The Marginalian
The Paradise Notebooks: A Poet and a Geologist’s Love Letter to Life Lensed Through a Mountain
"Each world bears all the worlds we might find within it. If you understand one outcropping of...
8 months ago
"Each world bears all the worlds we might find within it. If you understand one outcropping of stone, or one wildflower, or one hummingbird — if we see our way along the tracery of cause and effect, the mystery of change and recreation — then we are led to everything we see, and...
Ben Borgers
Current Self and Going to Libraries
over a year ago
sbensu
The Perfectionists (book)
A great book that covers the ideas and people behind modern industry.
5 months ago
A great book that covers the ideas and people behind modern industry.
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Enter Again November'
The final
stanza of Howard Nemerov’s “Elegy of Last Resort” from his second collection, Guide to the...
2 months 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...
Josh Thompson
Social skills are like any other skills
Learning social
skills are no different from learning cooking
skills, or handstand
skills. It...
over a year ago
Learning social
skills are no different from learning cooking
skills, or handstand
skills. It helps to have exposure at a young age, but with time and effort, you can learn, and even master, cooking, handstands, and social skills.
Why do social skills matter?
Most people get...
This Space
39 Books: 1996
It's a commonplace that in reading novels one can escape the ravages of time. In 1994, I borrowed my...
8 months ago
It's a commonplace that in reading novels one can escape the ravages of time. In 1994, I borrowed my student housemate's innocent-looking hardback edition of Nicholson Baker's The Fermata in which Arno Strine writes about how he can actually stop time. The title refers to the...
The Marginalian
Kierkegaard on the Value of Despair
"To despair over oneself, in despair to want to be rid of oneself, is the formula for all despair."
a year ago
"To despair over oneself, in despair to want to be rid of oneself, is the formula for all despair."
Wuthering...
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr's La plus secrète mémoire des hommes - one of his objectives was to be original...
La plus secrète mémoire des hommes (2021) by
Senegalese novelist Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, published in...
8 months ago
La plus secrète mémoire des hommes (2021) by
Senegalese novelist Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, published in English as The Most
Secret History of Men (2023), is the first imitation of Roberto Bolaño I
have seen outside of Latin American literature.
Many reviews note that Sarr’s novel is...
The American Scholar
“The Pulley” by George Herbert
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Pulley” by George Herbert appeared first on The American...
3 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Pulley” by George Herbert appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Proper Object of Love: Iris Murdoch on the Angst of Not Knowing Ourselves and Each Other
One of the hardest things to learn in life is that the heart is a clock too fast not to break. We...
5 months ago
One of the hardest things to learn in life is that the heart is a clock too fast not to break. We lurch into loving, only to discover again and again that it takes a long time to know people, to understand people — and “understanding is love’s other name.” Even without...
Anecdotal Evidence
'One Is Always at Home in One’s Past'
I will quote
the writer who has given me more pleasure – “aesthetic bliss” he called it –
than any...
8 months ago
I will quote
the writer who has given me more pleasure – “aesthetic bliss” he called it –
than any other and whose birthday we observed earlier this week: “One is always at home in one’s past.” That might
serve as a gloss on his autobiography, Speak,
Memory, in which he writes at...
The Marginalian
I Touched the Sun: A Tender Illustrated Parable About How to Find and Bear Your Inner Light
“One discovers the light in darkness, that is what darkness is for; but everything in our lives...
a year ago
“One discovers the light in darkness, that is what darkness is for; but everything in our lives depends on how we bear the light,” James Baldwin wrote in one of his finest, least known essays. In his exquisite memoir of the search for inner light, the blind resistance hero...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Fragility of Happiness'
Christopher Carduff, books editor at the Wall Street Journal, asked me to review
a new translation...
a year ago
Christopher Carduff, books editor at the Wall Street Journal, asked me to review
a new translation of a Russian novel due for publication in November. The proofs arrived on Thursday and I sent Chris an email letting him know I was
already reading the book. The email bounced back...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Life Is Slow Dying'
One of
Philip Larkin’s most technically adept poems, “Here,” is never self-consciously
flashy,...
a year ago
One of
Philip Larkin’s most technically adept poems, “Here,” is never self-consciously
flashy, though the first of its three sentences is twenty-five lines long. Its
earliest readers perhaps flipped past it in The
Whitsun Weddings (1964) -- it’s the first poem in the collection –...
The American Scholar
Imperfecta
Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the...
7 months ago
Her brother’s disease leads a writer to challenge how we conceive of human abnormality in the emerging era of gene editing
The post Imperfecta appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
How would anarchist societies protect themselves?
Letters to an anarchist, part three.
a month ago
Letters to an anarchist, part three.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Perhaps the Most Impressive of All'
Spices meant
salt and pepper. For my family like others in the American working class, there
was no...
3 months ago
Spices meant
salt and pepper. For my family like others in the American working class, there
was no cardamom or turmeric. When I was a kid those would have sounded vaguely
like medical conditions. We never heard of such things until decades later.
For some baked goods, breakfast...
The Marginalian
May Sarton on the Art of Living Alone
"The people we love are built into us."
a year ago
"The people we love are built into us."
Wuthering...
Three weeks in Portugal
I was in Portugal for three weeks in June. Five hours a day for four days I was in this inlingua...
6 months ago
I was in Portugal for three weeks in June. Five hours a day for four days I was in this inlingua classroom in Porto, or one much like it:
The results:
B1 in Portuguese after about two years of fairly relaxed study
– relaxed until those four days – which seems pretty good. ...
This Space
Literature likes to hide
Last December I was fortunate enough to borrow a copy of The Unmediated Vision, Geoffrey Hartman's...
a year ago
Last December I was fortunate enough to borrow a copy of The Unmediated Vision, Geoffrey Hartman's first book, published in 1954. It is difficult to find a copy now but you can download a digital version of the book via the link. The opening chapter is a 50-page study of "Tintern...
Escaping Flatland
On having more interesting ideas
“To write well, all you have to do is cultivate your mind and then write what you see.” When I talk...
7 months ago
“To write well, all you have to do is cultivate your mind and then write what you see.” When I talk to people who have worked with their ideas seriously for 10+ years, it feels like I can throw any topic on them and they’ll have an interesting idea, or if not an idea so at least...
The Marginalian
You and the Universe: N.J. Berrill’s Poetic 1958 Masterpiece of Cosmic Perspective
"The universe is as we find it and as we discover it within ourselves."
4 months ago
"The universe is as we find it and as we discover it within ourselves."
Josh Thompson
Two Critical Books and Two Critical Articles (For 'Software People')
I speak with many persons who are considering becoming software developers (usually by way of a...
over a year ago
I speak with many persons who are considering becoming software developers (usually by way of a program like the Flatiron School or the Turing School).
I’m a graduate of the Turing School, and have written a lot about the program, like:
My reflections on Turing
an 8-part guide to...
The American Scholar
Hometown Heroes
What if the goal is not to make it out of the neighborhood?
The post Hometown Heroes appeared first...
8 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.
Josh Thompson
Redefining Success
It’s been pretty quiet around here lately. It’s been almost a month since my last entry. I thought...
over a year ago
It’s been pretty quiet around here lately. It’s been almost a month since my last entry. I thought about writing something here almost every day, but here is why I didn’t:
I want to produce “content” that is helpful and relevant to those who might read it.
I felt like nothing I...
The American Scholar
Chris Combs
Surveillance state
The post Chris Combs appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
Surveillance state
The post Chris Combs appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Testing Rake Tasks in Rails
I recently wrote a rake task to update some values we’ve got stored in the database. The rake task...
over a year ago
I recently wrote a rake task to update some values we’ve got stored in the database. The rake task itself isn’t important in this post, but testing it is.
We’ve got many untested rake tasks in the database, so when our senior dev suggested adding a test, I had to build ours from...
Astral Codex Ten
Against The Generalized Anti-Caution Argument
...
a month ago
Josh Thompson
Boulder Ruby Group meetup notes
Move Slow and Improve Things: Performance Improvement in a Rails App
Boulder Ruby Group Monthly...
over a year ago
Move Slow and Improve Things: Performance Improvement in a Rails App
Boulder Ruby Group Monthly Meetup @Recurly Offices, Feb 13, 2018
Slides are available here on Dropbox
Git Push, Git Paid
Here’s the “Git Push, Git Paid” t-shirt I mentioned:
Thoughtbot designed these, and it...
Josh Thompson
STOP YELLING ON THE INTERNET, or, A Better Use for the Caps Lock Key
My current project is to learn to type using an alternative keyboard layout called Colemak.
QWERTY...
over a year ago
My current project is to learn to type using an alternative keyboard layout called Colemak.
QWERTY has problems. Here are a few, shamelessly borrowed from
Colemak.com
It places very rare letters in the best positions, so your fingers have to move a lot more.
It suffers from a...
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
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...
Josh Thompson
Train Hard
When’s the last time you participated in a sporting event? (Football, Ultimate Frisbee, rock...
over a year ago
When’s the last time you participated in a sporting event? (Football, Ultimate Frisbee, rock climbing, running biking, wrestling, whatever)
When’s the last time you
trained for that activity?
Finally:
When is the last time you trained for that activity
with someone else?...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Their Thoughts, Their Longings, Hopes, Their Fate'
A new
record: stopped three times at train crossings in a single day without leaving
the city,...
10 months ago
A new
record: stopped three times at train crossings in a single day without leaving
the city, driving only to the university library and back, twenty-two miles. Because
of its sprawling, unplanned nature, Houston is a dense web of train tracks, as
John Bainbridge, a staff writer...
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:...
7 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...
The Marginalian
Something About the Sky: Rachel Carson’s Lost Serenade to the Science of the Clouds, Found and...
A version of this essay appeared in The New York Times Book Review. A cloud is a spell against...
9 months ago
A version of this essay appeared in The New York Times Book Review. A cloud is a spell against indifference, an emblem of the water cycle that makes this planet a living world capable of trees and tenderness, a great cosmic gasp at the improbability that such a world exists, that...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I’m Tickled to Death When They Call Me Comic'
Like
porkchops, fame is highly perishable. Writers once read by millions – think of James
Michener...
9 months ago
Like
porkchops, fame is highly perishable. Writers once read by millions – think of James
Michener and, at a far more accomplished level, James Gould Cozzens – have evaporated
from literary memory. Newspaper writing and journalism in general are especially
biodegradable. Who...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Songful, Tuneful Land'
"None
can care for literature in itself who do not take a special pleasure in the
sound of names;...
12 months ago
"None
can care for literature in itself who do not take a special pleasure in the
sound of names; and there is no part of the world where nomenclature is so rich,
poetical, humorous, and picturesque as the United States of America.”
Robert Louis
Stevenson means place names. He’s...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Monsoons, Boredom, Stench'
R.L. Barth
takes as the epigraph to his new chapbook, Ghost
Story (Scienter Press, Louisville, Ky.,...
10 months ago
R.L. Barth
takes as the epigraph to his new chapbook, Ghost
Story (Scienter Press, Louisville, Ky., 2024), a passage from Dr. Johnson’s Idler essay for September 2, 1758:
“I suppose
every man is shocked when he hears how frequently soldiers are wishing for war.
The wish is not...
The Elysian
This Chinese philosopher reformed politics in one generation
Mòzǐ replaced his corrupt government with a humanist one.
a week ago
Mòzǐ replaced his corrupt government with a humanist one.
Josh Thompson
Typing for Programmers
If you had to distill my ability to bring value to those around me, it would be “Josh types good”.
I...
over a year ago
If you had to distill my ability to bring value to those around me, it would be “Josh types good”.
I can press these magical little keys on this little metal box here, and make these words come out.
If you’re reading these words, you don’t care how these words actually got on...
Josh Thompson
Job Hunting Recommendations for Early-Career Software Developers
I’ve distilled a number of conversations into this post.
Some of it is specific to getting a remote...
over a year ago
I’ve distilled a number of conversations into this post.
Some of it is specific to getting a remote job and working remotely, but all of it is applicable for any kind of software-related role. It’s probably applicable to non-software roles, but this is where most of my exprience...
Ben Borgers
Why Do We Still Use Snapchat?
over a year ago
Blog -...
Book Review - The Surrender Experiment
With the book The Surrender Experiment, author Michael (Mickey) Singer,
gives us a gift. In this...
over a year ago
With the book The Surrender Experiment, author Michael (Mickey) Singer,
gives us a gift. In this eloquently penned biography of his “journey into
life’s perfection”, he demonstrates the beauty that life can provide for us
when we are not solely guided by our logical,...
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
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...
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...
3 weeks ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Full Moon Rhyme” by Judith Wright appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Double Flame: Octavio Paz on Love
“Love is a bet, a wild one, placed on freedom. Not my own; the freedom of the Other… A knot made of...
a year ago
“Love is a bet, a wild one, placed on freedom. Not my own; the freedom of the Other… A knot made of two intertwined freedoms.” We love to forget ourselves, but also to remember what we are: mortal creatures lustful of meaning, radiant with life, eternally alone and eternally...
Josh Thompson
Lay a foundation
Yesterday I mentioned that
low friction goals are an advantage over “high friction” goals.
This is...
over a year ago
Yesterday I mentioned that
low friction goals are an advantage over “high friction” goals.
This is just another way of saying “easy things are easier to do than harder things”. Revelatory, I know.
Similarly,
I wrote a long time ago that:
We tell ourselves we can’t accomplish...
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
Milk Drop Coronet, an ultra-high-speed photograph of the splash of a drop of milk, Harold Edgerton, 1957
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Liked to Hold Ideas Up to the Light'
The single most
influential book in my life, the one that with time altered the way I think, not...
11 months ago
The single most
influential book in my life, the one that with time altered the way I think, not just what I think, is Guy’s Davenport’s The Geography of the Imagination (North
Point Press, 1981). I bought it that year in a lesbian bookstore in Manhattan. Over
the previous decade...
Josh Thompson
About Roundabouts
I’m desperately trying to work through a giant back-log of writings. Please see write it now for...
over a year ago
I’m desperately trying to work through a giant back-log of writings. Please see write it now for more. I’m spending only a few minutes on this, forgive my errors.
Of late, I’ve had a lot of conversations about roundabouts. I’m basically trying to explain the ways that a mobility...
Wuthering...
Wealth by Aristophanes - gout here, pot bellies there, ... obesity beyond all bounds
We saw Sophocles and Euripides end their long careers with masterpieces, but we do not have that...
over a year ago
We saw Sophocles and Euripides end their long careers with masterpieces, but we do not have that luck with Aristophanes. Wealth (388 BCE) is thin, scattershot, perhaps even a bit defeated or exhausted.
The conceit is as usual excellent. Plutus, the god of wealth, is freed...
The American Scholar
“To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing” by William Butler Yeats
The post “To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing” by William Butler Yeats appeared first on The...
a month ago
The post “To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing” by William Butler Yeats appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
How You Relate to Anything Is How You Relate to Everything: Reclaiming the Spirit of the Christmas...
Because life is a cosmos of connection, because to be alive is to be in relationship with the world,...
a week ago
Because life is a cosmos of connection, because to be alive is to be in relationship with the world, because (in the immortal words of John Muir) “when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe,” how we relate to anything is how...
The Marginalian
Leaning Toward Light: A Posy of Poems Celebrating the Joys and Consolations of the Garden
“Gardening is like poetry in that it is gratuitous, and also that it cannot be done on will alone,”...
a year ago
“Gardening is like poetry in that it is gratuitous, and also that it cannot be done on will alone,” the poet and passionate gardener May Sarton wrote as she contemplated the parallels between these two creative practices — parallels that have led centuries of beloved writers to...
Josh Thompson
Becoming an Early Riser
Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
-The man no child likes to...
over a year ago
Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
-The man no child likes to hear about when being awoken by their parents
Getting out of bed is a struggle. I’ve spent the better part of twenty four years setting my alarm as late as possible so I could have...
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
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post From <em>All Souls</em> by Saskia Hamilton appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Top Thing of the World'
John Keats’
meditation on a reader’s paradise:
“I had an
idea that a Man might pass a very pleasant...
2 months ago
John Keats’
meditation on a reader’s paradise:
“I had an
idea that a Man might pass a very pleasant life in this manner. Let him on a
certain day read a certain Page of full Poesy or distilled Prose, and let him
wander with it, and muse upon it and reflect from it, and dream...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Misrepresenting the Past and Its Culture'
I was still
a kid when Marshall McLuhan became the sage du
jour in the sixties. Television was a...
a year ago
I was still
a kid when Marshall McLuhan became the sage du
jour in the sixties. Television was a “cool” medium, according to Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964).
The cooler the medium, McLuhan wrote, “the more someone has to uncover and
engage in the media” and...
The Marginalian
Loving the Tree of Life: Annie Dillard on How to Bear Your Mortality
"We live and move by splitting the light of the present, as a canoe’s bow parts water."
a year ago
"We live and move by splitting the light of the present, as a canoe’s bow parts water."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Implacable, Bewildered, It Moves Among Us'
Some sixteen
years ago David Ferry thanked me for a post I had written about some of the lines by...
a year ago
Some sixteen
years ago David Ferry thanked me for a post I had written about some of the lines by Dr. Johnson interpolated into his poems. That email is long gone but
I remember being touched by his buoyant sense of gratitude. That a man in his
eighties, much honored as a poet,...
This Space
The criticism of Lessons, the lessons of criticism
I give thanks to Ryan Ruby for his review of Lessons, Ian McEwan’s latest novel. It brings to our...
over a year ago
I give thanks to Ryan Ruby for his review of Lessons, Ian McEwan’s latest novel. It brings to our attention that rare thing, joy of joys, a novel telling the story of a life remarkably similar to the author’s own set against the backdrop of recent history. Ruby shows how the...
Josh Thompson
Quitting the shallow for the deep
Deep work over shallow
TL;DR: I’m off social media, but want to keep a functioning Twitter URL. So,...
over a year ago
Deep work over shallow
TL;DR: I’m off social media, but want to keep a functioning Twitter URL. So, it redirects here.
This year’s “best book I’ve read” label might go to Cal Newport’s Deep Work.
Here’s the gist:
One of the most valuable skills in our economy is becoming...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Master Etcher of Human Portraits'
In
celebration of Edwin Arlington Robinson’s fiftieth birthday, on December 22,
1919, seventeen...
a year ago
In
celebration of Edwin Arlington Robinson’s fiftieth birthday, on December 22,
1919, seventeen poets and friends were asked to contribute to a symposium published
a day earlier in the New York Times Book
Review. All but Robert Frost contributed. Amy Lowell wrote: “A realist,...
Josh Thompson
2017 In Review & Thoughts on 2018
Note: this “annual review” covers three topics. Click on one to skip to it:
Looking back on...
over a year ago
Note: this “annual review” covers three topics. Click on one to skip to it:
Looking back on 2017
thoughts on going into 2018
book recommendations from the 79 books I read last year
I’ve got mixed feelings on annual reviews. I steadfastly refuse to set New Years’ resolutions, and...
Josh Thompson
Planned Unit Design Document (work-in-progress)
This is a draft document, meant for circulation, will evolve with time and eventually be something...
over a year ago
This is a draft document, meant for circulation, will evolve with time and eventually be something we bring to the City of Golden for ratification, or whatever needs to happen to get this done in this zone. This document relates to Collateralizing Mortgages and Loans With the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Last of the Anglo-Saxon Poets'
“Hooray for
Christmas, as Bessie Smith calls rather cautiously on one of her tracks, and if
all...
a year ago
“Hooray for
Christmas, as Bessie Smith calls rather cautiously on one of her tracks, and if
all you’re your friends like jazz it will present no problem.”
It’s
December 14, 1963, and Philip Larkin is reviewing an assortment of releases for
the Daily Telegraph in time for...
Anecdotal Evidence
'How Quickly It Would Slip By'
“[S]ome of
the memories I can now summon up have a greater intensity than the events...
4 months ago
“[S]ome of
the memories I can now summon up have a greater intensity than the events themselves
seemed to possess at the time, or rather – since memory has a filter of its
own, sometimes surprising in what it suppresses or retains, but always significant
– some of them stand out...
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...
6 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...
Josh Thompson
Practicing with Polylines Part 2 - Get Your Data (as a polyline) From Strava
Last time, I did a minimum first pass on rendering a polyline on a map.
It wasn’t just any polyline,...
3 months ago
Last time, I did a minimum first pass on rendering a polyline on a map.
It wasn’t just any polyline, though, it was a path of a walk I went on. (Technically, just a fragment of a path).
this is a heavy draft, I’ve had issues getting this all working well in the past, still have...
The American Scholar
Parque de la Música
The post Parque de la Música appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
The post Parque de la Música appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Louise Erdrich on the Deepest Meaning of Resistance
"Resist loss of the miraculous by lowering your standards for what constitutes a miracle. It is all...
a month ago
"Resist loss of the miraculous by lowering your standards for what constitutes a miracle. It is all a fucking miracle."
Ben Borgers
Stubborn Consistency [100 daily blog posts]
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Work-Life Separation in College
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Elixir/Phoenix part deux
I planned on working through this tutorial for building a slack clone, but half-way through the...
over a year ago
I planned on working through this tutorial for building a slack clone, but half-way through the set-up instructions, after I installed Elixir and Phoenix, I took a long detour through the basic set-up guide. Built some custom routes, along with controllers/views/templates,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Does Not Make a Nice Old Man'
A friend who
is a great admirer of Thomas Carlyle sent me an excerpt from a letter the Scotsman...
10 months ago
A friend who
is a great admirer of Thomas Carlyle sent me an excerpt from a letter the Scotsman wrote to his mother on September 12, 1843:
“I spent a
forenoon with Jeffery who is very thin and fretful I think; being at any rate
weakly, he is much annoyed at present by a hurt on...
The Marginalian
Necessary Losses: The Life-Shaping Art of Letting Go
"We cannot deeply love anything without becoming vulnerable to loss. And we cannot become separate...
a year ago
"We cannot deeply love anything without becoming vulnerable to loss. And we cannot become separate people, responsible people, connected people, reflective people without some losing and leaving and letting go."
The Marginalian
The Bird in the Heart: Terry Tempest Williams on the Paradox of Transformation and How to Live with...
"We can change, evolve, and transform our own conditioning. We can choose to move like water rather...
11 months ago
"We can change, evolve, and transform our own conditioning. We can choose to move like water rather than be molded like clay."
This Space
39 Books: 2004
Bought for an eye-watering £13 in the LRB Bookshop three months before this blog began, Once Again...
7 months ago
Bought for an eye-watering £13 in the LRB Bookshop three months before this blog began, Once Again for Thucydides is another example in this series of how a book of under 100 pages can be worth as much as any number of maximalist breeze blocks.
But do I really want to make such...
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Air of Baffled Absence'
R.L. Barth
has sent a new epigram, “Baffled,” not overtly related to the Vietnam War:
“I see...
5 months ago
R.L. Barth
has sent a new epigram, “Baffled,” not overtly related to the Vietnam War:
“I see these
hands on the deck railing, but
Whose are
they? Have they any meaning? What?”
Some readers
will understand. The familiar can become strange with age. That’s not always a...
Josh Thompson
Two Things That Are Helping Me (Finally) Learn Spanish
Kristi and I are in Costa Rica for the month of January. We spent two months in Buenos Aires this...
over a year ago
Kristi and I are in Costa Rica for the month of January. We spent two months in Buenos Aires this summer. That means in the space of six months, I’ll have spent three months in a Spanish-speaking country, yet
I’ve not made significant progress on my spanish.
That’s not to say...
The Marginalian
Love and the Sacred
"I did not know what love was until I encountered one that kept opening and opening and opening."
a year ago
"I did not know what love was until I encountered one that kept opening and opening and opening."
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
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “water sign woman” by Lucille Clifton appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Josh Thompson presentation to Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB)
Here’s a very important one-hour video that is highly relevant to GASB.
If my testimony accomplishes...
over a year ago
Here’s a very important one-hour video that is highly relevant to GASB.
If my testimony accomplishes nothing but encouraging members of the GASB board (Joel Black, Jeffrey Previdi, James Brown, Brian Caputo, Kristopher Knight, Dianna Ray, and Carolyn Smith) to spend 15 minutes...
The Marginalian
We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt, the Power of Defiant Goodwill, and the Art of...
"It is when the experience of powerlessness is at its most acute, when history seems at its most...
9 months ago
"It is when the experience of powerlessness is at its most acute, when history seems at its most bleak, that the determination to think like a human being, creatively, courageously, and complicatedly, matters the most."
The Elysian
Hint #1
I'm publishing a new print collection in three weeks.
4 months ago
I'm publishing a new print collection in three weeks.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Relief, Joy, or Nostalgia'
“Of course,
no one simply reads, or rereads, a given book. One reads a certain edition at a
specific...
8 months ago
“Of course,
no one simply reads, or rereads, a given book. One reads a certain edition at a
specific time in one’s life, and the particular book’s smell, typeface, and
paper can be as much a part of the experience as one’s physical and emotional
circumstances.”
I used to think...
Wuthering...
Ovid's Metamorhpses, Canto 6 - the sexual assaults - Because the lewdness of the Gods was so blazed...
Back to Ovid.
First, I have just begun Paul Barolsky’s Ovid and the
Metamorphoses of Modern Art...
11 months ago
Back to Ovid.
First, I have just begun Paul Barolsky’s Ovid and the
Metamorphoses of Modern Art from Boticelli to Picasso (2014), a work of art
history about Ovid written in the spirit of Ovid. The book is of the highest interest, and is a
long way from the catalogue of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Dark But Festive'
I grew up in
the Age of Magazines. My parents, who were not book readers, subscribed at
various...
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
The Pleasure of Being Left Alone
"An exquisite peace obtains: a drowsy, golden peace, flowing honey-sweet over my dwelling, soaking...
6 months ago
"An exquisite peace obtains: a drowsy, golden peace, flowing honey-sweet over my dwelling, soaking it, dripping like music from the walls... A peace for gods; a divine emptiness."
The Marginalian
The Majesty and Mystery of Night Migration, in a Stunning Poem Turned to Music
“Night, when words fade and things come alive,” Little Prince author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote...
a year ago
“Night, when words fade and things come alive,” Little Prince author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote in his love letter to the hours of darkness, composed while flying alone over the Sahara Desert. No aliveness animates the nocturne with more grandeur than the migration of birds....
The American Scholar
“The Testimony of J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Fiction” by Ai
The post “The Testimony of J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Fiction” by Ai appeared first on The American...
2 months ago
The post “The Testimony of J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Fiction” by Ai appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Whole Hog Barbecu'd!'
I was
surprised to see that Alexander Pope was familiar with the most popular cuisine
served in...
3 months ago
I was
surprised to see that Alexander Pope was familiar with the most popular cuisine
served in Texas: barbecue. You’ll find his reference in “The Second Satire in the Second Book of Horace Paraphrased”:
“Oldfield,
with more than Harpy throat endu’d,
Cries, ‘send
me, Gods! a...
Escaping Flatland
A summary of what I wrote in 2023
In 2023, I published 37 essays. I’ve spent the better part of the morning going through it all to...
a year ago
In 2023, I published 37 essays. I’ve spent the better part of the morning going through it all to see what the themes were—it is quite surprising to notice what emerges when you allow yourself to follow your curiosity and intuition for a full year. I wrote a summary of the...
The American Scholar
Jane Skafte
The language of trees
The post Jane Skafte appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 months ago
The language of trees
The post Jane Skafte appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
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...
Steven Scrawls
The Controversial Aftermath of the 777Linguine Interview
The
Controversial Aftermath of the 777Linguine Interview
Longtime fans of popular EDM “angststep”...
5 months ago
The
Controversial Aftermath of the 777Linguine Interview
Longtime fans of popular EDM “angststep” artist 777Linguine are
“shocked” and “betrayed” after his polarizing statements yesterday that
his latest album, NOMORETEARS2CRY, was written and recorded in a time of
“profound...
The Marginalian
The Warped Side of Our Universe: A Painted Epic Poem about the Dazzling Science of Spacetime
The first English use of the word space to connote the cosmic expanse appears in line 650 of Book I...
a year ago
The first English use of the word space to connote the cosmic expanse appears in line 650 of Book I of Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost: “Space may produce new Worlds,” he wrote, and grow rife with them. In the centuries since Milton, who lived through the golden dawn of...
Ben Borgers
The Magic of the Common Room
over a year ago
Josh Thompson
Trip Report: New River Gorge
Kristi and I are spending a few weeks in Fayetteville, WV, home of the New River Gorge. There’s...
over a year ago
Kristi and I are spending a few weeks in Fayetteville, WV, home of the New River Gorge. There’s fantastic climbing here. I climbed with good friends, and was absolutely humbled by how strong they all are. (My defense, at least for the next few weeks, is that I’ve not climbed...
Josh Thompson
How Can You Buy Happiness?
You can’t, but that won’t stop you and me from trying, at least a little.
We (Humans, americans, at...
over a year ago
You can’t, but that won’t stop you and me from trying, at least a little.
We (Humans, americans, at least “other people like me”) like to buy
things. But we should do more than just buy
things.
Experiences can have a much bigger impact on people’s happiness than things, and a...
Josh Thompson
First five meals from The 4-Hour Chef
I don’t know how to cook. Period. My most impressive culinary creations were, until recently,...
over a year ago
I don’t know how to cook. Period. My most impressive culinary creations were, until recently, spaghetti and beans-n-rice.
I got married about a year ago, and had hoped that I would become inspired to become a world-class chef. After a long time eating Rice-A-Roni, spaghetti,...
The American Scholar
The Diagnostician of Despair
Why Rousseau believed that Enlightenment values would lead us to ruin
The post The Diagnostician of...
2 weeks ago
Why Rousseau believed that Enlightenment values would lead us to ruin
The post The Diagnostician of Despair appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
39 Books: 2003
This year I read Robert Antelme's The Human Race for the first time. I was nonplussed. The strange...
7 months ago
This year I read Robert Antelme's The Human Race for the first time. I was nonplussed. The strange title, closer to popular sociology than memoir, should have been a warning. This was not quite the horror story one imagines of memoirs from those who survived Nazi concentration...
The Marginalian
Octavio Paz on Freedom
"Without freedom, what we call a person does not exist."
a year ago
"Without freedom, what we call a person does not exist."
The Marginalian
Maira Kalman on How to Live with Remorse and Make of It a Portal of Creative Vitality
Each time we have tried to elevate ourselves above the other animals by claiming singular possession...
10 months ago
Each time we have tried to elevate ourselves above the other animals by claiming singular possession of some faculty, we have been humbled otherwise: Language, it turns out, is not ours alone, nor is the use of tools, nor is music. Elephants grieve, octopuses remember and...
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
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.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Memories Packed in the Rapid-Access File'
Last
Saturday morning, the day my brother would die, the Uber driver who carried me
from hotel to...
4 months ago
Last
Saturday morning, the day my brother would die, the Uber driver who carried me
from hotel to hospice in the morning went by the professional name “Lazarus” –
an omen I choose to leave unexamined and merely enjoy. Ken would have enjoyed
it.
Shortly after his death one of the...
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
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...
The Marginalian
Thunder, Bells, and Silence: The Eclipse that Went Extinct
What was it like for Martha, the endling of her species, to die alone at the Cincinnati Zoo that...
7 months ago
What was it like for Martha, the endling of her species, to die alone at the Cincinnati Zoo that late-summer day in 1914, all the other passenger pigeons gone from the face of the Earth, having once filled its skies with an immensity of beating wings, so many that John James...
Josh Thompson
Parking in Golden
Parking in Golden is broken.
This deeply broken parking situation causes vehicle and pedestrian...
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...
The Elysian
The "letters to an anarchist" post-mortem
Peter and I discuss our letter writing series.
4 weeks ago
Peter and I discuss our letter writing series.
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
"We need detachment... as much as we need engagement in our lives... transports that make our consciousness of time and mortality easier to bear."
The Marginalian
The Lost Drop: An Illustrated Celebration of the Wonder of the Water Cycle and the Interconnected...
I remember when I first learned about the water cycle, about how it makes of our planet a living...
a year ago
I remember when I first learned about the water cycle, about how it makes of our planet a living world and binds the fate of every molecule to that of every other. I remember feeling in my child-bones the profound interconnectedness of life as I realized I was breathing the...
Josh Thompson
Driven by Compression Progress
Note from author: This is part of an experimental series, more-or-less based on “white papers” and...
over a year ago
Note from author: This is part of an experimental series, more-or-less based on “white papers” and academic literature, as applied to somewhat practical-ish domains.
These pages serve as a brief overview of a paper, and I’ll be able to link to this paper down the road when I what...
Ben Borgers
The Redemption Arc Is Coming
over 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
On sympathy, reciprocity, and satisfying the fulness of our nature.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A General Effect of Pleasing Impression'
Back in the Golden Age of Blogging, the decline of
which roughly coincided with the arrival of...
a year ago
Back in the Golden Age of Blogging, the decline of
which roughly coincided with the arrival of Anecdotal Evidence in 2006, literary
memes were far more popular. Some were trivial parlor games, a way for certain readers
to safely show off without having ever opened a book....
Josh Thompson
Career advice for Millenials. (ugh. I hate this title)
Hah! You thought
I had career advice?
Not quite.
Christian Bonilla writes one of the best blogs...
over a year ago
Hah! You thought
I had career advice?
Not quite.
Christian Bonilla writes one of the best blogs I’ve ever read at
Smart Like How. Please click over there, and read a few of his posts.
He talks about being
data savy even if you’re not a data scientist. He covers
how to suceed...
The American Scholar
Corona Chasers
You never forget your first solar eclipse
The post Corona Chasers appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
You never forget your first solar eclipse
The post Corona Chasers appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'He's Not Pulling It Out of Thin Air'
A friend
tells me he is boycotting a favorite bookstore because, as he writes, “someone
posted a...
9 months ago
A friend
tells me he is boycotting a favorite bookstore because, as he writes, “someone
posted a fair-sized sign on the store’s ‘Community Board’ reading, ‘From The
River to the Sea, Palestine Shall Be Free.’” There’s a naïvely childish part of
me that finds the obscenity...
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
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...
The Marginalian
Trauma, Growth, and How to Be Twice as Alive: Tove Jansson on the Worm and the Art of Self-Renewal
"Nothing is easy when you might come apart in the middle at any moment."
5 months ago
"Nothing is easy when you might come apart in the middle at any moment."
The American Scholar
Braña Curuchu
The post Braña Curuchu appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The post Braña Curuchu appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ben Borgers
Is It Worth It to Be Passive Aggressive?
over a year ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Knows to Get a Dollar'
The word tummler I learned from A.J. Liebling. It’s
the title of a story he collected in his first...
10 months ago
The word tummler I learned from A.J. Liebling. It’s
the title of a story he collected in his first book, Back Where I Came From (1938). “Tummler” was published in the
February 26, 1938 issue of The New Yorker
and begins:
“To the boys
of the I.&Y., Hymie Katz is a hero. He is a...
The American Scholar
Let Us Compare Mythologies
Exploding the Canon, Episode 4
The post Let Us Compare Mythologies appeared first on The American...
8 months ago
Exploding the Canon, Episode 4
The post Let Us Compare Mythologies appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'An Immense Special Talent'
D.G. Myers
and I met in person only once, in March 2012, when David came to Houston to see
his...
3 months ago
D.G. Myers
and I met in person only once, in March 2012, when David came to Houston to see
his oncologist. We had lunch in a Mexican restaurant and talked for hours, then
I drove him to the hospital. He gave me the Library of America’s collection of
Henry James’ writings on...
The American Scholar
Marlana Stoddard Hayes
Hope blooms
The post Marlana Stoddard Hayes appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
Hope blooms
The post Marlana Stoddard Hayes appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Afterlives of the Soul: Sister Nivedita on Love and Death
"To the soul, time does not exist. Only her own great purpose exists, shining clear and steady...
a year ago
"To the soul, time does not exist. Only her own great purpose exists, shining clear and steady through the mists before her."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Confined to Famous Defunct Chefs'
Never underestimate
the satisfactions of contrariness. It starts as an impulse in adolescence,...
a year ago
Never underestimate
the satisfactions of contrariness. It starts as an impulse in adolescence, of
course, when the will to disagree and provoke comes naturally. It’s enormously entertaining
to the provokers, irritatingly tiresome to the rest of us. We outgrow it or at
least it...
The American Scholar
“Snow” by Louis MacNeice
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Snow” by Louis MacNeice appeared first on The American...
a week ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “Snow” by Louis MacNeice appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Winnicott on the Qualities of a Healthy Mind and a Healthy Relationship
"A sign of health in the mind is the ability of one individual to enter imaginatively and yet...
4 months ago
"A sign of health in the mind is the ability of one individual to enter imaginatively and yet accurately into the thoughts and feelings and hopes and fears of another person; also to allow the other person to do the same to us."
Wuthering...
"Socrates gone mad" - my hero Diogenes the Cynic
He lived in a jar, owned a staff and a cloak and nothing
else, and was a sarcastic pain in the...
a year ago
He lived in a jar, owned a staff and a cloak and nothing
else, and was a sarcastic pain in the ass.
He took the example of Socrates to its limit. Plato is the one who called him “Socrates
gone mad,” but in a sense he is just the logical result of thinking through how
Socrates...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Human Impulse, the Human Aspiration'
The upstairs
neighbor, a diffident graduate student in English, knocked on the door to tell me W.H....
a year ago
The upstairs
neighbor, a diffident graduate student in English, knocked on the door to tell me W.H. Auden had died. He was close to
tears and couldn’t stop shaking his head in disbelief. This was half a century ago, late September
1973. We talked books almost daily and a few...
The Elysian
Let's read the Terra Ignota series together
Our summer reading is Ada Palmer's feat of utopian worldbuilding.
6 months ago
Our summer reading is Ada Palmer's feat of utopian worldbuilding.
Wuthering...
everything in a being is always repeating - reading Gertrude Stein's The Making of Americans
Since I actually read the thing for some reason I will write
some notes on Gertrude Stein’s enormous...
7 months ago
Since I actually read the thing for some reason I will write
some notes on Gertrude Stein’s enormous The Making of Americans: Being a
History of a Family’s Progress (1925).
It is a monster. Why did I read
it? No, that is not the right
questions. There are good reasons to
read...
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...
a month 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.
Wuthering...
What books am I reading this summer in the Greek philosophy readalong? Some details.
Now that we are almost done with Plato, the bulkiest figure
in my little Greek philosophy readalong,...
a year ago
Now that we are almost done with Plato, the bulkiest figure
in my little Greek philosophy readalong, I thought it would be a good idea to
revisit, clarify, and puzzle over the texts that will take us to the end of the
project, now that I have given the matter a little more...
The American Scholar
New Year, Old Year
The post New Year, Old Year appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 days ago
The post New Year, Old Year appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
Your alternatives to democracy
Entries to the March writing prompt.
8 months ago
Entries to the March writing prompt.
The Marginalian
The Cosmogony of You
We live in a state of perpetual dissociation from the almost unbearable wonder of being alive....
a month ago
We live in a state of perpetual dissociation from the almost unbearable wonder of being alive. Wonder is always an edge state, its edge so sharp it threatens to rupture the mundane and sever us from what we mistake for reality — the TV, the townhouse, the trauma narrative. If we...
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
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
A 40 Hour Work Week
Business Insider posted an article on why we have a
40 hour work week.
The author blames big...
over a year ago
Business Insider posted an article on why we have a
40 hour work week.
The author blames big business for why we’ve not dropped below 40 hours per week. He thinks that if America became less consumer-driven, our economy would collapse.
He’s got the wrong starting assumptions...
The Marginalian
Comet & Star: A Cosmic Fable about the Rhythms and Consolations of Friendship
People pass through our lives and change us, tilting our orbit with their own. Sometimes, if the...
2 months ago
People pass through our lives and change us, tilting our orbit with their own. Sometimes, if the common gravitational center is strong enough, they return, they stay. Sometimes they travel on. But they change us all the same. The great consolation of the cosmic order is the...
Josh Thompson
Injury Impedes Improvement
Kristi and I have been in Colorado for three months, I’ve been climbing regularly for two, I am back...
over a year ago
Kristi and I have been in Colorado for three months, I’ve been climbing regularly for two, I am back in shape and it feels good.
I am tempted to throw myself into climbing again. To climb every day, or maybe every other day, and finish every session with training. But here’s the...
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
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
Gratitude 3x/day
Earlier this year, I read
The Miracle Morning, which promises (paraphrasing here):
If you do these...
over a year ago
Earlier this year, I read
The Miracle Morning, which promises (paraphrasing here):
If you do these seven things every morning you’ll be the most amazing person you’ve ever met.
OK, it’s not exactly that bold, but it’s not far off. It wasn’t a terrible book, it had lots of good...
The Marginalian
Awakened Cosmos: Poetry as Spiritual Practice
"Poetry is the cosmos awakened to itself."
9 months ago
"Poetry is the cosmos awakened to itself."
The Marginalian
Let the Last Thing Be Song
"When I die, I want to be sung across the threshold."
6 months ago
"When I die, I want to be sung across the threshold."
Josh Thompson
Give it 30 days
Do you have any big audacious goal you want to accomplish?
If you think back to Jan 1, 2016, what...
over a year ago
Do you have any big audacious goal you want to accomplish?
If you think back to Jan 1, 2016, what were your goals?
Lose weight/get in shape
Make more money/start budgeting
Learn a language
Learn a skill
Read more
Stop doing something (smoking, drinking)
Statistically, all of...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Brief, Dry, Almost Colorless Account '
The Polish
writer Gustaw Herling-Grudziński (1919-2000) --
Gulag survivor, co-founder of Kultura
and...
a year ago
The Polish
writer Gustaw Herling-Grudziński (1919-2000) --
Gulag survivor, co-founder of Kultura
and author of A World Apart: Imprisonment
in a Soviet Labor Camp During World War II (1951) – has sent me back to
Varlam Shalamov and his Kolyma stories. Herling-Grudziński in 1971...
Blog -...
Book Review - Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples, 2019 Edition
I don’t anticipate giving many perfect ratings, but this book is a rare gem
– a captivating...
over a year ago
I don’t anticipate giving many perfect ratings, but this book is a rare gem
– a captivating page-turner packed full of aha moments. The authors have
woven together decades of personal research and experience in the field of
intimate relationships to create a classic...
The American Scholar
“The Last Words of My English Grandmother”
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Last Words of My English Grandmother” appeared first on...
5 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “The Last Words of My English Grandmother” appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Tiny Habits take 2
Dr. BJ Fogg runs
Tiny Habits, a one-week course on building new habits.
Since most of what we do is...
over a year ago
Dr. BJ Fogg runs
Tiny Habits, a one-week course on building new habits.
Since most of what we do is governed by habits, it is reasonable to study how to build new ones, or replace bad ones.
I
have done his course before, and had success. I have been reading
Freewith Kristi and...
Anecdotal Evidence
'At the Five and Ten Cent Store'
Irving
Berlin was Jewish and gave us the soundtrack for our American holidays,...
a month ago
Irving
Berlin was Jewish and gave us the soundtrack for our American holidays, including
Thanksgiving Day: “My needs are small, I buy ’em all / At the five and ten cent
store. / Oh, I've got plenty to be thankful for.” Bing Crosby, a serious Roman
Catholic, introduced “I’ve Got...
The Marginalian
Home: An Illustrated Celebration of the Genius and Wonder of Animal Dwellings
“There’s no place like home,” Dorothy sighs in The Wizard of Oz. But home is not a place — it is a...
8 months ago
“There’s no place like home,” Dorothy sighs in The Wizard of Oz. But home is not a place — it is a locus of longing, always haunted by our existential homelessness. “Welcome home!” a cheaply suited broker once exclaimed at me, swinging open the door to a tiny studio as my foot...
Wuthering...
Ferdowsi's Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings - No one has any knowledge of those first days...
My little Persian literature syllabus in March was built on Aboloqasem
Ferdowsi’s gigantic epic...
8 months ago
My little Persian literature syllabus in March was built on Aboloqasem
Ferdowsi’s gigantic epic Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings (1010), a
slender 850 pages in Dick Davis’s 2006 prose (mostly) translation. He added another 100 pages to the 2016
edition, whether filling out...
This Space
A loss of problems
Martin Amis' novels were among those I read when I began reading novels – one read what was being...
a year ago
Martin Amis' novels were among those I read when I began reading novels – one read what was being talked about on television and in newspapers. Money was the first quickly followed by each and every one that preceded it, including the journalism in The Moronic Inferno, which I...
Josh Thompson
Three Ways to Decide What to be When You Grow Up
Recently, I have had to explain to people what is it that I want to do. This question is difficult...
over a year ago
Recently, I have had to explain to people what is it that I want to do. This question is difficult to answer for two reasons. The first reason is I am not yet strongly pulled into a specific position. My ideal answer would be “I want to do X role at company Y.” Short. Concise....
The Marginalian
The Half-Life of Hope
After breaking out of timidity with “Spell Against Indifference,” an offering of another poem — this...
a year ago
After breaking out of timidity with “Spell Against Indifference,” an offering of another poem — this one inspired by a lovely piece of science news that touched me with its sonorous existential echoes. THE HALF-LIFE OF HOPE by Maria Popova Walking beneath the concrete canopy...
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
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Death Is Not Far From Me'
It’s in the
nature of most writers to come up with their own rules and obey them when it
serves...
10 months ago
It’s in the
nature of most writers to come up with their own rules and obey them when it
serves their purposes. Even the strictest formalist bends a little in the
service of what works aesthetically. The byproduct of that decision-making
process is “style.” Good work can come out...
The Marginalian
A Victorian Visionary’s Prescient Case for Animal Rights and Vegetarianism
"Once upon a time your fore-fathers made no scruple about not only killing, but also eating their...
a year ago
"Once upon a time your fore-fathers made no scruple about not only killing, but also eating their relations."
Josh Thompson
2023 Annual Review
It’s that time of the year. I often enjoy reading other people’s annual reviews, and I’ve always...
11 months ago
It’s that time of the year. I often enjoy reading other people’s annual reviews, and I’ve always found value in writing my own, even as there is a few years I’ve missed, since I started the habit way back in 2015.
for a long time, I did annual reviews. 2020 was late, and then for...
Josh Thompson
December Review, January Goals
This is a follow-up from last month’s goals
1. Deepen Knowledge of Back-end Development
I finished...
over a year ago
This is a follow-up from last month’s goals
1. Deepen Knowledge of Back-end Development
I finished OverTheWire’s Bandit series, except the last lesson, which didn’t make sense. (It does now! Turns out login shells and “regular” shells are different. I’ll take another spin at it...
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
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.
Anecdotal Evidence
'I'm Not a Funny Man'
“All writers
that are worth anything are humorists.”
It’s one of
those preposterously broad...
a year ago
“All writers
that are worth anything are humorists.”
It’s one of
those preposterously broad observations you want to immediately endorse or
dismiss, but if “humor” is defined liberally and we accept it as a spectrum ranging
from the driest wit to slapstick, farce and bawdy,...
Josh Thompson
Act a Fool, or: Motion vs. Action
If you’ve started reading this article, but have only two minutes, don’t read what I’m writing. Go...
over a year ago
If you’ve started reading this article, but have only two minutes, don’t read what I’m writing. Go read
this article by James clear. It’s called “
The Mistake Smart People Make: Being In Motion vs. Taking Action”. I’ve linked it a third time
here. Go read it.
James starts with...
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...
2 weeks 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...
sbensu
Vibes are music, arguments are lyrics
Losing My Religion is not about religion and Arguments are not about arguments
5 months ago
Losing My Religion is not about religion and Arguments are not about arguments
The Marginalian
Mars and Our Search for Meaning: A Planetary Scientist’s Love Letter to Life
"It is the search for infinity, the search for evidence that our capacious universe might hold life...
a year ago
"It is the search for infinity, the search for evidence that our capacious universe might hold life elsewhere, in a different place or at a different time or in a different form."
The Marginalian
The Sunflower and the Soul: Wendell Berry on the Collaborative Nature of the Universe and the Cure...
"We are not the authors of ourselves. That we are not is a religious perception, but it is also a...
6 months ago
"We are not the authors of ourselves. That we are not is a religious perception, but it is also a biological and a social one. Each of us has had many authors, and each of us is engaged, for better or worse, in that same authorship. We could say that the human race is a great...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Culmination of Contemporary Economism'
For half a
century my brother earned his living making picture frames, some of which were
themselves...
4 months ago
For half a
century my brother earned his living making picture frames, some of which were
themselves works of art. In later years he relied more on accounts with hotel
chains and the glass office buildings in downtown Cleveland. Frames for these corporate
accounts he called...
The Marginalian
Blue Is the Color of Desire: The Science, Poetry, and Wonder of the Bowerbird
For all the enchantment the color blue has cast upon humanity, no animal has fallen under its spell...
a year ago
For all the enchantment the color blue has cast upon humanity, no animal has fallen under its spell more hopelessly than the bowerbird, whose very survival hinges on blue. In a small clearing on the forest floor, the male weaves twigs and branches into an elaborate bower, which...
Josh Thompson
Playing with the HTTP send/response cycle in Ruby, without Faraday ("HTTP Yeah You Know Me" project)
As part of the HTTP Server project.
First, I’m working through Practicing Ruby’s “Implementing an...
over a year ago
As part of the HTTP Server project.
First, I’m working through Practicing Ruby’s “Implementing an HTTP File Server” for general practice and understanding.
I’m going to use Postman to capture traffic and try to replicate some of the things the guides reference.
Lastly, I just...
Josh Thompson
How to fly… like a boss
I am in a quest to
level up my life. Free flights is a big part of this. I’ve not gotten too many...
over a year ago
I am in a quest to
level up my life. Free flights is a big part of this. I’ve not gotten too many of those yet, but the next best thing is free seat upgrades. I’m not talking about first class - that’s beyond me, at the moment. I’m talking about getting stuck in the back of the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Every Corner Is Fraught with Memory'
A.J.
Liebling’s valediction – to New York City, The
New Yorker and the grand celebration that was...
11 months ago
A.J.
Liebling’s valediction – to New York City, The
New Yorker and the grand celebration that was his life as a writer – was published
two weeks after his death, in the January 11, 1964 issue of the magazine that had printed
more than five-hundred of his pieces since he joined...
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
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
Making Space: An Illustrated Ode to the Art of Welcoming the Unknown
It is the silence between the notes that distinguishes music from noise, the stillness of the soil...
4 months ago
It is the silence between the notes that distinguishes music from noise, the stillness of the soil that germinates the seeds to burst into bloom. It is in the gap of absence that we learn trust, in the gap between knowledge and mystery that we discover wonder. Every act of making...
This Space
39 Books: 1985
The first novel I read was Twice Shy by Dick Francis, reportedly the Queen Mother's favourite...
8 months ago
The first novel I read was Twice Shy by Dick Francis, reportedly the Queen Mother's favourite novelist (which tells you all you need to know about the intellectual energies of British Royal Family). It was the hardback edition below and tells the story of an Olympic champion...
This Space
39 Books: 2018
In spite of what I said yesterday about the decline in the number of novels I read each year, this...
7 months ago
In spite of what I said yesterday about the decline in the number of novels I read each year, this year was packed with a variety: Australian, Korean, Austrian, Egyptian, German, Argentinian and, today's choice, Norwegian; that is, if variety depends on the country of origin. But...
The Marginalian
Turning to Stone: A Geologist’s Love Letter to the Wisdom of Rocks
Among the great salvations of my childhood were the rocks and minerals lining the bookshelves of our...
4 months ago
Among the great salvations of my childhood were the rocks and minerals lining the bookshelves of our next door neighbor — a geologist working for the Bulgarian Ministry of Environment and Water. I spent long hours casting amethyst refractions on the ceiling, carving words into...
Wuthering...
Jeremy Denk plays Charles Ives and Blind Tom Wiggins - a pleasing conjunction of Wuthering...
More Massachusetts semi-literay adventures.
Last weekend I was at Tanglewood in Lenox,...
4 months ago
More Massachusetts semi-literay adventures.
Last weekend I was at Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts,
enjoying Jeremy Denk’s performance of insurance executive Charles Ives’s Concord
Sonata (c. 1913). It was a pleasing
congruence of Wuthering Expectations themes.
I have nothing...
The American Scholar
Autumn 2024
The post Autumn 2024 appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
The post Autumn 2024 appeared first on The American Scholar.
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
"(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...
Wuthering...
Books I Read in June 2023
If only I had the will to write something. But I can read.
PHILOSOPHY
Fragments or Sayings or...
a year ago
If only I had the will to write something. But I can read.
PHILOSOPHY
Fragments or Sayings or Tall Tales (4th
C. BCE), Diogenes the Cynic, tr. Guy Davenport
Cynics (2008), William Desmond - for an entry in a series aimed at students, surprisingly well written. It helps that...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Troublesome Error, a Pernicious Foppery''
Let’s be
grateful to our troubled age for making it necessary to revive such formerly dormant
words...
7 months ago
Let’s be
grateful to our troubled age for making it necessary to revive such formerly dormant
words as cant and foppery, so as to avoid the more precise
but less polite bullshit. For foppery, the OED offers among its definitions “foolishness, imbecility,
stupidity, folly.” It’s...
The Marginalian
No One You Love Is Ever Dead: Hemingway on the Most Devastating of Losses and the Meaning of Life
"We must live it, now, a day at a time and be very careful not to hurt each other."
7 months ago
"We must live it, now, a day at a time and be very careful not to hurt each other."
The American Scholar
“How Happy Is the Little Stone” by Emily Dickinson
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “How Happy Is the Little Stone” by Emily Dickinson appeared...
7 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully
The post “How Happy Is the Little Stone” by Emily Dickinson appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
Metamorphoses, cantos 7 through 10 - more Heroides, more gore, more of everything - What meen my...
Metamorphoses is fluid, quick, and ever-changing. Let’s look at cantos VII through X, which...
10 months ago
Metamorphoses is fluid, quick, and ever-changing. Let’s look at cantos VII through X, which have
their share of famous stories, stories famous, or as famous as they are,
because of Metamorphoses. Venus
and Adonis, Baucis and Philemon, Orpheus and Eurydice, Pygmalion. Icarus –...
The Elysian
Yes, Taylor Swift is just as genius as Mary Shelley
The video from our live event.
3 months ago
The video from our live event.
The Elysian
Writing Prompt: What movement does the world need right now?
And how do we build it?
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Particular Adroitness and Off-hand Readiness'
For years, with plenty of interruptions, I’ve
tried working my way through John Dryden’s prolific...
a year ago
For years, with plenty of interruptions, I’ve
tried working my way through John Dryden’s prolific output – poems, plays,
translations, essays, letters. Much of it is lost on me, especially among the plays. His
verse and essays are what I most enjoy, but a play, Amphitryon,or the...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Now You Are Elsewhere'
I came late
to the poet Henri Coulette, long after his death in 1988 at age sixty, and
promptly fell...
10 months ago
I came late
to the poet Henri Coulette, long after his death in 1988 at age sixty, and
promptly fell for his charms. Chief among them are elegance, technical
virtuosity, wit and devotion to his native turf, Southern California. Like one
of his favorite writers, Raymond Chandler,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Our Lives Are Permanently Unfinished Projects'
“My
bookshelves, like my writings, are haunted by the ghosts of influences past,
all remembered with...
11 months ago
“My
bookshelves, like my writings, are haunted by the ghosts of influences past,
all remembered with great tenderness, much as one recalls an old flame from
college days: Whitney Balliett, Edmund Wilson, William F. Buckley, Jr., A. J.
Liebling, Somerset Maugham, Diana Trilling,...
The Marginalian
Stunning 200-Year-Old French Illustrations of Exotic, Endangered, and Extinct Birds
From peacocks to penguins, a winged menagerie of wonder.
a year ago
From peacocks to penguins, a winged menagerie of wonder.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A University Education, Uncorrupted'
A human being
is “born an heir to an inheritance to which he can succeed only in a process...
3 weeks ago
A human being
is “born an heir to an inheritance to which he can succeed only in a process of
learning.” Aristotle didn't get it quite right when he thought we could be defined by our capacity
for speech and even, on occasion, rational discourse. No, it’s learning that
makes us...
Anecdotal Evidence
'How Much Can Be Accomplished'
Cleveland is
traditionally divided between East Side and West Side. I’m a West-Sider, though
I...
5 months ago
Cleveland is
traditionally divided between East Side and West Side. I’m a West-Sider, though
I haven’t lived in the city since 1977. The designation suggests working-class
neighborhoods, many of them Slavic. Ethnicity was important, and not usually in
the sense of bigotry. I was...
Josh Thompson
Talent is Overrated
Talent is Overrated
In Talent is Overrated, the author argues that world-class performers are not...
over a year ago
Talent is Overrated
In Talent is Overrated, the author argues that world-class performers are not genetically gifted. The difference between world-class performers and the rest of us? Lots of deliberate practice. (Read the article.)
I have no interest in becoming Mozart, or Tiger...
The Marginalian
To Be a Person: Jane Hirshfield’s Playful and Poignant Poem About Bearing Our Human Condition
"To be a person may be possible then, after all."
a year ago
"To be a person may be possible then, after all."
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Bright, Cheerful, Salubrious Hell'
Max
Beerbohm’s first radio broadcast, delivered on December 29, 1935, is titled
“London Revisited.”...
a year ago
Max
Beerbohm’s first radio broadcast, delivered on December 29, 1935, is titled
“London Revisited.” He celebrates the city of his birth (in 1872) and youth –
the Edwardian era – and implicitly critiques the London of the interbellum
years:
“London has been
cosmopolitanised,...
The Marginalian
Hermann Hesse on What Books Give Us and the Heart of Wisdom
Books show us what it is like to be another and at the same time return us to ourselves. We read to...
a year ago
Books show us what it is like to be another and at the same time return us to ourselves. We read to learn how to live — how to love and how to suffer, how to grieve and how to be glad. We read to clarify ourselves and to anneal our values. We read for the assurance that others...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Kind of Things I Love'
At the end
of her Friday post on Orson Welles and his Chimes
at Midnight, Di Nguyen at the Little...
12 months ago
At the end
of her Friday post on Orson Welles and his Chimes
at Midnight, Di Nguyen at the Little White Attic appends a bookish cri de coeur, one I have echoed many
times:
“I
increasingly feel at odds with modern culture,” she begins. “I’m indifferent to
contemporary music,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Time Is Tight'
My brother is
dying as he lived – stubbornly. He has been in hospice for two weeks and is...
4 months ago
My brother is
dying as he lived – stubbornly. He has been in hospice for two weeks and is failing
incrementally. On Monday we were swapping memories and he stopped talking on
Tuesday, the same day he stopped eating. He lies on his back on the hospice
bed, mouth open, eyes staring...
The Marginalian
Roxane Gay on Loving vs. Being in Love and the Mark of a Soul Mate
"It isn’t perfect, not at all. It doesn’t need to be. It is, simply, what fills you up."
a year ago
"It isn’t perfect, not at all. It doesn’t need to be. It is, simply, what fills you up."
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Art and Practice of Reading Aloud to Others'
A longtime reader in Philadelphia, a retired attorney, tells
me that since the start of the COVID-19...
a year ago
A longtime reader in Philadelphia, a retired attorney, tells
me that since the start of the COVID-19 lockdown he has been reading books
aloud to his wife, most recently The Wife
of Martin Guerre by Janet Lewis. His list of more than a dozen titles includes
Moby-Dick (“our overall...
The Elysian
Will you explain anarchism to me?
Letters to an anarchist, part one.
a month ago
Letters to an anarchist, part one.
Josh Thompson
Taking the Plunge with Colemak
This entire post is written in
Colemak.
I am aiming to write at least 100 words, and this is...
over a year ago
This entire post is written in
Colemak.
I am aiming to write at least 100 words, and this is certainly harder than copying someone else’s words.
I have completed a few hours of dedicated practice, and it is quite possible that I am jumping the gun, and will quickly revert to...
Josh Thompson
How to never accidentally click Twitter's "Moments" again (and to block anything else on the...
Do you use Twitter’s “Moments” tool, or do you just find it really annoying?
Most people find it...
over a year ago
Do you use Twitter’s “Moments” tool, or do you just find it really annoying?
Most people find it annoying. Here’s how to get rid of Twitter’s “Moments” forever:
0. Be won over to using an ad blocker on the internet.
They don’t block just ads, but malicious scripts and...
This Space
Notes from overground
Seventeen years ago my copy of Richard Ford's The Lay of the Land was delayed in the post and...
a year ago
Seventeen years ago my copy of Richard Ford's The Lay of the Land was delayed in the post and arrived long after the novel had been reviewed in all the big newspapers so, instead of riding the wave of publication, I was dragged under by its backwash. I had to answer a question...
Josh Thompson
Troubleshooting Chinese Character Sets in MySQL
A while back, I picked up a bug where when a customer tried to save certain kinds of data using...
over a year ago
A while back, I picked up a bug where when a customer tried to save certain kinds of data using Chinese characters, we were replacing the Chinese characters like 平仮名 with a series of ?.
This will be a quick dive through how I figured out what the problem was, and then validated...
The Marginalian
May Sarton on How to Cultivate Your Talent
"A talent grows by being used, and withers if it is not used."
a year ago
"A talent grows by being used, and withers if it is not used."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Life Is So Long'
Several
years ago I was diagnosed with a condition called MGUS (pronounced EM-gus) -- monoclonal...
9 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...
The Marginalian
How We Become Ourselves: Erik Erikson’s 8 Stages of Human Development
It never ceases to stagger that some stroke of chance in the early history of the universe set into...
3 months ago
It never ceases to stagger that some stroke of chance in the early history of the universe set into motion the Rube Goldberg machine of events that turned atoms born in the first stars into you — into this temporary clump of borrowed stardust that, for the brief interlude between...
The American Scholar
Kinship and Contradictions
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz on the complexities of Native American identity
The post Kinship and...
3 weeks ago
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz on the complexities of Native American identity
The post Kinship and Contradictions appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Collection of Scraps and Shards of Knowledge'
“During this time we know [John] Donne was
collecting his fascinations in a book: a collection of...
5 months ago
“During this time we know [John] Donne was
collecting his fascinations in a book: a collection of scraps and shards of
knowledge known as a commonplace book.”
Like Donne (1572-1621), some of us are
magpie-minded, collecting objects shiny and drab, often without obvious
utility....
The Marginalian
What Rises from the Ruins: Katherine Anne Porter on the Power of the Artist and the Function of Art...
"We understand very little of what is happening to us at any given moment."
a year ago
"We understand very little of what is happening to us at any given moment."
The American Scholar
American Horror Story
Jeremy Dauber on our obsession with fear
The post American Horror Story appeared first on The...
2 months ago
Jeremy Dauber on our obsession with fear
The post American Horror Story appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
Wall by Jen Craig
“This novel gives the reader one of the best depictions of thinking in fiction that I have read in a...
a year ago
“This novel gives the reader one of the best depictions of thinking in fiction that I have read in a long time” – Talking Big
"... combines exactitude and vagueness, immediacy and distance, to approximate how scatty, worm-like human thought might be represented on the page" – The...
sbensu
The secondary market in gift cards
This post by patio11 covers a few things that I learned working with gift cards over the years.
over a year ago
This post by patio11 covers a few things that I learned working with gift cards over the years.
sbensu
Interfaces for logical migrations
This post explains how you can use interfaces to make data model and database migrations easier.
a year ago
This post explains how you can use interfaces to make data model and database migrations easier.
The Marginalian
There Was a Shadow: A Lyrical Illustrated Celebration of the Changing Light, in the World and in the...
“Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty,” Junichiro Tanizaki wrote in the 1933 Japanese...
6 months ago
“Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty,” Junichiro Tanizaki wrote in the 1933 Japanese classic In Praise of Shadows. As a physical phenomenon, shadows are one of the most beguiling phenomena of nature, emissaries of the entwined history of light and consciousness; as...
The American Scholar
Consummated in Exile
A new recording of Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances conveys the breadth of the 20th-century...
6 months ago
A new recording of Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances conveys the breadth of the 20th-century composer’s life’s journey
The post Consummated in Exile appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Pry Tips and Tricks
the following is cross-posted from development.wombatsecurity.com. I wrote about some handy extra...
over a year ago
the following is cross-posted from development.wombatsecurity.com. I wrote about some handy extra features I’ve found using Pry much of my day.
I joined the Wombat team a few months ago, and have been working on the threatsim product. We had a bit of a bug backlog, and myself and...
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
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...
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
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...
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
"Care and responsibility are constituent elements of love, but without respect for and knowledge of the beloved person, love deteriorates into domination and possessiveness."
This Space
39 Books: 2022
"Hölderlin...asked only that we accept silence as the one meaningful syllable in the...
7 months ago
"Hölderlin...asked only that we accept silence as the one meaningful syllable in the universe."
This line from Paul Stubbs' remarkable essay collection The Return to Silence is not an epigram to Marjorie Perloff's Infrathin: An Experiment in Micropoetics, but it might have...
Anecdotal Evidence
'And Then Became a Name Like Others Slain'
In a six-word
paragraph in “Preliminary,” his brief introduction to Undertones of War, Edmund...
a month ago
In a six-word
paragraph in “Preliminary,” his brief introduction to Undertones of War, Edmund Blunden articulates the impulse that
would drive his poetry for the next half-century: “I must go over it again.” Psychically,
there was no Armistice. Whether to purge its memory or...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Larkin Was a Larrikin'
At age ten
or so I had a pen pal, a girl from New South Wales, Australia. We both wrote in
pencil on...
11 months ago
At age ten
or so I had a pen pal, a girl from New South Wales, Australia. We both wrote in
pencil on lined paper, and we met through our respective newspapers in
Cleveland and Sydney. The correspondence lasted for a year or so and I don’t
remember what either of us ever said to...
Wuthering...
Thou hast devourd thy sonnes - some notes on Seneca's horror plays
My Seneca reading in March:
Medea, tr. Frederick Ahl
The Trojan Women, tr. E. F. Watling
Thyestes,...
a year ago
My Seneca reading in March:
Medea, tr. Frederick Ahl
The Trojan Women, tr. E. F. Watling
Thyestes, tr. Jasper Heywood
Hercules Furens, tr. Heywood
The Madness of Hercules, tr. Dana Gioia
The plays themselves are all from the mid-1st century,
perhaps written when Seneca was in...
Anecdotal Evidence
'And Talked Down Speechless Death'
In my November 1 post I asked, “Does anyone know anything about Edward Case?” I had stumbled
on a...
2 days ago
In my November 1 post I asked, “Does anyone know anything about Edward Case?” I had stumbled
on a gifted poet previously unknown to me who had died in 1985. This week I heard
from his son James Case, an architect living in New Jersey, who briefed me on
his father and his work....
The American Scholar
Paradise Reclaimed
Olivia Laing on the dark histories and utopian dreams of the flower bed
The post Paradise Reclaimed...
5 months ago
Olivia Laing on the dark histories and utopian dreams of the flower bed
The post Paradise Reclaimed appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
A Shelter in Time: John Berger on the Power of Music
"Songs are like rivers: each follows its own course, yet all flow to the sea, from which everything...
a year ago
"Songs are like rivers: each follows its own course, yet all flow to the sea, from which everything came."
Anecdotal Evidence
'More Interesting to Me Than the Future'
“The past
has always been more interesting to me than the future, just as I have found
pessimists...
5 months ago
“The past
has always been more interesting to me than the future, just as I have found
pessimists more amusing than optimists and failures more attractive than
successes. I do not say that my preferences are based upon universal principles
or that everyone should share them; in...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Signs His Name in Sparks'
By trade my
father was an ironworker for the City of Cleveland’s Municipal Light, always
called...
5 months ago
By trade my
father was an ironworker for the City of Cleveland’s Municipal Light, always
called “Muny Light." At home he was a welder, specializing in wrought-iron
railings. His aesthetic sense could be summarized in a single word: big. Or heavy. Everything he built was...
The American Scholar
Un Tinto
The post Un Tinto appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
The post Un Tinto appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Like to Think of Pasteur in Elysium'
In 1985, the
year Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo, the scholar
and...
7 months ago
In 1985, the
year Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo, the scholar
and translator Clarence Brown published The
Portable Twentieth-Century Russian Reader, a selection ranging from Tolstoy
and Chekhov to Voinovich and Sokolov. In the introduction he...
The Marginalian
The Work of Art: Inside the Creative Process of Beloved Artists, Poets, Musicians, and Other Makes...
“The true artist,” Beethoven wrote in his touching letter of advice to a young girl aspiring to be...
8 months ago
“The true artist,” Beethoven wrote in his touching letter of advice to a young girl aspiring to be an artist, “is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.” The choreographer Martha Graham called this particular shade of...
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
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”...
The American Scholar
Magic Men
The post Magic Men appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 weeks ago
The post Magic Men appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
How to Be Animal: An Antidote to Our Self-Expatriation from Nature
How to embrace our inheritance as "a creature of organic substance and electricity that can be...
a year ago
How to embrace our inheritance as "a creature of organic substance and electricity that can be eaten, injured and dissipated back into the enigmatic physics of the universe."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Craft Is Perfected Attention'
The
campiness can get a little thick when the poet/publisher/photographer Jonathan
Williams...
a year ago
The
campiness can get a little thick when the poet/publisher/photographer Jonathan
Williams (1929-2008) is in the neighborhood, but he’s always festive, the sort
of fellow you could hire to turn around tedious parties or staff meetings. A
reader says she is enjoying Williams’...
Josh Thompson
Some Lessons Learned While Preparing for Two Technical Talks
A few weeks ago, I gave two talks about Ruby and Rails:
An 8-minute lightning talk about using...
over a year ago
A few weeks ago, I gave two talks about Ruby and Rails:
An 8-minute lightning talk about using .count vs .size in ActiveRecord query methods
A 30-minute talk at the Boulder Ruby Group arguing that developers should embrace working with non-development business functions, and the...
The Marginalian
May Sarton on Writing, Gardening, and the Importance of Patience Over Will in Creative Work
"Gardening is like poetry in that it is gratuitous, and also that it cannot be done on will alone."
a year ago
"Gardening is like poetry in that it is gratuitous, and also that it cannot be done on will alone."
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Am Entirely Sure That I Like It'
On March 27,
1905, Theodore Roosevelt had just started his second term as president of the
United...
9 months ago
On March 27,
1905, Theodore Roosevelt had just started his second term as president of the
United States when he wrote a letter to a little-known poet living in Boston:
Dear Mr.
Robinson:
I have
enjoyed your poems especially The
Children of the Night so much that I must write to...
Josh Thompson
Back in the saddle (of writing)
Background
It’s been a hell of a year. I’ve got about 10,000 things I’ve wanted to write about, and...
over a year ago
Background
It’s been a hell of a year. I’ve got about 10,000 things I’ve wanted to write about, and have not gotten around to any of them. Here’s my various top-level reasons for not writing:
what I want to write about feels too complicated to express easily/coherently
I feel...
The American Scholar
Overconsumed
Adam Minter on what happens to all the stuff we downsize, declutter, and discard
The post...
a month ago
Adam Minter on what happens to all the stuff we downsize, declutter, and discard
The post Overconsumed appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
How to be an awesome belayer
For the next few posts I am going to geek out on sport climbing. If you’re not a climber (or a sport...
over a year ago
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...
Anecdotal Evidence
'But Johnson Fought Back'
Epigraphs to
books are often superfluous. They can come off as cute or pretentious. They add...
3 months ago
Epigraphs to
books are often superfluous. They can come off as cute or pretentious. They add little
or nothing to the manner in which we read the book and often amount to our
author showing off, touting his own vast reading or giving himself an unearned
endorsement. The most...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Dubious or Questionable Medium'
In 1972,
Daryl Hine, the editor of Poetry, requested
poems “protesting the acceleration of the...
11 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...
Ben Borgers
Are My Technical Posts Worth It?
over a year ago
Ben Borgers
Tufts Meal Plans Are a Scam
over a year ago
The Marginalian
Little Black Hole: A Tender Cosmic Fable About How to Live with Loss
Right this minute, people are making plans, making promises and poems, while at the center of our...
a year ago
Right this minute, people are making plans, making promises and poems, while at the center of our galaxy a black hole with the mass of four billion suns screams its open-mouth kiss of oblivion. Someday it will swallow every atom that ever touched us and every datum we ever...
Josh Thompson
Context Setting for certain patterns & classes of relationship difficulties
I’ve been “catching up” a lot in my life lately. Some of that catching up involves bringing up to...
over a year ago
I’ve been “catching up” a lot in my life lately. Some of that catching up involves bringing up to speed various people I’ve not spoken too (or spoken too much, or openly, or recently, or ever, or some combination thereof).
I am strongly biased towards written/editable/consistent...
Josh Thompson
Daily Exercise - Russian Kettlebells
Exercise. It makes most people either cringe or salivate.
Those of you who love exercising for the...
over a year ago
Exercise. It makes most people either cringe or salivate.
Those of you who love exercising for the sake of exercising - you can stop reading now. This information is probably not relevant to you.
Those of you who don’t like to exercise, but know you really should exercise...
The Marginalian
The Birth of the Byline: How a Bronze Age Woman Became the World’s First Named Author and Used the...
Days after I arrived in America as a lone teenager, the same age Mary Shelley was when she wrote...
6 months ago
Days after I arrived in America as a lone teenager, the same age Mary Shelley was when she wrote Frankenstein, not yet knowing I too was to become a writer, I found myself wandering the vast cool halls of the Penn Museum. There among the thousands of ancient artifacts was one to...
The Marginalian
How to Make a World: A Poem
Like mathematics, the truest metaphors are not invented but discovered. In fact, they hardly feel...
11 months ago
Like mathematics, the truest metaphors are not invented but discovered. In fact, they hardly feel like metaphors — they feel like equations equating something previously unseen with something familiar in order to see more deeply into the nature of reality. One morning out on a...
Josh Thompson
Why I Eat Bacon Every Day (And You Should Too)
note: as of late 2017, I’ve rolled over to a mostly vegetarian diet. I still love meat, but don’t...
over a year ago
note: as of late 2017, I’ve rolled over to a mostly vegetarian diet. I still love meat, but don’t feel comfortable eating it, for ethical reasons. I still believe that, on a whole, bacon is good for you, and I still eat veggies and many eggs every day. I just don’t eat bacon or...
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
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 Elysian
Join our upcoming literary salon discussions
Our calendar of upcoming events.
3 months ago
Our calendar of upcoming events.
The American Scholar
Imperiled Planet
The ecological havoc we’ve wrought
The post Imperiled Planet appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 months ago
The ecological havoc we’ve wrought
The post Imperiled Planet appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
How to Grow Re-enchanted with the World: A Salve for the Sense of Existential Meaninglessness and...
A shimmering reminder that "the magic is of our own conjuring."
a year ago
A shimmering reminder that "the magic is of our own conjuring."
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Soul of Reading!'
Don’t invariably
mistake a digression for sloppy storytelling. True, a clumsy storyteller will...
2 months ago
Don’t invariably
mistake a digression for sloppy storytelling. True, a clumsy storyteller will digress
out of sheer rambling confusion and indifference to his audience. My father was
like that. We arrived at some destination and he would promptly relate the
details of the...
Josh Thompson
First pass with Elixir/Phoenix
I’m digging into Elixir and Phoenix. I’m working through this tutorial to cloning Slack.
The...
over a year ago
I’m digging into Elixir and Phoenix. I’m working through this tutorial to cloning Slack.
The tutorial author says
At the time of writing, I have ~1 week experience with Phoenix. Similar to Rubber Ducky Debugging, I am writing this blog post to force myself to think differently...
The Elysian
Maybe you need to have more fun
"Fun" as essential to human flourishing.
5 months ago
"Fun" as essential to human flourishing.
This Space
The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard
I began reading The Morning Star without any prior knowledge of the contents, just as I had begun...
over a year ago
I began reading The Morning Star without any prior knowledge of the contents, just as I had begun reading every other book of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s since receiving an ARC of the first volume of My Struggle long before he shone above us like the morning star in this novel. This...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Shitcan the Sass'
George
Turberville writes in his epilogue to Epitaphes, Epigrams, Songs and Sonets (1567):
“I write...
6 months ago
George
Turberville writes in his epilogue to Epitaphes, Epigrams, Songs and Sonets (1567):
“I write but of familiar stuffe because my stile is lowe.” Today we call him a
master of the “plain style,” the opposite of ornate poeticizing, along with his
contemporaries George...
Steven Scrawls
Stone Hands Reaching
Stone Hands Reaching
I’m told the statue is right in front of me, so I reach out and find
myself...
6 months ago
Stone Hands Reaching
I’m told the statue is right in front of me, so I reach out and find
myself touching a stone forearm. It’s cold, of course, and it’s coarser
than skin, but tracing along the arms is enough to bring back memories
of being comforted, of being held, when I was a...
The Elysian
Substack could create the future of books
Here’s how that could look.
8 months ago
Here’s how that could look.
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Minute Passage of Private Life'
A young reader asks “Why ‘anecdotal’?” It was a last-minute decision
that Sunday afternoon almost...
a year ago
A young reader asks “Why ‘anecdotal’?” It was a last-minute decision
that Sunday afternoon almost eighteen years ago. I had it narrowed down to
three or four potential titles but liked the legal/criminological connotation
of “anecdotal evidence,” which is always judged suspect by...
The Marginalian
Milan Kundera on Animal Rights and What True Human Goodness Really Means
"True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient...
a year ago
"True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind's true mortal test, its fundamental test... consists of its attitude toward those who are at its mercy: animals."
Anecdotal Evidence
'Living Through Radical Change'
Ten years
ago, Joseph Epstein wrote to his friend Frederic Raphael:
“I have
myself long ago put...
8 months ago
Ten years
ago, Joseph Epstein wrote to his friend Frederic Raphael:
“I have
myself long ago put aside any thought about writing an autobiography. . . .
When I became, almost without conscious decision, a bookish and a scribbling
man, the larger sense of adventure went out of my...
Anecdotal Evidence
'So Important That It Ought to Absorb Him'
In his brief
portrait of Joseph Conrad, Desmond MacCarthy tells us the novelist “felt
himself...
a month ago
In his brief
portrait of Joseph Conrad, Desmond MacCarthy tells us the novelist “felt
himself impelled to attempt an intenser vividness in description. Try, just
try, so to describe something that the inattentive reader must see it, and the
attentive one can never forget that he...
The American Scholar
Bubble Girl
The kidnapping that once riveted the nation
The post Bubble Girl appeared first on The American...
7 months ago
The kidnapping that once riveted the nation
The post Bubble Girl appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Divided Providence
Faith’s pivotal role in the outcome of the Civil War
The post Divided Providence appeared first on...
a month ago
Faith’s pivotal role in the outcome of the Civil War
The post Divided Providence appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
39 Books: 1987
From two books in the first year of reading and twenty-four in the second, I read eighty-six in the...
8 months ago
From two books in the first year of reading and twenty-four in the second, I read eighty-six in the third, including a lot more non-fiction. This was due to cycling to libraries in adjacent towns where the selection was wider. One of them had my first non-novel choice: this...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Speak Knowledge Meagerly and Piteously'
“Montaigne
is heavy going, it has to be said.”
For once the
commonsensical Jules Renard is wrong....
3 months ago
“Montaigne
is heavy going, it has to be said.”
For once the
commonsensical Jules Renard is wrong. There’s no context for the remark in his
journal (October 1, 1898), so I take his words as given. Montaigne’s prose, at
least in translation, seems clear and readily understood. The...
Robert Caro
Anatomy of a $9 Burglary
“Anatomy of a $9 Burglary” is among Caro’s best early writing. When police arrested a criminal, all...
a year ago
“Anatomy of a $9 Burglary” is among Caro’s best early writing. When police arrested a criminal, all signs indicated a simple case of burglar
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