30 yrs worth of online notebooks by theme by Cosma Shalizi. Shalizi is an assoc prof of stats at Carnegie Mellon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosma_Shalizi Mentioned in Oct 2024 blogpost http://bactra.org/weblog/30-years-of-notebooks.html he started them in sept '94, based on a list of topics of interest he wrote out (orginally intended to use as filter for Usenet). Making such a list of topics is very commonplace like.

Sortes Vergilianae: taking random quotes from Vergilius and interpret their meaning either as prediction or as advice. The latter as a trigger for self reflection makes it a #leeswijze #reading manner that is non-linear

Vgl. [[Skillful reading is generally non-linear 20210303154148]]

St. Antonius (of Egypt, 3rd century) is said to have read the bible this way (sortes sanctorum it's called if you use it for divination), and Augustinus followed that thus picking up Paul's letter to the Romans and getting converted in the 4th century.

Is this ripping up of the text into isolated paragraphs to access and read a text an early input into commonplace books and florilegia? As a gathering of such things?

Mentioned in [[Information edited by Ann Blair]] in lemma 'Readers' p730.