Author: Joshua Miller

  • Flaubert’s “Be Regular and Ordinary” Quote

    Flaubert’s “Be Regular and Ordinary” Quote

    The internet can sometimes disappoint you, but sometimes it can be so very, very satisfying. When you’re quote-hunting these days, it’s usually just a disappointment. For instance: I have long loved a quotation from Gustave Flaubert that is translated as follows: “Be regular and ordinary in your life, so you can be violent and original…

  • Semantic Insatiability and Logophilic Etymologies

    Semantic Insatiability and Logophilic Etymologies

    What is the opposite of semantic satiation?

  • Rascal News

    Rascal News

    Rascal News is an exciting new venture in tabletop games journalism. Building on the 00s’ New Games Journalism for videogames, the editors/authors are Lin Codega, Rowan Zeoli, and Chase Carter. A recent interview with Kimi Hughes discusses “How Has Actual Play Changed Game Design?“ Some sources and inspirations:

  • Maybe the Horse Will Sing: On the Value of Putting Things Off

    Maybe the Horse Will Sing: On the Value of Putting Things Off

    Nasreddin got himself into some serious legal trouble–the reasons are lost to time. Before the king sentenced him to death, Nasreddin asked for a delay because he was the only person in the world who could teach a horse to sing. The king was skeptical, but gave Nasreddin a horse and a year to teach…

  • Why Philosophy of Crime and Punishment, Now?

    Why Philosophy of Crime and Punishment, Now?

    I am teaching this course again. Every year it changes, and this year I hope it changes a lot. Here’s what I said about this today, our first day of classes: Any story about crime and punishment is bound to start with a few stylized facts. Until this year, I’ve started with the same number:…

  • Beyond Sociology 101

    Beyond Sociology 101

    The University of Toronto’s Sociology Department posts the reading lists for its PhD comprehensive exams.

  • Strangers to Ourselves

    Strangers to Ourselves

    For my money the notion of self-estrangement is the fundamental insight of psychology.

  • Varieties of Stoicism

    Varieties of Stoicism

    What worries me about Silicon Valley’s mindfulness stoicism is the sense that it combines all the worst elements of world mastery and manliness with the stoicism of the weak: acceptance of injustice, the embrace of a hostile natural (and social!) world to which we must conform, and a quietism that locates our agency in that…

  • Joshua Miller’s Top Ten Things that Arendt Got Right About Political Theory

    Joshua Miller’s Top Ten Things that Arendt Got Right About Political Theory

    I wrote this little primer at the bottom of a long discussion of the Schocken Books editions of Arendt’s work, and then reposted it a while back on Facebook. It’s been popular, so I’m reposting it again here so I can easily link to it without feeding social media. Race-thinking precedes racism. Arendt’s analysis of…

  • Is Deliberate Underpolicing a Problem?

    Is Deliberate Underpolicing a Problem?

    Propublica thinks so: What Can Mayors Do When the Police Stop Doing Their Jobs? Rises and falls in crime rates are notoriously hard to explain definitively. Scholars still don’t agree on the causes of a decades long nationwide decline in crime. Still, some academics who have studied the phenomenon in recent years see evidence that rising rates of…