917 Matching Annotations
  1. Feb 2024
    1. Various modern figures such as the chair of the Federal Reserve in the United States, the prime minister in parliamentary systems, the president of the Swiss Confederation, the chief justice of the United States, the chief justice of the Philippines, the archbishop of Canterbury of the Anglican Communion and the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople of the Eastern Orthodox Church fall under both senses: bearing higher status and various additional powers while remaining still merely equal to their peers in important senses.

      This is still relevant today as the political form of Republicanism is still present nowadays.

    1. The Getae (/ˈdʒiːtiː, ˈɡiːtiː/ JEE-tee, GHEE-tee) or Gets (/dʒɛts, ɡɛts/ JETS, GHETS; Ancient Greek: Γέται, singular Γέτης) were a Thracian-related[1] tribe that once inhabited the regions to either side of the Lower Danube, in what is today northern Bulgaria and southern Romania.

      Getae were a Thracian tribe

    1. If this is true it refers not to its capture in the Second Punic War (211 BC), but to its submission to Rome in 338 BC. This places the date of foundation at about 600 BC, while Etruscan power was at its highest.[3]

      Etruscans submitted in 338 BC and were completely taken over in 211 (Second Punic wars)

    1. "HAD THEY BEEN WILLING TO ENJOY THE FRUITS OF THEIR LABOURS IN PEACE AND TRANQUILLITY, THE GREATEST AND BEST PART OF THE WORLD WAS THEIR OWN. IF THEY MUST HAVE VICTORIES AND TRIUMPHS, WHAT SCYTHIAN HORSE, WHAT PARTHIAN ARROWS, WHAT INDIAN TREASURES COULD HAVE RESISTED 70,000 ROMANS, LED ON BY POMPEY AND CAESAR?" PLUTARCH

      What if Caesar and Pompey fought together?

    1. The Battle of Dyrrachium (or Dyrrhachium) took place from April to late July 48 BC near the city of Dyrrachium, modern day Durrës in what is now Albania. It was fought between Gaius Julius Caesar and an army led by Gnaeus Pompey during Caesar's civil war.

      This battle happened before the deciding battle at Pharsalus

    1. Commentarii de Bello Gallico (.mw-parser-output .IPA-label-small{font-size:85%}.mw-parser-output .references .IPA-label-small,.mw-parser-output .infobox .IPA-label-small,.mw-parser-output .navbox .IPA-label-small{font-size:100%}Classical Latin: [kɔm.mɛnˈtaː.ɾi.iː deː ˈbɛl.loː ˈɡal.lɪ.koː]; English: Commentaries on the Gallic War), also Bellum Gallicum (English: Gallic War), is Julius Caesar's firsthand account of the Gallic Wars, written as a third-person narrative
    1. 1. We first read an excerpt from Ibn Khaldun, a great historian of the Muslim world. His family came from Muslim Spain, but he was born in North Africa. He spent many years working in the administrations of local rulers, until he eventually moved to Egypt, where he died in 1406. We will encouter him quite often in this course and will discuss his life in week 6. This week, we turn to his famous book The Muqaddimah (or, Introduction), in which he lays out his vision of history, its patterns and purpose. In the excerpt that we read this week he is trying to make sense of a question that should bother us too: how were the Arabs (meaning, pre-Islamic Arabs, not Arabs in the modern sense), a fragmented society, able to conquer the known world and establish their rule over it? What do you think of his answer, is it any good? 2. The other source we read this week is by another famous Muslim historian, al-Tabari. al-Tabari was originally from Iran, but lived most of his life in Baghdad, where he died in 923. He wrote a massive historical work, History of Messengers (or Prophets) and Kings, in which he collected all he knew about the world from its creation to his days. Translated into English in its entirety this work takes up 40 volumes. When we say that al-Tabari wrote this book, we need to understand that his role was often that of an editor, not an author: he selected, arranged and edited accounts that he found in the works of others. Usually, he names his sources. In the excerpt we read today, al-Tabari is telling what happened before a major battle between the Persians (representing the Sasanian Empire) and the Arabs, the battle of Qadisiyya that took place in the mid-630s (perhaps, in 636). On the eve of the battle, the Persians want to talk and the Arabs (Muslims) send an envoy. Here you have a vivid account of how this messenger arrives to the assembled Persians. Historically this encounter is not important: the battle took place regardless and the Arabs won. But the narrative is significant for how it shows the values of the two sides involved in the fight. So what are these values? For the Arab side, to what extent are their ethnic (that's the way Arabs are) and to what extent religious (that's the way Muslims are)?
    1. To Al-Jallad, however, the inscriptional evidence, containing many references to peoples, events, and places that appear in the Quran and other early Islamic narratives, suggests the opposite: an evolution of Arabian ideas and practices. “This kind of society would have been very similar to the first audience of the Quran,” Al-Jallad said. “The inscriptions tell us what their world was like.”

      (see previous) Or perhaps, there was a slow evolution of ideas and practices, rather than a radical break?

    2. But traditional Muslim theology, along with much Western scholarship, regards the birth of Islam as a radical break with Arabia’s past.

      Islam was a radical break with the previous Arabic past

    3. The real Jahiliyya, the scholars argue, probably had much more in common with Islam than previously thought.

      Maybe these pre-Islamic people had more in common with the Muslims than we think?

    4. The time before Muhammad’s revelation is known in Arabic as the Jahiliyya, usually translated as the Age of Ignorance. According to Fred Donner, a historian at the University of Chicago, “The Islamic account of the Jahiliyya is a saga of unrelieved paganism, which emphasizes the difference between the darkness of unbelief and the light that Islam brought to Arabia.”

      Pre-Islamic Arabia was ignorant, unbelievers (jahiliyya)

    5. Michael Macdonald amassed a vast collection of photographs of these texts and launched a digital Safaitic database, with the help of Laïla Nehmé, a French archeologist and one of the world’s leading experts on early Arabic inscriptions. “When we started working, Michael’s corpus was all on index cards,” Nehmé recalled. “With the database, you could search for sequences of words across the whole collection, and you could study them statistically. It worked beautifully.”
    6. The study of early Islam has traditionally depended not on rock inscriptions but on chronicles and literary sources composed a few centuries after Muhammad’s death—a method of research that Al-Jallad likens to reading the history of North America entirely from the perspective of the first European settlers. He is confident that scholars will soon be able to tell the earliest history of Islam using evidence from the time of Muhammad’s birth.

      Primary sources few centuries after birth of Muhammed.

    1. Right as the Witch King says "The world of men will fall", the horn was blown. The Rohirrim came.

      02:44 "Forth and fear no darkness!" (and Theoden speech) "Ere the sun rises"

      03:27 "Death! Death! Death!" The Rohirrim ride to their death, willingly, facing it.

    1. Can they really do all of them at once? While some may come close and do well enough, the added complexity and overreach of all these functionalities may be diluting the base power of what the zettelkasten is capable.

      Trying too many things with a Zettelkasten makes it worse. Adopt simplicity.

    2. While it can be used as a productivity tool specifically for writing, some are adapting and using it (and tools built for it) for productivity use writ-large. This includes project management or GTD (Getting Things Done) functions. Some are using it as a wiki, digital garden, or personal knowledge management system for aggregating ideas and cross linking them over time. Others are using it as a journal or diary with scheduling and calendaring functions tacked on. Still others are using it to collect facts and force the system to do spaced repetition. These additional functionalities can be great and even incredibly useful, but they’re going far beyond the purpose-fit functionality of what a zettelkasten system was originally designed to do.

      The ZK is a simple system. It isn't't a Second Brain. Nor is it GTD. Nor all the other things that people sometimes use it for. I have held this opinion for a while, and it is reassuring that Chris holds the same opinion.

  2. Jan 2024
    1. The Boy Who Lived came face to face with Lord Voldemort precisely seven times in the Harry Potter series. This number held a lot of significance throughout the series—there are seven Harry Potter books, Voldemort created seven Horcruxes, a wand costs seven Galleons, and the list goes on and on.

      7 is an important number in HP. Also, just an important number in general. Look at the 7 deadly sins, f.e.

    1. Deze actie is blijvend: iedere keer dat hij (of iemand anders) probeert een Koran te verbranden, zullen wij duizend Korans uitdelen.

      Bij elke Koran verbranding, gaan ze 1000 uitdelen.

    1. ew, show all notes created today on daily note with DD-MM-YYYY? .t3_1689wtl._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #edeeef; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #6f7071; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #6f7071; } Tried all the stuff I have seen, simply get an empty table. Any ideas?If anyone has a way that would link it on the graph too, that would be great. Thanks :D

      Obsidian Dataview query — Show all notes today on daily note

    1. SPQR, an abbreviation for Senatus Populusque Romanus (.mw-parser-output .IPA-label-small{font-size:85%}.mw-parser-output .references .IPA-label-small,.mw-parser-output .infobox .IPA-label-small,.mw-parser-output .navbox .IPA-label-small{font-size:100%}Classical Latin: [s̠ɛˈnäːt̪ʊs̠ pɔpʊˈɫ̪ʊs̠kʷɛ roːˈmäːnʊs̠]; transl. "The Senate and People of Rome"), is an emblematic phrase referring to the government of the Roman Republic.

      SPQR refers to "The Senate and People of Rome", the government of the Roman Republic

    1. 29.00 No matter what we experience(d), we can become anew. Kratos is still the man who destroyed Olympus, a monster, but also no more (see conversation between Kratos and Athena)

    1. What Maximus meant is that Quintus shouldn't ask for forgiveness because he (Quintus) can handle the shame of his actions, and if he couldn't then he would simply act differently. Maximus essentially tells him to deal with the fact that what he's doing is shameful in both their eyes and not try to hide behind excuses.

      Quintus seems to look for forgiveness and excuses. But, he is a responsible man. He should take responsibility for his action. But, isn't there some extension to this? Doesn't the quote imply, also, that whatever burden is bestowed upon men, we can bear it? So, Quintus should take responsibility, but also could have chosen otherwise and would have been able to bear the burden.

    2. Quintus: "I'm a soldier, I obey"

      Maximus: "Nothing happens to anyone that he is not fitted by nature to bear"

      What does Maximus mean with this? Is it a jab at Quintus? Could Quintus have decided, perhaps, "to not obey", and bear his burden that is bestowed upon by nature, that anyone can bear?

    3. YOU are responsible for your deeds... not anyone else... you always have a choice

      So, take your responsibility, and accept the burden that is bestowed upon you by nature. You can surely bear it.

    1. Deep processing is the foundation of all learning. It refers to your ability to think about information critically, find relationships, make sense of new information, and organise it into meaningful knowledge in your memory.
    1. Guts, accustomed to heartbreak and death, and empathising with the emptiness that follows the loss of a loved one (especially at the hands of Griffith), comforts her, encouraging Schierke to cry and express her emotions. He got a scalding from Godo months before; he now understands how dangerous it is to manage emotions poorly. Bottling up the pain cannot help Schierke. Guts allows her to have time to cry, and Schierke rushes to him for comfort. Her actions are childlike here, which is a change from her usual adult-like demeanour. Schierke is used to behaving older and wiser than she is, but with Guts, she learns to be a child again

      How to handle emotions — not bottling it up, letting them be.

    2. Akin to the pirates’ philosophy in One Piece, Guts doesn't set out to be anyone's hero. He's had a rough life and he lives for his own convictions, and yet somehow, people are drawn to him. Guts, regardless of what happens to him, keeps pushing forward. He had reason to give up numerous times each arc, but he never does. Instead, he uses his conviction and personal principles—initially a revenge quest but transforming into a means to restore his beloved—to propel himself through the story, and it's beautiful to read.
    3. At the same time, there is a slither of light that penetrates the dark narrative. Although the protagonists have all led fractured, traumatic lives, they never succumb to the impending desire to give up. Guts embodies stubborn perseverance, and through his struggles, the reader learns to cling onto hope.

      Throughout the dark narrative, there is a slitter of light. They never give up.

    4. Only recently when we discussed Berserk did we find a name for it: claustrophobia. Berserk makes you feel trapped, and its world is so small, and the hardships are so great, and it is so bleak and violent and unforgiving, that as a reader, you begin to suffocate with it. There is nothing you wish for more than Guts's happiness and Casca's peace and Griffith's destruction. Nothing more. It’s mind-boggling to consider just how much bad fortune Guts has experienced. Berserk is a story where bad things happen to decent people, and it can be depressing.

      Berserk makes the reader feel claustrophobic

    1. Akin to the pirates’ philosophy in One Piece, Guts doesn’t set out to be anyone’s hero. He’s had a rough life and he lives for his own convictions, and yet somehow, people are drawn to him. Guts, regardless of what happens to him, keeps pushing forward. He had reason to give up numerous times each arc, but he never does. Instead, he uses his conviction and personal principles — initially a revenge quest but transforming into a means to restore his beloved — to propel himself through the story, and it’s beautiful to read.”

      Like One Piece, Berserk isn't romantic. They aren't specifically anyone's hero. They have a rough life. But they keeps on pushing.

    2. Guts is a mentally broken character affected by the isolation and loneliness that he has both been cursed with and brought on himself. Despite this, he always finds a way to keep on going throughout the manga.

      Guts is broken and lonely. Despite this, he finds a way to keep going.

    3. You’re going to be all right. You just stumbled over a stone in the road. It means nothing. Your goal lies far beyond this. Doesn’t it? I’m sure you’ll overcome this. You’ll walk again… soon.”

      Berserk is about perseverance and healing.

    4. People bring the small flames of their wishes together… since they don’t want to extinguish the small flame… they’ll bring that small flame to a bigger fire. A big flame named Griffith. But you know… I didn’t bring a flame with me. I think I just stopped by to warm myself by the bonfire.”

      Guys doesn't want to put his dreams and hopes into someone else's. He wants to carve out a path for himself.

    5. In terms of the design he looks very similar to Mordred from Arthurian legend with his distinctive black armour, though this is just speculation on my part and Miura seems to maintain he wanted a distinctive medival swordsman with no clear influence in most of his interviews.

      Guts is influenced by Mordred from the Arthurian legend?

    6. At first I envisioned Guts as a hero who can get angry. Like Max in Mad Max or Kenshiro in Fist of the North Star. I focused on how to make him angry, how to make him get revenge, and how to effectively display his appearance and gimmicks, and what resulted after that struggle was the original Black Swordsman.”

      At first, Miura imagined Guts to be angry.

    1. and now that such diminution has become sensible, and that these diseases seem at last to be on the decline, will your Society proceed to give them new life and vigour by encouraging (19) the use of those very substances from which more than from any other single cause these diseases spring ? Your Society will not do so ; but will rather hasten to correct its error, to abjure the narrow policy which would substitute one evil for another, and to establish itself on the firm basis of the physiological principle that substances which exercise so powerful an influence on the nervous system as to produce intoxication, whether it be the intoxication of spirituous liquors, or of tea and coffee, or of opium, or of tobacco, cannot be used habitually without injuring the health of the body and impairing the faculties of the mind.

      Society causing rise of nervous illness? (promoting tea/coffee)

    2. If the influence of tea on the human health be such as I have described, we should expect to find that there had occurred during the above-mentioned period of one hundred years an increase of nervous diseases bearing some proportion to the increased use of tea.

      Increase import if tea as more nervous disease.

    3. This is the case with tea and coffee as it is with wine and spirits. Both belong to that class of substances which produce nervous excitement of mind and body

      "Nervous excitement of mind and body" both tea/coffee/alcohol

    4. The peculiar state of mind and body which tea and coffee produce, and which I have called intoxication, follows the use of those substances as regularly as vinous intoxication follows the use of spirituous liquors. Like vinous intoxication it is modified by the habits, circumstances, and peculiar constitutions of individuals, some persons requiring a larger, some a smaller dose to produce a given effect

      Intoxication of tea and coffee differs person to person

    5. The use of tea and coffee produces in all persons effects similar in kind to those detailed in the above related cases, but differing in degree according to the constitution of the individual, the quantity of active exercise which he uses, the intensity with which his mind is employed, the quantity of spirituous liquor which he drinks, and above all, according to the strength, the quantity, and the kind of the tea or coffee taken. All these circumstances vary so much in different individuals, and even in the same individual at different periods of his life, that the effects of tea and coffee on the health are subjected to an almost infinite variety of modifications, and cannot be traced to their true causes without great difficult

      Tea and coffee as diff effects for each person (see following for description of types of people)

    6. the substitutes will be thrown aside, and the use of spirituous liquors established on a firmer foundation than ever. Thus shall a deep wound have been inflicted upon the cause of sobriety, by the very persons who were most anxious to to defend it, and with the very instrument which they used in its defence

      Reuse of alcohol (spirituous liquors) bec of tea/coffee bad — advice of society backfires.

    7. A. B., a gentleman, who like the subject of the foregoing narrative had always abstained from spirituous liquors, and who had like him indulged in the use of tea and coffee, although by no means to the same excess, gradually lost his rest at night ; lying awake for several hours after he went to bed, and seldom falling asleep until two o’clock in the morning. At the same time his appetite became bad, his spirits extremely low, he had a fixed pain in the region of the heart accompanied with palpitations, and his life seemed to be in danger. By an accident he took neither tea nor coffee on one evening, and that night he fell asleep immediately on going to bed, and slept soundly all night ; he abstained the next night, and that night also slept. He then renounced tea and coffee altogether ; his distressing symptoms disappeared, and he has ever since enjoyed sound sleep at night, and his health has been perfectly good. On one or two occasions having for the sake of experiment returned for a single evening to the use of these substances, he has on those occasions had a return of the sleeplessness and of his other nervous symptoms

      Tea in evening as disturbing sleep (see p18 and 19 personal story)

    8. that all living bodies or parts of living bodies soon become insensible to stimuli to which they are accustomed. Hence the demand for a stronger stimulus to produce the required excitement. It is in this way that the habit of intemperate drinking is most commonly formed; the stomach demanding a larger and larger quantity, or as it is called, allowance of drink, until the temperate man becomes a drunkard almost without knowing it

      Alcohol tolerance leads to drunkenness

    9. Of the intoxicating substances which I have mentioned, tea and coffee are those to which the inhabitants of this country are most likely to have recourse as a substitute for strong drink, both because the taste for them is already formed, and because their use is approved of and recommended (3) in a pamphlet lately published by your Society, and attributed to a gentleman of the highest eminence in the medical profession.

      Coffee and tea as alternative bec of taste and pamphlet by society

    10. where the prohibition of wine has been followed by such enormous excesses in opium, coffee, and tobacco, and is in accordance with the known passion of man for that high state of excitement, which for want of a better name I have called intoxication, a term commonly applied to that particular species of excitement only, which is produced by spirituous drink.

      New substances (including coffee) for higher states of consciousness/excitement — "intoxicating substances"

    11. Your Society is threatened by two manifest dangers arising from this diversity of opinion and practice. The first and lesser danger is that it will on this account make less progress in the opinion of the public, and will be the more likely to have its numbers thinned by defection ; its members adopting first one plan, then another, and then a third, and at last perhaps, dissatisfied with all, returning to their original habits.

      (danger 1) Too many replacements for alcohol — regress back to "old habits" (consuming alcohol)

    12. The other danger to which your Society is exposed is still greater ; it is the danger that habits injurious to your own health and prejudicial to the interests of the community will take the place of the habits which you have laid aside ; that the use of one stimulus will be exchanged for that of another, and that some other intoxicating substance as opium, or tobacco, or tea or coffe

      (danger 2) Replacing one bad substance with other

    13. abandoned their former habits, but they are altogether at a loss to determine what new habits to establish in the place of those which they have abandoned

      Replacing alcohol with other substances (see page)

    14. But although abstinence from strong liquors has been at all times recommended by the few, and although it has been proved to be practicable by the experience of nations, yet has it happened that in this country, down to the present moment, no effective or even vigorous effort has been made to banish these destructive liquors

      England in a drunken state (no efforts made to reduce intake)

    15. Your Society, formed with a view to the adoption of such measures, carries with it the good wishes of all men, and already deserves the double praise of having discovered where the root of the evil lay, and of having used a powerful and well-directed effort to eradicate it.

      Drunkenness seen as evil

    1. How to beat procrastination?

      07.00 Clear goals — goals that focus on the action, not the outcome. (Very specific)

      See GTD on next-actions that make a distinction between outcomes (projects) and clear goals (Next-Actions)

      "This keeps your brain from wondering, what is the first step?"

      10.00 Challenge-skill balance. Find sweet spot where challenge is slightly more than your skill level. Too much challenge is anxiety, too little is boredom. How to tune it? (1) Lower the hurdle. (2) Compress time for a given task. (3) Define scope (What needs to be done? Why? How long?)

      14.00 Bypassing/response inhibition. Engaging in a task as soon as you are committed. Don't waver. Sleep to flow is an example.

      17.30 Flow payoff — have long blocks of focus, where the struggle to get into flow is actually worth it.

    1. A variable is considered dependent if it depends on an independent variable. Dependent variables are studied under the supposition or demand that they depend, by some law or rule (e.g., by a mathematical function), on the values of other variables. Independent variables, in turn, are not seen as depending on any other variable in the scope of the experiment in question.[a]

      Dependent variables depend upon independent variables (whereas independent variables are independent).

    1. Furthermore, Shanks thinks of Luffy in a dire situation, rather than anguish at his arm that is bitten off. Shanks truly loves Luffy — love that is shown when we are ourselves suffer deeply

    1. Promoting coffee as an alternative to alcohol was a tactic of the temperance movement that had begun to take hold here in the early 1800s, and by the end of the century it looked as if it might actually be working. Certainly, it was more subtle than some attempts to curb drunkenness – in Islandmagee, for example, local landowner Lord Dungannon had dealt with “the appalling number of sudden, violent and premature deaths, solely from the effects of intemperance” by the simple act of smashing up all 14 pubs on the peninsula

      Replacing coffee with alcohol was a way to combat intemperance (Temperance movement)

    2. Coffee shops are the new pubs, a friend once remarked. And he may well be right. As traditional bars struggle, coffee outlets are popping up on every street corner. Many pub landlords, especially in country areas, are only keeping their doors open in anticipation of the day someone will make an offer for their licence. Meanwhile, young entrepreneurs in horseboxes can hardly turn out the mochaccinos fast enough. Somehow, we’ve gone from ‘fancy a pint?’ to ‘see you for a coffee’.

      Pubs making way for coffee shops

  3. Dec 2023
    1. The mind is an information processing and pattern recognition machine that we have a certain amount of control over based on our level of consciousness. The mind is a system – containing a complex set of systems – that accepts, rejects, and uses information to aid in the goals you feed it.

      The mind holds a set of goals. It either discards or integrates incoming information based on these goals.

      • see ZK on goals and projects as information filters
    2. A routine is a set of practical goals that order the mind. A writer who moves to a new location or travels for an extended period of time will have a stressful acclimation period until their mind runs on new systems. If they can’t write well in their normal routine, they feel threatened, because “who they are” may die.

      Routines order the mind

    3. Your bad habits don’t seem worth quitting because you don’t have responsibilities (or prioritize those responsibilities) that deserve you at 100% capacity.

      Goals and projects require sacrifices. Bad habits are/need to go.

      I am currently experiencing this. I want to do a lot of fun and important stuff. Because I have clarity on these goals right now, my bad habits — gaming mindlessly, going on news rabbit holes — "have to go".