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The Marginalian
The Great Blue Heron, Signs vs. Omens, and Our Search for Meaning One September dawn on the verge of a significant life change, sitting on my poet friend’s dock, I...
3 months ago
36
3 months ago
One September dawn on the verge of a significant life change, sitting on my poet friend’s dock, I watched a great blue heron rise slow and prehistoric through the morning mist, carrying the sky on her back. In the years since, the heron has become the closest thing I have to what...
The American Scholar
The Next New Thing In architecture, the gulf between the traditional and the modern seems wider than ever before The...
6 months ago
23
6 months ago
In architecture, the gulf between the traditional and the modern seems wider than ever before The post The Next New Thing appeared first on The American Scholar.
Escaping Flatland
The third chair I remembered my loneliness; I felt it with a defencelessness that I had denied myself at the time....
10 months ago
20
10 months ago
I remembered my loneliness; I felt it with a defencelessness that I had denied myself at the time. The feeling that writing was impossible; that I would never find a place in the world that felt like home; that no one except my wife would ever care about me, about the things that...
Wuthering...
The Story of the Stone, volume 4 - It was an eerie, desolate night. At the two-thirds mark, after 80 chapters of the 120, three big changes hit The Story of the Stone...
16 hours ago
8
16 hours ago
At the two-thirds mark, after 80 chapters of the 120, three big changes hit The Story of the Stone (c. 1760 / 1791).  First, David Hawkes, the original translator of the Penguin edition, dies; John Minford finishes the job.  Second, the author of the novel, Cao Xueqin, dies,...
The Elysian
Maybe you need to have more fun "Fun" as essential to human flourishing.
5 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Almost Sure to Please Others' I prefer the prose to the verse of two great poets: John Keats and Marianne Moore. That’s heresy, I...
10 months ago
16
10 months ago
I prefer the prose to the verse of two great poets: John Keats and Marianne Moore. That’s heresy, I know, and I’m not trying to be provocative. I can judge only by my frequency of rereading and the resultant pleasure. Keats’ letters are endlessly amusing,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Understand Our Fellow Creatures a Little Better' Edwin Arlington Robinson, not the sunniest of poets, writes to his friend Harry de Forest Smith on...
3 months ago
32
3 months ago
Edwin Arlington Robinson, not the sunniest of poets, writes to his friend Harry de Forest Smith on May 13, 1896:  “If printed lines are good for anything, they are bound to be picked up some time; and then, if some poor devil of a man or woman feels any better or any stronger...
The Marginalian
We Are the Music, We Are the Spark: Pioneering Biologist Ernest Everett Just on What Makes Life... "Life is exquisitely a time-thing, like music."
12 months ago
Josh Thompson
Typing in Colemac 2.0 I want to learn to type in Colemak, but I’m afraid to try to invest twenty hours in it. That’s a...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
I want to learn to type in Colemak, but I’m afraid to try to invest twenty hours in it. That’s a long commitment, and I’m afraid I would not follow through, and feel like it was a failure, because I didn’t allot enough time, nor reach a desired level of skill. My hope is that as...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Daring to His Own Disadvantage' “The words poetic and fatuous ought not to be synonyms; and to encounter a mind which is against...
5 months ago
50
5 months ago
“The words poetic and fatuous ought not to be synonyms; and to encounter a mind which is against mock society, mock poetry, mock justice, mock spirituality—against  any form of enslavement—is a benefit.”  Marianne Moore could be a soft touch when it came to reviewing. She could...
The Marginalian
Between Matter and Spirit: Psychoanalyst Allen Wheelis on the Substance of What We Are "We are carriers of spirit... into a future unknown, unknowable, and in continual creation."
a year ago
The American Scholar
“Full Moon Rhyme” by Judith Wright Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Full Moon Rhyme” by Judith Wright appeared first on The...
a week ago
12
a week ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Full Moon Rhyme” by Judith Wright appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Uses of the Erotic: Audre Lorde on the Relationship Between Eros, Creativity, and Power "There is, for me, no difference between writing a good poem and moving into sunlight against the...
a year ago
The American Scholar
“water sign woman” by Lucille Clifton Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “water sign woman” by Lucille Clifton appeared first on The...
2 months ago
30
2 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “water sign woman” by Lucille Clifton appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Make Something Beautiful' “There have been many things I’ve tried to write about and could not. Things too serious, too...
3 weeks ago
10
3 weeks ago
“There have been many things I’ve tried to write about and could not. Things too serious, too painful, and that’s not the purpose of writing a poem. The point of poetry is to make something beautiful—something in itself. I’m not trying to pour my sorrows down on the page.”  Janet...
Ben Borgers
Customer Rewards Programs
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Soil Must Have Been Prepared' Tom Disch took the title of his first collection of essays and reviews from “The Castle of...
a year ago
8
a year ago
Tom Disch took the title of his first collection of essays and reviews from “The Castle of Indolence” (1748), eighty-one Spenserian stanzas by the Scottish poet James Thomson. The poem is a sort of mock-epical hymn to the Protestant work ethic, a virtue ably represented by...
Josh Thompson
Falling into Place I recently started a job with Litmus. A key component of this job search for me was that it be 100%...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
I recently started a job with Litmus. A key component of this job search for me was that it be 100% remote. At my last job, I worked remote regularly, at least one day a week, but the rest of the week, I was in the office. Remote work is becoming established around the world,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Exhausted By Their Long Dying' Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Shadows on the Hudson is a novel of endless conversation, much of it...
a year ago
18
a year ago
Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Shadows on the Hudson is a novel of endless conversation, much of it passionate and grief-stricken, spoken by well-educated, middle-class Jewish characters in New York City shortly after World War II. Chief among the title’s Shadows are the victims of the...
ribbonfarm
Protocol Entrepreneurship I’m running the Summer of Protocols program for the Ethereum Foundation again this year. Here is the...
9 months ago
2
9 months ago
I’m running the Summer of Protocols program for the Ethereum Foundation again this year. Here is the Call for Applications. I’d appreciate any help getting it in front of the right candidates. The core of it is what we’re calling Protocol Improvement Grants (PIGs): 90k for a team...
Ben Borgers
Personal Software
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Why Do We Still Use Snapchat?
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Interlude: The Idea of “The West” A brief look at a grand narrative The post Interlude: The Idea of “The West” appeared first on The...
8 months ago
25
8 months ago
A brief look at a grand narrative The post Interlude: The Idea of “The West” appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
Drowning is Fine by Darren Allen For reasons unclear to me at the time I re-read several novels by Aharon Appelfeld, the author born...
over a year ago
37
over a year ago
For reasons unclear to me at the time I re-read several novels by Aharon Appelfeld, the author born in 1932 to a German-speaking Jewish family in what was also Paul Celan’s hometown, Czernowitz, then in Romania, now in Ukraine, and who wrote exclusively in Hebrew after he had...
Ben Borgers
Reading with RSS
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Heroism and the Human Search for Meaning: Ernest Becker on the Hidden Root of Our Existential... "To become conscious of what one is doing to earn his feeling of heroism is the main self-analytic...
a year ago
This Space
The last novel "(We are, it seems to remind us, always saying goodbye to our children.)" John Self's aside in his...
over a year ago
38
over a year ago
"(We are, it seems to remind us, always saying goodbye to our children.)" John Self's aside in his review of JM Coetzee's The Death of Jesus captures the pervasive anxiety experienced while reading this novel better than even the most detailed plot summary, which is anyway likely...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Until He Un-Alived' “But at bottom poetry, like all art, is inextricably bound up with giving pleasure, and if a poet...
3 months ago
34
3 months ago
“But at bottom poetry, like all art, is inextricably bound up with giving pleasure, and if a poet loses his pleasure-seeking audience he has lost the only audience worth having, for which the dutiful mob that signs on every September is no substitute.”  Philip Larkin’s...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Also Did Not Hope' Back to the theme of non-specialization, of writer as generalist: “Next to Montaigne, the rest of...
3 months ago
16
3 months ago
Back to the theme of non-specialization, of writer as generalist: “Next to Montaigne, the rest of the great intellectual figures of the sixteenth century, the leaders of the Renaissance, of Humanism, of the Reformation, and of the modern sciences, the men who created modern...
Josh Thompson
Five Lessons Learned in Buenos Aires Note: This is an unedited draft of a post from July 5, 2015. Almost exactly one year ago, written...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Note: This is an unedited draft of a post from July 5, 2015. Almost exactly one year ago, written after a week in Buenos Aires. Since writing this post, Kristi and I have continued on to more than a year of non-stop travel, though we’re settling down back in Golden, CO in about...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Deaf Unto the Suggestions of Tale-bearers' “Though the Quickness of thine Ear were able to reach the noise of the Moon, which some think it...
10 months ago
47
10 months ago
“Though the Quickness of thine Ear were able to reach the noise of the Moon, which some think it maketh in it rapid revolution; though the number of thy Ears should equal Argus his Eyes . . .”  The first surgery on my left ear was fifty years ago, prompted by a perpetually...
Wuthering...
there is no wisdom in me; and that is true enough - what is knowledge? - Theaetetus and Parmenides The epistemological crisis of Greek philosophy has surprised me.  The early attempts to...
a year ago
37
a year ago
The epistemological crisis of Greek philosophy has surprised me.  The early attempts to systematically understand, without the help of the revealed truth of religion, difficult concepts like existence and virtue led, almost immediately, to the question of whether anyone can...
sbensu
But I want to turn people into dinosaurs Beware of what you actually want.
5 months ago
The Marginalian
Working Out, Working In: Applying the Six Principles of Athletic Training to Writing and Creative... The highest and hardest task of life may be to become entirely ourselves — to continually purify and...
a year ago
39
a year ago
The highest and hardest task of life may be to become entirely ourselves — to continually purify and clarify who and what we are, shedding the shoulds of culture, convention, and expectation to discover the innermost musts: those deepest and truest callings of the authentic self,...
The Marginalian
The Humanistic Philosopher and Psychologist Erich Fromm on Love and the Meaning of Respect "Care and responsibility are constituent elements of love, but without respect for and knowledge of...
5 months ago
51
5 months ago
"Care and responsibility are constituent elements of love, but without respect for and knowledge of the beloved person, love deteriorates into domination and possessiveness."
Anecdotal Evidence
'What Is Called an Amateur' I recently encountered a choice example of academic snobbery, the lording of a tenured professor...
a year ago
48
a year ago
I recently encountered a choice example of academic snobbery, the lording of a tenured professor over lecturers, adjuncts and even “mere assistant professors.” Normally the perpetrator tries to disguise his snottiness or treat it as a joke but in this case the prima donna was...
The Elysian
Will you explain anarchism to me? Letters to an anarchist, part one.
a month ago
The Marginalian
The First Scientist’s Guide to Truth: Alhazen on Critical Thinking Born into a world with no clocks, telescopes, microscopes, or democracy, Ḥasan Ibn al-Haytham...
a year ago
9
a year ago
Born into a world with no clocks, telescopes, microscopes, or democracy, Ḥasan Ibn al-Haytham (c. 965–c. 1040), known in the West as Alhazen, began his life studying religion, but grew quickly disenchanted by its unquestioned dogmas and the way it turned people on each other with...
The Marginalian
Albert Camus on How to Live Whole in a Broken World Born into a World War to live through another, Albert Camus (November 7, 1913–January 4, 1960) died...
6 months ago
40
6 months ago
Born into a World War to live through another, Albert Camus (November 7, 1913–January 4, 1960) died in a car crash with an unused train ticket to the same destination in his pocket. Just three years earlier, he had become the second-youngest laureate of the Nobel Prize, awarded...
Josh Thompson
Hidden Damages of the Introvert vs. Extrovert "debate" Are you an introvert or an extrovert? Chances are good an answer pops to your mind. Of course you’re...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Are you an introvert or an extrovert? Chances are good an answer pops to your mind. Of course you’re right! You’ve taken internet tests! You’ve read Buzzfeed articles describing one aptitude or the other, and you feel like they speak to you! Stop. Right now. You’re speaking lies...
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
42
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...
Josh Thompson
Fred Roger's Method For Writing Scripts Someone said: People think this is silly, but read about Fred rogers’ method for writing a script...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Someone said: People think this is silly, but read about Fred rogers’ method for writing a script for his show. The rules aren’t fully applicable to presentations, but the attention to detail and to the Interpretation of the audience is. Don’t use any words carelessly. I...
The American Scholar
Caprock Adventures worth the silence The post Caprock appeared first on The American Scholar.
8 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Belonged Essentially to the Order of Wags' A gift I prize is seeing the humor in writers not taxonomically labeled “Humorists.” If you tell me...
9 months ago
51
9 months ago
A gift I prize is seeing the humor in writers not taxonomically labeled “Humorists.” If you tell me a piece by S.J. Pearlman has made you laugh my response is, “Enjoy yourself.” I don’t find Pearlman as funny as I did when I was a kid, though I’m happy for you. But if you tell me...
The American Scholar
Nights at the Opera Long before he wrote his masterly novels, Stendhal was transformed by the power of music The post...
4 months ago
40
4 months ago
Long before he wrote his masterly novels, Stendhal was transformed by the power of music The post Nights at the Opera appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
On Wanting to Change: Adam Phillips on Our Capacity for Transformation "There is no description of a life without an account of the changes that are possible within it."
6 months ago
Josh Thompson
On Cleaner Controllers A few days ago, I worked on a project that was mostly about serving up basic store data (modeled...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
A few days ago, I worked on a project that was mostly about serving up basic store data (modeled after Etsy) to an API. We had a few dozen end-points, and all responses were in JSON. Most of the action happened inside of our controllers, and as you might imagine, our routes.rb...
The Marginalian
Jonathan Franzen on How to Write About Nature, with a Side of Rachel Carson and Alice in Wonderland I grew up loving Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. My grandmother read it to me before I could read....
9 months ago
53
9 months ago
I grew up loving Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. My grandmother read it to me before I could read. I read it to myself as soon as I could. I loved the strangeness of it, and the tenderness. As a child mathematician, I loved knowing that a grown mathematician had written it. But...
Escaping Flatland
Having a shit blog has made me feel abundant From Giacometti’s sketch book
3 months ago
The American Scholar
“Death Fugue” by Paul Celan Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Death Fugue” by Paul Celan appeared first on The American...
6 months ago
54
6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Death Fugue” by Paul Celan appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Never Has a Man Deserved a Reputation Less' My middle son, a Marine Corps officer at Quantico, asked last week if I would interested in “working...
a year ago
11
a year ago
My middle son, a Marine Corps officer at Quantico, asked last week if I would interested in “working through Wittgenstein” with him. Of course, so we met online on Sunday for ninety minutes and read propositions 1 and 2 of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. I first read the book...
Josh Thompson
Turing Prep Chapter 1: Make Mod 1 Easier Than It Otherwise Would Be Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...
Josh Thompson
Cultivate Curiosity, or 'Reasons to be More Childlike' I’ve had an idea rolling around my head. I suspect that “being curious” will correlate well with...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
I’ve had an idea rolling around my head. I suspect that “being curious” will correlate well with positive outcomes in my life, on pretty much any time horizon, be it days, weeks, or decades. Curiosity feels like a tolerable antidote to boredom, though boredom in and of itself is...
Wuthering...
Books I Read in April 2024 - this irritation passes over into patient completed understanding Grinding away at Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans (1925), a genuine monster.  “As I...
7 months ago
59
7 months ago
Grinding away at Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans (1925), a genuine monster.  “As I was saying it is often irritating to listen to the repeating they are doing, always then that one has it as being to love repeating that is the whole history of each one, such a one has it...
Anecdotal Evidence
'No Secret Element of Gusto Warms Up the Sermon' Gusto is one of my favorite virtues, especially among writers. Italo Svevo has it. John Steinbeck...
a month ago
14
a month ago
Gusto is one of my favorite virtues, especially among writers. Italo Svevo has it. John Steinbeck does not. A.J. Liebling has it. Woodward and Bernstein have never heard of it. Gusto is taking pleasure in the job at hand. About writers it suggests energy and enjoyment in playing...
Ben Borgers
Not Developer Enough
over a year ago
The American Scholar
“One Letter” by Liu Xiaobo Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “One Letter” by Liu Xiaobo appeared first on The American...
6 months ago
62
6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “One Letter” by Liu Xiaobo appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
The Web is a Superpower
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Tufts Meal Plan Wrapped
9 months ago
Josh Thompson
An Intro to Customer Success Customer Success - what is it? When I tell people I work in “Customer Success”, they immediately...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
Customer Success - what is it? When I tell people I work in “Customer Success”, they immediately think I do either Customer Support, or sales. In a way, they are correct. I do both. Today, and more in the future, I’ll dig deep into this particular industry. A traditional...
Ben Borgers
How /swipes Works
over a year ago
The American Scholar
What Comes Naturally The post What Comes Naturally appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The Marginalian
Nothing: The Illustrated Story of How John Cage Revolutionized Music Through Silence "We make our lives by what we love."
7 months ago
The Marginalian
Awakened Cosmos: Poetry as Spiritual Practice "Poetry is the cosmos awakened to itself."
9 months ago
Astral Codex Ten
Highlights From The Comments On Prison ...
a week ago
Josh Thompson
What Do You Do? I enjoy meeting new people. Usually, one of the first questions I’ll ask them is “What to you...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
I enjoy meeting new people. Usually, one of the first questions I’ll ask them is “What to you do?” They usually respond with their occupation, or their status in school. My follow-up question is “When you’re not doing that, what do you do?” Sometimes this is a conversational...
The Marginalian
Everything Is Already There: Javier Marías on the Courage to Heed Your Intuitions "This has nothing to do with premonitions, there is nothing supernatural or mysterious about it,...
a year ago
49
a year ago
"This has nothing to do with premonitions, there is nothing supernatural or mysterious about it, what’s mysterious is that we pay no heed to it."
The Marginalian
Befriending a Blackbird Friendship is a lifeline twined of truth and tenderness. That we extend it to each other is...
6 months ago
54
6 months ago
Friendship is a lifeline twined of truth and tenderness. That we extend it to each other is benediction enough. To extend it across the barrier of biology and sentience, to another creature endowed with a wholly other consciousness, partakes of the miraculous. Born in England in...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Thus Massive Was the Vessel, Built in Vain' Gee-whiz technology soon grows obsolete and quaint. On this date in 1934, the USS Macon, a U.S. Navy...
5 months ago
27
5 months ago
Gee-whiz technology soon grows obsolete and quaint. On this date in 1934, the USS Macon, a U.S. Navy airship – blimp, dirigible, Zeppelin – successfully tracked the heavy cruiser USS Houston as it carried President Franklin Roosevelt on a secret voyage from Annapolis, Md., to...
The Marginalian
Spell Against Indifference I was a latecomer to poetry — an art form I did not understand and, as we tend to do with what we do...
a year ago
11
a year ago
I was a latecomer to poetry — an art form I did not understand and, as we tend to do with what we do not understand, discounted. But under its slow seduction, I came to see how it shines a sidewise gleam on the invisible and unnameable regions of being where the truest truths...
This Space
"And no real fate" – reading in the interval A sportswriter on the radio said that the lack of football in covid lockdown has disrupted the...
over a year ago
36
over a year ago
A sportswriter on the radio said that the lack of football in covid lockdown has disrupted the rhythm of the lives of those who follow the sport. The word stuck in my mind. Does rhythm differ from routine? When a routine is broken, there is an interval of confusion and anxiety,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Not the Head But the Seat' My late friend David Myers  taught me the useful German and Yiddish word imported into English,...
a year ago
14
a year ago
My late friend David Myers  taught me the useful German and Yiddish word imported into English, sitzfleisch. The etymology is straightforward: sitzen (“to sit”) + Fleisch (“flesh”). In other words, what we sit on -- the buttocks, ass or derriere. Metaphorically, the OED tells us,...
The American Scholar
Thoreau’s Pencils How might a newly discovered The post Thoreau’s Pencils appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The Elysian
How would anarchist societies protect themselves? Letters to an anarchist, part three.
a month ago
The Marginalian
Some Thoughts about the Ocean and the Universe How to bear the gravity of being.
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Richly, Sometimes Dreamily, Melodic' A friend has given me an unexpected gift: a first American edition of Poems for Children (Henry Holt...
9 months ago
35
9 months ago
A friend has given me an unexpected gift: a first American edition of Poems for Children (Henry Holt and Co., 1930), with a printed note before the title page:  “Three hundred copies of ‘Poems for Children’ have been specially printed and bound, and have been signed by the...
Wuthering...
Metamorphoses, Books XI to XV - The whole of it flows I had better finish up Ovid’s Metamorphoses before I forget what was in it.  It is full of memorable...
8 months ago
51
8 months ago
I had better finish up Ovid’s Metamorphoses before I forget what was in it.  It is full of memorable things, but I have limits.  Books XI through XV, the last five, in this post. Book X ended with the songs of Orpheus, so he has to begin Book XI with Orpheus’s gruesome death,...
The American Scholar
Aging Out Many of us do not go gentle into that good night The post Aging Out appeared first on The American...
2 weeks ago
5
2 weeks ago
Many of us do not go gentle into that good night The post Aging Out appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
Proust regained I recommend very highly for anyone who has read or not read In Search of Lost Time Brian Nelson's...
a year ago
9
a year ago
I recommend very highly for anyone who has read or not read In Search of Lost Time Brian Nelson's The Swann Way, the first volume in a new translation of the entire novel by diverse hands, in this fine paperback from Oxford World's Classics. His translation of the chapter Swann...
Wuthering...
Plato's Republic - justice, fantasy and censorship - We'll ask Homer not to be angry I had ambitions to write about Plato’s Republic with some thoroughness, but I guess I will just...
a year ago
60
a year ago
I had ambitions to write about Plato’s Republic with some thoroughness, but I guess I will just pursue one point.  Good enough. I have been separating Socrates from Plato, an imaginative exercise based on circular criteria.  The more Socratic of the Socratic dialogues are...
This Space
39 Books: 2000 In 1998 my friend John Harris mentioned that he was travelling to the US so I asked if he could pick...
7 months ago
52
7 months ago
In 1998 my friend John Harris mentioned that he was travelling to the US so I asked if he could pick up a copy of the new translation of Peter Handke's My Year in the No-man's Bay, not available over here. He was the first to tell me about this new website called Amazon. This is...
The American Scholar
Bubble Girl The kidnapping that once riveted the nation The post Bubble Girl appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
56
7 months ago
The kidnapping that once riveted the nation The post Bubble Girl appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
39 Books in one For anyone interested (you there in the phone box), here's a PDF of the 39 Books series. 39 Books:...
6 months ago
77
6 months ago
For anyone interested (you there in the phone box), here's a PDF of the 39 Books series. 39 Books: PDF As the introduction explained, the books were chosen from those on my books-read lists that I hadn't written about before. I thought it might be instructive to contrast the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Death Is Divestment, Death Is Communion' “Whenever in my dreams I see the dead, they always appear silent, bothered, strangely depressed,...
5 months ago
51
5 months ago
“Whenever in my dreams I see the dead, they always appear silent, bothered, strangely depressed, quite unlike their dear, bright selves. I am aware of them, without any astonishment, in surroundings they never visited during their earthly existence, in the house of some friend of...
Ben Borgers
Is It Worth It to Be Passive Aggressive?
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Blocks recap
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
One Year Ago Email
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Birth of the Byline: How a Bronze Age Woman Became the World’s First Named Author and Used the... Days after I arrived in America as a lone teenager, the same age Mary Shelley was when she wrote...
6 months ago
41
6 months ago
Days after I arrived in America as a lone teenager, the same age Mary Shelley was when she wrote Frankenstein, not yet knowing I too was to become a writer, I found myself wandering the vast cool halls of the Penn Museum. There among the thousands of ancient artifacts was one to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Every Departure Destroys a Class of Sympathies' As a boy I was spared most deaths. I've read of people who lose parents, siblings and close friends...
5 months ago
47
5 months ago
As a boy I was spared most deaths. I've read of people who lose parents, siblings and close friends when young, and wonder how they adapt to unprecedented loss. They have nothing to compare it to. The death that hit me hardest was President Kennedy’s, a month after my eleventh...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Well Educated and Glad of the Fact' “[A] literary man or woman is someone who is not only steeped in literature but has made this...
a month ago
20
a month ago
“[A] literary man or woman is someone who is not only steeped in literature but has made this immersion into literature part of his or her own life, so that the experience of books has been integral with the experience of life and therefore strongly influences his or her general...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Bring on the Vitamines' When I returned to college in 2002, thirty years after dropping out a year before graduating, I took...
3 days ago
6
3 days ago
When I returned to college in 2002, thirty years after dropping out a year before graduating, I took a class in something called “psychological anthropology.” The teacher was personable and the class was a sort of catch basin of random learning. We could write about any stray...
The Elysian
The future according to artists The Parisianer 2050's project to imagine the future in art.
8 months ago
Ben Borgers
iPad Impatience
over a year ago
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
2
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...
Ben Borgers
An Eye for Design
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
9
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...
The Marginalian
The Great Blind Spot of Science and the Art of Asking the Complex Question the Only Answer to Which... “Real isn’t how you are made… It’s a thing that happens to you,” says the Skin Horse — a stuffed toy...
a month ago
23
a month ago
“Real isn’t how you are made… It’s a thing that happens to you,” says the Skin Horse — a stuffed toy brought to life by a child’s love — in The Velveteen Rabbit. Great children’s books are works of philosophy in disguise; this is a fundamental question: In a reality of matter,...
This Space
39 Books: 2013 I reread books like Aharon Appelfeld's A Table for One and Anne Atik's How It Was as if returning to...
7 months ago
47
7 months ago
I reread books like Aharon Appelfeld's A Table for One and Anne Atik's How It Was as if returning to a particular bench with a view of the sea. On first glance A Table for One promises only banal, coffee-table memories and reflections, and that would be almost right: Real...
Josh Thompson
Letter to Two Climbers (Part 1) Hello! We met recently. (I gave Justin tape after he cut his toe and didn’t have a bandaid.) You and...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Hello! We met recently. (I gave Justin tape after he cut his toe and didn’t have a bandaid.) You and your partner were climbing a route near me and my partner. One of you (I’ll call Charles, because he had a British accent) was trying  so hard to figure out some moves high above...
The American Scholar
“Tristan da Cunha” by Roy Campbell Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Tristan da Cunha” by Roy Campbell appeared first on The...
4 months ago
36
4 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Tristan da Cunha” by Roy Campbell appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Is Wonderful to Be a Writer' I met the Israeli novelist Aharon Appelfeld in 1987 on the same day I met Raul Hilberg and Cynthia...
7 months ago
63
7 months ago
I met the Israeli novelist Aharon Appelfeld in 1987 on the same day I met Raul Hilberg and Cynthia Ozick. I had read Appelfeld’s first novel, Badenheim 1939 (1978; trans. 1980), several years earlier and found it disturbing in a novel way. The action takes place on the cusp of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'How to Live With Ourselves As We Are' “What’s essential is not Montaigne’s wisdom, but his wise recognition of his foolishness; not his...
3 months ago
22
3 months ago
“What’s essential is not Montaigne’s wisdom, but his wise recognition of his foolishness; not his virtue, but his good cognizance of his vices; not his ‘honesty,’ but his honesty, his complete leveling with the reader.”  I tried a little experiment, a variation on bibliomancy. I...
Ben Borgers
HEY’s Fun Names
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Books in the Running Brooks' One of my favorite literary analogies: “The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden...
11 months ago
17
11 months ago
One of my favorite literary analogies: “The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed and diligently planted, varied with shades, and scented with flowers; the composition of Shakespeare is a forest, in which oaks extend their branches, and pines tower in...
Astral Codex Ten
The Early Christian Strategy ...
a month ago
ribbonfarm
There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm I’m a little late to the party, but I just finished the wonderfully imaginative There Is No...
7 months ago
2
7 months ago
I’m a little late to the party, but I just finished the wonderfully imaginative There Is No Antimemetics Division (2020) by qntm. The premise is that our world is full of things with antimemetic properties. An antimeme is “an idea with self-censoring properties; an idea which, by...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Some Spirit That Didn’t Wobble' “As a youngster I came to the classics simply by following the clues of other writers. Cooper,...
11 months ago
28
11 months ago
“As a youngster I came to the classics simply by following the clues of other writers. Cooper, Stevenson, Whitman, even Edgar Rice Burroughs seemed to lead, allusion by allusion, back to a body of writing that was solider and wiser, some spirit that didn’t wobble, wasn’t under...
Escaping Flatland
Thinking about perceptiveness links
4 months ago
The Marginalian
How to Grow Re-enchanted with the World: A Salve for the Sense of Existential Meaninglessness and... A shimmering reminder that "the magic is of our own conjuring."
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'New Eyes Each Year' From 1955 until his death in 1985, Philip Larkin worked as a librarian at the Brynmor Jones Library...
9 months ago
17
9 months ago
From 1955 until his death in 1985, Philip Larkin worked as a librarian at the Brynmor Jones Library at the University of Hull, eventually becoming its director. Although Larkin complained about the time-consuming nature of the job, taking him away from poetry and other writing,...
The Marginalian
The Art of Withstanding Abandonment: The Patience of the Penguin and How Evolution Invented Faith “Let us love this distance which is wholly woven of friendship, for those who do not love each other...
4 months ago
25
4 months ago
“Let us love this distance which is wholly woven of friendship, for those who do not love each other are not separated,” Simone Weil wrote in her soulful meditation on the paradox of closeness and separation. To be separated from a loved one — in space or in silence, by choice or...
The Marginalian
Sheltering the Heroes Among Us: John Berger on Art as Resistance and Redemption of Justice "The powerful fear art, whatever its form... because it makes sense of what life’s brutalities...
a month ago
19
a month ago
"The powerful fear art, whatever its form... because it makes sense of what life’s brutalities cannot, a sense that unites us... becomes a meeting-place of the invisible, the irreducible, the enduring."
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Used to Stand in Front of the Windows' In my dream I was staring through the window of a bookstore, worried that sunlight would bleach the...
11 months ago
17
11 months ago
In my dream I was staring through the window of a bookstore, worried that sunlight would bleach the color from the cover of a book. At the center of a display that seemed to be made of cotton gauze was not just any book but a first edition of Ulysses. In the rare books collection...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Originality, Learning, Acuteness, Terseness of Style' Samuel Johnson: “Coxcombs and blockheads always have been, and always will be, innovators; some in...
10 months ago
19
10 months ago
Samuel Johnson: “Coxcombs and blockheads always have been, and always will be, innovators; some in dress, some in polity, some in language.”  John Horne Tooke: “I wonder whether they invented the choice appellations you have just repeated.”   Johnson: “No, sir! Indignant wise men...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Accepter and Recorder of Things as They Are' It has been a good week for the satisfaction of knowing that a book I recommended has been read and...
a year ago
32
a year ago
It has been a good week for the satisfaction of knowing that a book I recommended has been read and enjoyed. A reader in New York City tells me the title character of V.S. Pritchett’s 1951 novel Mr. Beluncle reminds her of her late father, a man she describes as “feckless.” And...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Expression of Blatant Despotism' Two female acquaintances have recently endured divorce, and their lives are measurably improved. The...
11 months ago
15
11 months ago
Two female acquaintances have recently endured divorce, and their lives are measurably improved. The woman I know better, whose wedding and reception we attended, was married to a thuggish prison guard of a husband. You wouldn’t know it, looking at him. Handsome, well-dressed and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Carry on With the Business of the Day' Beware of “nature poetry.” It tends to be not about nature but the poet and his self-regarding...
4 months ago
40
4 months ago
Beware of “nature poetry.” It tends to be not about nature but the poet and his self-regarding epiphanies. Perhaps our finest nature poet is Yvor Winters. A basic understanding of biology is useful in discouraging pantheism and other forms of fashionable nature mysticism.  We...
The American Scholar
Hometown Heroes What if the goal is not to make it out of the neighborhood? The post Hometown Heroes appeared first...
7 months ago
26
7 months ago
What if the goal is not to make it out of the neighborhood? The post Hometown Heroes appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'If the Nation Is to Be Saved From This Menace' “To the thinking man there are few things more disturbing than the realization that we are becoming...
10 months ago
21
10 months ago
“To the thinking man there are few things more disturbing than the realization that we are becoming a nation of minor poets.”  P.G. Wodehouse is being kind. He wrote “The Alarming Spread of Poetry” in 1916 when the blight was fresh and perhaps still reversible. His Exhibit A is...
The Marginalian
Dead Stars: Poet Laureate Ada Limón’s Stunning Love Poem to Life "We’ve come this far, survived this much. What would happen if we decided to survive more? To love...
a year ago
Ben Borgers
5% of things go wrong
a year ago
Ben Borgers
Welcome to TikTok
over a year ago
The Marginalian
What It’s Like to Be an Owl: The Strange Science of Seeing with Sound “We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals,” the great nature...
12 months ago
13
12 months ago
“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals,” the great nature writer Henry Beston wrote in his lovely century-old meditation on otherness and the web of life. “In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted...
The American Scholar
Heart of Semi-Darkness A writer’s delectable quest for rare flavors The post Heart of Semi-Darkness appeared first on The...
3 months ago
24
3 months ago
A writer’s delectable quest for rare flavors The post Heart of Semi-Darkness appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Pi
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Postmodern Pigeonhole Is a Shuck' With Tom Disch’s suicide in 2008 we lost not only one of our best poets, a fine writer of short...
a month ago
19
a month ago
With Tom Disch’s suicide in 2008 we lost not only one of our best poets, a fine writer of short stories and of one novel, Camp Concentration, but perhaps the most entertaining of our critics. His only recent rivals have been Turner Cassity and R.S. Gwynn. “Entertainment” and...
Josh Thompson
I Once Worked Hard When I began working at my first job out of college, I knew I didn’t want to spend my whole career...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
When I began working at my first job out of college, I knew I didn’t want to spend my whole career there. I was a college graduate (that means something, right?) working at a climbing gym, part time, teaching seven-year-olds how to climb at about $10 an hour. I had no idea what I...
This Space
The Lascaux Notebooks by Jean-Luc Champerret Lascaux, a placename standing for the abyssal revelation of the cave paintings discovered there...
over a year ago
50
over a year ago
Lascaux, a placename standing for the abyssal revelation of the cave paintings discovered there after millennia in darkness, and Notebooks, suggesting a private endeavour, preparation, a work to come. While neither is secret as such, neither was meant for the light. Two intrigues...
Wuthering...
My cancer - "It can’t be true! It can’t, but it is." Liver cancer.  That was a surprise.  I knew something was wrong, but I was not expecting that. Since...
a year ago
13
a year ago
Liver cancer.  That was a surprise.  I knew something was wrong, but I was not expecting that. Since the diagnosis last summer, since it was known for a fact that I had something serious, things have moved fast.  It has been like boarding a train.  Once in motion there is no way...
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
2
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 Marginalian
From Cells to Souls: The Poetic Science of How the Brain Became The making of our densely networked crucible of thought and tenderness.
a year ago
The Elysian
Is America about to fall? Or flourish? That depends on us.
a month ago
Josh Thompson
`Medusa` mythical creature: part 1 Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Won’t You Turn Your Radio Down' Most of the surfaces in the radio station, not counting the DJs and turntables, are plastered with...
a year ago
15
a year ago
Most of the surfaces in the radio station, not counting the DJs and turntables, are plastered with yellow-on-black KTRU bumper stickers. In some cases, students have cut up the stickers and rearranged the letters into the same timeless obscenities we scrawled on the walls of the...
Wuthering...
The Assemblywomen by Aristophanes - Octopus tunnyfish dogfish and skate The Assemblywomen by Aristophanes – or The Parliament of Women, or several other titles – was...
over a year ago
35
over a year ago
The Assemblywomen by Aristophanes – or The Parliament of Women, or several other titles – was performed in 392 BCE, thirteen years after The Frogs.  In the interval many things had changed.  Athens had been conquered; democracy was overthrown but restored; one endless war ended...
Josh Thompson
About working remotely at Litmus with Pajamas.io A while back, I wrote a long interview for Pajamas.io, a publication around remote work. I’ve pasted...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
A while back, I wrote a long interview for Pajamas.io, a publication around remote work. I’ve pasted the entire article here below. When Josh Thompson wanted to move out to rural Colorado with his family to be closer to the mountains he loves to climb, he knew finding a company...
Astral Codex Ten
How Did You Do On The AI Art Turing Test? ...
a month ago
Ben Borgers
Heart Reacts
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
On Fables: Finishing up Antifragile I’m cleaning up some notes I wanted to jot down over the last few weeks Nassim Taleb, in...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
I’m cleaning up some notes I wanted to jot down over the last few weeks Nassim Taleb, in Antifragile, says: The great economist Ariel Rubinstein gets the green lumber fallacy - it requires a great deal of intellect and honesty to see things that way. Rubinstein refuses to...
Josh Thompson
November 2016 Goals November 2016 Goals Note to the reader: The words that follow are all about me. Very naval-gaze-ish....
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
November 2016 Goals Note to the reader: The words that follow are all about me. Very naval-gaze-ish. I feel I owe you this warning. My November goals are an extension of my October goals. October was good ( October review) - I made progress on two of three projects, and one of...
The Marginalian
D.H. Lawrence on the Hypocrisies of Social Change and What It Actually Takes to Shift the Status Quo "We have created a great, almost overwhelming incubus of falsity and ugliness on top of us, so that...
a year ago
Wuthering...
Books I Read in May 2023 I had a good time. GREEK PHILOSOPHY The Nicomachean Ethics (4th C. BCE), Aristotle - a post,...
a year ago
93
a year ago
I had a good time. GREEK PHILOSOPHY The Nicomachean Ethics (4th C. BCE), Aristotle - a post, however shallow, should appear soon. FICTION Joseph in Egypt (1936), Thomas Mann The Long Valley (1938) & The Grapes of Wrath (1939), John Steinbeck - I last read this probably...
Wuthering...
Books I Read in September 2023 Despite all evidence I hope to wrap up the Greek philosophy project within the next couple of...
a year ago
49
a year ago
Despite all evidence I hope to wrap up the Greek philosophy project within the next couple of weeks.  A medical deadline approaches.  That will help. As usual, I read good books.   PHILOSOPHY & SELF-HELP Letters from a Stoic (c. 60), Seneca - good timing for some...
The Marginalian
How to Triumph Over the Challenges of the Creative Life: Audubon’s Antidote to Despair We move through the world as surfaces shimmering with the visibilia of our accomplishments, the...
2 months ago
38
2 months ago
We move through the world as surfaces shimmering with the visibilia of our accomplishments, the undertow of our suffering invisible to passers-by. The selective collective memory we call history contributes to this willful blindness, obscuring the tremendous personal cost behind...
The American Scholar
“The Imaginary Iceberg” by Elizabeth Bishop Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Imaginary Iceberg” by Elizabeth Bishop appeared first on...
8 months ago
24
8 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Imaginary Iceberg” by Elizabeth Bishop appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Grace Paley on the Countercultural Courage of Imagining Other Lives “Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real,” Iris...
4 months ago
40
4 months ago
“Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real,” Iris Murdoch wrote in her superb investigation of the parallels between art and morality. There could be no such realization without imagination, which is our only instrument for fathoming...
Josh Thompson
Collateralizing Mortgages and Loans With the Present Value of Rent Flow this is a draft document, it pairs with this Planned Unit Development application draft...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
this is a draft document, it pairs with this Planned Unit Development application draft document Inspiration comes from many places, but most strongly it draws heavily from Order Without Design. I’ve quoted in depth two pages below, but there is many other sections of the book...
Josh Thompson
Learn to Type - Again Yesterday, we talked about why the Caps Lock key should be converted into a delete key. What I’ve...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Yesterday, we talked about why the Caps Lock key should be converted into a delete key. What I’ve learned from learning Colemak Short, focused practice yields great results. When I start a timer for twenty minutes, I feel a sense of urgency, rather than defeat. Time boxing...
The Elysian
Substack could create the future of books Here’s how that could look.
7 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Enter Again November' The final stanza of Howard Nemerov’s “Elegy of Last Resort” from his second collection, Guide to the...
a month ago
23
a month ago
The final stanza of Howard Nemerov’s “Elegy of Last Resort” from his second collection, Guide to the Ruins (1950):  “We enter again November; cold late light  Glazes the field, a little fever of love,  Held in numbed hands, admires the false gods;  While lonely on this coast the...
The Marginalian
Stunning Century-Old Illustrations of Tibetan Fairy Tales from the Artist Who Created Bambi Soulful art from stories that speak "to the childhood of all times and all races."
a year ago
The American Scholar
Chris Combs Surveillance state The post Chris Combs appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Nothing Given Us to Keep Is Lost' Howard Nemerov reminded me not of Walden Pond in Concord but of a smaller, less storied pond at the...
6 months ago
18
6 months ago
Howard Nemerov reminded me not of Walden Pond in Concord but of a smaller, less storied pond at the opposite end of Massachusetts, near Lee in the Berkshires. I was there to interview Paul Metcalf (1917-99) and his wife Nancy for my newspaper in the summer of 1988. Paul was a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Find It Hard to Read Great Books at All' A young reader tells me he is unable to read most books written before “about the middle of the 60s....
8 months ago
20
8 months ago
A young reader tells me he is unable to read most books written before “about the middle of the 60s. I like Vonnegut. A lot of the stuff before that is like a foreign language to me.” I’m reminded of an English professor who told me more than half a century ago that most of her...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Interior Convulsion' Too late the other night a friend texted me links to several stand-up routines by the late Jackie...
a year ago
12
a year ago
Too late the other night a friend texted me links to several stand-up routines by the late Jackie Mason. I clicked on one and the inevitable followed: I went looking for more and soon descended into a privately curated  comedy show with guest stars Don Rickles, Jonathan Winters...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Twitter of Inconsequent Vitality' This week I will interview a professor of chemical engineering who is retiring after forty-four...
8 months ago
54
8 months ago
This week I will interview a professor of chemical engineering who is retiring after forty-four years on the faculty. He came to the university straight from earning his Ph.D. He’s neither flashy nor hungry for publicity, and I was surprised he agreed to speak with me. He has a...
Josh Thompson
Finding an Edge These last two weeks have been the hardest, or the most frustrating, of my time at Turing so...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
These last two weeks have been the hardest, or the most frustrating, of my time at Turing so far. I’ve been put a little off-balance by this difficulty, and I think I’m close to uncovering some useful tidbit or idea that will serve me well, and might serve someone else...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Read a Little, Listen to a Little Music' “To tend the world: read a little, listen to a little music.”  I was slow to warm to the late Adam...
a year ago
9
a year ago
“To tend the world: read a little, listen to a little music.”  I was slow to warm to the late Adam Zagajewski. I still prefer his essays to his poems, which often seem sentimental and formless, as though he demanded too little of himself when writing poetry. Only in the five...
This Space
“Can there be a pure narrative?” The question opening Maurice Blanchot’s essay The Experience of Proust* has always drawn me back,...
over a year ago
34
over a year ago
The question opening Maurice Blanchot’s essay The Experience of Proust* has always drawn me back, not to secure a yes or a no, but to keep the question of pure narrative open in its initial uncertainty, perhaps, rather, in its impossibility, as it appears to make reading and...
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
2
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...
Josh Thompson
An Open Letter about Golden 2022-06-15 Update I wrote this document the first time in a very small number of minutes, three...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
2022-06-15 Update I wrote this document the first time in a very small number of minutes, three weeks ago, on my way out the door on a particularly busy day. I follow “write it now”. I’ve gotten to discuss this letter with a few different people, because I mentioned it in email....
The American Scholar
Under a Spell Everlasting Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, published a century ago, tells of a world unable to free itself from...
2 weeks ago
9
2 weeks ago
Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, published a century ago, tells of a world unable to free itself from the cataclysm of war The post Under a Spell Everlasting appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'All These Jolts of Beauty' Once I interviewed a mycologist who, before his lecture, removed a yellow mushroom from an oak tree...
a month ago
19
a month ago
Once I interviewed a mycologist who, before his lecture, removed a yellow mushroom from an oak tree in front of the hall where he was speaking and munched on it while he spoke. A few years later the writer Paul Metcalf, author of Genoa (1965), swore me to secrecy before revealing...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Scabrous Memory Writhes Here, Underneath' I’ve just learned that some thirty percent of Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city, is paved,...
2 weeks ago
11
2 weeks ago
I’ve just learned that some thirty percent of Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city, is paved, covered in concrete and asphalt. That doesn’t count buildings and other structures. It amounts to roughly 384 square miles of ground surface that is “case-hardened, carapaced,” to...
This Space
Twentieth anniversary post On this day in 2004, I posted the first entry on this blog.  In recent years many posts have...
2 months ago
39
2 months ago
On this day in 2004, I posted the first entry on this blog.  In recent years many posts have reflected on the past and present of literary blogging (there is no future) so I will not go over that waste land again except to wish more had followed the example of This Space. One of...
Josh Thompson
2018 In Review & Thoughts on 2019 I find a lot of value in other people’s reviews of their years. It’s the time of year to be...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
I find a lot of value in other people’s reviews of their years. It’s the time of year to be contemplative and reflective on the last 12 months, so here we are. Note to reader: I’m posting this in May, 2019. I wrote it in late December, 2018, didn’t get around to finishing it up...
Josh Thompson
Parking in Golden Parking in Golden is broken. This deeply broken parking situation causes vehicle and pedestrian...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Parking in Golden is broken. This deeply broken parking situation causes vehicle and pedestrian traffic in Golden to break, in the same way that if a machine on a manufacturing line breaks, adjacent components need to stop, or it will also malfunction. The topic of parking (at...
Anecdotal Evidence
'For the Ordinary Educated Man' I’ve read most of Robert Conquest’s books – history, poetry, fiction – and here is the sole passage...
5 months ago
41
5 months ago
I’ve read most of Robert Conquest’s books – history, poetry, fiction – and here is the sole passage I have almost committed to memory:  “Literature exists for the ordinary educated man, and any literature that actively requires enormous training can be at best of only peripheral...
Josh Thompson
`Medusa` mythical creature: part 2 Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...
Ben Borgers
The TikTok Peer Group
over a year ago
The American Scholar
The Rescuer In search of the Underground Railroad’s legendary conductor The post The Rescuer appeared first on...
6 months ago
33
6 months ago
In search of the Underground Railroad’s legendary conductor The post The Rescuer appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Dream Big, and Build Optionality We all can dream big. I have dreams, and you probably do to. For example: Travel, location...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
We all can dream big. I have dreams, and you probably do to. For example: Travel, location independent living, being wealthy/choosing to do work that interests you, enjoying “simple” things. The list could go on, and on, and on. But then we go right along doing all the normal...
Escaping Flatland
Don’t sacrifice the wrong thing I began emailing essays into the void on 30 May 2021, 53 days before Rebecka, our youngest daughter...
6 months ago
73
6 months ago
I began emailing essays into the void on 30 May 2021, 53 days before Rebecka, our youngest daughter was born. This writing experiment has followed roughly the same trajectory as the baby. In 2021, Escaping Flatland's prime achievement was putting a few toys in its mouth (a...
The American Scholar
Kinship and Contradictions Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz on the complexities of Native American identity The post Kinship and...
a week ago
11
a week ago
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz on the complexities of Native American identity The post Kinship and Contradictions appeared first on The American Scholar.
ribbonfarm
Harberger Tax It’s always nice to see trails of thought connect up. An idea I first encountered and really liked...
9 months ago
2
9 months ago
It’s always nice to see trails of thought connect up. An idea I first encountered and really liked in a 2014 Steve Randy Waldman (interfluidity) post has apparently since acquired a name and a more extended provenance. Waldman’s post, Tax price, not value, presents the idea as a...
Ben Borgers
Waking up Early
over a year ago
Escaping Flatland
A measuring device that tells me what is interesting + links
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Flow, Like Waters After Summer Show’rs' “As two men sit silent, after having exhausted all their topics of conversation; one says, ‘It is...
4 months ago
26
4 months ago
“As two men sit silent, after having exhausted all their topics of conversation; one says, ‘It is very fine weather,’ and the other says, ‘Yes;’—one blows his nose, and the other rubs his eye-brows; (by the way, this is very much in Homer’s manner;) such seems to be the case...
The Marginalian
O Sweet Spontaneous: E.E. Cummings’s Love-Poem to Earth and the Glory of Spring The ultimate anthem of resistance to the assaults on life.
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Lack of Self-deception' “There is a difference between a villain and one who simply commits a crime. The villain is an...
a year ago
13
a year ago
“There is a difference between a villain and one who simply commits a crime. The villain is an extremely conscious person and commits a crime consciously, for its own sake.”  A fine distinction, one often lost on us. Auden is describing Shakespeare’s Richard III and refers us to...
The American Scholar
“The Cucumber ” by Nâzim Hikmet Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Cucumber ” by Nâzim Hikmet appeared first on The...
4 months ago
41
4 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Cucumber ” by Nâzim Hikmet appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Punctuation
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Favorite Children’s Books of 2023 Tender and poetic reckonings with friendship, fear, love, solitude, black holes, deep time, and the...
a year ago
13
a year ago
Tender and poetic reckonings with friendship, fear, love, solitude, black holes, deep time, and the interconnectedness of life.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Beautiful Lighthearted Perfection' Who is the quintessential American? Who embodies E pluribus unum? Who, at the intergalactic council,...
11 months ago
18
11 months ago
Who is the quintessential American? Who embodies E pluribus unum? Who, at the intergalactic council, might represent our nation (and species, for that matter)? I nominate Louis Armstrong. Other names come to mind: Abraham Lincoln, Jacques Barzun, Ralph Ellison, perhaps...
The American Scholar
Set in Seclusion The post Set in Seclusion appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
"The Test of a Reader' “. . . to say a word or two about the improvable reader. The gift of reading, as I have called it,...
6 months ago
50
6 months ago
“. . . to say a word or two about the improvable reader. The gift of reading, as I have called it, is not very common, nor very generally understood. It consists, first of all, in a vast intellectual endowment—a free grace, I find I must call it—by which a man rises to understand...
Anecdotal Evidence
'That Excellent Judge, Posterity' A reader can sometimes judge the true worth of a writer by the quality of his detractors....
9 months ago
20
9 months ago
A reader can sometimes judge the true worth of a writer by the quality of his detractors. Take Dwight Macdonald on James Gould Cozzens. And then consider Arnold Bennett (1867-1931). Today he’s judged a respectable but minor English novelist, something of a documentarian, if he’s...
The Marginalian
Jealousy and Its Antidote: Pioneering Psychiatrist Leslie Farber on the Tangled Psychology of Our... "Every jealous person knows jealousy to be a brutally degrading experience and resists with all his...
a year ago
The Marginalian
How to Bless Each Other: Poet and Philosopher John O’Donohue on the Light Within Us and Between Us "The structures of our experience are the windows into the divine. When we are true to the call of...
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Shadow Cabinet of Writers' “All of us, probably, have some favorite unfashionable author. Occasionally a minority taste can be...
2 months ago
28
2 months ago
“All of us, probably, have some favorite unfashionable author. Occasionally a minority taste can be powerful enough to make for some isolated masterpiece a small niche in literary history -- Henry Green’s Loving and Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Mr. Fortune's Maggot have both...
The American Scholar
“He Asked About the Quality” by C. P. Cavafy Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “He Asked About the Quality” by C. P. Cavafy appeared first...
6 months ago
52
6 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “He Asked About the Quality” by C. P. Cavafy appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
How to take payments via Stripe on a Static Site I’ve had rolling around my head an idea of selling small how-to guides and resources. Things that I...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
I’ve had rolling around my head an idea of selling small how-to guides and resources. Things that I wish existed, but have never been able to find. For example, I’ve read a bunch of books that talk about good Object-Oriented design, or refactoring code, or writing better tests....
Anecdotal Evidence
'Only Little People Frightened By the Long Night' The calendar and tradition assure us that Halloween is October 31 but the voice of the people in our...
a year ago
12
a year ago
The calendar and tradition assure us that Halloween is October 31 but the voice of the people in our neighborhood as expressed through the “group chat” I have never looked at moved the celebration to October 29. The reasons are unclear. What this means in practical terms is two...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Harbinger of a Song Greater Still' “I went to him very late each night, and he read many of the poems to me or discussed them with me...
a year ago
7
a year ago
“I went to him very late each night, and he read many of the poems to me or discussed them with me till the early hours of the morning. The tears often ran down his face as he read, without the slightest apparent consciousness of them on his part. The pathos and grandeur of these...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Well-known Types of Miracle' It’s grim out there and getting grimmer. Two poems encountered on the same day provided a touch of...
7 months ago
51
7 months ago
It’s grim out there and getting grimmer. Two poems encountered on the same day provided a touch of buoyancy. The first was originally written in Russian by Vladimir Nabokov on May 6, 1923:  “No, life is no quivering quandary! Here under the moon things are bright and dewy. We are...
Anecdotal Evidence
'So Many Delicate Aphorisms of Human Nature' “We should hesitate to name any writings which would afford so large and so various a selection of...
3 months ago
35
3 months ago
“We should hesitate to name any writings which would afford so large and so various a selection of detached passages complete in themselves. . . . We should be at a loss to name the writer of English prose who is his superior, or, setting Shakespeare aside, the writer of English...
The Marginalian
The Warblers and the Wonder of Being: Loren Eiseley on Contacting the Miraculous "The time has to be right; one has to be, by chance or intention, upon the border of two worlds. And...
10 months ago
16
10 months ago
"The time has to be right; one has to be, by chance or intention, upon the border of two worlds. And sometimes these two borders may shift or interpenetrate and one sees the miraculous."
Ben Borgers
Late Night Sprints
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
On Learning As a student at Turing, I’ve recently been thinking about learning how to learn, specifically in the...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
As a student at Turing, I’ve recently been thinking about learning how to learn, specifically in the context of software development. I am a bit hyperactive when it comes to trying to learn new things. Over the years, I’ve done plenty of ineffective learning, and at least a...
Blog -...
Book Review - Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples, 2019 Edition I don’t anticipate giving many perfect ratings, but this book is a rare gem – a captivating...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
I don’t anticipate giving many perfect ratings, but this book is a rare gem – a captivating page-turner packed full of aha moments. The authors have woven together decades of personal research and experience in the field of intimate relationships to create a classic...
The Marginalian
Yes: William Stafford’s Poetic Calibration of Perspective "No guarantees in this life."
11 months ago
The Elysian
Can we create a wise & enlightened citizenry? We'll need to address cognitive biases if we want to reach Plato's ideal.
8 months ago
Ben Borgers
Bubble Tea Snobbery
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'What She or He Ought to Know' In a typically mordant essay, “A Great Fog Over the Past,” Peter Hitchens cites “Spanish Waters,” a...
4 months ago
40
4 months ago
In a typically mordant essay, “A Great Fog Over the Past,” Peter Hitchens cites “Spanish Waters,” a poem by John Masefield, one of the first poets I claimed as my own when a boy, years before Eliot and Yeats. The poem’s “decrepit beggar,” as Hitchens puts it, “knows where the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Echo of a Song a Stranger Sang' I’m reminded of my age only when someone holds a door open for me (That’s my job!) or performs some...
2 months ago
16
2 months ago
I’m reminded of my age only when someone holds a door open for me (That’s my job!) or performs some other courtesy. I was returning to my car from the university library, carrying a canvas tote bag of books, walking with the aid of my cane, as usual, when a young man asked if he...
Ben Borgers
Novel Food
over a year ago
The American Scholar
Celebrating an American Icon The post Celebrating an American Icon appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Balance Sheet of Conscience' “Strange as this may sound, as soon as I saw the first Soviet airplanes on September 17, 1939, I had...
a year ago
7
a year ago
“Strange as this may sound, as soon as I saw the first Soviet airplanes on September 17, 1939, I had no doubt at all that I’d end up in a camp, and yet I wasn’t much interested in them. Could I have been wearied in advance, by the monotony and dullness of mass atrocities?”  That...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Nothing Makes a Man More Reverent' I have never thought of reading as a “hobby.” I put the word in quotes because I sense a patronizing...
3 weeks ago
9
3 weeks ago
I have never thought of reading as a “hobby.” I put the word in quotes because I sense a patronizing tinge to the word. A hobby is a lesser pastime than a job, something frivolous, a “leisure activity” that most people in the past couldn’t afford because they had to earn a...
The Marginalian
Your Voice Is a Garden: Margaret Watts Hughes’s Wondrous Victorian Visualizations of Sound “I hear bravuras of birds… I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice,” Walt Whitman...
4 months ago
34
4 months ago
“I hear bravuras of birds… I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice,” Walt Whitman exulted in his ode to the “puzzle of puzzles” we call Being. How puzzling indeed, and how miraculous, that of the cold silence of spacetime voice emerged, in all its warm loveliness —...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Life Is So Long' Several years ago I was diagnosed with a condition called MGUS (pronounced EM-gus) -- monoclonal...
8 months ago
22
8 months ago
Several years ago I was diagnosed with a condition called MGUS (pronounced EM-gus) -- monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance. It’s a symptom-less and in most cases benign disorder, but it can be a precursor to multiple myeloma. It means I see my oncologist once a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Dubious or Questionable Medium' In 1972, Daryl Hine, the editor of Poetry, requested poems “protesting the acceleration of the...
10 months ago
38
10 months ago
In 1972, Daryl Hine, the editor of Poetry, requested poems “protesting the acceleration of the undeclared Indo-Chinese War” for a special issue to be published in September of that year. Hine said he would be “grateful to consider any poem on this terrible and topical subject...
Anecdotal Evidence
"The Saint’s Strange Way to Practice Death" Among the road kill I’ve tallied on Houston streets, the most common casualty is the...
9 months ago
12
9 months ago
Among the road kill I’ve tallied on Houston streets, the most common casualty is the strangely spelled opossum (from the Powhatan). The least common, incidentally, is the armadillo, with two KIAs sighted in twenty years, both being pecked at by crows. Natives here seem uncommonly...
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
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Highest Kind of Verbal Exercise' John Updike published “Kenneths” in the July 5, 1958 issue of The New Yorker and collected it in his...
5 months ago
53
5 months ago
John Updike published “Kenneths” in the July 5, 1958 issue of The New Yorker and collected it in his second book of poems, Telephone Poles (1963):  “Rexroth and Patchen and Fearing—their mothers Perhaps could distinguish their sons from the others, But I am unable. My inner eye...
The Elysian
A grassroots political party for the middle The Forward Party, citizen's assemblies, and a creating better independence movement in the US.
6 days ago
Wuthering...
Lucretius brings to light in Latin verse the dark discoveries of the Greeks During the Hellenistic period, Epicureanism and Stoicism replaced Plato and Aristotle as the...
a year ago
10
a year ago
During the Hellenistic period, Epicureanism and Stoicism replaced Plato and Aristotle as the dominant philosophical movements (Plato would make a big comeback; Aristotle would have to wait for the great Arabic philosophers).  Both movements were popular in the Roman Republic as...
Anecdotal Evidence
Arthur Krystal My review of two books by Arthur Krystal -- A Word or Two Before I Go: Essays Then and Now and Some...
5 months ago
38
5 months ago
My review of two books by Arthur Krystal -- A Word or Two Before I Go: Essays Then and Now and Some Unfinished Chaos: The Lives of F. Scott Fitzgerald – is published in Ron Slate’s On the Seawall.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Then Came the Barbarians' “Prose poetry” suggests transfusing a patient with a blood type not his own. You’ll kill him or at...
3 months ago
37
3 months ago
“Prose poetry” suggests transfusing a patient with a blood type not his own. You’ll kill him or at least make him sick. When I confront a prose poem I run, though sometimes I pause to laugh and then run. The question becomes, which is worse: the poet’s ineptness or his...
This Space
Kafka's great fire The centenary of Kafka's death was marked twelve years late. His diary records it in September...
6 months ago
59
6 months ago
The centenary of Kafka's death was marked twelve years late. His diary records it in September 1912: This story, The Judgment, I wrote at one sitting during the night of the 22nd-23rd, from ten o'clock at night to six o'clock in the morning. I was hardly able to pull my legs...
Josh Thompson
The advantage of low friction goals If you have a project, make it easy to take small steps. I’m trying to publish something every day...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
If you have a project, make it easy to take small steps. I’m trying to publish something every day for a month. Normally, I would sit down at my computer, open a text editor, write something, the copy it into Squarespace, and customize the post from there. “Customization”...
Josh Thompson
12 Lessons Learned While Publishing Something Every Day for a Month A month ago, I decided to publish something every day for at least thirty days. I read a few others...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
A month ago, I decided to publish something every day for at least thirty days. I read a few others who did something similar, and discussed all the benefits. I’ve found myself struggling with creating something and then making it public. (Public here, on another project, or at...
Josh Thompson
$150 Custom-Made Standing Desk My desk/our kitchen table Standing desks are all the rage. (I’m still waiting for walking desks...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
My desk/our kitchen table Standing desks are all the rage. (I’m still waiting for walking desks to catch up.) Kristi and I outfitted our space with reclaimed furniture from Craigslist (also known as “cheap”), so we wanted to keep it going with a desk. My setup at our kitchen...
The Marginalian
The Work of Happiness: May Sarton’s Stunning Poem About Being at Home in Yourself "What is happiness but growth in peace."
a year ago
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
2
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...
Josh Thompson
Give it 30 days Do you have any big audacious goal you want to accomplish? If you think back to Jan 1, 2016, what...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Do you have any big audacious goal you want to accomplish? If you think back to Jan 1, 2016, what were your goals? Lose weight/get in shape Make more money/start budgeting Learn a language Learn a skill Read more Stop doing something (smoking, drinking) Statistically, all of...
The American Scholar
Rhyme, Not Repetition All that’s past isn’t necessarily present The post Rhyme, Not Repetition appeared first on The...
6 months ago
21
6 months ago
All that’s past isn’t necessarily present The post Rhyme, Not Repetition appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Merger Self, the Seeker Self, and the Lifelong Challenge of Balancing Intimacy and Independence Each time I see a sparrow inside an airport, I am seized with tenderness for the bird, for living so...
8 months ago
56
8 months ago
Each time I see a sparrow inside an airport, I am seized with tenderness for the bird, for living so acutely and concretely a paradox that haunts our human lives in myriad guises — the difficulty of discerning comfort from entrapment, freedom from peril. It is a paradox rooted in...
Escaping Flatland
Integrity Intensely Human, No 3
10 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Humour Is Reason Itself' The saddest man I know wishes more than anything to be thought of as a comedian, a jokester, the...
4 days ago
6
4 days ago
The saddest man I know wishes more than anything to be thought of as a comedian, a jokester, the reliably funny guy at the party. The sadness derives from his inability to say or do anything even modestly amusing. People will laugh aloud at something he says out of pity and an...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Scrawls With a Lavish Hand Its Signature' “Where the wind listeth, there the sailboats list, / Water is touched with a light case of hives /...
2 months ago
26
2 months ago
“Where the wind listeth, there the sailboats list, / Water is touched with a light case of hives / Or wandering gooseflesh.” Carl George is the sort of scientist whose company I most enjoy. He is a generalist, what used to be called a naturalist. Now an emeritus professor of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Dark But Festive' I grew up in the Age of Magazines. My parents, who were not book readers, subscribed at various...
7 months ago
55
7 months ago
I grew up in the Age of Magazines. My parents, who were not book readers, subscribed at various times to Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, Time, Life, Look, Saturday Evening Post and National Geographic, not to mention those periodicals subscribed to by my mother (McCall’s,...
The Marginalian
Nobel-Winning Poet Joseph Brodsky on the Remedy for Existential Boredom "Try to stay passionate, leave your cool to constellations. Passion, above all, is a remedy against...
5 months ago
34
5 months ago
"Try to stay passionate, leave your cool to constellations. Passion, above all, is a remedy against boredom. Another one, of course, is pain... passion's frequent aftermath."
The Marginalian
“Little Women” Author Louisa May Alcott on the Creative Rewards of Being Single "Liberty is a better husband than love."
a year ago
The American Scholar
From All Souls by Saskia Hamilton Poems read aloud, beautifully The post From <em>All Souls</em> by Saskia Hamilton appeared first on...
2 months ago
32
2 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post From <em>All Souls</em> by Saskia Hamilton appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'I'd Walk in Heaven With My Feet on Earth' “If love of beauty were the same as faith, / I’d walk in heaven with my feet on earth.” The...
12 months ago
14
12 months ago
“If love of beauty were the same as faith, / I’d walk in heaven with my feet on earth.” The late Terry Teachout once described himself as a “Midwestern aesthete,” an identification I have happily claimed. I sense that a love of beauty has grown scarce and too often earns contempt...
The Marginalian
The Fairy Tale Tree Creativity is at bottom the combinatorial work of memory and imagination. All of our impressions,...
11 months ago
19
11 months ago
Creativity is at bottom the combinatorial work of memory and imagination. All of our impressions, influences, and experiences — every sight we have ever seen, every book read, every landscape walked, every love loved — become seeds for ideas we later combine and recombine,...
The American Scholar
The March Down Main The post The March Down Main appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The American Scholar
Battle Hymns Charles Ives and the Civil War The post Battle Hymns appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Everything is Singing, Blooming and Sparkling' In a May 4, 1889 letter to his friend and editor Alexi Suvorin, Chekhov complains of taking no...
7 months ago
42
7 months ago
In a May 4, 1889 letter to his friend and editor Alexi Suvorin, Chekhov complains of taking no interest in “reviews, conversations about literature, gossip, successes, failures, high royalties,” and adds: “[I]n short, I’ve become a damn fool. My soul seems to be stagnating. I...
Escaping Flatland
A greeting They think it was a monk at the Monastery of St Alban in Trier, present-day Germany. On Christmas...
12 months ago
13
12 months ago
They think it was a monk at the Monastery of St Alban in Trier, present-day Germany. On Christmas day, sometime in the 1570s, he was out walking when he came upon a rose that had, in the blistering cold, put forth a flower. It was a hellebore, a winter rose. Moved by the...
Josh Thompson
Notes from 'Why We Sleep' I first read Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams about two years ago. It...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
I first read Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams about two years ago. It immediately led me to prioritize sleep over almost everything else. Most of us don’t get enough sleep, and are worse for it. Usually when the topic of sleep comes up, I say Hey, there’s...
Josh Thompson
Exploring source code via Griddler and Griddler-Mailgun Proofpoint had a two-day “hack day” recently. My coworker John and I teamed up on a cool little...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Proofpoint had a two-day “hack day” recently. My coworker John and I teamed up on a cool little feature. I’ll give some context in a moment, but this post isn’t about the hack day, or email - it’s about exploring source code. Here’s the context: In my day-to-day, I work on a...
The American Scholar
Ideology as Anatomy How shifting ideas about women’s bodies have affected their lives The post Ideology as Anatomy...
2 weeks ago
5
2 weeks ago
How shifting ideas about women’s bodies have affected their lives The post Ideology as Anatomy 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...
3 months ago
22
3 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.
This Space
39 Books: 2009 The further I get into this series, the fewer books there are on my yearly lists that I haven't...
7 months ago
58
7 months ago
The further I get into this series, the fewer books there are on my yearly lists that I haven't already written about and among those few that I feel able to write about. For 2009 there is one outstanding exception: another book about a writer exiled in Paris. Already in this...
The Marginalian
A Spell Against Stagnation: John O’Donohue on Beginnings "Our very life here depends directly on continuous acts of beginning."
11 months ago
Josh Thompson
Content but Restless There is tension between being content with what you have, and striving for more. We have all heard...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
There is tension between being content with what you have, and striving for more. We have all heard the “serenity prayer”: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference. This prayer is...
The Marginalian
The Art of Allowing Change: Neurobiologist Susan R. Barry’s Moving Correspondence with Oliver Sacks... There is a thought experiment known as Mary’s Room, brilliant and haunting, about the abyss between...
10 months ago
19
10 months ago
There is a thought experiment known as Mary’s Room, brilliant and haunting, about the abyss between felt experience and our mental models of it, about the nature of knowledge, the mystery of consciousness, and the irreducibility of aliveness: Living in a black-and-white chamber,...
The American Scholar
Betsy, Mary, and Trish The post Betsy, Mary, and Trish appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
ben-mini
IMG_0416 Between 2009 and 2012, Apple iPhones and iPod Touches included a feature called “Send to YouTube”...
a month ago
1
a month ago
Between 2009 and 2012, Apple iPhones and iPod Touches included a feature called “Send to YouTube” that allowed users to upload videos directly to YouTube from the Photos app. The feature worked… really well. In fact, YouTube reported a 1700% increase in total video uploads...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Be Made Out of Emotions, Colors, Life Itself' “[Robert Conquest] and his two closest friends, Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin, proved their...
5 months ago
41
5 months ago
“[Robert Conquest] and his two closest friends, Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin, proved their vocation by playing the games with language and perception that poets play, three Musketeers at a time when not much else was disturbing the quiet little cemetery of English...
Josh Thompson
Mythical Creatures: Refactoring wizard.rb Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...
Escaping Flatland
Thoughts on agency If anyone is in the mood for a video call, I would like to get a few of you together on Saturday at...
6 months ago
56
6 months ago
If anyone is in the mood for a video call, I would like to get a few of you together on Saturday at 6 pm CET (9 am PST). Like last time, I’ll prepare a few questions (probably relating to today’s post since that is top of mind) but mostly we’ll just talk about whatever comes up....
Ben Borgers
Pictures as Memories
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Setting up for 'SQL Queries for Mere Mortals' This tweet is from… a while ago. Turns out I didn’t dig into this book, because the pace at Turing...
over a year ago
1
over a year ago
This tweet is from… a while ago. Turns out I didn’t dig into this book, because the pace at Turing didn’t allow for a few weeks of thinking just about SQL. yes, I'm digging into sql to better my AR skills, and ultimately whatever I need to use next. pic.twitter.com/UhjyGKv1FQ —...
The Marginalian
The Human Scale: Oliver Sacks on How to Save Humanity from Itself "...or there will be genocide, atomic bombs, and we'll all perish and take the planet with us."
a year ago
The Marginalian
Coleridge on the Paradox of Friendship and Romantic Love On sympathy, reciprocity, and satisfying the fulness of our nature.
a year ago
The Marginalian
Nature’s Oldest Mandolin: The Poetic Science of How Cicadas Sing “The use of music,” Richard Powers wrote, “is to remind us how short a time we have a body” — a...
7 months ago
55
7 months ago
“The use of music,” Richard Powers wrote, “is to remind us how short a time we have a body” — a truth nowhere more bittersweet than in the creature whose body is the oldest unchanged musical instrument on Earth: a tiny mandolin silent for most of its existence, then sonorous with...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Some Godforsaken Province' After the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, the poet Aleksander Wat fled to Lwów, already occupied by...
7 months ago
61
7 months ago
After the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, the poet Aleksander Wat fled to Lwów, already occupied by the Soviets. He was arrested by the NKVD the following year and held in a military prison in that city, then moved to Kiev, the Lubyanka in Moscow, and Saratov, more than...
This Space
Kevin Hart and the outside There are two reasons why listening to Kevin Hart's interview on the Hermitix podcast, and reading...
a year ago
57
a year ago
There are two reasons why listening to Kevin Hart's interview on the Hermitix podcast, and reading his new collection and The Dark Gaze for the second time, has helped me to recognise what I have forgotten, missed, misconstrued or misunderstood in Maurice Blanchot's writing or,...
Ben Borgers
A Design Improvement for Our Communal Showers
over a year ago
Wuthering...
The Story of the Stone, fairy tale and realism - Not so wonderful, really, is it? I left the characters of The Story of the Stone as they were buying drapes and tablecloths for a...
2 months ago
34
2 months ago
I left the characters of The Story of the Stone as they were buying drapes and tablecloths for a party.  I will rejoin the party planning momentarily. The Story of the Stone is a massive domestic novel about an extended family.  The main plot is the teenage love triangle, but...
Astral Codex Ten
The Innocent And The Beautiful Have No Enemy But Time ...
a week ago
The Marginalian
The Night, the Light, and the Soul: Albert Pinkham Ryder’s Enchanting Moonscapes “That best fact, the Moon,” Margaret Fuller called it. “No one ever gets tired of the moon,” Walt...
a year ago
14
a year ago
“That best fact, the Moon,” Margaret Fuller called it. “No one ever gets tired of the moon,” Walt Whitman wrote down the Atlantic coast from her, exulting: Goddess that she is by dower of her eternal beauty, [the moon] commends herself to the matter-of-fact people by her...
Ben Borgers
Website redesign, December 2022
a year ago
The American Scholar
A Ray of Sunshine The post A Ray of Sunshine appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
Robert Caro
Misery Acres: An Investigative Series Perhaps Caro’s most influential work during his years at Newsday was the investigative series,...
a year ago
2
a year ago
Perhaps Caro’s most influential work during his years at Newsday was the investigative series, “Misery Acres,” a withering expose of fraud.
The Elysian
Your visions for the next Renaissance From our May writing prompt.
4 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Bright Books! the Perspectives to Our Weak Sights' April is the kindest and cruelest month.  Think of the births: George Herbert (April 3, 1593),...
8 months ago
59
8 months ago
April is the kindest and cruelest month.  Think of the births: George Herbert (April 3, 1593), Shakespeare (April 23, 1564), Henry Vaughan (April 17, 1621), Daniel Defoe (April 24, 1731), Edward Gibbon (April 27, 1737), William Hazlitt (April 10, 1778), Anthony Trollope (April...
Ben Borgers
No Dessert Challenge
a year ago
The Marginalian
An Illustrated Field Guide to the Science and Wonder of the Clouds Clouds drift ephemeral across the dome of this world, carrying eternity — condensing molecules that...
5 months ago
41
5 months ago
Clouds drift ephemeral across the dome of this world, carrying eternity — condensing molecules that animated the first breath of life, coursing with electric charges that will power the last thought. To me, a cloud will always be a spell against indifference — a little bloom of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Leave Him Something to Imagine' “I am now beginning to get fairly into my work; and by the help of a vegetable diet, with a few of...
a year ago
12
a year ago
“I am now beginning to get fairly into my work; and by the help of a vegetable diet, with a few of the cold seeds, I make no doubt but I shall be able to go on with my uncle Toby’s story, and my own, in a tolerable strait line.”  By the time a persevering reader has reached Book...
This Space
39 Books: 2006 My choice for 2003 began with indecision, as I couldn't imagine writing about Robert Antelme's The...
7 months ago
35
7 months ago
My choice for 2003 began with indecision, as I couldn't imagine writing about Robert Antelme's The Human Race. Instead I wondered if I could say something about Timothy Hyman's Sienese Painting. While I have little or no feeling for art, I am drawn to reading about it. The book's...
Escaping Flatland
Ethos and imagination Milk Drop Coronet, an ultra-high-speed photograph of the splash of a drop of milk, Harold Edgerton,...
a month ago
23
a month ago
Milk Drop Coronet, an ultra-high-speed photograph of the splash of a drop of milk, Harold Edgerton, 1957
Ben Borgers
Planning my week
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Beauty, Clarity, Consolation, Truth' The blogosphere is infested with hair-trigger book critics whose job it is, at long last, to set you...
a year ago
9
a year ago
The blogosphere is infested with hair-trigger book critics whose job it is, at long last, to set you straight. Their world is strictly binary --  like/dislike, good/bad – and they are fond of superlatives: the best/the worst. Dissent sparks crackdowns and there is no appeals...
Ben Borgers
Friday, January 14, 2022
over a year ago
The Marginalian
How to Say Goodbye: An Illustrated Field Guide to Accompanying a Loved One at the End of Life "If you don't know what to say, start by saying that... That opens things up."
a year ago
Josh Thompson
Climbing in Cuba, 2019 A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go climbing in Cuba. Mark and Dave, walking back from...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go climbing in Cuba. Mark and Dave, walking back from climbing outside Viñales Locals crag, called “The roof of the world”. Stunning routes. because it was so hot, we spent a lot of time in this cave. Kristi and I tend to stick...
The American Scholar
Good Intentions The post Good Intentions appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The American Scholar
“Guests” by Celia Thaxter  Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Guests” by Celia Thaxter  appeared first on The American...
5 days ago
The Elysian
No one buys books Everything we learned about the publishing industry from Penguin vs. DOJ.
8 months ago
The Marginalian
The Donkey and the Meaning of Eternity: Nobel-Winning Spanish Poet Juan Ramón Jiménez’s Love Letter... "Come with me. I'll teach you the flowers and the stars."
a year ago
The Elysian
What is the goal of anarchism? Letters to an anarchist, part five.
a month ago
Escaping Flatland
How to think in writing Part 1: The thought behind the thought
8 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Curiosity to Inquire Into All Things' “Concupiscence of experience, boundless curiosity to set our foot everywhere, to enter...
a month ago
20
a month ago
“Concupiscence of experience, boundless curiosity to set our foot everywhere, to enter every possible situation. Montaigne.”  I could have signed my name to that when I was twenty. I wanted to visit every country in the world, even the most dangerous. I made plans to move to...
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
sbensu
The person behind the idea When reading, it is worth understanding the kind of person authors are.
2 weeks ago
The American Scholar
Bitten The post Bitten appeared first on The American Scholar.
7 months ago
Steven Scrawls
Quicksilver and Clay Quicksilver and Clay Like everyone else, I walk around the world in a body made of quicksilver and...
11 months ago
2
11 months ago
Quicksilver and Clay Like everyone else, I walk around the world in a body made of quicksilver and clay. The pieces of my body—my sense of humor, my beliefs, my opinions and artistic sensibilities and worldviews, everything—combine to present a cohesive self to be...
Ben Borgers
Bin System
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Look Up: The Illustrated Story of Astronomer Henrietta Leavitt, Who Laid the Groundwork for... How a brilliant woman rose against the tide of her time to fathom the mysteries of space.
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Make a Friend or Sonnet' Some deny that true friendship can flourish on the internet, that genuine intimacy, trust and...
10 months ago
15
10 months ago
Some deny that true friendship can flourish on the internet, that genuine intimacy, trust and affection thrive only in the physical world. I was once sympathetic to this idea, which was more revealing of my own digital backwardness than of the nature of friendship. My thinking...
Josh Thompson
Twenties vs. Thirties (from a feeling-behind-the-curve 27 year old.) Some months ago I found a very encouraging article, comparing one’s twenties to one’s thirties. I’ve...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Some months ago I found a very encouraging article, comparing one’s twenties to one’s thirties. I’ve scoured everywhere that I stick notes and interesting reads, and cannot, for the life of me, find the article. The internet is littered with tons of fluff pieces talking about sex...
The Elysian
Could AI make us wise? An alternative to the internet making us stupid.
8 months ago
Josh Thompson
Habits, Milestones, and Climbing Since April 9th, I have spent exactly 70 minutes training for climbing. Prior to April 27th, I have...
over a year ago
2
over a year ago
Since April 9th, I have spent exactly 70 minutes training for climbing. Prior to April 27th, I have climbed exactly seven times in the last five months. I just spent two days at the New River Gorge and exceeded my expectations, considering my almost half-year hiatus from regular...
This Space
The end of literature, part three On the evening of December 12th, 2019 a numbed grief descended over the land, and has lain there...
over a year ago
29
over a year ago
On the evening of December 12th, 2019 a numbed grief descended over the land, and has lain there ever since. At that time a mild alternative to barbarism was being put to death. Back in 2015 when, against all odds, a lifelong socialist and campaigner against racism and...
Ben Borgers
We’re All Powered by Electric Meat
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Poets Who Are Plain and Gladsome' Being or pretending to be a philistine is great fun. It was one of Philip Larkin’s favorite ruses...
9 months ago
32
9 months ago
Being or pretending to be a philistine is great fun. It was one of Philip Larkin’s favorite ruses (“Books are a load of crap”). It’s certain to rile the pompous and pretentious, so all you have to do is sit back and enjoy the sputtering. I’ve happened on a first-rate anthology of...