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Anecdotal Evidence
'There Is Only Man' “You either fell under his spell and loved the wild ride of his prose, or you shunned or ignored...
3 months ago
32
3 months ago
“You either fell under his spell and loved the wild ride of his prose, or you shunned or ignored it.”   Infatuation of the literary sort is likely possible only among the young. That’s my experience. I have discovered good writers in recent decades – Yvor Winters, C.H. Sisson –...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ On a Low and a High A few days separate us from our time at Canyon of the Ancients and our last camp from this fall...
over a year ago
15
over a year ago
A few days separate us from our time at Canyon of the Ancients and our last camp from this fall trip. After a mangled tale of an ER (mis)visit and a return for refuge at Sage Canyon (this time camping just outside the Workshop Loft — thank you, Grant, for the use of your bathroom...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Show the Poetry of the Commonplace' A friend in Schenectady, N.Y. worked as a lineman for the telephone company for almost half a...
6 months ago
35
6 months ago
A friend in Schenectady, N.Y. worked as a lineman for the telephone company for almost half a century, into his seventies. He was the guy who strapped on a belt and spikes and climbed those sliver-making poles, and later showed rookie linemen the ropes. On the side, Bob was an...
Ben Borgers
Personal Software
over a year ago
This Space
A modern heretic Literature can be defined by the sense of the imminence of a revelation which does not in fact...
over a year ago
73
over a year ago
Literature can be defined by the sense of the imminence of a revelation which does not in fact occur. I used this line, apparently from Borges, as an epigram to an essay in the early days of online writing. I can't remember what book it came from and after searching I found a...
The American Scholar
Born to Be Wild One founding family’s centuries-long journey The post Born to Be Wild appeared first on The American...
a year ago
52
a year ago
One founding family’s centuries-long journey The post Born to Be Wild appeared first on The American Scholar.
This Space
The end of literature, part five "Stupid" and "a marketing exercise" were the first two descriptions I saw of the New York Times' 100...
a year ago
111
a year ago
"Stupid" and "a marketing exercise" were the first two descriptions I saw of the New York Times' 100 Best Books of the 21st Century polled from hundreds of "literary luminaries" offering ten choices each, and while it is both of those things, "parochial" is the first word that...
Ben Borgers
My Office Makes Me Feel Stupid
over a year ago
Wuthering...
The Girl from Samos by Menander - I don’t think any one individual is better at birth than any other It’s our last plays, the last surviving Greek play, The Girl from Samos (315 BCE) by Menander.  How...
over a year ago
62
over a year ago
It’s our last plays, the last surviving Greek play, The Girl from Samos (315 BCE) by Menander.  How tastes, or circumstances, had changed in the seventy years since Wealth, our last Aristophanes play.  The political and social satire is gone, the sexual and scatological jokes are...
Ben Borgers
Read the Dang Thing Out Loud
over a year ago
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...
a year ago
60
a year 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...
Josh Thompson
Winter on Two Pairs of Socks We’re minimalists, mostly. We try to not have a bunch of stuff. This naturally extends to the...
over a year ago
19
over a year ago
We’re minimalists, mostly. We try to not have a bunch of stuff. This naturally extends to the wardrobe. I’ll cover more about what we wear another time, but for now, I want to give you an idea. With the right socks, you can go an entire winter with just two pairs of socks. You...
The Marginalian
The Rigor of Angels: Human Nature and the Nature of Reality "What we are striving for lies inside us; we find ourselves in the world and the world in...
a year ago
Escaping Flatland
Life update + open thread and a few fragments of essays
a year ago
The American Scholar
Ask Already The post Ask Already appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months 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
21
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...
The Marginalian
A Plasticity of Being: What a Rare Bird of Prey Reveals about the Deepest Meaning of Intelligence “True teachers are called into being by the contradictions generated by civilization,” the poet Gary...
a month ago
24
a month ago
“True teachers are called into being by the contradictions generated by civilization,” the poet Gary Snyder reflected in his reckoning with the real work of life. “We need them.” We have always needed them because we need each other, because we have always been each other’s...
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
16
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 Marginalian
Against Self-Improvement: Adam Phillips on the Danger of Treating Ourselves as Pathological Patients... "So much depends on what we can make of what happens to us."
5 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Delight Crowns All My Days, and Here I’ll Die' R.L. Barth has been translating the epigrams of Marcus Valerius Martialis – the first-century...
3 weeks ago
16
3 weeks ago
R.L. Barth has been translating the epigrams of Marcus Valerius Martialis – the first-century Roman poet Martial, as we know him – for more than forty years and now has self-published a collection of 104 of his translations (of the 1,561 Latin originals extant): Pleasing the...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 A Less Rigorous Version of Friendship All of this is fine, but I’m less interested in this rigorous version of friendship than I am in a...
a year ago
16
a year ago
All of this is fine, but I’m less interested in this rigorous version of friendship than I am in a softer, more accepting friendship that has more in common with caregiving. I am all too aware of my flaws; I don’t really need my friends to remind me of them. Rather than demand I...
The Marginalian
Oliver Sacks on Despair and the Meaning of Life "The meaning of life... clearly has to do with love — what and whom and how one can love."
9 months ago
The American Scholar
Chapters and Verse Looking for the poet between the lines The post Chapters and Verse appeared first on The American...
5 months ago
28
5 months ago
Looking for the poet between the lines The post Chapters and Verse appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
“The Poet’s Occasional Alternative” by Grace Paley Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Poet’s Occasional Alternative” by Grace Paley appeared...
a year ago
66
a year ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Poet’s Occasional Alternative” by Grace Paley 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...
over a year ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ Internet trail magic Day 19: Sept 28, 2023 — We pull into a driveway in a quiet and pristine neighborhood. Jen and I...
a year ago
13
a year ago
Day 19: Sept 28, 2023 — We pull into a driveway in a quiet and pristine neighborhood. Jen and I approach the house of people I’ve known for years, but only from the internet. This will be the first time meeting in person. Craig opens the door, and we immediately hug. Following is...
The American Scholar
Apagón The post Apagón appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 months ago
Josh Thompson
Recommended books from 2017 I read many books in 2017. I’m listing them out here, along with recommendations. Here’s the...
over a year ago
20
over a year ago
I read many books in 2017. I’m listing them out here, along with recommendations. Here’s the recommendation “key”: 👍 = I recommend this book. This is intentionally fuzzy. 😔 = This book influenced my mental model of the world/reality/myself 🏢 = Book topic is architecture and/or...
The Marginalian
Meeting the Muse at the Edge of the Light: Poet Gary Snyder on Craftsmanship vs. Creative Force It is tempting, because we make everything we make with everything we are, to take our creative...
6 months ago
46
6 months ago
It is tempting, because we make everything we make with everything we are, to take our creative potency for a personal merit. It is also tempting when we find ourselves suddenly impotent, as all artists regularly do, to blame the block on a fickle muse and rue ourselves abandoned...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Let Us Think That We Build Forever' I’ve just learned that the English poet Clive Wilmer died on March 13 at age eighty. I knew him...
4 months ago
40
4 months ago
I’ve just learned that the English poet Clive Wilmer died on March 13 at age eighty. I knew him first as a friend and champion of Edgar Bowers, Thom Gunn and Dick Davis, a co-translator of the Hungarian poet Miklós Radnóti, a serious reader of John Ruskin and a fine poet in his...
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
33
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...
Steven Scrawls
Supposedly-Deceased Intellectuals Found Living at Resort ‘Small Village’ of Supposedly-Deceased Intellectuals Found Alive, Thriving at Caribbean...
a year ago
31
a year ago
‘Small Village’ of Supposedly-Deceased Intellectuals Found Alive, Thriving at Caribbean Resort Gabriel Martinez, a 35-year-old confectioner living in the Cayman Islands, thought he was posting a simple promotional photo when he snapped a picture of his ‘cocoa-banana-surprise’ and...
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Future Web It’s idealistic and very millennial of me to reminiscence the early days of Web innocence, unbound...
7 months ago
39
7 months ago
It’s idealistic and very millennial of me to reminiscence the early days of Web innocence, unbound creativity it hosted and wonderful lack of monetisation of virtually every aspect of being online. We can’t turn back time. But, individually and collectively, we can strive for...
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...
a year ago
75
a year ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Last Words of My English Grandmother” appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
So you want to work remotely... Josh’s “rules” for getting a sweet remote job A few weeks ago, I met a fantastic guy who is...
over a year ago
16
over a year ago
Josh’s “rules” for getting a sweet remote job A few weeks ago, I met a fantastic guy who is contemplating next steps for work. He is great at what he does, and is thinking about what direction to go in his life. He’s young, and thought working remotely sounded pretty cool. I...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Must Be Continually Striving to Live' A reader asks what I hope to accomplish in retirement. I’m not one for making grand plans or...
6 months ago
25
6 months ago
A reader asks what I hope to accomplish in retirement. I’m not one for making grand plans or resolutions. No golf and little travel. It’s more likely I’ll continue what I’m already doing – writing, reading, family matters – just more of it. More Montaigne, J.V. Cunningham,...
Ben Borgers
Am I a Gym Bro Now?
over a year ago
The Marginalian
The Galapagos and the Meaning of Life: A Young Woman’s Bittersweet Experiment in Inner Freedom “We may think we are domesticated but we are not,” Jay Griffiths wrote in her homily on not wasting...
10 months ago
48
10 months ago
“We may think we are domesticated but we are not,” Jay Griffiths wrote in her homily on not wasting our wildness, insisting on the “primal allegiance” the human spirit has to the wild. A decade after artist Rockwell Kent headed to a remote Alaskan island “to stand face to face...
Josh Thompson
Letter to Two Climbers (Part 1) Hello! We met recently. (I gave Justin tape after he cut his toe and didn’t have a bandaid.) You and...
over a year ago
22
over a year ago
Hello! We met recently. (I gave Justin tape after he cut his toe and didn’t have a bandaid.) You and your partner were climbing a route near me and my partner. One of you (I’ll call Charles, because he had a British accent) was trying  so hard to figure out some moves high above...
ribbonfarm
Protocol Entrepreneurship I’m running the Summer of Protocols program for the Ethereum Foundation again this year. Here is the...
a year ago
20
a year ago
I’m running the Summer of Protocols program for the Ethereum Foundation again this year. Here is the Call for Applications. I’d appreciate any help getting it in front of the right candidates. The core of it is what we’re calling Protocol Improvement Grants (PIGs): 90k for a team...
Ben Borgers
I Used All of My Meal Swipes!
over a year ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
🔗 Mundango Mundago is a game about enjoying the small things in life. Each day you get a brand new board of...
9 months ago
21
9 months ago
Mundago is a game about enjoying the small things in life. Each day you get a brand new board of activities you can pursue. Your board is yours. Your friends' boards will be different. Tap items to check them off as you complete them. — Dave Rupery Thanks for a little bit of joy,...
Ben Borgers
Why I Love Tailwind CSS
over a year ago
Astral Codex Ten
Prison And Crime: Much More Than You Wanted To Know ...
9 months ago
The Marginalian
John Gardner on the Key to Self-Renewal Across Life and the Art of Making Rather Than Finding... "The potentialities you develop to the full come as the result of an interplay between you and...
a year ago
The Elysian
Are we living in heaven or hell? It's a showdown between Elysium and Tartarus.
3 days ago
Wuthering...
Books I read in August 2024 My ambition this summer was to read extensively in Arabic literature.  Eh, I did all right, but I...
12 months ago
39
12 months ago
My ambition this summer was to read extensively in Arabic literature.  Eh, I did all right, but I will have to save Ibn Battuta’s Travels and the second half of Leg over Leg for some other time.  FICTION The Arabian Nights (14th c.), many hands – In the great Hassan Haddawy...
The Marginalian
Wholeness and the Implicate Order: Physicist David Bohm on Bridging Consciousness and Reality How to "include everything coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that is undivided,...
over a year ago
Naz Hamid — Journal...
✏️ The Phone As Disruptive My phone doesn't follow me everywhere. It occupies the last place I left it. This happens when I...
11 months ago
17
11 months ago
My phone doesn't follow me everywhere. It occupies the last place I left it. This happens when I leave to go for a run, sometimes when I run errands, and often hours go by without it. This is occurring more and more. It feels light. I feel light. The literal weight of the phone...
The Marginalian
Curiosity as an Instrument of Love: Thoreau and the Little Owl "If you would learn the secrets of Nature, you must practice more humanity than others."
11 months ago