1,348 Matching Annotations
  1. Last 7 days
    1. “He was the first person I knew who had his own personal copying machine,” she said. “He was terrified of losing things, so he often made a lot of copies.”

      quote from Kate Edgar, Sacks' assistant and editor

    1. Beyond the cards mentioned above, you should also capture any hard-to-classify thoughts, questions, and areas for further inquiry on separate cards. Regularly go through these to make sure that you are covering everything and that you don’t forget something.I consider these insurance cards because they won’t get lost in some notebook or scrap of paper, or email to oneself.

      Julius Reizen in reviewing over Umberto Eco's index card system in How to Write a Thesis, defines his own "insurance card" as one which contains "hard-to-classify thoughts, questions, and areas for further inquiry". These he would keep together so that they don't otherwise get lost in the variety of other locations one might keep them

      These might be akin to Ahrens' "fleeting notes" but are ones which may not easily or even immediately be converted in to "permanent notes" for one's zettelkasten. However, given their mission critical importance, they may be some of the most important cards in one's repository.

      link this to - idea of centralizing one's note taking practice to a single location

      Is this idea in Eco's book and Reizen is the one that gives it a name since some of the other categories have names? (examples: bibliographic index cards, reading index cards (aka literature notes), cards for themes, author index cards, quote index cards, idea index cards, connection cards). Were these "officially" named and categorized by Eco?

      May be worthwhile to create a grid of these naming systems and uses amongst some of the broader note taking methods. Where are they similar, where do they differ?


      Multi-search tools that have full access to multiple trusted data stores (ostensibly personal ones across notebooks, hard drives, social media services, etc.) could potentially solve the problem of needing to remember where you noted something.

      Currently, in the social media space especially, this is not a realized service.

    1. Not that it couldn't be done, but I'll suggest that following the structure/order of a Luhmann-artig zettelkasten may be a bit more limiting or difficult for creating fiction.

      There's a rich history of researching, outlining, and writing with card indexes as part of the creative process. Perhaps looking briefly at some examples particularly focusing on fiction may be helpful? Once you've done this, you can pick and choose the portions and affordances that work best for your preferred way of thinking and working.

      Some quick examples:

      Perhaps querying my digital zettelkasten may be helpful for you? Start with: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=tag%3A%27card+index+for+writing%27

      Ultimately, you can only spend so much time going down the rabbit hole of how you ought to do this work and taking suggestions or reading about how others have done it. The more difficult but more fruitful portion is to pick a method which seems like it will work for you and experiment with it by actually using or evolving it for yourself. How you start may not necessarily be how you end, but you won't know what's best for you if you don't start. Practice, practice, practice will get you much farther faster.

      reply to u/Atreides_Lion at https://reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1ft4r3z/a_very_important_matter_for_me/

    1. For all audiences and in most content, use intelligent or intelligence to describe or talk about the benefits of AI.In UI, use intelligent technology to describe the underlying technology that powers AI features.

      I think this is a good example of a misleading marketing ploy that shouldn't exist in technical documentation.

  2. Sep 2024
    1. He handwrites first, then types it up, triple-spacing in the old newspaper fashion, then pencil-edits and retypes, pencil-edits and retypes.

      Robert Caro's method of writing

    1. What do you mean with Zettelkasten ratchet? I am too unfamiliar with the word ratchet to really understand the meaning.[9:46 AM] Or if someone else has an idea and can help me out

      The additional "hidden context" is that the rachet/gear seen in many of these diagrams is usually attached to a radial spring (or some other device) which, as it is wound, stores energy which is later used by the bigger device in which the rachet and pawl are encased. Examples include the stem of watches, which when wound, store energy which the watch later uses to run as it counts the seconds. Another example is the mainspring of a typewriter which is attached to a ratchet/pawl set up; when you push the carriage to the right, the spring gets wound up and stores energy which is slowly expended by the escapement a space or a letter at a time as you type. In the zettelkasten analogy, the box and numbered cards placed in it act as the pawl (the wedge that prevents backward movement), as you add more and more information, you're storing/building up "potential energy" in small bits. This "stored energy" can be spent at a later time by allowing you to more easily write an article, paper, book, etc. In some sense, the zettelkasten (as most tools do) allows you a "mechanical advantage" in the writing process over trying to remember everything you've ever read and then relying on your ability to spit it all back out in a well-ordered manner.


      reply to Muhammed Ali at https://discord.com/channels/992400632390615070/992400632776507447/1286577013439594497

      continuation of https://hypothes.is/a/GTPIPnYiEe-GTUu4YcdeAQ

    1. Typewriters? In 2024? Are You Nuts? by Jesse M. Slater for [[Raconteur Press]]

      A short, but relatively solid typewriter 101 story for someone looking for a distraction-free writing machine. Certainly not completist, but enough to get your toes wet.

      Slater uses his typewriter for a first draft, then edits the second draft as he re-types it into his computer to have a digital copy for further editing and distribution.

    1. The Dominican Republic has been a political and economic success story in contrast to its neighbor and, unlike Haiti, is secure enough for the secretary of state to spend the night.

      sasssssy

  3. Aug 2024
    1. Typewriter Video Series - Episode 147: Font Sizes and the Writing Process by [[Joe Van Cleave]]

      typewriters for note making

      double or 1 1/2 spacing with smaller typefaces may be more efficient for drafting documents, especially first drafts

      editing on actual paper can be more useful for some

      Drafting on a full sheet folded in half provides a book-like reading experience for reading/editing and provides an automatic backing sheet

      typewritten (or printed) sheets may be easier to see and revise than digital formats which may hide text the way ancient scrolls did for those who read them.

      Jack Kerouac used rolls of paper to provide continuous writing experience. Doesn't waste the margins of paper at the top/bottom. This may be very useful for first drafts.

      JVC likes to thread rolls of paper into typewriters opposite to the original curl so as to flatten the paper out in the end.

    1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixedink

      MixedInk was a startup that provided web-based, collaborative writing software enabling large groups of people to create text that expresses a collective opinion, such as a mission statement, editorial, political platform, open letter or product review.

    1. Cothran, Ann, and George E. Mason. “The Typewriter: Time-Tested Tool for Teaching Reading and Writing.” The Elementary School Journal 78, no. 3 (1978): 171–73. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1001415

      No new results here, but a modest overview and literature review of research on typewriters in classrooms.

    2. In this experimentagain the pupils who could type werefound to have made more gains in lan-guage usage and spelling than the nontyp-ers.

      M. W. Tate's 1934 typewriter studies showed student gains in language usage and spelling. Now that computers have automatic spell-checkers and students less frequently use dictionaries or study spelling in particular, does spelling ability in modern classrooms keep pace with numbers from earlier in the century when more emphasis was put on that portion of writing pedagogy?

    3. One must wonder if the early use of typewriters to teach reading and writing research matches that of modern day use of computers and tablets in the same classrooms?

    1. Interesting thought. This guy relates the upcome of AI (non-fiction) writing to the lack of willingness people have to find out what is true and what is false.

      Similar to Nas & Damian Marley's line in the Patience song -- "The average man can't prove of most of the things that he chooses to speak of. And still won't research and find the root of the truth that you seek of."

      If you want to form an opinion about something, do this educated, not based on a single source--fact-check, do thorough research.

      Charlie Munger's principle. "I never allow myself to have [express] an opinion about anything that I don't know the opponent side's argument better than they do."

      It all boils down to a critical self-thinking society.

  4. Jul 2024
    1. Approaching its 10th anniversary, the Longform podcast is a weekly hour-long interview with a nonfiction writer about their work, practice and personal philosophies. When it was founded in 2012, as a co-production of Longform.org and the Atavist magazine, co-hosts Max Linsky, Evan Ratliff and Aaron Lammer drilled down into aspects of the craft such as note-taking and revising drafts. These days the scope of their warm, considered conversations has broadened to be as much about life as about writing. Dig into the archives to hear from greats such as Gay Talese, Renata Adler, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Ariel Levy, Ira Glass, Michael Lewis, George Saunders, Susan Orlean and Robert McKee.

      A great podcast about writing which will help you explore the work, practice and philosophy of writing fiction through a light-hearted conversation

    1. This also means that one cannot think without making allowances for differences.

      9/8g The card index technique is based on the experience that one cannot think without writing – at least not in demanding, selectively accessing memory-based contexts.

      This also means that one cannot think without making allowances for differences.

      I like this slightly more differentiated instantiation for thinking better than Ahren's assertion that one can't think without writing. Luhmann qualifies it over and above Ahrens who elides meaning if this was the source he may have been tangentially referencing. (Was it an explicit reference? check...)

    1. https://web.archive.org/web/20240711102003/https://longnow.org/ideas/moonbound/

      via Frank Meeuwsen https://frankmeeuwsen.com/2024/07/10/dragons-on-the.html

      On writing [[Moonbound by Robin Sloan]] , Sloan makes a few remarks about his notes that support his writing process.

    2. When I sit down to begin things, I just marinate in my own stew for a while. It'll be a couple of weeks and my task at that time is to go through those notes of all those things that caught my eye at some point. As you spend time with them, you start to gather things together and you start to see themes emerge or clumps. There are characters in here that are three different notes that sort of found each other and I put them together

      His writing process is for several weeks to go through notes, just looking through them, let it mingle in his head. Then put things together and look for emergent clusters / topics.

    3. If you're going to write something that means something, you gotta put your own most urgent questions into it.

      Meaningful writing needs a driving personally urgent question. Sounds about right. Meaningful to whom though, and urgent at what scale? I think my own more continuous urgent questions feed into my company and the 'carrying' themes throughout my blogging, and sound through in how I share my ideas and stories in client orgs. In my blogging 'urgent' can be a few minutes thing, or a thing over a week, urging me to blog something in the now. It is forceful but temporary and localised. Vgl formulering v [[% Interessevelden 20200523102304]] [[Holding questions 20091015123253]]

    1. Someone once said that at least one in five people are writing a novel. I barely know anyone who isn’t. It is still a prestigious form. And so, despite social media – the junk food of communication – literature continues to adapt to the contemporary mood. Where there is digital overload, people are returning to this more relaxed, nutritious analogue mode - reading words on a page.
    2. What makes a writer a real writer is that they begin to find an audience for their work; readers who are excited by what they find on the page.
  5. Jun 2024
    1. https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/nabokov.jpeg via https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/typers.html

      This photo, similar to others in the Carl Mydans series for LIFE Magazine is surely from his September 1958 photo series, though I couldn't find an original from the LIFE archive.

      Nabokov, reading off of index cards in his zettelkasten, dictates to his wife Vera who is typing on what appears to be a 1949 or 1950 Henry Dreyfuss Royal Quiet De Luxe typewriter.

      Notice metal strip on the back of the typewriter with small rectangular blocks. This is the Royal's tabulator set up which distinguishes the Quiet De Luxe model from the Arrow model.

      The body styling of this typewriter changed in 1950 from Dreyfuss' original 1948 design. Because it's light gray it has to be from '49 or '50 as the '48 original was a black body with dark gray highlights and didn't have chrome across the front as this one does in an alternate angle.

    1. "We can do more to heal Grandmother Earth and protect her sacred children. The birth of this calf is both a blessing and warning.”

      Imminent crisis is prerequisite to a savior.

    1. The £8mn Longitude Prize was awarded on Wednesday to Sysmex Astrego, a Swedish company whose method cuts the analysis time for urinary tract infection patient samples from two or three days to less than an hour.

      good example of well-designed grant

    1. he too wants to shine a light on the foolishness and wickedness of Western pols

      hm. old spy novels emphasized politicians as locus of control and businessmen as villains. villains in the sense of antagonists. what about villainous businessmen who are in the locus of control?

    1. Going to a Rogan show for “work” might function similarly, giving us cover in case we accidentally enjoyed it.

      The most masculine thing is devising covers for activities you enjoy, but may be considered feminine or frivolous.

    1. The more inventive and fecund a great mind is, the more it will shape thelanguage it uses to fit its thought. To express a new idea or insight, a new word isinvented or an old word given a novel meaning. Sometimes in the development ofhis own characteristic vocabulary, a great writer uses a new word for an old ideawhich he has appropriated and assimilated to his own thought. Sometimes theopposite occurs; the traditional word is appropriated or borrowed, but the ideawhich it long expressed is replaced either by a totally new, or at least by a variant,conception.

      Language is essential for the expression of thought, be it novel or ancient.

    2. The foregoing examples illustrate various forms topics take according to thedifferent kinds of subjects they propose for discussion. Some deal with the natureof a thing or its definition, some with its qualities or attributes, some with itscauses, and some with its kinds; some deal with distinctions or differences, andsome with comparisons or contrasts; some propose a general theory for considera-tion, some present a problem, and some state an Issue. Some— such as the lastthree above —are difficult to characterize by any formula.

      The complexity of the topic is determined by the content of the discussion the topic is about.

    3. It is easier to say what a topic is not, than what it is or should be. If it mustalways be a less determinate expression than a sentence, and if it must usually be amore complex expression than a single word or pair of words (which are theverbal expression of terms, such as the great ideas), it would seem to follow thatthe proper expression of a topic is a phrase— often, perhaps, a fairly elaboratephrase involving a number of terms and signifying a number of possible relationsbetween them. This general description of the grammatical form of a topic docsnot, however, convey an adequate notion of the extraordinary variety of possi-ble phrasings.

      To me, it seems that Adler et al., are arguing that a topic should be stated as a phrase with varying degrees of complexity, determined by ?

    4. For example, “The ideal of the educated man’"(Education la) is a simple topic; “The right to property: the ownership of themeans of production” (Labor 7b) is a complex topic; and “The use and criticismof the intellectual tradition: the sifting of truth from erroi; the reaction againstthe authority of the past” (Progress 6c) is a more complex topic.

      Some examples of topics that are formulated and used in the original syntopicon.

    5. A topic, in short, must have greater amplitude than any other logical form ofstatement. The familiar grammatical forms of the declarative or interrogativesentence, or even the complex sentence w'hich expresses a dilemma, arc there-fore inappropriate for the statement of topics. Since it must be able to includeall these and more, the statement of a topic must be less determinate in verbalstructure.

      A topic should never be suggestive, for it would not be a topic in that way.

    1. “etheric realm,” as well as in some fifteen thousand hours of recordings that have for many years been stored in a concrete bunker in Montana.

      common technique that I haven't used; tell the full story up front, or at least allude to it, before dropping in deeper down below.

      not an intro paragraph but like a different story to contain your story. this is literlaly just an intro. but whatever, like the introduction of a detail as a segue into a story anchored by another detail

    1. overall blogs by 35 percent

      This is great. I could definitely see Agrilinks blog posts being leveraged by teams and individuals to have that consistent space to write and share. I have a Wordpress blog but not everybody has their own site.

  6. May 2024
    1. While his dad had favored bribing Balkan seamen to move his product to Europe aboard cargo ships, police said, the younger Nesic turned to smaller vessels to evade tightening screening procedures at Brazilian and European ports. Nesic allegedly bought cheap fishing boats that he retrofitted with extra fuel tanks, stuffed with cocaine, and staffed with Balkan or Brazilian crews to make the Atlantic crossing.

      this would be a cool opening scene, the motorboats trailing the cargo ship

    1. Information about ownership can, however, be found in the pages of Tatler or on the message boards of Ismaili Muslims unhappy about their tithes being used to pay for the extravagant lifestyle of a man who is both their religious imam and the descendant of an aristocrat ennobled by both the Iranian and British monarchies
    1. But this implies that those who direct pay in order to be able to do this and are not paid to direct, which is clearly not true in the majority of cases

      fun sentence

    1. The Book of Hours was largely developed at the artist’s colony at Worpswede, but finished in Paris. It displays the turn towards mystical religiosity that was developing in the poet, in contrast to the naturalism popular at the time, after the religious inspiration he experienced in Russia. Soon thereafter, however, Rilke developed a highly practical approach to writing, encouraged by Rodin’s emphasis on objective observation. This rejuvenated inspiration resulted in a profound transformation of style, from the subjective and mystical incantations to his famous Ding-Gedichte, or thing-poems, that were published in the New Poems.

      Naturalism was prevalent in the time of Rilke (circa 1900s). Rilke, however, had a mystical experience in Russia? (did he literally have an experience of unity and bliss?) He combined this mysticism with the objectivity that he learned from Auguste Rodin.


      As a result, his writing had a mystical and objective bent to it. How exactly? Was this also present in his Apollo poems (1907)?

    1. When you catch and idea, you see it in your mind's eye, and you feel it, and you can hear it. And then you write that idea down on a piece of paper, and you write it down in such a way that when you read it, the idea comes back in full.<br /> —David Lynch 3:05

    1. "When kids write letters, they're just messy," she says. As kids practice writing "A," each iteration is different, and that variability helps solidify their conceptual understanding of the letter.

      Interleaving

    2. A slew of recent brain imaging research suggests handwriting's power stems from the relative complexity of the process and how it forces different brain systems to work together to reproduce the shapes of letters in our heads onto the page.

      Interesting. Needs more research on my part.

    3. In adults, taking notes by hand during a lecture, instead of typing, can lead to better conceptual understanding of material.

      This is because of the fact that one needs to think (process) before writing. One can't possibly write everything verbatim. Deep processing. Relational thinking.

    4. Why writing by hand beats typing for thinking and learning
    1. Nabokov’s working notecards for “Lolita.”

      Nabokov used index cards for his research and writing. In one index card for research on Lolita, he creates a "weight-heigh-age table for girls of school age" to be able to specify Lolita's measurements. He also researched the Colt catalog of 1940 to get gun specifications to make those small points realistic in his writing.

      syndication link

    1. Walter Wellesley “Red” Smith used a version of this quote by 1949. In April of that year the influential and widely syndicated newspaper columnist Walter Winchell wrote. Boldface has been added to excerpts:[1]1949 April 06, Naugatuck Daily News, Walter Winchell In New York, Page 4, Column 5, Naugatuck, Connecticut. (NewspaperArchive) Red Smith was asked if turning out a daily column wasn’t quite a chore. …”Why, no,” dead-panned Red. “You simply sit down at the typewriter, open your veins, and bleed.”

      via 1949 April 06, Naugatuck Daily News, Walter Winchell In New York, Page 4, Column 5, Naugatuck, Connecticut. (NewspaperArchive)

      https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/09/14/writing-bleed/

    1. It is rare for academic ideas to reach the Amy Adams stage without drawing scholarly fire. Since 2023, three articles have appeared in scientific journals, with 45 authors in all, arguing that the claims made on behalf of the wood-wide web have far outstripped the evidence.

      definitely a trend of popular theories aligned with woke narratives being beat back

    1. Williams, Alex. “Paul Auster, the Patron Saint of Literary Brooklyn, Dies at 77.” The New York Times, May 1, 2024, sec. Books. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/30/books/paul-auster-dead.html.

    2. Writing six hours a day, often seven days a week, he pumped out a new book nearly annually for years. He ultimately published 34 books, accounting for shorter works that were later incorporated into larger books, including 18 novels and several acclaimed memoirs and assorted autobiographical works, along with plays, screenplays and collections of stories, essays and poems.
    3. He eschewed computers, often writing by fountain pen in his beloved notebooks.“Keyboards have always intimidated me,” he told The Paris Review in 2003.“A pen is a much more primitive instrument,” he said. “You feel that the words are coming out of your body, and then you dig the words into the page. Writing has always had that tactile quality for me. It’s a physical experience.”He would then turn to his vintage Olympia typewriter to type his handwritten manuscripts. He immortalized the trusty machine in his 2002 book “The Story of My Typewriter,” with illustrations by the painter Sam Messer.

      digging the words into the page sounds adjacent to Seamus Heaney's "Digging" which analogizes writing to digging: https://hypothes.is/a/J-z8OgfQEe-0adtJyXyb3g

      There's something here which suggests pens, typewriters, keyboards, etc. as direct extended mind objects as tools for thought. A sense of rumination and expulsion simultaneously.

    4. “I’ve always wanted to write what to me is beautiful, true, and good, but I’m also interested in inventing new ways to tell stories. I wanted to turn everything inside out.”
  7. Apr 2024
    1. https://web.archive.org/web/20240430091654/https://pdworkman.com/writing-a-novel-in-markdown/

      A full description of PD Workman's workflow writing a book in markdown and Obsidian. Mentions using Canvas and Excalidraw to visualise plot development, as well as Kanban style boards. Mentions compiling tools to create manuscript from loose files. Seems similar to Scrivener except that has this baked in and thus less flexible?

    1. WhenI fi nish a page and pull it out, I holdsomething real. And this, too, fuels myprogress by giving me a tangible senseof accomplishment.

      Typewriters provide a tangible sense of accomplishment when a writer finishes a page.

    2. Laptops are ideal forwhen I research and write at the sametime, or when I work on several storiesat once, going back and forth amongwindows. But for everything else, Iseek a departure from my primaryworld. It’s a different type of writing,so I need a different tool.
    1. Forrester: No thinking - that comes later. You must write your first draft with your heart. You rewrite with your head. The first key to writing is... to write, not to think!

      https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181536/quotes

      In this quote from Finding Forrester (Columbia Pictures, 2000) Forrester (portrayed by Sean Connery) turns the idea that writing is thinking on its head.

    1. Great Books tend to arise in the presence of great audiences. by [[Naomi Kanakia]]

      Kanakia looks at what may have made 19th C. Russian literature great. This has potential pieces to say about how other cultures had higher than usual rates of creativity in art, literature, etc.

      What commonalities did these sorts of societies have? Were they all similar or were there broad ranges of multiple factors which genetically created these sorts of great outputs?

      Could it have been just statistical anomaly?

    1. We quote because we are afraid to-change words, lest there be a change in meaning.

      Quotations are easier to collect than writing things out in one's own words, not only because it requires no work, but we may be afraid of changing the original meaning by changing the original words or by collapsing the context and divorcing the words from their original environment.

      Perhaps some may be afraid that the words sound "right" and they have a sense of understanding of them, but they don't quite have a full grasp of the situation. Of course this may be remedied by the reader or listener not only by putting heard stories into their own words and providing additional concrete illustrative examples of the concepts. These exercises are meant to ensure that one has properly heard/read and understood a concept. Psychologists call this paraphrasing or repetition the "echo effect" (others might say parroting or mirroring) and have found that it can help to build understanding, connection, and likeability between people. Great leaders who do this will be sure to make sure that credit for the original ideas goes to the originator and not to themselves simply because they repeated it, especially in group settings where their words may have more primacy amidst their underlings.

      (I can't find it at the moment, but there's a name/tag for this in my notes? looping?)

      Beyond this, can one place the idea into a more clear language than the original? Add some poetry perhaps? Make the concept into a concrete meme to make it more memorable?

      Journalists like to quote because it gives primacy of voice to the speaker and provides the reader with the sense that they're getting the original from which they might make up their own minds. It also provides a veneer of vérité to their reportage.

      Link this back to Terrence's comedy: https://hypothes.is/a/xe15ZKPGEe6NJkeL77Ji4Q

    2. Description and illustration are^ comple-mentary, they give together a more complete picture than citherwithout the other.

      Kaiser says that "description and illustration are complementary, they give together a more complete picture than either without the other" and this sentiment is similar to Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren's pedagogy of restatement and providing concrete examples a means of testing understanding.

      See: - https://hypothes.is/a/RgUa-mOcEe6PChv_seYXZA - https://hypothes.is/a/B3sDhlm5Ee6wF0fRYO0OQg

    3. You cannot buy a ready-made intelligence departmenton which to run your business.
    1. In 1889 she founded the Young Woman’s Journal, the monthly magazine of the Young Ladies’ Mutual Improvement Association, which she edited until 1900. She contributed to magazines and newspapers for the rest of her life, and in 1914 she became the first editor of the Relief Society Magazine. For Susa, writing was a beloved pursuit through which she could make a meaningful contribution to the community. “My whole soul is for the building up of this kingdom,” she wrote to one close confidante about her literary ambitions. “I would labor so hard to help my sisters in this same work.”
      • i love that she knew how to translate her writing skill and talent to a bigger cause
    1. Who am I speaking to?What do I want?What do they care about?How can I explain it to them in terms they care about?

      Framework for message framing

  8. Mar 2024
    1. Blogging isn’t just a way to organize your research — it’s a way to do research for a book or essay or story or speech you don’t even know you want to write yet. It’s a way to discover what your future books and essays and stories and speeches will be about.

      Blogging as a way to "find your voice?"

    2. Writing for an audience keeps me honest.

      Working in public as a way to avoid fooling yourself (a la Feynman).

      “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself– and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that.” -Richard Feynman-

    1. We can't use algorithms to filter for quality because they're not designed to. They're designed to steer you towards whatever's most profitable for their creators.That puts the onus on us, as users, to filter out the noise and that is increasingly difficult.
    1. The text in this book is numbered by paragraphs and where asubject is treated in more than one place, the numbers in bracketsindicate the additional paragraphs bearing on the subject underdiscussion.

      ¶5

      The book is ostensibly in the form of a card index with numbers laid out in running order to create a book. The index is also done keyed to these paragraph numbers rather than by page as has traditionally been done.

      As a result, one could cut up the book (or two copies to get both sides) and turn it back into a card index with very little work.

    1. to be effective, thinking should be written down.
    2. when we can express an idea in our own words, it’s on the way to becoming ours.
    3. In prehistory, before writing, talking was thinking. Today, writing has taken the place of talking.
    4. writing is thinking
    1. quote from Schopenhauer’s essay, ‘How to think for oneself’, §268:“the most beautiful thought, if not written down, is in danger of being irretrievably forgotten.”It’s from the passage where he observes that Lichtenberg thought for himself in both senses of the phrase, unlike Herder.The original essay, “Selbstdenken” was part of Schopenhauer’s book Parerga und Paralipomena II. Last authorised edition, Erstausgabe Berlin, A. W. Hayn 1851, online textLooks like Povarnin was a Schopenhauer fan!
  9. Feb 2024
    1. "If I have nothing else to do then I write all day; in the morning from 8:30am to noon. Then I go for a short walk with my dog. Then in the afternoon I work again from 2pm to 4pm. Then it's the dog's turn again. Sometimes I lie down for a quarter of an hour.... And, then I usually write until around 11pm. I'm usually in bed by 11pm where I read a few more things."8

      Luhmann his output might be a result of his work ethic and routines. Attributing productivity merely to his zettelkasten is misleading. Also Chris Aldrich on The Cargo Cult of Zettelkasten https://chrisaldrich.wordpress.com/2023/02/03/a-note-on-the-cargo-cult-of-zettelkasten/

    1. The authors made one serious mistake, however. Although theyhad taken great pains to be sure that within their massive workevery book and manuscript stored in their building was representedby a three-by-ve page, and often by several pages, describing it,they had forgotten to devote any page, anywhere, to the very book

      that they had themselves been writing all those years.

      Baker describes the library card catalog as a massive book made up of 3 x 5 inch pages describing all the other books. Sadly he laments, they never bothered to catalog this meta-book itself.

    1. https://web.archive.org/web/20240208185222/https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00349-5

      Paper by author Lizzie Wolkovich refused because of inaccurate suspicion of ChatGPT usage. Another cut to the peer review system? She had her GitHub writing receipts. Intriguing. Makes me think about blogging in Obs while having a private blogging repo that tracks changes. n:: use github while writing for [[Reverse Turing menszijn bewijs vaker nodig 20230505100459]] purposes.

    1. Perhaps the quickest way to understand the elements of what a novelistis doing is not to read, but to write; to make your own experiment withthe dangers and difficulties of words.

      This seems to be the duality of Millard Kaufman (and certainly other writers'?) advice that to be a good writer, one must first be well read.

      Of course, perhaps the two really are meant to be a hand in a glove and the reader should actively write as they read thereby doing both practices at once.

  10. Jan 2024
    1. Doto, Bob. “What Do We Mean When We Say ‘Bottom-Up?’” Writing by Bob Doto (blog), January 25, 2024. https://writing.bobdoto.computer/what-do-we-mean-when-we-say-bottom-up/.

    1. https://web.archive.org/web/20240118140434/https://jsomers.net/blog/dictionary Intriguing post, albeit for me fait divers, on using a dictionary to improve one's writing. But it takes a dictionary that explains the differences in meaning between synonyms/alternatives for a word. At the end a process is shared to get an out of copyright English dictionary (an old Webster's) that works like that into a digitally usable form. https://hypothes.is/u/acct%3Apeterhagen%40hypothes.is Peter Hagen in 2021 mentions that process didn't work and used https://github.com/mortenjust/webster-mac as alternative that did. Found via Chris Aldrich on h.

    1. Nearly 5 years ago, I read Watanabe Shoichi‘s “知的生活の方法 (Chiteki seikatsu no houhou = A way to intellectual life)”. His episode was very first time I realize what is card system, and it is used in academic world for long time.

      Hawk Sugano was introduced to index cards circa 2001 by means of Watanabe Shoichi's book “知的生活の方法” (A Method of Intellectual Life".

      https://web.archive.org/web/20170530033313/http://pileofindexcards.org/blog/2006/08/20/me-and-indexcard/

  11. Dec 2023
    1. “I do all my own research,” she said, “though reviewers have speculatedthat I must have a band of hirelings. I like to be led by a footnote ontosomething I never thought of. I rarely photocopy research materials because, for me, note-taking is learning, distilling. That’s the whole essence ofthe business. In taking notes, you have to discard what you don’t need. If you[photocopy] it, you haven’t chewed it.”

      Sounds similar to Umberto Eco's admonition about photocopying: https://hypothes.is/a/U3Sg_r0ZEe25T2tD3U-nmw

    1. Summary

      1. 📚 Second Edition Overview: This is the second, revised and expanded edition of the book. The first edition was titled "Como Fazer Anotações Inteligentes. Uma Técnica Simples para Impulsionar a Escrita, Aprendizado e Pensamento - para Estudantes, Acadêmicos e Escritores de Livros de Não Ficção".

      2. 🖋️ Key Focus: The book emphasizes the importance of organizing ideas and notes for effective writing. It's a guide for students, academics, and knowledge professionals to enhance their writing, learning, and long-term knowledge retention.

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      6. 👤 Author's Background: Written by Dr. Sönke Ahrens, a writer and researcher in education and social sciences, known for the award-winning book "Experimento e Exploração: Formas de Revelação do Mundo" (Springer).

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    1. Some of my better type casts start out as handwritten, though not often. In this mode, the typewriter isn’t a creation platform, more like the publishing medium, which I still prefer over word processed.
    1. “try and cut and paste and rearrange everything around like a scrapbook”, and it wasn’t really working. I’m not sure if it’s something that was off about my approach, or if the premise itself was fundamentally flawed.

      I kept trying this for a long time but it never got anywhere. The best I can guess is that what's missing is depth and moving around shallow notes doesn't solve the depth problem. You also don't know where the depth is going to come from (it's not obvious) so you have to dig into each one to figure it out, rather than just shuffling them around