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The American Scholar
Two Names The post Two Names appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
Escaping Flatland
Almost everyone I’ve met would be well-served thinking more about what to focus on Including me
a year ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ The Phone As Disruptive My phone doesn't follow me everywhere. It occupies the last place I left it. This happens when I...
a year ago
20
a year ago
My phone doesn't follow me everywhere. It occupies the last place I left it. This happens when I leave to go for a run, sometimes when I run errands, and often hours go by without it. This is occurring more and more. It feels light. I feel light. The literal weight of the phone...
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."
a year ago
Josh Thompson
How to Wake Up Early An understanding of sleep, and attempts to wake up early (Read Part Two, and Part Three) My...
over a year ago
26
over a year ago
An understanding of sleep, and attempts to wake up early (Read Part Two, and Part Three) My understanding of sleep has evolved. When I was born, I spent most of my time asleep (if I recall correctly…) and gradually spent less and less time sleeping, until I was down to about...
The Marginalian
Curiosity as an Instrument of Love: Thoreau and the Little Owl "If you would learn the secrets of Nature, you must practice more humanity than others."
11 months ago
This Space
The withdrawal of the novel We are subjected to that which does not exist        Simone Weil When an old friend who...
over a year ago
60
over a year ago
We are subjected to that which does not exist        Simone Weil When an old friend who has drunk deep from the puddle of the New Atheism complained on social media that religious people believe things that are “inventions, fairy stories, not real, made up", I was...
Ben Borgers
About
11 months ago
Robert Caro
Robert Caro on the Art of Biography I was never interested in writing biographies merely to tell the lives of famous men. From the first...
over a year ago
37
over a year ago
I was never interested in writing biographies merely to tell the lives of famous men. From the first time I thought of becoming a biographer
Blog -...
Book Review - Showboat: The Life of Kobe Bryant In the book Showboat: The Life of Kobe Bryant, author Roland Lazenby meticulously shares the...
over a year ago
30
over a year ago
In the book Showboat: The Life of Kobe Bryant, author Roland Lazenby meticulously shares the journey of Kobe Bryant, from ancestral influences up through his final game in the NBA. He is a clear fan of Kobe’s inarguable work ethic, but he allows readers to reinforce their...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Carrying On, Backing Out, Moving on But to my original remark, I’m backing out of Meta Corporation platforms. Maybe that’s all I mean....
10 months ago
29
10 months ago
But to my original remark, I’m backing out of Meta Corporation platforms. Maybe that’s all I mean. It’s the election, of course, and its campaigns. It’s the devolution of news and journalism and the rise of manipulative and untruthful media. It’s all kinds of things. Lies and...
Ben Borgers
JumboCode+
over a year ago
Wuthering...
On the greatness of The Story of the Stone - it is in a vigorous, somewhat staccato style Some notes on The Story of the Stone, Volume 1: The Golden Days (c. 1760 or maybe 1792) by Cao...
11 months ago
70
11 months ago
Some notes on The Story of the Stone, Volume 1: The Golden Days (c. 1760 or maybe 1792) by Cao Xueqin, the first of the five volumes of the Penguin edition of the greatest Chinese novel. I don’t like writing about a book before I have finished it, but in a sense I did finish a...
Ben Borgers
Your Feelings Are Not Unique
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Twitter Not Found
over a year 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...
a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Knew Nothing Special But Himself' A longtime reader in England writes:  “I thought of you the other day. I was reading Trent’s Last...
a week ago
9
a week ago
A longtime reader in England writes:  “I thought of you the other day. I was reading Trent’s Last Case published in 1913 by Edmund Clerihew Bentley. A description of one of the main characters reads:   “‘His austere but not unhappy life was spent largely among books and in...
Ben Borgers
iPad Impatience
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Rosebuds Are Rare As a Day in June' Fortune cookies no longer contain fortunes. Tucked inside the sugary shells are slips of paper...
6 months ago
38
6 months ago
Fortune cookies no longer contain fortunes. Tucked inside the sugary shells are slips of paper printed with platitudes. I carry one such slip in my wallet, salvaged from a forgotten meal at least a decade ago: “Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Grantland Day 22: Oct 1, 2023 — As we suspect, the weather reports prove wildly inaccurate. At 8,000 feet,...
a year ago
16
a year ago
Day 22: Oct 1, 2023 — As we suspect, the weather reports prove wildly inaccurate. At 8,000 feet, we’re subject to alpine weather rules. Meaning, isolated storms can cycle in at anytime, and they do. Lightning flashes, thunder cracks. We sleep in fits and starts. I remove the...
Josh Thompson
The Violence of God and the Hermeneutics of Paul Sometimes I (Josh) want to share around certain academic works. Sometimes its a PDF that I want...
over a year ago
30
over a year ago
Sometimes I (Josh) want to share around certain academic works. Sometimes its a PDF that I want someone to download and read, sometimes it’s text from a book I’ve read, and cannot otherwise get a sharable format of. So, I laboriously take photos of pages, use an optical character...
The American Scholar
Adventures With Jean Striking up a friendship with an older writer meant accepting the risk of getting hurt The post...
a year ago
49
a year ago
Striking up a friendship with an older writer meant accepting the risk of getting hurt The post Adventures With Jean appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
What We Look for When We Are Looking: John Steinbeck on Wonder and the Relational Nature of the... Searching for "that principle which keys us deeply into the pattern of all life."
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Of Wonder, the Courage of Uncertainty, and How to Hear Your Soul: The Best of The Marginalian 2023 Hindsight is our finest instrument for discerning the patterns of our lives. To look back on a year...
a year ago
31
a year ago
Hindsight is our finest instrument for discerning the patterns of our lives. To look back on a year of reading, a year of writing, is to discover a secret map of the mind, revealing the landscape of living — after all, how we spend our thoughts is how we spend our lives. In...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Grandstanding I love this moment of moments. Jen, Grant, and Ryan doing their own thing. The Grandstand in Death...
over a year ago
14
over a year ago
I love this moment of moments. Jen, Grant, and Ryan doing their own thing. The Grandstand in Death Valley is an astonishing playa, and worth every single moment. Read on nazhamid.com or Reply via email
Josh Thompson
"A delicate mix of chess... and bear wrestling" Over the last few weeks I’ve found myself needing to break down “why” of sport climbing (I’ll refer...
over a year ago
18
over a year ago
Over the last few weeks I’ve found myself needing to break down “why” of sport climbing (I’ll refer to sport as “lead” climbing from here on out. Sorry, trad climbers). If someone is enjoying top roping, (or bouldering) why should they take on the work of learning to lead climb,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Is Only Man' “You either fell under his spell and loved the wild ride of his prose, or you shunned or ignored...
4 months ago
35
4 months ago
“You either fell under his spell and loved the wild ride of his prose, or you shunned or ignored it.”   Infatuation of the literary sort is likely possible only among the young. That’s my experience. I have discovered good writers in recent decades – Yvor Winters, C.H. Sisson –...
Anecdotal Evidence
'In Praise of Half-Forgotten Books' Sometimes all it takes for me to pull a book off the shelf is a provocative or otherwise...
2 weeks ago
13
2 weeks ago
Sometimes all it takes for me to pull a book off the shelf is a provocative or otherwise interesting title. While retrieving a collection of William H. Pritchard’s reviews in the university library I noticed a nearby slender volume titled In Praise of the Half-Forgotten and Other...
Wuthering...
Not Shakespeare - a preliminary, semi-formed invitation to read plays by Shakespeare's... Here’s something I’ve been wanting to do.  I’ve been wanting to return to the plays of...
3 months ago
39
3 months ago
Here’s something I’ve been wanting to do.  I’ve been wanting to return to the plays of Shakespeare’s contemporaries, Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson and so on.  The Spanish Tragedy, The Duchess of Malfi, The Knight of the Burning Pestle,  Bartholomew Fair.  It has been a while...
Wuthering...
The appeal of Septology as religious fiction - the urge, inexplicably, to pray - because it helps!... Septology is a stream-of-consciousness novel throughout, a mix of sentence fragments, unconventional...
10 months ago
56
10 months ago
Septology is a stream-of-consciousness novel throughout, a mix of sentence fragments, unconventional punctuation, and temporal shifts, meaning the painter Asle is sometimes thinking about the present and sometimes about the past.  These are all old moves, old techniques.  I was a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Must Be Continually Striving to Live' A reader asks what I hope to accomplish in retirement. I’m not one for making grand plans or...
7 months ago
27
7 months ago
A reader asks what I hope to accomplish in retirement. I’m not one for making grand plans or resolutions. No golf and little travel. It’s more likely I’ll continue what I’m already doing – writing, reading, family matters – just more of it. More Montaigne, J.V. Cunningham,...
The American Scholar
Why the Bronx Burned Bench Ansfield on a 20th-century triangle trade The post Why the Bronx Burned appeared first on The...
4 days ago
5
4 days ago
Bench Ansfield on a 20th-century triangle trade The post Why the Bronx Burned appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Is It Not Wonderful to Be Alive: Edward Lear’s Parrots In the late summer of 1832, England was set aflame with wonder — a glimpse of something wild and...
2 months ago
128
2 months ago
In the late summer of 1832, England was set aflame with wonder — a glimpse of something wild and flamboyant, shimmering with the lush firstness of a world untrammeled by the boot of civilization. Edward Lear (May 12, 1812–January 29, 1888), barely out of his teens, had been...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Things Become Other Things — by Craig Mod The absolute best place to buy TBOT's Random House edition is from your local bookshop. Go in, tell...
9 months ago
33
9 months ago
The absolute best place to buy TBOT's Random House edition is from your local bookshop. Go in, tell ’em you're looking for this book by this guy named Craig Mod. Regale them with your excitement about said book. Do you think this is going to be a great book? Say, ‘I think this is...
The American Scholar
Scrolling Through Jack Kerouac, Malcolm Cowley, and the difficult birth of On the Road The post Scrolling Through...
2 weeks ago
4
2 weeks ago
Jack Kerouac, Malcolm Cowley, and the difficult birth of On the Road The post Scrolling Through appeared first on The American Scholar.
sbensu
Creative kernels Artists can often trace entire pieces around one idea that drives everything else.
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...
9 months ago
61
9 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Full Moon Rhyme” by Judith Wright appeared first on The American Scholar.
Steven Scrawls
Care doesn't scale Care Doesn’t Scale I met a social worker whose job was to look after four orphaned children. She’d...
10 months ago
38
10 months ago
Care Doesn’t Scale I met a social worker whose job was to look after four orphaned children. She’d alternate with her coworkers spending 24 hours at a time living with the kids, effectively acting as their parent. The children, unsurprisingly, had a lot of trauma and so her job...
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
18
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Took Off My Hat to This Little Fool' “Is it not strange that the phantoms of a blood-stained period have so airy a grace and look with...
5 months ago
33
5 months ago
“Is it not strange that the phantoms of a blood-stained period have so airy a grace and look with so tender eyes? -- that I recall with difficulty the danger and death and horrors of the time, and without effort all that was gracious and picturesque?”  The Battle of...
Escaping Flatland
Morning ritual + reading recommendations
a year ago
The Marginalian
Fox and Bear: A Tender Modern Fable About Reversing the Anthropocene, Illustrated in Cut-Cardboard... An antidote to the civilizational compulsions that rob human nature of nature.
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
On Scooters as a class of vehicle/tool Introduction Often when I say “scooter”, especially in the united states, the person thinks of...
9 months ago
96
9 months ago
Introduction Often when I say “scooter”, especially in the united states, the person thinks of something different than what I mean. Here’s Denver’s Sportique Scooters, here’s one of their recent posts: So that is the kind of vehicle I’m talking about when I say “scooter”. I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Your Literary Judgments Are Not Interesting' All of us when young – readers, I mean – fancy ourselves rebels and independent thinkers but most of...
5 months ago
48
5 months ago
All of us when young – readers, I mean – fancy ourselves rebels and independent thinkers but most of us are afflicted to varying degrees with the superego of the age. That is, we are influenced, whether we know it or not, by the critical climate, by the judgments and fashions of...
ben-mini
Commoditize Your Complements To the man who coined the phrase, “nothing in life is free”… have you been on GitHub...
a year ago
41
a year ago
To the man who coined the phrase, “nothing in life is free”… have you been on GitHub lately? Open-source is software that anyone can freely view, use, modify, and share because its code is publicly available on sites like Github and Huggingface. My last coding project alone was...
Astral Codex Ten
Ask Me Anything (2/2025) ...
7 months ago
The Marginalian
Thank You, Everything: An Illustrated Love Letter to the World We forget that none of this had to exist — that we weren’t owed mountains and music by the universe....
9 months ago
76
9 months ago
We forget that none of this had to exist — that we weren’t owed mountains and music by the universe. And maybe we have to forget — or we would be too stupefied with gratitude for every raindrop and every eyelash to get through the daily tasks punctuating the unbidden wonder of...
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...
a year ago
80
a year 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...
The American Scholar
“Lament” by Thom Gunn Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Lament” by Thom Gunn appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The Marginalian
Winnicott on the Psychology of Democracy, the Most Dangerous Type of Person, and the Unconscious... In the late morning of the first day of August in 2023, exactly twenty summers after I arrived in...
11 months ago
72
11 months ago
In the late morning of the first day of August in 2023, exactly twenty summers after I arrived in Philadelphia as a lone teenager from a country thirteen centuries America’s senior, I experienced that wonderful capacity for self-surprise as tears came streaming down my face in a...