722 Matching Annotations
  1. Last 7 days
    1. Witness that here Iago doth give upThe execution of his wit, hands, heart,To wronged Othello’s service. Let him command,And to obey shall be in me remorse,What bloody business ever

      Iago has fully vowed himself to this plot that he has created, perhaps even if it means it will destroy him. Why? What is his motive? Does simply the creation of an entertaining story constitute the meaning of life?

    2. The Moor already changes with my poison.Dangerous conceits are in their natures poisonsWhich at the first are scarce found to distaste,But with a little act upon the bloodBurn like the mines of sulfur

      Describing how Iago's act was very little, but turned dramatic due to to perhaps everyone's love for drama

    3. In the meantime,Let me be thought too busy in my fears—As worthy cause I have to fear I am—And hold her free, I do beseech your honor

      He plays both sides, the suspicion and the "no it couldn't be", showing that it is Othello that chooses the suspicion.

    4. Though I perchance am vicious in my guess,As, I confess, it is my nature’s plagueTo spy into abuses, and oft my jealousyShapes faults that are not, that your wisdom,From one that so imperfectly conceits,Would take no notice, nor build yourself a trouble

      IAGO QUITE LITERALLY IS HONEST WITH OTHELLO! He warns him that these suspicions, these inner thoughts are all a delusion, and yet Othello's insecurity and stubbornness refuses to believe it

    5. And what’s he then that says I play the villain?When this advice is free I give and honest,Probal to thinking and indeed the courseTo win the Moor again?

      even he states, what has he seriously done, but to carry words here and there, to incite what's already there?

    6. That we should, with joy, pleasance revel and applause,transform ourselves into beasts!

      Touches on innocence, free will and lack of constraint, lack of morality, lack of humanity == Blake's innocence == protection from Iago

    7. You are but now cast inhis mood, a punishment more in policy than in malice

      Yet again stating the intentions of everyone in just wariness of their reputation and pride

    8. You have lost no reputation at all unless yourepute yourself such a loser.

      Again example why he is a creator: Free will.

    9. Tis pride that pulls the country down,Then take thine auld cloak about thee.Some wine, ho

      Iago is directly stating, or singing, while all are under his curse, that it is pride that pulls each down -- and he is merely showing its effects. Kind of 4th wall

    10. That may offend the isle. But here they come.If consequence do but approve my dreamMy boat sails freely, both with wind and stream.

      He speaks as if he is playing a strategic game of chess. He is the gamemaster, Shakespeare himself, the comedic clown that turns everything upside down.

    1. https://pipdecks.com/

      Also targeting business executives (via YouTube) as a storytelling deck: https://pipdecks.com/pages/storyteller-tactics-card-deck

      Described as "expert knowledge in your back pocket", and sold as a "toolkit" with "practical step-by-step recipes", and "templates."

      They offer 7 decks of tactics for Brand, Team, Storytelling, Innovation, Productivity, Team, Workshop, Strategy.

  2. Mar 2024
    1. Daarbovenop nog een ander waardevol ding, waarvoor ik de woorden nog niet precies van vinden. Een vorm van bewustzijn over tijd en ruimte, en de loop der dingen in mijn leven daarin. Het klinkt vast vaag, maar dagelijks moeiteloos kunnen zien waar je vandaag de afgelopen 20 jaar mee bezig was doet iets met een mens, en op een goede manier.

      Dit doet me denken aan dat PKM kan functioneren als een persoonlijke geschiedenis van jezelf.

  3. muse-jhu-edu.du.idm.oclc.org muse-jhu-edu.du.idm.oclc.org
    1. For the redwood forest, fire is a sign of change and growth, naturally occurring and clearing out the underbrush, the ashes becoming nutrients in the soil. The forest is at last able to blossom and breathe. The redwood trees themselves stand tall amongst the flames, their thick fire-resistant bark a protective shield. Even when elderly trees do topple, they scatter tiny sprouts in their wake. Through a scorching, forest floors that once never saw light are suddenly soaked in it, nutrients are recycled. Insect pests, invasive species, and diseased trees are cleared away for new saplings. The process is called regenerative growth. A time for rebirth sets in. From the chaos comes an opportunity.

      metaphor of fire in the woods - it's a disruption, but can lead to succession and regeneration "the process is called regenerative growth. a time for rebirth sets in. From the chaos comes an opportunity"

    1. I find it ridiculous that we spend energy on debating whether an alternate spelling is "correct" - real people, not English professors and dictionary authorities, are the authorities on English-as-used, and will ultimately make the distinction irrelevant.

      Point: there is no "authority" on which spelling is correct, because normal people using the language are the ones who decide

    1. Paul Otlet, another great information visionary, to create a worldwide database for allsubjects.

      Otlet's effort was more than a "database for all subjects", wasn't it? This seems a bit simplistic.

  4. Feb 2024
    1. Eine neue Studie der Universität für Bodenkultur beziffert erstmals, wieviel Kohlenstoff zwischen 1900 und 2015 langfristig oder kurzfristig in menschlichen Artefakten wie Gebäuden gespeichert wurde. Die Menge des dauerhaft gespeicherten Kohlenstoffs hat sich seit 1900 versechzehnfacht. Sie reicht aber bei weitem nicht aus, um die globale Erhitzung wirksam zu beeinflussen. Die Möglichkeiten, Boot in Gebäuden zu nutzen, um der Atmosphäre CO2 zu entziehen, werden bisher nicht genutzt. https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000208522/co2-entnahme-durch-holzbau-ist-bisher-nicht-relevant-fuer-den-klimaschutz

      Studie: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ad236b

    1. accepting an answer doesn't mean it is the best one. For me it is interesting how argumentation of some users is reduced to "Hey, the editor has 5000+ edits. Do not ever think that a particular edit was wrong."
    1. Would it bestretching things too much, you suddenly wonder, to call yourRolodex a form of autobiography—a manuscript that you have beenwriting these fteen years, tinkering with, revising?
    1. The smallest collection of card catalogs is near the librarian’s information desk in the Social Science/Philosophy/Religion department on lower level three. It is rarely used and usually only by librarians. It contains hundreds of cards that reflect some of the most commonly asked questions of the department librarians. Most of the departments on the lower levels have similar small collections. Card catalog behind the reference desk on lower level three, photo credit: Tina Lernø

    1. American contributors were underlined in red in Murray’saddress books.
    2. Dr Minor would read a text not for its meaning but for its words. It wasa novel approach to the task – the equivalent of cutting up a book word byword, and then placing each in an alphabetical list which helped the editorsquickly find quotations. Just as Google today ‘reads’ text as a series of wordsor symbols that are searchable and discoverable, so with Dr Minor. A manualundertaking of this kind was laborious – he was basically working as acomputer would work – but it probably resulted in a higher percentage of hisquotations making it to the Dictionary page than those of other contributors.
    1. Knowing is not a rationale for not acting. Can we doubt that knowl-edge has become a weapon we wield against ourselves?
    2. It was Nietzsche who warned us, at the end of the 19th century, notonly that God is dead but that “faith in science, which after all existsundeniably, cannot owe its origin to a calculus of utility; it must haveoriginated in spite of the fact that the disutility and dangerousness ofthe ‘will to truth,’ of ‘truth at any price’ is proved to it constantly.”

      Joy quoting Nietzsche

    3. In recent times, we have come to revere scientific knowledge.

      Some do, yes, but it's interesting to note that when Bill Joy was writing this a strong anti-science movement was afoot in the United States of America.

    1. The connection with ancestors is a central feature of the Constellation process.

      Relationship of stars to stories and people to each other (ancestors).

      As above, so below...

      Reflection of the skys to the earth and to its peoples

    1. I think basically imagination is a lot of work

      for - adjacency - self construction - judgment as simplification - imagination is hard work

      adjacency - between - self construction - judgment as simplification - imagination as hard work - adjacency statement - We construct the self of others because we are lazy. - It takes hard work to construct a complex picture of another human being. - It's easier to just pass simple judgment and create a label for the other.

    2. other cultures do not think this and that suggests that our sense of self is largely culturally constructed

      for - quote - Sarah Stein Lubrano - quote - self as cultural construction in WEIRD culture - sense of self

      quote - (immediately below)

      • It's just a weird fascination of our weird culture that
        • we think the self is there and
        • it's the best and most likely explanation for human behavior
      • Other people in other cultures do not think this
      • and that suggests that our sense of self is largely culturally constructed

      discussion - sense of self is complex. See the work of - Michael Levin and - https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=michael+levin - Major Evolutionary Transition in Individuality - https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=major+evolutionary+transition+in+individuality

  5. Jan 2024
    1. dreaming can be seen as the "default" position for the activated brain

      for - dream theory - dreaming as default state of brain

      • Dreaming can be seen as the "default" position for the activated brain
      • when it is not forced to focus on
        • physical and
        • social reality by
          • (1) external stimuli and
          • (2) the self system that reminds us of
            • who we are,
            • where we are, and
            • what the tasks are
          • that face us.

      Question - I wonder what evolutionary advantage dreaming would bestow to the first dreaming organisms? - why would a brain evolve to have a default behaviour with no outside connection? - Survival is dependent on processing outside information. There seems to be a contradiction here - I wonder what opinion Michael Levin would have on this theory?

    1. ZK II note 9/8b 9/8b On the general structure of memories, see Ashby 1967, p. 103 . It is then important that you do not have to rely on a huge number of point-by-point accesses , but rather that you can rely on relationships between notes, i.e. references , that make more available at once than you would with a search impulse or with one thought - has fixation in mind.

      This underlies the ideas of songlines and oral mnemonic practices and is related to Vannevar Bush's "associative trails" in As We May Think.

      Luhmann, Niklas. “ZK II Zettel 9/8b.” Niklas Luhmann-Archiv, undated. https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8b_V.

    1. in general countries tend to excavate enormous volumes of earth and this earth is incredibly considered as a waste material

      for - circular economy - building - excavation waste - circular economy - construction - excavation waste - key insight - repurpose excavation waste as building material

      key insight - She makes an pretty important observation about the inefficiency of current linear construction process - The excavation part requires enormous amounts of energy, and the earth that is excavated is treated as waste that must be disposed of AT A COST! - Instead, with a paradigm shift of earth as a valuable building resource, the excavation PRODUCES the building materials! - This is precisely what BC Material's circular economy business model is and it makes total sense!<br /> - With a simple paradigm and perspective shift, waste is suddenly transformed into a resource! - waste2resource - waste-to-resource

      new meme - Waste-2-Resource

    1. Wirth himself realized the problems of Pascal and his later languages are basically improved versions of Pascal -- Modula, Modula-2, and Oberon. But these languages didn't even really displace Pascal itself let alone C -- but maybe if he had named them in a way that made it clear to outsiders that these were Pascal improvements they would have had more uptake.

      Modula and Oberon should have been codenames rather than independent projects.

    1. Instance methods Instances of Models are documents. Documents have many of their own built-in instance methods. We may also define our own custom document instance methods. // define a schema const animalSchema = new Schema({ name: String, type: String }, { // Assign a function to the "methods" object of our animalSchema through schema options. // By following this approach, there is no need to create a separate TS type to define the type of the instance functions. methods: { findSimilarTypes(cb) { return mongoose.model('Animal').find({ type: this.type }, cb); } } }); // Or, assign a function to the "methods" object of our animalSchema animalSchema.methods.findSimilarTypes = function(cb) { return mongoose.model('Animal').find({ type: this.type }, cb); }; Now all of our animal instances have a findSimilarTypes method available to them. const Animal = mongoose.model('Animal', animalSchema); const dog = new Animal({ type: 'dog' }); dog.findSimilarTypes((err, dogs) => { console.log(dogs); // woof }); Overwriting a default mongoose document method may lead to unpredictable results. See this for more details. The example above uses the Schema.methods object directly to save an instance method. You can also use the Schema.method() helper as described here. Do not declare methods using ES6 arrow functions (=>). Arrow functions explicitly prevent binding this, so your method will not have access to the document and the above examples will not work.

      Certainly! Let's break down the provided code snippets:

      1. What is it and why is it used?

      In Mongoose, a schema is a blueprint for defining the structure of documents within a collection. When you define a schema, you can also attach methods to it. These methods become instance methods, meaning they are available on the individual documents (instances) created from that schema.

      Instance methods are useful for encapsulating functionality related to a specific document or model instance. They allow you to define custom behavior that can be executed on a specific document. In the given example, the findSimilarTypes method is added to instances of the Animal model, making it easy to find other animals of the same type.

      2. Syntax:

      Using methods object directly in the schema options:

      javascript const animalSchema = new Schema( { name: String, type: String }, { methods: { findSimilarTypes(cb) { return mongoose.model('Animal').find({ type: this.type }, cb); } } } );

      Using methods object directly in the schema:

      javascript animalSchema.methods.findSimilarTypes = function(cb) { return mongoose.model('Animal').find({ type: this.type }, cb); };

      Using Schema.method() helper:

      javascript animalSchema.method('findSimilarTypes', function(cb) { return mongoose.model('Animal').find({ type: this.type }, cb); });

      3. Explanation in Simple Words with Examples:

      Why it's Used:

      Imagine you have a collection of animals in your database, and you want to find other animals of the same type. Instead of writing the same logic repeatedly, you can define a method that can be called on each animal instance to find similar types. This helps in keeping your code DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) and makes it easier to maintain.

      Example:

      ```javascript const mongoose = require('mongoose'); const { Schema } = mongoose;

      // Define a schema with a custom instance method const animalSchema = new Schema({ name: String, type: String });

      // Add a custom instance method to find similar types animalSchema.methods.findSimilarTypes = function(cb) { return mongoose.model('Animal').find({ type: this.type }, cb); };

      // Create the Animal model using the schema const Animal = mongoose.model('Animal', animalSchema);

      // Create an instance of Animal const dog = new Animal({ type: 'dog', name: 'Buddy' });

      // Use the custom method to find similar types dog.findSimilarTypes((err, similarAnimals) => { console.log(similarAnimals); }); ```

      In this example, findSimilarTypes is a custom instance method added to the Animal schema. When you create an instance of the Animal model (e.g., a dog), you can then call findSimilarTypes on that instance to find other animals with the same type. The method uses the this.type property, which refers to the type of the current animal instance. This allows you to easily reuse the logic for finding similar types across different instances of the Animal model.

      Certainly! Let's go through each part and explain it in simple terms: ### 1. `this` in Mongoose: - **What is `this`?** In JavaScript, `this` refers to the current context or object. In Mongoose, particularly within methods and middleware functions, `this` represents the instance (document) the function is currently operating on. - **Why is it used?** `this` is used to access and modify the properties of the current document. For example, in a Mongoose method, `this` allows you to refer to the fields of the specific document the method is called on. ### 2. Example: Let's use the `userSchema.pre("save", ...)`, which is a Mongoose middleware, as an example: ```javascript userSchema.pre("save", async function (next) { if (!this.isModified("password")) { next(); } else { this.password = await bcrypt.hash(this.password, 10); next(); } }); ``` - **Explanation in Simple Words:** - Imagine you have a system where users can sign up and set their password. - Before saving a new user to the database, you want to ensure that the password is securely encrypted (hashed) using a library like `bcrypt`. - The `userSchema.pre("save", ...)` is a special function that runs automatically before saving a user to the database. - In this function: - `this.isModified("password")`: Checks if the password field of the current user has been changed. - If the password is not modified, it means the user is not updating their password, so it just moves on to the next operation (saving the user). - If the password is modified, it means a new password is set or the existing one is changed. In this case, it uses `bcrypt.hash` to encrypt (hash) the password before saving it to the database. - The use of `this` here is crucial because it allows you to refer to the specific user document that's being saved. It ensures that the correct password is hashed for the current user being processed. In summary, `this` in Mongoose is a way to refer to the current document or instance, and it's commonly used to access and modify the properties of that document, especially in middleware functions like the one demonstrated here for password encryption before saving to the database.

    Tags

    Annotators

    URL

    1. each sub-portion has its own topology. The index is decentralized in nature, while the bibliographical section/notes are all somewhat centralized in form.

      I imagine this diversity of structure is what made Luhmann's slipbox so potent. In an ecosystem, neither an arboreal root system nor a mycorrhizal network are enough to stage nutrient flow; they must intertwine with each other.—oxytonic on 2024-01-08

      Luhmann's system wasn't very unique (really only in his filing system) compared with the thousands of others in use at the time or for centuries prior. The more interesting space of intertwining is between the ideas in the box and those held in memory and worked on in coordination with the brain. Too many get wrapped up in his physically visible box and forget the work done by the by the "invisible" brain.

  6. Dec 2023
    1. There will be errors in MESON – those I have copied from books, magazines and the card collections I have access to, those I have copied from the other free online databases and those I have perpetrated myself. If you find an error, do contact me about it, quoting the problem ids (PIDs).

      MESON is comprised in part of card index collections of chess problems and puzzles.

    2. http://www.bstephen.me.uk/meson/meson.pl?opt=top MESON Chess Problem Database

      Compiled using a variety of sources including card indexes.

      found via

      As for the Pirnie collection, not counted it, but I am slowly going through it for my online #ChessProblem database: https://t.co/eTDrPnX09b . Also going through several boxes of the White-Hume Collection which I have.

      — Brian Stephenson (@bstephen2) August 5, 2020
      <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
    1. It Took Decades To Create This Chess Puzzle Database (30 Thousand), 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9craX0M_2A.

      A chess School named after Genrikh Kasparyan (alternately Henrik Kasparian) houses his card index of chess puzzles with over 30,000 cards.

      The cards are stored in stacked wooden trays in a two door cabinet with 4 shelves.

      There are at least 23 small wooden trays of cards pictured in the video, though there are possibly many more. (Possibly as many as about 35 based on the layout of the cabinet and those easily visible.)

      Kasparyan's son Sergei donated the card index to the chess school.

      Each index card in the collection, filed in portrait orientation, begins with the name of the puzzle composer, lists its first publication, has a chess board diagram with the pieces arranges, and beneath that the solution of the puzzle. The cards are arranged alphabetically by the name of the puzzle composer.

      The individual puzzle diagrams appear to have been done with a stamp of the board done in light blue ink with darker blue (or purple?) and red inked stamped pieces arranged on top of it.


      u/ManuelRodriguez331 in r/Zettelkasten - Chess players are memorizing games with index cards

  7. Nov 2023
    1. When can we expect the Web to stop pretending to be the old things, and start being what it really ought to be?

      The Web already is what it is, at least—and what that is is not an imitation of the old. If anything, it ought to be more like the old, cf Tschichold.

      Things like citability are crucial, not just generally, but in that they are fundamental to what the Web was supposed to have been, and modern Web practices overwhelmingly sabotage it.

  8. dat-ecosystem-archive.github.io dat-ecosystem-archive.github.io
    1. Multi-writer will allow Dats to be modified by multiple devices and multiple authors at the same time. Each author will have their own secret key and publish a Dat with their data in it. Multi-writer fuses all of these separate Dats into one “meta-Dat” that is a view of everyone’s data combined
    1. In the West we talk about how matter—body and brain—might be the necessary conditions for the emergence of the mind. That is the scientists’ assumption. However, there is another hypothesis, which is that consciousness itself is the basic stuff of the universe and that we are the emanation of that consciousness as opposed to the origin or the evolutionary source of it. Of course, to accept that we would have to give up the idea that everything is based on some material property
      • for: materialism Vs panpsychism

      • comment

        • Husserl's phenomenology, especially his views on epoche in his later years lean more towards panpsychism although they are different in a nuanced way.
        • there is direct, pure biological phenomenological experience ,- Epoche may give us a taste of it, interment meditation may go further and the deepest meditation of decades of intense practice may re-immerse us in it.
        • Feral children who grow into feral adults, an extremely rare occurrence, may have an immersive experience of it
        • social conditioning of language bind meaning tightly to our construction and experience of objects in our sensory field
        • it is extremely difficult to disentangle our conditioned meaning with prelinguistic phenomenological experience of reality
        • spiritual awakening or enlightenment would appear to show that it is possible
        • When we attach such strong meaning to ideas, such as to scientific ideas, "material* objects, in spite of their attached, implicit symbolic complexity, appear to have a natural, autonomous and obvious existence.
        • in this way, our conscious constructs become solidified and mistaken for concrete, autonomously existent objects. Consciousness then comes to mistaken variants of consciousness itself with autonomously existent objects
    1. The idea of viewing my own life as a laboratory has always appealed to me.
      • for: life as a living lab

      • comment

        • in some sense, life is the ultimate potential laboratory and the labs in science are variants of the laboratory of life.
    1. Due to its nature, phenomenology focuses on experiences and emphasizes the sense thatsurrounds the everyday, the meaning of the human being, that is to say, the experience of whatwe are. Phenomenology is sensitive to the problems around the world of life.The world of life represents the reality of daily life, which is investigated under a non-naive eye. This world without categories or explanations, coming from science, is the life's pre-scientific dimension, characterized by being extremely rich, a world of experiences andexperience. In this world, objective sciences are examined as cultural facts. It is the sum of bordersand horizons in which worldly facts are born and established, and which have to be regeneratedby experience. This study corresponds to the worldly phenomenology.
      • for: key insight - phenomenology as life's pre-scientific dimension

      • key insight

      • paraphrase
        • Due to its nature, phenomenology focuses on experiences and emphasizes the sense that surrounds the everyday, the meaning of the human being,,
          • that is to say, the experience of what we are.
        • Phenomenology is sensitive to the problems around the world of life.
        • The world of life represents the reality of daily life, which is investigated under a non-naive eye. -This world without categories or explanations, coming from science, is the life's pre-scientific dimension, characterized by being extremely rich, a world of experiences and experience.
        • In this world, objective sciences are examined as cultural facts.
        • It is the sum of borders and horizons in which worldly facts are born and established, and which have to be regenerated by experience. This study corresponds to the worldly phenomenology.
    1. Partially ordered event-based systems are well placed to supportsuch branching-and-merging workflows, since they already makedata changes explicit in the form of events, and their support forconcurrent updates allows several versions of a dataset to coexistside-by-side.

      Event-based systems allow for divergent views as first-class citizens.

    2. in Git terms, one user can create a branch (a setof commits that are not yet part of the main document version),and another user can choose whether to merge it

      Users are empowered to create composed views out of events of their choice.

      I.e., collaboration as composition.

      I.e., divergent views as first-class citizens.

    3. we can reconstruct the state of thedocument at any past moment in time
    1. I 01:00:30 think that a proper version of the concept of synchronicity would talk about multiscale patterns so that when you're looking at electrons in the computer you would say isn't it amazing that these electrons went over here and 01:00:42 those went over there but together that's an endgate and by the way that's part of this other calculation like amazing down below all they're doing is following Maxwell's equations but looked at at another level wow they just just 01:00:54 computed the weather in you know in in Chicago so I I I think what you know I it's not about well I was going to say it's not about us and uh and our human tendency to to to to pick out patterns 01:01:07 and things like but actually I I do think it's that too because if synchronicity is is simply how things look at other scales
      • for: adjacency - consciousness - multiscale context

      • adjacency between

        • Michael's example
        • my idea of how consciousness fits into a multiscale system
      • adjacency statement
        • from a Major Evolutionary Transition of Individuality perspective, consciousness might be seen as a high level governance system of a multicellular organism
        • this begs the question: consciousness is fundamentally related to individual cells that compose the body that the consciousness appears to be tethered to
        • question: Is there some way for consciousness to directly access the lower and more primitive MET levels of its own being?
    1. When Michael Wörgötter, a Munich-based designer and educator, came across his own Schriftenkartei set earlier this year, he understood their value for designers and researchers and wanted to make them as widely accessible as possible. He scanned each card at 1200 DPI, and reprinted them in two bound volumes, along with a handy supplementary guide, written in German and English, that offers historical background. The books are available for purchase directly from Wörgötter.

      Munich-based designer and educator Michael Wörgötter digitally scanned and then printed bound copies of the 638 cards of the Schriftenkartei into two volumes with a supplementary guide for additional historical background. He subsequently donated the Schriftenkartei to the Letterform Archive.

      Digital copies of the cards are available on Flicker (https://www.flickr.com/photos/letterformarchive/albums/72177720310834741) and the Letterform Archive intends to provide digital copies in their online archive.

    2. Coles, Stephen. “This Just In: Schriftenkartei, a Typeface Index.” Letterform Archive, November 3, 2023. https://letterformarchive.org/news/schriftenkartei-german-font-index/.

      Example of a zettelkasten covering the available typefaces produced from 1958 and 1971 in West Germany.

    1. What do you do for a calendar? I'm considering moving from a moleskine GTD system to index cards for reasons you mention (waste paper, can't re-order), but love my 2-year calendar at the front

      reply to verita-servus at https://www.reddit.com/r/gtd/comments/15pfz8o/comment/k7iqjwa/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

      Last year I had a Field Notes card with the year's calendar on it that I kept with my daily cards when necessary. (I think it came included with their "Ignition" edition.) Many companies give these sorts of calendars away as PR.

      This year I used a Mizushima Perpetual Calendar Stamp to create my own custom card with the coming years' dates. (I also often use this stamp for individual months on other types of cards.) I'm sure you could also find something online to print out or draw your own if you wish. These index card specific templates might give one ideas: https://www.calendarsquick.com/printables/free.html.

      Pretty much any spread one might make in a bullet journal can be recreated in index cards. Some of the biggest full page spreads or double page spreads are still doable, they may just need to be shrunk a bit or broken up. I've also printed things onto larger 8x12" card stock and then folded them down to 4x6" before to use as either larger notes or mini-folders as necessary. Usually I do this for holding the month's receipts.

      This set of calendar cards from Present & Correct which are done in letterpress looked nice if you wanted to go more to the luxe side as well as to the larger side.

      Given the sticker market for Hobonichi and other similar planners, you could also buy some custom decorative stickers which you could attach to cards as well. And there's nothing keeping you from just writing it all out by hand if you wish.

      Options abound.

  9. Oct 2023
    1. But Alter, along with critics like Frank Kermode, Harold Bloom, David Damrosch and Gabriel Josipovici, has spent the past quarter-century rejecting both the preacherly and the historicist approaches to the Bible and devising one that would allow us to grapple with it as literature.
    1. HTML had blown open document publishing on the internet

      ... which may have really happened, per se, but it didn't wholly incorporate (subsume/cannibalize) conventional desktop publishing, which is still in 2023 dominated by office suites (a la MS Word) or (perversely) browser-based facsimiles like Google Docs. Because the Web as it came to be used turned out to be as a sui generis medium, not exactly what TBL was aiming for, which was giving everything (everything—including every existing thing) its own URL.

    1. Messages are delineated by newlines. This means, in particular, that the JSON encoding process must not introduce newlines within a message. Note however that newlines are used in this document for readability.

      Better still: separate messages by double linefeed (i.e., a blank line in between each one). It only costs one byte and it means that human-readable JSON is also valid in all readers—not just ones that have been bodged to allow non-conformant payloads under special circumstances (debugging).

    1. Rather than dealing with the invariably convoluted process of moving my content between systems — exporting it from one, importing it into another, fixing any incompatibilities, maybe removing some things that I can’t find a way to port over — I drop my Markdown files into the new website and it mostly Just Works.

      What if you just dropped your pre-rendered static assets into the new system?

    1. Morgan, Robert R. “Opinion | Hard-Pressed Teachers Don’t Have a Choice on Multiple Choice.” The New York Times, October 22, 1988, sec. Opinion. https://www.nytimes.com/1988/10/22/opinion/l-hard-pressed-teachers-don-t-have-a-choice-on-multiple-choice-563988.html.

      https://web.archive.org/web/20150525091818/https://www.nytimes.com/1988/10/22/opinion/l-hard-pressed-teachers-don-t-have-a-choice-on-multiple-choice-563988.html. Internet Archive.

      Example of a teacher pressed into multiple-choice tests for evaluation for time constraints on grading.

      He falls prey to the teacher's guilt of feeling they need to grade every single essay written. This may be possible at the higher paid levels of university teaching with incredibly low student to teacher ratios, but not at the mass production level of public education.

      While we'd like to have education match the mass production assembly lines of the industrial revolution, this is sadly nowhere near the case with current technology. Why fall prey to the logical trap?

    1. Ogilvie uncovers the story of Anna Thorpe Wetherill, an anti-slavery activist who hid escaped enslaved people in her house in Philadelphia. Mrs Thorpe focused her efforts in the slips she sent to Oxford on recording the language of slavery, submitting definitions for ‘abhorrent’, ‘abolition’, ‘accursed’ and ‘attack’. Like Margaret Murray’s, her work ensured that the language of colonisation appeared in the dictionary not just as the lingua franca of jingoistic imperialism but shaded with the stories and the voices of the colonised.
    1. Water immobilization is a cool thing! The simplest way to accomplish it is by freezing. But can you think of how water might be immobilized (so to speak) at temperatures above freezing, say at 50°F (10°C)? Think Jell-O and a new process that mimics caviar and you have two methods that nearly stop water in its tracks.

      I learned that science and cooking is always connected. Even if we don't think about it in every day life like when water evaporates or freezes it is chemistry. But what I found most interesting that I learned is how water immobilization works, or to put it more simply the science behind Jell-O. When you add gelatin to water it traps the water molecules in place which creates the sort of liquid and solid hybrid we find with Jell-O.

    1. any ideology really is a big 00:18:56 antidote to vulnerability because now we have an answer to everything and uh now we're we can justify whatever we do we don't have to be vulnerable we don't to look at the truth 00:19:10 so the ideologies are very seductive and and and they work like like the addict is in denial of the problem that he's creating for himself let alone for other people 00:19:23 that a person who is connected or addicted to an ideology will be in denial of the harm being done to themselves and particularly to others so yes i think it's useful to talk about 00:19:37 [Music] ideology as addictive
      • for: Gabor Mate, Gabor Mate - ideology as addiction, quote , quote - Gabor Mate, ideology as addiction

      • quote

        • any ideology really is a big antidote to vulnerability because now we have an answer to everything and now we can justify whatever we do we don't have to be vulnerable
        • we don't to look at the truth so the ideologies are very seductive and they work like the addict is in denial of the problem that he's creating for himself let alone for other people
        • a person who is connected or addicted to an ideology will be in denial of the harm being done to themselves and particularly to others so yes i think it's useful to talk about ideology as addictive
    1. Father emptied a card le for Margot and me and lled it withindex cards that are blank on one side. This is to become ourreading le, in which Margot and I are supposed to note down thebooks we’ve read, the author and the date. I’ve learned two newwords: “brothel” and “coquette.” I’ve bought a separate notebookfor new words.

      —Anne Frank (1929-1945), diary entry dated Saturday, February 27, 1943 (age 13)

      Anne Frank was given an empty card file by her father who filled it with index cards that were blank on one side. They were intended to use it as a "reading file" in which she and Margot were "supposed to note down the books we've read, the author and the date."


      In the same entry she mentioned that she'd bought a separate notebook for writing down new words she encountered. Recent words she mentions encountering were "brothel" and "coquette".

    1. Envisioning the next wave of emergent AI

      Are we stretching too far by saying that AI are currently emergent? Isn't this like saying that card indexes of the early 20th century are computers. In reality they were data storage and the "computing" took place when humans did the actual data processing/thinking to come up with new results.

      Emergence would seem to actually be the point which comes about when the AI takes its own output and continues processing (successfully) on it.

  10. Sep 2023
    1. I wonder what you think of a distinction between the more traditional 'scholar's box', and the proto-databases that were used to write dictionaries and then for projects such as the Mundaneum. I can't help feeling there's a significant difference between a collection of notes meant for a single person, and a collection meant to be used collaboratively. But not sure exactly how to characterize this difference. Seems to me that there's a tradition that ended up with the word processor, and another one that ended up with the database. I feel that the word processor, unlike the database, was a dead end.

      reply to u/atomicnotes at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/16njtfx/comment/k1tuc9c/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

      u/atomicnotes, this is an excellent question. (Though I'd still like to come to terms with people who don't think it acts as a knowledge management system, there's obviously something I'm missing.)

      Some of your distinction comes down to how one is using their zettelkasten and what sorts of questions are being asked of it. One of the earliest descriptions I've seen that begins to get at the difference is the description by Beatrice Webb of her notes (appendix C) in My Apprenticeship. As she describes what she's doing, I get the feeling that she's taking the same broad sort of notes we're all used to, but it's obvious from her discussion that she's also using her slips as a traditional database, but is lacking modern vocabulary to describe it as such.

      Early efforts like the OED, TLL, the Wb, and even Gertrud Bauer's Coptic linguistic zettelkasten of the late 1970s were narrow enough in scope and data collected to make them almost dead simple to define, organize and use as databases on paper. Of course how they were used to compile their ultimate reference books was a bit more complex in form than the basic data from which they stemmed.

      The Mundaneum had a much more complex flavor because it required a standardized system for everyone to work in concert against much more freeform as well as more complex forms of collected data and still be able to search for the answers to specific questions. While still somewhat database flavored, it was dramatically different from the others because of it scope and the much broader sorts of questions one could ask of it. I think that if you ask yourself what sorts of affordances you get from the two different groups (databases and word processors (or even their typewriter precursors) you find even more answers.

      Typewriters and word processors allowed one to get words down on paper quicker by a magnitude of order or two faster, and in combination with reproduction equipment, made it easier to spin off copies of the document for small scale and local mass distribution a lot easier. They do allow a few affordances like higher readability (compared with less standardized and slower handwriting), quick search (at least in the digital era), and moving pieces of text around (also in digital). Much beyond this, they aren't tremendously helpful as a composition tool. As a thinking tool, typewriters and word processors aren't significantly better than their analog predecessors, so you don't gain a huge amount of leverage by using them.

      On the other hand, databases and their spreadsheet brethren offer a lot more, particularly in digital realms. Data collection and collation become much easier. One can also form a massive variety of queries on such collected data, not to mention making calculations on those data or subjecting them to statistical analyses. Searching, sorting, and making direct comparisons also become far easier and quicker to do once you've amassed the data you need. Here again, Beatrice Webb's early experience and descriptions are very helpful as are Hollerinth's early work with punch cards and census data and the speed with which the results could be used.

      Now if you compare the affordances by each of these in the digital era and plot their shifts against increasing computer processing power, you'll see that the value of the word processor stays relatively flat while the database shows much more significant movement.

      Surely there is a lot more at play, particularly at scale and when taking network effects into account, but perhaps this quick sketch may explain to you a bit of the difference you've described.

      Another difference you may be seeing/feeling is that of contextualization. Databases usually have much smaller and more discrete amounts of data cross-indexed (for example: a subject's name versus weight with a value in pounds or kilograms.) As a result the amount of context required to use them is dramatically lower compared to the sorts of data you might keep in an average atomic/evergreen note, which may need to be more heavily recontextualized for you when you need to use it in conjunction with other similar notes which may also need you to recontextualize them and then use them against or with one another.

      Some of this is why the cards in the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae are easier to use and understand out of the box (presuming you know Latin) than those you might find in the Mundaneum. They'll also be far easier to use than a stranger's notes which will require even larger contextualization for you, especially when you haven't spent the time scaffolding the related and often unstated knowledge around them. This is why others' zettelkasten will be more difficult (but not wholly impossible) for a stranger to use. You might apply the analogy of context gaps between children and adults for a typical Disney animated movie to the situation. If you're using someone else's zettelkasten, you'll potentially be able to follow a base level story the way a child would view a Disney cartoon. Compare this to the zettelkasten's creator who will not only see that same story, but will have a much higher level of associative memory at play to see and understand a huge level of in-jokes, cultural references, and other associations that an adult watching the Disney movie will understand that the child would completely miss.

      I'm curious to hear your thoughts on how this all plays out for your way of conceptualizing it.

    1. the Bodhisattva vow can be seen as a method for control that is in alignment with, and informed by, the understanding that singular and enduring control agents do not actually exist. To see that, it is useful to consider what it might be like to have the freedom to control what thought one had next.
      • for: quote, quote - Michael Levin, quote - self as control agent, self - control agent, example, example - control agent - imperfection, spontaneous thought, spontaneous action, creativity - spontaneity
      • quote: Michael Levin

        • the Bodhisattva vow can be seen as a method for control that is in alignment with, and informed by, the understanding that singular and enduring control agents do not actually exist.
      • comment

        • adjacency between
          • nondual awareness
          • self-construct
          • self is illusion
          • singular, solid, enduring control agent
        • adjacency statement
          • nondual awareness is the deep insight that there is no solid, singular, enduring control agent.
          • creativity is unpredictable and spontaneous and would not be possible if there were perfect control
      • example - control agent - imperfection: start - the unpredictability of the realtime emergence of our next exact thought or action is a good example of this
      • example - control agent - imperfection: end

      • triggered insight: not only are thoughts and actions random, but dreams as well

        • I dreamt the night after this about something related to this paper (cannot remember what it is now!)
        • Obviously, I had no clue the idea in this paper would end up exactly as it did in next night's dream!
      • for: bio-buddhism, buddhism - AI, care as the driver of intelligence, Michael Levin, Thomas Doctor, Olaf Witkowski, Elizaveta Solomonova, Bill Duane, care drive, care light cone, multiscale competency architecture of life, nonduality, no-self, self - illusion, self - constructed, self - deconstruction, Bodhisattva vow
      • title: Biology, Buddhism, and AI: Care as the Driver of Intelligence
      • author: Michael Levin, Thomas Doctor, Olaf Witkowski, Elizaveta Solomonova, Bill Duane, AI - ethics
      • date: May 16, 2022
      • source: https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/24/5/710/htm

      • summary

        • a trans-disciplinary attempt to develop a framework to deal with a diversity of emerging non-traditional intelligence from new bio-engineered species to AI based on the Buddhist conception of care and compassion for the other.
        • very thought-provoking and some of the explanations and comparisons to evolution actually help to cast a new light on old Buddhist ideas.
        • this is a trans-disciplinary paper synthesizing Buddhist concepts with evolutionary biology
    2. “intelligence as care
      • for: wisdom and compassion, intelligence as care
      • comment
        • the slogan "intelligence as care" seems parallel to the Buddhist slogan of "wisdom and compassion" where:
          • care is analogous to compassion
          • insight is analogous to wisdom
    3. Another feature of this vision that aligns well with Buddhist ideas is the lack of a permanent, unique, unitary Self [68]. The picture given by the evolutionary cell-biological perspective is one where a cognitive agent is seen as a self-reinforcing process (the homeostatic loop), not a thing [69,70,71].
      • for: illusory self, non-self, lack of self, organism - as process, human INTERbeCOMing, bio-buddhism, biology - buddhism
    1. I'm using Kubuntu 23.04, do not use Snaps, and wish to update to Thunderbird 115 from the installed version 102. Is this possible? It appears as if Ubuntu have stopped providing non-Snap packages for mainstream apps and Thunderbird themselves offer me a tar.bz2 whilst I'd rather use packaged apps. Will Thunderbird 115 be available as an official .deb file at all; will it be in the repos? What's the best non-Snap way to install it and keep it updated?
    1. The skill inspectional reader does more than classify a book in his mental card catalogue, and achieve a superficial knowledge of its contents.

      a second use of "mental card catalogue", though somehow he doesn't seem to realize the inherent value for building knowledge... ?

  11. Aug 2023
    1. Another way I get inspiration for research ideas is learning about people's pain points during software development Whenever I hear or read about difficulties and pitfalls people encounter while I programming, I ask myself "What can I do as a programming language researcher to address this?" In my experience, this has also been a good way to find new research problems to work on.
    1. The first thing to do is to take that four-page synopsis and make a list of all the scenes that you’ll need to turn the story into a novel. And the easiest way to make that list is . . . with a spreadsheet.

      Of course spreadsheets are databases of information and one can easily and profitably put all these details into index cards which are just as easy (maybe even easier) to move around

    1. other jokes did not land because I did not know the movie star or celebrity referenced.
    2. The main thing I learned while reading through Phyllis Diller's jokes is that comedy has changed a lot since she started her career in the mid-1950s. Her comedy is focused on short one-liners that get laughs in quick succession, while today's comedy is more story-driven. Although a lot of her jokes are very time-bound due to their content, it was interesting to get a glimpse of what was happening at the time a joke was written. Each joke card has a date on it, and the cards span the 1960s to the 1990s. The topic of the jokes told a lot about what people were worried about or focused on at the time the joke was written, whether it was the inflation or student protests of the 1970s, a celebrity's many marriages, or gossip about the president at the time. While, like any comedian, some of her jokes fall flat, I appreciated Diller's hard work in meticulously recording, testing, and filing each joke in the gag file, along with her ability to make a joke about almost any topic.

      evidence of comedy shift from 50s/60s of one liners to more story-based comedy of the 2000s onward. Some of this may come about through idea links or story links as seen in some of Diller's paperclipped cards (see https://hypothes.is/a/W9Wz-EXsEe6nZxew_8BUCg).

    1. These index cards are organized alphabetically by subject ranging from accessories to world affairs and covering almost everything in between.

      Phyllis Diller's gag file was arranged alphabetically by subject and ranged from "accessories" to "world affairs".

    1. The task is to have a communitynevertheless, and to discover means of using specialties topromote it. This can be done through the Great Conversa-tion.

      The commons as a social glue

      Perhaps there's a framing of "the commons" as a larger entity from which we not only draw, but to which we contribute and in which we participate that glues us all together.

      Link under: https://hypothes.is/a/mEgAiEIFEe6trVPf7HjFhQ

    1. Thanks Sascha for an excellent primer on the internal machinations of our favorite machines beyond the usual focus on the storage/memory and indexing portions of the process.

      Said another way, a zettelkasten is part of a formal logic machine/process. Or alternately, as Markus Krajewski aptly demonstrates in Paper Machines (MIT Press, 2011), they are early analog storage devices in which the thinking and logic operations are done cerebrally (by way of direct analogy to brain and hand:manually) and subsequently noted down which thereby makes them computers.

      Just as mathematicians try to break down and define discrete primitives or building blocks upon which they can then perform operations to come up with new results, one tries to find and develop the most interesting "atomic notes" from various sources which they can place into their zettelkasten in hopes of operating on them (usually by juxtaposition, negation, union, etc.) to derive, find, and prove new insights. If done well, these newly discovered ideas can be put back into the machine as inputs to create additional newer and more complex outputs continuously. While the complexity of Lie Algebras is glorious and seems magical, it obviously helps to first understand the base level logic before one builds up to it. The same holds true of zettelkasten.

      Now if I could only get the printf portion to work the way I want...

    1. Back in 1945, there was this guy, Vannevar Bush. He was working for the US government, and one of the ideas that he put forth was, 00:01:35 "Wow, humans are creating so much information, and we can't keep track of all the books that we've read or the connections between important ideas." And he had this idea called the "memex," where you could put together a personal library of all of the books and articles that you have access to. And that idea of connecting sources captured people's imaginations.
      • for: memex, Vannevar Bush, Indyweb, Ted Nelson
    1. when you when you sort of take a step back and look at that part of the distraction and the 00:14:47 chaos that Trump and these GOP trolls deliver it's it's a wonderful Boon for the oil and gas industry and the Koch brothers and the guys that fund these campaigns and the federal Federalist 00:14:59 Society you know that's owning the Supreme Court they want to keep doing business as usual and the easiest way to do that is to have this big chaotic GOP that ignores climate change and to play 00:15:11 into what they want is the mainstream media not focusing more on climate change let alone making those two connections and a lot of mainstream media is scared to make that connection because oil companies are paying the bills 00:15:23 and CNN and every other network
      • for: polycrisis, Trumpism, Chaos, distraction, climate crisis, climate communication, complexity, adjacency climate change fossil fuel industry, adjacency climate change big oil, adjacency climate change politics big oil, quote adjacency climate change fossil fuel industry, quote adjacency climate change big oil
      • key insight
        • claim
          • One big reason that big oil is funding GOP to keep the chaotic Trump story as the main headline is to foster distraction from climate change impacts
          • big news story in the US is Donald Trump and the election, climate change impacts of extreme weather is minimized
          • the distraction of politics from a chaotic GOP is perfect distraction for the masses to ignore climate change and for big oil to continue BAU
      • paraphrase
      • quote
        • when you take a step back and look at that part of the distraction and the chaos that Trump and these GOP trolls deliver
        • it's it's a wonderful Boon for the oil and gas industry and the Koch brothers and the guys that fund these campaigns and the federal Federalist Society that's owning the Supreme Court
        • they want to keep doing business as usual and the easiest way to do that is
          • to have this big chaotic GOP that ignores climate change and
          • to play into what they want
            • the mainstream media not focusing more on climate change let alone making those two connections
          • a lot of mainstream media is scared to make that connection because oil companies are paying the bills of CNN and every other network
      • author
        • Noel Casler
    1. the victims that suffer under over consumption over 00:10:38 depletion and environmental degradation they don't really have a say so we want a fair World At Large we need to start with Fair countries and with Fair countries the prerequisite is fair cities what's needed here too is direct 00:10:51 mechanisms by which they're people can have their voices heard can hold Elites accountable and fundamentally have an opportunity to partake in the designing of the rules of the institutions and of 00:11:05 the outlying sort of overarching structures of their cities and therefore we move from cities to countries and countries to the World At Large
      • for: TPF, cosmolocal, community as building block, city as building block, W2W, quote, quote - Brian Wong, citizen assemblies, bottom-up strategy
      • paraphrase
      • quote
        • the victims that suffer under over consumption over depletion and environmental degradation don't really have a say
        • so we want a fair World
        • At Large we need to start with Fair countries
          • and with Fair countries the prerequisite is
          • fair cities
        • what's needed here too is direct mechanisms by which
          • the people can have their voices heard
          • can hold Elites accountable and
          • fundamentally have an opportunity to partake in the designing of
            • the rules of the institutions and
            • of the outlying sort of overarching structures of their cities and therefore
          • we move from cities to countries and
          • from countries to the World At Large
    1. we were designed by you know evolution through evolution we have become we were i really every organism as we'll 00:45:01 talk about in a minute is a problem-solving organism and if i can't solve problems there's like a you know like fundamentally going against the grain of what it means to be an organism
      • for: evolutionary design, organisms - problem solving
      • key insight
        • organisms as evolution's way of solving a specific problem
        • hence, organisms are by their very nature, solvers of specific evolutionary problems of how to best adapt to an environment, and that includes our own human species
    1. If you are using UUIDs instead of integers as the primary key on your models, you should set Rails.application.config.generators { |g| g.orm :active_record, primary_key_type: :uuid } in a config file.
  12. Jul 2023
    1. To paraphrase Gibbon on the Roman Emperor Gordian’s 22 acknowledged concubines, my books are for use, not ostentation.
    2. Books aren’t commoditiesAdvertisementI despise — viscerally, perhaps irrationally — the people one sometimes sees at used book stores scanning every title with a handheld device to check its online price. They regard books strictly as products and usually don’t know anything about them, only caring about what they can buy low and sell high on Amazon or eBay.
    1. Isn’t it too much time and energy consuming? I’m not provoking, I’m genuine.

      reply to IvanCyb at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/1587onp/comment/jt8zbu4/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 Asking broadly about indexing methods in zettelkasten

      When you begin you'll find yourself creating lots of index entries to start, in part because you have none, but you'll find with time that you need to do less and less because index entries already exist for most of what you would add. More importantly most of the entries you might consider duplicating are likely to be very near cards that already have those index entries.

      As an example if you have twenty cards on cultural anthropology, the first one will be indexed with "cultural anthropology" to give you a pointer of where to start. Then when you need to add a new card to that section, you'll look up "cultural anthropology" and skim through what you've got to find the closest related card and place it. You likely won't need to create a new index entry for it at all.

      But for argument's sake, let's say you intend to do some work at the intersection of "cultural anthropology" and "writing" and this card is also about "writing". Then you might want to add an index entry for "writing" from which you'll branch off in the future. This will tend to keep your index very sparse. As an example you can look at Niklas Luhmann's digitized collection to notice that he spent his career in the area of "sociology" but there are only just a few pointers from his index into his collection under that keyword. If he had tagged every single card related to "sociology" as "sociology" in his index, the index entry for it would have been wholly unusable in just a few months. Broadly speaking his entire zettelkasten is about sociology, so you need to delve a few layers in and see which subtopics, sub-subtopics, sub-sub-subtopics, etc. exist. As you go deeper into specific topics you'll notice that you branch down and out into more specific subareas as you begin to cover all the bases within that topic. If you like, for fun, you can see this happening in my digital zettelkasten on the topic of "zettelkasten" at https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=tag%3A%22zettelkasten%22. The tool only shows the top 50 tags for that subject in the side bar, but you can slowly dig down into subtopics to see what they look like and a bit of how they begin to overlap.

      Incidentally, this is one of the problems with those who tag everything with top level topic headings in digital contexts—you do a search for something important and find so much that it becomes a useless task to try to sift through it all. As a result, users need better tools to give them the ability to do more fine-grained searching, filtering, and methods of discovery.

    1. However, in many ofthese courses, the Web itself is treat-ed as a specific instantiation of moregeneral principals. In other cases, theWeb is treated primarily as a dynamiccontent mechanism that supports thesocial interactions among multiplebrowser users. Whether in CS studiesor in information-school courses, theWeb is often studied exclusively as thedelivery vehicle for content, technicalor social, rather than as an object ofstudy in its own right.

      I'd argue that this is a good thing. I think the tech industry's navelgazing does perhaps some of the worst harm wrt the problems articulated earlier.

    1. Also, for those who for some reason prefer curly brackets over Python-style indenting, it is also possible to write:

      Good and sensible.

    1. Concepts, Constructs, and Variables Last updated Aug 21, 2021 Save as PDF 2.1: Unit of Analysis 2.3: Propositions and Hypotheses picture_as_pdfFull BookPageDownloadsFull PDFImport into LMSIndividual ZIPBuy Print CopyPrint Book FilesSubmit Adoption ReportPeer ReviewDonate /*<![CDATA[*/ window.hypothesisConfig = function () { return { "showHighlights": false }; }; //localStorage.setItem('darkMode', 'false'); window.beelineEnabled = true; document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].prepend(document.getElementById('mt-screen-css'),document.getElementById('mt-print-css')); //$('head').prepend($('#mt-print-css')); //$('head').prepend($('#mt-screen-css'));/*]]>*/ Page ID26212 /*<![CDATA[*/window.addEventListener('load', ()=>LibreTexts.TOC(undefined, undefined, true));/*]]>*/ /*<![CDATA[*/ //CORS override LibreTexts.getKeys().then(()=>{ if(!$.ajaxOld){ $.ajaxOld = $.ajax; $.ajax = (url, options)=> { if(url.url && url.url.includes('.libretexts.org/@api/deki/files')) { let [subdomain, path] = LibreTexts.parseURL(); let token = LibreTexts.getKeys.keys[subdomain]; url.headers = Object.assign(url.headers || {}, {'x-deki-token':token}); } else if (typeof url === 'string' && url.includes('.libretexts.org/@api/deki/files')){ let [subdomain, path] = LibreTexts.parseURL(); let token = LibreTexts.getKeys.keys[subdomain]; options.headers = Object.assign(options.headers || {}, {'x-deki-token':token}); } return $.ajaxOld(url, options); } } });/*]]>*/ Anol BhattacherjeeUniversity of South Florida via Global Text Project

      Bhattacherjee, A. (2021). Unit of Analysis: Concepts, Constructs, and Variables. (2), 3. Libre Texts Social Sciences

    1. But I would do less than justice to Mr. Adler's achieve-ment if I left the matter there. The Syntopicon is, in additionto all this, and in addition to being a monument to the indus-try, devotion, and intelligence of Mr. Adler and his staff, astep forward in the thought of the West. It indicates wherewe are: where the agreements and disagreements lie; wherethe problems are; where the work has to be done. It thushelps to keep us from wasting our time through misunder-standing and points to the issues that must be attacked.When the history of the intellectual life of this century iswritten, the Syntopicon will be regarded as one of the land-marks in it.

      p xxvi

      Hutchins closes his preface to his grand project with Mortimer J. Adler by giving pride of place to Adler's Syntopicon.

      Adler's Syntopicon isn't just an index compiled into two books which were volumes 2 and 3 of The Great Books of the Western World, it's physically a topically indexed card index of data (a grand zettelkasten surveying Western culture if you will). It's value to readers and users is immeasurable and it stands as a fascinating example of what a well-constructed card index might allow one to do even when they don't have their own yet.

      Adler spoke of practicing syntopical reading, but anyone who compiles their own card index (in either analog or digital form) will realize the ultimate value in creating their own syntopical writing or what Robert Hutchins calls participating in "The Great Conversation" across twenty-five centuries of documented human communication.

      See also: https://hypothes.is/a/WF4THtUNEe2dZTdlQCbmXw


      The way Hutchins presents the idea of "Adler's achievement" here seems to indicate that Hutchins didn't have a direct hand in compiling or working on it directly.

    1. Inserting a maincards with lack of memory .t3_14ot4na._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } Lihmann's system of inserting a maincard is fundamentally based on a person's ability to remember there are other maincards already inserted that would be related to the card you want to insert.What if you have very poor memory like many people do, what is your process of inserting maincards?In my Antinet I handled it in an enhanced method from what I did in my 27 yrs of research notebooks which is very different then Lihmann's method.

      reply to u/drogers8 at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/14ot4na/inserting_a_maincards_with_lack_of_memory/

      I would submit that your first sentence is wildly false.

      What topic(s) cover your newly made cards? Look those up in your index and find where those potentially related cards are (whether you remember them or not). Go to that top level card listed in your index and see what's there or in the section of cards that come after it. Find the best card in that branch and file your new card(s) as appropriate. If necessary, cross-index them with sub-topics in your index to make them more findable in the future. If you don't find one or more of those topics in your index, then create a new branch and start an index entry for one or more of those terms. (You'll find yourself making lots of index entries to start, but it will eventually slow down—though it shouldn't stop—as your collection grows.)

      Ideally, with regular use, you'll likely remember more and more, especially for active areas you're really interested in. However, take comfort that the system is designed to let you forget everything! This forgetting will actually help create future surprise as well as serendipity that will actually be beneficial for potentially generating new ideas as you use (and review) your notes.

      And if you don't believe me, consider that Alberto Cevolini edited an entire book, broadly about these techniques—including an entire chapter on Luhmann—, which he aptly named Forgetting Machines!

    1. "I keep a dated diary of sorts on index cards, though they rarely go past one card a day."This is something I haven't heard of before. So, you journal/diary on index cards, one per day?

      reply to u/taurusnoises (Bob Doto) at tk

      Yep, for almost a full year now on 4x6" index cards. (Receipts for the kids: https://boffosocko.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/wp-1688411021709-scaled.jpg)

      Previously I'd used a Hobonichi Cousin (page per day) journal for this. (Perhaps I should have stayed with the A6 size instead of the larger A5 for consistency?) Decades ago (around 1988ish?) I had started using a 2 page per day DayTimer pocket planners (essentially pre-printed/timed index cards spiral bound into monthly booklets which they actually shipped in index card-like plastic boxes for storage/archival purposes). Technically I've been doing a version of this for a really long time in one form or another.

      It generally includes a schedule, to do lists (bullet journal style), and various fleeting notes/journaling similar to the older Memindex format, just done on larger cards for extra space. I generally either fold them in half for pocket storage for the day or carry about in groups for the coming week(s) when I'm away from my desk for extended periods (also with custom blank index card notebooks/pads).

      I won't go into the fact that in the 90's I had a 5,000+ person rolodex... or an index card (in the entertainment they called them buck slips) with the phone numbers and names of \~100 people I dealt with regularly when early brick cell phones didn't have great (or any) storage/functionality.

    2. reply to Bob Doto at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/14lcb4z/using_diaries_and_journals_as_source_material_for/

      Ross Ashby kept his notes in notebooks/journals but he did cross-index them by topic using index cards. Rather than reference them by notebook (name/title/date) and page number, he kept a set of handwritten running page numbers across the entirety of his notebooks, so instead of Notebook 15 page 55, 1952 he'd simply write "3786" for page 3786. This can be seen on his index card for the indexed word "determinate" as an example.

      For other examples, see: http://www.rossashby.info/journal/index/index.html

      My own notebooks are usually titled by year and date spans along with page numbers, so I'll use those roughly as Bob describes. This has made it much easier to not need to move all my older notes into a card-based system, but still make them useable and referenceable.

      For those with more explicit journaling, diary, or other writing habits, Ralph Waldo Emmerson makes an interesting example of practice as he maintained at least two commonplace books (a poetry-specific one and a general one) as well as a large set of writing journals where he experimented with writing before later publishing his work. Since there are extant (digitized and published copies) and large bodies of scholarship around them, they make an interesting case study of how his process worked and how others might imitate it.

      On the diary front, of the historical examples I've seen floating around, only Roland Barthes had a significant practice of keeping his "diary" in index card form, a portion of which was published on October 12, 2010. Mourning Diary is a collection published for the first time from Roland Barthes' 330 index cards focusing on his mourning following the death of his mother in 1977.

      Not as extensive, Vladimir Nabokov recorded a "diary" of sixty-four dreams on 118 index cards beginning on October 14, 1964 as an experiment. He was following the instructions of John Dunne, a British philosopher, in An Experiment with Time. The results were published by Princeton University Press in Insomniac Dreams: Experiments with Time by Vladimir Nabokov which was edited by Gennady Barabtarlo.

      Presumably if one keeps a diary or journal in index card form in chronological order, they can simply reference it by date and either time or card X of Y, if there are multiple card entries for a single day. I keep a dated diary of sorts on index cards, though they rarely go past one card a day.

    1. anachronistic zettelkasten

      Does he really mean anachronistic here? It doesn't seem to suit the context. While he seems to be comparing the time-ordered nature of a journal versus the non-time ordered structure of a zettelkasten, I can't help but read it from the alternate, and more common (and also pejorative) perspective. Seems odd to call it out specifically as it's not an issue with respect to any other of the more commonly used sources (books, journal articles, magazines, newspapers.)

      Might have been better to use anachronistic to modify zettel rather than zettelkasten which is a collective noun--that's the dissonance here for me.

      Compare those, like Roland Barthes, who used a slip box as a diary, which would have been chronological. I've also got a chronological section of my slip box.

  13. Jun 2023
    1. Lost history ± the web is designed for society,but crucially it neglects one key area: its history.Information on the web is today's information.Yesterday's information is deleted or overwrit-ten

      It's my contention that this is a matter of people misusing the URL (and the Web, generally); Web pages should not be expected to "update" any more than you expect the pages of a book or magazine or a journal article to be self-updating.

      We have taken the original vision of the Web -- an elaborately cross-referenced information space whose references can be mechanically dereferenced -- and rather than treating the material as imbued with a more convenient digital access method and keeping in place the well-understood practices surrounding printed copies, we compromised the entire project by treating it as a sui generis medium. This was a huge mistake.

      This can be solved by re-centering our conception of what URLs really are: citations. The resources on the other sides of a list of citations should not change. To the extent that anything ever does appear to change, it happens in the form of new editions. When new editions come out, nobody goes around snapping up the old copies and replacing it for no charge with the most recent one while holding the older copies hostage for a price (or completely inaccessible no matter the price).

    1. It certainly would have by now,were it not for the multitude of volunteer sheriffs of the information highway who ride aroundpatrolling the thing day and night.

      This piqued my interest because I wonder how there are so many volunteers on Wikipedia. It raises questions like, why are they willingly patrolling the site and making sure there is no vandalism or inaccurate information? What is in it for them? Since it says volunteers I assume there are so rewards for these people so is it just good morals or boredom? I attached a picture of a chart showing the increase in editors after COVID. I think during COVID many people were bored so they decided to take on volunteering on Wikipedia and afterwards maybe it became a hobby.

    2. so far as generalaccuracy of content is concerned, Wikipedia is comparable to conventionally compiledencyclopedias, including Britannica.

      This information definitely changed my opinions and views of Wikipedia. I feel like all throughout high school I was taught that Wikipedia was not a scholarly source so I always avoided looking on there because I didn't think it was accurate but reading the results of this study and the article attached about this study has changed my views of Wikipedia.

    1. On October 14, 1964, Vladimir Nabokov, a lifelong insomniac, began a curious experiment. Over the next eighty days, immediately upon waking, he wrote down his dreams, following the instructions he found in An Experiment with Time by the British philosopher John Dunne. The purpose was to test the theory that time may go in reverse, so that, paradoxically, a later event may generate an earlier dream. The result—published here for the first time—is a fascinating diary in which Nabokov recorded sixty-four dreams (and subsequent daytime episodes) on 118 index cards, which afford a rare glimpse of the artist at his most private.

      Vladimir Nabokov recorded sixty-four dreams on 118 index cards beginning on October 14, 1964 as an experiment. He was following the instructions of John Dunne, a British philosopher, in An Experiment with Time. The results were published by Princeton University Press in Insomniac Dreams: Experiments with Time by Vladimir Nabokov which was edited by Gennady Barabtarlo.

  14. May 2023
    1. I get by when I work by accumulating notes—a bit about everything, ideas cap-tured on the fly, summaries of what I have read, references, quotations . . . Andwhen I want to start a project, I pull a packet of notes out of their pigeonhole anddeal them out like a deck of cards. This kind of operation, where chance plays arole, helps me revive my failing memory.16

      via: Didier Eribon, Conversations with Claude Lévi-Strauss (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), vii–viii; Claude Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1963), 129f.

    2. Discussing the documentary system of surveillance, Foucault points toa “partly official, partly secret hierarchy” in Paris that had been using a card index to managedata on suspects and criminals at least since 1833.

      source apparently from: “Apparition de la fiche et constitution des sciences humaines: encore une invention que les historiens célèbrent peu.” Michel Foucault, Surveillir et punir. Naissance de la prison (Paris: Gallimard, 1975), 287, referring to A. Bonneville, De la recidive (Paris, 1844), 92–93.

    1. What's included in the 3x5 Life System: 6 months of Daily cards **Schedule version** (186 cards) Monthly/Year Goal Cards (1 year of cards) Habit Tracker Cards (1 year of cards) Weekly Review Cards (1 year of cards) Storage Box with 3x5 logo on lid Monthly dividers to keep your storage box organized Mobile Phone Sleeve Stainless Steel Stand MINI COURSE: Outlining how best to utilize the system

      via: https://www.3x5life.com/collections/frontpage/products/3x5-life-system-with-mini-course

      They apparently offer a mini course outlining the system.

      One wonders how much "why" they offer?

    1. One click to turn any web page into a card. Organize your passions.

      https://aboard.com/

      In beta May 2023, via:

      All right. @Aboard is in Beta. @richziade and I are to blame, and everyone else deserves true credit. Here's an animated GIF that explains the entire product. Check out https://t.co/i9RXiJLvyA, sign up, and we're waving in tons of folks every day. pic.twitter.com/7WS1OPgsHV

      — Paul Ford (@ftrain) May 17, 2023
      <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
    1. If you doubt my claim that internet is broad but not deep, try this experiment. Pick any firm with a presence on the web. Measure the depth of the web at that point by simply counting the bytes in their web. Contrast this measurement with a back of the envelope estimate of the depth of information in the real firm. Include the information in their products, manuals, file cabinets, address books, notepads, databases, and in each employee's head.
    1. While the today / next / someday cards are labeled, they're also color coded (white, light tan, tan) to help distinguish them.

      Though not defined in the Analog system, these differently colored cards could also be used to indicate different sorts of data, though one would need to potentially ignore the pre-printed labels of "Today", "Next", "Someday".

    1. Requesting advice for where to put a related idea to a note I'm currently writing .t3_13gcbj1._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } Hi! I am new to building a physical ZK. Would appreciate some help.Pictures here: https://imgur.com/a/WvyNVXfI have a section in my ZK about the concept of "knowledge transmission" (4170/7). The below notes are within that section.I am currently writing a note about how you have to earn your understanding... when receiving knowledge / learning from others. (Picture #1)Whilst writing this note, I had an idea that I'm not quite sure belongs on that note itself - and I'm not sure where it belongs. About how you also have to "earn" the sharing of knowledge. (Picture #2)Here are what I think my options are for writing about the idea "you have to earn your sharing of knowledge":Write this idea on my current card. 4170/7/1Write this idea on a new note - as a variant idea of my current note. 4170/7/1aWrite this idea on a new note - as a continuation of my current note. 4170/7/1/1Write this idea on a new note - as a new idea within my "knowledge transmission" branch. 4170/7/2What would you do here?

      reply to u/throwthis_throwthat at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/13gcbj1/requesting_advice_for_where_to_put_a_related_idea/

      I don't accept the premise of your question. This doesn't get said often enough to people new to zettelkasten practice: Trust your gut! What does it say? You'll learn through practice that there are no "right" answers to these. Put a number on it, file it, and move on. Practice, practice, practice. You'll be doing this in your sleep soon enough. As long as it's close enough, you'll find it. Save your mental cycles for deeper thoughts than this.

      Asking others for their advice is fine, but it's akin to asking a well-practiced mnemonist what visual image they would use to remember something. Everyone is different and has different experiences and different things that make their memories sticky for them. What works incredibly well for how someone else thinks and the level of importance they give an idea is never as useful or as "true" as how you think about it. Going with your gut is going to help you remember it better and is far likelier to make it easier to find in the future.

    1. Note taking can also be done to create a database (a la Beatrice Webb's scientific note taking).

    2. The few notes I did refer back to frequently where checklists, self-written instructions to complete regular tasks, lists (reading lists, watchlists, etc.) or recipes. Funnily enough the ROI on these notes was a lot higher than all the permanent/evergreen/zettel notes I had written.

      Notes can be used for different purposes.

      • productivity
      • Knowledge
        • basic sense-making
        • knowledge construction and dispersion

      The broad distinction is between productivity goals and knowledge. (Is there a broad range I'm missing here within the traditions?) You can take notes about projects that need to be taken care of, lists of things to do, reminders of what needs to be done. These all fall within productivity and doing and checking them off a list will help one get to a different place or location and this can be an excellent thing, particularly when the project was consciously decided upon and is a worthy goal.

      Notes for knowledge sake can be far more elusive for people. The value here generally comes with far more planning and foresight towards a particular goal. Are you writing a newsletter, article, book, or making a video or performance of some sort (play, movie, music, etc.)? Collecting small pieces of these things on a pathway is then important as you build your ideas and a structure toward some finished product.

      Often times, before getting to this construction phase, one needs to take notes to be able to scaffold their understanding of a particular topic. Once basically understood some of these notes may be useless and not need to be reviewed, or if they are reviewed, it is for the purpose of ensconcing ideas into long term memory. Once this is finished, then the notes may be broadly useless. (This is why it's simple to "hide them with one's references/literature notes.) Other notes are more seminal towards scaffolding ideas towards larger projects for summarization and dissemination to other audiences. If you're researching a topic, a fair number of your notes will be used to help you understand the basics while others will help you to compare/contrast and analyze. Notes you make built on these will help you shape new structures and new, original thoughts. (note taking for paradigm shifts). These then can be used (re-used) when you write your article, book, or other creative project.

    1. The Web does not yet meet its design goal as being a pool of knowledge that is as easy to update as to read. That level of immediacy of knowledge sharing waits for easy-to-use hypertext editors to be generally available on most platforms. Most information has in fact passed through publishers or system managers of one sort or another.

    1. For $1,900.00 ?

      reply to rogerscrafford at tk

      Fine furniture comes at a fine price. 🗃️🤩 I suspect that it won't sell for quite a while and one could potentially make an offer at a fraction of that to take it off their hands. It might bear considering that if one had a practice large enough to fill half or more, then that price probably wouldn't seem too steep for the long term security and value of the contents.

      On a price per card of storage for some of the cheaper cardboard or metal boxes you're going to pay about $0.02-0.03 per card, but you'd need about 14 of those to equal this and those aren't always easy to stack and access regularly. With this, even at the full $1,900, you're looking at storage costs of $0.10/card, but you've got a lot more ease of use which will save you a lot of time and headache as more than adequate compensation, particularly if you're regularly using the approximately 20,400 index cards it would hold. Not everyone has the same esthetic, but I suspect that most would find that this will look a lot nicer in your office than 14 cheap cardboard boxes. That many index cards even at discount rates are going to cost you about $825 just in cards much less beautiful, convenient, and highly usable storage.

      Even for some of the more prolific zettelkasten users, this sort of storage is about 20 years of use and if you compare it with $96/year for Notion or $130/year for Evernote, you're probably on par for cost either way, but at least with the wooden option, you don't have to worry about your note storage provider going out of business a few years down the line. Even if you go the "free" Obsidian route, with computers/storage/backups over time, you're probably not going to come out ahead in the long run. It's not all apples to apples comparison and there are differences in some of the affordances, but on balance and put into some perspective, it's probably not the steep investment it may seem.

      And as an added bonus, while you're slowly filling up drawers, as a writer you might appreciate the slowly decreasing wine/whiskey bottle storage over time? A 5 x 8 drawer ought to fit three bottles of wine or as many fifths of Scotch. It'll definitely accommodate a couple of magnums of Jack Daniels. 🥃🍸🍷My experience also tells me that an old fashioned glass can make a convenient following block in card index boxes.

      A crystal old fashioned glass serves as a following block to some index cards and card dividers in a Shaw-Walker card index box (zettelkasten). On the table next to the index are a fifth of Scotch (Glenmorangie) and a bowl of lemons.

    1. almost all beginners to RDF go through a sort of "identity crisis" phase, where they confuse people with their names, and documents with their titles. For example, it is common to see statements such as:- <http://example.org/> dc:creator "Bob" . However, Bob is just a literal string, so how can a literal string write a document?

      This could be trivially solved by extending the syntax to include some notation that has the semantics of a well-defined reference but the ergonomics of a quoted string. So if the notation used the sigil ~ (for example), then ~"Bob" could denote an implicitly defined entity that is, through some type-/class-specific mechanism associated with the string "Bob".

  15. Apr 2023
    1. Sorkin had been a heavy smoker since high school — two packs a day of Merits — and the habit had long been inextricable from his writing process. “It was just part of it, the way a pen was part of it,” he said. “I don’t want to talk about it too much, because I’ll start to salivate.”

      For Aaron Sorkin smoking was a tool that was part of his writing process.

    1. Memindex Phondex Office Phone Number Organizer Styrene NOS

      Memindex, Inc. of Rochester, NY manufactured a plastic "Phonedex" in the mid-20th century. It was made of Dow Chemical Styrene and sat underneath a standard rotary dial telephone and contained index cards with one's lists of phone numbers on them.

      Phonedex

    1. 44:19 - [Claudia] The classification is anything but indifferent.44:24 The manner of shelving the books44:26 is meant to impart certain suggestions to the reader,44:30 who, looking on the shelves for one book,44:33 is attracted by the kindred ones next to it,44:36 glances at the sections above and below,44:39 and finds himself involved in a new trend of thought44:43 which may lend to additional interests44:46 to the one he was pursuing.

      The classification is anything but indifferent. The manner of shelving the books is meant to impart certain suggestions to the reader, who, looking on the shelves for one book, is attracted by the kindred ones next to it, glances at the sections above and below, and finds himself involved in a new trend of thought which may lend to additional interests to the one he was pursuing.<br /> —Claudia Wedepohl on the design of Warburg's library, [00:44:19] in Aby Warburg: Metamorphosis and Memory

      Provides a similar sort of description of the push towards serendipity and discovery found in one's zettelkasten as well as that in Melvil Dewey's library classification and arrangements.

    1. Seeking to keep Mr. Jory entertained, he idly tossed off a stunt in which he recalled the location of all 52 cards in a shuffled deck.

      Harry Lorayne, having run out of card tricks to entertain actor Victor Jory one evening, invented a trick in which he recalled the location of all the cards in a deck of playing cards. The feat so impressed Jory that Lorayne made it part of his magic act in the Catskills.

    2. Mr. Lorayne did not claim to have invented the mnemonic system that was his stock in trade: As he readily acknowledged, it harked back to classical antiquity. But he was among the first people in the modern era to recognize its use as entertainment, and to parlay it into a highly successful business.

      Harry Lorayne recognized the use of mnemonics as a form of entertainment and parlayed it into a career. Others before him, primarily magicians like David Roth had paved the way for some of this practice.

    1. something so ephemeral as a URL

      Well, they're not supposed to be ephemeral. They're supposed to be as durable as the title of whatever book you're talking about.

    1. We could saythat he was the first progressive educator not simply because he encouraged hiscontemporaries and successors to think about the child as a special kind oflearner, but also because of his views on education’s role in helping to developan open, liberal polity. A political system, he said, needs people who are fair,open-minded, and think for themselves; it doesn’t want people who aresubservient to authority.

      We could say first, though I highly suspect that his ideas came from somewhere else...

    1. You should only write on the front side of the paper slips, so it is possible to read the note during searches without the need to take it out.

      Luhmann mentions that he only wrote on one side so that he didn't need to physically remove notes from the box when searching it. There is a level of lost productivity if one needs to physically remove a card to read it and then replace it; this lost productivity is magnified if one uses their slip box regularly over the span of many years.

    1. Values, in the way C.S Lewis and theologians might define them, come from an alignment with true reality. They are not commodities for us to trade in a narcissistic quest for self-fulfillment, or things we can make up, choose from a pile and build into our technology.From this perspective, real values come from beyond humans. From the divine. They are not something that can be quantified into ones and zeroes, but something that can be felt. Something that has quality.

      Key finding - Values cannot be quantified - but are something felt, - and which has a quality (qualia)

  16. Mar 2023
    1. https://www.3m.co.uk/3M/en_GB/post-it-notes/ideas/articles/make-the-leap-from-to-do-to-done-with-the-scrum-methodology/

      "The Scrum method" described here, similar to the Kanban method, the Memindex method, tickler systems, or other card index as productivity systems, seems to be a productized name for selling Post-it Notes.

      Scrum method consists of a project broken down into "story" rows with "to do" items in columns which progress along to "in process", "to verify", and finally "done".

      Other productized names (particular to the note taking space): Antinet zettelkasten, Linking Your Thinking, Second Brain, etc.

    1. Basic statistics regarding the TLL: - ancient Latin vocabulary words: ca. 55,000 words - 10,000,000 slips - ca. 6,500 boxes - ca. 1,500 slips per box - library 32,000 volumes - contributors: 375 scholars from 20 different countries - 12 Indo-European specalists - 8 Romance specialists - 100 proof-readers - ca. 44,000 words published - published content: 70% of the entire vocabulary - print run: 1,350 - Publisher: consortium of 35 academies from 27 countries on 5 continents

      Longest remaining words: - non / 37 boxes of ca 55,500 slips - qui, quae, quod / 65 boxes of ca. 96,000 slips - sum, esse, fui / 54.5 boxes of ca. 81,750 slips - ut / 35 boxes of ca 52,500 slips

      Note that some of these words have individual zettelkasten for themselves approaching the size of some of the largest personal collections we know about!

      [18:51]

    1. Based on the history and usage of horreum here in this first episode of the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae podcast, a project featuring a 10+ million slip zettelkasten at its core, I can't help but think that not only is the word ever so apropos for an introduction, but it does quite make an excellent word for translating the idea of card index in English or Zettelkasten from German into Latin.

      My horreum is a storehouse for my thoughts and ideas which nourishes my desire to discover and build upon my knowledge.

      This seems to be just the sort of thing that Jeremy Cherfas might appreciate on multiple levels.

      https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/download/nxm28u/Horreum.mp3

    1. in this example, use of insects for animal feed and food for humans presents a Knowable and Avoidable unintended consequence.
      • Example
        • insect for animal feed
          • as a example of knowable and avoidable unintended consequence
    2. The unintended consequence was both Unknowable due to the lack of foresight regarding the potential for insects as feed, and Avoidable had more specific wording been used.
      • Example of unknowable and avoidable
      • The same insect problem above
        • can also be classified as
          • unknowable and
          • avoidable
        • in EU regulation (EC) No 999/2001
          • that does not distinguish between
            • ruminants and
            • insects,
          • in effect banning the use of insects in
            • aquaculture,
            • poultry and
            • pig feed
    1. Die schiere Menge sprengt die Möglichkeiten der Buchpublikation, die komplexe, vieldimensionale Struktur einer vernetzten Informationsbasis ist im Druck nicht nachzubilden, und schließlich fügt sich die Dynamik eines stetig wachsenden und auch stetig zu korrigierenden Materials nicht in den starren Rhythmus der Buchproduktion, in der jede erweiterte und korrigierte Neuauflage mit unübersehbarem Aufwand verbunden ist. Eine Buchpublikation könnte stets nur die Momentaufnahme einer solchen Datenbank, reduziert auf eine bestimmte Perspektive, bieten. Auch das kann hin und wieder sehr nützlich sein, aber dadurch wird das Problem der Publikation des Gesamtmaterials nicht gelöst.

      Google translation:

      The sheer quantity exceeds the possibilities of book publication, the complex, multidimensional structure of a networked information base cannot be reproduced in print, and finally the dynamic of a constantly growing and constantly correcting material does not fit into the rigid rhythm of book production, in which each expanded and corrected new edition is associated with an incalculable amount of effort. A book publication could only offer a snapshot of such a database, reduced to a specific perspective. This too can be very useful from time to time, but it does not solve the problem of publishing the entire material.


      While the writing criticism of "dumping out one's zettelkasten" into a paper, journal article, chapter, book, etc. has been reasonably frequent in the 20th century, often as a means of attempting to create a linear book-bound context in a local neighborhood of ideas, are there other more complex networks of ideas which we're not communicating because they don't neatly fit into linear narrative forms? Is it possible that there is a non-linear form(s) based on network theory in which more complex ideas ought to better be embedded for understanding?

      Some of Niklas Luhmann's writing may show some of this complexity and local or even regional circularity, but perhaps it's a necessary means of communication to get these ideas across as they can't be placed into linear forms.

      One can analogize this to Lie groups and algebras in which our reading and thinking experiences are limited only to local regions which appear on smaller scales to be Euclidean, when, in fact, looking at larger portions of the region become dramatically non-Euclidean. How are we to appropriately relate these more complex ideas?

      What are the second and third order effects of this phenomenon?

      An example of this sort of non-linear examination can be seen in attempting to translate the complexity inherent in the Wb (Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache) into a simple, linear dictionary of the Egyptian language. While the simplicity can be handy on one level, the complexity of transforming the entirety of the complexity of the network of potential meanings is tremendously difficult.

    2. Ausgangspunkt und Zentrum der Arbeit am Altägyptischen Wörterbuch ist die Anlage eines erschöpfenden Corpus ägyptischer Texte.

      In the early twentieth century one might have created a card index to study a large textual corpus, but in the twenty first one is more likely to rely on a relational database instead.

    1. Die vermutlich zwischen 1952 und Anfang 1997 entstandenen Aufzeichnungen, mithilfe derer Luhmann die Ergebnisse seiner exzessiven und interdisziplinär breit angelegten Lektüre systematisch organisiert hat, dokumentieren die Theorieentwicklung auf eine einzigartige Weise, so dass man die Sammlung auch als eine intellektuelle Autobiographie verstehen kann.

      The researchers at the Niklas Luhmann-Archive studying Niklas Luhmann's Zettelkasten consider that "the collection can be understood as an intellectual autobiography" (translation mine) even though his slips were generally undated.

    1. Sustainable consumption scholars offer several explanations forwhy earth-friendly, justice-supporting consumers falter when itcomes to translating their values into meaningful impact.
      • Paraphrase
      • Claim
        • earth-friendly, justice-supporting consumers cannot translate their values into meaningful impact.
      • Evidence
      • “the shading and distancing of commerce” Princen (1997) is an effect of information assymetry.
        • producers up and down a supply chain can hide the negative social and environmental impacts of their operations, putting conscientious consumers at a disadvantage. //
      • this is a result of the evolution of alienation accelerated by the industrial revolution that created the dualistic abstractions of producers and consumers.
      • Before that, producers and consumers lived often one and the same in small village settings
      • After the Industrial Revolution, producers became manufacturers with imposing factories that were cutoff from the general population
      • This set the conditions for opaqueness that have plagued us ever since. //

      • time constraints, competing values, and everyday routines together thwart the rational intentions of well-meaning consumers (Røpke 1999)

      • assigning primary responsibility for system change to individual consumers is anathema to transformative change (Maniates 2001, 2019)
      • This can be broken down into three broad categories of reasons:

        • Rebound effects
          • https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=jevon%27s+paradox
          • increases in consumption consistently thwart effciency-driven resource savings across a wide variety of sectors (Stern 2020). -sustainability scholars increasingly critique “effciency” both as:
            • a concept (Shove 2018)
            • as a form of“weak sustainable consumption governance” (Fuchs and Lorek 2005).
          • Many argue that, to be successful, effciency measures must be accompanied by initiatives that limit overall levels of consumption, that is, “strong sustainable consumption governance.
        • Attitude-behavior gap

        • Behavior-impact gap

    1. General instructions for using a Memindex

      HOW IT IS USED <br /> Things to be done today, jot on face card. Things to be done tomorrow or next Friday, jot on card for that day. Things to keep before you until done, jot on opposite front card. A matter for January 10th jot on a short card put under the band till you return to your desk, then file next to card for January 10th when it will come out and refresh your memory.

      Things to be done when in New York or Chicago jot on card "N" or "C." The new address of Mr. Jones, under "J." Ideas on advertising jot on card tabbed "adv." Things for your clerk to do, on his card , etc., etc. Retire today's card tonight, carrying forward things not completed and put next card in the file in has proved that almost back of pocket case. The alphabet enables one to index all jottings for instant reference. This system is very comprehensive yet perfectly simple. You soon the learn to depend on it every hour of every day.

      Within the general instructions in a 1904 Memindex advertisement (next to an ad for "Genuine Edison Incandescent Lamps") we see the general ideas of indexing things into the future and carrying undone tasks forward, just as is done in the bullet journal method.

  17. books.googleusercontent.com books.googleusercontent.com
    1. mindex.THIS is the name Howard L. Wilson, of Rochester, N.Y.,hasgivenhisvestpocket cardsystem.Itisa

      Geyers Stationer. “Memindex Advertisement.” Geyer’s Stationer: Devoted to the Interests of the Stationery, Fancy Goods and Notion Trades, September 15, 1904. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Geyer_s_Stationer/L507AQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0

      Howard L. Wilson of Rochester, NY named his vest pocket card index system the Memindex.

    1. Lisa Jacobs, the founder and chief executive of Imagine It Done, a home organization service in New York City, said that out of hundreds of projects in the past few years, she can recall only three requests to organize books. In one of those examples, the arranged books were treated as a backdrop — to be admired, but not read. “The clientele that has collected books through the years are not as numerous for us,” she said.

      Any book collector worth their salt will already have in mind the way they want their collection arranged. Only someone who wants to use it as wallpaper would have a service arrange it.

      I wonder what the other two cases were?

    1. In a postwar world in which educational self-improvement seemed within everyone’s reach, the Great Books could be presented as an item of intellectual furniture, rather like their prototype, the Encyclopedia Britannica (which also backed the project).

      the phrase "intellectual furniture" is sort of painful here...

    1. Poem from the inside back cover of a 1913 Memindex Catalog:

      JUST JOT IT DOWN.

      If you’re going to meet a man<br /> Jot it down<br /> If you’ve got a little plan<br /> Jot it down<br /> If you never can remember<br /> Your requirements for September<br /> ’Till October or November<br /> Jot ’em down.

      If you’ve got a note to pay<br /> Jot it down<br /> If its due the first of May<br /> Jot it down<br /> If collections are so slow<br /> That to meet the note you know<br /> You must dun old Richard Roe<br /> Jot it down

      If you have a happy thought<br /> Jot it down<br /> If there’s something to be bought<br /> Jot it down<br /> Whether duty calls or pleasure<br /> If you’re busy or at leisure<br /> It will help you beyond measure<br /> Jot it down

      If there’re facts that you’d retain<br /> Jot ’em down<br /> If you’ve got to meet a train<br /> Jot it down<br /> If at work or only play<br /> If at home or far away<br /> In the night or in the day<br /> Jot it down

    2. c.1913 Wilson Memindex Desk Organzier Catalog Price List Booklet Rolodex Prequel

      In a 1913 catalog for the Wilson Memindex, the company suggested putting to do items and one's schedule on one side of the card and potentially keeping one's accounts or a diary on the reverse side.

    1. Durante años, los inventos han ampliado los poderes físicos de las personas en lugar de los poderes de su mente. Argumenta que están a la mano los instrumentos que, si se desarrollan adecuadamente, darán a la sociedad acceso y dominio sobre el conocimiento heredado de las épocas. La perfección de estos instrumentos pacíficos, sugiere, debería ser el primer objetivo de nuestros científicos.

      Esto es buenísimo para la innovación de nuevos inventos que pueden beneficiar la humanidad por medio de la imaginación del ser humano pero creo se debe ser limitado debido a la gran imaginación que contiene el ser humano pero dicha imaginación se puede crear ideas buenas, malas y desechables.

    1. 1930s Wilson Memindex Co Index Card Organizer Pre Rolodex Ad Price List Brochure

      archived page: https://web.archive.org/web/20230310010450/https://www.ebay.com/itm/165910049390

      Includes price lists

      List of cards includes: - Dated tab cards for a year from any desired. - Blank tab cards for jottings arranged by subject. - These were sold in 1/2 or 1/3 cut formats - Pocket Alphabets for jottings arranged by letter. - Cash Account Cards [without tabs]. - Extra Record Cards for permanent memoranda. - Monthly Guides for quick reference to future dates. - Blank Guides for filing records by subject.. - Alphabet Guides for filing alphabetically.

      Memindex sales brochures recommended the 3 x 5" cards (which had apparently been standardized by 1930 compared to the 5 1/2" width from earlier versions around 1906) because they could be used with other 3 x 5" index card systems.

      In the 1930s Wilson Memindex Company sold more of their vest pocket sized 2 1/4 x 4 1/2" systems than 3 x 5" systems.

      Some of the difference between the vest sized and regular sized systems choice was based on the size of the particular user's handwriting. It was recommended that those with larger handwriting use the larger cards.

      By the 1930's at least the Memindex tag line "An Automatic Memory" was being used, which also gave an indication of the ubiquity of automatization of industrialized life.

      The Memindex has proved its success in more than one hundred kinds of business. Highly recommended by men in executive positions, merchants, manufacturers, managers, .... etc.

      Notice the gendering of users specifically as men here.

      Features: - Sunday cards were sold separately and by my reading were full length tabs rather than 1/6 tabs like the other six days of the week - Lids were custom fit to the bases and needed to be ordered together - The Memindex Jr. held 400 cards versus the larger 9 inch standard trays which had space for 800 cards and block (presumably a block to hold them up or at an angle when partially empty).

      The Memindex Jr., according to a price sheet in the 1930s, was used "extensively as an advertising gift".

      The Memindex system had cards available in bundles of 100 that were labeled with the heading "Things to Keep in Sight".

    1. There's some interesting comparison to the ideas here and the long term state-of-the-art in information management, particularly in business and library settings which Bush wholly ignores.

      Most fascinatingly Bush "coins" memex here, but prior art for the Memindex as a similar product in the office/business productivity space easily goes back to 1906 and was popular to and through at least the early 1950s.

      For details on this, see:

      https://boffosocko.com/2023/03/09/the-memindex-method-an-early-precursor-of-the-memex-hipster-pda-43-folders-gtd-basb-and-bullet-journal-systems/

    1. Memindex

      Let YOUR MIND GO FREE Do not tax your brain trying to re- member. Get the MEMINDEX HABIT and you can FORGET WITH IMPUNITY. An ideal reminder and handy system for keeping all memoranda where they will appear at the right time. Saves time, money, opportunity. A brain saver. No other device answers its purpose. A Great Help for Busy Men, Used and recommended by Bankers, Man- ufacturers, Salesmen, Lawyers, Doctors, Merchants, Insurance Men, Architects, Ed- ucators, Contractors, Railway Managers Engineers, Ministers, etc., all over the world. Order now and get ready to Begin the New Year Right. Rest of '06 free with each outfit. Express prepaid on receipt of price. Personal checks accepted

      Also a valuable card index for desk use. Dated cards from tray are carried in the handy pocket case, 2 to 4 weeks at a time. To-day's card always at the front. No leaves to turn. Helps you to PLAN YOUR WORK WORK YOUR PLAN ACCOMPLISH MORE You need it. Three years' sales show that most all business and professional men need it. GET IT NOW. WILSON MEMINDEX CO. 93 Mills St., Rochester, N. Y.

      Interesting that the use of the portmanteau memindex (as memory + index) for a card index being used to supplement one's memory. It can't go unnoticed that the Wilson Memindex Co. was manufacturing and selling these as early as 1906, several decades before Vannevar Bush's use of the word Memex which seems derivative and removes more of the traces of index from the root.

      Note the use of card sizes 2 3/4 x 4 1/2" and 3 x 5 1/2" for this system.

    2. AndMr.H. BeebeofChicago,using butonedrawer,says:"IthasmademekeepappointmentsandlayoutmyworktoincreasethethingsIcandoinaday."

      And Mr. H. Beebe of Chicago, using but one drawer, says: "It has made me keep appointments and lay out my work to increase the things I can do in a day. "

    3. Also saves balf the time in filing correspondence , enabling one girlto do the work of two. This saving alone will quickly pay installationexpense.

      Example of sales touting productivity in a filing system.

      Note also the specific gendering of the clerk here in 1906.

    1. The only possible opening for a statement of this kind is that I detest writing. The process itself epitomizes the European concept of "legitimate" thinking; what is written has an importance that is denied the spoken. My culture, the Lakota culture, has an oral tradition, so I ordinarily reject writing. It is one of the white world's ways of destroying the cultures of non-European peoples, the imposing of an abstraction over the spoken relationship of a people.
      • Quote
      • The only possible opening for a statement of this kind is that I detest writing. The process itself epitomizes the European concept of "legitimate" thinking; what is written has an importance that is denied the spoken. My culture, the Lakota culture, has an oral tradition, so I ordinarily reject writing. It is one of the white world's ways of destroying the cultures of non-European peoples, the imposing of an abstraction over the spoken relationship of a people.

      • Comment

      • One critique of this statement is that it wasn't only European cultures that created written language. It has a rich non European history.
      • also, from an evolutionary perspective, written language use a major variable Facilitating Evolutionary Transition (FET) for a Major Evolutionary Transition (MET) of our species.

      • https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=Major+Evolutionary+Transition

      • Title

        • Revolution and American Indians: “Marxism is as Alien to My Culture as Capitalism"
      • Author

        • Russell Means
      • Context

        • The following speech was given by Russell Means in July 1980, before several thousand people who had assembled from all over the world for the Black Hills International Survival Gathering, in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
        • It was Russell Means's most famous speech.
    1. In der aktuellen Folge „research_tv“ der Universität Bielefeld erklären Professor Dr. André Kieserling, Johannes Schmidt und Martin Löning, wie sie sich der so genannten „intellektuellen Autobiographie“ Luhmanns annähern.

      Translation:

      In the current episode "research_tv" of Bielefeld University, Professor Dr. André Kieserling, Johannes Schmidt and Martin Löning how they approach Luhmann's so-called “intellectual autobiography”.

      !!

  18. Feb 2023
    1. I find it very tiring haha. As I said in another comment, processing a single chapter can take me a full day or two. However, I keep reminding myself that I would rather spend a day processing a chapter well, and have literature notes to serve me a lifetime (potentially, at least), rather than reading a chapter in two hours and not remember a single thing the next day. When I REALLY need a reminder of this, I just look at my "Backlog" folder which contains old "notes" that are now pretty much useless: I didn't use a reference manager consistently during my first two years of PhD so there are a lot of citations which are unreliable; I didn't really summarise texts, I only read them and highlighted; I didn't use the cloud for a long time, so I lost a lot of notes; and I didn't have Obsidian, so a lot of my notes are just contained within the context of the place I read them, rather than being connected. Seeing three years worth of useless materials, and knowing that I read a couple hundred of articles/chapters but I have nothing to show for it, that makes me more patient when writing my literature notes now. However I also find it very exciting that I can future-proof some of my notes. I feel like I'm working for my future self.

      A partial answer to note taking why.

    1. The reason is that the journaling is in part an accumulative method: There is a long period of low-structured input which benefits manifest first acutely (writing in itself seems to be healing through understanding). After you amassed a time-line of thoughts you can try to find throughlines and patterns which then gives you access to deep insights if you have the right tools. Most of the time people use psychologists which I think is in a similar way problematic that people use physical therapists for too much of their problems: Many problems are best solved by the person that has immediate access to the ego-perspective (phenomenological layer, subjective access, etc.) of the problem. This is of course dependent on self-education on basic concepts of what I call true self-care. Self-care seems to be associated with stuff like doing pleasant things (hot bath, nice walks in the sun) nowadays. If you take the antifragile nature of us humans into account this is just another way of the modern hedonist to keep stuck. (This is important for my approach to incorporate journaling into the Zettelkasten Method)

      —Sasha Fast https://forum.zettelkasten.de/profile/Sascha

      I love the deeper definition and distinction of self-care here.

    1. One online company, Books by the Foot, offers to ‘curate a library that matches both your personality and your space’, promising to provide books ‘based on colour, binding, subject, size, height, and more to create a collection that looks great’.
    2. Unlike books, tablets do not offer a medium for demonstrating taste and refinement. That is why interior decorators use shelves of books to create an impression of elegance and refinement in the room.
    3. If Seneca or Martial were around today, they would probably write sarcastic epigrams about the very public exhibition of reading text messages and in-your-face displays of texting. Digital reading, like the perusing of ancient scrolls, constitutes an important statement about who we are. Like the public readers of Martial’s Rome, the avid readers of text messages and other forms of social media appear to be everywhere. Though in both cases the performers of reading are tirelessly constructing their self-image, the identity they aspire to establish is very different. Young people sitting in a bar checking their phones for texts are not making a statement about their refined literary status. They are signalling that they are connected and – most importantly – that their attention is in constant demand.