facts
An antiquated take on antiquity
The post Facing the Facts appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
An antiquated take on antiquity
The post Facing the Facts appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Anticipating Since Morning a Successful Hunt'
The neighbors
had several tall ash trees growing in their backyard behind the garage and the
trunks...
9 months ago
The neighbors
had several tall ash trees growing in their backyard behind the garage and the
trunks were a favorite perch for Polyphemus and especially cecropia moths. These
are large insects, beautifully colored, with “eyes” on their wings. To budding lepidopterists
they were...
Astral Codex Ten
Prison And Crime: Much More Than You Wanted To Know
...
3 weeks ago
sbensu
On becoming a person (book)
It reframes therapy as a relationship instead of a treatment.
2 weeks ago
It reframes therapy as a relationship instead of a treatment.
The American Scholar
Laura S. Lewis
Welding trash into treasure
The post Laura S. Lewis appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
Welding trash into treasure
The post Laura S. Lewis appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
God, Human, Animal, Machine: Consciousness and Our Search for Meaning in the Age of Artificial...
An inquiry into the eternal enchantment of why the world exists.
a year ago
An inquiry into the eternal enchantment of why the world exists.
Josh Thompson
Constraints
Constraints are USUALLY seen in a negative light.
Google defines it as:
a limitation or...
over a year ago
Constraints are USUALLY seen in a negative light.
Google defines it as:
a limitation or restriction
Here’s some example constraints that we find in the world around us, which we often view as an annoyance or frustration:
I have to be to work by 9a
I have to get up at 7a
I have...
The Marginalian
Between Psyche and Cyborg: Carl Jung’s Legacy and the Countercultural Courage to Reclaim the Deeply...
"A reanimated world is one in which spirit and matter are not just equally regarded but recognized...
8 months ago
"A reanimated world is one in which spirit and matter are not just equally regarded but recognized as mutually dependent."
This Space
"And no real fate" – reading in the interval
A sportswriter on the radio said that the lack of football in covid lockdown has disrupted the...
over a year ago
A sportswriter on the radio said that the lack of football in covid lockdown has disrupted the rhythm of the lives of those who follow the sport. The word stuck in my mind. Does rhythm differ from routine? When a routine is broken, there is an interval of confusion and anxiety,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Occasion for Festive Processions"
“Others will
balk at his sometimes extravagant vocabulary; words such as ‘amphisbaenic’ or ‘labarum’...
5 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...
Josh Thompson
Crock Pots are Foolproof, Right?
A while back I got together with my good friend
Dustin. I had an evening free, wanted to cook, AND...
over a year ago
A while back I got together with my good friend
Dustin. I had an evening free, wanted to cook, AND hang out with good friends. I wanted to try a
really good looking recipe, and watch Django Unchained.
The cooking instructions for the recipe was “cook on low for 7-9 hours”. I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Some Could, Some Could Not, Shake Off Misery'
Last week I
wrote a post about the poet Bob Barth, the patrol he led as a 21-year-old...
4 months ago
Last week I
wrote a post about the poet Bob Barth, the patrol he led as a 21-year-old Marine
Corporal in Vietnam, and the war correspondent who wrote a dispatch about him
for a newspaper. Two days later, after learning that the stringer, Albert W.
Vinson, soon took his own life,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Gleams Like a Warm Homestead Light'
Here is
epigram 1.33 by Marcus Valerius Martialis (c. 38-102 A.D.), better known in
English as...
2 months ago
Here is
epigram 1.33 by Marcus Valerius Martialis (c. 38-102 A.D.), better known in
English as Martial:
“In private
she mourns not the late-lamented;
If someone’s
by, her tears leap forth on call.
Sorrow, my
dear, is not so easily rented.
They are
true tears that without witness...
Ben Borgers
Streaks Are Extremely Powerful
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not Movement But Glaciation'
There’s an
art to reviewing a book one doesn’t love but doesn’t hate, especially if the
reviewer...
a year ago
There’s an
art to reviewing a book one doesn’t love but doesn’t hate, especially if the
reviewer prizes the author’s earlier work. How to juggle critical rigor, honesty and
tact? Turner Cassity, writing about Edwin Arlington Robinson’s Amaranth (1934), does it with confident...
Josh Thompson
An Open Letter about Golden
2022-06-15 Update
I wrote this document the first time in a very small number of minutes, three...
over a year ago
2022-06-15 Update
I wrote this document the first time in a very small number of minutes, three weeks ago, on my way out the door on a particularly busy day. I follow “write it now”. I’ve gotten to discuss this letter with a few different people, because I mentioned it in email....
sbensu
Love's Executioner (book)
Countertransference applies to regular conversation.
3 weeks ago
Countertransference applies to regular conversation.
The Marginalian
How to Grow Re-enchanted with the World: A Salve for the Sense of Existential Meaninglessness and...
A shimmering reminder that "the magic is of our own conjuring."
a year ago
A shimmering reminder that "the magic is of our own conjuring."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Aesthetically They Are Still Delightful'
“Early
Ellington records are like vintage cars. They are not as he or anyone else
would make them...
7 months ago
“Early
Ellington records are like vintage cars. They are not as he or anyone else
would make them nowadays, but historically they are still important and
aesthetically they are still delightful.”
Let's not confine Philip
Larkin’s conclusion exclusively to Duke Ellington’s
early...
The Marginalian
The Great Blue Heron, Signs vs. Omens, and Our Search for Meaning
One September dawn on the verge of a significant life change, sitting on my poet friend’s dock, I...
3 months ago
One September dawn on the verge of a significant life change, sitting on my poet friend’s dock, I watched a great blue heron rise slow and prehistoric through the morning mist, carrying the sky on her back. In the years since, the heron has become the closest thing I have to what...
Josh Thompson
LeetCode: Words From Characters, and Benchmarking Solutions
I recently worked through a LeetCode problem.
The first run was pretty brutal. It took (what felt...
over a year ago
I recently worked through a LeetCode problem.
The first run was pretty brutal. It took (what felt like) forever, and I was not content with my solution.
Even better, it passed the test cases given while building the solution, but failed on submission.
So, once I fixed it so it...
Josh Thompson
Driven by Compression Progress
Note from author: This is part of an experimental series, more-or-less based on “white papers” and...
over a year ago
Note from author: This is part of an experimental series, more-or-less based on “white papers” and academic literature, as applied to somewhat practical-ish domains.
These pages serve as a brief overview of a paper, and I’ll be able to link to this paper down the road when I what...
Escaping Flatland
On feeling connected
generosity is potency
2 months ago
The Marginalian
Kierkegaard on the Value of Despair
"To despair over oneself, in despair to want to be rid of oneself, is the formula for all despair."
a year ago
"To despair over oneself, in despair to want to be rid of oneself, is the formula for all despair."
Ben Borgers
On “Incrementally Correct Personal Websites”
over 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,...
11 months ago
“As a
youngster I came to the classics simply by following the clues of other
writers. Cooper, Stevenson, Whitman, even Edgar Rice Burroughs seemed to lead,
allusion by allusion, back to a body of writing that was solider and wiser,
some spirit that didn’t wobble, wasn’t under...
Escaping Flatland
Relationships are coevolutionary loops
Looking for Alice, part 3
a year ago
Looking for Alice, part 3
The Marginalian
Mars and Our Search for Meaning: A Planetary Scientist’s Love Letter to Life
"It is the search for infinity, the search for evidence that our capacious universe might hold life...
a year ago
"It is the search for infinity, the search for evidence that our capacious universe might hold life elsewhere, in a different place or at a different time or in a different form."
The Elysian
Week 4: One pitch several places
8 months ago
The Elysian
What is the goal of anarchism?
Letters to an anarchist, part five.
a month ago
Letters to an anarchist, part five.
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
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Poets in an Age of Prose'
Yvor Winters
published his final book, Forms of Discovery,
in October 1967, three months before his...
a year ago
Yvor Winters
published his final book, Forms of Discovery,
in October 1967, three months before his death from cancer at age sixty-seven on
January 25, 1968. Read his late correspondence in The Selected Letters of Yvor Winters (ed. R.L. Barth, 2000) for an
understanding of the...
Josh Thompson
$150 Custom-Made Standing Desk
My desk/our kitchen table
Standing desks are
all the
rage. (I’m still waiting for
walking desks...
over a year ago
My desk/our kitchen table
Standing desks are
all the
rage. (I’m still waiting for
walking desks to catch up.)
Kristi and I outfitted our space with reclaimed furniture from Craigslist (also known as “cheap”), so we wanted to keep it going with a desk. My setup at our kitchen...
The American Scholar
Rhyme, Not Repetition
All that’s past isn’t necessarily present
The post Rhyme, Not Repetition appeared first on The...
6 months ago
All that’s past isn’t necessarily present
The post Rhyme, Not Repetition appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Femmes Fantastiques
Mickalene Thomas and the art of remixing
The post Femmes Fantastiques appeared first on The American...
6 months ago
Mickalene Thomas and the art of remixing
The post Femmes Fantastiques appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
A grassroots political party for the middle
The Forward Party, citizen's assemblies, and a creating better independence movement in the US.
6 days ago
The Forward Party, citizen's assemblies, and a creating better independence movement in the US.
The American Scholar
Ground Truth
A story of dirt, dollars, and death
The post Ground Truth appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
A story of dirt, dollars, and death
The post Ground Truth appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Friends They May Become To-morrow'
“New books
can have few associations. They may reach us on the best deckle-edged Whatman
paper, in...
2 weeks ago
“New books
can have few associations. They may reach us on the best deckle-edged Whatman
paper, in the newest types of famous presses, with backs of embossed vellum,
with tasteful tasselled strings,--and yet be no more to us than the constrained
and uneasy acquaintances of...
Wuthering...
The best books of 2023, in a sense - "Aren't you tired of reading?"
Last January seems even more distant than usual at this time
of year. It will likely not...
11 months ago
Last January seems even more distant than usual at this time
of year. It will likely not surprise
anyone that 2023 now comes with a strong feeling of Before and After. So I will indulge in the “facetious and silly”
exercise of identifying the best books I read in 2023. Sorting...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Culmination of Contemporary Economism'
For half a
century my brother earned his living making picture frames, some of which were
themselves...
3 months ago
For half a
century my brother earned his living making picture frames, some of which were
themselves works of art. In later years he relied more on accounts with hotel
chains and the glass office buildings in downtown Cleveland. Frames for these corporate
accounts he called...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Carry on With the Business of the Day'
Beware of “nature
poetry.” It tends to be not about nature but the poet and his self-regarding...
4 months ago
Beware of “nature
poetry.” It tends to be not about nature but the poet and his self-regarding epiphanies.
Perhaps our finest nature poet is Yvor Winters. A basic understanding of
biology is useful in discouraging pantheism and other forms of fashionable nature
mysticism.
We...
Josh Thompson
Setting up Application Performance Monitoring in DataDog in your Rails App
When I write guides to things, I write them first and foremost for myself, and I tend to work...
over a year ago
When I write guides to things, I write them first and foremost for myself, and I tend to work through things in excruciating detail. You might find this to be a little too in-depth, or you might appreciate the detail. Either way, if you want a step-by-step guide, this should do...
Anecdotal Evidence
'How to Live With Ourselves As We Are'
“What’s
essential is not Montaigne’s wisdom, but his wise recognition of his
foolishness; not his...
3 months ago
“What’s
essential is not Montaigne’s wisdom, but his wise recognition of his
foolishness; not his virtue, but his good cognizance of his vices; not his ‘honesty,’
but his honesty, his complete
leveling with the reader.”
I tried a
little experiment, a variation on bibliomancy. I...
Josh Thompson
Who inspires you, and is still alive?
There are lots of dead people that we look up to. But people that are alive, and not world-wide...
over a year ago
There are lots of dead people that we look up to. But people that are alive, and not world-wide famous are a bit more knowable. Some of them will even reply to tweets you send them!
So, here are a few people that I follow and have received TONS of amazing wisdom from. (I...
The American Scholar
The Given Child
To what lengths would a mother go to ensure her family’s survival in a remote Himalayan village?
The...
6 months ago
To what lengths would a mother go to ensure her family’s survival in a remote Himalayan village?
The post The Given Child appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
How to Have Enough: Wendell Berry on Creativity and Love
“Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily...
a week ago
“Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily Dickinson sighed in one of her love letters to Susan an epoch before Kurt Vonnegut, in a short and lovely poem, distilled happiness to the knowledge that you have enough. It is not an...
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
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
'Oaks That Were Acorns That Were Oaks'
We hear acorns
hitting the roof of the house and the cars. It makes the cats nervous and sounds
like...
a year ago
We hear acorns
hitting the roof of the house and the cars. It makes the cats nervous and sounds
like slow hail. The crop this year is prodigious. The
patio is covered with them, more than the squirrels can keep up with. Stomping on them make a satisfying crack/pop sound. I’ve...
This Space
Kafka's great fire
The centenary of Kafka's death was marked twelve years late. His diary records it in September...
6 months ago
The centenary of Kafka's death was marked twelve years late. His diary records it in September 1912:
This story, The Judgment, I wrote at one sitting during the night of the 22nd-23rd, from ten o'clock at night to six o'clock in the morning. I was hardly able to pull my legs...
Josh Thompson
Talent is Overrated
Talent is Overrated
In Talent is Overrated, the author argues that world-class performers are not...
over a year ago
Talent is Overrated
In Talent is Overrated, the author argues that world-class performers are not genetically gifted. The difference between world-class performers and the rest of us? Lots of deliberate practice. (Read the article.)
I have no interest in becoming Mozart, or Tiger...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Till Love and Fame to Nothingness Do Sink'
Dr. Johnson
thought the first aim of biography was utilitarian: “I esteem biography, as
giving us...
a month ago
Dr. Johnson
thought the first aim of biography was utilitarian: “I esteem biography, as
giving us what comes near to ourselves, what we can turn to use.” The reader reads
the life of another, reflects on it and applies the lessons he deduces to
himself. In the early pages of his...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Working a Thing Out'
Long ago an
editor urged me never to assume I knew what readers were thinking or what they
wanted....
5 months ago
Long ago an
editor urged me never to assume I knew what readers were thinking or what they
wanted. It’s presumptuous to do so. Mind-reading quickly turns into seeking
approval from readers and sucking up to them. Be clear, don’t condescend,
respect the reader’s intelligence....
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Learned to Love Books'
“Though most
of the teachers followed Erasmus in seeking to make learning palatable,
Montaigne...
3 months ago
“Though most
of the teachers followed Erasmus in seeking to make learning palatable,
Montaigne considers himself fortunate to have avoided getting 'nothing out of
school but a hatred of books, as do nearly all our noblemen,’” writes Donald
Frame in his 1965 biography of the...
The American Scholar
Good Vibrations
One eccentric’s desert landmark allows visitors to bathe in sound
The post Good Vibrations appeared...
8 months ago
One eccentric’s desert landmark allows visitors to bathe in sound
The post Good Vibrations appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
Ovid's Metamorhpses, Canto 6 - the sexual assaults - Because the lewdness of the Gods was so blazed...
Back to Ovid.
First, I have just begun Paul Barolsky’s Ovid and the
Metamorphoses of Modern Art...
10 months ago
Back to Ovid.
First, I have just begun Paul Barolsky’s Ovid and the
Metamorphoses of Modern Art from Boticelli to Picasso (2014), a work of art
history about Ovid written in the spirit of Ovid. The book is of the highest interest, and is a
long way from the catalogue of...
The American Scholar
A Toothsome Tale
Bill Schutt chomps through millennia to share the story of our pearly whites
The post A Toothsome...
3 months ago
Bill Schutt chomps through millennia to share the story of our pearly whites
The post A Toothsome Tale appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Are No Millers Any More'
I’ve just
learned of the suicide of a woman I knew casually a long time ago. Such news is
always...
14 hours ago
I’ve just
learned of the suicide of a woman I knew casually a long time ago. Such news is
always unsettling, as though a fundamental law of nature had been violated. Given what we
know of the person, and it may be very little, we apply
her circumstances to our own and conclude,...
The Marginalian
The Wondrous Birds of the Himalayas and the Forgotten Victorian Woman Whose Illustrations Rewilded...
Bridging Blake and Darwin with a single-hair brush.
a year ago
Bridging Blake and Darwin with a single-hair brush.
The Marginalian
Jealousy and Its Antidote: Pioneering Psychiatrist Leslie Farber on the Tangled Psychology of Our...
"Every jealous person knows jealousy to be a brutally degrading experience and resists with all his...
a year ago
"Every jealous person knows jealousy to be a brutally degrading experience and resists with all his might revealing the extent of his degradation."
Escaping Flatland
Reading challenging books with kids is fun and probably useful
I was looking through my diary from the summer of 2020 and found this entry about Maud, then three...
8 months ago
I was looking through my diary from the summer of 2020 and found this entry about Maud, then three years old, in late toddlerhood. 25th of July 2020. I was doing the dishes. Maud came in. “I have looked a little in books,” she said.
Josh Thompson
Habits Take Preparation
Kristi and I moved to Golden, Colorado. We’ve been in our new apartment for five days. I’m trying to...
over a year ago
Kristi and I moved to Golden, Colorado. We’ve been in our new apartment for five days. I’m trying to quickly settle into a routine that makes sense for both of us.
For example - I work for a company in Boston. While I could keep local working hours (Mountain Time) I prefer to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Marsh Light Is Still Burning Hard'
I’m
suspicious of the itch for ranking books and making lists. Too often it’s a substitute...
10 months ago
I’m
suspicious of the itch for ranking books and making lists. Too often it’s a substitute for
actually reading them, a ruse for flaunting one’s hipness or sophistication. My
late friend David Myers was fond of assembling such lists, which are likely to
assure higher-than-average...
The Marginalian
Endling: A Poem
I turned the corner one afternoon to find my neighborhood grocer gone. No warning, just gone —...
10 months ago
I turned the corner one afternoon to find my neighborhood grocer gone. No warning, just gone — padlocked and boarded off, closed for good, a long chain of habit suddenly severed. We know that entropy drags everything toward dissolution, that life is a vector pointed at loss, but...
The Marginalian
How the Sea Came to Be: An Illustrated Singsong Celebration of the Evolution of Life
“Who has known the ocean? Neither you nor I, with our earth-bound senses,” Rachel Carson wrote in...
a year ago
“Who has known the ocean? Neither you nor I, with our earth-bound senses,” Rachel Carson wrote in the pioneering 1937 essay that invited the human imagination into the science and splendor of the marine world for the first time — a world then more mysterious than the Moon, a...
sbensu
When coordination pays off
Stories about Stripe Link where we have to do a lot of upfront coordination but it was worth it.
2 months ago
Stories about Stripe Link where we have to do a lot of upfront coordination but it was worth it.
The American Scholar
Bubble Girl
The kidnapping that once riveted the nation
The post Bubble Girl appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
The kidnapping that once riveted the nation
The post Bubble Girl appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
Metamorphoses, Books XI to XV - The whole of it flows
I had better finish up Ovid’s Metamorphoses before I
forget what was in it. It is full of
memorable...
8 months ago
I had better finish up Ovid’s Metamorphoses before I
forget what was in it. It is full of
memorable things, but I have limits.
Books XI through XV, the last five, in this post.
Book X ended with the songs of Orpheus, so he has to begin
Book XI with Orpheus’s gruesome death,...
Ben Borgers
I Keep Rewriting My Personal Website
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Little Black Hole: A Tender Cosmic Fable About How to Live with Loss
Right this minute, people are making plans, making promises and poems, while at the center of our...
a year ago
Right this minute, people are making plans, making promises and poems, while at the center of our galaxy a black hole with the mass of four billion suns screams its open-mouth kiss of oblivion. Someday it will swallow every atom that ever touched us and every datum we ever...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Buttonhole Strangers on the Street'
Dedicated
readers have to be optimists. When we return to a book already read and enjoyed,
often...
10 months ago
Dedicated
readers have to be optimists. When we return to a book already read and enjoyed,
often decades later, we’re acting on faith, trusting that we and it remain
compatible. That’s not always the case, of course. My younger self is not a reliable critic. For too long I was an...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Old Collections Persist Somewhere'
Speaking of
anthologies, I again picked up Books and
Libraries (2021), published as part of the...
a year ago
Speaking of
anthologies, I again picked up Books and
Libraries (2021), published as part of the Everyman's Library Pocket Poets
Series. I’ve browsed in several of these attractively compact volumes and they are
a very mixed bag, as any thematic anthology must be. You can sense...
The American Scholar
“how i got ovah” by Carolyn Rodgers
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “how i got ovah” by Carolyn Rodgers appeared first on The...
3 weeks ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “how i got ovah” by Carolyn Rodgers appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Is a Rite of Finitude'
Most of
Richard Wilbur’s poetry I read retrospectively, in books, long after it was
written and...
7 months ago
Most of
Richard Wilbur’s poetry I read retrospectively, in books, long after it was
written and first published in magazines. One exception I remember is “All That Is,” which appeared in the May 13, 1985 issue of The New Yorker. I had mostly stopped reading the magazine by...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Courage to Face Reality Squarely'
I’m flying to
Cleveland today to see my brother who has been diagnosed with cancer. It has
already...
4 months ago
I’m flying to
Cleveland today to see my brother who has been diagnosed with cancer. It has
already metastasized and he’s in the Cleveland Clinic, waiting to be admitted to
their hospice program. Ken turned sixty-nine in April and is two and a half
years younger than me. My...
The Marginalian
A Heron’s Antidote to Fear of Death
They didn’t imagine it, the dying dinosaurs, that they would grow wings and become birds, become the...
2 weeks ago
They didn’t imagine it, the dying dinosaurs, that they would grow wings and become birds, become the laboratory in which evolution invented dreams and the cathedral in which it invented faith. “There is grandeur in this view of life,” Darwin consoled himself as his beloved...
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...
20 hours 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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Barricades Against Boredom'
I’ve reminded
my sons with tedious regularity that the world is densely populated with boring
people...
a year ago
I’ve reminded
my sons with tedious regularity that the world is densely populated with boring
people and boring situations. Think of advertising, PowerPoint, golf, Marxists,
super-hero movies, activists of any stripe, videogames and the novels of Joseph
McElroy. That each of...
The Marginalian
Octavia Butler (and Whitman’s Ghost) on America
“Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought,” Octavia Butler (June 22, 1947–February 24, 2006)...
2 months ago
“Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought,” Octavia Butler (June 22, 1947–February 24, 2006) urged in her prophetic Parable of the Talents, written in the 1990s and set in the 2020s. Her words remain a haunting reminder that our rights are founded upon our...
Ben Borgers
Why Do We Still Use Snapchat?
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'So Important That It Ought to Absorb Him'
In his brief
portrait of Joseph Conrad, Desmond MacCarthy tells us the novelist “felt
himself...
a month ago
In his brief
portrait of Joseph Conrad, Desmond MacCarthy tells us the novelist “felt
himself impelled to attempt an intenser vividness in description. Try, just
try, so to describe something that the inattentive reader must see it, and the
attentive one can never forget that he...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Moved—Stopp’d--Shall I Go On?—No'
The
professor asked me to write a paper on Tristram
Shandy, the novel she had introduced to us in...
4 weeks ago
The
professor asked me to write a paper on Tristram
Shandy, the novel she had introduced to us in her eighteenth-century English
fiction class. It was her favorite novel. Its bawdy humor matched her own. For
me it was love at first sight – for the novel, I mean. I was already a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Impetuous Eagerness to Subvert'
Dr. Johnson describes
the poet and physician Mark Akenside: “He
certainly retained an unnecessary...
6 months ago
Dr. Johnson describes
the poet and physician Mark Akenside: “He
certainly retained an unnecessary and outrageous zeal for what he called and
thought liberty; a zeal which sometimes disguises from the world, and not
rarely from the mind which it possesses, an envious desire of...
The Marginalian
Yes: William Stafford’s Poetic Calibration of Perspective
"No guarantees in this life."
11 months ago
"No guarantees in this life."
Wuthering...
Daryl Hine's Ovid's Heroines - I, who could a dragon hypnotize
An anti-Valentine’s Day book now, Ovid’s Heroides
(25-16 BCE, somewhere in there), a collection of...
10 months ago
An anti-Valentine’s Day book now, Ovid’s Heroides
(25-16 BCE, somewhere in there), a collection of fictional letters in verse written
by mythical heroines to their no-good boyfriends and husbands. Many end in suicide. Dido castigating Aeneas, Phaedra mourning...
The Marginalian
The Experience Machine: Cognitive Philosopher Andy Clark on the Power of Expectation and How the...
"We are never simply seeing what’s 'really there,' stripped bare of our own anticipations or...
a year ago
"We are never simply seeing what’s 'really there,' stripped bare of our own anticipations or insulated from our own past experiences. Instead, all human experience is part phantom — the product of deep-set predictions."
The Elysian
Maybe you need to have more fun
"Fun" as essential to human flourishing.
5 months ago
"Fun" as essential to human flourishing.
Anecdotal Evidence
'What Will Become of My Diary?'
“During the
morning hours of the first of September 1939, war broke out between Germany and
Poland...
3 months ago
“During the
morning hours of the first of September 1939, war broke out between Germany and
Poland and indirectly between Germany and Poland’s allies, England and France.
This war will indeed bring destruction upon human civilization which merits
annihilation and destruction....
Anecdotal Evidence
'Fond of Books and Fond of Reading'
A friend has
loaned me his copy of Maurice Baring’s Have You Anything to Declare? (1936),
subtitled...
8 months ago
A friend has
loaned me his copy of Maurice Baring’s Have You Anything to Declare? (1936),
subtitled A Note Book with Commentaries. This
is the 1950 edition published by William Heinemann and comes with an indecipherable
pencil inscription on the front end paper that may be...
Josh Thompson
Winter on Two Pairs of Socks
We’re
minimalists, mostly. We try to not have a bunch of stuff. This naturally extends to the...
over a year ago
We’re
minimalists, mostly. We try to not have a bunch of stuff. This naturally extends to the wardrobe.
I’ll cover more about what we wear another time, but for now, I want to give you an idea. With the right socks, you can go an entire winter with just two pairs of socks. You...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Could Take Part in This Savouring of the World'
One of the
ways biologists distinguish the animate from the inanimate, and the dead, is
motility....
4 months ago
One of the
ways biologists distinguish the animate from the inanimate, and the dead, is
motility. Life moves independently, under its own power. Stasis suggests the
end of life. Travel is especially prized by those unable to do so, whether confined
to bed or a Soviet Bloc regime....
Josh Thompson
Blocks and Closures in Ruby
Continuing on from yesterday’s post about method_missing, I’m moving on to a part of Ruby’s language...
over a year ago
Continuing on from yesterday’s post about method_missing, I’m moving on to a part of Ruby’s language that has been a bit of a mystery for me for quite some time. I’m still working through Metaprogramming in Ruby.
It’s the concept of lambdas, procs, blocks, and more. I also hope...
The Marginalian
The Rigor of Angels: Human Nature and the Nature of Reality
"What we are striving for lies inside us; we find ourselves in the world and the world in...
a year ago
"What we are striving for lies inside us; we find ourselves in the world and the world in ourselves."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Dense, Democratic, Vulgar'
When high
summer arrives -- in Texas, long before this
Thursday’s equinox – I think of Saratoga...
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...
ribbonfarm
Decision Brownouts
In thinking about decision-making under stress, most people focus on fight-or-flight responses. Both...
7 months ago
In thinking about decision-making under stress, most people focus on fight-or-flight responses. Both fighting and fleeing are obvious courses of action that inherit a clear sense of direction from the characteristics of the threat itself, and are energized by the automatic...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Each Man Can Be Judged By His Favorite Books'
This I find
in The Lone Heretic: A Biography of Miguel
de Unamuno y Jugo (1963) by Margaret Thomas...
6 months ago
This I find
in The Lone Heretic: A Biography of Miguel
de Unamuno y Jugo (1963) by Margaret Thomas Rudd, who quotes her subject: “Each
man can be judged by his favorite books.” She adds of the great Spanish thinker
and novelist:
“Throughout
his long life Unamuno returned to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'At Least When Practised By a Master'
I know
several industrious readers who read nothing but novels, not even short stories
and certainly...
a year ago
I know
several industrious readers who read nothing but novels, not even short stories
and certainly not biographies, poetry or other forms of nonfiction. Some are
devoted to genre fiction – mysteries, science fiction – and at least one sticks
to the “classics” -- Austen and...
The Marginalian
Milan Kundera on Animal Rights and What True Human Goodness Really Means
"True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient...
a year ago
"True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind's true mortal test, its fundamental test... consists of its attitude toward those who are at its mercy: animals."
The Marginalian
Making Space: An Illustrated Ode to the Art of Welcoming the Unknown
It is the silence between the notes that distinguishes music from noise, the stillness of the soil...
3 months ago
It is the silence between the notes that distinguishes music from noise, the stillness of the soil that germinates the seeds to burst into bloom. It is in the gap of absence that we learn trust, in the gap between knowledge and mystery that we discover wonder. Every act of making...
The Marginalian
The Universe in Verse Book
"We need science to help us meet reality on its own terms, and we need poetry to help us broaden and...
7 months ago
"We need science to help us meet reality on its own terms, and we need poetry to help us broaden and deepen the terms on which we meet ourselves and each other. At the crossing point of the two we may find a way of clarifying our experience and of sanctifying it."
The Marginalian
From the Labor Camp to the Pantheon of Literature: How Dostoyevsky Became a Writer
"I have nothing, except for certain, and perhaps very minor, literary abilities."
3 months ago
"I have nothing, except for certain, and perhaps very minor, literary abilities."
Josh Thompson
The How and Why of BlockValue
I wrote the following post, and built the application in question, in 2017, in my “end of Turing”...
over a year ago
I wrote the following post, and built the application in question, in 2017, in my “end of Turing” project, before I’d ever been hired as a software developer.
I really enjoyed the app that I built, and I keep wanting to get around to cleaning it up and making it work again. Maybe...
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
“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...
The Marginalian
Ursula K. Le Guin on Change, Menopause as Rebirth, and the Civilizational Value of Elders
"Into the space ship, Granny."
a year ago
"Into the space ship, Granny."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Gave Themselves Without Idle Words to Death'
Rudyard
Kipling was barely twenty years old when he wrote his “Prelude” to Departmental Ditties...
a year ago
Rudyard
Kipling was barely twenty years old when he wrote his “Prelude” to Departmental Ditties (1886), which
includes these lines: “The deaths ye died I have watched beside, / And the
lives ye led were mine.” Eugene Sledge was nineteen when he enlisted in the
Marine Corps a year...
Wuthering...
Books I read in February 2024 - if there is truth in poets' prophesies, then in my fame forever will...
Persian literature in March: the epic Shahnameh in
Dick Davis’s mostly prose translation, plus the...
9 months ago
Persian literature in March: the epic Shahnameh in
Dick Davis’s mostly prose translation, plus the classical poets he translated in
Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz, plus some Rumi and at least
one contemporary Iranian novel, Mahmoud Dowlatabadi’s The Colonel
(2009). ...
Anecdotal Evidence
'By Studying Little Things'
“He advised
me to keep a journal of my life, fair and undisguised.”
So did my high-school
English...
5 months ago
“He advised
me to keep a journal of my life, fair and undisguised.”
So did my high-school
English teacher two centuries later. Boswell took Dr. Johnson’s advice and
later mined the resulting journal when assembling his Life of Johnson (1791). Much of Boswell’s London Journal...
Wuthering...
The appeal of Septology as religious fiction - the urge, inexplicably, to pray - because it helps!...
Septology is a stream-of-consciousness novel
throughout, a mix of sentence fragments, unconventional...
a month ago
Septology is a stream-of-consciousness novel
throughout, a mix of sentence fragments, unconventional punctuation, and temporal
shifts, meaning the painter Asle is sometimes thinking about the present and
sometimes about the past.
These are all old moves, old techniques. I was a...
Josh Thompson
Waking Up Early 2.0
A few months ago, I wrote about
waking up early.
I tracked my progress for almost a month, and most...
over a year ago
A few months ago, I wrote about
waking up early.
I tracked my progress for almost a month, and most of the days I woke up between 4:45 and 6:00. My “must be up by” time is 7:30a, so waking up more than an hour and a half early counts as a huge win.
From mid-may until June 7, I...
Escaping Flatland
Can we scale cultures that support learning?
new essay in Asterisk
2 months ago
Robert Caro
Misery Acres: An Investigative Series
Perhaps Caro’s most influential work during his years at Newsday was the investigative series,...
a year ago
Perhaps Caro’s most influential work during his years at Newsday was the investigative series, “Misery Acres,” a withering expose of fraud.
The Perry Bible...
Pop
The post Pop appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
8 months ago
The post Pop appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
The Marginalian
The Challenge of Closeness: Alain de Botton on Love, Vulnerability, and the Paradox of Avoidance
The psychological machinery of our commonest coping mechanism for the terror of hurt, rejection, and...
a year ago
The psychological machinery of our commonest coping mechanism for the terror of hurt, rejection, and abandonment.
The American Scholar
“The Last Words of My English Grandmother”
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Last Words of My English Grandmother” appeared first on...
5 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Last Words of My English Grandmother” appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
We Go to the Park: A Soulful Illustrated Meditation on Our Search for Meaning
"Sometimes it feels as if all of life is made up of longing."
4 months ago
"Sometimes it feels as if all of life is made up of longing."
The Marginalian
Favorite Children’s Books of 2023
Tender and poetic reckonings with friendship, fear, love, solitude, black holes, deep time, and the...
a year ago
Tender and poetic reckonings with friendship, fear, love, solitude, black holes, deep time, and the interconnectedness of life.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Dull Night in a Buffalo Hotel'
When writing
journalism, H.L. Mencken occasionally practiced what I think of as an informal form
of...
7 months ago
When writing
journalism, H.L. Mencken occasionally practiced what I think of as an informal form
of Impressionism. He would organize isolated bits of description, usually
snapshots of people, without explicit narration or formal structure. The
effect, sometimes satirical, was...
The Marginalian
Let Your Heart Be Broken
"The miracle is that we rise again out of suffering... The miracle is that we create ourselves...
a year ago
"The miracle is that we rise again out of suffering... The miracle is that we create ourselves anew."
Steven Scrawls
The Firefly Artist
The Firefly Artist
Note: it’s a metaphor. I’m not calling for mass firefly
imprisonment.
Two hours...
a year ago
The Firefly Artist
Note: it’s a metaphor. I’m not calling for mass firefly
imprisonment.
Two hours after dusk, a crowd gathered by the dozens, by the
hundreds, to see the firefly artist’s yearly performance. They spread
out blankets in the clearing, sharing snacks by the light of...
The American Scholar
“Stick the Landing” by David Gewanter
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Stick the Landing” by David Gewanter appeared first on The...
4 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Stick the Landing” by David Gewanter appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'And the Third Is To Be Kind.'
A Palpable Elysium: Portraits of Genius and
Solitude
(David R. Godine, 2002) is a collection of the...
a year ago
A Palpable Elysium: Portraits of Genius and
Solitude
(David R. Godine, 2002) is a collection of the late publisher/poet’s
photographs of artists well-known and obscure. Williams was no snob when it
came to talent and genius. He photographs Stevie Smith, Guy Davenport...
The Elysian
Join our upcoming literary salon discussions
Our calendar of upcoming events.
3 months ago
Our calendar of upcoming events.
The American Scholar
“Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes appeared first on...
5 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'What She or He Ought to Know'
In a
typically mordant essay, “A Great Fog Over the Past,” Peter Hitchens cites “Spanish Waters,” a...
4 months ago
In a
typically mordant essay, “A Great Fog Over the Past,” Peter Hitchens cites “Spanish Waters,” a poem by John Masefield, one of the first poets I claimed as my own
when a boy, years before Eliot and Yeats. The poem’s “decrepit beggar,” as Hitchens
puts it, “knows where the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Moment Before the Germans Will Arrive'
A Jewish
friend writes: “The distraction of the war and its repercussions around the
world is making...
a year ago
A Jewish
friend writes: “The distraction of the war and its repercussions around the
world is making concentration on other things difficult. . . . I wish I could tune the news out. But
the stakes for the future of Israel and of Jewish life generally are too great
for me to be...
Josh Thompson
`ls` command to show directory contents
I like to use the tree command on my local machine when trying to peek into the structure and...
over a year ago
I like to use the tree command on my local machine when trying to peek into the structure and contents of a given directory.
tree -L 2
will [L]ist recursively everything [2] levels deep from your current directory. The output is nicely formatted like this:
> tree -L 2
.
├──...
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...
8 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
“The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry appeared first on...
6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry appeared first on The American Scholar.
sbensu
APIs as ladders
APIs are hard to learn. If you think about the learning curve of your API, you can design one that...
over a year ago
APIs are hard to learn. If you think about the learning curve of your API, you can design one that works for beginners, novices, and experts.
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Ill-Assorted Collection'
A friend has
broken up with her boyfriend and he is launching protracted salvos of nasty
emails in...
2 months ago
A friend has
broken up with her boyfriend and he is launching protracted salvos of nasty
emails in her direction. As prose they are better than average. There have been
no threats of violence and little profanity. The ex’s weapon of choice is a
detailed critique of every aspect...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Role Is a Role Worth Perfecting'
“The tragic
Portuguese Jew of Amsterdam wrote that there is nothing the free man thinks of
less than...
11 months ago
“The tragic
Portuguese Jew of Amsterdam wrote that there is nothing the free man thinks of
less than he does of death. But that sort of free man is no more than a dead
man; he is free only from life’s wellspring, lacking in love, a slave to his
freedom. The thought that I must...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Leave Him Something to Imagine'
“I am now
beginning to get fairly into my work; and by the help of a vegetable diet, with
a few of...
a year ago
“I am now
beginning to get fairly into my work; and by the help of a vegetable diet, with
a few of the cold seeds, I make no doubt but I shall be able to go on with my
uncle Toby’s story, and my own, in a tolerable strait line.”
By the time
a persevering reader has reached Book...
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
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...
Blog -...
Book Review - Zen in the Art of Archery
Zen in the Art of Archery is described by John Stevens in his book Zen Bow,
Zen Arrow as likely...
over a year ago
Zen in the Art of Archery is described by John Stevens in his book Zen Bow,
Zen Arrow as likely being the most popular book about Japanese culture and
martial arts ever. This is a bold statement I cannot contest, having read
only three other books about Zen: the...
Josh Thompson
Ethan Magnass' sermons from Grace Anglican Church in Grove City, PA
I’ve been recommending a collection of sermons to many people recently.
I’ve listened to each of...
over a year ago
I’ve been recommending a collection of sermons to many people recently.
I’ve listened to each of these sermons quite a few times. They’re worth your time.
Ethan Magness is the rector at Grace Anglican Church in Grove City, PA.
Sermon Series on Joseph
Grace Anglican Church podcast...
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...
2 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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'But Johnson Fought Back'
Epigraphs to
books are often superfluous. They can come off as cute or pretentious. They add...
3 months ago
Epigraphs to
books are often superfluous. They can come off as cute or pretentious. They add little
or nothing to the manner in which we read the book and often amount to our
author showing off, touting his own vast reading or giving himself an unearned
endorsement. The most...
sbensu
Hiring from Big Tech
Some brief notes about the subject
8 months ago
Some brief notes about the subject
Ben Borgers
Driving School Corruption
over a year ago
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
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...
The Marginalian
Notes on Complexity: A Buddhist Scientist on the Murmuration of Being
"You are this body, and you are these molecules, and you are these atoms, and you are these quantum...
a year ago
"You are this body, and you are these molecules, and you are these atoms, and you are these quantum entities, and you are the quantum foam, and you are the energetic field of space-time, and, ultimately, you are the fundamental awareness out of which all these emerge."
This Space
39 Books: 2018
In spite of what I said yesterday about the decline in the number of novels I read each year, this...
6 months ago
In spite of what I said yesterday about the decline in the number of novels I read each year, this year was packed with a variety: Australian, Korean, Austrian, Egyptian, German, Argentinian and, today's choice, Norwegian; that is, if variety depends on the country of origin. But...
Josh Thompson
Rails Migration: When you can't add a uniqueness constraint because you already have duplicates
I get to occasionally contribute to the Wombat Security dev blog. I wrote the following for...
over a year ago
I get to occasionally contribute to the Wombat Security dev blog. I wrote the following for development.wombatsecurity.com.
This post has been updated to reflect some lessons learned while running this migration in production. Don’t leave a column without an index at any point in...
The American Scholar
“À une passante” by Charles Baudelaire
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “À une passante” by Charles Baudelaire appeared first on The...
5 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “À une passante” by Charles Baudelaire appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Harbinger of a Song Greater Still'
“I went to
him very late each night, and he read many of the poems to me or discussed them
with me...
a year ago
“I went to
him very late each night, and he read many of the poems to me or discussed them
with me till the early hours of the morning. The tears often ran down his face
as he read, without the slightest apparent consciousness of them on his part.
The pathos and grandeur of these...
Wuthering...
Ovid's Amores and Marlowe's Ovid - Love slack’d my muse
Since it is Valentine’s Day, I’ll riffle through Ovid’s
Amores (16 BCE), as translated by Peter...
10 months ago
Since it is Valentine’s Day, I’ll riffle through Ovid’s
Amores (16 BCE), as translated by Peter Green in The Erotic Poems
(1982) and Christopher Marlowe as Ovid’s Elegies (1599). A statement of purpose:
I, Ovid, poet of my wantonness,
Born at Peligny, to write more address.
So...
The American Scholar
Agent 37
The post Agent 37 appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
The post Agent 37 appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Dead Wall or a Thick Mist'
Reading occasionally reveals a pleasing convergence of thought between one writer, separated by...
a year ago
Reading occasionally reveals a pleasing convergence of thought between one writer, separated by centuries
and continents, and another. The happy reader is their ambassador and beneficiary.
I was again reading Nabokov’s brief, death-haunted novel from 1972, Transparent Things. Its...
The Elysian
Founders will get much richer by exiting to employees
This is how we create a wave of employee ownership.
4 months ago
This is how we create a wave of employee ownership.
Josh Thompson
Lifestyle Design (AKA Intentional Habit Building)
The top New Years resolutions indicate that Americans know they need to make changes. The top three...
over a year ago
The top New Years resolutions indicate that Americans know they need to make changes. The top three resolutions always relate to getting in shape, eating better, spending time better, and spending money better.
Everyone is aware that change is good, even necessary, but given the...
Escaping Flatland
Swimming in July
Just the pure physical joy of thrashing your arms around in water. To fill the kid’s buckets and...
5 months ago
Just the pure physical joy of thrashing your arms around in water. To fill the kid’s buckets and throw it at the sun—the way the water falls apart into drops, and then into mist, the way a rainbow appears for a second and is gone.
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
"To be a person may be possible then, after all."
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Interior Convulsion'
Too late the
other night a friend texted me links to several stand-up routines by the late
Jackie...
a year ago
Too late the
other night a friend texted me links to several stand-up routines by the late
Jackie Mason. I clicked on one and the inevitable followed: I went looking for
more and soon descended into a privately curated comedy show with guest stars Don
Rickles, Jonathan Winters...
Wuthering...
Thanks and praise to celebrate the happiness of this great event – the end of the Greek play...
I am quoting the end of Alcestis by Euripides, his early whatever it is, not a tragedy, not a satyr...
over a year ago
I am quoting the end of Alcestis by Euripides, his early whatever it is, not a tragedy, not a satyr play, not a comedy. Admetos has won back his wife and the play is at its end, so he declares “a feast of thanks and praise” (tr. Arrowsmith), which is what I want to do. If we...
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...
7 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
Jonathan Franzen on How to Write About Nature, with a Side of Rachel Carson and Alice in Wonderland
I grew up loving Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. My grandmother read it to me before I could read....
9 months ago
I grew up loving Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. My grandmother read it to me before I could read. I read it to myself as soon as I could. I loved the strangeness of it, and the tenderness. As a child mathematician, I loved knowing that a grown mathematician had written it. But...
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
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
Coleridge on the Paradox of Friendship and Romantic Love
On sympathy, reciprocity, and satisfying the fulness of our nature.
a year ago
On sympathy, reciprocity, and satisfying the fulness of our nature.
Josh Thompson
Pry Tips and Tricks
the following is cross-posted from development.wombatsecurity.com. I wrote about some handy extra...
over a year ago
the following is cross-posted from development.wombatsecurity.com. I wrote about some handy extra features I’ve found using Pry much of my day.
I joined the Wombat team a few months ago, and have been working on the threatsim product. We had a bit of a bug backlog, and myself and...
The Marginalian
How to Bear Your Loneliness: Grounding Wisdom from the Great Buddhist Teacher Pema Chödrön
"We are cheating ourselves when we run away from the ambiguity of loneliness."
a year ago
"We are cheating ourselves when we run away from the ambiguity of loneliness."
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...
11 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...
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
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
'Deaf Unto the Suggestions of Tale-bearers'
“Though the
Quickness of thine Ear were able to reach the noise of the Moon, which some
think it...
10 months ago
“Though the
Quickness of thine Ear were able to reach the noise of the Moon, which some
think it maketh in it rapid revolution; though the number of thy Ears should
equal Argus his Eyes . . .”
The first surgery
on my left ear was fifty years ago, prompted by a perpetually...
Josh Thompson
October 2016 Review
October 2016 Review
This month’s review. In another few days I’ll post the goals for November.
I...
over a year ago
October 2016 Review
This month’s review. In another few days I’ll post the goals for November.
I had
three goals for October, as of about 12 days ago:
October goals:
Programming
I wanted to finish a certain Rails Tutorial, and move on to the next one. This project I made zero...
The Marginalian
There’s a Ghost in the Garden: A Subtle and Soulful Illustrated Fable about Memory and Mystery
One of the things no one tells us as we grow up is that we will be living in a world rife with...
a month ago
One of the things no one tells us as we grow up is that we will be living in a world rife with ghosts — all of our disappointed hopes and our outgrown dreams, all the abandoned novels and unproven theorems, all the people we used to love, all the people we used to be. A ghost is...
Josh Thompson
Travel somewhere fun. But first get on Scott's email list
Most of us have a bucket list item of “travel abroad”, right?
It gets harder to realize once you...
over a year ago
Most of us have a bucket list item of “travel abroad”, right?
It gets harder to realize once you start looking through flight prices, though. If you and your significant other want to head to Europe or Asia, you might be dropping $2500, minimum, for the both of you.
That’s...
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
"We are all interconnected in the universe, and from this, universal responsibility arises... Everyone has the responsibility to develop a happier world."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Old Landor's Bones Are Laid'
On Tuesday I
wrote about Walter Savage Landor, his poems and especially Imaginary Conversations, a...
3 months ago
On Tuesday I
wrote about Walter Savage Landor, his poems and especially Imaginary Conversations, a collection of 174 dialogues, mostly of
historical and literary figures, published in five volumes between 1824 and
1829. I keep a mental list of books I admire and enjoy that seem...
Josh Thompson
How Can You Buy Happiness?
You can’t, but that won’t stop you and me from trying, at least a little.
We (Humans, americans, at...
over a year ago
You can’t, but that won’t stop you and me from trying, at least a little.
We (Humans, americans, at least “other people like me”) like to buy
things. But we should do more than just buy
things.
Experiences can have a much bigger impact on people’s happiness than things, and a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Is Brio Enough Here'
A word I’ve always liked is brio. It sounds like the name of a commercial product, floor wax or
an...
a year ago
A word I’ve always liked is brio. It sounds like the name of a commercial product, floor wax or
an energy drink. We have an Italian restaurant in Houston called Brio. My
Italian dictionary translates it as “zest” and the OED gives “liveliness, vivacity, ‘go.’” It
suggests...
The Marginalian
Between Matter and Spirit: Psychoanalyst Allen Wheelis on the Substance of What We Are
"We are carriers of spirit... into a future unknown, unknowable, and in continual creation."
a year ago
"We are carriers of spirit... into a future unknown, unknowable, and in continual creation."
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
The post The Hare and the Tortoise appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
The Marginalian
Flowers for Things I Don’t Know How to Say: A Tender Painted Lexicon of Consolation and Connection
“To be a Flower is profound Responsibility,” Emily Dickinson wrote. From the moment she pressed the...
7 months ago
“To be a Flower is profound Responsibility,” Emily Dickinson wrote. From the moment she pressed the first wildflower into her astonishing teenage herbarium until the moment Susan pinned a violet to her alabaster chest in the casket, she filled her poems with flowers and made of...
Steven Scrawls
Maybe your desires are delusional
Maybe your desires are
delusional
The vast majority of my desires are not the reasonable desires...
8 months ago
Maybe your desires are
delusional
The vast majority of my desires are not the reasonable desires that I
had once believed them to be. They’re actually completely delusional
desires dressed up in shoddy “reasonable desire” costumes, and I’ve just
been pretending not to notice.
How...
The Marginalian
The Work of Art: Inside the Creative Process of Beloved Artists, Poets, Musicians, and Other Makes...
“The true artist,” Beethoven wrote in his touching letter of advice to a young girl aspiring to be...
7 months ago
“The true artist,” Beethoven wrote in his touching letter of advice to a young girl aspiring to be an artist, “is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.” The choreographer Martha Graham called this particular shade of...
The Elysian
Three classic utopian novels—now collectibles
More than 100 years ago, three thinkers imagined what a utopian future might look like in the year...
3 months ago
More than 100 years ago, three thinkers imagined what a utopian future might look like in the year 2000. Now, their novels are available as a collectible set.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Bring on the Vitamines'
When I returned
to college in 2002, thirty years after dropping out a year before graduating, I
took...
3 days ago
When I returned
to college in 2002, thirty years after dropping out a year before graduating, I
took a class in something called “psychological anthropology.” The teacher was
personable and the class was a sort of catch basin of random learning. We could
write about any stray...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Lack of Self-deception'
“There is a
difference between a villain and one who simply commits a crime. The villain is
an...
a year ago
“There is a
difference between a villain and one who simply commits a crime. The villain is
an extremely conscious person and commits a crime consciously, for its own
sake.”
A fine
distinction, one often lost on us. Auden is describing Shakespeare’s Richard
III and refers us to...
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