Posts tagged “poetry”
- Scientific American published a list of all the interesting things to see in the night sky in 2025.
- Spotify’s Secret Star Wars Easter Egg: The Hidden Lightsaber Feature (I don’t usually stream music, but this is pretty cool.)
- Are you responsible for designing or developing any type of authentication for a website or app? Take a second and read the UX of login codes by Brad Frost.
- “You can’t speak to the weather’s manager. Mother Nature has no concierge. Your investment portfolio will not halt an inferno. A college degree won’t tame the blaze. In the way we all inhabit the same Earth, we are all made of blood and flesh that burns the same.” – via The Handbasket
- Own a Kindle? You can read the complete works of Shakespeare for free.
- The Jabberwocky was one of my mom’s favorite poems. I love that I can still recite most of it from memory and it always makes me think of her.
- “Hey gamers remember, on Dec 26 a lot of kids are gonna be online playing with their gifted console/game/pc for the first time. Be nice.” – via @dinocornel
- An Ode to Christmas Eve
- It’s a Christmas miracle! Netflix subscribers can play Civilization VI on iOS devices, free and with no ads. – via hiro.report
- In 1996 Sir Purr became the only NFL mascot to ever be involved in a live play. – via @gregstreetz83
- Is it just me or does every Instagram link shared via Apple Messages on iOS 18 take you to the wrong post? And the preview of the link in Messages never works.
The Alphabet Fades Away – via @anthony_onumonu- Democratic Representative Abigail Spanberger, on lawmakers’ unfounded theories about those weird drones over New Jersey: “Members of Congress need to not be opportunistic idiots who say shit that’s not true.” – via crooked
- Drinking caffeine (the equivalent of a very strong cup) thirty minutes before aerobic exercise increases fat oxidation by 11% in the morning and by 13% in the afternoon. – via Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s Pump Club
- A pregnant woman in Texas claimed her fetus was an HOV lane passenger, but got a ticket anyway.
- New England’s largest outdoor sculpture park is in Brookline, New Hampshire, about an hour north of Boston. – via my dad
- If you’re bored with the standard New York Times puzzles — or looking for more ways to avoid thinking about the impending collapse of society — Alphaguess and Wordiply are two other fun word games. Worldle is a fun geography game and Framed is a fun movie game. Or see if you can beat my streak of 19 at WikiTrivia. There’s also a sports version of Connections.
- Being a “safe space for both sides” means you’re not a safe space for one side. – via @lingeringperception
- Art Garfunkel describes tearful reunion with Paul Simon: “I cried when he told me how much I had hurt him.” – via @timcarmody
- “I know that you have what it takes to start healing.” – via Coach Bennett’s Newsletter
- “It’s 91 degrees in November… no idea why I’m saving for retirement. At no point did Mad Max check his 401k.” – via @rpgregory87
- The Story Behind Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” and the Poet’s Own Stirring Reading of His Masterpiece – via @mariapopova
- This lovely Martha Wainwright track (from the absolutely fantastic Big Little Lies soundtrack) might resonate with some of you lately.
- See also: “The point of winning was not to make themselves happy, it was to make everyone else miserable.” – via @duckswithpants
- These 10 CSS Code Snippets Every UI Developer Should Know and 10 Bootstrap Tricks Every UI Developer Should Know are both handy. – via Niraj Narkhede
- Chocolate is America’s favorite Halloween candy, with Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups once again the top choice in an overwhelming majority of states. But don’t sleep on Nerds Gummy Clusters, which boosted sales at Ferrara Candy Company from $40 million in 2018 to $800 million last year.
- Wow. Texas leads the nation in wind energy generation with over 15,000 turbines producing between a bit more than 10% of the total electricity in the United States.
- An Expert’s Guide to Protein for Athletes – via @sweatscience
- New research found that if you want to feel younger later in life, don’t go easy on your training. – via Arnold’s Pump Club
- I’ve always been a sucker for black holes, so these thought experiments that fray the fabric of space-time were fun. – via kottke, of course
- Take thirty seconds out of your day to read this brilliant poem, If Adam Picked the Apple, by Danielle Coffyn. – also via kottke
To Have and Have Not
A paper I wrote for ENL 3124 at the University of Florida on February 20, 1996
Johnny 99
An analysis of W.H. Auden’s poem “Miss Gee”
My mom loved “Do not go gentle into that good night”, and I have thought about that poem quite a bit since she died. Last week I stood in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey and explained who Dylan Thomas was to my son. When Taylor Swift released ttpd a few days later, I heard the title track and almost couldn’t believe the serendipity.
Today is the birthday of T.S. Eliot, born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1888. At the age of 27, he wrote “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915), and at 34, wrote “The Waste Land” (1922). At the height of his career, when he was writing poetry, plays, and literary criticism, and serving as director of the British publisher Faber & Faber, he was the 20th century’s single most influential writer. He was dry and enigmatic, and he spoke very, very slowly. Yet, he loved the Marx Brothers and was said to harbor a weakness for squirting buttonholes and exploding cigars. Somebody once said to Eliot that most editors are failed writers. Eliot said: “Yes. So are most writers.”
via The Writer’s Almanac