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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...
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4 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...
4 months ago
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4 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 ...
4 months ago
Anecdotal Evidence
'Style Is the Forgetting of All Styles' “I recall admiring the calmly expository flavor and simple, nonjudgemental humanity of profile...
4 months ago
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4 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.
4 months ago
The Elysian
Grassroots movements are building garden cities We're changing the aesthetic from the bottom up.
4 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...
4 months ago
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4 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...
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“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...
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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...
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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 ...
4 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...
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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...
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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...
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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
4 months ago
Josh Thompson
Isometric Deadlift Holds (for Climbing!) alternative titles: yielding isometric mid-thigh pin pulls, isometric deadlift 'holds' for fun and...
4 months ago
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4 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...
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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...
4 months ago
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4 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.
4 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...
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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.
4 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...
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“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.
4 months ago
Escaping Flatland
Take a part of the world that you love and give it your care Edward Weston, Armco Steel, Ohio, 1922
4 months ago
Astral Codex Ten
The Colors Of Her Coat ...
4 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,...
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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...
4 months ago
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4 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...
4 months ago
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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 ...
4 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...
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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.
4 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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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 ...
4 months ago
The Marginalian
On Play The necessities of survival make our lives livable, but everything that makes them worth living...
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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...
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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...
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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 ...
5 months ago
The Elysian
How WeFunder democratizes business ownership A discussion with Jonny Price, president of WeFunder.
5 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...
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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...