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The American Scholar
“Sakura Park” by Rachel Wetzsteon Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Sakura Park” by Rachel Wetzsteon appeared first on The...
19 hours ago
2
19 hours ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Sakura Park” by Rachel Wetzsteon appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The Whole of It Because we are creatures made of time, what we call suffering is at bottom a warping of time, a form...
10 hours ago
2
10 hours ago
Because we are creatures made of time, what we call suffering is at bottom a warping of time, a form of living against it and not with it — the pain of loss, aching for what has been and no longer is; the pain of longing, aching for what could be but is not yet and may never be;...
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Pulls the Reader In' I grew up observing the Holy Trinity, the literary one: Homer, Dante, Shakespeare. Faith told me...
18 hours ago
2
18 hours ago
I grew up observing the Holy Trinity, the literary one: Homer, Dante, Shakespeare. Faith told me these were the foundational figures who would sustain us. Reason and a lifetime of reading have confirmed my faith. I think of them as formulating the cultural oxygen that sustains...
The Elysian
No, we shouldn't return to the climate of the 18th century Improving the climate is a better goal than trying to fight change.
yesterday
Anecdotal Evidence
'Idiot Hopefulness or Fathomless Exasperation' When my oldest son was about seven and already a movie enthusiast, we drove up to the Crandall...
yesterday
3
yesterday
When my oldest son was about seven and already a movie enthusiast, we drove up to the Crandall Library in Glens Falls, N.Y. to watch Laurel and Hardy movies. I’d seen a notice in the paper. A film collector brought his own projector and a box of 16mm reels and set up in one of...
The American Scholar
Stephanie Santana Preserving family history The post Stephanie Santana appeared first on The American Scholar.
yesterday
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Brought Us This Far' Self-knowledge is fine but some things are best left unexamined. “Why do you read so many books?” a...
2 days ago
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2 days ago
Self-knowledge is fine but some things are best left unexamined. “Why do you read so many books?” a reader asks. His assumption, never directly articulated, is that reading is compensation for the absence of something far more important. I suppose people have been facing...
The Elysian
Democracy should happen online A Guest Lecture with Margo Loor, co-founder of the Estonian participatory democracy platform Citizen...
4 days ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'At a Quarter a Tome' I owe a significant chunk of my education to the existence of paperback books. By “education” I...
4 days ago
4
4 days ago
I owe a significant chunk of my education to the existence of paperback books. By “education” I don’t mean what I pretended to do while in the company of professors, though many of them assigned books published in soft covers. I mean self-assigned literature, beginning as a kid...
The American Scholar
Family Values Augustine Sedgewick on the history of paternity and patriarchy The post Family Values appeared first...
4 days ago
3
4 days ago
Augustine Sedgewick on the history of paternity and patriarchy The post Family Values appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
Silence, Solitude, and the Art of Surrender: Pico Iyer on Finding the World in a Benedictine... "Such a simple revolution: Yesterday I thought myself at the center of the world. Now the world...
5 days ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'[C]onservatives Should Embrace the Novel' Fifteen years ago, in a blog post titled “Conservative novels,”  my friend the late D.G. Myers...
5 days ago
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5 days ago
Fifteen years ago, in a blog post titled “Conservative novels,”  my friend the late D.G. Myers critiqued a “top-ten” list of that literary species assembled by a writer at The National Review. David called the list “strangely disappointing,” and it’s tough to argue with that...
The Marginalian
The Arguers: A Charming Illustrated Parable about the Absurdity of Self-righteousness Perhaps the most perilous consequence of uncertain times, times that hurl us into helplessness and...
6 days ago
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6 days ago
Perhaps the most perilous consequence of uncertain times, times that hurl us into helplessness and disorientation, is that they turn human beings into opinion machines. We dope our pain and confusion with false certainties that stifle the willingness to understand (the nuances of...
The Elysian
We can terraform the Earth—not just Mars If we can revive a dead planet, we can revive our own.
6 days ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'What He Knows Who Looks Into Life and Sees' Most of my preoccupations lie elsewhere but I retain a casual interest in what used to be called...
6 days ago
6
6 days ago
Most of my preoccupations lie elsewhere but I retain a casual interest in what used to be called field biology. That is, the non-molecular, outside-the-laboratory practice of observing plants and animals, even in the middle of Houston. The motives are pleasure, wonder and...
The American Scholar
A Pair of Elephants The post A Pair of Elephants appeared first on The American Scholar.
6 days ago
Wuthering...
A draft Elizabethan Not Shakespeare syllabus In case yesterday’s invitation was a bit abstract, here is my current sense of a twenty-play...
6 days ago
6
6 days ago
In case yesterday’s invitation was a bit abstract, here is my current sense of a twenty-play Elizabethan Not Shakespeare syllabus that I would like to investigate beginning next fall.  I’ve read twelve of them. Please note that almost every date below should be preceded by “c.” ...
The American Scholar
Reasons for Living The post Reasons for Living appeared first on The American Scholar.
a week ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Most Natural Thing in the World' Why write? Indulge my glibness: Why not? Still in high school, I learned I had little...
a week ago
73
a week ago
Why write? Indulge my glibness: Why not? Still in high school, I learned I had little understanding of a given subject until I tried to express it in a precise selection of words, words that corresponded not to my feelings or theories but to what I could perceive. Not gushing – a...
The American Scholar
“The Last One” by W. S. Merwin Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Last One” by W. S. Merwin appeared first on The American...
a week ago
Wuthering...
Not Shakespeare - a preliminary, semi-formed invitation to read plays by Shakespeare's... Here’s something I’ve been wanting to do.  I’ve been wanting to return to the plays of...
a week ago
10
a week ago
Here’s something I’ve been wanting to do.  I’ve been wanting to return to the plays of Shakespeare’s contemporaries, Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson and so on.  The Spanish Tragedy, The Duchess of Malfi, The Knight of the Burning Pestle,  Bartholomew Fair.  It has been a while...
The Elysian
TERRAFORM: An essay collection about the future of our planet Six writers explore the future of our world for an online series and print pamphlet.
a week ago
Escaping Flatland
Caring for others At Kastrup Airport in Copenhagen, I see a passport fall out of the back pocket of a man and...
a week ago
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a week ago
At Kastrup Airport in Copenhagen, I see a passport fall out of the back pocket of a man and immediately (at least) three strangers call out.
This Space
On the Calculation of Volume 1 by Solvej Balle The premise of this multi-volume novel is simple: a modern-day French woman called Tara finds...
a week ago
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a week ago
The premise of this multi-volume novel is simple: a modern-day French woman called Tara finds herself stuck inside the eighteenth day of a November. The nineteenth never appears. On the 121st iteration of the same day she begins to write by describing the sounds made by her...
The American Scholar
The Unjolly Green Giant How C. F.  Seabrook became the Lear of the vegetable fields The post The Unjolly Green Giant...
a week ago
5
a week ago
How C. F.  Seabrook became the Lear of the vegetable fields The post The Unjolly Green Giant appeared first on The American Scholar.
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Information of a High School Janitor' A former colleague reminded me of the babysitting job I was given by a newspaper editor some...
a week ago
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a week ago
A former colleague reminded me of the babysitting job I was given by a newspaper editor some forty years ago. I was the court reporter, covering every level from city police court to the New York Court of Appeals, plus the federal court in the beautiful Art Deco building on...
The Marginalian
The Grammar of Fantasy and the Fantastic Binomial: Beloved Italian Children’s Book Author Gianny... "The mind forms a whole. Its creativity must be cultivated in all directions."
a week ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Thrived on Giving Offense' Why did my teachers devote more class time to John Greenleaf Whittier and James Russell Lowell –...
a week ago
6
a week ago
Why did my teachers devote more class time to John Greenleaf Whittier and James Russell Lowell – American exemplars of the Age of Thrice-Named Writers -- than to Lord Byron? After more than half a century, I can only speculate. Literary patriotism? We spent a lot of time reading...
The Elysian
Newsletter bundles don't work A Guest Lecture with Even Armstrong on why he left Every to go independent.
a week ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Peaceabale Morning' Boys of my age grew up fighting Nazis and Japs. We inherited our fathers’ war and were too old to...
a week ago
6
a week ago
Boys of my age grew up fighting Nazis and Japs. We inherited our fathers’ war and were too old to “play Army” – always the phrase – by the time Vietnam heated up. A German refugee, Mrs. Becker, lived next door and we were ordered to kill only Japs if we were playing near her...
The American Scholar
Ask Already The post Ask Already appeared first on The American Scholar.
a week ago
The Marginalian
The Majesty of Mountains and the Mountains of the Mind Mountains are some of our best metaphors for the mind and for the spirit, but they are also living...
a week ago
5
a week ago
Mountains are some of our best metaphors for the mind and for the spirit, but they are also living entities, sovereign and staggering. I remember the first time I saw a mountain from an airplane — forests miniaturized to moss, rivers to capillaries, the Earth crumpled like a...
The Elysian
Creating a global safety net without nation-states A Guest Lecture featuring Sondre Rasch, co-founder and CEO of SafetyWing.
2 weeks ago
The Marginalian
Mushrooms and Our Search for Meaning This essay was originally published as the cover story in the Summer 2025 issue of Orion Magazine....
2 weeks ago
9
2 weeks ago
This essay was originally published as the cover story in the Summer 2025 issue of Orion Magazine. “Who are you?” the caterpillar barks at Alice from atop the giant mushroom, and Alice, never quite having considered the question, mutters a child’s version of Emily Dickinson’s...
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Illustrate With Marginal Notes' I no longer write in books, a decision I made decades ago that I occasionally regret. It came...
2 weeks ago
6
2 weeks ago
I no longer write in books, a decision I made decades ago that I occasionally regret. It came to feel like defacement. But it’s interesting to see what attracted, delighted or puzzled my younger self. Here are the three books on my shelves most heavily underlined and...
The American Scholar
“In the Summer” by Nizar Qabbani Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “In the Summer” by Nizar Qabbani appeared first on The...
2 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Commonly Lost Because It Never Was Deserved' Often, I hardly recognize my younger self. I did foolish things I would never contemplate today....
2 weeks ago
7
2 weeks ago
Often, I hardly recognize my younger self. I did foolish things I would never contemplate today. My self-centeredness was appalling, my taste frequently shameful, even in books. I read critics uncritically and was cowed by their fame and influence. Taste doesn’t arrive...
The American Scholar
Jeremy Spoke in Class Today On guns, MTV, Stephen King, and the nightmare from which we cannot awake The post Jeremy Spoke in...
2 weeks ago
3
2 weeks ago
On guns, MTV, Stephen King, and the nightmare from which we cannot awake The post Jeremy Spoke in Class Today appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Marginalian
The One Hundred Milliseconds Between the World and You: Oliver Sacks on Perception “If the doors of perception were cleansed,” William Blake wrote, “everything would appear to man as...
2 weeks ago
7
2 weeks ago
“If the doors of perception were cleansed,” William Blake wrote, “everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.” But we are finite creatures, in time and in space, and there is a limit to how much reality we can bear — evolution gave us consciousness so that we may sieve the...
The American Scholar
On (Middle-Class) Frugality Does cutting costs mean robbing oneself of life’s small delights? The post On (Middle-Class)...
2 weeks ago
7
2 weeks ago
Does cutting costs mean robbing oneself of life’s small delights? The post On (Middle-Class) Frugality appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
What I Read in May 2025 – “There’s the store that’s shaped like a duck,” Franca said. First, my poor email subscribers missed some of the installments of my newsletter about Anthony...
2 weeks ago
10
2 weeks ago
First, my poor email subscribers missed some of the installments of my newsletter about Anthony Powell.  If this keeps happening I will have to think of something or even do something.  Here they are: A skippable piece of throat-clearing about the roman fleuve. What I think...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Things Which Make a Life of Ease' R.L. Barth, our finest living epigrammist (admittedly, not a vast job description), has sent me his...
2 weeks ago
7
2 weeks ago
R.L. Barth, our finest living epigrammist (admittedly, not a vast job description), has sent me his translation of a well-known epigram by Martial, the Roman master of the pithy form. Bob found it among his papers and doesn’t remember making it. “[T]ranslating something [Ben]...
The Marginalian
Imagine Water Otherwise: Robert Macfarlane on the Personhood of Rivers and the Meaning of Aliveness “Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river,” Borges wrote in his timeless...
2 weeks ago
9
2 weeks ago
“Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river,” Borges wrote in his timeless “refutation” of time. “No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life,” Nietzsche wrote a century earlier in his directive on how to find yourself....
Anecdotal Evidence
'When the Heart is Full . . .' “You say truly, that death is only terrible to us as it separates us from those we love, but I...
2 weeks ago
6
2 weeks ago
“You say truly, that death is only terrible to us as it separates us from those we love, but I really think those have the worst of it who are left by us, if we are true friends. I have felt more (I fancy) in the loss of Mr. Gay, than I shall suffer in the thought of going away...
The American Scholar
The Birthmark The post The Birthmark appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
The Elysian
Our community round has opened—let's fund this book! + Join our call tonight!
2 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
Compatible Observations of Great Men Andrew Taylor on Charles Montagu Doughty, author of Travels in Arabia Deserta (1888): “He appealed...
2 weeks ago
11
2 weeks ago
Andrew Taylor on Charles Montagu Doughty, author of Travels in Arabia Deserta (1888): “He appealed instinctively to the past, against what he saw as the corruption of language, manners and morality of his own time, but Travels in Arabia Deserta is not backward-looking for its own...
The Marginalian
The Wanting Monster: An Almost Unbearably Tender Illustrated Spell Against the Curse of Not Enough Wanting is the menacing margin of error between desire and need. It is the blade that vivisects your...
2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
Wanting is the menacing margin of error between desire and need. It is the blade that vivisects your serenity, the hammer that shatters your wholeness — to want anything is to deem your life incomplete without it. It is a perpetual motion machine that keeps you restlessly...
The Elysian
How Silicon Valley got rich And how everyone else can get rich too.
2 weeks ago
Escaping Flatland
On the pleasure of reading private notebooks One reason I like this genre is that people censor themselves less when they are writing in private.
2 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'All of Time is Cut in Two—Before and After' Rhina Espaillat writes the sonnet “How Like a Winter . . .” (And After All: Poems, 2018) in...
2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
Rhina Espaillat writes the sonnet “How Like a Winter . . .” (And After All: Poems, 2018) in response to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 17:  “So Shakespeare describes absence. Yes—but no, since every winter ends, gentling to spring’s tentative yellows, then the green and blue and bolder...
The Marginalian
Raising Hare: The Moving Story of How a Helpless Creature Helped a Workaholic Wake Up from the... Narrow the aperture of your attention enough to take in any one thing fully, and it becomes a portal...
2 weeks ago
8
2 weeks ago
Narrow the aperture of your attention enough to take in any one thing fully, and it becomes a portal to everything. Anneal that attention enough so that you see whatever and whoever is before you free from expectation, unfiltered through your fantasies or needs, and it becomes...
The American Scholar
Apagón The post Apagón appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Alone in a Room with the English Language' “One of the offices of poetry: to use shapely speech to express the radicals of existence in all...
3 weeks ago
8
3 weeks ago
“One of the offices of poetry: to use shapely speech to express the radicals of existence in all their ambiguity.”  “Shapely speech” is nicely put. Guys I knew, when being polite, might describe a girl as “shapely.” You know what that means. It means pleasing. What about “the...
The American Scholar
“A Blessing” by James Wright Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “A Blessing” by James Wright appeared first on The American...
3 weeks ago
This Space
A mighty contagious absence, part two On submission and resistance to AI-generated literature   To great writers, finished works weigh...
3 weeks ago
15
3 weeks ago
On submission and resistance to AI-generated literature   To great writers, finished works weigh lighter than those fragments on which they work throughout their lives. For only the more feeble and distracted take an inimitable pleasure in conclusions, feeling themselves...
Anecdotal Evidence
''T is But the Graves That Stay' “Above the town of Frankfort, on the top of the steep bluff of the Kentucky River, is a burial-place...
3 weeks ago
8
3 weeks ago
“Above the town of Frankfort, on the top of the steep bluff of the Kentucky River, is a burial-place where lie the bones of many heroes, sons the Commonwealth has lovingly gathered in one fold. It is a beautiful site for this simple Valhalla, with its wide outlook over the noble...
The American Scholar
Tessa G. O’Brien Expansiveness and wonder The post Tessa G. O’Brien appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Conception of Life As an Enchanted State' On summer mornings in the mid-nineteen-sixties, I would follow the path behind our house through a...
3 weeks ago
9
3 weeks ago
On summer mornings in the mid-nineteen-sixties, I would follow the path behind our house through a growth of poplars and sassafras to the place where the white oaks and tulip trees took over. The path ended at the top of the hill where we went sledding in winter. Most mornings...
The Marginalian
Owl Lake: A Vintage Treasure from Japanese Artist Keizaburo Tejima That we will never know what it is like to be another — another person, another creature — is one of...
3 weeks ago
11
3 weeks ago
That we will never know what it is like to be another — another person, another creature — is one of the most exasperating things in life, but also one of the most humbling, the most catalytic to our creative energies: the great calibrator of our certainties, the ultimate...
Anecdotal Evidence
'He’s Not the Only One' My newly graduated youngest son is visiting Thailand with friends from his alma mater, Rice...
3 weeks ago
9
3 weeks ago
My newly graduated youngest son is visiting Thailand with friends from his alma mater, Rice University. Most of the photos he has sent document meals eaten and temples visited, but among them is this one, my favorite image:  The smiling head of the Buddha sunk among the...
The American Scholar
Lingua Obscura Laura Spinney on the spread of Proto-Indo-European The post Lingua Obscura appeared first on The...
3 weeks ago
9
3 weeks ago
Laura Spinney on the spread of Proto-Indo-European The post Lingua Obscura appeared first on The American Scholar.
Escaping Flatland
When writing, look at what you are trying to describe more than at your words 9 reflections
3 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'For I Have Renounced Happiness' “Happiness is the search for happiness.”  I’m not so sure. My understanding is that there are no...
3 weeks ago
8
3 weeks ago
“Happiness is the search for happiness.”  I’m not so sure. My understanding is that there are no happy lives, only happy moments. Those moments seem to be the byproduct of right living. A life dedicated fulltime to achieving happiness is likely to be filled with respites of...
The American Scholar
An Enigma at the Center The story of the American West in one photograph The post An Enigma at the Center appeared first on...
3 weeks ago
10
3 weeks ago
The story of the American West in one photograph The post An Enigma at the Center appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
Anthony Powell's style and sensibility - Life is full of internal dramas, instantaneous and... Nicholas Jenkins – I did not register his name at all for the entire first novel, but I know it now...
3 weeks ago
15
3 weeks ago
Nicholas Jenkins – I did not register his name at all for the entire first novel, but I know it now – goes to school, gets a job in publishing, writes a novel, gets a girlfriend, gets a job as a script writer, splits with the girlfriend, and writes another novel or two, none of...
The Marginalian
Is Peace Possible Is Peace Possible?, originally published in 1957, is the second title in Marginalian Editions. Below...
3 weeks ago
13
3 weeks ago
Is Peace Possible?, originally published in 1957, is the second title in Marginalian Editions. Below is my foreword to the new edition as it appears in on its pages. How ungenerous our culture has been in portraying science as cold, unfeeling, and aloof from the human sphere. No...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Books Which Can Be Read Again and Again' “The great bulk of the world’s prose fiction, contemporary and past, does not wear well. Almost all...
3 weeks ago
11
3 weeks ago
“The great bulk of the world’s prose fiction, contemporary and past, does not wear well. Almost all of it is soon forgotten and of those books which survive the wear of time, only a few withstand the effects of time on the reader himself. Out of all the novels ever written there...
The American Scholar
Engulfed The post Engulfed appeared first on The American Scholar.
3 weeks ago
The Elysian
Who should control AI? Nonprofits aren't our only option.
4 weeks ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Wanted Only Time' My brother’s yahrzeit – the first anniversary of his death last summer – is approaching. His death...
4 weeks ago
8
4 weeks ago
My brother’s yahrzeit – the first anniversary of his death last summer – is approaching. His death was the most intimate I have experienced. I spent most of the last two weeks of his life with him, in hospital and hospice, and observed the moment of his death.  Ken could be...
The American Scholar
“Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden appeared first on The...
4 weeks ago
12
4 weeks ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
How A Dance to the Music of Time works, so far - I always enjoy hearing the details of other... My writing here is often about what surprised me or did not.  So let’s have that about the first...
4 weeks ago
13
4 weeks ago
My writing here is often about what surprised me or did not.  So let’s have that about the first four novels of Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time, the twelve volume sequence published from 1951 to 1975 and covering a refracted version of Powell’s life from his later...
Anecdotal Evidence
'There Is Only Man' “You either fell under his spell and loved the wild ride of his prose, or you shunned or ignored...
4 weeks ago
12
4 weeks 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 –...
The American Scholar
“The Jester’s Magma” The post “The Jester’s Magma” appeared first on The American Scholar.
4 weeks ago
The Marginalian
The Pain and the God Within You: Carl Jung on the Relationship Between Psychological Suffering and... When AI first began colonizing language — which is still our best instrument for bridging the abyss...
a month ago
14
a month ago
When AI first began colonizing language — which is still our best instrument for bridging the abyss between us, a container for thought and feeling that shapes the contents — I asked chatGPT to compose a poem about a solar eclipse in the style of Walt Whitman. It returned a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Poetry That Nobody Nowadays Reads' Once I patronized a library book sale where volumes were sold not by age, condition, whether...
a month ago
11
a month ago
Once I patronized a library book sale where volumes were sold not by age, condition, whether paperback or hard cover, and certainly not by literary worth but by weight. On the table by the exit was a scale, the flat-topped sort associated with butcher shops. The arrangement was a...
The Marginalian
How Should You Live Your Life: Marie Howe’s Spare, Stunning Poem “The Maples” “Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of...
a month ago
25
a month ago
“Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy,” Albert Camus wrote in one of the most sobering opening pages in literature. So here you are, having answered affirmatively, consciously or not, now facing the second...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Read Well, Read Little' A reader asks what novels by William Makepeace Thackeray I would suggest he read. My answer is brief...
a month ago
13
a month ago
A reader asks what novels by William Makepeace Thackeray I would suggest he read. My answer is brief and not terribly helpful: Vanity Fair. It’s the only book by Thackery I have read, and that was a long time ago. I saw Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Barry Lyndon in 1975....
Wuthering...
Preface to notes on the first four novels of Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time In France, at the Lyon public library, I was surprised to bump into so many romans fleuves, whatever...
a month ago
15
a month ago
In France, at the Lyon public library, I was surprised to bump into so many romans fleuves, whatever those are.  They were notable on the shelf because these long series of novels are now published in monumental, highly visible, omnibus editions.  The library assumes that...
The Marginalian
Annie Dillard on Unselfconsciousness Walking through the white-walled gallery at the graduation show of one of New York’s most esteemed...
a month ago
15
a month ago
Walking through the white-walled gallery at the graduation show of one of New York’s most esteemed art schools, between beautiful young people with Instagram faces, I was struck to see project after project take up as its subject the least durable, most illusory aspect of human...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The War with What He Does Not Understand' “. . . I am closer to the ‘life of the spirit’ than you are. You are talking about the right of one...
a month ago
13
a month ago
“. . . I am closer to the ‘life of the spirit’ than you are. You are talking about the right of one or another type of knowledge to exist, whereas I’m talking about peace, not rights. I want people not to see war where there isn’t any. Different branches of knowledge have always...
The Elysian
CITY STATE: A discussion about autonomous governance Here's the recording from our literary salon discussion.
a month ago
The Marginalian
Isotopes, Vikings, Mars We are perishable matter yearning for meaning, and time is both the matter and the meaning of our...
a month ago
12
a month ago
We are perishable matter yearning for meaning, and time is both the matter and the meaning of our lives. “Time is a river that sweeps me along but I am the river,” Borges wrote in 1940. “Time is the substance I am made of.” Around the same time, the chemist Willard Libby had a...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Books Which Can Be Read Again and Again' “The great bulk of the world’s prose fiction, contemporary and past, does not wear well. Almost all...
a month ago
5
a month ago
“The great bulk of the world’s prose fiction, contemporary and past, does not wear well. Almost all of it is soon forgotten and of those books which survive the wear of time, only a few withstand the effects of time on the reader himself. Out of all the novels ever written there...
The American Scholar
White Easter The post White Easter appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
On a Phrase by Jane Greer “. . . I pounce on quiet when I find it.”  Do you hear that sound? A low vibrato in the distance?...
a month ago
12
a month ago
“. . . I pounce on quiet when I find it.”  Do you hear that sound? A low vibrato in the distance? Sometimes it swells and the windows seem to rattle. It’s a pedal point reminiscent of hornets in a jar, but less reassuring. It’s the collective drone of chatter, of casually...
The American Scholar
“That Day” by Nikki Giovanni Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “That Day” by Nikki Giovanni appeared first on The American...
a month ago
The Elysian
120 million employee-owners in one generation We have a moonshot opportunity to make the bottom half way richer. Here’s how we take it.
a month ago
Escaping Flatland
What problem should you be working on now? How to filter problems worth solving from problems worth quitting?
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Fanaticisms and Factiousnesses Too' “History is not some past from which we are cut off. We are merely at its forward edge as it...
a month ago
15
a month ago
“History is not some past from which we are cut off. We are merely at its forward edge as it unrolls. And only if one is without historical feeling at all can one think of the intellectual fads and fashions of one’s own time as a ‘habitation everlasting.’ We may feel that at...
The Marginalian
Václav Havel on How to Live with Your Greatest Failure Few things in life are more devastating than to give something your all and still fail. Not the...
a month ago
13
a month ago
Few things in life are more devastating than to give something your all and still fail. Not the “fail better” of startup culture, not the “fail forward” of self-help, not the failure that is childhood’s fulcrum of learning, not the inspired mistakes that propel creative risk, but...
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Following Pages Are Frankly Bookish' If you're familiar with Andrew Lang (1844-1912) at all, it’s likely as a collector of folk and fairy...
a month ago
12
a month ago
If you're familiar with Andrew Lang (1844-1912) at all, it’s likely as a collector of folk and fairy tales. I remember as a kid reading some of his twelve “Coloured” Fairy Books. He was also a prolific poet and critic, though that work is largely forgotten. He remains best known...
Astral Codex Ten
The Twins Join The Linguistic-Symbolic Order ...
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Bolt of Inspiration Strikes Invariably' “Inspiration is perhaps merely the joy of writing: it does not precede writing.” A student and...
a month ago
17
a month ago
“Inspiration is perhaps merely the joy of writing: it does not precede writing.” A student and aspiring fiction writer wonders why I seldom refer to “inspiration.” What is it? Do I deny its existence? Have certain writers successfully relied on it? Can he? My answer is yes and...
The American Scholar
The Shipping News Ian Kumekawa tells the story of the global economy in one barge The post The Shipping News appeared...
a month ago
17
a month ago
Ian Kumekawa tells the story of the global economy in one barge The post The Shipping News appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
What I Read in April 2025 – Have we cherished expectations? I should make that the new official slogan of the blog.  It is from p. 614 of Finnegans Wake, one of...
a month ago
18
a month ago
I should make that the new official slogan of the blog.  It is from p. 614 of Finnegans Wake, one of the books I recently read. FICTION The Sword in the Stone (1938), T. H. White – I for some reason did not read this as a youth.  It is wonderful, full of anachronism and parody...
Naz Hamid
Barbara “Nuggie” Schuetz-Hamid Rest in peace little one. I never would have guessed that a 4-lb Chihuahua would come into our...
a month ago
18
a month ago
Rest in peace little one. I never would have guessed that a 4-lb Chihuahua would come into our lives, let alone be the animal to steal my heart before Jen’s. Our previous animals — two cats and a Boxer dog — are a stark contrast to a tiny dog that we would carry around in a sling...
The Elysian
Let's read Moral Ambition together Rutger Bregman's new book is the subject of our next literary salon.
a month ago
Astral Codex Ten
Highlights From The Comments On AI Geoguessr ...
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Among Those Who Read There is Great Variety' Writing is famously the most narcissistic of professions, even worse than acting or being a...
a month ago
13
a month ago
Writing is famously the most narcissistic of professions, even worse than acting or being a politician. We’re forever carrying on about ourselves and our precious insights, like the kid in class who raises his hand and goes “Ooh! Ooh!” each time the teacher asks a question....
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 380.5 ...
a month ago
The Marginalian
Ocean Vuong on Anger “To be an artist is a guarantee to your fellow humans that the wear and tear of living will not let...
a month ago
18
a month ago
“To be an artist is a guarantee to your fellow humans that the wear and tear of living will not let you become a murderer,” Louise Bourgeois wrote in her diary as a young artist. “The poets (by which I mean all artists),” James Baldwin wrote in his late thirties, “are finally the...
Astral Codex Ten
Moldbug Sold Out "At long last, I've created the populist strongman from my classic 11,000 blog post series 'Don't...
a month ago
15
a month ago
"At long last, I've created the populist strongman from my classic 11,000 blog post series 'Don't Create The Populist Strongman'"
Anecdotal Evidence
'He Lies Until the Trauma Trots Away' At age fourteen, our dog, if human, would be eligible for Social Security. Luke sleeps more than he...
a month ago
12
a month ago
At age fourteen, our dog, if human, would be eligible for Social Security. Luke sleeps more than he did when a pup. His rear end aches and he takes nearly as many meds each day as I do. He throws up more often and has trouble jumping on the bed. We indulge him as we would a sick...
The American Scholar
Star Trek: Discovery The post <em>Star Trek: Discovery</em> appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'But No One Style, I Think, is Recommended' A reader tells me of her disgust with most insects and reptiles, the small creatures, almost...
a month ago
11
a month ago
A reader tells me of her disgust with most insects and reptiles, the small creatures, almost domestic, that surround us. She resents the “nature sentimentality” such “vermin” rouse in some people. They “make [her] skin crawl,” she writes – an idiom I’ve always found amusing....
The American Scholar
“Piano Fire” by Claudia Emerson Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Piano Fire” by Claudia Emerson appeared first on The...
a month ago
16
a month ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Piano Fire” by Claudia Emerson appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
We’ve raised $50,000—now I’m writing a book! My vision for the future of capitalism has been greenlit. Now let’s make it a reality.
a month ago
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 380 ...
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'This Is My Time and Theme' “I delight sensually in Time, in its stuff and spread, in the fall of its folds, in the...
a month ago
14
a month ago
“I delight sensually in Time, in its stuff and spread, in the fall of its folds, in the very impalpability of its grayish gauze, in the coolness of its continuum.”  You may recognize the almost overripe prose. Ingesting so rich a diet too early in life can spoil one for plainer...
The American Scholar
Lorena Diosdado Multifaceted Latinx identities The post Lorena Diosdado appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The Marginalian
Hope Is the Thing with Feathers, and with Fangs: The Alchemy of Unrequited Love and the Story Behind... This essay is adapted from the nineteenth chapter of my book Figuring. In the first autumn of her...
a month ago
17
a month ago
This essay is adapted from the nineteenth chapter of my book Figuring. In the first autumn of her thirties, Emily Dickinson wrote to her confidante and eventual editor Thomas Wentworth Higginson: I had a terror — since September — I could tell to none, and so I sing, as the Boy...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Death, Indeed, Continually Hovers About Us' A high-school friend writes to ask what I remember of May 4, 1970. We would graduate in a month and...
a month ago
6
a month ago
A high-school friend writes to ask what I remember of May 4, 1970. We would graduate in a month and go to university in the fall. The fear and excitement of that symbolic step toward adulthood was blunted by the killing of four students by Ohio National Guardsmen at Kent State...
The Marginalian
Stalactite & Stalagmite: A Brief Illustrated History of Earth and One Great Truth about Love We are always either drawing closer or drifting apart — there is no stasis in relationships. The...
a month ago
24
a month ago
We are always either drawing closer or drifting apart — there is no stasis in relationships. The direction of movement may change over the course of a relationship, but there is no stasis. Despite our culture’s bias for the drama of cataclysm — the violent heartbreaks, the very...
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Was a Good Moment of Remembrance' Out of the aether after twenty-six years came an email from Mikhail Iossel: “Greetings -- and...
a month ago
5
a month ago
Out of the aether after twenty-six years came an email from Mikhail Iossel: “Greetings -- and apologies for writing out of that metaphoric nowhere.” In May 1999, Mikhail was a writer-in-residence at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., and I was a reporter for that city’s...
The Marginalian
States of Possession: Erich Neumann on Creativity, the Unconscious, and the Psychology of... There are things in life that come over you sudden as a flash flood, total as an eclipse — the great...
a month ago
11
a month ago
There are things in life that come over you sudden as a flash flood, total as an eclipse — the great loves, the great creative passions, the great urges to conquer a mountain or a theorem. They can feel like an alien invasion, like the immense hand of some imperative has seized...
Astral Codex Ten
Testing AI's GeoGuessr Genius Seeing a world in a grain of sand
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Glass Filled With a Supersaturate Solution' “[S]he is one of the few truly compelling stylists now at work. Her voice is authoritative,...
a month ago
6
a month ago
“[S]he is one of the few truly compelling stylists now at work. Her voice is authoritative, confident, unfussy, exacting. She is never overtly confessional, which sets her apart from many poets writing since the Romantics. She makes rare company.”  And isn’t that what we look for...
Wuthering...
Languages and literature - Finnegans Wake becomes unbeurrable from age More keys.  As Anna Livia Plurabelle says or thinks or dreams at the very end of Finnegans...
a month ago
12
a month ago
More keys.  As Anna Livia Plurabelle says or thinks or dreams at the very end of Finnegans Wake, “The keys to.”  She is falling asleep so she unfortunately does not finish the sentence.  Some keys to the Wake: languages, literature, and themes. Languages In “Pierre Menard, Author...
Naz Hamid
The Abstraction Gap Bridging the design-development gap as AI rises. There’s a frustrating gap in how development...
a month ago
10
a month ago
Bridging the design-development gap as AI rises. There’s a frustrating gap in how development projects present themselves. What looks straightforward on GitHub — ‘just run this command!’ — quickly spirals into an odyssey of sudo permissions, package managers, and missing...
Astral Codex Ten
You Can Keep Having An Opinion Even When The Government Also Has It ...
a month ago
Escaping Flatland
Drift Right now it is April 18 and I am walking along the steep coast at the peninsula on the Northeastern...
a month ago
9
a month ago
Right now it is April 18 and I am walking along the steep coast at the peninsula on the Northeastern corner of our island.
Anecdotal Evidence
'Poor Naked Wretches, Whereso’er You Are' Aleksander Wat (1900-67) was a Polish poet and one-time Communist hounded and imprisoned by Nazis...
a month ago
6
a month ago
Aleksander Wat (1900-67) was a Polish poet and one-time Communist hounded and imprisoned by Nazis and Soviets alike. In 1964 while visiting California, he recorded lengthy conversations with fellow poet and Pole Czesław Miłosz. The transcripts were translated by Richard Lourie...
Wuthering...
Some of the difficulties of Finnegans Wake - Two dreamyums in one dromium? Yes and no error. I am too tired to write about Finnegans Wake which is a good state for writing about this dream...
a month ago
12
a month ago
I am too tired to write about Finnegans Wake which is a good state for writing about this dream novel where characters keep falling asleep.  “Dream” is conventional wisdom but I will note that no part of the book resembles any dream I have ever experienced or read about, although...
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 379.5 ...
a month ago
Josh Thompson
Related to Grief & Sadness & Supremacy Introduction this post is very drafty, but has been sitting around getting longer for a few weeks...
a month ago
11
a month ago
Introduction this post is very drafty, but has been sitting around getting longer for a few weeks now, so I’m simply posting now and will do some more rounds of cleanup, probably. I’d started writing some of this in a letter to a friend, then noticed that, with a little...
Astral Codex Ten
The Populist Right Must Own Tariffs ...
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Frivolous Subjects?' “Frivolous subjects? Well, and thank God for it, not everybody can be writing about big,...
a month ago
7
a month ago
“Frivolous subjects? Well, and thank God for it, not everybody can be writing about big, so-called important issues: population, genes, semantics, sex, death. Surely there is value in anything that makes us laugh, that makes us understand ourselves more.”  These wise words are...
The American Scholar
Another You The post Another You appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
Wuthering...
The key to Finnegans Wake - there is a limit to all things so this will never do Over the last month I read Finnegans Wake (1939).  I first read some bits of it in college, in a...
a month ago
11
a month ago
Over the last month I read Finnegans Wake (1939).  I first read some bits of it in college, in a Norton Anthology of British Literature, and other, although mostly the same, bits occasionally, mostly to remind myself what they looked like.  Anyone interested in literature should...
The Marginalian
Chance, Choice, and How to Claim Your Life Only a fool or an egomaniac would deny that chance shapes the vast majority of life. The time,...
a month ago
10
a month ago
Only a fool or an egomaniac would deny that chance shapes the vast majority of life. The time, place, culture, family, body, brain, and biochemistry we are born into, the people who cross our path, the accidents that befall us — these dwarf in consequence the sum total of our...
The Elysian
How we’re profit sharing on Metalabel A financial analysis of our first cooperative media project + where we could go from here.
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Every Word Is a World' When someone had eaten his fill and couldn’t take another bite, my maternal grandmother, born the...
a month ago
5
a month ago
When someone had eaten his fill and couldn’t take another bite, my maternal grandmother, born the same year as T.S. Eliot, would say, “His sufficiency is suffonsified.” I’ve never heard another person utter those words. For most of my life I assumed the fourth word in that...
The American Scholar
“Pin Pricks of Loneliness” by Etheridge Knight Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Pin Pricks of Loneliness” by Etheridge Knight appeared first...
a month ago
6
a month ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Pin Pricks of Loneliness” by Etheridge Knight appeared first on The American Scholar.
Wuthering...
Two novels titled Attila - Maximal words striving to breach an angel I will write about two newly published translations of Spanish novels that comprise an amusing stunt...
a month ago
9
a month ago
I will write about two newly published translations of Spanish novels that comprise an amusing stunt by Open Letter Books.  They are Attila by Aliocha Coll (1991) and Attila by Javier Serena (2014), both translated by Katie Whittemore.  Coll’s Attila is a Finnegans...
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 379 ...
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Opsimath That I Am in So Many Matters' I was a lazy student who worked hard when the task interested me and coasted the rest of the time....
a month ago
5
a month ago
I was a lazy student who worked hard when the task interested me and coasted the rest of the time. I dropped out of Latin prematurely because I couldn’t be bothered to master the ablative absolute, among other things. Formal education was an evasive game played with teachers....
Astral Codex Ten
AMA With AI Futures Project Team ...
a month ago
The Marginalian
The Art of Befriending Time and Change: Debbie Millman’s Illustrated Love Letter to Gardening as a... You may or may not find the meaning of life while pacing a flower bed, but each time you plunge your...
a month ago
5
a month ago
You may or may not find the meaning of life while pacing a flower bed, but each time you plunge your bare hands into the hummus of the Earth and run your fingers through the roots of something that hungers for the sun, you are resisting the dying of the light and saying “yes” to...
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Soliloquy for Two' The ideally named English neurologist Russell Brain died in 1966 but his textbook, Brain’s Diseases...
a month ago
6
a month ago
The ideally named English neurologist Russell Brain died in 1966 but his textbook, Brain’s Diseases of the Nervous System (1933), remains in print. The Royal College of Physicians has called it “the standard British textbook on his subject.” Brain was also a poet and...
The American Scholar
Coming Home Craig Thompson digs up memories of farm labor and the history of ginseng The post Coming Home...
a month ago
7
a month ago
Craig Thompson digs up memories of farm labor and the history of ginseng The post Coming Home appeared first on The American Scholar.
Naz Hamid
SXSW ’11 Memories are an interesting beast. I have certain core memories that are embedded deep in my mind....
a month ago
8
a month ago
Memories are an interesting beast. I have certain core memories that are embedded deep in my mind. The years I attended SXSW from 2007-2012 encompass some of those. In 2011, I shared a house with longtime partner-in-crime Scott Robbin, Jeff Skinner, and Sam Felder. We were off...
The Marginalian
Introducing Marginalian Editions: Extraordinary Forgotten Books Brought Back to Life I have become a person on the pages and in the margins of books. In nearly two decades of reckoning...
a month ago
6
a month ago
I have become a person on the pages and in the margins of books. In nearly two decades of reckoning with my reading in writing, it has been my ongoing lamentation to see works of enduring beauty and substance perish out of print — because the ideas they conduct are not the...
The Elysian
You can collect CITY STATE now The digital and print editions are now available.
a month ago
Astral Codex Ten
AI Futures: Blogging And AMA ...
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Refreshed His Senses, Heart, and Head' If I had been in the house all day reading during a long Ohio winter, invariably my mother would...
a month ago
26
a month ago
If I had been in the house all day reading during a long Ohio winter, invariably my mother would say, “Go outside and blow the stink off.” My parents took a kid reading as a reproach, something unnatural and probably unhealthy – one more reason for me to be secretive. When I was...
The American Scholar
After the Fallout On jellyfish babies, my father’s pain, and the legacy of nuclear testing in the Pacific The post...
a month ago
24
a month ago
On jellyfish babies, my father’s pain, and the legacy of nuclear testing in the Pacific The post After the Fallout appeared first on The American Scholar.
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 378.5 ...
a month ago
Escaping Flatland
Sometimes the reason you can’t find people you resonate with is because you misread the ones you... Sometimes two people will stand next to each other for fifteen years, both feeling out of place and...
a month ago
33
a month ago
Sometimes two people will stand next to each other for fifteen years, both feeling out of place and alone, like no one gets them, and then one day, they look up at each other and say, “Oh, there you are.”
Astral Codex Ten
With This Character's Death, The Thread Of Prophecy Is Severed RIP Pope Francis and a particularly interesting apocalyptic prophecy
a month ago
This Space
An anniversary appeal On this day last year I began posting every day for 39 days to commemorate 39 years since I began...
a month ago
27
a month ago
On this day last year I began posting every day for 39 days to commemorate 39 years since I began reading books. I dug out a folder of book lists I'd kept since 1986, chose one book from each year that I'd not written about before and wrote what ever the book suggested to me....
Anecdotal Evidence
'It Was Written By a Madman' Can we be privately embarrassed in the solitude of our skulls, without an audience?...
a month ago
20
a month ago
Can we be privately embarrassed in the solitude of our skulls, without an audience? Embarrassment seems like a response to a social setting. In that sense, it resembles involuntary amusement. To laugh helplessly, out loud when alone, is rare among the sane. I think embarrassment...
The American Scholar
A Stronger Spine The post A Stronger Spine appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The Elysian
“I sold my company to my employees” An interview with Tim Rettig, founder of Intrust IT, on how he sold his company to employees and...
a month ago
18
a month ago
An interview with Tim Rettig, founder of Intrust IT, on how he sold his company to employees and became an employee ownership advocate.
Astral Codex Ten
Links For April 2025 ...
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Absence of Her Voice From that Concord' “There are three points of view from which a writer can be considered: he may be considered as...
a month ago
23
a month ago
“There are three points of view from which a writer can be considered: he may be considered as a storyteller, as a teacher, and as an enchanter. A major writer combines these three – storyteller, teacher, enchanter – but it is the enchanter in him that predominates and makes him...
The American Scholar
“Little Sleep’s-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight” by Galway Kinnell Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Little Sleep’s-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight” by...
a month ago
30
a month ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Little Sleep’s-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight” by Galway Kinnell appeared first on The American Scholar.
Naz Hamid
Kin The third culture difference. One of the hardest aspects of being a third culture kid and eventually...
a month ago
124
a month ago
The third culture difference. One of the hardest aspects of being a third culture kid and eventually adult is the difficulty in the journey of your identity. When you're young, the movement and culture- and context-switching are par for the course — it comes with the literal...
The Elysian
How we achieve the borderless future of Terra Ignota On Ada Palmer’s utopian sci-fi series and an exploration of how we might bring it to life.
a month ago
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 378 ...
a month ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Shaping Tombs in Words' Catharine Savage Brosman describes her late husband, Patric Savage, like this:  “I am bereft   “of...
a month ago
22
a month ago
Catharine Savage Brosman describes her late husband, Patric Savage, like this:  “I am bereft   “of curator, you see, of one who cared tremendously— for books, for me—but would have sacrificed the whole collection for my sake.”   The poem is “Pat Curating His Library” (Arm in Arm,...
The American Scholar
Diana Antohe Threads of memory and home The post Diana Antohe appeared first on The American Scholar.
a month ago
The Marginalian
The Kiln and the Quantum of Relationships Anything you give your time to and polish with attention will become a lens on your search for...
a month ago
22
a month ago
Anything you give your time to and polish with attention will become a lens on your search for meaning, will lavish you with metaphors that become backdoors into the locked room of your most urgent reckonings. In my nascent adventures in pottery, I have observed with great...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Our World Has Passed Away' Dinant is a small city in the Walloon region of Belgium, on the Meuse River. It is one of those...
a month ago
23
a month ago
Dinant is a small city in the Walloon region of Belgium, on the Meuse River. It is one of those otherwise obscure places (Fort Pillow, Lidice, My Lai) that has lent its name to an atrocity. On August 23, 1914, in the early weeks of World War I, German troops slaughtered almost...
Astral Codex Ten
Yet Another Reason To Hate College Admissions Essays ...
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'A Mind Shorn of History Is Vacuous' “April 17 [in 1778], being Good Friday, I waited on Johnson, as usual.”  As was the custom in...
2 months ago
20
2 months ago
“April 17 [in 1778], being Good Friday, I waited on Johnson, as usual.”  As was the custom in school when I was growing up, I learned history as a rollcall of great men and memorized dates. “Abraham Lincoln” and “December 7, 1941” plugged leaks in my obligatory knowledge and that...
The American Scholar
“The Overture” The post “The Overture” appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The Marginalian
Twenty Ways to Matter The two great tasks of the creative life are keeping failure from breaking the spirit and keeping...
2 months ago
23
2 months ago
The two great tasks of the creative life are keeping failure from breaking the spirit and keeping success from ossifying it. If you do attain success by the weft and warp of hard work and luck, it takes great courage to resist becoming a template of yourself that replicates...
The Elysian
Digital nomads could create network states Here's how.
2 months ago
Astral Codex Ten
ACX Classifieds 4/25 ...
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Familiar Hearts of Strangers' “At bottom Chekhov is a writer who has flung his soul to the side of pity, and sees into the...
2 months ago
16
2 months ago
“At bottom Chekhov is a writer who has flung his soul to the side of pity, and sees into the holiness and immaculate fragility of the hidden striver below.”  In his letters to family and friends, Chekhov can be harsh, hectoring and even smutty, though seldom in the stories except...
The American Scholar
In the Matter of the Commas For the true literary stylist, this seemingly humble punctuation mark is a matter of precision,...
2 months ago
19
2 months ago
For the true literary stylist, this seemingly humble punctuation mark is a matter of precision, logic, individuality, and music The post In the Matter of the Commas appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ploum.net
Dédicace à Trolls & Vélo et magie cycliste Dédicace à Trolls & Vélo et magie cycliste Je serai ce samedi 19 avril à Mons au festival Trolls &...
2 months ago
19
2 months ago
Dédicace à Trolls & Vélo et magie cycliste Je serai ce samedi 19 avril à Mons au festival Trolls & Légende en dédicace au stand PVH. La star de la table sera sans conteste Sara Schneider, autrice fantasy de la saga des enfants d’Aliel et qui est toute auréolée du Prix SFFF Suisse...
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 377.5 ...
2 months ago
Naz Hamid
Hustle to Flow A meditation on entering flow state. A snack beckons. I stand up and head a few feet away to the...
2 months ago
19
2 months ago
A meditation on entering flow state. A snack beckons. I stand up and head a few feet away to the kitchen area. A hojicha latte is on my mind, and also a bite. My brain is at operational capacity, and I am in a flow state. The metabolic need feels high, and I need to keep my...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Chockfull of Love, Crammed With Bright Thoughts' Several years have passed since I last entered a bookstore selling new books, such as Barnes and...
2 months ago
20
2 months ago
Several years have passed since I last entered a bookstore selling new books, such as Barnes and Noble or the late Borders. Long ago they stopped feeling like home and a visit usually turned out to be a waste of time. Serendipitous discovery was rare. The portion of the goods on...
The American Scholar
Savory or Apples? The post Savory or Apples? appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
Wuthering...
What I Read in March 2025 – Some day, he thought, I must use such a scene to start a good, thick... FICTION The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1904), Arthur Conan Doyle – My emergency book, the book on my...
2 months ago
23
2 months ago
FICTION The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1904), Arthur Conan Doyle – My emergency book, the book on my phone, for when I need to read in the dark, or it is raining at the bus stop, or similar dire situations.  I have been dipping into it for two years or more, but decided to finish...
The Marginalian
3 Kinds of Loneliness and 4 Kinds of Forever Loneliness is the fundamental condition of life — we are born by another, but born alone; die around...
2 months ago
23
2 months ago
Loneliness is the fundamental condition of life — we are born by another, but born alone; die around others (if we are lucky and loved), but die alone; we spend our lives islanded in our one and only human experience — in these particular bodies and minds and circumstances drawn...
The Elysian
Yes, it can be profitable to sell print magazines and books Collectable print projects don't have to be an expensive vanity project.
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'You Should Take a Book of Poetry' “The Brains Trust” was a BBC radio show popular in the nineteen-forties and -fifties. A panel of...
2 months ago
19
2 months ago
“The Brains Trust” was a BBC radio show popular in the nineteen-forties and -fifties. A panel of “experts” – among them Desmond MacCarthy, Kenneth Clark and Rose Macaulay – would answer questions submitted by listeners. The U.S. had similar radio programs at the time, such as...
The American Scholar
“Wild Peaches” by Elinor Wylie Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Wild Peaches” by Elinor Wylie appeared first on The American...
2 months ago
23
2 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Wild Peaches” by Elinor Wylie appeared first on The American Scholar.
Astral Codex Ten
Highlights From The Comments On POSIWID ...
2 months ago
Escaping Flatland
The newness of depth Fragments from the cutting room floor, vol 4
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'You There in Your Straight Row on Row' On Sunday, a friend and I, after lunch at a favorite Mexican restaurant, visited Kaboom Books here...
2 months ago
19
2 months ago
On Sunday, a friend and I, after lunch at a favorite Mexican restaurant, visited Kaboom Books here in Houston. He left with a stack of books. I found one: Adelaide Crapsey: On the Life and Work of an American Master (Pleiades Press and Gulf Coast, 2018). I know her thanks only to...
Naz Hamid
Modus Operandi My operating rules and way of living. This is a m.o. (mo) page, or modus operandi page. It lists out...
2 months ago
40
2 months ago
My operating rules and way of living. This is a m.o. (mo) page, or modus operandi page. It lists out the way I approach my life and the rules I apply to it to thrive. This is a living document and will be added to as more comes to mind, or as I develop new ones. It is mirrored at...
Ploum.net
À la recherche de l’attention perdue À la recherche de l’attention perdue La messagerie instantanée et la politique Vous l’avez...
2 months ago
27
2 months ago
À la recherche de l’attention perdue La messagerie instantanée et la politique Vous l’avez certainement vu passer : Un journaliste américain s’est fait inviter par erreur sur un chat Signal où des personnes très haut placées de l’administration américaine (y compris le...
The Elysian
What if your side hustle is being in Congress? The future of democracy is direct, online, and doesn't require politicians.
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Yes, I'm Perfectly All Right' Had I been more clever or alert I might have heard and recorded my brother’s last words before he...
2 months ago
140
2 months ago
Had I been more clever or alert I might have heard and recorded my brother’s last words before he died last August in hospice. A reader asks about this, and I admit I blew it. For the last week or so of his life, Ken was unconscious, occasionally moaning when the nurses shifted...
Wuthering...
Platonov's Chevengur - “But communism’s about to set in... Why am I finding everything so hard?” Another remarkable Russian novel finally made it into English last year, Andrey Platonov’s...
2 months ago
31
2 months ago
Another remarkable Russian novel finally made it into English last year, Andrey Platonov’s Chevengur, written in 1929 but not published until 1972, in Paris. Robert and Elizabeth Chandler have been translating Platonov for decades now, and this novel and the apparatus...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Nobody to Witness Its Effects Upon Me' Johnson, Boswell and friends met for dinner at the Crown and Anchor on April 12, 1776. Among...
2 months ago
22
2 months ago
Johnson, Boswell and friends met for dinner at the Crown and Anchor on April 12, 1776. Among the topics of conversation was the evergreen favorite “whether drinking improved conversation and benevolence.” Sir Joshua Reynolds maintained it did. Johnson replies:   “‘No, Sir: before...
The Marginalian
How Two Souls Can Interact with One Another: Simone de Beauvoir on Love and Friendship It is in relationships that we discover both our depths and our limits, there that we anneal...
2 months ago
31
2 months ago
It is in relationships that we discover both our depths and our limits, there that we anneal ourselves and transcend ourselves, there that we are hurt the most and there that we find the most healing. But despite what a crucible of our emotional and spiritual lives relationships...
Astral Codex Ten
Come On, Obviously The Purpose Of A System Is Not What It Does ...
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Rest Is Silence' Here I pause to remember a forgotten poet who remembered a slightly less forgotten poet – a reminder...
2 months ago
23
2 months ago
Here I pause to remember a forgotten poet who remembered a slightly less forgotten poet – a reminder that all of us are eminently forgettable, regardless of our purported virtues. Walter de la Mare died on June 22, 1956, at age eighty-three. The journal Poetry assigned William...
The American Scholar
Muscle Memory Michael Joseph Gross on the importance of strength, past and present The post Muscle Memory appeared...
2 months ago
26
2 months ago
Michael Joseph Gross on the importance of strength, past and present The post Muscle Memory appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Elysian
An American case for building new cities We need to remember how to build things.
2 months ago
Astral Codex Ten
Twilight Of The Edgelords Should edgy heterodox centrists accept some of the blame for Trump?
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Weaknesses as Good as Other People’s Virtues' “It is not easy to write essays like Montaigne, nor Maxims in the manner of the Duke de...
2 months ago
21
2 months ago
“It is not easy to write essays like Montaigne, nor Maxims in the manner of the Duke de la Rochefoucault.”  Who could think otherwise? The two Frenchmen are masters of diametrically opposed forms. In Montaigne’s hands, an essay can afford to be expansive. In fact, expansiveness –...
The American Scholar
Doing Nothing Is Everything An areligious writer finds peace in a Benedictine monastery The post Doing Nothing Is Everything...
2 months ago
23
2 months ago
An areligious writer finds peace in a Benedictine monastery The post Doing Nothing Is Everything appeared first on The American Scholar.
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 376.5 ...
2 months ago
Ploum.net
De l’utilisation des smartphones et des tablettes chez les adolescents De l’utilisation des smartphones et des tablettes chez les adolescents Chers parents, chers...
2 months ago
20
2 months ago
De l’utilisation des smartphones et des tablettes chez les adolescents Chers parents, chers enseignants, chers éducateurs, Nous le savons toutes et tous, le smartphone est devenu un objet incontournable de notre quotidien, nous connectant en permanence au réseau Internet qui,...
The Marginalian
Carl Jung on Creativity The question of what it takes to create — to make something of beauty and substance that touches...
2 months ago
27
2 months ago
The question of what it takes to create — to make something of beauty and substance that touches other lives across space and time — is one of the deepest, oldest questions, perhaps because the answer to it is so unbearably simple: everything. We bring everything we are and...
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...
2 months ago
26
2 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 American Scholar
Facts of the Case The post Facts of the Case appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The Elysian
Join us for a discussion about CITY STATE A literary salon discussion about autonomous governance.
2 months ago
Escaping Flatland
Repeat great words, repeat them stubbornly Intensely Human, No 4: The Envoy of Mr Cogito
2 months ago
Astral Codex Ten
My Takeaways From AI 2027 ...
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Some Bloodless Snippet of History' Since he was a little boy my middle son has been a serial enthusiast. Back then it was rocks,...
2 months ago
27
2 months ago
Since he was a little boy my middle son has been a serial enthusiast. Back then it was rocks, carnivorous plants, Dmitri Mendeleev and the periodic table, coins, electronics – one focus of interest after another. He wasn’t fickle or easily distracted by the next shiny thing....
The American Scholar
“Campo dei Fiori” by Czesław Miłosz Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Campo dei Fiori” by Czesław Miłosz appeared first on The...
2 months ago
28
2 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Campo dei Fiori” by Czesław Miłosz appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ploum.net
La fin d’un monde ? La fin d’un monde ? La fin de nos souvenirs Nous sommes envahis d’IA. Bien plus que vous ne le...
2 months ago
28
2 months ago
La fin d’un monde ? La fin de nos souvenirs Nous sommes envahis d’IA. Bien plus que vous ne le pensez. Chaque fois que votre téléphone prend une photo, ce n’est pas la réalité qui s’affiche, mais une reconstruction « probable » de ce que vous avez envie de voir. C’est la raison...
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 376 ...
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Style Is the Forgetting of All Styles' “I recall admiring the calmly expository flavor and simple, nonjudgemental humanity of profile...
2 months ago
22
2 months ago
“I recall admiring the calmly expository flavor and simple, nonjudgemental humanity of profile stories Patrick Kurp contributed to the Gazette, years and years ago.”  After three decades, I’ve heard from a former newspaper colleague, a music writer, Mike Hochanadel. A...
The American Scholar
Helina Metaferia An army of activists The post Helina Metaferia appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The Elysian
Grassroots movements are building garden cities We're changing the aesthetic from the bottom up.
2 months ago
The Marginalian
How to Be More Alive: Artist and Philosopher Rockwell Kent on Breaking the Trance of Near-living The point, of course, is to make yourself alive — to feel the force of being in your sinew and your...
2 months ago
27
2 months ago
The point, of course, is to make yourself alive — to feel the force of being in your sinew and your spirit, to tremble with the beauty and the terror of it all, to breathe lungfuls of life that gasp you awake from the trance of near-living induced by the system of waste and want...
Anecdotal Evidence
'I Took Off My Hat to This Little Fool' “Is it not strange that the phantoms of a blood-stained period have so airy a grace and look with...
2 months ago
17
2 months ago
“Is it not strange that the phantoms of a blood-stained period have so airy a grace and look with so tender eyes? -- that I recall with difficulty the danger and death and horrors of the time, and without effort all that was gracious and picturesque?”  The Battle of...
Wuthering...
Andrey Platonov's "Soul" - the universal happiness of the unhappy I read Andrey Platonov’s novel Chevengur (1929) not too long ago and the collection of stories Soul...
2 months ago
23
2 months ago
I read Andrey Platonov’s novel Chevengur (1929) not too long ago and the collection of stories Soul (1935-46) last month.  Here we will have some notes.  These are the Robert and Elizabeth Chandler translations (four additional translators assist with Soul).  Those dates are for...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Livelier in Pleasant Weather' Magazines have long been fond of asking well-known writers to recommend books appropriate to...
2 months ago
26
2 months ago
Magazines have long been fond of asking well-known writers to recommend books appropriate to certain times of year, usually as Christmas gifts or so-called “beach reading.” The results tend to be surprisingly conventional and unrewarding, with pleasing exceptions. Consider...
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 375.5 ...
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'People Who Just Love the Proximity of Books' Left in a hefty anthology titled The Faber Book of War Poetry (ed. Kenneth Baker, 1996) was...
2 months ago
27
2 months ago
Left in a hefty anthology titled The Faber Book of War Poetry (ed. Kenneth Baker, 1996) was a postcard from O’Gara & Wilson, Ltd. Booksellers in Chicago. More than forty years ago I visited that shop near the University of Chicago and purchased a partial set of Conrad for a...
The Elysian
Maybe villages are our future—not cities Italy's Matera as a case study for revitalizing small governments and creating a future of...
2 months ago
27
2 months ago
Italy's Matera as a case study for revitalizing small governments and creating a future of interconnected villages.
The Marginalian
Lights On: Consciousness, the Mystery of Felt Experience, and the Fundamental Music of Reality When I was five, not long after the night I sat on my father’s shoulders among the thousands of...
2 months ago
21
2 months ago
When I was five, not long after the night I sat on my father’s shoulders among the thousands of people on the yellow brick plaza in front of the Bulgarian Parliament singing protest songs to take down the Communist dictatorship, my parents got us a hamster. I would say got me a...
Astral Codex Ten
Introducing AI 2027 Or maybe 2028, it's complicated
2 months ago
Josh Thompson
Isometric Deadlift Holds (for Climbing!) alternative titles: yielding isometric mid-thigh pin pulls, isometric deadlift 'holds' for fun and...
2 months ago
9
2 months ago
alternative titles: yielding isometric mid-thigh pin pulls, isometric deadlift 'holds' for fun and climbing Introduction A few months ago, I began some barefoot sprints up a hill at a local park, and discussed also adding heavy kettlebell swings. My back started feeling great,...
Anecdotal Evidence
'After So Many Deaths I Live and Write' One needn’t be a fetishist or even a book collector – reader is close enough -- to prize an...
2 months ago
23
2 months ago
One needn’t be a fetishist or even a book collector – reader is close enough -- to prize an “association copy,” a term neatly defined here: “A book that belonged to or was annotated by the author, someone close to the author, a famous or noteworthy person, or someone especially...
The American Scholar
Splitting Our Sides A new biography of a comedy pioneer The post Splitting Our Sides appeared first on The American...
2 months ago
22
2 months ago
A new biography of a comedy pioneer The post Splitting Our Sides appeared first on The American Scholar.
The Perry Bible...
Blocked The post Blocked appeared first on The Perry Bible Fellowship.
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Guide Him in the Real World' In 1899, Edwin Arlington Robinson read Thoreau’s Walking, a work based on an 1851 lecture...
2 months ago
29
2 months ago
In 1899, Edwin Arlington Robinson read Thoreau’s Walking, a work based on an 1851 lecture published posthumously in 1862. Robinson was not impressed by his fellow New Englander. He condemned Thoreau’s “glorified world-cowardice” in a letter to his friend Daniel Gregory...
The American Scholar
Terra Do Queixo The post Terra Do Queixo appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
The Marginalian
Carl Linnaeus’s Flower Clock “The eternal problem of the human being is how to structure his waking hours,” the Canadian...
2 months ago
26
2 months ago
“The eternal problem of the human being is how to structure his waking hours,” the Canadian psychiatrist Eric Berne observed in his 1964 classic Games People Play. Four centuries earlier, Galileo had both combated and complicated the problem by inventing timekeeping and with it,...
The Elysian
What comes after the sovereign individual? A discussion with Lauren Razavi about sovereign collectives.
2 months ago
Escaping Flatland
Take a part of the world that you love and give it your care Edward Weston, Armco Steel, Ohio, 1922
2 months ago
Astral Codex Ten
The Colors Of Her Coat ...
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'So a Fool Returneth to His Folly' Grownups seldom credit children with insight into human psychology, thus treating them as smaller,...
2 months ago
23
2 months ago
Grownups seldom credit children with insight into human psychology, thus treating them as smaller, more annoying versions of themselves. My father had an acquaintance even he knew was a fool. By admitting such knowledge, he was violating adult solidarity. His friend's customary...
The American Scholar
“The Dream” by Theodore Roethke Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Dream” by Theodore Roethke appeared first on The...
2 months ago
32
2 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “The Dream” by Theodore Roethke appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ploum.net
Goodbye Offpunk, Welcome XKCDpunk! Goodbye Offpunk, Welcome XKCDpunk! For the last three years, I’ve been working on Offpunk, a...
2 months ago
28
2 months ago
Goodbye Offpunk, Welcome XKCDpunk! For the last three years, I’ve been working on Offpunk, a command-line gemini and web browser. Offpunk.net While my initial goal was to browse the Geminisphere offline, the mission has slowly morphed into cleaning and unenshitiffying the modern...
Robert Caro
Rifling Through the Archives with Legendary Historian Robert Caro SMITHSONIAN: Reams of papers, revealing how the scholar came to write his iconic biographies are...
2 months ago
23
2 months ago
SMITHSONIAN: Reams of papers, revealing how the scholar came to write his iconic biographies are preserved forever in New York.
Anecdotal Evidence
'To Make Her Smile and Keep Her in Their Game' A friend called to chat while driving to Dallas to visit her mother. My friend is my age. Her mother...
2 months ago
24
2 months ago
A friend called to chat while driving to Dallas to visit her mother. My friend is my age. Her mother is ninety-six years old. She lives on her own and only recently, after falling, did she agree to start using a cane. I’m not sure anyone is prepared to get old (or not get old)....
The American Scholar
Song for the Earth Finding a message for today in the music of Gustav Mahler The post Song for the Earth appeared first...
2 months ago
28
2 months ago
Finding a message for today in the music of Gustav Mahler The post Song for the Earth appeared first on The American Scholar.
Naz Hamid
Forty-Seven I turned another year older. A collection of small moments and choices that let me be me. One...
2 months ago
28
2 months ago
I turned another year older. A collection of small moments and choices that let me be me. One guidepost for each year I've been alive — some I've practiced for decades, and a few new ones. Feel out the day and go where your energy wants you to. Your energy is precious. Don’t let...
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 375 ...
2 months ago
Wuthering...
the calm vegetable clairvoyance of these great rooted lives - John Cowper Powys's trees -... Wolf Solent has pressed his beautiful young wife against an ash tree, presumably as a prelude to...
2 months ago
29
2 months ago
Wolf Solent has pressed his beautiful young wife against an ash tree, presumably as a prelude to sex, but he begins rubbing the bark: ‘Human brains! Human knots of confusion!’ he thought.  ‘Why can’t we steal the calm vegetable clairvoyance of these great rooted lives?’ (Wolf...
The Elysian
It’s time for Thomas Jefferson's village-states His small, democratic communities would revive and defend our republic.
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'But They Are Very Bad Poems' Eugenio Montale speaking with an interviewer, American poet W.S. Di Piero, in 1973:  “Political...
2 months ago
22
2 months ago
Eugenio Montale speaking with an interviewer, American poet W.S. Di Piero, in 1973:  “Political ideas are best expressed in prose. Why should we express political ideas in such an abstruse language as poetry? If I were to write against the war in Viet Nam, I would write in prose,...
Wuthering...
Wolf Solent and A Glastonbury Romance - Both the two great forces pouring forth from the... Last summer I read John Cowper Powys’s novel Wolf Solent (1929) and recently I read A Glastonbury...
2 months ago
28
2 months ago
Last summer I read John Cowper Powys’s novel Wolf Solent (1929) and recently I read A Glastonbury Romance (1932), not his first novels but the first that anyone noticed.  Wolf Solent is a plump 600 pages, and Glastonbury a monstrous 1,100.  Powys was 56 when the first was...
Robert Caro
Why Has ‘The Power Broker’ Had Such a Long Life? NEW YORK TIMES: Robert Caro created a lasting portrait of corruption by turning the craft of...
2 months ago
24
2 months ago
NEW YORK TIMES: Robert Caro created a lasting portrait of corruption by turning the craft of journalism into a pursuit of high art.
The Marginalian
Walt Whitman on Owning Your Life At the bottom of the abyss between us is the hard fact that to be a person, a particular person, is...
2 months ago
32
2 months ago
At the bottom of the abyss between us is the hard fact that to be a person, a particular person, is so profoundly different from what any other person can suppose. This is why one of the hardest learnings in life is that you cannot love — or scold, or coax, or palter — anyone out...
Anecdotal Evidence
'Without One Wonder in the Sky!' John Partridge (1677-1715) was an English shoemaker-turned-astrologer who claimed to have refined...
2 months ago
23
2 months ago
John Partridge (1677-1715) was an English shoemaker-turned-astrologer who claimed to have refined his “science.” Don’t smirk or pity our benighted forebears. Newspapers still publish astrology columns and dozens of astrological publications remain in print. See Modern Astrology...
The American Scholar
The Most Famous Unknown Artist David Sheff puts Yoko Ono in the spotlight The post The Most Famous Unknown Artist appeared first on...
2 months ago
27
2 months ago
David Sheff puts Yoko Ono in the spotlight The post The Most Famous Unknown Artist appeared first on The American Scholar.
Ploum.net
The candid naivety of geeks The candid naivety of geeks I mean, come on! Amazon recently announced that, from now on, everything...
2 months ago
33
2 months ago
The candid naivety of geeks I mean, come on! Amazon recently announced that, from now on, everything you say to Alexa will be sent to their server. Pluralistic: Amazon annihilates Alexa privacy settings, turns on continuous, nonconsensual audio uploading (15 Mar 2025)...
The Elysian
Should we create more US states? Inside the growing movement to redraw state lines, and why it might be better for liberals and...
2 months ago
26
2 months ago
Inside the growing movement to redraw state lines, and why it might be better for liberals and conservatives alike.
Astral Codex Ten
Hidden Open Thread 374.5 ...
2 months ago
The Marginalian
On Play The necessities of survival make our lives livable, but everything that makes them worth living...
2 months ago
25
2 months ago
The necessities of survival make our lives livable, but everything that makes them worth living partakes of the art of the unnecessary: beauty (the cave was no warmer or safer for our paintings, and what about the bowerbird?), love (how easily we could propagate our genes without...
Anecdotal Evidence
'We Are Not So Full of Evil As of Inanity' Montaigne devotes a brief essay to a pair of pre-Socratic Greek thinkers, “Of Democritus and...
2 months ago
28
2 months ago
Montaigne devotes a brief essay to a pair of pre-Socratic Greek thinkers, “Of Democritus and Heraclitus.” The former is reputed to have been a misanthrope, perhaps a melancholic. The latter was known as “the laughing philosopher.”  The essayist begins by weighing the importance...
The American Scholar
Transcending the Glass Ceiling Five women who made important contributions to 19th-century American philosophy finally get their...
2 months ago
30
2 months ago
Five women who made important contributions to 19th-century American philosophy finally get their due The post Transcending the Glass Ceiling appeared first on The American Scholar.
Astral Codex Ten
"Deros And The Ur-Abduction" In Asterisk ...
2 months ago
The Elysian
How WeFunder democratizes business ownership A discussion with Jonny Price, president of WeFunder.
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Dust and Shadows' Here I encounter yet again the bothersome issue of major vs. minor writers. When “minor” is used as...
2 months ago
23
2 months ago
Here I encounter yet again the bothersome issue of major vs. minor writers. When “minor” is used as a purely dismissive judgment, beware. There are minor writers who write beautifully and earn our respect and even love – Max Beerbohm is the first who comes to mind – and...
The American Scholar
The One Who Got Away The post The One Who Got Away appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago
Robert Caro
‘The Power Broker’ Is Finally Getting a Digital Edition. What Took So Long? Caro’s mammoth study of the urban planner Robert Moses is coming out as an e-book on the 50th...
2 months ago
13
2 months ago
Caro’s mammoth study of the urban planner Robert Moses is coming out as an e-book on the 50th anniversary of the biography’s publication.
The Marginalian
Comets, Orbits, and the Mystery We Are: The Enchanted Celestial Mechanics of Australian Artist Shane... “We are bathing in mystery and confusion,” Carl Sagan told his best interviewer. “That will always...
2 months ago
35
2 months ago
“We are bathing in mystery and confusion,” Carl Sagan told his best interviewer. “That will always be our destiny. The universe will always be much richer than our ability to understand it.” We have wielded our tools of reason at the mystery — theorems and telescopes, postulates...
Astral Codex Ten
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2025: Times & Places ...
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Least Motion of Wonder in Himself' In 1968, my high-school English teacher loaned me the anthology of short stories she had used at...
2 months ago
23
2 months ago
In 1968, my high-school English teacher loaned me the anthology of short stories she had used at Kent State University just a few years earlier. Included were the usual suspects -- Maupassant, Hemingway, Chekhov, Eudora Welty – but I read them because I knew nothing. Among the...
The American Scholar
“Käthe Kollwitz” by Muriel Rukeyser Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Käthe Kollwitz” by Muriel Rukeyser appeared first on The...
2 months ago
24
2 months ago
Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Käthe Kollwitz” by Muriel Rukeyser appeared first on The American Scholar.
Josh Thompson
Cones, Coning, and Fixing Junctions, And How And Why “Traffic Cones and Junction Fixes: A DIY Guide” ? this is very drafty This post is probably best...
2 months ago
32
2 months ago
“Traffic Cones and Junction Fixes: A DIY Guide” ? this is very drafty This post is probably best viewed on desktop, with some links opening new tabs, viewed, closed, and then this post returned to. There’s a lot of videos farther down, some of them are tiktoks (sorry) and some of...
Escaping Flatland
Why we ended up homeschooling “Little Sister”, Agnes Martin, 1962
2 months ago
Astral Codex Ten
Open Thread 374 ...
2 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'The Earliest of My Friends Is Gone' I often speak or exchange texts with my nephew. Soon he’ll turn thirty-six, but he lives in...
2 months ago
23
2 months ago
I often speak or exchange texts with my nephew. Soon he’ll turn thirty-six, but he lives in Cleveland, 1,200 miles away, and I seldom see him. Distance warps the sense of duration, so I think of him as frozen in his early twenties. We spoke on Sunday and for the first time since...
The American Scholar
Cobi Moules Landscapes of queer joy The post Cobi Moules appeared first on The American Scholar.
2 months ago