flâneur

TIL | Nicholas Charriere

nicholascharriere.com · 243 words · saved by 1 readers

A rhetorical device: repeat a word or phrase with a word or two in between. Once you see it, it's everywhere. "To be or not to be" is a diacope (ABA — the repeated word bracketing an interruption), and so is "a horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!" (AABA). The little gap is what gives it that insistent, drumbeat quality — it's why the line sticks.

Today I learned — small notes on things I discover. Aug 24, 2026 Feynman's wobbly plate After Los Alamos, Feynman felt stuck: physics had become duty, not play. He decided to quit worrying about what was "important" and just follow curiosity. In a Cornell cafeteria he watched a plate wobble as it spun through the air, worked out the motion for fun (pretty awesome), and that thread of play led him back into the problems behind the diagrams he later won the Nobel for. The lesson he kept: treat the work as play, and the serious stuff has a way of showing up anyway. Aug 7, 2026 Diacope A…

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