Josh Thompson
Train Hard
When’s the last time you participated in a sporting event? (Football, Ultimate Frisbee, rock...
over a year ago
When’s the last time you participated in a sporting event? (Football, Ultimate Frisbee, rock climbing, running biking, wrestling, whatever)
When’s the last time you
trained for that activity?
Finally:
When is the last time you trained for that activity
with someone else?...
Josh Thompson
How to Ask Questions of Experts To Gain More than Just Answers
Recently, I co-led a session at Turing with Regis Boudinot, a Turing grad who works at GitLab.
We...
over a year ago
Recently, I co-led a session at Turing with Regis Boudinot, a Turing grad who works at GitLab.
We discussed two things:
asking good questions
having a good workflow
After the session, I promised an overview of what we discussed. Here’s that overview for “Asking good questions”....
Anecdotal Evidence
'All Sorts of Characters in the World'
“His poems
are not much read now.” Sad words, often deserved but occasionally unjust. Of
course,...
a year ago
“His poems
are not much read now.” Sad words, often deserved but occasionally unjust. Of
course, much of poetry is no longer read, not even by those who consider
themselves poets. Who besides eccentrics and cranks reads Pope, Tennyson and
Longfellow? The opening question is posed...
Josh Thompson
On Fables: Finishing up Antifragile
I’m cleaning up some notes I wanted to jot down over the last few weeks
Nassim Taleb, in...
over a year ago
I’m cleaning up some notes I wanted to jot down over the last few weeks
Nassim Taleb, in
Antifragile, says:
The great economist Ariel Rubinstein gets the green lumber fallacy - it requires a great deal of intellect and honesty to see things that way.
Rubinstein refuses to...
The American Scholar
A Rebel to Remember
Gregory P. Downs on the late Anthony E. Kaye’s groundbreaking history of Nat Turner
The post A Rebel...
4 months ago
Gregory P. Downs on the late Anthony E. Kaye’s groundbreaking history of Nat Turner
The post A Rebel to Remember appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
ben-mini
Commoditize Your Complements
To the man who coined the phrase, “nothing in life is free”… have you been on GitHub...
4 months ago
To the man who coined the phrase, “nothing in life is free”… have you been on GitHub lately?
Open-source is software that anyone can freely view, use, modify, and share because its code is publicly available on sites like Github and Huggingface. My last coding project alone was...
Anecdotal Evidence
'One Is Always at Home in One’s Past'
I will quote
the writer who has given me more pleasure – “aesthetic bliss” he called it –
than any...
8 months ago
I will quote
the writer who has given me more pleasure – “aesthetic bliss” he called it –
than any other and whose birthday we observed earlier this week: “One is always at home in one’s past.” That might
serve as a gloss on his autobiography, Speak,
Memory, in which he writes at...
Steven Scrawls
Quicksilver and Clay
Quicksilver and Clay
Like everyone else, I walk around the world in a body made of
quicksilver and...
11 months ago
Quicksilver and Clay
Like everyone else, I walk around the world in a body made of
quicksilver and clay. The pieces of my body—my sense of humor, my
beliefs, my opinions and artistic sensibilities and worldviews,
everything—combine to present a cohesive self to be...
The American Scholar
Jason Middlebrook
Tree rings in time
The post Jason Middlebrook appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
Tree rings in time
The post Jason Middlebrook appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles - indeed his end / Was wonderful if ever mortal’s was
Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles is one of the plays that got me excited about the entire project of...
over a year ago
Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles is one of the plays that got me excited about the entire project of reading or re-reading the complete plays. The last surviving tragedy, even if it hardly recognizable as a tragedy, it provides a coherent ending to the tragic tradition. It is...
The Marginalian
Blue Is the Color of Desire: The Science, Poetry, and Wonder of the Bowerbird
For all the enchantment the color blue has cast upon humanity, no animal has fallen under its spell...
a year ago
For all the enchantment the color blue has cast upon humanity, no animal has fallen under its spell more hopelessly than the bowerbird, whose very survival hinges on blue. In a small clearing on the forest floor, the male weaves twigs and branches into an elaborate bower, which...
The Marginalian
Emerson on the Singular Enchantment of Indian Summer (and a Better Term for This Liminal Season...
"There are days... wherein the world reaches its perfection, when the air, the heavenly bodies, and...
2 months ago
"There are days... wherein the world reaches its perfection, when the air, the heavenly bodies, and the earth, make a harmony."
The Marginalian
The Birth of the Byline: How a Bronze Age Woman Became the World’s First Named Author and Used the...
Days after I arrived in America as a lone teenager, the same age Mary Shelley was when she wrote...
6 months ago
Days after I arrived in America as a lone teenager, the same age Mary Shelley was when she wrote Frankenstein, not yet knowing I too was to become a writer, I found myself wandering the vast cool halls of the Penn Museum. There among the thousands of ancient artifacts was one to...
Josh Thompson
2017 In Review & Thoughts on 2018
Note: this “annual review” covers three topics. Click on one to skip to it:
Looking back on...
over a year ago
Note: this “annual review” covers three topics. Click on one to skip to it:
Looking back on 2017
thoughts on going into 2018
book recommendations from the 79 books I read last year
I’ve got mixed feelings on annual reviews. I steadfastly refuse to set New Years’ resolutions, and...
The American Scholar
The Wonder of It All
In search of awe
The post The Wonder of It All appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
In search of awe
The post The Wonder of It All appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
Metamorphoses Cantos IV and V - gore, Pyramus and Thisbe, and a rap battle
Bacchus continues his reign of terror in Canto IV of Metamorphoses
by turning three sisters who...
11 months ago
Bacchus continues his reign of terror in Canto IV of Metamorphoses
by turning three sisters who refuse to believe in his divinity into what “we in
English language Backes or Reermice call the same” (Golding, 99) “[Or, as we
say, bats.]” (Martin, 140). How sad that
we lost the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Probity Was Perhaps the Highest Good'
As a
newspaper reporter I covered only one capital murder trial. This was in rural
Indiana in 1983....
8 months ago
As a
newspaper reporter I covered only one capital murder trial. This was in rural
Indiana in 1983. At the age of eighteen, William Spranger had fatally shot a
town marshal, William Miner, in the back with the officer’s service revolver. The
jury found Spranger guilty and Judge...
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...
sbensu
The birth of a (pseudo) currency
A dozen pseudo-currencies were issued in Argentina in 2002. How did that work? And why are they...
10 months ago
A dozen pseudo-currencies were issued in Argentina in 2002. How did that work? And why are they coming back in 2024?
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Cool Malignity of Othello'
“As Shakespeare
went on, however, he became interested in why people like evil, not for their
own...
a year ago
“As Shakespeare
went on, however, he became interested in why people like evil, not for their
own advantage but for its own sake.”
In his
lecture on Othello, W.H. Auden understands,
as a growing number of our contemporaries do not, that evil is autonomous and
self-justifying....
Blog -...
Book Review - Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples, 2019 Edition
I don’t anticipate giving many perfect ratings, but this book is a rare gem
– a captivating...
over a year ago
I don’t anticipate giving many perfect ratings, but this book is a rare gem
– a captivating page-turner packed full of aha moments. The authors have
woven together decades of personal research and experience in the field of
intimate relationships to create a classic...
Anecdotal Evidence
'If the Nation Is to Be Saved From This Menace'
“To the
thinking man there are few things more disturbing than the realization that we
are becoming...
10 months ago
“To the
thinking man there are few things more disturbing than the realization that we
are becoming a nation of minor poets.”
P.G.
Wodehouse is being kind. He wrote “The Alarming Spread of Poetry” in 1916 when
the blight was fresh and perhaps still reversible. His Exhibit A is...
Blog -...
Book Review - Codependent No More
With more than five million copies sold by its twenty-fifth anniversary
nearly a decade ago,...
over a year ago
With more than five million copies sold by its twenty-fifth anniversary
nearly a decade ago, Codependent No More is a startling, powerful book that
has touched the lives of so very many.
This Space
The end of something
Thirteen years ago I posted The beginning of something to mark the fifteenth anniversary of Spike...
a year ago
Thirteen years ago I posted The beginning of something to mark the fifteenth anniversary of Spike Magazine (not to be confused with Spiked), which I helped to found when the world wide web was forming, and to comment on the direction online literary culture had taken. By that...
ribbonfarm
Bangalore Meetup Report
Did a ribbonfarm meetup in Bangalore last night, the first ever in India. Thanks to Abhishek Agarwal...
7 months ago
Did a ribbonfarm meetup in Bangalore last night, the first ever in India. Thanks to Abhishek Agarwal for organizing. I think this is the first meetup I’ve done since the last Refactor Camp in 2019. It was kinda last minute, which is why I only posted on Substack rather than here...
Wuthering...
Jeremy Denk plays Charles Ives and Blind Tom Wiggins - a pleasing conjunction of Wuthering...
More Massachusetts semi-literay adventures.
Last weekend I was at Tanglewood in Lenox,...
4 months ago
More Massachusetts semi-literay adventures.
Last weekend I was at Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts,
enjoying Jeremy Denk’s performance of insurance executive Charles Ives’s Concord
Sonata (c. 1913). It was a pleasing
congruence of Wuthering Expectations themes.
I have nothing...
The American Scholar
Red Tide Warning
Living on Florida’s Gulf Coast means having to coexist with pervasive and toxic algal blooms—and...
7 months ago
Living on Florida’s Gulf Coast means having to coexist with pervasive and toxic algal blooms—and neighbors who don’t always believe what they see
The post Red Tide Warning appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Find Other Things Which We Liked Better'
One night in the spring of 1766, Boswell and Goldsmith visited Dr. Johnson unannounced and
asked if...
10 months ago
One night in the spring of 1766, Boswell and Goldsmith visited Dr. Johnson unannounced and
asked if he wished to join them at the Mitre Tavern on Fleet Street in London.
Johnson was “indisposed” and Goldsmith said, “[W]e will not go to the Mitre to-night,
since we cannot have the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Amber of His Style'
Isaac
Waisberg at IWP Books has digitalized three volumes of Desmond MacCarthy’s essays
and reviews...
8 months ago
Isaac
Waisberg at IWP Books has digitalized three volumes of Desmond MacCarthy’s essays
and reviews -- Portraits (1931), Criticism (1932), Memories (1953) – with a promise of more to come. MacCarthy’s reputation
in the U.S. is almost sub-atomic. Devotees of Bloomsbury think of hm...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Everyone He Knew Something About'
A reader who
enjoys the novels of Sinclair Lewis tells me she is put off by the length and
dullness...
2 months ago
A reader who
enjoys the novels of Sinclair Lewis tells me she is put off by the length and
dullness of Mark Schorer’s 1961 biography of the Nobel laureate. I haven’t read
Lewis since high school and have never read Schorer’s 867-page behemoth but I
sympathize. I remember reading...
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
Be a little better at personal email
The next bunch of posts will be me “clearing out the drawers” of notes I have scattered across my...
over a year ago
The next bunch of posts will be me “clearing out the drawers” of notes I have scattered across my phone, computer, and brain. There is no unifying theme to what will be written here.
Three recommendations to email better
TL;DR Email should usually be as short as possible. More of...
The Marginalian
What Makes Life Alive: Vassily Grossman on Consciousness, Freedom, and Kindness
“Every thing that lives is holy, life delights in life,” William Blake wrote in an era when science...
5 months ago
“Every thing that lives is holy, life delights in life,” William Blake wrote in an era when science first began raising questions with spiritual undertones: What is life? Where does it begin and end? What makes it alive? But in the epochs since, having discovered muons and...
The Marginalian
Some Blessings to Begin with
It is good, I feel, to begin a new year, or a new day, with a little reservoir of gladness. Here are...
3 days ago
It is good, I feel, to begin a new year, or a new day, with a little reservoir of gladness. Here are some gladnesses I have gathered, and two new bird divinations I have made, as a conscious way of consecrating our days with the blessed fact that we weren’t promised any of this —...
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...
2 months 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...
This Space
A modern heretic
Literature can be defined by the sense of the imminence of a revelation which does not in fact...
over a year ago
Literature can be defined by the sense of the imminence of a revelation which does not in fact occur.
I used this line, apparently from Borges, as an epigram to an essay in the early days of online writing. I can't remember what book it came from and after searching I found a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Poets Who Are Plain and Gladsome'
Being or
pretending to be a philistine is great fun. It was one of Philip Larkin’s favorite
ruses...
9 months ago
Being or
pretending to be a philistine is great fun. It was one of Philip Larkin’s favorite
ruses (“Books are a load of crap”). It’s certain to rile the pompous and
pretentious, so all you have to do is sit back and enjoy the sputtering. I’ve
happened on a first-rate anthology of...
The Elysian
Elysian gatherings around the world
Picnic with me in New Zealand, Australia, Japan, and San Francisco.
2 weeks ago
Picnic with me in New Zealand, Australia, Japan, and San Francisco.
Escaping Flatland
Garlic and gravel
fragments
5 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
"The Test of a Reader'
“. . . to
say a word or two about the improvable reader. The gift of reading, as I have
called it,...
7 months ago
“. . . to
say a word or two about the improvable reader. The gift of reading, as I have
called it, is not very common, nor very generally understood. It consists,
first of all, in a vast intellectual endowment—a free grace, I find I must call
it—by which a man rises to understand...
The American Scholar
“Snow” by Louis MacNeice
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Snow” by Louis MacNeice appeared first on The American...
a week ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Snow” by Louis MacNeice appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Living Through Radical Change'
Ten years
ago, Joseph Epstein wrote to his friend Frederic Raphael:
“I have
myself long ago put...
8 months ago
Ten years
ago, Joseph Epstein wrote to his friend Frederic Raphael:
“I have
myself long ago put aside any thought about writing an autobiography. . . .
When I became, almost without conscious decision, a bookish and a scribbling
man, the larger sense of adventure went out of my...
The Marginalian
The Remedy for Creative Block and Existential Stuckness
"Faithfulness to the moment and to the present circumstance entails continuous surrender... Only...
a year ago
"Faithfulness to the moment and to the present circumstance entails continuous surrender... Only unconditional surrender leads to real emptiness, and from that place of emptiness I can be prolific and free."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Pick Up a Machete and Start Exploring'
A splendid
day for American literature: born on March 1 are Ralph Ellison (1914), Howard
Nemerov...
10 months ago
A splendid
day for American literature: born on March 1 are Ralph Ellison (1914), Howard
Nemerov (1920) and Richard Wilbur (1921). I’m reminded of how important contemporary
American writers were to me when I was young, in the 60s and 70s. Everything
was new and promising, and I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Be Made Out of Emotions, Colors, Life Itself'
“[Robert
Conquest] and his two closest friends, Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin, proved
their...
5 months ago
“[Robert
Conquest] and his two closest friends, Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin, proved
their vocation by playing the games with language and perception that poets
play, three Musketeers at a time when not much else was disturbing the quiet
little cemetery of English...
The American Scholar
“I Will Greet the Sun Again” by Forugh Farrokhzad
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “I Will Greet the Sun Again” by Forugh Farrokhzad appeared...
4 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “I Will Greet the Sun Again” by Forugh Farrokhzad appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'He's Not Pulling It Out of Thin Air'
A friend
tells me he is boycotting a favorite bookstore because, as he writes, “someone
posted a...
9 months ago
A friend
tells me he is boycotting a favorite bookstore because, as he writes, “someone
posted a fair-sized sign on the store’s ‘Community Board’ reading, ‘From The
River to the Sea, Palestine Shall Be Free.’” There’s a naïvely childish part of
me that finds the obscenity...
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."
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
'A Taste for Strolling in Cemeteries'
Just
as most of the people we encounter across a lifetime mean nothing to us and
will not...
a year ago
Just
as most of the people we encounter across a lifetime mean nothing to us and
will not even
linger in memory, as they stir neither distaste nor devotion, so it is with
books and writers. Had I been one of those desperately obsessive readers who
records every title read, I...
Josh Thompson
Taking the Plunge with Colemak
This entire post is written in
Colemak.
I am aiming to write at least 100 words, and this is...
over a year ago
This entire post is written in
Colemak.
I am aiming to write at least 100 words, and this is certainly harder than copying someone else’s words.
I have completed a few hours of dedicated practice, and it is quite possible that I am jumping the gun, and will quickly revert to...
The Marginalian
Favorite Books of 2023
To look back on a year of reading is to be handed a clear mirror of your priorities and passions, of...
a year ago
To look back on a year of reading is to be handed a clear mirror of your priorities and passions, of the questions that live in you and the reckonings that keep you up at night. While the literature of the present comprises only a tiny fraction of my own reading, here are a...
Josh Thompson
Letter to Two Climbers (Part 1)
Hello!
We met recently. (I gave Justin tape after he cut his toe and didn’t have a bandaid.)
You and...
over a year ago
Hello!
We met recently. (I gave Justin tape after he cut his toe and didn’t have a bandaid.)
You and your partner were climbing a route near me and my partner. One of you (I’ll call Charles, because he had a British accent) was trying
so hard to figure out some moves high above...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Remarkable Literary Judgment'
She was
twelve or thirteen, a girl in a hooded sweatshirt seated beside a woman I
assume was her...
4 months ago
She was
twelve or thirteen, a girl in a hooded sweatshirt seated beside a woman I
assume was her mother. She sat on the aisle two rows ahead of me. The cabin of
the plane glowed with screens while she was reading Andrew R. MacAndrew’s 1961 translation
of Dead Souls, the Signet...
Josh Thompson
On Cleaner Controllers
A few days ago, I worked on a project that was mostly about serving up basic store data (modeled...
over a year ago
A few days ago, I worked on a project that was mostly about serving up basic store data (modeled after Etsy) to an API.
We had a few dozen end-points, and all responses were in JSON.
Most of the action happened inside of our controllers, and as you might imagine, our routes.rb...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Was Only Coming True'
In the final
year of his life, Clive James published a book-length poem, The River in the Sky...
a year ago
In the final
year of his life, Clive James published a book-length poem, The River in the Sky (2018), a dying man’s
last fling. The title refers to the Japanese phrase for the Milky Way. It’s
mostly autobiography, a book of well-rehearsed memories, largely unstructured, much
of...
Josh Thompson
A New Old Financial Product
I’m going to weave together talk of land value, and financing, and some of the primitives1 around...
over a year ago
I’m going to weave together talk of land value, and financing, and some of the primitives1 around financial products.
How much would you pay for a box that lives in your mailbox and delivers $1000 on the first of every month?
Would you pay at least $5000, if you felt really...
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...
The Elysian
My TEDx talk about the future of fiction
And publishing.
6 months ago
The Marginalian
Dead Stars: Poet Laureate Ada Limón’s Stunning Love Poem to Life
"We’ve come this far, survived this much. What would happen if we decided to survive more? To love...
a year ago
"We’ve come this far, survived this much. What would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?"
The Marginalian
The Middle Passage: A Jungian Field Guide to Finding Meaning and Transformation in Midlife
"Our task at midlife is to be strong enough to relinquish the ego-urgencies of the first half and...
10 months ago
"Our task at midlife is to be strong enough to relinquish the ego-urgencies of the first half and open ourselves to a greater wonder."
The American Scholar
American Modernism’s Lost Boy-King
The late, great Paul Auster on Stephen Crane
The post American Modernism’s Lost Boy-King appeared...
8 months ago
The late, great Paul Auster on Stephen Crane
The post American Modernism’s Lost Boy-King appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Reborn in the City of Light
At a time when Paris was an incubator of modernism, a group of bold American women arrived to make...
4 months ago
At a time when Paris was an incubator of modernism, a group of bold American women arrived to make art out of their lives
The post Reborn in the City of Light appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Échame la Culpa
The post Échame la Culpa appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The post Échame la Culpa appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Commonplace Insights'
The Center for Popular Culture Studies at Bowling
Green State University in Ohio was founded in...
3 months ago
The Center for Popular Culture Studies at Bowling
Green State University in Ohio was founded in 1970, the year I entered BG as a
freshman. Today it’s the only institution in the country to have a Department
of Popular Culture. As an English major I hung around with professors who...
Josh Thompson
Fred Roger's Method For Writing Scripts
Someone said:
People think this is silly, but read about Fred rogers’ method for writing a script...
over a year ago
Someone said:
People think this is silly, but read about Fred rogers’ method for writing a script for his show. The rules aren’t fully applicable to presentations, but the attention to detail and to the Interpretation of the audience is. Don’t use any words carelessly.
I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Pristine Caldera of Consonants'
The subject
of quarks came up in conversation with an electrical engineer. We didn’t linger
but I...
6 months ago
The subject
of quarks came up in conversation with an electrical engineer. We didn’t linger
but I got to explain its etymology. The word for the subatomic particle was
coined by the physicist Murray Gell-Mann, who borrowed it from Finnegans Wake: “Three quarks for Muster
Mark!”...
Wuthering...
Philoctetes by Sophocles - Let me suffer what I must suffer
Philoctetes by Sophocles (409 BCE), performed when the author was 87, which is perhaps why he is in...
over a year ago
Philoctetes by Sophocles (409 BCE), performed when the author was 87, which is perhaps why he is in a mood of reconciliation and healing.
Literal healing. Philoctetes possesses the bow of Hercules. Either the bow, or Philoctetes himself, or both – prophecies are ambiguous...
The American Scholar
“Planetarium” by Adrienne Rich
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Planetarium” by Adrienne Rich appeared first on The American...
8 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Planetarium” by Adrienne Rich appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Masters of Horror and Magic
The German folklorists who helped build a nation
The post Masters of Horror and Magic appeared first...
2 months ago
The German folklorists who helped build a nation
The post Masters of Horror and Magic appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Thunder, Bells, and Silence: The Eclipse that Went Extinct
What was it like for Martha, the endling of her species, to die alone at the Cincinnati Zoo that...
7 months ago
What was it like for Martha, the endling of her species, to die alone at the Cincinnati Zoo that late-summer day in 1914, all the other passenger pigeons gone from the face of the Earth, having once filled its skies with an immensity of beating wings, so many that John James...
The American Scholar
In the Mushroom
True foraging isn’t the domain of the weekend warrior; it’s serious, serious business
The post In...
a month ago
True foraging isn’t the domain of the weekend warrior; it’s serious, serious business
The post In the Mushroom appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Prejudice Against Humor?'
“What is the
origin of the prejudice against humor? Why is it so dangerous, if you would
keep the...
11 months ago
“What is the
origin of the prejudice against humor? Why is it so dangerous, if you would
keep the public confidence, to make the public laugh? Is it because humor and
sound sense are essentially antagonistic? Has humanity found by experience that
the man who sees the fun of life...
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...
Josh Thompson
STOP YELLING ON THE INTERNET, or, A Better Use for the Caps Lock Key
My current project is to learn to type using an alternative keyboard layout called Colemak.
QWERTY...
over a year ago
My current project is to learn to type using an alternative keyboard layout called Colemak.
QWERTY has problems. Here are a few, shamelessly borrowed from
Colemak.com
It places very rare letters in the best positions, so your fingers have to move a lot more.
It suffers from a...
Robert Caro
In Florida, the Pitch Is High and Hard
A special Senate committee has opened an investigation into these “Misery Acres” that take dollars...
a year ago
A special Senate committee has opened an investigation into these “Misery Acres” that take dollars from people who cannot afford it.
The American Scholar
Turning the World to Powder
Jay Owens on the tiny particles that float through our lives
The post Turning the World to Powder...
6 months ago
Jay Owens on the tiny particles that float through our lives
The post Turning the World to Powder appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Understanding CalcYouLater Subconsciously
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Ground Truth
A story of dirt, dollars, and death
The post Ground Truth appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
A story of dirt, dollars, and death
The post Ground Truth appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
How I Sent Texts for Assassins
over a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 356.5
...
a month ago
The Marginalian
Consciousness, Artificial Intelligence, and Our Search for Meaning: Oliver Sacks on ChatGPT, 30...
"We are not incoherent, a bundle of sensations, but a self, rising from experience, continually...
a year ago
"We are not incoherent, a bundle of sensations, but a self, rising from experience, continually growing and revised... Through experience, education, art, and life, we teach our brains to become unique. We learn to be individuals. This is a neurological learning as well as a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Related But Detached'
I’ve seen Hamlet on the stage only once, in 1971.
The prince was played by Dame Judith Anderson,...
10 months ago
I’ve seen Hamlet on the stage only once, in 1971.
The prince was played by Dame Judith Anderson, unconvincing in her early seventies.
Wrong sex, wrong age, wrong play – a stillborn theatrical stunt. My reaction was perhaps the
worst that staged Shakespeare can inspire – boredom...
The Marginalian
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows: Uncommonly Lovely Invented Words for What We Feel but Cannot Name
"Despite what dictionaries would have us believe, this world is still mostly undefined."
8 months ago
"Despite what dictionaries would have us believe, this world is still mostly undefined."
The Marginalian
The Wound Is the Gift: David Whyte on the Relationship Between Anxiety and Intimacy
"Intimacy is presence magnified by our vulnerability, magnified by increasing proximity to the fear...
a month ago
"Intimacy is presence magnified by our vulnerability, magnified by increasing proximity to the fear that underlies that vulnerability."
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Air of Baffled Absence'
R.L. Barth
has sent a new epigram, “Baffled,” not overtly related to the Vietnam War:
“I see...
5 months ago
R.L. Barth
has sent a new epigram, “Baffled,” not overtly related to the Vietnam War:
“I see these
hands on the deck railing, but
Whose are
they? Have they any meaning? What?”
Some readers
will understand. The familiar can become strange with age. That’s not always a...
The American Scholar
Battle Hymns
Charles Ives and the Civil War
The post Battle Hymns appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
Charles Ives and the Civil War
The post Battle Hymns appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
The Fair Fields
Only rarely did the outside world intrude on an idyllic Connecticut childhood, but in the tumultuous...
a month ago
Only rarely did the outside world intrude on an idyllic Connecticut childhood, but in the tumultuous 1960s, that intrusion included an encounter with evil
The post The Fair Fields appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Turning to Stone: A Geologist’s Love Letter to the Wisdom of Rocks
Among the great salvations of my childhood were the rocks and minerals lining the bookshelves of our...
4 months ago
Among the great salvations of my childhood were the rocks and minerals lining the bookshelves of our next door neighbor — a geologist working for the Bulgarian Ministry of Environment and Water. I spent long hours casting amethyst refractions on the ceiling, carving words into...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Hundred Words for the Word Brother'
One of the
stranger events recounted by Montaigne:
“[I]f I must
bring myself into this, a brother...
2 months ago
One of the
stranger events recounted by Montaigne:
“[I]f I must
bring myself into this, a brother of mine, [Arnaud, Lord of] Saint-Martin,
twenty-three years old, who had already given pretty good proof of his valor, while
playing tennis was struck by a ball a little above the...
Ben Borgers
How You Perceive the World
over a year ago
The American Scholar
The March Down Main
The post The March Down Main appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The post The March Down Main appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
“How Do I Love Thee” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “How Do I Love Thee” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning appeared...
4 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “How Do I Love Thee” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Ecstasy of Eternity: Richard Jefferies on Time and Self-Transcendence
This is the great paradox: that human life, lived between the time of starlings and the time of...
10 months ago
This is the great paradox: that human life, lived between the time of starlings and the time of stars, is made meaningful entirely inside the self, but the self is a mirage of the mind, a figment of cohesion that makes the chaos and transience bearable. A few times a lifetime, if...
Josh Thompson
Tongue Ties: What, So What, What To Do
“tongue tied” (my first time hearing the word, my newborn’s experience)
‘tongue tie’ was something...
7 months ago
“tongue tied” (my first time hearing the word, my newborn’s experience)
‘tongue tie’ was something I’d heard discussed (the little bit of fiber under a tongue) as the child we now know as Eden was incubating inside of Kristi’s womb. I didn’t think much of it then.
Cut forward to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Moralizing Purge of the Past'
"I think we
are living through a moralizing purge of the past, similar to the one that
early...
9 months ago
"I think we
are living through a moralizing purge of the past, similar to the one that
early Christianity inflicted on the same pagan learning. There will be another
Dark Ages in our lifetimes; and another Renaissance, too, but not one that we
will live to see.”
I’m...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Books I Have Liked'
One way to
classify readers is by their choice of reading matter across time. Some are
specialists....
a month ago
One way to
classify readers is by their choice of reading matter across time. Some are
specialists. They read deeply but narrowly, only science fiction or the Latin
classics in translation. That strategy is alien to me because by nature I’m an
omnivore, moving from Henry James to...
Josh Thompson
Exploring source code via Griddler and Griddler-Mailgun
Proofpoint had a two-day “hack day” recently. My coworker John and I teamed up on a cool little...
over a year ago
Proofpoint had a two-day “hack day” recently. My coworker John and I teamed up on a cool little feature. I’ll give some context in a moment, but this post isn’t about the hack day, or email - it’s about exploring source code.
Here’s the context:
In my day-to-day, I work on a...
Blog -...
Book Review - The Alchemy of Inner Work
The Alchemy of Inner Work, by Lorie Eve Dechar and Benjamin Fox, is an
exposition of an inner...
over a year ago
The Alchemy of Inner Work, by Lorie Eve Dechar and Benjamin Fox, is an
exposition of an inner healing art that is incredibly valuable to
practitioners. Yet, each of us – regardless of trade, title, or label – is
ultimately our own healing practitioner, and this book is a...
Josh Thompson
No New Books
I’ve promised myself that I won’t add any more books to my Kindle, either by purchasing them from...
over a year ago
I’ve promised myself that I won’t add any more books to my Kindle, either by purchasing them from Amazon, or downloading them online, or renting them from a Library.
Why?
I’ve let reading about doing things stand in the way of doing the things. No amount of educational literature...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Old Man in the Dark'
Philip
Larkin shares with us the mundane complaints of the middle class, the lusts and
anxieties of...
a year ago
Philip
Larkin shares with us the mundane complaints of the middle class, the lusts and
anxieties of people unburdened with wealth and pull. He grows deaf, loses hair,
juggles girlfriends, gains weight and drinks too much. As a librarian he works hard.
He will never be hip except...
This Space
More and less: Veilchenfeld by Gert Hofmann
Gert Hofmann's Veilchenfeld is the latest of his novels to be published in English translation, and...
over a year ago
Gert Hofmann's Veilchenfeld is the latest of his novels to be published in English translation, and the first translated by Eric Mace-Tessler. Tom Conaghan at Review31 has given it an appreciative review, recognising that Hofmann's presentation of a civilisation's descent into...
sbensu
Math intuitions on variance
This is a supplement to High Variance Management, where I build some intuition on the different...
a year ago
This is a supplement to High Variance Management, where I build some intuition on the different probability distributions involved.
Josh Thompson
An Intro to Customer Success
Customer Success - what is it?
When I tell people I work in “Customer Success”, they immediately...
over a year ago
Customer Success - what is it?
When I tell people I work in “Customer Success”, they immediately think I do either Customer Support, or sales. In a way, they are correct. I do both. Today, and more in the future, I’ll dig deep into this particular industry.
A traditional...
Josh Thompson
My Good Friends (Who Don't Know Me)
Rumor has it you become like those you spend time with. Or “birds of a feather flock together”, or...
over a year ago
Rumor has it you become like those you spend time with. Or “birds of a feather flock together”, or “you are what you eat”. Maybe that last one was Hannibal Lector,
having an old friend for dinner.
Anyway, the person that
you are is influenced by the people you spend time with....
The American Scholar
On Book
August Wilson’s play just hit the big screen, but even greater rewards await on the page
The post On...
a month ago
August Wilson’s play just hit the big screen, but even greater rewards await on the page
The post On Book appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Pure Essay'
“A good deal
that he wrote took the form of the ‘pure’ essay, written, as Lord David Cecil
says,...
7 months ago
“A good deal
that he wrote took the form of the ‘pure’ essay, written, as Lord David Cecil
says, ‘not to instruct or edify but only to produce aesthetic satisfaction.’ I
do not know why it should be so, but today the ‘pure’ essay is a literary genre
to which no reader under sixty...
The Marginalian
On Wanting to Change: Adam Phillips on Our Capacity for Transformation
"There is no description of a life without an account of the changes that are possible within it."
7 months ago
"There is no description of a life without an account of the changes that are possible within it."
The Marginalian
Roxane Gay on Loving vs. Being in Love and the Mark of a Soul Mate
"It isn’t perfect, not at all. It doesn’t need to be. It is, simply, what fills you up."
a year ago
"It isn’t perfect, not at all. It doesn’t need to be. It is, simply, what fills you up."
The Marginalian
An Almanac of Birds: Divinations for Uncertain Days
I have found that the surest way of seeing the wondrous in something ordinary, something previously...
5 months ago
I have found that the surest way of seeing the wondrous in something ordinary, something previously underappreciated, is coming to love someone who loves it. As we enter each other’s worlds in love — whatever its shape or species — we double our way of seeing, broaden our way of...
The Elysian
Hint #3
I'm publishing a new print collection in one week.
4 months ago
I'm publishing a new print collection in one week.
Josh Thompson
Typing for Programmers
If you had to distill my ability to bring value to those around me, it would be “Josh types good”.
I...
over a year ago
If you had to distill my ability to bring value to those around me, it would be “Josh types good”.
I can press these magical little keys on this little metal box here, and make these words come out.
If you’re reading these words, you don’t care how these words actually got on...
The American Scholar
Laura S. Lewis
Welding trash into treasure
The post Laura S. Lewis appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
Welding trash into treasure
The post Laura S. Lewis appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Transcendent Brain: The Poetic Physicist Alan Lightman on Spirituality for the Science-Spirited
A largehearted invitation to "stand on the precipice between the known and the unknown, without...
a year ago
A largehearted invitation to "stand on the precipice between the known and the unknown, without fear, without anxiety, but instead with awe and wonder at this strange and beautiful cosmos we find ourselves in."
The Marginalian
May Sarton on Grieving a Pet
"It is absolutely inward and private, the relation between oneself and an animal."
a year ago
"It is absolutely inward and private, the relation between oneself and an animal."
The Marginalian
You and the Universe: N.J. Berrill’s Poetic 1958 Masterpiece of Cosmic Perspective
"The universe is as we find it and as we discover it within ourselves."
4 months ago
"The universe is as we find it and as we discover it within ourselves."
The Marginalian
Thank You, Everything: An Illustrated Love Letter to the World
We forget that none of this had to exist — that we weren’t owed mountains and music by the universe....
3 weeks ago
We forget that none of this had to exist — that we weren’t owed mountains and music by the universe. And maybe we have to forget — or we would be too stupefied with gratitude for every raindrop and every eyelash to get through the daily tasks punctuating the unbidden wonder of...
Josh Thompson
Anarchy (or, less provocatively, Mutuality and Co-Creation)
In 2017, I read The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the...
8 months ago
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...
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...
Astral Codex Ten
Prison And Crime: Much More Than You Wanted To Know
...
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Also Did Not Hope'
Back to the
theme of non-specialization, of writer as generalist: “Next to
Montaigne, the rest of...
3 months ago
Back to the
theme of non-specialization, of writer as generalist: “Next to
Montaigne, the rest of the great intellectual figures of the sixteenth century,
the leaders of the Renaissance, of Humanism, of the Reformation, and of the
modern sciences, the men who created modern...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Energy in Things Shone Through Their Shapes'
Some
fugitive thinkers among us long for order in a manner almost nostalgic:
“I envied
those past...
a month ago
Some
fugitive thinkers among us long for order in a manner almost nostalgic:
“I envied
those past ages of the world
When, as I
thought, the energy in things
Shone
through their shapes, when sun and moon no less
Than tree or
stone or star or human face
Were seen
but as fantastic...
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...
The Marginalian
An Introvert’s Field Guide to Friendship: Thoreau on the Challenges and Rewards of the Art of...
"We only need to be as true to others as we are to ourselves that there may be ground enough for...
a year ago
"We only need to be as true to others as we are to ourselves that there may be ground enough for friendship."
The Marginalian
Henry James on Losing a Mother
"These are hours of exquisite pain; thank Heaven this particular pang comes to us but once."
a year ago
"These are hours of exquisite pain; thank Heaven this particular pang comes to us but once."
This Space
The Opposite Direction, a book
Please use a link below to download an ebook of posts selected from over the last seven years of...
over a year ago
Please use a link below to download an ebook of posts selected from over the last seven years of this blog.
This is the second collection after This Space of Writing and the title comes from the adolescent Thomas Bernhard's phrase repeated to an official at the labour exchange...
Josh Thompson
Playing with the HTTP send/response cycle in Ruby, without Faraday ("HTTP Yeah You Know Me" project)
As part of the HTTP Server project.
First, I’m working through Practicing Ruby’s “Implementing an...
over a year ago
As part of the HTTP Server project.
First, I’m working through Practicing Ruby’s “Implementing an HTTP File Server” for general practice and understanding.
I’m going to use Postman to capture traffic and try to replicate some of the things the guides reference.
Lastly, I just...
This Space
39 Books: 1999
I've always preferred the Serpent's Tail edition of Pessoa's Book of Disquiet over the others...
8 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...
Ben Borgers
JumboCode plans for Head of Engineering
a year ago
Josh Thompson
Save hundreds by being willing to spend $20
When you pack for a trip, you pack “just in case” items, right? Things that in a certain situation...
over a year ago
When you pack for a trip, you pack “just in case” items, right? Things that in a certain situation would be priceless. Think “umbrella” or “underpants”.
But then you think of all the possible situations you might encounter, and you’ll find your “just in case” items quickly...
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Grand Marxist Stalin Did Ten In'
In one of
the essential books published in the twentieth century, The Great Terror (1968; rev. 1990,...
3 weeks ago
In one of
the essential books published in the twentieth century, The Great Terror (1968; rev. 1990, 2008), Robert Conquest (1917-2015)
writes matter-of-factly: “We are told in recent Soviet articles that on 12
December 1937 alone, Stalin and Molotov sanctioned 3,167 death...
Josh Thompson
Act a Fool, or: Motion vs. Action
If you’ve started reading this article, but have only two minutes, don’t read what I’m writing. Go...
over a year ago
If you’ve started reading this article, but have only two minutes, don’t read what I’m writing. Go read
this article by James clear. It’s called “
The Mistake Smart People Make: Being In Motion vs. Taking Action”. I’ve linked it a third time
here. Go read it.
James starts with...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Those Move Easiest Who Have Learned to Dance'
Hugh Kenner glosses
a well-known couplet in Alexander Pope’s “Essay on Criticism” (1711) by...
a year ago
Hugh Kenner glosses
a well-known couplet in Alexander Pope’s “Essay on Criticism” (1711) by reference to Newton’s
second law of motion (published in 1687 in his Principia Mathematica, one year before Pope’s birth) and “numerous
points of disequilibrium”:
“True ease
in writing...
This Space
39 Books: 2013
I reread books like Aharon Appelfeld's A Table for One and Anne Atik's How It Was as if returning to...
7 months ago
I reread books like Aharon Appelfeld's A Table for One and Anne Atik's How It Was as if returning to a particular bench with a view of the sea. On first glance A Table for One promises only banal, coffee-table memories and reflections, and that would be almost right:
Real...
The American Scholar
Island Royalty
A new biography of a Caribbean revolutionary
The post Island Royalty appeared first on The American...
a month ago
A new biography of a Caribbean revolutionary
The post Island Royalty appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Troublesome Error, a Pernicious Foppery''
Let’s be
grateful to our troubled age for making it necessary to revive such formerly dormant
words...
7 months ago
Let’s be
grateful to our troubled age for making it necessary to revive such formerly dormant
words as cant and foppery, so as to avoid the more precise
but less polite bullshit. For foppery, the OED offers among its definitions “foolishness, imbecility,
stupidity, folly.” It’s...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Also Read for Ecstasy'
A reader one-third
of my age asks, “Why are books so important to you? What do they matter?” Her...
9 months ago
A reader one-third
of my age asks, “Why are books so important to you? What do they matter?” Her questions
aren’t cynical. She sounds like a reader driven by the sort of bookish hunger I
recognize. Her tastes are eclectic, not confined strictly to the American or...
The Marginalian
Simone Weil on Love and Its Counterfeit
How to tell a plaything from a necessity.
a year ago
How to tell a plaything from a necessity.
This Space
"When now?"
Out of curiosity, I read a few novels that over the last year have received the highest praise on...
over a year ago
Out of curiosity, I read a few novels that over the last year have received the highest praise on social media and literary podcasts, and have appeared multiple times in newspaper Books of the Year choices and on prize shortlists, and one that even won a prize. I wanted to see...
This Space
39 Books: 1998
I said I'd come back to "not writing".
A few months ago I watched Unstuck in Time, a long but...
8 months ago
I said I'd come back to "not writing".
A few months ago I watched Unstuck in Time, a long but captivating documentary on the life of Kurt Vonnegut and his friendship with the film's maker, Robert Weide. In his final years, Vonnegut moved to the country and stopped writing. His...
Escaping Flatland
Everything that turned out well in my life followed the same design process
The context is smarter than you.
5 months ago
The context is smarter than you.
This Space
This kingdom by the sea
Published in 1912, it’s about the fall of the repressed writer Gustav
von Aschenbach, when his...
a year ago
Published in 1912, it’s about the fall of the repressed writer Gustav
von Aschenbach, when his supposedly objective appreciation of a young
boy’s beauty becomes sexual obsession.
This is how BBC Radio 4's In Our Time sets up a discussion of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice...
The Elysian
Please come up with wildly speculative futures
Inside my writing philosophy.
9 months ago
Inside my writing philosophy.
Wuthering...
Lucretius brings to light in Latin verse the dark discoveries of the Greeks
During the Hellenistic period, Epicureanism and Stoicism replaced
Plato and Aristotle as the...
a year ago
During the Hellenistic period, Epicureanism and Stoicism replaced
Plato and Aristotle as the dominant philosophical movements (Plato would make a
big comeback; Aristotle would have to wait for the great Arabic philosophers). Both movements were popular in the Roman
Republic as...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Goddam Stone Wall You Butt Your Head Into'
Aging feels like playing the role of a generic Old
Guy on the stage. It’s a performance, not a...
4 hours ago
Aging feels like playing the role of a generic Old
Guy on the stage. It’s a performance, not a chronological state. I can slough
it off any time I wish. Such is the power of delusion. I retire today. On
Thursday I went to the police department on campus to get my retiree’s ID...
Anecdotal Evidence
'As a Whole It Is a Gallimaufry'
“[O]ne is
tempted—though it might be dangerous—to maintain that the best books in the
world were...
10 months ago
“[O]ne is
tempted—though it might be dangerous—to maintain that the best books in the
world were written chiefly for pleasure and with an after-hope to please.”
Things get
sticky when you start plumbing a writer’s intentions. Let’s just say that a dwindling
species of serious...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Known to All But Themselves'
Suddenly,
there’s nothing shameful about ignorance. I mean personally, not as an indictment
of the...
5 months ago
Suddenly,
there’s nothing shameful about ignorance. I mean personally, not as an indictment
of the bigger culture. There’s so much I don’t know or understand, and that
knowledge of my ignorance no longer bothers me very much. I still like learning
things but there was a time when...
The American Scholar
Born to Be Wild
One founding family’s centuries-long journey
The post Born to Be Wild appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
One founding family’s centuries-long journey
The post Born to Be Wild appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Ideology as Anatomy
How shifting ideas about women’s bodies have affected their lives
The post Ideology as Anatomy...
a month ago
How shifting ideas about women’s bodies have affected their lives
The post Ideology as Anatomy appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Taking Your Time, Angel of Death'
I like plain
speaking when it comes to death. Not needlessly harsh but direct and above all...
a month ago
I like plain
speaking when it comes to death. Not needlessly harsh but direct and above all unvarnished,
no flowers, closer to a coroner’s report than a greeting card. A well-meaning
reader has sent belated condolences for my brother’s death in August without
once using any of...
This Space
39 Books: Introducing a blog series
In 1985, I read two books. The following year I read a lot more, and it was then I began to keep a...
8 months ago
In 1985, I read two books. The following year I read a lot more, and it was then I began to keep a list of each book I finished. I've kept the list ever since. In this blog series I will choose one book from each of the 39 years and write whatever occurs to me and post whatever...
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...
10 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...
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...
ben-mini
Root Canals and Bill Gates
In Finding Nemo, there was a scene about a root canal surgery that absolutely terrified me:
This...
6 months ago
In Finding Nemo, there was a scene about a root canal surgery that absolutely terrified me:
This could just be me, but I spent a remarkable amount of my childhood worrying about root canals. Horror stories like these created a universal phobia that dentists suck and that’s...
sbensu
The battlefield where arguments fight
A lot of speech is about convincing others of what type of arguments have merit
10 months ago
A lot of speech is about convincing others of what type of arguments have merit
Escaping Flatland
In praise of insular groups
Last spring, as we were exploring the coastline of our island, Johanna, the kids, and I crossed a...
8 months ago
Last spring, as we were exploring the coastline of our island, Johanna, the kids, and I crossed a meadow where two men were artificially inseminating a longhaired cow. We stopped to observe the work. When it was done, one of the men came over to where we stood by the electric...
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Collection of Scraps and Shards of Knowledge'
“During this time we know [John] Donne was
collecting his fascinations in a book: a collection of...
5 months ago
“During this time we know [John] Donne was
collecting his fascinations in a book: a collection of scraps and shards of
knowledge known as a commonplace book.”
Like Donne (1572-1621), some of us are
magpie-minded, collecting objects shiny and drab, often without obvious
utility....
This Space
39 Books: 2022
"Hölderlin...asked only that we accept silence as the one meaningful syllable in the...
7 months ago
"Hölderlin...asked only that we accept silence as the one meaningful syllable in the universe."
This line from Paul Stubbs' remarkable essay collection The Return to Silence is not an epigram to Marjorie Perloff's Infrathin: An Experiment in Micropoetics, but it might have...
This Space
Proust regained
I recommend very highly for anyone who has read or not read In Search of Lost Time Brian Nelson's...
a year ago
I recommend very highly for anyone who has read or not read In Search of Lost Time Brian Nelson's The Swann Way, the first volume in a new translation of the entire novel by diverse hands, in this fine paperback from Oxford World's Classics. His translation of the chapter Swann...
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.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Like a Golden Retriever'
Part of the pleasure of listening to the late jazz
musician Dave McKenna playing piano was hearing...
a year ago
Part of the pleasure of listening to the late jazz
musician Dave McKenna playing piano was hearing the musical quotes he wove into his improvisations. The practice, deplored by some
critics, was not unique to McKenna, of course. To cite only jazz musicians I
have seen in person,...
Josh Thompson
An announcement, and a teaser (for you rock climbers)
Here’s a clip from a video I shot today.
Can you guess what’s coming?
(This is all going to happen...
over a year ago
Here’s a clip from a video I shot today.
Can you guess what’s coming?
(This is all going to happen on
The Climber’s Guide)
(Warning to mobile users: big gif)
In case you didn’t guess, or you guessed wrong…
I’m shooting tons of video for a course. It’s going to be awesome. It’s...
Blog -...
Book Review - Open
Open by Andre Agassi is a narrative tour de force. I literally could not
put it down. I usually...
over a year ago
Open by Andre Agassi is a narrative tour de force. I literally could not
put it down. I usually have four to six books on the go at any time, but
all of them were put on pause for the day and a half it took me to devour
this book.
The Elysian
Free speech in the age of social media
A discussion about misinformation, echo chambers, media spin, social trolling, and how we can create...
3 weeks ago
A discussion about misinformation, echo chambers, media spin, social trolling, and how we can create something better.
Ben Borgers
The Code That Keeps Me Alive
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Poetry as Prayer: The Great Russian Poet Marina Tsvetaeva on Reclaiming the Divine
"In our age, to have the courage for direct speech to God (for prayer) we must either not know what...
5 months ago
"In our age, to have the courage for direct speech to God (for prayer) we must either not know what poems are, or forget."
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Single Line of Calm'
Judged
solely as a liquid asset, the most valuable book I ever held was a history of
Argentina...
4 weeks ago
Judged
solely as a liquid asset, the most valuable book I ever held was a history of
Argentina borrowed from the public library in Schenectady, N.Y. At home I discovered
the previous reader had marked his place with a twenty-dollar bill. I returned
the book but not the cash. It...
Josh Thompson
Rules for Fighting Fair
When a friend tells me they want to date someone, I ask them why. They always say “she’s pretty,...
over a year ago
When a friend tells me they want to date someone, I ask them why. They always say “she’s pretty, funny, and kind”, or “he is handsome, funny, and cares for me”. Obviously. Have you ever wanted to date someone because they are ugly, boring, and mean?
So, rather than asking more...
Josh Thompson
Hidden Damages of the Introvert vs. Extrovert "debate"
Are you an introvert or an extrovert?
Chances are good an answer pops to your mind. Of course you’re...
over a year ago
Are you an introvert or an extrovert?
Chances are good an answer pops to your mind. Of course you’re right! You’ve taken internet tests! You’ve read Buzzfeed articles describing one aptitude or the other, and you feel like they speak to you!
Stop. Right now. You’re speaking lies...
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...
The American Scholar
Martha Foley’s Granddaughters
What the esteemed literary editor never knew about the life of her troubled son, David Burnett
The...
5 months ago
What the esteemed literary editor never knew about the life of her troubled son, David Burnett
The post Martha Foley’s Granddaughters appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Bright Books! the Perspectives to Our Weak Sights'
April is the
kindest and cruelest month.
Think of the
births: George Herbert (April 3, 1593),...
8 months ago
April is the
kindest and cruelest month.
Think of the
births: George Herbert (April 3, 1593), Shakespeare (April 23, 1564), Henry
Vaughan (April 17, 1621), Daniel Defoe (April 24, 1731), Edward Gibbon (April
27, 1737), William Hazlitt (April 10, 1778), Anthony Trollope (April...
Wuthering...
The sophists and their rehabilitation - they clearly cause the ruin and corruption of their...
I have been pursuing the sophists, the great antagonists of Socrates and Plato. Minimized for...
a year ago
I have been pursuing the sophists, the great antagonists of Socrates and Plato. Minimized for centuries in the history of philosophy as, following Plato (but not Socrates), hucksters, they, or some of them, are now taken seriously as an intermediate step between the cosmological...
Anecdotal Evidence
'When We Have Excellent Books, They Sell'
“People tell
us all the time that civilization is finished, that the world is coming to an
end. But...
4 months ago
“People tell
us all the time that civilization is finished, that the world is coming to an
end. But then we look at our sales details and we smile.”
John Byron
Kuhner posts a rare dispatch of hope from the world of books, the beating heart
of what remains of our civilization. In...
This Space
The enigma for criticism
To this day, I can learn only from bad films. The good ones I watch in the same spirit in which I...
a year ago
To this day, I can learn only from bad films. The good ones I watch in the same spirit in which I watched when I was a kid. The great ones, even when I see them many times, are just an enigma.
Werner Herzog describes a few "bad films" in his autobiography, all from his...
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Accepter and Recorder of Things as They Are'
It has been
a good week for the satisfaction of knowing that a book I recommended has been
read and...
a year ago
It has been
a good week for the satisfaction of knowing that a book I recommended has been
read and enjoyed. A reader in New York City tells me the title character of
V.S. Pritchett’s 1951 novel Mr. Beluncle
reminds her of her late father, a man she describes as “feckless.” And...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Hallmark of What Is Truly Priceless'
“. . . what
literature is really about: our very survival as human beings.”
A bit melodramatic,
no?...
10 months ago
“. . . what
literature is really about: our very survival as human beings.”
A bit melodramatic,
no? Grandiose? Perhaps expressed by a writer worried about sales or a reader boosting
his self-esteem? Could be. But there’s something to it. Maybe it amounts to
more than...
The American Scholar
Look Out!
Why did it take so long to protect
The post Look Out! appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
Why did it take so long to protect
The post Look Out! appeared first on The American Scholar.
Steven Scrawls
"Progress"
“Progress”
The following tables are my (opinionated, minimally researched)
answers to questions...
a year ago
“Progress”
The following tables are my (opinionated, minimally researched)
answers to questions about a curated version of Wikipedia’s
list of most-visited websites (see Notes for
details). I invite you to follow along, issue your own snap judgments,
and come to your own...
The Marginalian
The Ant, the Grasshopper, and the Antidote to the Cult of More: A Lovely Vintage Illustrated Poem...
“Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily...
a year ago
“Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily Dickinson lamented in a love letter. In his splendid short poem about the secret of happiness, Kurt Vonnegut exposed the taproot of our modern suffering as the gnawing sense that what we...
Josh Thompson
November 2016 Review
Note to the reader: The words that follow are all about me. This is naval-gaze-ish. I feel I owe you...
over a year ago
Note to the reader: The words that follow are all about me. This is naval-gaze-ish. I feel I owe you this warning.
My November goals were an extension of October’s goals. I feel comfortable with long-term unchanging goals.
They were:
Deepen my knowledge of front-end web...
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...
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...
3 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
'A Minute Passage of Private Life'
A young reader asks “Why ‘anecdotal’?” It was a last-minute decision
that Sunday afternoon almost...
a year ago
A young reader asks “Why ‘anecdotal’?” It was a last-minute decision
that Sunday afternoon almost eighteen years ago. I had it narrowed down to
three or four potential titles but liked the legal/criminological connotation
of “anecdotal evidence,” which is always judged suspect by...
Josh Thompson
POODR Notes: Acquiring Behavior Through Inheritance (Chapter 6)
I’m reading through Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby .
These are some notes from chapter 6,...
over a year ago
I’m reading through Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby .
These are some notes from chapter 6, Acquiring Behavior Through Inheritance; mostly these are for me, and they don’t intend to stand on their own. Read the book, work through chapter six, and then come back and read...
The Marginalian
How You Relate to Anything Is How You Relate to Everything: Reclaiming the Spirit of the Christmas...
Because life is a cosmos of connection, because to be alive is to be in relationship with the world,...
a week ago
Because life is a cosmos of connection, because to be alive is to be in relationship with the world, because (in the immortal words of John Muir) “when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe,” how we relate to anything is how...
Josh Thompson
Depression
I’m starting to write more regularly these days. For a long time, I’ve hardly written anything, or...
over a year ago
I’m starting to write more regularly these days. For a long time, I’ve hardly written anything, or only written when external circumstances required me to write something. For example, when I give a talk, I always create a page to “support” the talk, that I can link to in slides,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Other Thermopylae, the Alamo'
A reader asks for impressions of Texas, a place
she, a lifelong Northerner, has never visited....
7 months ago
A reader asks for impressions of Texas, a place
she, a lifelong Northerner, has never visited. Twenty years ago last month I
saw Texas for the first time, and the first surprise, seen from the air, was
abundant greenery. I was expecting desert and tumbleweeds. Houston is...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Bluster (New Style) Invokes the Public Good'
I write
about money more often than ever before at my day job. I’m not naïve and understand
that...
a year ago
I write
about money more often than ever before at my day job. I’m not naïve and understand
that research can be costly and professors don’t work for the love of it, but money
has become the barometer of worth. Small grants can be ignored regardless of
the intrinsic worth of the...
The American Scholar
Mortal Coils
We aren’t alone in facing the inevitable
The post Mortal Coils appeared first on The American...
4 months ago
We aren’t alone in facing the inevitable
The post Mortal Coils 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...
a month 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...
Ben Borgers
Work-Life Separation in College
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Make Hard Things Easier by Removing Friction
Friction resists movement.
Lots of things count as (negative) friction.
Anything that consumes...
over a year ago
Friction resists movement.
Lots of things count as (negative) friction.
Anything that consumes resources (time, energy, money, physical goods.)
Anything that causes negative feelings (shame, doubt, guilt, fear.)
Anything that could have a downside (losing money, respect, your...
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...
9 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.
The Elysian
The rich are controlling our government
Ok but what can we do about it?
3 weeks ago
Ok but what can we do about it?
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Stand for the Unacademic'
“I stand for
the un-Academic: the anti-Academic.”
As do most
of the better sort among writers and...
9 months ago
“I stand for
the un-Academic: the anti-Academic.”
As do most
of the better sort among writers and readers. Something vital was lost when the
profs colonized and laid claim to literature. John Gross puts it like this in The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters
(1969; rev. ed....
The Marginalian
William James on Love
"If it comes, it comes; if it does not come, no process of reasoning can force it. Yet it transforms...
9 months ago
"If it comes, it comes; if it does not come, no process of reasoning can force it. Yet it transforms the value of the creature loved."
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Most Perverse Gesture'
“Books are
friends, oracles, household gods, characters in the ongoing drama of our...
a year ago
“Books are
friends, oracles, household gods, characters in the ongoing drama of our minds.”
Understandably,
Lance Marrow gets a little sentimental about books and their needless
destruction. We resist soft-headed fetishism but for some of us, discarding or
destroying books, even...
Ben Borgers
I Used All of My Meal Swipes!
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Current Self and Going to Libraries
over a year ago
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.
Josh Thompson
Bootstrapping streetcars in Golden
I was describing this two or three stage plan to a friend the other day. They almost understood it,...
over a year ago
I was describing this two or three stage plan to a friend the other day. They almost understood it, but since they don’t live in Golden, and have not spent a lot of their life nerding out on “urban mobility infrastructure”, they didn’t quite get it.
Since I’m trying to write...
The American Scholar
Rhyme, Not Repetition
All that’s past isn’t necessarily present
The post Rhyme, Not Repetition appeared first on The...
7 months ago
All that’s past isn’t necessarily present
The post Rhyme, Not Repetition appeared first on The American Scholar.
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 362.5
...
yesterday
The Perry Bible...
Brushed
The post Brushed appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
7 months ago
The post Brushed appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
Anecdotal Evidence
'It's on the Russian Level'
“I’m not a
great reader of fiction. I read through all of Jane Austen with pleasure. I
read through...
5 months ago
“I’m not a
great reader of fiction. I read through all of Jane Austen with pleasure. I
read through George Eliot at school, but I was too young to appreciate her
then. But about a year ago I read Middlemarch.
Most marvellous book. Best
thing in nineteenth-century English fiction,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Those Move Easiest Who Have Learn’d to Dance'
Alexander
Pope’s 1716 imitation of Martial’s epigram X.23:
“At length,
my Friend (while Time, with...
7 months ago
Alexander
Pope’s 1716 imitation of Martial’s epigram X.23:
“At length,
my Friend (while Time, with still career,
Wafts on his
gentle wing his eightieth year),
Sees his
past days safe out of Fortune’s power,
Nor dreads
approaching Fate’s uncertain hour;
Reviews his
life, and in...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Expression of Blatant Despotism'
Two female
acquaintances have recently endured divorce, and their lives are measurably
improved. The...
a year ago
Two female
acquaintances have recently endured divorce, and their lives are measurably
improved. The woman I know better, whose wedding and reception we attended, was
married to a thuggish prison guard of a husband. You wouldn’t know it, looking
at him. Handsome, well-dressed and...
The American Scholar
Imperfecta
Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the...
7 months ago
Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the emerging era of gene editing
The post Imperfecta appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
''He Knew It Was All Wrong for the Season'
Once I
listened to a guy who had decided to stop drinking while sitting alone in a
diner eating his...
a week ago
Once I
listened to a guy who had decided to stop drinking while sitting alone in a
diner eating his Christmas dinner, separated from his wife and children. He
recalled the moment with good humor. What had depressed him was eating canned
corn. He had grown up associating good food...
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...
4 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
'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...
2 weeks ago
With the deaths
of certain writers our reaction is shamefully selfish: Why did he do that to me? No thought for family or friends, or
even other readers, merely one’s sense of personal betrayal. That’s how I felt
seven years ago when Richard Wilbur died at age ninety-six, as...
Ben Borgers
Brief: AI-summarized news
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Comet & Star: A Cosmic Fable about the Rhythms and Consolations of Friendship
People pass through our lives and change us, tilting our orbit with their own. Sometimes, if the...
2 months ago
People pass through our lives and change us, tilting our orbit with their own. Sometimes, if the common gravitational center is strong enough, they return, they stay. Sometimes they travel on. But they change us all the same. The great consolation of the cosmic order is the...
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."
Wuthering...
The Story of the Stone, volume 3 - melodrama, drinking games, and "a convocation of bees and...
I am two-thirds through Cao Xueqin’s enormous The Story
of the Stone (c. 1760), volume 3 of the...
3 weeks ago
I am two-thirds through Cao Xueqin’s enormous The Story
of the Stone (c. 1760), volume 3 of the David Hawkes translation, and the
next twenty chapters have arrived at the library so I had better write this
chunk up.
In this big middle section a number of minor or even...
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
'Perhaps the Most Impressive of All'
Spices meant
salt and pepper. For my family like others in the American working class, there
was no...
3 months ago
Spices meant
salt and pepper. For my family like others in the American working class, there
was no cardamom or turmeric. When I was a kid those would have sounded vaguely
like medical conditions. We never heard of such things until decades later.
For some baked goods, breakfast...
This Space
Twentieth anniversary post
On this day in 2004, I posted the first entry on this blog.
In recent years many posts have...
3 months ago
On this day in 2004, I posted the first entry on this blog.
In recent years many posts have reflected on the past and present of literary blogging (there is no future) so I will not go over that waste land again except to wish more had followed the example of This Space. One of...
This Space
39 Books: 2023
This is the 39th and final post of this series. As the introduction explains, I began seeking a...
7 months ago
This is the 39th and final post of this series. As the introduction explains, I began seeking a return to the short-form of the early days of blogging. And it started off well, with each entry written in no time, sometimes stirring up the sediment of initial enchantment. As I got...
The American Scholar
Kat Wiese
Taking flight
The post Kat Wiese appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
Taking flight
The post Kat Wiese appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
5 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
What It Takes to Grow: Pioneering Psychoanalyst Karen Horney on the Key to Self-Realization
"Self-knowledge... is not an aim in itself, but a means of liberating the forces of spontaneous...
a year ago
"Self-knowledge... is not an aim in itself, but a means of liberating the forces of spontaneous growth. In this sense, to work at ourselves becomes not only the prime moral obligation, but... the prime moral privilege."
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Kind of Representative Figure of His Era'
We gave our sons
Hebrew names: Joshua, Michael, David. They roughly translate as “God is...
a year ago
We gave our sons
Hebrew names: Joshua, Michael, David. They roughly translate as “God is deliverance,”
“gift of God” and “beloved,” respectively. We are not Jewish and not linguists
but we like plain names rooted in tradition, names with an identifiable history
traceable, in this...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Knowing Only What Is Shown, Nothing Learned'
In Wednesday’s
installment of his newsletter “Prufrock,” Micah Mattix praises the American poet...
a year ago
In Wednesday’s
installment of his newsletter “Prufrock,” Micah Mattix praises the American poet Ernest Hilbert’s “understated realism” -- as opposed to hyperbolic fantasy, I
suppose. There’s a sobriety to Hilbert’s work, a mature acceptance of the real world
unaccompanied by...
The Marginalian
Polyvagal Theory and the Neurobiology of Connection: The Science of Rupture, Repair, and Reciprocity
"The mind narrates what the nervous system knows. Story follows state."
7 months ago
"The mind narrates what the nervous system knows. Story follows state."
Josh Thompson
Let Me Fix [some of] Your Parking Problems
Hi there! I’m Josh, and I’m your local neighborhood advocate for overlooked spaces.
Today, we’ll be...
a year ago
Hi there! I’m Josh, and I’m your local neighborhood advocate for overlooked spaces.
Today, we’ll be focusing on parking lots.
Your parking lot has a job to do, and every day, every night, rain or shine, hot or cold, clear, rainy, or snowy, your parking lot does the best it can at...
sbensu
Love's Executioner (book)
Countertransference applies to regular conversation.
a month ago
Countertransference applies to regular conversation.
Ben Borgers
There’s No Personal Space in College
over a year ago
The American Scholar
“Peter Quince at the Clavier” by Wallace Stevens
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Peter Quince at the Clavier” by Wallace Stevens appeared...
5 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Peter Quince at the Clavier” by Wallace Stevens appeared first on The American Scholar.
sbensu
Everybody is the main character
People are motivated and engaged with the work only if they feel in charge of their own destiny....
a year ago
People are motivated and engaged with the work only if they feel in charge of their own destiny. Make it clear to them that they are!
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...
11 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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Even Erudition is Possible Outside Academe'
A reader tells
me he earned his B.A. in English several years ago and now he works for a
non-profit...
5 months ago
A reader tells
me he earned his B.A. in English several years ago and now he works for a
non-profit that pushes “arts education,” whatever that might be. I don’t take
him for an idealist. He’s bright, personable, an ambitious reader and bored.
Our culture doesn’t know what to do...
The Marginalian
The Paradise Notebooks: A Poet and a Geologist’s Love Letter to Life Lensed Through a Mountain
"Each world bears all the worlds we might find within it. If you understand one outcropping of...
8 months ago
"Each world bears all the worlds we might find within it. If you understand one outcropping of stone, or one wildflower, or one hummingbird — if we see our way along the tracery of cause and effect, the mystery of change and recreation — then we are led to everything we see, and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Wish That He’d Arrived Much Sooner'
I offended
a reader by referring to Samuel Taylor Coleridge as “a brilliant windbag junkie.”
Let’s...
a year ago
I offended
a reader by referring to Samuel Taylor Coleridge as “a brilliant windbag junkie.”
Let’s consider each part of the epithet. “Brilliant”? Without question. He wrote
three incontestably good poems but Coleridge is an early specimen of the “public
intellectual,” bristling...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Author Who Inspires Such Perennial Affection'
“This
impossibly erudite, overbearing, tender, and anguished man lived in a perpetual
state of...
3 weeks ago
“This
impossibly erudite, overbearing, tender, and anguished man lived in a perpetual
state of dissatisfaction with himself which only disciplined labor could allay
but never completely still.”
In their moral
and emotional complexity, certain lives resemble the finest novels –...
The Marginalian
O Sweet Spontaneous: E.E. Cummings’s Love-Poem to Earth and the Glory of Spring
The ultimate anthem of resistance to the assaults on life.
a year ago
The ultimate anthem of resistance to the assaults on life.
The Elysian
Idea Labs! An open thread for collaborative worldbuilding
Let's brainstorm the future together.
9 months ago
Let's brainstorm the future together.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Let Us See Them There in the Shadows'
A childhood
acquaintance has died. We were never close. In fact, I didn’t know he was still
alive...
6 months ago
A childhood
acquaintance has died. We were never close. In fact, I didn’t know he was still
alive until a friend told me he was dead. What I remember is his face, his
general demeanor, roughly the sort of behavior I could expect of him. I last
saw him more than half a century...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Mind Quite Vacant Is a Mind Distress’d'
I’ll be
going halftime at the university, effective July 1, in preparation for retiring
later this...
6 months ago
I’ll be
going halftime at the university, effective July 1, in preparation for retiring
later this year. I knew a guy in high school who already yearned for retirement
despite never having had a job, whereas I’d been working since I was twelve. He
wanted to play golf and go...
The Marginalian
How to Be More Alive: Hermann Hesse on Wonder and the Proper Aim of Education
"While wandering down the path of wonder, I briefly escape the world of separation and enter the...
a year ago
"While wandering down the path of wonder, I briefly escape the world of separation and enter the world of unity."
sbensu
The person behind the idea
When reading, it is worth understanding the kind of person authors are.
a month ago
When reading, it is worth understanding the kind of person authors are.
Josh Thompson
Cultivate Curiosity, or 'Reasons to be More Childlike'
I’ve had an idea rolling around my head.
I suspect that “being curious” will correlate well with...
over a year ago
I’ve had an idea rolling around my head.
I suspect that “being curious” will correlate well with positive outcomes in my life, on pretty much any time horizon, be it days, weeks, or decades. Curiosity feels like a tolerable antidote to boredom, though boredom in and of itself is...
Escaping Flatland
A measuring device that tells me what is interesting
+ links
3 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Ordinary, Helpless, Moody Human Talk'
Long ago I came
to accept that certain writers will never be enjoyed by certain readers. I’m...
a year ago
Long ago I came
to accept that certain writers will never be enjoyed by certain readers. I’m no
matchmaker and don’t have the soul of a proselytizer. I resent people telling
me what I ought to like. On Wednesday two young missionaries came to the front
door. One launched his...
This Space
Books of the year 2024
In order of being read.
Giorgio Agamben – What I saw, heard, learned…
One night, along Venice’s...
2 weeks ago
In order of being read.
Giorgio Agamben – What I saw, heard, learned…
One night, along Venice’s Zattere, watching the putrid water lap at the city’s foundations, I saw that we exist solely in the intermittence of our being, and that what we call I is just a shadow...
The 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.
The Marginalian
Joy as a Force of Resistance and a Halo of Loss, with a Nick Cave Song and a Lisel Mueller Poem
In this world heavy with robust reasons for despair, joy is a stubborn courage we must not...
3 months ago
In this world heavy with robust reasons for despair, joy is a stubborn courage we must not surrender, a fulcrum of personal power we must not yield to cynicism, blame, or any other costume of helplessness. “Experience of conflict and a load of suffering has taught me that what...
Anecdotal Evidence
'When Young Men Go to Die'
Like most lifelong civilian Americans, I have
never fired a gun in my life. I owned a BB gun when I...
7 months ago
Like most lifelong civilian Americans, I have
never fired a gun in my life. I owned a BB gun when I was a kid and often fired
my brother’s pellet gun. My experience with firearms is entirely second- or
third-hand via the movies, which give me the illusion that I know...
Josh Thompson
HTTParty and to_json
I was having some trouble debugging an HTTParty POST request.
A few tools that were useful to...
over a year ago
I was having some trouble debugging an HTTParty POST request.
A few tools that were useful to me:
post DEBUG info to STDOUT
netcat to listen to HTTP requests locally
I had this code:
options = {
headers: {
"Content-Type": "application/json",
authorization: "Bearer...
Wuthering...
Diogenes Laertius and the fun of the fragment
We have the complete Plato, from multiple manuscript sources. We have lost every published book...
a year ago
We have the complete Plato, from multiple manuscript sources. We have lost every published book (widely copied scroll) of Aristotle’s, but a large mass of what are perhaps transcribed lecture notes survived, barely, in a single manuscript, so that is our Aristotle. I don’t know...
Josh Thompson
Change your MAC address with a shell script
For a while, I’ve had notes from Change or Spoof a MAC Address in Windows or OS X saved, so if I am...
over a year ago
For a while, I’ve had notes from Change or Spoof a MAC Address in Windows or OS X saved, so if I am using a wifi connection that limits me to thirty minutes or an hour or whatever, I can “spoof” a new MAC address, and when I re-connect to the wifi, the access point thinks I’m on...
Josh Thompson
Avoid a car accident with a $3 tool
TL;DR: Buy a
blind spot mirror for your car. They are $2, and can keep you from getting in an...
over a year ago
TL;DR: Buy a
blind spot mirror for your car. They are $2, and can keep you from getting in an accident. Not a lot of people have them, though they’re awesome.
I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about how to make driving safer.
Step 1 to making driving safer is “don’t...
Josh Thompson
Robert Moses - The Most Important Person You've Never Heard Of
this was originally posted a few years ago, republishing as a blog post as I organize an...
7 months ago
this was originally posted a few years ago, republishing as a blog post as I organize an increasingly large number of links and resources here.
Here’s a big dumping ground for some resources on robert moses I’ve got floating around.
Obviously, this has grown to an unwieldy sizy...
Escaping Flatland
Without looking it up, what do you think?
+ links
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Like to Think of Pasteur in Elysium'
In 1985, the
year Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo, the scholar
and...
7 months ago
In 1985, the
year Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo, the scholar
and translator Clarence Brown published The
Portable Twentieth-Century Russian Reader, a selection ranging from Tolstoy
and Chekhov to Voinovich and Sokolov. In the introduction he...
The American Scholar
The Baritone as Democrat
How Lawrence Tibbett prophesied the Metropolitan Opera crisis of today
The post The Baritone as...
a month ago
How Lawrence Tibbett prophesied the Metropolitan Opera crisis of today
The post The Baritone as Democrat appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
My Guilt for Useless Things
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Tour of D3 for Clueless Folk Like Me
D3 stands for Data Driven Documents, and it’s the coolest thing ever.
Check out a few...
over a year ago
D3 stands for Data Driven Documents, and it’s the coolest thing ever.
Check out a few examples:
Animated, interactive curves(dynamic)
OMG Particles II(dynamic)
simple map of the us(static) <= very little code
Radial Dendrogram(static)
circle wave(dynamic)
Force-directed...
This Space
Ultimate things: The Aphorisms of Franz Kafka
Although we are unmusical, we have a tradition of singing
Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse...
over a year ago
Although we are unmusical, we have a tradition of singing
Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk
The first reason to celebrate Shelley Frisch’s new translation into English of Kafka’s short prose written in the village of Zürau, now Siřem in the Czech Republic, is that...
This Space
39 Books: 2011
How does one respond to Nietzsche's revelation at Sils Maria?
I read Pierre Klossowski's Nietzsche...
7 months ago
How does one respond to Nietzsche's revelation at Sils Maria?
I read Pierre Klossowski's Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle because the thought of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same occurred to me as a literary concept, perhaps the ultimate experience of the literary, but needed...
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...
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...
The Elysian
Hint #2
I'm publishing a new print collection in two weeks.
4 months ago
I'm publishing a new print collection in two weeks.
sbensu
Risk-takers decide faster
Unsurprising connection between risk and speed.
a month ago
Unsurprising connection between risk and speed.
Robert Caro
An Interview With Robert Caro and Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt greeted us in his beautiful 19th century house and in his bare feet (of which more later). As...
a year ago
Kurt greeted us in his beautiful 19th century house and in his bare feet (of which more later). As the interview progressed it grew sort of
The Perry Bible...
Hacked
The post Hacked appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
9 months ago
The post Hacked appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
The Marginalian
Turning from Peril to Possibility: Ecological Superhero Christiana Figueres on the Spirituality of...
Few things have maimed the spirit of Western civilization more than the myth of our expulsion from...
a year ago
Few things have maimed the spirit of Western civilization more than the myth of our expulsion from the Garden of Eden — a deeply damaging story about human nature, damning us and our relationship to nature. Unthinkingly, we have perpetuated this story in our present narrative...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Soil Must Have Been Prepared'
Tom Disch
took the title of his first collection of essays and reviews from “The Castle of...
a year ago
Tom Disch
took the title of his first collection of essays and reviews from “The Castle of Indolence” (1748), eighty-one Spenserian stanzas by the Scottish poet James
Thomson. The poem is a sort of mock-epical hymn to the Protestant work ethic, a virtue ably
represented by...
The American Scholar
Tramping With Virginia
A seminal essay about walking the streets of London can present challenges in the classrooms of...
7 months ago
A seminal essay about walking the streets of London can present challenges in the classrooms of today
The post Tramping With Virginia appeared first on The American Scholar.
The 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."
Full Width 
Shortcuts 
Sign Up 
Log In 
Articles 
Reading List 