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Poems From An Email Exchange. Re: Your Submission 9:27pm | by Hanif Abdurraqib | Medium
Poems From An Email Exchange. Re: Your …

The Wikipedia article for Benford's law—

Benford's law, also known as the Newcomb–Benford law, the law of anomalous numbers, or the first-digit law, is an observation that in many real-life sets of numerical data, the leading digit is likely to be small. In sets that obey the law, the number 1 appears as the leading significant digit about 30% of the time, while 9 appears as the leading significant digit less than 5% of the time. If the digits were distributed uniformly, they would each occur about 11.1% of the time. Benford's law also makes predictions about the distribution of second digits, third digits, digit combinations, and so on.

Benford's law of anomalous numbers

P.E. Moskowitz, 'The Rubber Band Conundrum', in Mental Hellth (2022)—

After a few extremely hard years, I felt, well, better.

Strangely, this realization came with a sudden surge of anxiety and dread, not because I thought something bad would happen, but because, deep in my bones, I realized nothing bad would happen. That I actually was better. That I had moved on from various traumas. And, it turns out, freedom is the scariest thing of all.

For the last several years I’d been in a deep rumination about the purpose of my life, questioning how to move on from various Bad Things that happened to me, how to believe in a bright future when things can be so bleak. I say rumination and not depression because depression implies a useless disorder, one that must be cured instead of embraced. What I experienced was a productive sadness and introspection, one necessary to realign my life and prepare myself for the rest of it.

P.E. Moskowitz, 'The Rubber Band Conund…

Luis Alberto de Cuenca, 'William of Aquitaine Returns', trans. by Gustavo Pérez Firmat —

I’m going to make a poem out of nothing.
You and I will be the protagonists.
Our emptiness, our loneliness,
the deadly boredom, the daily defeats.

Luis Alberto de Cuenca's poem 'William …
The Cloud in Sally Rooney's Room
The Cloud in Sally Rooney's Room

Nancy Lemann, 'Diary of Remorse', in The Paris Review (2022)—

I was plagued by remorse, but my remorse seemed inspired by insignificant dumb things—things not really worthy of bona fide remorse. That didn’t make it any less painful or plague-worthy, as I was still riddled with disgrace on a minute-by-minute basis, so I decided to conduct a scientific study to analyze the cause(s). Then I could modify my behavior so as to behave in a way that would not cover me with dishonor. Remorse is akin to regret but more violent than regret. The overall atmosphere in my case seemed to derive from generic self-loathing. But that was too vague. Once I conducted the study, I would be able to identify more exactly the source of the trouble…

Ever since I started keeping my diary of remorse, my remorse has evaporated. The answer to a personality problem or spiritual malaise is to keep a diary of it because then the quantity you are quantifying seems to disappear. Therefore I should go on to keep a diary of other troubling quantities. Such as Diary of Lassitude, Lack of Motivation, Failure to Act, etc.

Nancy Lemann, 'Diary of Remorse', in th…
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