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The Elysian
An American case for building new cities We need to remember how to build things.
3 months ago
The Marginalian
A Glow in the Consciousness: The Continuous Creative Act of Seeing Clearly "Simply to look on anything... with the love that penetrates to its essence, is to widen the domain...
a year ago
50
a year ago
"Simply to look on anything... with the love that penetrates to its essence, is to widen the domain of being in the vastness of non-being."
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...
10 months ago
69
10 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...
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...
over a year ago
23
over 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
Ben Borgers
Did MCAS Matter?
over a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
Tegmark's Mathematical Universe Defeats Most Proofs Of God's Existence ...
4 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'So a Fool Returneth to His Folly' Grownups seldom credit children with insight into human psychology, thus treating them as smaller,...
3 months ago
28
3 months ago
Grownups seldom credit children with insight into human psychology, thus treating them as smaller, more annoying versions of themselves. My father had an acquaintance even he knew was a fool. By admitting such knowledge, he was violating adult solidarity. His friend's customary...
Josh Thompson
June trip to the New River Gorge The New River Gorge had beautiful weather this weekend. The forecast for the weekend was, until...
over a year ago
14
over a year ago
The New River Gorge had beautiful weather this weekend. The forecast for the weekend was, until Friday, near-certain thunderstorms. Typical of the New, the weather proved unpredictable, and we had glorious sun the entire trip. I was eager to get out to the New, since my last...
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...
a year ago
43
a year 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...
Wuthering...
Books finished in March 2023 For some reason I have been putting a monthly account of completed books on Twitter, where it is a...
over a year ago
56
over a year ago
For some reason I have been putting a monthly account of completed books on Twitter, where it is a common practice, although mostly with photographs of book stacks.  I am not sure why I have not put the lists here as well.  I guess I am not sure any of this is interesting. Soon,...
Escaping Flatland
Advice from my editor A sculptural representation of JS Bach’s Fugue in E Flat Minor by Henrik Neugeboren “I can’t make...
a year ago
101
a year ago
A sculptural representation of JS Bach’s Fugue in E Flat Minor by Henrik Neugeboren “I can’t make myself finish this one,” Johanna said one night when we were reading together in bed. She was working her way through a 6021-word essay draft about identities as interfaces that I...
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
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
15
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...
The American Scholar
“The Purse-Seine” by Robinson Jeffers Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Purse-Seine” by Robinson Jeffers appeared first on The...
6 months ago
46
6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Purse-Seine” by Robinson Jeffers appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
An Enigma at the Center The story of the American West in one photograph The post An Enigma at the Center appeared first on...
a month ago
16
a month ago
The story of the American West in one photograph The post An Enigma at the Center appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Rhyme, Not Repetition All that’s past isn’t necessarily present The post Rhyme, Not Repetition appeared first on The...
a year ago
40
a year ago
All that’s past isn’t necessarily present The post Rhyme, Not Repetition appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The New Science of Plant Intelligence and the Mystery of What Makes a Mind "Every thought that has ever passed through your brain was made possible by plants."
a year ago
Ben Borgers
Brief: AI-summarized news
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Injury Impedes Improvement Kristi and I have been in Colorado for three months, I’ve been climbing regularly for two, I am back...
over a year ago
14
over a year ago
Kristi and I have been in Colorado for three months, I’ve been climbing regularly for two, I am back in shape and it feels good. I am tempted to throw myself into climbing again. To climb every day, or maybe every other day, and finish every session with training. But here’s the...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Being Hired to Care One of the biggest mistakes that I see people make as they start to dip their toes into advising is...
10 months ago
13
10 months ago
One of the biggest mistakes that I see people make as they start to dip their toes into advising is try to anchor their work to specific deliverables. Doing this is bad for a number of reasons, but the primary one is that when you’re being brought on as an advisor, you’re not...
Josh Thompson
Structural Holes and Good Ideas Note from author: This is part of an experimental series, more-or-less based on “white papers” and...
over a year ago
15
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...
The Elysian
Your alternatives to democracy Entries to the March writing prompt.
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Better Bread Than Is Made of Wheat' Sometimes disparate things almost announce their covert similarities and linkages, in a way...
4 months ago
27
4 months ago
Sometimes disparate things almost announce their covert similarities and linkages, in a way Aristotle would have understood, and it makes good sense to combine them. I was looking for something in The Poet’s Tongue, the anthology compiled by W.H. Auden and the schoolmaster John...
Wuthering...
The Frogs by Aristophanes - Brilliant! Brilliant! Wish I knew what you were talking about! The Frogs by Aristophanes is this week’s play.  It was performed in what now look like the waning...
over a year ago
51
over a year ago
The Frogs by Aristophanes is this week’s play.  It was performed in what now look like the waning days of Athens, just before their conquest by Sparta, and in particular the last days of Athenian tragedy, with Euripides and Sophocles both recently dead.  In what may be the most...
Josh Thompson
The Violence of God and the Hermeneutics of Paul Sometimes I (Josh) want to share around certain academic works. Sometimes its a PDF that I want...
over a year ago
20
over a year ago
Sometimes I (Josh) want to share around certain academic works. Sometimes its a PDF that I want someone to download and read, sometimes it’s text from a book I’ve read, and cannot otherwise get a sharable format of. So, I laboriously take photos of pages, use an optical character...
The American Scholar
Drops in a Bucket The post Drops in a Bucket appeared first on The American Scholar.
11 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Needlessly Limited Accommodation' That certain mediocre books are judged “classics,” at least by teachers and librarians desperate to...
2 weeks ago
9
2 weeks ago
That certain mediocre books are judged “classics,” at least by teachers and librarians desperate to stock their shelves, fill bulletin boards and placate administrators, is well-known and nobody says much about it. I’m uncertain what mysterious collective formulates this canon...
Josh Thompson
Preparing to adopt a habit There are many habits I wish I had. More times than I can count, I have tried to get up early. I...
over a year ago
20
over a year ago
There are many habits I wish I had. More times than I can count, I have tried to get up early. I faithfully set my alarm for some crack-of-dawn time that leaves me with a reasonable amount of sleep, but gives me time to myself before I have to get ready for work. Almost as many...
The Marginalian
The Art of the Sacred Pause and Despair as a Catalyst of Regeneration Just as there are transitional times in the life of the world — dark periods of disorientation...
6 months ago
42
6 months ago
Just as there are transitional times in the life of the world — dark periods of disorientation between two world systems, periods in which humanity loses the ability to comprehend itself and collapses into chaos in order to rebuild itself around a new organizing principle — there...
The American Scholar
Catalina Schliebener Muñoz Playing with dolls The post Catalina Schliebener Muñoz appeared first on The American Scholar.
a year ago
Josh Thompson
Cheap fix to night-time teeth grinding A few years ago, I found out I grind me teeth at night. Kristi says it sounds like I’m chewing...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
A few years ago, I found out I grind me teeth at night. Kristi says it sounds like I’m chewing marbles. Others who grind their teeth give themselves headaches, or wake themselves up at night. You can’t really stop yourself from grinding your teeth, since you’re asleep. You can...
This Space
39 Books: 2020 It may be a sign of something that I read Louis-René des Forêts's Poems of Samuel Wood several years...
a year ago
92
a year ago
It may be a sign of something that I read Louis-René des Forêts's Poems of Samuel Wood several years after reading A Voice from Elsewhere in which Maurice Blanchot dedicates three unusually personal (and often bewildering) essays to them. The book's title is adapted from a line...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Every map of China is wrong. And this is intentional… If you’ve never looked at a digital map of China, I urge you to do it now — initially, if you look...
8 months ago
40
8 months ago
If you’ve never looked at a digital map of China, I urge you to do it now — initially, if you look at the street view, it looks like any other map you’ve encountered. However, if you overlay the satellite view you can see things are out of whack. Visit original link → or View on...
Ploum.net
Pérenniser ma numérique éphémérité Pérenniser ma numérique éphémérité J’écris mon journal personnel à la machine à écrire. De simples...
7 months ago
15
7 months ago
Pérenniser ma numérique éphémérité J’écris mon journal personnel à la machine à écrire. De simples feuilles de papier que je fais relier chaque année et dont le contenu n’est nulle part en ligne. Pourtant, j’ai le sentiment que ce contenu a beaucoup plus de chances d’être un jour...
The Marginalian
Against the Pleasurable Luxury of Despair and the Aridity of Self-pity: Doris Lessing on the... "The choice before us... is not merely a question of preventing an evil, but of strengthening a...
a month ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Forty Three On March 28th 2021, I turned 43. My second pandemic birthday, I turned 42 shortly after San...
over a year ago
11
over a year ago
On March 28th 2021, I turned 43. My second pandemic birthday, I turned 42 shortly after San Francisco went into lockdown. It feels like a lifetime has passed between now and then, and with a sense of deja vu, like it was yesterday. Except that I wasn't at home, and I was on the...
The Marginalian
The Moon and the Yew Tree: Patti Smith Reads Sylvia Plath’s Haunting Portrait of Depression "This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary."
a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
Links For January 2025 ...
5 months ago
Josh Thompson
Cancel Your Cable. Seriously. No one likes to waste money, right? There are two things that are even worse to...
over a year ago
12
over a year ago
No one likes to waste money, right? There are two things that are even worse to waste. Time Energy Money can be earned, and if more is needed, you can spend less or earn more. Energy is what you need to bring ideas to fruition. Unlimited time with no energy gets you nowhere, as...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ For our fathers Day 17: Sept 26, 2023 — Jen’s father, Michael Schuetz, passed away on Father’s Day, June 20, 2010....
a year ago
12
a year ago
Day 17: Sept 26, 2023 — Jen’s father, Michael Schuetz, passed away on Father’s Day, June 20, 2010. My father, Abdul Hamid Hussain, passed away on Father’s Day, June 18, 2017. It’s another occurrence of similarity and coincidence that feels cosmic to us. Today, we’re in...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Foursquare Open Source Places: A new foundational dataset for the geospatial community It is reasonable to ask, why a company like Foursquare who has spent years building a proprietary...
7 months ago
20
7 months ago
It is reasonable to ask, why a company like Foursquare who has spent years building a proprietary dataset would freely open a layer of that data to the community. So reasonable in fact that many of my colleagues thought I had lost my mind when I shared the news that we would be...
The Marginalian
How to Be More Alive: Artist and Philosopher Rockwell Kent on Breaking the Trance of Near-living The point, of course, is to make yourself alive — to feel the force of being in your sinew and your...
3 months ago
33
3 months ago
The point, of course, is to make yourself alive — to feel the force of being in your sinew and your spirit, to tremble with the beauty and the terror of it all, to breathe lungfuls of life that gasp you awake from the trance of near-living induced by the system of waste and want...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 The Myth of “Do What You Love” The most striking point, to me, from Tokumitsu’s book is how easily the myth of ’do what you love’...
10 months ago
12
10 months ago
The most striking point, to me, from Tokumitsu’s book is how easily the myth of ’do what you love’ cracks when you press on it. The underlying message of such a myth, she writes, is that ‘each individual’s specialness will guide him or her to work that he or she enjoys and that...
The Elysian
I'm crowdfunding a book—we've raised $38,000 already! But writing about a better economy isn't enough, we have to build it too.
4 months ago
The American Scholar
“Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes appeared first on...
a year ago
86
a year ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Daybreak in Alabama” by Langston Hughes appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Courage to Be Yourself: Virginia Woolf on How to Hear Your Soul "Beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme difficulty of being oneself."
a year ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Where You Give Your Energy I had just turned 40. I was feeling increasingly stagnant at VSCO and recognized the need for a...
a year ago
12
a year ago
I had just turned 40. I was feeling increasingly stagnant at VSCO and recognized the need for a change. I began discussions with leadership about my desire for greater involvement. It was straight-up politicking, with my objective being a title change to formally lead the product...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Soliloquy for Two' The ideally named English neurologist Russell Brain died in 1966 but his textbook, Brain’s Diseases...
2 months ago
10
2 months ago
The ideally named English neurologist Russell Brain died in 1966 but his textbook, Brain’s Diseases of the Nervous System (1933), remains in print. The Royal College of Physicians has called it “the standard British textbook on his subject.” Brain was also a poet and...
Wuthering...
Menander's Dyskolos - each man would hold a moderate share and be content This week it’s Menander’s Dyskolos, or The Grouch, or The Misanthrope (316 BCE), which may or may...
over a year ago
54
over a year ago
This week it’s Menander’s Dyskolos, or The Grouch, or The Misanthrope (316 BCE), which may or may not have inspired the title of Molière’s great play, and nothing more than the title since the play was, like all of Menander’s plays, long lost.  A fairly complete Dyskolos was the...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Apple Maps on the web launches in beta Today, Apple Maps on the web is available in public beta, allowing users around the world to access...
11 months ago
23
11 months ago
Today, Apple Maps on the web is available in public beta, allowing users around the world to access Maps directly from their browser. Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
The Marginalian
Albert Camus on Writing and the Importance of Stubbornness in Creative Work "There is no greatness without a little stubbornness... Works of art are not born in flashes of...
a year ago
Josh Thompson
October 2016 Review October 2016 Review This month’s review. In another few days I’ll post the goals for November. I...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
October 2016 Review This month’s review. In another few days I’ll post the goals for November. I had three goals for October, as of about 12 days ago: October goals: Programming I wanted to finish a certain Rails Tutorial, and move on to the next one. This project I made zero...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The War with What He Does Not Understand' “. . . I am closer to the ‘life of the spirit’ than you are. You are talking about the right of one...
a month ago
22
a month ago
“. . . I am closer to the ‘life of the spirit’ than you are. You are talking about the right of one or another type of knowledge to exist, whereas I’m talking about peace, not rights. I want people not to see war where there isn’t any. Different branches of knowledge have always...
Josh Thompson
Success is not support We did a high-level “Customer Success” overview yesterday. Today, lets contrast customer support and...
over a year ago
22
over a year ago
We did a high-level “Customer Success” overview yesterday. Today, lets contrast customer support and customer success. Support vs. Success First, what’s the difference between “customer support” and “customer success”? Lincoln Murphey says: Customer Success is proactively working...
The American Scholar
Jane Skafte The language of trees The post Jane Skafte appeared first on The American Scholar.
a year ago
This Space
39 Books: 2006 My choice for 2003 began with indecision, as I couldn't imagine writing about Robert Antelme's The...
a year ago
55
a year ago
My choice for 2003 began with indecision, as I couldn't imagine writing about Robert Antelme's The Human Race. Instead I wondered if I could say something about Timothy Hyman's Sienese Painting. While I have little or no feeling for art, I am drawn to reading about it. The book's...
The American Scholar
Muscle Memory Michael Joseph Gross on the importance of strength, past and present The post Muscle Memory appeared...
3 months ago
34
3 months ago
Michael Joseph Gross on the importance of strength, past and present The post Muscle Memory appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Donating forks to the dining hall
a year ago
Ben Borgers
CS 15: Data Structures
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Denver.rb meetup notes Move Slow and Improve Things: Performance Improvement in a Rails App Denver.rb Monthly Meetup...
over a year ago
15
over a year ago
Move Slow and Improve Things: Performance Improvement in a Rails App Denver.rb Monthly Meetup @WeWork, Feb 12, 2018 We talked about performance profiling! Here’s the slides, on Dropbox I’m working on going deeper on the topic of Rails performance. I’ve got a lot more on the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Books Which Can Be Read Again and Again' “The great bulk of the world’s prose fiction, contemporary and past, does not wear well. Almost all...
a month ago
20
a month ago
“The great bulk of the world’s prose fiction, contemporary and past, does not wear well. Almost all of it is soon forgotten and of those books which survive the wear of time, only a few withstand the effects of time on the reader himself. Out of all the novels ever written there...
The Marginalian
War, Peace, and Possible Futures: George Saunders on Storytelling the World’s Fate and the Antidote... "War is large-scale murder, us at our worst, the stupidest guy doing the cruelest thing to the...
a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
"Deros And The Ur-Abduction" In Asterisk ...
3 months ago
The Marginalian
Coleridge on the Paradox of Friendship and Romantic Love On sympathy, reciprocity, and satisfying the fulness of our nature.
over a year ago
The American Scholar
“Daddy” by Sylvia Plath Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath appeared first on The American...
5 days ago
Ben Borgers
Tufts Meal Plans Are a Scam
over a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
1DaySooner's Trump II Health Policy Proposals ...
5 months ago
Josh Thompson
Career advice for Millenials. (ugh. I hate this title) Hah! You thought I had career advice? Not quite. Christian Bonilla writes one of the best blogs...
over a year ago
18
over a year ago
Hah! You thought I had career advice? Not quite. Christian Bonilla writes one of the best blogs I’ve ever read at Smart Like How. Please click over there, and read a few of his posts. He talks about being data savy even if you’re not a data scientist. He covers how to suceed...
The American Scholar
“My Mother on an Evening in Late Summer” by Mark Strand Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “My Mother on an Evening in Late Summer” by Mark Strand...
5 months ago
38
5 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “My Mother on an Evening in Late Summer” by Mark Strand appeared first on The American Scholar.
ribbonfarm
Covid and Noun-Memory Effects Ever since I got a bout of Covid a couple of years ago (late 2022), I’ve noticed memory problems of...
a year ago
28
a year ago
Ever since I got a bout of Covid a couple of years ago (late 2022), I’ve noticed memory problems of a very specific sort: Difficulty remembering names. Especially people names, but also other sorts of proper nouns. This is especially marked when it comes to remembering names of...
Josh Thompson
Blessed to be Sick Yesterday, I wrote about reducing work hours to less than 40 hours a week. Yesterday, I was...
over a year ago
17
over a year ago
Yesterday, I wrote about reducing work hours to less than 40 hours a week. Yesterday, I was struggling to be engaged in my work. I was easily distracted, and didn’t feel very efficient during the day. Once I identified the tasks I needed to complete before I could walk away from...
The Elysian
What is the goal of anarchism? Letters to an anarchist, part five.
7 months ago
Josh Thompson
Focus: One Thing at a Time The pressure to be working on more than one thing at a time is enormous. This pressure comes from no...
over a year ago
14
over a year ago
The pressure to be working on more than one thing at a time is enormous. This pressure comes from no one but me. And before I dismiss this tendency as “proof that I work too hard”, I must take another tact. It comes from a need to satisfy my ego. It is much easier to say “I did...
Josh Thompson
MySQL concatenation and casting I recently set up my environment for working through SQL for Mere Mortals. I’ll record some...
over a year ago
18
over a year ago
I recently set up my environment for working through SQL for Mere Mortals. I’ll record some interested tidbits here as I go. Chapter 5: Concatenation without the || operator I use MySQL at work, and MySQL doesn’t support the || operator for string concatenation. So, in the book,...
Josh Thompson
Upgrade your job So, apparently I send a lot of email about people trying to get cool jobs. Here’s yet another email...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
So, apparently I send a lot of email about people trying to get cool jobs. Here’s yet another email I sent to a friend, recorded here.  Hi [redacted], First I want to highlight is that flexible/remote jobs are just like normal jobs, but more people want them, so the companies...
Escaping Flatland
A measuring device that tells me what is interesting + links
9 months ago
Ben Borgers
Batching
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Nikolai Vavilov and the Living Library of Resilience: The Story of the World’s First Seed Bank and... The most moving story of self-sacrifice in the history of science.
over a year ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ We're definitely in Kansas, Dorothy Day 9: Sept 18, 2023 — One more person to see before we leave Colorado. Matt Jacobs is a longtime...
a year ago
10
a year ago
Day 9: Sept 18, 2023 — One more person to see before we leave Colorado. Matt Jacobs is a longtime friend formerly of New York and Brooklyn, but now lives in Denver with his family. He’s another part of the bevy of people we know who’ve relocated to this great state. We meet at...
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 363 ...
6 months ago
Wuthering...
Books I Read in June 2023 If only I had the will to write something.  But I can read. PHILOSOPHY Fragments or Sayings or...
over a year ago
92
over a year ago
If only I had the will to write something.  But I can read. PHILOSOPHY Fragments or Sayings or Tall Tales (4th C. BCE), Diogenes the Cynic, tr. Guy Davenport Cynics (2008), William Desmond - for an entry in a series aimed at students, surprisingly well written.  It helps that...
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 371 ...
4 months ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ The Last Times During our trip this year, looking at my mother, the reality suddenly hit me. She's 75. I visit my...
6 months ago
28
6 months ago
During our trip this year, looking at my mother, the reality suddenly hit me. She's 75. I visit my family in Malaysia once a year, and if she lives to 90, that means just 15 more visits together. The realization shook me. When my father passed in 2017, I hadn't considered how...
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 379.5 ...
2 months ago
The Marginalian
A Stone Is a Story: An Illustrated Love Letter to Deep Time and Earth’s Memory We are denizens of an enormous pebble drifting through the cosmic ocean of pure spacetime — a planet...
a year ago
56
a year ago
We are denizens of an enormous pebble drifting through the cosmic ocean of pure spacetime — a planet made a world largely by its rockiness. Rock gave us mountains and beaches, bridges and kitchen countertops, gave us the first Promethean fire that sparked civilization. A rock is...
The Marginalian
Don’t Waste Your Greening Life-Force: Hildegard’s Prophetic Enchanted Ecology The year is 1174. Gravity, oxygen, and electricity have not been discovered. Clocks, calculus, and...
6 months ago
51
6 months ago
The year is 1174. Gravity, oxygen, and electricity have not been discovered. Clocks, calculus, and the printing press have not been invented. Earth is the center of the universe, encircled by heavenly bodies whose motions are ministered by angels. Most people never live past...
Josh Thompson
Two Things That Are Helping Me (Finally) Learn Spanish Kristi and I are in Costa Rica for the month of January. We spent two months in Buenos Aires this...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
Kristi and I are in Costa Rica for the month of January. We spent two months in Buenos Aires this summer. That means in the space of six months, I’ll have spent three months in a Spanish-speaking country, yet I’ve not made significant progress on my spanish. That’s not to say...
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 357 ...
7 months ago
The Marginalian
How to Miss Loved Ones Better: The Psychology of Waiting and Withstanding Absence On "the capacity to bear frustration without turning against one’s needy self, or against the person...
10 months ago
The Marginalian
The Value of Being Wrong: Lewis Thomas on Generative Mistakes In praise of our "property of error, spontaneous, uncontrolled, and rich in possibilities."
over a year ago
The Marginalian
A Spell Against Stagnation: John O’Donohue on Beginnings "Our very life here depends directly on continuous acts of beginning."
a year ago
The Marginalian
Oliver Sacks on Despair and the Meaning of Life "The meaning of life... clearly has to do with love — what and whom and how one can love."
8 months ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Mirrored Malaysia After almost three years apart due to the pandemic, we were heartwarmingly reunited with my family...
over a year ago
10
over a year ago
After almost three years apart due to the pandemic, we were heartwarmingly reunited with my family in August of 2022. It was an intense and dense ten days, spending almost all waking hours together: talking, eating, and watching the time go by as fast as it would arrive. I...
The Marginalian
The Poetic Science of the Ghost Pipe: Emily Dickinson and the Secret of Earth’s Most Supernatural... "That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet."
a year ago
The Marginalian
William James on the Most Vital Understanding for Successful Relationships "Neither the whole of truth nor the whole of good is revealed to any single observer."
over a year ago
The Elysian
Asia and the future of the nation state A discussion with Benjamin Perry.
8 months ago
This Space
39 Books: 1989 Nowadays I would be put off reading a book labelled controversial and exciting gossipy attention on...
a year ago
55
a year ago
Nowadays I would be put off reading a book labelled controversial and exciting gossipy attention on TV and in newspapers, but in 1989 I read Alexander Stuart's The War Zone that did exactly that. It was later made into a controversial film. The only thing I remember of the...
The American Scholar
Mystery Solved! The post Mystery Solved! appeared first on The American Scholar.
a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 367.5 ...
5 months ago
Josh Thompson
Redefining Success It’s been pretty quiet around here lately. It’s been almost a month since my last entry. I thought...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
It’s been pretty quiet around here lately. It’s been almost a month since my last entry. I thought about writing something here almost every day, but here is why I didn’t: I want to produce “content” that is helpful and relevant to those who might read it. I felt like nothing I...
Ben Borgers
Draft Now, Publish Later
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Little Black Hole: A Tender Cosmic Fable About How to Live with Loss Right this minute, people are making plans, making promises and poems, while at the center of our...
a year ago
25
a year ago
Right this minute, people are making plans, making promises and poems, while at the center of our galaxy a black hole with the mass of four billion suns screams its open-mouth kiss of oblivion. Someday it will swallow every atom that ever touched us and every datum we ever...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Road Hunting Sometimes I look at past images and marvel at what’s there. In this case, the marvel came from the...
over a year ago
10
over a year ago
Sometimes I look at past images and marvel at what’s there. In this case, the marvel came from the fact that we (Jen, Grant, and Ryan) drove this trail after we spent the night from where this was taken. Read on nazhamid.com or Reply via email
The American Scholar
A Toothsome Tale Bill Schutt chomps through millennia to share the story of our pearly whites The post A Toothsome...
10 months ago
37
10 months ago
Bill Schutt chomps through millennia to share the story of our pearly whites The post A Toothsome Tale appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Bridges The post Bridges appeared first on The American Scholar.
a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
The Populist Right Must Own Tariffs ...
2 months ago
The Marginalian
From Stardust to Sapiens: A Stunning Serenade to Our Cosmic Origins and Our Ongoing Self-Creation We were never promised any of it — this world of cottonwoods and clouds — when the Big Bang set the...
a year ago
27
a year ago
We were never promised any of it — this world of cottonwoods and clouds — when the Big Bang set the possible in motion. And yet here we are, atoms with consciousness, each of us a living improbability forged of chaos and dead stars. Children of chance, we have made ourselves into...
The Marginalian
How Two Souls Can Interact with One Another: Simone de Beauvoir on Love and Friendship It is in relationships that we discover both our depths and our limits, there that we anneal...
3 months ago
41
3 months ago
It is in relationships that we discover both our depths and our limits, there that we anneal ourselves and transcend ourselves, there that we are hurt the most and there that we find the most healing. But despite what a crucible of our emotional and spiritual lives relationships...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Towards Standardizing Place The difference between locations and places is an important nuance. Humans build out, demarcate, and...
11 months ago
14
11 months ago
The difference between locations and places is an important nuance. Humans build out, demarcate, and describe discrete venues and areas in space. The questions we ask only deal in coordinates because they have to; we’d rather ask questions about roads, paths, houses, stores,...
This Space
39 Books: 1995 Looking over the list of books read over a decade, it becomes clear that each book came too early or...
a year ago
56
a year ago
Looking over the list of books read over a decade, it becomes clear that each book came too early or too late, or not at all; unless, of course, not yet. Untimely medications. Of the first, Robert Pinget's Be Brave applies. Again, lightness rather than heaviness, when there was...
Josh Thompson
Social skills are like any other skills Learning social skills are no different from learning cooking skills, or handstand skills. It...
over a year ago
14
over a year ago
Learning social skills are no different from learning cooking skills, or handstand skills. It helps to have exposure at a young age, but with time and effort, you can learn, and even master, cooking, handstands, and social skills. Why do social skills matter? Most people get...
Ben Borgers
Friday, January 21, 2022
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Why Do We Still Use Snapchat?
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Gratitude 3x/day Earlier this year, I read The Miracle Morning, which promises (paraphrasing here): If you do these...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
Earlier this year, I read The Miracle Morning, which promises (paraphrasing here): If you do these seven things every morning you’ll be the most amazing person you’ve ever met. OK, it’s not exactly that bold, but it’s not far off. It wasn’t a terrible book, it had lots of good...
The Marginalian
The Light in the Abyss Between Us Bless consciousness, for making blue different to me than it is to you. I remember the moment a...
5 months ago
50
5 months ago
Bless consciousness, for making blue different to me than it is to you. I remember the moment a friend’s son came home from school to recount with something between shock and exhilaration how he realized while talking to a classmate that the notion of a mental image is not merely...
The American Scholar
Consummated in Exile A new recording of Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances conveys the breadth of the 20th-century...
a year ago
55
a year ago
A new recording of Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances conveys the breadth of the 20th-century composer’s life’s journey The post Consummated in Exile appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
A Lighthouse for Dark Times This is the elemental speaking: It is during phase transition — when the temperature and pressure of...
8 months ago
56
8 months ago
This is the elemental speaking: It is during phase transition — when the temperature and pressure of a system go beyond what the system can withstand and matter changes from one state to another — that the system is most pliant, most possible. This chaos of particles that...
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 362 ...
6 months ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Let This Be a Moment A moment when you discover that legacy media is not in your best interest, being fueled by...
7 months ago
19
7 months ago
A moment when you discover that legacy media is not in your best interest, being fueled by advertising and bureaucratic bullshit. If you've worked anywhere, you should understand that no organization is immune to this. A moment when you might consider stepping out of your shoes...
Escaping Flatland
A funny thing about curiosity Following your curiosity, you can bring something new and beautiful into the world as a gift to...
5 months ago
54
5 months ago
Following your curiosity, you can bring something new and beautiful into the world as a gift to others. But to go there you have to do things that others will think stupid and embarrassing.
Astral Codex Ten
With This Character's Death, The Thread Of Prophecy Is Severed RIP Pope Francis and a particularly interesting apocalyptic prophecy
2 months ago
Ben Borgers
One Year Ago Email
over a year ago
Wuthering...
Jon Fosse's Septology - art "can only say something while keeping silent about what it actually... Jon Fosse’s Septology (2019-21) is a long stream-of-consciousness novel about a Norwegian painter...
8 months ago
57
8 months ago
Jon Fosse’s Septology (2019-21) is a long stream-of-consciousness novel about a Norwegian painter trying to understand one of his paintings.  Each of the novel’s seven sections begins with Asle looking at the painting: AND I SEE MYSELF STANDING and looking at the picture...
The American Scholar
“Three Things Enchanted Him …” by Anna Akhmatova Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Three Things Enchanted Him …” by Anna Akhmatova appeared...
8 months ago
56
8 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Three Things Enchanted Him …” by Anna Akhmatova appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Perry Bible...
Clicked The post Clicked appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
8 months ago
The Marginalian
Reason and Emotion: Scottish Philosopher John Macmurray on the Key to Wholeness and the Fundaments... "The emotional life is not simply a part or an aspect of human life. It is not, as we so often...
over a year ago
45
over a year ago
"The emotional life is not simply a part or an aspect of human life. It is not, as we so often think, subordinate, or subsidiary to the mind. It is the core and essence of human life. The intellect arises out of it, is rooted in it, draws its nourishment and sustenance from it."
Escaping Flatland
Sometimes the reason you can’t find people you resonate with is because you misread the ones you... Sometimes two people will stand next to each other for fifteen years, both feeling out of place and...
2 months ago
42
2 months ago
Sometimes two people will stand next to each other for fifteen years, both feeling out of place and alone, like no one gets them, and then one day, they look up at each other and say, “Oh, there you are.”
The Marginalian
Home: An Illustrated Celebration of the Genius and Wonder of Animal Dwellings “There’s no place like home,” Dorothy sighs in The Wizard of Oz. But home is not a place — it is a...
a year ago
42
a year ago
“There’s no place like home,” Dorothy sighs in The Wizard of Oz. But home is not a place — it is a locus of longing, always haunted by our existential homelessness. “Welcome home!” a cheaply suited broker once exclaimed at me, swinging open the door to a tiny studio as my foot...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Attempt But Little At a Time' A blog turns out to be an education undertaken in public. Its proprietor is more student than...
5 months ago
19
5 months ago
A blog turns out to be an education undertaken in public. Its proprietor is more student than teacher, and one is fortunate to encounter numerous tutors along the way, between the covers of books and out there in the bigger world. I seldom sit down at the keyboard with the goal...
Josh Thompson
How To Procfile: Run Just a Single Process Lets say you’ve got something like this in your Procfile: web: PORT=3000...
over a year ago
17
over a year ago
Lets say you’ve got something like this in your Procfile: web: PORT=3000 RAILS_ENV=development bundle exec puma -C ./config/puma_development.rb -e development devlog: tail -f ./log/development.log mailcatcher: ruby -rbundler/setup -e...
The Elysian
Three classic utopian novels—now collectibles More than 100 years ago, three thinkers imagined what a utopian future might look like in the year...
10 months ago
61
10 months ago
More than 100 years ago, three thinkers imagined what a utopian future might look like in the year 2000. Now, their novels are available as a collectible set.
The Marginalian
Something in You Hungers for Clarity: Ta-Nehisi Coates on Writing “Words have more power than any one can guess; it is by words that the world’s great fight, now in...
7 months ago
65
7 months ago
“Words have more power than any one can guess; it is by words that the world’s great fight, now in these civilized times, is carried on,” Mary Shelley wrote in the middle of the Napoleonic Wars that laid the template for the colonialist power structure of the modern world, in an...
ben-mini
The Most Mind-Blowing Tech Moments of My Life This is a fun one. Below is a brief list of the most mind-blowing tech moments in my 27 years of...
a year ago
22
a year ago
This is a fun one. Below is a brief list of the most mind-blowing tech moments in my 27 years of life. There’s nothing too heady here- just an exercise in what might have made me get so into tech. 1. WarioWare: Twisted (2006) At my community center, waiting for my friend’s karate...
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 372 ...
4 months ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 /now – June 8, 2024 I do the work I do for a living in no small part because I had access to an internet connection as a...
11 months ago
10
11 months ago
I do the work I do for a living in no small part because I had access to an internet connection as a teenager. That connection helped shape me and open up my world. What art, creativity, skill, and sure, economic potential, is going untapped right now in Rural America because a...
The Marginalian
How to Live a Miraculous Life: Brian Doyle on Love, Humility, and the Quiet Grace of the Possible Suppose we agree that we are here to love anyway — to love even though the work is almost unbearably...
7 months ago
61
7 months ago
Suppose we agree that we are here to love anyway — to love even though the work is almost unbearably difficult, even though we know that everything alive is dying, that everything beautiful is perishable, that everything we love will eventually be taken from us by one form of...
The Marginalian
The Hot Shower as Uncommon Prayer One of the paradoxes of being alive is that it is often through the extremes of sensation, through...
6 months ago
46
6 months ago
One of the paradoxes of being alive is that it is often through the extremes of sensation, through the shock of having a body, that we come most proximate to the subtleties of the soul. Walt Whitman knew this: “If the body is not the soul,” he sang electric, “what is the soul?”...
The American Scholar
A Fight With Cudgels Meditations on death, Goya, and the immutability of art The post A Fight With Cudgels appeared first...
a month ago
5
a month ago
Meditations on death, Goya, and the immutability of art The post A Fight With Cudgels appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Can You Recover From Months (YEARS!) of Not Climbing? A few weeks ago, I headed into the gym thinking that I felt a little off-kilter. I’d not climbed in...
over a year ago
14
over a year ago
A few weeks ago, I headed into the gym thinking that I felt a little off-kilter. I’d not climbed in a week, I though, and maybe I was getting weaker or something. Turns out that wasn’t the problem - I had actually been climbing too much, and was feeling it. This is an odd...
The Marginalian
Delight Between Science and Magic: Euler’s Disk and the Sound of the Singularity One afternoon in the late 1980s, sitting in the company cafeteria, aerospace engineer Joseph Bendik...
7 months ago
59
7 months ago
One afternoon in the late 1980s, sitting in the company cafeteria, aerospace engineer Joseph Bendik found himself so bored that he took a coin out of his pocket and began spinning it atop the table. In a testament to the eternal paradox of boredom and wonder as two sides of the...
The Elysian
Creating a global safety net without nation-states A Guest Lecture featuring Sondre Rasch, co-founder and CEO of SafetyWing.
a month ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Bourdain's Blessing I’ll never forget the moment. I still walk past the jiujitsu gym, just a block over from our place...
6 months ago
29
6 months ago
I’ll never forget the moment. I still walk past the jiujitsu gym, just a block over from our place and the moment comes rushing back. I was walking our dearly departed Boxer dog, Shaun. It was 2017. It was early. The Ralph Gracie Academy occupies a long stretch of Howard Street,...
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 369.5 ...
4 months ago
The Marginalian
Wonder Beyond Why: The Majesty and Mystery of the Birds-of-Paradise “To go all the way from a clone of archaebacteria, in just 3.7 billion years, to the B-Minor Mass...
a year ago
35
a year ago
“To go all the way from a clone of archaebacteria, in just 3.7 billion years, to the B-Minor Mass and the Late Quartets, deserves a better technical term for the record than randomness,” the poetic scientist Lewis Thomas wrote in his forgotten masterpiece of perspective. This is...
The Marginalian
The Paradox of Free Will The neuroscience, physics, and philosophy of freedom in a universe of fixed laws.
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Flowers for Things I Don’t Know How to Say: A Tender Painted Lexicon of Consolation and Connection “To be a Flower is profound Responsibility,” Emily Dickinson wrote. From the moment she pressed the...
a year ago
92
a year ago
“To be a Flower is profound Responsibility,” Emily Dickinson wrote. From the moment she pressed the first wildflower into her astonishing teenage herbarium until the moment Susan pinned a violet to her alabaster chest in the casket, she filled her poems with flowers and made of...
Wuthering...
Wealth by Aristophanes - gout here, pot bellies there, ... obesity beyond all bounds We saw Sophocles and Euripides end their long careers with masterpieces, but we do not have that...
over a year ago
71
over a year ago
We saw Sophocles and Euripides end their long careers with masterpieces, but we do not have that luck with Aristophanes.  Wealth (388 BCE) is thin, scattershot, perhaps even a bit defeated or exhausted. The conceit is as usual excellent.  Plutus, the god of wealth, is freed...
Robert Caro
The Power Broker Book Club The “99% Invisible Breakdown” podcast spent a year reading The Power Broker with guests Conan...
3 months ago
35
3 months ago
The “99% Invisible Breakdown” podcast spent a year reading The Power Broker with guests Conan O’Brien, Robert Caro, and others.
Ben Borgers
Bagel Institute
over a year ago
The Elysian
Hint #3 I'm publishing a new print collection in one week.
10 months ago
This Space
This kingdom by the sea Published in 1912, it’s about the fall of the repressed writer Gustav von Aschenbach, when his...
over a year ago
56
over 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 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
37
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A State of Vagary, Doubt and Indecision' There’s a tidy part of me that wants things resolved, whether a lawsuit or a differential equation....
4 months ago
26
4 months ago
There’s a tidy part of me that wants things resolved, whether a lawsuit or a differential equation. No sloppy inconsistencies, no denouements hanging by a thread. I used to love IRS Form 1040EZ: subtract one number from another, sign your name and wait for the refund. I had a...
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 372.5 ...
4 months ago
The American Scholar
The Justice Worker Rebecca Sandefur’s mission is to provide help to tens of millions of Americans in solving their...
a month ago
9
a month ago
Rebecca Sandefur’s mission is to provide help to tens of millions of Americans in solving their legal problems The post The Justice Worker appeared first on The American Scholar.
sbensu
Semantic gaps Swedish has a specific word for each of the four grandparents: mormor, morfar, farmor, farfar....
a year ago
16
a year ago
Swedish has a specific word for each of the four grandparents: mormor, morfar, farmor, farfar. English doesn’t. So when you mention your 'grandma' to a Swede, they are left wondering 'which grandma?' even if it is not relevant to the story. That is a semantic gap.
Wuthering...
What I Read in May 2025 – “There’s the store that’s shaped like a duck,” Franca said. First, my poor email subscribers missed some of the installments of my newsletter about Anthony...
a month ago
17
a month ago
First, my poor email subscribers missed some of the installments of my newsletter about Anthony Powell.  If this keeps happening I will have to think of something or even do something.  Here they are: A skippable piece of throat-clearing about the roman fleuve. What I think...
This Space
39 Books: 2010 This series has sailed into the doldrum years. Reading has become less of a headlong existential...
a year ago
86
a year ago
This series has sailed into the doldrum years. Reading has become less of a headlong existential adventure than something one does, a pastime, a hobby, something you tell a quiz show presenter how you relax: "I like to read, Brad." By this time I had given up reviewing...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Image to Mesh Gradient Generate beautiful gradients from colors or from a photo. Visit original link → or View on...
10 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Certain Saving Humor' “Except for a certain saving humor, I should indeed have been a full monster.”  One definition of a...
5 months ago
18
5 months ago
“Except for a certain saving humor, I should indeed have been a full monster.”  One definition of a friend is someone with whom you can share any joke or other comic effort without fear of offending him. It may not be funny – the only pertinent criterion for judging humorousness...
The Marginalian
Into the Blue Beyond: William Beebe’s Dazzling Account of Becoming the First Human Being to See the... "It was stranger than any imagination could have conceived... an indefinable translucent blue quite...
a year ago
The American Scholar
Learning to Be Social What might Rousseau teach us about how to live with others? The post Learning to Be Social appeared...
4 months ago
14
4 months ago
What might Rousseau teach us about how to live with others? The post Learning to Be Social appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
In the Dark: A Lyrical Illustrated Invitation to Find the Light Behind the Fear The mind is a camera obscura constantly trying to render an image of reality on the back wall of...
a year ago
27
a year ago
The mind is a camera obscura constantly trying to render an image of reality on the back wall of consciousness through the pinhole of awareness, its aperture narrowed by our selective attention, honed on our hopes and fears. In consequence, the projection we see inside the dark...
Ben Borgers
Thursday, January 13, 2022
over a year ago
The American Scholar
‘God-Knows-What-Kind-of-Classic’ Why shouldn’t America’s federal buildings speak to us in a language encompassing the old as well as...
a month ago
5
a month ago
Why shouldn’t America’s federal buildings speak to us in a language encompassing the old as well as the new? The post ‘God-Knows-What-Kind-of-Classic’ appeared first on The American Scholar.
Blog -...
Book Review - Iron John Iron John by Robert Bly is a classic book about men. It has legions of ardent fans, but I...
over a year ago
23
over a year ago
Iron John by Robert Bly is a classic book about men. It has legions of ardent fans, but I reluctantly admit I am not one of the more zealous. Although the book has high points – the classic story of Iron John as put down by the Grimm brothers stands out to me, as well as an...
Ben Borgers
Preschooler > AI
over a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 380 ...
2 months ago
Josh Thompson
Back in the saddle (of writing) Background It’s been a hell of a year. I’ve got about 10,000 things I’ve wanted to write about, and...
over a year ago
15
over a year ago
Background It’s been a hell of a year. I’ve got about 10,000 things I’ve wanted to write about, and have not gotten around to any of them. Here’s my various top-level reasons for not writing: what I want to write about feels too complicated to express easily/coherently I feel...
ribbonfarm
History is More Like Science Fiction Than Fantasy I’ve been slow-reading Bettany Hughes’ Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities for months now, ever since I...
a year ago
21
a year ago
I’ve been slow-reading Bettany Hughes’ Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities for months now, ever since I visited the city (on Kindle, so I didn’t realize when I started that it’s 600 pages plus another 250 odd notes). It’s dense and absorbing and I’ll probably do a reflections post...
The American Scholar
After the Fallout On jellyfish babies, my father’s pain, and the legacy of nuclear testing in the Pacific The post...
2 months ago
30
2 months ago
On jellyfish babies, my father’s pain, and the legacy of nuclear testing in the Pacific The post After the Fallout appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Befriending a Blackbird Friendship is a lifeline twined of truth and tenderness. That we extend it to each other is...
a year ago
91
a year ago
Friendship is a lifeline twined of truth and tenderness. That we extend it to each other is benediction enough. To extend it across the barrier of biology and sentience, to another creature endowed with a wholly other consciousness, partakes of the miraculous. Born in England in...
The American Scholar
We Contain Multitudes Why do so few of us exercise the many talents with which we are born? The post We Contain Multitudes...
a month ago
4
a month ago
Why do so few of us exercise the many talents with which we are born? The post We Contain Multitudes appeared first on The American Scholar.
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...
8 months ago
63
8 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...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Is Substack so Bad? All those readers that Substack shows you as a positive thing on your dashboard are worth very...
6 months ago
24
6 months ago
All those readers that Substack shows you as a positive thing on your dashboard are worth very little. Upon leaving Substack authors have found that users acquired via the Substack recommendation engine have higher churn than organic growth and are less likely to open your...
The American Scholar
The Bears The post The Bears appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
Ben Borgers
I Don’t Get Getir
over a year ago
This Space
39 Books: 1985 The first novel I read was Twice Shy by Dick Francis, reportedly the Queen Mother's favourite...
a year ago
82
a year ago
The first novel I read was Twice Shy by Dick Francis, reportedly the Queen Mother's favourite novelist (which tells you all you need to know about the intellectual energies of British Royal Family). It was the hardback edition below and tells the story of an Olympic champion...
Ben Borgers
We’re All Powered by Electric Meat
over a year ago
This Space
39 Books: 2001 In 1995 I found this hardback edition in the British History section of a Brighton bookshop six...
a year ago
87
a year ago
In 1995 I found this hardback edition in the British History section of a Brighton bookshop six years after the French original was cited by Gabriel Josipovici as one of his books of the year: "a beautifully controlled examination of the effect on [Roubaud] of his wife's death...
The Marginalian
Ocean Vuong on Anger “To be an artist is a guarantee to your fellow humans that the wear and tear of living will not let...
2 months ago
28
2 months ago
“To be an artist is a guarantee to your fellow humans that the wear and tear of living will not let you become a murderer,” Louise Bourgeois wrote in her diary as a young artist. “The poets (by which I mean all artists),” James Baldwin wrote in his late thirties, “are finally the...
Ben Borgers
Lessons Learned from Hanging Posters
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Is Only Man' “You either fell under his spell and loved the wild ride of his prose, or you shunned or ignored...
a month ago
20
a month ago
“You either fell under his spell and loved the wild ride of his prose, or you shunned or ignored it.”   Infatuation of the literary sort is likely possible only among the young. That’s my experience. I have discovered good writers in recent decades – Yvor Winters, C.H. Sisson –...
The American Scholar
A Terrifying Delight Following Robert Frost into the depths The post A Terrifying Delight appeared first on The American...
a year ago
64
a year ago
Following Robert Frost into the depths The post A Terrifying Delight appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Getir Colors
over a year ago
This Space
39 Books: 2008 On January 19 of this year, I received a traumatic brain injury that for 16 years has limited my...
a year ago
95
a year ago
On January 19 of this year, I received a traumatic brain injury that for 16 years has limited my capacity to read. It was also the year I read two novels in which the legacy of violence presses on the form they take. Horacio Castellanos Moya's Senselessness spirals in Bernhardian...
Astral Codex Ten
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2025: Times & Places ...
3 months ago
The Marginalian
Kamau & ZuZu Find a Way: A Tender Lunar Fable about the Stubborn Courage of Prevailing Over the Odds... "But we will have to find a way to live, as people do."
10 months ago
Wuthering...
Planning next year's readalong opportunities - Greek philosophy and Roman plays If only I had another idea as good as reading all the Greek plays in order.  But I do have ideas. ...
over a year ago
73
over a year ago
If only I had another idea as good as reading all the Greek plays in order.  But I do have ideas. 1. Roman plays.  Up to five Roman playwrights have survived: the comedians Plautus and Terence and the tragedian Seneca, along with two plays under his name that were likely...
Ben Borgers
How ChatGPT spoiled my semester
9 months ago
The American Scholar
Stephanie Santana Preserving family history The post Stephanie Santana appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 weeks ago
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
67
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...
The Marginalian
The Wondrous Birds of the Himalayas and the Forgotten Victorian Woman Whose Illustrations Rewilded... Bridging Blake and Darwin with a single-hair brush.
a year ago
Escaping Flatland
Talking to part of a friend Finding an authentic connection based on who you are now, not who you were in the past
a year ago
Josh Thompson
A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of y-intercept The following is recounted on  Quora, from a lecture by Stanford professor John Ousterhout (he’s in...
over a year ago
15
over a year ago
The following is recounted on  Quora, from a lecture by Stanford professor John Ousterhout (he’s in the Computer Science department): Here’s today’s thought for the weekend.  A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of Y-intercept.   [Laughter] So at a mathematical level this is...
The American Scholar
No Murder in the Mews The post No Murder in the Mews appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 weeks ago
Josh Thompson
First pass with Elixir/Phoenix I’m digging into Elixir and Phoenix. I’m working through this tutorial to cloning Slack. The...
over a year ago
15
over a year ago
I’m digging into Elixir and Phoenix. I’m working through this tutorial to cloning Slack. The tutorial author says At the time of writing, I have ~1 week experience with Phoenix. Similar to Rubber Ducky Debugging, I am writing this blog post to force myself to think differently...
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...
10 months ago
59
10 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.
Josh Thompson
How to be an awesome belayer For the next few posts I am going to geek out on sport climbing. If you’re not a climber (or a sport...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
For the next few posts I am going to geek out on sport climbing. If you’re not a climber (or a sport climber), these are not for you. All of this information is in the context of sport climbing on trustworthy protection - not trad climbing! How to belay when your climber is in...
The American Scholar
“Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden appeared first on The...
a month ago
21
a month ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Just Yesterday The post Just Yesterday appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
Ben Borgers
Your Feelings Are Not Unique
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Carl Linnaeus’s Flower Clock “The eternal problem of the human being is how to structure his waking hours,” the Canadian...
3 months ago
33
3 months ago
“The eternal problem of the human being is how to structure his waking hours,” the Canadian psychiatrist Eric Berne observed in his 1964 classic Games People Play. Four centuries earlier, Galileo had both combated and complicated the problem by inventing timekeeping and with it,...
Blog -...
Book Review - Dancing Naked in the Mind Field Dancing Naked in the Mind Field, the autobiography of Kary Mullis, published in 1998, is...
over a year ago
27
over a year ago
Dancing Naked in the Mind Field, the autobiography of Kary Mullis, published in 1998, is reminiscent of another Nobel Prize winning autobiography, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!. Dr. Mullis and Dr. Feynman had a great deal in common, including their incomprehensible...
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...
a year ago
48
a year ago
One founding family’s centuries-long journey The post Born to Be Wild appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Broadest Portal to Joy "Despite every single lie to the contrary, despite every single action born of that lie — we are in...
over a year ago
85
over a year ago
"Despite every single lie to the contrary, despite every single action born of that lie — we are in the midst of rhizomatic care that extends in every direction, spatially, temporally, spiritually."
Ploum.net
De la soumission au technofascisme religieux De la soumission au technofascisme religieux Les générateurs de code stupide Sur Mastodon, David...
4 months ago
29
4 months ago
De la soumission au technofascisme religieux Les générateurs de code stupide Sur Mastodon, David Chisnall fait le point sur une année d’utilisation de GitHub Copilot pour coder. Et le résultat est clair : si, au début, il a l’impression de gagner du temps en devant moins taper...
The Marginalian
Favorite Books of the Year: Art, Science, Poetry, Psychology, Children’s, and More Because I read for the same reason I write — to fathom my life and deepen my living — looking back...
6 months ago
61
6 months ago
Because I read for the same reason I write — to fathom my life and deepen my living — looking back on a year of life has always been looking back on a year of reading. This year was different — a time of such profound pain and profound transformation that it fused reading and...
ribbonfarm
Intellectual Menopause I ran across the alarming phrase intellectual menopause a few months ago in John Gall’s...
11 months ago
26
11 months ago
I ran across the alarming phrase intellectual menopause a few months ago in John Gall’s Systemantics, and it naturally stuck in my brain given I’m pushing 50 and getting predictably angsty about it. The phrase conjures up visions of a phenomenon much more profound and unfunny...
Anecdotal Evidence
'With Purple Prose and a Bad Actor’s Gestures' On April 9, 1778, Johnson and Boswell dined at the home of Sir Joshua Reynolds, where Edward Gibbon...
3 weeks ago
9
3 weeks ago
On April 9, 1778, Johnson and Boswell dined at the home of Sir Joshua Reynolds, where Edward Gibbon and Davide Garrick, among others, were also present. The subject of translations, including Pope’s Homer, emerged. “We must try its effect as an English poem,” Johnson said, “that...
The American Scholar
Three Poems The post Three Poems appeared first on The American Scholar.
10 months ago
sbensu
But I want to turn people into dinosaurs Beware of what you actually want.
11 months ago
sbensu
The secondary market in gift cards This post by patio11 covers a few things that I learned working with gift cards over the years.
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Necessity of Our Illusions: Oliver Sacks on the Mind as an Escape Artist from Reality "We need detachment... as much as we need engagement in our lives... transports that make our...
a year ago
Ben Borgers
What is JumboCode?
over a year ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Departure Mono Departure Mono is a monospaced pixel font with a lo-fi technical vibe. Visit original link → or View...
10 months ago
11
10 months ago
Departure Mono is a monospaced pixel font with a lo-fi technical vibe. Visit original link → or View on nazhamid.com →
The American Scholar
The Fair Fields Only rarely did the outside world intrude on an idyllic Connecticut childhood, but in the tumultuous...
7 months ago
27
7 months 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
What Birds Dream About: The Evolution of REM and How We Practice the Possible in Our Sleep "It may be that in REM, this gloaming between waking consciousness and the unconscious, we practice...
a year ago
94
a year ago
"It may be that in REM, this gloaming between waking consciousness and the unconscious, we practice the possible into the real... It may be that we evolved to dream ourselves into reality — a laboratory of consciousness that began in the bird brain."
Ben Borgers
Stubborn Consistency [100 daily blog posts]
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Alone Together: An Illustrated Celebration of the Art of Shared Solitude “One can never be alone enough to write,” Susan Sontag lamented in her diary. “Oh comforting...
a year ago
29
a year ago
“One can never be alone enough to write,” Susan Sontag lamented in her diary. “Oh comforting solitude, how favorable thou art to original thought!” the founding father of neuroscience exulted in considering the ideal environment for creative breakthrough. All creative people,...
The Marginalian
The Stunning Mystical Paintings of the 16th-Century Portuguese Artist Francisco de Holanda Blake before Blake, Hilma before Hilma.
over a year ago
Wuthering...
Three weeks in Portugal I was in Portugal for three weeks in June.  Five hours a day for four days I was in this inlingua...
a year ago
107
a year ago
I was in Portugal for three weeks in June.  Five hours a day for four days I was in this inlingua classroom in Porto, or one much like it: The results: B1 in Portuguese after about two years of fairly relaxed study – relaxed until those four days – which seems pretty good. ...
The American Scholar
“Stick the Landing” by David Gewanter Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Stick the Landing” by David Gewanter appeared first on The...
11 months ago
37
11 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Stick the Landing” by David Gewanter appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Book Notes: 'The Case Against Sugar' by Gary Taube In the last few weeks, I read The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes. I found it to be compelling...
over a year ago
15
over a year ago
In the last few weeks, I read The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes. I found it to be compelling (more on that in a moment) and I want to be impacted by them. I want the daily decisions that I make to be subtly influenced by this author and these books. Related but in a different...
The Marginalian
A Victorian Visionary’s Prescient Case for Animal Rights and Vegetarianism "Once upon a time your fore-fathers made no scruple about not only killing, but also eating their...
over a year ago
The Elysian
Maybe villages are our future—not cities Italy's Matera as a case study for revitalizing small governments and creating a future of...
3 months ago
34
3 months ago
Italy's Matera as a case study for revitalizing small governments and creating a future of interconnected villages.
Josh Thompson
Paths In Which I Am Interested this is still in draft status this page serves as a placeholder for various paths I’m interested...
a year ago
23
a year ago
this is still in draft status this page serves as a placeholder for various paths I’m interested in. I hope to bring attention to “linear parks”, or a park that functions more in size and shape to a street, crossing blocks of distance, but maintaining park vibes throughout. Path...
This Space
39 Books: 2018 In spite of what I said yesterday about the decline in the number of novels I read each year, this...
a year ago
82
a year ago
In spite of what I said yesterday about the decline in the number of novels I read each year, this year was packed with a variety: Australian, Korean, Austrian, Egyptian, German, Argentinian and, today's choice, Norwegian; that is, if variety depends on the country of origin. But...
The Marginalian
The One Hundred Milliseconds Between the World and You: Oliver Sacks on Perception “If the doors of perception were cleansed,” William Blake wrote, “everything would appear to man as...
a month ago
12
a month ago
“If the doors of perception were cleansed,” William Blake wrote, “everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.” But we are finite creatures, in time and in space, and there is a limit to how much reality we can bear — evolution gave us consciousness so that we may sieve the...
The Marginalian
The Sunflower and the Soul: Wendell Berry on the Collaborative Nature of the Universe and the Cure... "We are not the authors of ourselves. That we are not is a religious perception, but it is also a...
a year ago
85
a year ago
"We are not the authors of ourselves. That we are not is a religious perception, but it is also a biological and a social one. Each of us has had many authors, and each of us is engaged, for better or worse, in that same authorship. We could say that the human race is a great...
Ben Borgers
First Name Usernames
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Beyond Either/Or: Kierkegaard on the Passion for Possibility and the Key to Resetting Relationships "Were I to wish for anything I would not wish for wealth and power, but for the passion of the...
11 months ago
54
11 months ago
"Were I to wish for anything I would not wish for wealth and power, but for the passion of the possible, that eye which everywhere, ever young, ever burning, sees possibility."
ribbonfarm
Stack Map of the World I’ve been buried neck deep in work stuff this week, but I did find time to make this stack diagram...
a year ago
22
a year ago
I’ve been buried neck deep in work stuff this week, but I did find time to make this stack diagram of the world, inspired by the xkcd Dependency cartoon. Randall Munroe draws better than me, but in my favor, I use more colors. Did you know most of the high-purity quartz needed...
The Marginalian
How to Make America Great: A Visionary Manifesto from the Woman Who Ran for President in 1872 In 1872, half a century before American women could vote, Victoria Woodhull (September 23, 1838–June...
5 months ago
61
5 months ago
In 1872, half a century before American women could vote, Victoria Woodhull (September 23, 1838–June 9, 1927) ran for President, with Frederick Douglass as her running mate. Papers declared her candidacy “a brazen imposture, to be extinguished by laughter rather than by law.”...
Josh Thompson
20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don't Get Jason Nazar recently wrote an article titled 20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don’t Get. Please read it, but...
over a year ago
19
over a year ago
Jason Nazar recently wrote an article titled 20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don’t Get. Please read it, but with a big grain of salt. Nazar opens with the statement “I made a lot of mistakes along the way, and I see this generation making their own.” This seems to be an aspirational...
Josh Thompson
Build a Personal Website in Jekyll - A Detailed Guide For First-Timers You’re a turing student, in the backend program. You know Ruby, you wanna start blogging, but...
over a year ago
14
over a year ago
You’re a turing student, in the backend program. You know Ruby, you wanna start blogging, but everyone who says go start a blog Seems to also think you have 10 hours (or 20 hours? or 2 hours? how long does this take) to sit around dealing with setting up a personal website. Lets...
Robert Caro
Anatomy of a $9 Burglary “Anatomy of a $9 Burglary” is among Caro’s best early writing. When police arrested a criminal, all...
over a year ago
24
over a year ago
“Anatomy of a $9 Burglary” is among Caro’s best early writing. When police arrested a criminal, all signs indicated a simple case of burglar
The Elysian
Please come up with wildly speculative futures Inside my writing philosophy.
a year ago
The Marginalian
May Sarton on Grieving a Pet "It is absolutely inward and private, the relation between oneself and an animal."
over a year ago
The American Scholar
The Brahmin and His Imaginary Friend How a classic paean to the honest virtues of a Maine fisherman obscured several ugly truths The...
7 months ago
29
7 months ago
How a classic paean to the honest virtues of a Maine fisherman obscured several ugly truths The post The Brahmin and His Imaginary Friend appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
About
9 months ago
The Marginalian
The Kiln and the Quantum of Relationships Anything you give your time to and polish with attention will become a lens on your search for...
2 months ago
29
2 months ago
Anything you give your time to and polish with attention will become a lens on your search for meaning, will lavish you with metaphors that become backdoors into the locked room of your most urgent reckonings. In my nascent adventures in pottery, I have observed with great...
The Elysian
I'm traveling the world to study utopia An update about my life and artistic process.
a year ago
ben-mini
Old School Business In a prior role, I experienced friction with my sales team’s leadership: They emphasized the needs...
a year ago
17
a year ago
In a prior role, I experienced friction with my sales team’s leadership: They emphasized the needs of the economic buyer and neglected the end-users. They withheld key performance indicators from prospects (i.e. pricing, number of customers, customer satisfaction). They demeaned...
The Marginalian
After Love: Maxine Kumin’s Stunning Poem About Eros as a Portal to Unselfing It is one of the hardest things in life — discerning where we end and the rest of the world begins,...
a year ago
26
a year ago
It is one of the hardest things in life — discerning where we end and the rest of the world begins, negotiating the permeable boundary between self and other, all the while longing for its dissolution, longing to be set free from the prison of ourselves. That is why we cherish...
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...
a year ago
64
a year ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Peter Quince at the Clavier” by Wallace Stevens appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Adventures With Jean Striking up a friendship with an older writer meant accepting the risk of getting hurt The post...
10 months ago
42
10 months ago
Striking up a friendship with an older writer meant accepting the risk of getting hurt The post Adventures With Jean appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
How A Dance to the Music of Time works, so far - I always enjoy hearing the details of other... My writing here is often about what surprised me or did not.  So let’s have that about the first...
a month ago
21
a month ago
My writing here is often about what surprised me or did not.  So let’s have that about the first four novels of Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time, the twelve volume sequence published from 1951 to 1975 and covering a refracted version of Powell’s life from his later...
Josh Thompson
Customer Success: American Airlines Case Study Continuing the theme of “what the heck do I do for work”, I’m writing about Customer Success as I...
over a year ago
12
over a year ago
Continuing the theme of “what the heck do I do for work”, I’m writing about Customer Success as I see it. My words are my own, I don’t speak for the industry as a whole, or even for Litmus. I’m just trying to sharpen my own thinking. Last time, I argued that customer success is...
The American Scholar
The Writing on the Wall Augustine Sedgewick on his discovery of Henry David Thoreau’s connection to slavery The post The...
8 months ago
57
8 months ago
Augustine Sedgewick on his discovery of Henry David Thoreau’s connection to slavery The post The Writing on the Wall appeared first on The American Scholar.
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 367 ...
5 months ago
The American Scholar
Indiana Absurd Tiffany Tsao on translating a beguiling Indonesian short-story collection The post Indiana Absurd...
a year ago
52
a year ago
Tiffany Tsao on translating a beguiling Indonesian short-story collection The post Indiana Absurd appeared first on The American Scholar.
Idle Words
The Lunacy of Artemis In August 2020, the New York Times asked me to write an op-ed for a special feature on...
a year ago
26
a year ago
In August 2020, the New York Times asked me to write an op-ed for a special feature on authoritarianism and democracy. They declined to publish my submission, which I am sharing here instead. A little over 51 years ago, a rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral carrying three...
The Marginalian
We Go to the Park: A Soulful Illustrated Meditation on Our Search for Meaning "Sometimes it feels as if all of life is made up of longing."
11 months ago
Wuthering...
Ovid's Metamorphoses, Canto I, "Of shapes transformde to bodies straunge" Some notes on Canto I of Ovid’s Metamorphosis (8 CE).  Just some of the things I am looking for...
a year ago
30
a year ago
Some notes on Canto I of Ovid’s Metamorphosis (8 CE).  Just some of the things I am looking for or enjoying while reading Ovid’s epic of “forms changed / into new bodies.”  (tr. Charles Martin, 2004, p. 15).  Or, per Arthur Golding (1567, p. 3 of the Paul Dry paperback) “Of...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 What price? If anything, as the well gets poisoned by their own outputs, large language models may well end up...
9 months ago
14
9 months ago
If anything, as the well gets poisoned by their own outputs, large language models may well end up eating their own slop and getting their own version of mad cow disease. So this might be as good as they’re ever going to get. — Jeremy Keith I use AI. Not particularly for...
Josh Thompson
Blocks and Closures in Ruby Continuing on from yesterday’s post about method_missing, I’m moving on to a part of Ruby’s language...
over a year ago
13
over a year ago
Continuing on from yesterday’s post about method_missing, I’m moving on to a part of Ruby’s language that has been a bit of a mystery for me for quite some time. I’m still working through Metaprogramming in Ruby. It’s the concept of lambdas, procs, blocks, and more. I also hope...
Anecdotal Evidence
'What My Mind Thinks My Pen Writes' Some books, including several of the best, defy conventional literary formulas and genres. Consider...
5 months ago
17
5 months ago
Some books, including several of the best, defy conventional literary formulas and genres. Consider Moby-Dick. Is it a novel in the same inarguable sense as Middlemarch, another very big book? What about Tristram Shandy, with its endlessly deferred plot, digressions within...
Wuthering...
Ferdowsi's Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings - No one has any knowledge of those first days... My little Persian literature syllabus in March was built on Aboloqasem Ferdowsi’s gigantic epic...
a year ago
101
a year ago
My little Persian literature syllabus in March was built on Aboloqasem Ferdowsi’s gigantic epic Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings (1010), a slender 850 pages in Dick Davis’s 2006 prose (mostly) translation.  He added another 100 pages to the 2016 edition, whether filling out...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ I'm damn near eighty! Day 14: Sept 23, 2023 — It’s been a number of years since we’ve attended a wedding. In addition to...
a year ago
11
a year ago
Day 14: Sept 23, 2023 — It’s been a number of years since we’ve attended a wedding. In addition to seeing the immediate family, we’re invited to Jen’s cousin’s wedding, which by proxy includes spending time with extended family. Even counting the lost pandemic years, I haven’t...
The Elysian
Social Development > Self-Development We need one much more than the other.
6 months ago
This Space
The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard I began reading The Morning Star without any prior knowledge of the contents, just as I had begun...
over a year ago
76
over a year ago
I began reading The Morning Star without any prior knowledge of the contents, just as I had begun reading every other book of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s since receiving an ARC of the first volume of My Struggle long before he shone above us like the morning star in this novel. This...
Ben Borgers
The Land of Endless Socialization
over a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
Against The Generalized Anti-Caution Argument ...
7 months 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
16
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...
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...
7 months ago
51
7 months 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.
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ What's Next vs. What's Now Trevor Noah is a funny, funny person. He's sharp. And during November-December 2023, he was doing a...
11 months ago
11
11 months ago
Trevor Noah is a funny, funny person. He's sharp. And during November-December 2023, he was doing a two-week stint in San Francisco on his most recent tour, Off the Record[1]. Jen and I attended his very first show of the run on November 30. The set is hilarious and the best live...
The Perry Bible...
Us The post Us appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
8 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Glass Filled With a Supersaturate Solution' “[S]he is one of the few truly compelling stylists now at work. Her voice is authoritative,...
2 months ago
10
2 months ago
“[S]he is one of the few truly compelling stylists now at work. Her voice is authoritative, confident, unfussy, exacting. She is never overtly confessional, which sets her apart from many poets writing since the Romantics. She makes rare company.”  And isn’t that what we look for...
Josh Thompson
Recommended Reading I’ve read many books over the years. Thousands. Here’s a few that I find myself...
a year ago
23
a year ago
I’ve read many books over the years. Thousands. Here’s a few that I find myself referencing/recommending.Periodically, I refresh this list. It’s changed over the years years. the list you are about to read is heavily reworked, based off this older list:...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Livelier in Pleasant Weather' Magazines have long been fond of asking well-known writers to recommend books appropriate to...
3 months ago
32
3 months ago
Magazines have long been fond of asking well-known writers to recommend books appropriate to certain times of year, usually as Christmas gifts or so-called “beach reading.” The results tend to be surprisingly conventional and unrewarding, with pleasing exceptions. Consider...
The Elysian
The Cooperatist Manifesto that inspired Mondragon Father José María Arizmendiarrieta didn’t just imagine a better economic system, he built it.
9 months ago
Josh Thompson
Learning Spanish: Conversation connectors I’m learning Spanish right now,  as I’ve mentioned. The bad news is I’ve been in some state...
over a year ago
15
over a year ago
I’m learning Spanish right now,  as I’ve mentioned. The bad news is I’ve been in some state of learning spanish for the better part of the last 15 years. My mom’s parents came here from Paraguay, and so she and her siblings are all native Spanish speakers, plus their spouses....
Ben Borgers
Are My Technical Posts Worth It?
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Time and the Soul: Philosopher Jacob Needleman on Our Search for Meaning "The real significance of our problem with time... is a crisis of meaning... The root of our modern...
a year ago
35
a year ago
"The real significance of our problem with time... is a crisis of meaning... The root of our modern problem with time is neither technological, sociological, economic nor psychological. It is metaphysical. It is a question of the meaning of human life itself."
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
61
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...
The American Scholar
A Blast of a Time The scientific underpinnings of Armageddon The post A Blast of a Time appeared first on The American...
a month ago
5
a month ago
The scientific underpinnings of Armageddon The post A Blast of a Time appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Quick Dive into React As usual, this is a work in progress. At a high level, I’m familiarizing myself with Phoenix/Elixir,...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
As usual, this is a work in progress. At a high level, I’m familiarizing myself with Phoenix/Elixir, and need to sharpen my React knowledge along the way. After working through part 1 of a slack clone in Elixir/Phoenix tutorial, I ran into some errors getting the React app up and...
The American Scholar
In the Matter of the Commas For the true literary stylist, this seemingly humble punctuation mark is a matter of precision,...
2 months ago
28
2 months ago
For the true literary stylist, this seemingly humble punctuation mark is a matter of precision, logic, individuality, and music The post In the Matter of the Commas appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
You’d still work if you didn’t have to But it would feel more like play.
12 months ago
The Marginalian
How We Render Reality: Attention as an Instrument of Love "Since our consciousness plays some part in what comes into being, the play of attention can both...
over a year ago
78
over a year ago
"Since our consciousness plays some part in what comes into being, the play of attention can both create and destroy, but it never leaves its object unchanged."
Ben Borgers
Portal
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Mortal Coils We aren’t alone in facing the inevitable The post Mortal Coils appeared first on The American...
10 months ago
43
10 months ago
We aren’t alone in facing the inevitable The post Mortal Coils appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Laura S. Lewis Welding trash into treasure The post Laura S. Lewis appeared first on The American Scholar.
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Show the Poetry of the Commonplace' A friend in Schenectady, N.Y. worked as a lineman for the telephone company for almost half a...
4 months ago
30
4 months ago
A friend in Schenectady, N.Y. worked as a lineman for the telephone company for almost half a century, into his seventies. He was the guy who strapped on a belt and spikes and climbed those sliver-making poles, and later showed rookie linemen the ropes. On the side, Bob was an...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 I Will Fucking Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again Sweet merciful Jesus, stop talking. Unless you are one of a tiny handful of businesses who know...
12 months ago
14
12 months ago
Sweet merciful Jesus, stop talking. Unless you are one of a tiny handful of businesses who know exactly what they're going to use AI for, you do not need AI for anything - or rather, you do not need to do anything to reap the benefits. Artificial intelligence, as it exists and is...
Wuthering...
Books I Read in October 2023 The five-day hospital stay breaking the month in half is likely invisible to anyone but me, but that...
a year ago
101
a year ago
The five-day hospital stay breaking the month in half is likely invisible to anyone but me, but that is why the fiction list is so mystery-heavy, and for that matter so long.  Many of these books, the post-surgery group, are not just short but light, well-suited for the invalid's...
Ben Borgers
How Recurring Tasks in War Room Work
over a year ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 The Many Lives of Null Island At risk of ruining the secret for you, Null Island is a long-running inside joke among...
11 months ago
34
11 months ago
At risk of ruining the secret for you, Null Island is a long-running inside joke among cartographers. It is an imaginary island located at a real place: the coordinates of 0º latitude and 0º longitude, a location in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa where the Prime...
Josh Thompson
Migrating my Jekyll site to Netlify Troubleshooting Netilify deploy Ugggh I moved intermediateruby.com to Netlify a few months ago in...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
Troubleshooting Netilify deploy Ugggh I moved intermediateruby.com to Netlify a few months ago in like 10 minutes, so my primary site, josh.works, should take maybe 20, right? I’m a few hours deep. Here’s what I get when Netlify tries to build: I should have done the following...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 WebGlossary.info As per the official description, “the glossary covers the major standards and concepts of the Web,...
11 months ago
10
11 months ago
As per the official description, “the glossary covers the major standards and concepts of the Web, beginning with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, accessibility, security, performance, code quality and testing, internationalization, localization, frameworks and editors and tooling. It then...
The Marginalian
The Strength to Remember and the Strength to Forget: James Baldwin on What Makes a Hero “Let everything happen to you,” wrote Rilke, “Beauty and terror.” It is not easy, this simple...
4 months ago
28
4 months ago
“Let everything happen to you,” wrote Rilke, “Beauty and terror.” It is not easy, this simple surrender. The courage and vulnerability it takes make it nothing less than an act of heroism. Most of our cowardices and cruelties, most of the suffering we endure and inflict, stem...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Bolt of Inspiration Strikes Invariably' “Inspiration is perhaps merely the joy of writing: it does not precede writing.” A student and...
2 months ago
25
2 months ago
“Inspiration is perhaps merely the joy of writing: it does not precede writing.” A student and aspiring fiction writer wonders why I seldom refer to “inspiration.” What is it? Do I deny its existence? Have certain writers successfully relied on it? Can he? My answer is yes and...
Josh Thompson
2018 Reading Review & Recommendations I read many books in 2018. I’m listing them out here, along with recommendations. Here’s the...
over a year ago
14
over a year ago
I read many books in 2018. I’m listing them out here, along with recommendations. Here’s the recommendation “key”: 👍 = I recommend this book. (This metric is intentionally fuzzy.) 😔 = This book influenced my mental model of the world/reality/myself 🏢 = Book topic is...
Josh Thompson
Array divergence in Ruby Lets say you have a list of valid items, and you want to run another array against it, and pull out...
over a year ago
17
over a year ago
Lets say you have a list of valid items, and you want to run another array against it, and pull out the items that don’t match. You don’t want to iterate through all of the items in one array, calling other_array.include?(item). (That’s computationally expensive) valid_people =...
The Perry Bible...
Ditty The post Ditty appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
4 months ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ A Second Shot It sunk in. Both the needle and the fact that life had indeed changed. I turned to my left and...
over a year ago
11
over a year ago
It sunk in. Both the needle and the fact that life had indeed changed. I turned to my left and looked at her. She, the same Black woman who had administered the first, and this time I tucked her name away into my memory, having forgotten it in the excitement and overwhelming...
The American Scholar
New Year, Old Year The post New Year, Old Year appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
The American Scholar
Lessons in the Diplomatic Arts Notes from a musical tour of South Africa The post Lessons in the Diplomatic Arts appeared first on...
a week ago
26
a week ago
Notes from a musical tour of South Africa The post Lessons in the Diplomatic Arts appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
elk.sh
over a year ago