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Wuthering...
What I Read in February 2025 – All human minds are in touch with a dark reservoir of our race’s... One of these books is 1,100 pages long.  It was just by chance that I read two genuinely disgusting...
5 months ago
46
5 months ago
One of these books is 1,100 pages long.  It was just by chance that I read two genuinely disgusting books at around the same time. FICTION A Glastonbury Romance (1932), John Cowper Powys -  I will write a bit about this beast, soon.  That line in the title is from Chapter 25,...
The Marginalian
Any Common Desolation "You may have to break your heart, but it isn’t nothing to know even one moment alive."
5 months ago
The Elysian
I'm crowdfunding a book—we've raised $38,000 already! But writing about a better economy isn't enough, we have to build it too.
5 months ago
Escaping Flatland
King of the sea snakes This one is a mix of things.
5 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Thanks for This Fancy, Insect King' I once spent most of a day in an upstate New York marsh with a neuroethologist, a biologist who...
5 months ago
37
5 months ago
I once spent most of a day in an upstate New York marsh with a neuroethologist, a biologist who studies how an animal’s nervous system determines its behavior. His specialty was the order Odonata – dragonflies and damselflies. Like any journalist who’s paying attention, I got a...
The American Scholar
The Root Cause Padraic X. Scanlan tells the real history of the Irish Potato Famine The post The Root Cause...
5 months ago
44
5 months ago
Padraic X. Scanlan tells the real history of the Irish Potato Famine The post The Root Cause appeared first on The American Scholar.
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 372.5 ...
5 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Mystery of Language I Shall Never Solve' Quite a marvelous season after a protracted Northern winter, spring is the hoariest of subjects for...
5 months ago
44
5 months ago
Quite a marvelous season after a protracted Northern winter, spring is the hoariest of subjects for a poem. How many ways are there to be jubilant or render the sensation of “cavorting with the milkmaids,” as an old friend once put it? The effort usually comes off as hackneyed or...
Astral Codex Ten
OpenAI Nonprofit Buyout: Much More Than You Wanted To Know ...
5 months ago
Naz Hamid
Quality, Maintenance & Craft We are shokunin. Last week I was in Ojai, California, for True’s Founder Camp.[1] James Freeman,...
5 months ago
46
5 months ago
We are shokunin. Last week I was in Ojai, California, for True’s Founder Camp.[1] James Freeman, founder of Blue Bottle Coffee was in conversation with Jeff Veen, and one of the attendees asked him: “How do you maintain such high quality?” Freeman answers, “‘Maintaining’ is a...
The Marginalian
The Strength to Remember and the Strength to Forget: James Baldwin on What Makes a Hero “Let everything happen to you,” wrote Rilke, “Beauty and terror.” It is not easy, this simple...
5 months ago
37
5 months ago
“Let everything happen to you,” wrote Rilke, “Beauty and terror.” It is not easy, this simple surrender. The courage and vulnerability it takes make it nothing less than an act of heroism. Most of our cowardices and cruelties, most of the suffering we endure and inflict, stem...
Josh Thompson
Barefoot Sprinting Up a Grassy Hill, & Kettlebell Swings Introduction A few months ago, maybe in November, certainly by December, I began this ‘barefoot...
5 months ago
54
5 months ago
Introduction A few months ago, maybe in November, certainly by December, I began this ‘barefoot sprinting up grassy hills’ thing I’m going about to talk about in detail below. Shortly after I started, I began making use of the kettlebells I’d usually ignored at the gym(s) I have...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Things That Might Have Been and Never Were' My middle son enjoys a genre of fiction known as “alternate history.” Among its practitioners is the...
5 months ago
33
5 months ago
My middle son enjoys a genre of fiction known as “alternate history.” Among its practitioners is the American novelist Harry Turtledove. As I understand it, the premise is simple: change an event in the past and see what happens in subsequent history. Hitler, for instance, dies...
The American Scholar
Consolidated Ruin The post Consolidated Ruin appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
Astral Codex Ten
The Ozempocalypse Is Nigh Sorry, you can only get drugs when there's a drug shortage.
5 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Better Bread Than Is Made of Wheat' Sometimes disparate things almost announce their covert similarities and linkages, in a way...
5 months ago
34
5 months ago
Sometimes disparate things almost announce their covert similarities and linkages, in a way Aristotle would have understood, and it makes good sense to combine them. I was looking for something in The Poet’s Tongue, the anthology compiled by W.H. Auden and the schoolmaster John...
The American Scholar
“After Great Pain, a Formal Feeling Comes” by Emily Dickinson Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “After Great Pain, a Formal Feeling Comes” by Emily Dickinson...
5 months ago
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5 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “After Great Pain, a Formal Feeling Comes” by Emily Dickinson appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ploum.net
N’attendez pas, changez vos paradigmes ! N’attendez pas, changez vos paradigmes ! Il faut se passer de voiture pendant un certain temps pour...
5 months ago
40
5 months ago
N’attendez pas, changez vos paradigmes ! Il faut se passer de voiture pendant un certain temps pour réellement comprendre au plus profond de soi que la solution à beaucoup de nos problèmes sociétaux n’est pas une voiture électrique, mais une ville cyclable. Nous ne devons pas...
Astral Codex Ten
What Happened To NAEP Scores? ...
5 months ago
The Marginalian
Miss Leoparda: A Painted Parable of the Third Way and How to Change the World When told that there are only two options on the table and when both are limiting, most people,...
5 months ago
38
5 months ago
When told that there are only two options on the table and when both are limiting, most people, conditioned by the option dispensary we call society, will choose the lesser of the two limitations. Some will try to find a third option to put on the table; they may or may not...
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 372 ...
5 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Most Noteworthy Action of Human Life' I dreamed my late brother was here in Houston, a city he never visited. He was phobic about flying...
5 months ago
38
5 months ago
I dreamed my late brother was here in Houston, a city he never visited. He was phobic about flying and traveled by air only twice in his life, when very young. We were seated across from each other, on the couches by the front window. What I remember of the dream is brief, little...
The American Scholar
Luis Alvaro Sahagún Nuño Ancestral healing The post Luis Alvaro Sahagún Nuño appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
The Perry Bible...
0 Percent Chance The post 0 Percent Chance appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
5 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Something Irrepressibly Celebratory' A longtime reader of Anecdotal Evidence has commented on my March 1 post:  “One of my...
5 months ago
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5 months ago
A longtime reader of Anecdotal Evidence has commented on my March 1 post:  “One of my worst apprehensions about my son’s college education came true in his freshman English class. The professor brought up Lamb only to highlight something he said that would strike modern...
The Marginalian
Obsidian and the Birds: An Odyssey of Wonder from the Aztecs to the Quantum World A recent visit to Teotihuacán — the ancient Mesoamerican city in present-day Mexico, built by...
5 months ago
49
5 months ago
A recent visit to Teotihuacán — the ancient Mesoamerican city in present-day Mexico, built by earlier cultures around 600 BCE and later rediscovered by the Aztecs — left me wonder-smitten by the see-saw of our search for truth and our search for meaning, by a peculiar confluence...
Anecdotal Evidence
'And Does the Time Seem Long?' “Maurine Smith died March 8, 1919, at the age of twenty-three years. Nearly her whole life had been...
5 months ago
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5 months ago
“Maurine Smith died March 8, 1919, at the age of twenty-three years. Nearly her whole life had been one of intense physical suffering, and she knew few of the usual felicities.”  Yvor Winters is introducing us to a poet whose name you likely have never encountered.  Smith and...
The Perry Bible...
Snowflake The post Snowflake appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
5 months ago
Ploum.net
20 years of Linux on the Desktop (part 3) 20 years of Linux on the Desktop (part 3) Previously in "20 years of Linux on the Deskop": After...
5 months ago
43
5 months ago
20 years of Linux on the Desktop (part 3) Previously in "20 years of Linux on the Deskop": After contributing to the launch of Ubuntu as the "perfect Linux desktop", Ploum realises that Ubuntu is drifting away from both Debian and GNOME. But something else is about to shake the...
ben-mini
Platform or Point Solution? A while back, I wrote a post titled “What is a Platform?”. I defined what a platform is and why tech...
5 months ago
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5 months ago
A while back, I wrote a post titled “What is a Platform?”. I defined what a platform is and why tech companies are so determined to become labeled as one. My definition of a platform is a tool that allows users to define and build their own things, which can be used by other...
Wuthering...
Clarice Lispector's Near to the Wild Heart - When she spoke, she invented crazy, crazy! My subject is Clarice Lispector’s Near to the Wild Heart (1943), her first novel, and the only book...
5 months ago
50
5 months ago
My subject is Clarice Lispector’s Near to the Wild Heart (1943), her first novel, and the only book of hers I have read.  I read Alison Entrekin’s English translation because 1) I did not have a Portuguese text handy and 2) I figured it would be too hard for me, which I think is...
Anecdotal Evidence
'His Rising and His Fading Is Most Beautiful; A librarian friend and I were talking about the similarities between library cataloguing and...
5 months ago
33
5 months ago
A librarian friend and I were talking about the similarities between library cataloguing and taxonomy in biology – the art of classification – and the sort of people such specialized disciplines attract. Formerly a piano teacher, she was attracted to library science by way of...
Astral Codex Ten
Why Should Intelligence Be Related To Neuron Count? ...
5 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Writers That Are Worth Anything Are Humorists' Bertie Wooster has asked if he can purchase a gift for Jeeves while he is out, and the valet...
5 months ago
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5 months ago
Bertie Wooster has asked if he can purchase a gift for Jeeves while he is out, and the valet replies: “‘Well, sir, there has recently been published a new and authoritatively annotated edition of the works of the philosopher Spinoza. Since you are so generous, I would appreciate...
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
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 371.5 ...
5 months ago
The Elysian
The company of the future looks like this A Guest Lecture with Salim Ismail, author of Exponential Organizations
5 months ago
Escaping Flatland
An essay in which my friend feels stuck and I suggest relaxing some constraints The short version is that my friend, in my opinion, thinks about what he wants in a too constrained...
5 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'All That Is Human Slips Away' Varlam Shalamov (1907-82), who ought to know, opens a poem with this line: “Memory has veiled / much...
5 months ago
34
5 months ago
Varlam Shalamov (1907-82), who ought to know, opens a poem with this line: “Memory has veiled / much evil . . .” Shalamov survived almost eighteen years in the Gulag, in the Arctic region known as Kolyma. His final imprisonment, from 1937 to 1951, was imposed after he referred to...
The American Scholar
Brown Wasps The post Brown Wasps appeared first on The American Scholar.
5 months ago
Astral Codex Ten
Spring Meetups Everywhere 2025 - Call For Organizers ...
5 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Think, to Read, to Meditate, to React' Often, I think of the late Adam Zagajewski urging young poets – and by extension, the rest of us --...
5 months ago
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5 months ago
Often, I think of the late Adam Zagajewski urging young poets – and by extension, the rest of us -- to “read everything.” The suggestion is not dictatorial. The Pole even admits he is a “chaotic reader,” as most of us are. I’ve never been systematic about much of anything...
The American Scholar
“Writing in the Dark” by Denise Levertov Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Writing in the Dark” by Denise Levertov appeared first on...
5 months ago
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5 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Writing in the Dark” by Denise Levertov appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Insomnia and the Secret Life of Ideas: Kafka on the Relationship Between Sleeplessness and... Where we go when we go to sleep and why we go there is one of the great mysteries of the mind. Why...
5 months ago
52
5 months ago
Where we go when we go to sleep and why we go there is one of the great mysteries of the mind. Why the mind at times refuses to go there, despite the pleading and bargaining of its conscious owner, is a greater mystery still. We know that ever since REM evolved in the bird brain,...
This Space
A measure of forever For me, fiction is a space of plainness and excess.             Amina Cain When TS Eliot read...
5 months ago
46
5 months ago
For me, fiction is a space of plainness and excess.             Amina Cain When TS Eliot read Dante for the first time, he noted a discrepancy between his enjoyment and his understanding, leading to the famous claim that "genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood"....
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 371 ...
5 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Rosebuds Are Rare As a Day in June' Fortune cookies no longer contain fortunes. Tucked inside the sugary shells are slips of paper...
6 months ago
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6 months ago
Fortune cookies no longer contain fortunes. Tucked inside the sugary shells are slips of paper printed with platitudes. I carry one such slip in my wallet, salvaged from a forgotten meal at least a decade ago: “Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and...
The American Scholar
Tiger Mom At a forest preserve in India, a writer sees the world anew and learns how to focus her son’s...
6 months ago
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6 months ago
At a forest preserve in India, a writer sees the world anew and learns how to focus her son’s restless mind The post Tiger Mom appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
Who Would I Be Off My Meds Can weaning oneself off pharmaceuticals ease the cycle of perpetual suffering? The post Who Would I...
6 months ago
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6 months ago
Can weaning oneself off pharmaceuticals ease the cycle of perpetual suffering? The post Who Would I Be Off My Meds appeared first on The American Scholar.
The American Scholar
A Midsummer Night’s Stream A Midsummer Night’s Stream The post A Midsummer Night’s Stream appeared first on The American...
6 months ago