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  1. Apr 2023
    1. We know, from the first generation of users,55:26 a person like Frances Yates,55:27 who have been writing about and speaking about later on,55:32 how much the structure of the library55:35 has helped them in defining their topics,55:38 and basically in their research,55:40 and how inspirational it was,

      Frances Yates has apparently indicated how influential Aby Warburg's library and its structure was on her work and research.


      direct reference for this?

    2. Aby Warburg died of a heart attack52:41 on the 26th of October, 1929,52:45 at the age of 63.

      Aby Warburg, scion of a major banking family died on October 26, 1929, just two days before Black Monday on October 28, the stock market crash which marked the end of the "Roaring Twenties" and the beginning of the Great Depression.


      Could family influences or changes at that time have caused small, but underlying issues relating to the crash at that time? What was the reaction of the Warburg family on early Monday the 28th?

      Aby, as the oldest, would have inherited the bank, but by arrangement with his younger brother in their youth apparently gave it to his brother in exchange for books.

    3. 51:20 - [Aby] Not until art history can show51:22 that it sees the work of art51:23 in a few more dimensions than it has done so far51:27 will our activity again attract the interest of scholars51:31 and of the general public.51:36 Every serious scholar51:37 who has to venture on a problem of cultural history51:40 reads over the entrance to his workshop Goethe's lines:51:43 "What you call the spirit of the age51:46 "is really no more51:47 "than the spirit of the worthy historian51:49 "in which the age is reflected."51:57 In my role as psycho-historian,51:59 I tried to diagnose52:00 the schizophrenia of Western civilization52:02 from its images in an autobiographical reflex.52:10 May the history of art and the study of religion,52:13 between which lies nothing at present52:15 but wasteland overgrown with verbiage,52:18 meet together one day in learned and lucid minds,52:22 and may they share a workbench in the laboratory52:24 of the iconological science of civilization.
    4. 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.

    5. 12:03 - For art is not only something which is aesthetic relevant,12:07 but it's relevant in so many other dimensions too,12:11 partially, and intellectually,12:15 and there's a lot of knowledge enclosed within the artworks.

      For art is not only something which is aesthetic relevant, but it's relevant in so many other dimensions too, partially, and intellectually, and there's a lot of knowledge enclosed within the artworks. —Michael Diers [00:12:03], art historian in Aby Warburg: Metamorphosis and Memory

    6. 09:36 - From his early youth, he loved to collect stamps,09:42 and he said if all the images which are around us09:47 would have been lost,09:47 an album of stamps would help us to understand the world.

      Just as Warburg's suggestion that an album of collected stamps could help us to understand the world visually if all other images were lost, perhaps subsections of traces of other cultures could do the same.

    7. 06:57 The entire range of emotional stirrings,06:59 aggression, defense, sacrifice, mourning,07:03 melancholia, ecstasy, triumph, et cetera, is expressed07:06 through the revival of movements, gestures, and postures,07:11 that is pathosformel:07:12 the expressive formulas of emotion07:15 either taken from ancient modes07:16 or reappearing as mnemonic traces in successive works.

      The entire range of emotional stirrings, aggression, defense, sacrifice, mourning, melancholia, ecstasy, triumph, et cetera, is expressed through the revival of movements, gestures, and postures, that is pathosformel: the expressive formulas of emotion either taken from ancient modes or reappearing as mnemonic traces in successive works.


      Original source for this? (Likely in German as original.)

      Warburg is talking about the expression of current art through the lens of the classical arts and there is a throughline of "mnemonic traces" through out time.

    1. Stream of Consciousness to Atomic Notes: A Powerful Note-Taking Workflow

      Broadly a workflow that takes journaling/morning pages and then progressively refines them into atomic-like notes.

      Uses the idea of open loops from the GTD-space.

    2. The Medici effect is a concept that describes the way in which innovation arises from the intersection of different disciplines and ideas. The term was coined by author Frans Johansson in his book “The Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can Teach Us About Innovation”. The Medici family of Renaissance-era Florence is used as an example of the way in which the intersection of different disciplines, such as art, science, and finance, led to a period of great innovation and cultural advancement. Similarly, Johansson argues that innovation today is more likely to occur when people from different backgrounds and disciplines come together to share ideas and collaborate. The Medici effect highlights the importance of diversity, curiosity, and creativity in driving innovation and problem-solving.

      Frans Johansson's "Medici effect" which describes innovation arriving from an admixture of diversity of people and their ideas sounds like a human-based mode of combinatorial creativity similar to that seen in the commonplace book/zettelkasten traditions. Instead of the communication occurring between a person and their notes or written work, the communication occurs between people.

      How is the information between these people crystalized? Some may be written, some may be in prototypes and final physical products, while some may simply be stored in the people themselves for sharing and re-sharing over time.

    1. If you break it apart and reassemble the cubies randomly, there’s actually only a 1 in 12 chance that it’s solvable.

      A Rubic's cube taken apart and put together randomly only has a 1 in 12 chance of being solvable.

    1. does my zettelkasten make writing... harder?

      Worried about self-plagiarizing in the future? Others like Hans Blumenberg have struck through used cards with red pencil. This could also be done with metadata or other searchable means in the digital realm as well. (See: https://hypothes.is/a/mT8Twk2cEe2bvj8lq2Lgpw)

      General problems she faces: 1. Notetaking vs. writing voice (shifting between one and another and not just copy/pasting) 2. discovery during writing (put new ideas into ZK as you go or just keep writing on the page when the muse strikes) 3. Linearity of output: books are linear and ZK is not

      Using transclusion may help in the initial draft/zero draft?<br /> ie: ![[example]] (This was mentioned in the comments as well.)

      directional vs. indirectional notes - see Sascha Fast's article


      Borrowing from the telecom/cable industry, one might call this the zettelkasten "last mile problem". I've also referred to it in the past as the zettelkasten output problem. (See also the description and comments at https://boffosocko.com/2022/07/12/call-for-model-examples-of-zettelkasten-output-processes/ as well as some of the examples linked at https://boffosocko.com/research/zettelkasten-commonplace-books-and-note-taking-collection/)

      Many journal articles that review books (written in English) in the last half of the 20th century which include the word zettelkasten have a negative connotation with respect to ZK and frequently mention the problem that researchers/book writers have of "tipping out their ZKs" without the outlining and argument building/editing work to make their texts more comprehensible or understandable.

      Ward Cunningham has spoken in the past about the idea of a Markov Monkey who can traverse one's atomic notes in a variety of paths (like a Choose Your Own Adventure, but the monkey knows all the potential paths). The thesis in some sense is the author choosing a potential "best" path (a form of "travelling salesperson problem), for a specific audience, who presumably may have some context of the general area.

      Many mention Sonke Ahrens' book, but fail to notice Umberto Eco's How to Write a Thesis (MIT, 2015) and Gerald Weinberg's "The Fieldstone Method (Dorset House, 2005) which touch a bit on these composition problems.

      I'm not exactly sure of the particulars and perhaps there isn't enough historical data to prove one direction or another, but Wittgenstein left behind a zettelkasten which his intellectual heirs published as a book. In it they posit (in the introduction) that rather than it being a notetaking store which he used to compose longer works, that the seeming similarities between the ideas in his zettelkasten and some of his typescripts were the result of him taking his typescripts and cutting them up to put into his zettelkasten. It may be difficult to know which direction was which, but my working hypothesis is that the only way it could have been ideas from typescripts into his zettelkasten would have been if he was a "pantser", to use your terminology, and he was chopping up ideas from his discovery writing to place into contexts within his zettelkasten for later use. Perhaps access to the original physical materials may be helpful in determining which way he was moving. Cross reference: https://hypothes.is/a/BptoKsRPEe2zuW8MRUY1hw

      Some helpful examples: - academia : Victor Margolin - fiction/screenwriting: - Dustin Lance Black - Vladimir Nabokov - others...

    2. Also I really want to see the someone using their zettlekasten for managing knowledge about stuff not zettlekasten related. Mine mainly revolves about artistic appretiation, creativity and art fundamentals. I've been wanting to make a video series about it, just havent find the time. Your videos serve much as inspiration and as example of how may I go about it.

      reply to Sara Martínez at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQPvrcksjUA&lc=UgzbdJ1cdxkjnN0DBOl4AaABAg

      Sara, here are some creative/art-related examples that might help:<br /> Dancer/Choreographer Twyla Tharp used a slightly modified slip box method that included much more than notes on cards for her dance-related work. She describes the process well in chapter 6 of her book "The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life".

      If you're into art and image-based work, Aby Warburg had a zettelkasten with images. Search for details on his "Mnemosyne Atlas" at The Warburg Institute at the School of Advanced Study University of London which has some material you may appreciate.

      Product designer khimtan has a visual zettelkasten practice you can find examples of on Reddit in the "Antinet" sub.

      A variety of comedians like Phyllis Diller, Joan Rivers, Bob Hope, and George Carlin had zettelkasten practices for their comedy work.

      Eminem has a fantastic, but tremendously simple zettelkasten for songwriting. Taylor Swift has a somewhat similar digital version which she has talked about using, though she doesn't use the word zettelkasten to describe it.

      syndication link

    3. Tara Brabazon

      She may have some material on her YouTube channel on the zettelkasten output problem.

    1. Some observers termed Thom’s text a biography while others refer to it as a history. But these monikers might mislead contemporary readers who would expect a biography or history produced by an academic press to be undergirded by scholarly methods – including archival research and citations that document its claims in that record. Today we understand Thom’s text to be less a work of biography or history and more a hagiography: the effort of an admiring descendant who compiled the varied recollections of elders and their impressions of Mr. Hopkins and his family.

      How do we better distinguish the margins between histories, biographies, and hagiographies and the motivations of the writers who produce them?

      How do we better underline these subtleties to the broader publics outside of historians and other specialists?

    1. Immediately before stepping on stage, he suggests using the tip of your right pinky finger to find the upper end of your trousers zipper. If your fingernail clicks against the zipper’s metal pull-tab, then you are safe and ready to make your entrance. If your pinky slides in up to your knuckle, however, then you have to XYZ PDQ (eXamine Your Zipper, Pretty Darn Quick)!

      Harry Lorayne used a pinky check, in which he used the fingernail of his pinky finger against his the pull-tab of his zipper to ensure his fly was closed, every night before appearing on stage to prevent embarrassment and to maintain credibility as a memory expert.

      MAGIC MENTOR MONDAY: Harry Lorayne - Chamber Magic<br /> by Steve Cohen

    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. “My father stopped hitting me for my grades,” Mr. Lorayne told The Chicago Tribune in 1988. “He hit me for other things.”
    3. “They were professional poor people,” he told an interviewer, invoking his parents. “I remember having a potato for dinner.”
    4. Mr. Lorayne’s attainments are all the more noteworthy in light of the fact that he grew up in poverty, struggled academically as a result of undiagnosed dyslexia and concluded his formal education after only a single year of high school.Image

      Harry Lorayne struggled in school because of dyslexia which wasn't noticed or as well understood at the time. As a result he dropped out of high school after his freshman year.

    5. 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.

    6. By the 1960s, Mr. Lorayne was best known for holding audiences rapt with feats of memory that bordered on the elephantine. Such feats were born, he explained in interviews and in his many books, of a system of learned associations — call them surrealist visual puns — that seemed equal parts Ivan Pavlov and Salvador Dalí.

      "surrealist visual puns"

    7. He was 96.

      Harry Lorayne passed away on April 7, 2023 at the age of 96.

      Is there a link between memory training and longevity?

    1. Good afternoon, just wondering why didn’t Harry Lorraine include a memory palace in his memory techniques?

      A solid question for which I have an historical answer, though working through some of the finer historical details may be a worthwhile exercise.

    1. Tharp, Twyla. The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life. Simon & Schuster, 2006. https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Creative-Habit/Twyla-Tharp/9780743235273.

      annotation target: urn:x-pdf:39643634366262353731363464363334626534646334316331613038363337663139633264363536643732653731376136643130653762343638306332343434

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    1. Peaches.LA was created by Natalie Tenerelli and Dan Cox to help get some of the best peaches in the world into the hands of everyone outside the LA Farmers Markets and top chefs.

      https://peaches.la/

      Tenerelli Orchards sells these at the Victory Park Farmers' Market in the summer.

      Recommended by Gabi Grace. Ask for bruised stock for significant discount.

    1. Typewriter Tips: Budgeting (AKA How to get cheap typewriters!)

      • antique malls (look in unconventional places (like luggage))
      • estate sales (everything must go)
      • yard sales
      • auctions
      • facebook marketplace (negotiating)

      Hunting tips - look for cases, folks they often don't know what's in them or think they're luggage - look under things - negotiate<br /> - bundle items as a group to negotiate<br /> - Tell friends and you'll get an army looking for you

    1. How to Clean a Typewriter


      Rubbing alcohol or WD-40 for cleaning out light rust, oil, dirt and grime.

      Use Rem-Oil for oiling typewriters

      Toothpaste and toothbrush is great for cleaning crinkle paint on typewriters.

    1. And there are some useful bits of trivia, like how the letters for the word TYPEWRITER are all on the top row of a QWERTY layout, presumably to make it easier for typewriter salesmen in their day to impress potential clients with their mastery of the keyboard.
    2. Musician John Mayer, too, describes his typewriter as more of an emotional companion than a logistical tool. He laments writing lyrics with the judgemental “red squiggly line” of spell check, which he says stops the creative process because he feels compelled to fix the error, and turning to a typewriter which “doesn’t judge you, it just goes, ‘right away, sir, right away’.”
    1. “Tom Hanks, Typewriter Enthusiast.” CBS News Sunday Morning. CBS, October 15, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTtDb73NkNM.

    2. https://youtu.be/UTtDb73NkNM?t=49

      CBS has a card index with an index card indicating that Morley Safer brought an Olivetti typewriter to the office.


      Whose card index was this? What other purpose did it serve?

    3. Friday<br /> 7 July <br /> 2017

      Lee,

      You are a wise and brave man. This 1930's era Smith- corona Clipper will last you for the ages..

      Happy to have served you...<br /> /s<br /> Tom Hanks


      Hanks wrote this letter to an interviewer who purchased one. Lost here on the viewer is the fact that the Clipper wasn't manufactured until 1946...

    4. This is what I would suggest: if you wanted the perfect typewriter that will last forever that would be a great conversation piece, I'd say get the Smith-Corona Clipper. That will be as satisfying a typing experience as you will ever have. —Tom Hanks on CBS Sunday Morning: "Tom Hanks, Typewriter Enthusiast" at 07:30

    1. My favorite is always changing. Any Smith-Corona Sterling or Silent is a gem. Any Hermes, either the green or tan, all work like lightning. I have a thing for my Olivetti Lettera 22’s, as they are masterpieces of design, the action is crazy fast and light, and the typewriter is in the Museum of Modern Art.

      —Tom Hanks in TribLive 2020-05-22 at https://web.archive.org/web/20200522085215/https://archive.triblive.com/aande/books/tom-hanks-on-his-love-of-typewriters-and-the-free-press/


      I've seen several sites and listings for Smith-Corona typewriters which mention this interview quote.

    1. The Clipper was named after Boeing's 314 Clipper- which although was retired by Pan-Am in 1946- still continued to represent a new era of elegant, luxurious travel, and which this typewriter is directly associated with.
    1. Llewelyn, J. E. “Zettel. By Ludwig Wittgenstein. Edited by G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 1967. Pp. v + ve + 124 + 124e. Price 37s 6d).” The Philosophical Quarterly 18, no. 71 (April 1968): 176. https://doi.org/10.2307/2217524.

    1. Of all skill, part is infused by precept, and part is obtained by habit.SAMUEL JOHNSON
    2. For the rules in textbooks of rhetoric cannot by themselves make expertthose who are eager to dispense with study and practice.DIONYSIUS OF HALICARNASSUS
    3. natural one: we firstmust find something to say, then organize our material, and then put it intowords.

      Finding something to say within a zettelkasten-based writing framework is relatively easy. One is regularly writing down their ideas with respect to other authors as part of "the great conversation" and providing at least a preliminary arrangement. As part of their conversation they're putting these ideas into words right from the start.

      These all follow the basic pillars of classic rhetoric, though one might profitably take their preliminary written notes and continue refining the arrangement as well as the style of the writing as they proceed to finished product.

    4. one must also submit to the discipline provided by imitationand practice.

      Too many zettelkasten aspirants only want the presupposed "rules" for keeping one or are interested in imitating one or another examples. Few have interest in the actual day to day practice and these are often the most adept. Of course the downside of learning some of the pieces online leaves the learner with some (often broken) subset of rules and one or two examples (often only theoretical) and then wonder why their actual practice is left so wanting.

      link to https://hypothes.is/a/ZeZEgNm8Ee2woUds5QzgOw

    5. they weresensible enough to recognize that one does not acquire a skill simply bystudying rules; one must also submit to the discipline provided by imitationand practice. And they recognized too that in order to derive the maximumbenefit from precept, imitation, and practice, the student had to be firedwith a desire to learn as much as his natural endowments permitted.

      Going back at least as far as the rhetoric of Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian, we recognize that while sets of rules can be helpful to the student, these must also be paired with ample imitation and practice.

    6. Corbett, Edward P. J. Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student. 1st (Second Printing). 1965. Reprint, Oxford University Press, 1966.

    1. Art is thought that produces a thing. Art is muscle memory that produces a thing. Art is a search that produces a thing. Art is a practice that produces a thing.Art is work that produces a thing.
    2. He preferred penning poems to typing them, because, he said, “A poem can appear finished just because of the cleanness of the typescript, and I don’t want it to seem finished before it is.” When he typed a poem, he said, he was reading it, but when he wrote a poem by hand he could hear it.
    1. The most efficient route toward enacting such policy, the authors argue, lies not in convincing deniers to believe in climate change but in galvanizing those who already do.
    2. In a 2015 study published in PLOS One, Maibach and colleagues found that telling people that experts agreed on climate change increased the chances that those individuals would accept that climate change was happening, was human-caused, and presented a real threat. Extra encouraging: That strategy was also particularly influential on Republicans, though liberals might also need a nudge.
    3. For many skeptics, Neha Thirani Bagri has written in Quartz, delineating the myriad potential harms of unmitigated climate change is not an effective strategy. Instead, it can be more productive to illustrate the potential benefits that mitigation may carry. She writes:A comprehensive study published in 2015 in Nature surveyed 6,000 people across 24 countries and found that emphasizing the shared benefits of climate change was an effective way of motivating people to take action — even if they initially identified as deniers. For example, people were more likely to take steps to mitigate climate change if they believe that it will produce economic and scientific development. Most importantly, these results were true across political ideology, age, and gender.
    4. research has found that conservatives are more likely to support a pro-environmental agenda when presented with messages containing themes of patriotism and defending the purity of nature.
    5. In Vice, Maggie Puniewska points to the moral foundations theory, according to which liberals and conservatives prioritize different ethics: the former compassion, fairness and liberty, the latter purity, loyalty and obedience to authority.
    6. the best predictor of whether we agree with the science is simply where we fall on the political spectrum.

      Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, climate scientist at Texas Tech University

      the referent "the science" is "the [climate] science" in this context

    1. According to the researchers, proximity was tied to certainty. The farther away a climate-related event was perceived to be, the less certain viewers were that humans were causing it. That made them feel less responsible for doing something about it and “lowered their own perceived ability to influence global climate change outcomes,” says Tsay-Vogel, a COM assistant professor of communication.
    1. My biggest realization recently is to do whatever the opposite of atomicity is.

      Too many go too deep into the idea of "atomic notes" without either questioning or realizing their use case. What is your purpose in having atomic notes? Most writing about them online talk about the theoretical without addressing the underlying "why".

      They're great for capturing things on the go and having the ability to re-arrange and reuse them into much larger works. Often once you've used them a few times, they're less useful, specially for the average person. (Of course it's another matter if you're an academic researcher, they're probably your bread and butter.) For the beekeepers of the world who need some quick tidbits which they use frequently, then keeping them in a larger outlined document or file is really more than enough. Of course, if you're creating some longer book-length treatise on beekeeping, then it can be incredibly helpful to have them at atomic length.

      There's a spectrum from the small atomic note to the longer length file (or even book). Ask yourself, "what's your goal in having one or the other, or something in between?" They're tools, choose the best one for your needs.

    1. any easy strategies to improve my notetaking?

      reply to u/all_flowers_in_time_ at https://www.reddit.com/r/NoteTaking/comments/12g3idj/any_easy_strategies_to_improve_my_notetaking/

      In many ways I was just like you in school...

      Some of it depends on what your notes are for. Are you using them to write things in your own words to increase understanding and tie them into other ideas? Are you using them as reminders? Are you using them to build material for later (papers, articles, write a book, other?) For memorization?

      Your notes look like they've got a Cornell Notes appearance, so perhaps more formally structuring your pages that way will help? Creating sample test questions afterward for practice and recall can be highly useful and force you to create answers which is dramatically more productive than simply reviewing over notes which usually creates a false sense of familiarity.

      If you're using them for memorization, then perhaps convert the notes after lecture into flash cards (physical cards, Anki, Mnemosyne, etc.) that you can use for spaced repetition.

      If you're using them to later create other content, then perhaps a commonplace book or zettelkasten structure may be helpful for cross indexing ideas. If you're not familiar with these, try out the following book which covers all of these use cases and mores:

      Ahrens, Sönke. How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers. Create Space, 2017.

      I wish I had been able to do so when I was a student.

    1. Benefits of sharing permanent notes .t3_12gadut._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }

      reply to u/bestlunchtoday at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/12gadut/benefits_of_sharing_permanent_notes/

      I love the diversity of ideas here! So many different ways to do it all and perspectives on the pros/cons. It's all incredibly idiosyncratic, just like our notes.

      I probably default to a far extreme of sharing the vast majority of my notes openly to the public (at least the ones taken digitally which account for probably 95%). You can find them here: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich.

      Not many people notice or care, but I do know that a small handful follow and occasionally reply to them or email me questions. One or two people actually subscribe to them via RSS, and at least one has said that they know more about me, what I'm reading, what I'm interested in, and who I am by reading these over time. (I also personally follow a handful of people and tags there myself.) Some have remarked at how they appreciate watching my notes over time and then seeing the longer writing pieces they were integrated into. Some novice note takers have mentioned how much they appreciate being able to watch such a process of note taking turned into composition as examples which they might follow. Some just like a particular niche topic and follow it as a tag (so if you were interested in zettelkasten perhaps?) Why should I hide my conversation with the authors I read, or with my own zettelkasten unless it really needed to be private? Couldn't/shouldn't it all be part of "The Great Conversation"? The tougher part may be having means of appropriately focusing on and sharing this conversation without some of the ills and attention economy practices which plague the social space presently.

      There are a few notes here on this post that talk about social media and how this plays a role in making them public or not. I suppose that if I were putting it all on a popular platform like Twitter or Instagram then the use of the notes would be or could be considered more performative. Since mine are on what I would call a very quiet pseudo-social network, but one specifically intended for note taking, they tend to be far less performative in nature and the majority of the focus is solely on what I want to make and use them for. I have the opportunity and ability to make some private and occasionally do so. Perhaps if the traffic and notice of them became more prominent I would change my habits, but generally it has been a net positive to have put my sensemaking out into the public, though I will admit that I have a lot of privilege to be able to do so.

      Of course for those who just want my longer form stuff, there's a website/blog for that, though personally I think all the fun ideas at the bleeding edge are in my notes.

      Since some (u/deafpolygon, u/Magnifico99, and u/thiefspy; cc: u/FastSascha, u/A_Dull_Significance) have mentioned social media, Instagram, and journalists, I'll share a relevant old note with an example, which is also simultaneously an example of the benefit of having public notes to be able to point at, which u/PantsMcFail2 also does here with one of Andy Matuschak's public notes:

      [Prominent] Journalist John Dickerson indicates that he uses Instagram as a commonplace: https://www.instagram.com/jfdlibrary/ here he keeps a collection of photo "cards" with quotes from famous people rather than photos. He also keeps collections there of photos of notes from scraps of paper as well as photos of annotations he makes in books.

      It's reasonably well known that Ronald Reagan shared some of his personal notes and collected quotations with his speechwriting staff while he was President. I would say that this and other similar examples of collaborative zettelkasten or collaborative note taking and their uses would blunt u/deafpolygon's argument that shared notes (online or otherwise) are either just (or only) a wiki. The forms are somewhat similar, but not all exactly the same. I suspect others could add to these examples.

      And of course if you've been following along with all of my links, you'll have found yourself reading not only these words here, but also reading some of a directed conversation with entry points into my own personal zettelkasten, which you can also query as you like. I hope it has helped to increase the depth and level of the conversation, should you choose to enter into it. It's an open enough one that folks can pick and choose their own path through it as their interests dictate.

    1. The problem is not water-related becuase I have tested it. And himidity and moisture are causing the stains as chatgpt said it might be a possibilty, what can I do?

      -u/Pambaiden at https://www.reddit.com/r/notebooks/comments/12go4ft/my_notebook_gets_stain_on_it_when_i_leave_it/

      Example of someone who queried ChatGPT as a general search engine to solve a problem and mentioned it in a public Reddit when asking for general advice about a problem with their notebook.

    2. SoupsUndying · 4 hr. agoChat… gpt… wow, how the world changes in the blink of an eye
    1. To buy or not to buy a course? And, if the latter, which one? .t3_12fowjy._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } questionSo, I've been considering buying an online course for Zettelkasten (in Obsidian). Thing is... There are a bunch of them. Two (maybe three) questions:Is it worth it? Has anyone gone down that path and care to share their experience?Any recommendations? I've seen a bunch of options and really don't have any hints on how to evaluate them.

      reply to u/Accomplished-Tip-597 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/12fowjy/to_buy_or_not_to_buy_a_course_and_if_the_latter/

      Which "industry", though? Productivity? Personal Knowledge Management? Neither of these are focused on the idea of a Luhmann-esque specific zettelkastenare they?

      For the original poster, what is your goal in taking a course? What do you want to get out of it? What are you going to use such a system for? The advice you're looking for will hinge on these.

      Everyone's use is going to be reasonably idiosyncratic, so not knowing anything else, my general recommendation (to minimize time, effort, and expense) would be to read one of the following (for free), practice at some of it for a few weeks before you do anything else. Then if you need it, talk u/taurusnoises into a few consultations based on what you'd like to accomplish. He's one of the few who does this who's got experience in the widest variety of traditions in addition to expertise in the platform you want (though I'd still recommend him if you were using something else.)

    1. Ferguson, Niall. “I’m Helping to Start a New College Because Higher Ed Is Broken.” Bloomberg.Com, November 8, 2021, sec. Opinion. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-11-08/niall-ferguson-america-s-woke-universities-need-to-be-replaced.

      Seems like a lot of cherry picking here... also don't see much evidence of progress in a year and change.

      Only four jobs listed on their website today: https://jobs.lever.co/uaustin. Note all are for administration and none for teaching. Most have a heavy fundraising component.

    2. In our minds, there can be no more urgent task for a society than to ensure the health of its system of higher education.

      Really?! A conservative saying we should worry about the health of education as his fellows choke off funding to all levels of education in general?

      "Why are you turning blue and gasping for breath?" the Republican asks as he stands on the throat of education.

    3. Only a handful have been set up this century: University of California Merced (2005), Ave Maria University (2003) and Soka University of America (2001). Just five U.S. colleges founded in the past 50 years make it into the Times’s top 25 “Young Universities”: University of Alabama at Birmingham (founded 1969), University of Texas at Dallas (1969), George Mason (1957), University of Texas at San Antonio (1969) and Florida International (1969). Each is (or originated as) part of a state university system.

      How does he focus on the dearth of new universities, particularly in populations which have only been growing? No mention of the growing number of colleges which have gone bankrupt and disappeared? Given population growth, with appropriately commensurate funding (a political football), we should have seen a huge number of new institutions just from that.

    4. The ever-growing army of coordinators for Title IX — the federal law prohibiting sex-based discrimination — is one manifestation of the bureaucratic bloat, which since the 1990s has helped propel tuition costs far ahead of inflation.

      Benjamin Ginsberg has documented bureaucratic bloat since the 1970's and only the tiniest fraction is down to Title IX, which is a political red herring here. A much larger amount of bloat can be attributed to professionalization of running the university allowing professors more time for teaching and research and less administrative work. Commercial specialization of this sort has increased because of increased competition within the capitalistic system which has grown there. A sizeable portion also goes into development efforts as educational funding has shrunk (due primarily to conservative efforts) as well as administrative functions to run fringe benefits like athletic centers, activities, lazy rivers, climbing walls, etc. which are used to recruit students into a much more selective number of universities.

    5. Mitchell Langbert’s analysis of tenure-track, Ph.D.-holding professors from 51 of the 66 top-ranked liberal arts colleges in 2017 found that those with known political affiliations were overwhelmingly Democratic. Nearly two-fifths of the colleges in Langbert’s sample were Republican-free.

      No acknowledgement here that 2017 was a Republican Presidential administration, which means that a reasonable number of academics left academia to staff the administration. It's a common occurrence that there are reasonable shifts back and forth between government and academia as administrations change. One should look at comparisons from a Democratic presidential administration for a better idea versus Ferguson's cherry picking here.

      Also unmentioned is the general disbelief in logic and the underpinning of science on the right in general, a fact which may make conservatives less likely to figure in these sorts of career paths. Are conservatives more likely to take career paths in capitalism-based endeavors than go into academia in the first place given the decrease in regulatory climate in the last half century?

      Additionally by only looking at liberal arts institutions, he's heavily biasing the sample from the start. Why not also include the wide variety of non-liberal arts institutions? Agriculture and Mechanical Schools, Engineering Schools, Religious Schools, etc.?

      The presumption of liberal profesoriate from the start is also likely to discourage students from considering the profession regardless of their desires and career goals, particularly when the professoriate has significantly shrunk in the last thirty years due to decreased funding. One ought to worry that there are any educators in the business of higher education, much less conservative ones who may be more biased to leave for higher paying careers elsewhere.

      There are so many missing pieces of analysis here...

    1. There’s the sublimely harmonizing brother duo Ye Vagabonds, who opened shows for Phoebe Bridgers last summer; the mighty bass-baritone singer-songwriter John Francis Flynn; Eoghan O Ceannabhain, a master of Irish-language song in the sean nos tradition; and Lankum, a gang of drone-loving experimentalists who have become a lodestar for the scene, and released their fourth album on March 24.
    2. Irish singer Lisa O’Neill
    3. Barry was a street singer “discovered” by the folklorist Alan Lomax in the 1950s; she busked with a banjo and a beautiful bray of a voice, brazenly Irish, singing songs of the day alongside traditional ballads.
    1. Lying press (German: Lügenpresse, lit. 'press of lies') is a pejorative and disparaging political term used largely for the printed press and the mass media at large. It is used as an essential part of propaganda and is thus usually dishonest or at least not based on careful research.
    1. Now, I've made a number of documentaries about fake news. And what interests me is the first person to use the phrase mainstream media was Joseph Goebbels. And he, in one of his propaganda sheets, said “It's very important that you don't read the mainstream media because they'll tell you lies.” You must read the truth by the ramblings of his boss and his associated work. And you do have to watch this. This is a very, very well-established technique of fascists, is to tell you, don't read this stuff, read our stuff.<br /> —Ian Hislop, Editor, Private Eye Magazine 00:16:00, Satire in the Age of Murdoch and Trump, The Problem with Jon Stewart Podcast

    2. Satire in the Age of Murdoch and Trump. The Problem With Jon Stewart Podcast, 2023-03-09. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbOiXmMnyw4.

      Watched most of this passively while reading on 2023-04-06

    1. How best to incorporate a book of terms? .t3_12e2r50._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } questionHi, so my Zettelkasten is mainly based around learning literary/storytelling techniques. There's a book called the Elements of Eloquence (which I can't recommend enough to those interested in language) which lays down a large number of formulas from rhetoric for creating memorable lines. It varies in complexity from alliteration to hendiadys, and contains 39 of these memorable-line-recipes in total.I want to enter them into my vault, but worry that creating 39 new notes for the individual formula might be overkill. I thought I'd ask here as I am worried about irreducibility - do I create a single note that contains brief descriptions of all the recipes, or fill my zettelkasten with them, creating what feels a little bit like spam?I've had the zettelkasten for a while but have been too busy to properly use it until recently, so I thought I'd be better off asking the people with actual experience!

      reply to u/apricotsareweird at r/Zettelkasten - How best to incorporate a book of terms?

      This sounds a bit like it might fit into the mold of an example like Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's "Oblique Strategies" which are bits of creative advice that one draws out at random to help improve their work. You could have a custom deck for potential writing work and attempt the recipes at random to see where it takes you. At worst a collection of them could be used for spaced repetition to memorize or familiarize yourself with them. At a later date you could give them numbers and install them into a larger collection, but keeping them as a stand alone collection certainly couldn't hurt at least to start.

    1. Charles Vidor
    2. William S. Paley
    3. Joseph L. Mankiewicz
    4. Henry R. Luce

      founded Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated magazines

      This explains the "advertisement" in LIFE in January 1948.

    5. Marshall Field
    6. Frank Capra
    7. TheSyntopicon invites the reader to make on the set whatever demands arisefrom his own problems and interests. It is constructed to enable the reader,nomatter what the stages of his reading in other ways, to find that part of theGreat Conversation in which any topic that interests him is being discussed.

      While the Syntopicon ultimately appears in book form, one must recall that it started life as a paper slip-based card index (Life v24, issue 4, 1948). This index can be queried in some of the ways one might have queried a library card catalog or more specifically the way in which Niklas Luhmann indicated that he queried his zettelkasten (Luhmann,1981). Unlike a library card catalog, The Syntopicon would not only provide a variety of entry places within the Western canon to begin their search for answers, but would provide specific page numbers and passages rather than references to entire books.

      The Syntopicon invites the reader to make on the set whatever demands arise from his own problems and interests. It is constructed to enable the reader, no matter what the stages of his reading in other ways, to find that part of the Great Conversation in which any topic that interests him is being discussed. (p. 85)

      While the search space for the Syntopicon wasn't as large as the corpus covered by larger search engines of the 21st century, the work that went into making it and the depth and focus of the sources make it a much more valuable search tool from a humanistic perspective. This work and value can also be seen in a personal zettelkasten. Some of the value appears in the form of having previously built a store of contextualized knowledge, particularly in cases where some ideas have been forgotten or not easily called to mind, which serves as a context ratchet upon which to continue exploring and building.

  2. books.google.com books.google.com
    1. Two page spread of Life Magazine article with the title "The 102 Great Ideas" featuring a photo of 26 people behind 102 card indexes with categorized topical labels from Angel to Will.

    2. LIFE. “The 102 Great Ideas: Scholars Complete a Monumental Catalog.” January 26, 1948. https://books.google.com/books?id=p0gEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA92&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false. Google Books.

      Provides an small example of "the great conversation" on the equality of men and women.

    3. Amidst a number of very gendered advertisements in issue 4 of volume 24 of LIFE magazine from 1948 is a short piece on the pending release of The Encyclopædia Britannica's Great Books of the Western World.

      The piece starts out talking about the 432 classical works written by 71 men and highlights the fact that "Woman, not a main idea, is included [with] in [the topical category] Family Man and Love." The piece goes on by way of example of the work to excerpt portions on Idea number 51: "Man". To show the flexibility of the included Syntopicon categorization they elaborate with 15 excerpted passages from authors from Plato to Freud on Idea 51, subdivision 6b: "Men and Women: their equality or inequality".

      It provides a fantastic mini-study on the emerging conversation on gender studies as seen in a mainstream magazine in 1948.


      Were there any follow up letters to the editor on this topic in subsequent issues? How was this broader piece received with respect to the idea of gender at the time?

    4. A staff of at least 26 created the underlying index that would lay at the heart of the Great Books of the Western World which was prepared in a rented old fraternity house on the University of Chicago campus. (p. 93)

    1. If there is a core theme to the formal position it is that education isabout passing on information; for formalists, culture and civilization represent astore of ideas and wisdom which have to be handed on to new generations.Teaching is at the heart of this transmission; and the process of transmission iseducation.
    2. Oakeshott saw educationas part of the ‘conversation of mankind’, wherein teachers induct their studentsinto that conversation by teaching them how to participate in the dialogue—howto hear the ‘voices’ of previous generations while cultivating their own uniquevoices.

      How did Michael Oakeshott's philosophy overlap with the idea of the 'Great Conversation' or 20th century movement of Adler's Great Books of the Western World.

      How does it influence the idea of "having conversations with the text" in the annotation space?

    3. There are, one might say, conservativeand liberal interpretations of this world view—the conservative putting theemphasis on transmission itself, on telling, and the liberal putting the emphasismore on induction, on initiation by involvement with culture’s established ideas.

      The formal educational viewpoint (in contrast to progressive education) can broadly be broken into conservative and liberal interpretations The conservative viewpoint focuses on transmission of knowledge while the liberal places its focus on initiation or induction into a culture's formative ideas.

    4. While progressive educators stress the child’s development from within,formalists put the emphasis, by contrast, on formation from without—formationthat comes from immersion in the knowledge, ideas, beliefs, concepts, andvisions of society, culture, civilization.
    5. A particularly important figure in the development of progressive education wasJohn Dewey, whose Laboratory School was founded in 1896 with the aim ofproviding the kind of progressive education that it was not possible to find inother schools in the USA at the time.
    6. the Montessori model of education was banned in Nazi Germany in1936
    7. Out of the ideas of Pestalozzi and Froebel, in the early 1900s Maria Montessorideveloped her method, depending on practical tasks such as personal care andcare for the environment, putting independence at the centre of the curriculum.

      Maria Montessori's educational model stemmed from the ideas of Pestalozzi and Froebel.

    8. a walk one day in the Thuringian hills, and meaning ‘children’s garden’ or‘garden of children’, the word ‘kindergarten’ is now used the world over todescribe preschool or nursery education.

      The word 'kindergarten' meaning a 'children's garden' was coined by educator Friedrich Froebel, a student of Johann Pestalozzi, while walking in the Thuringian hills.

    9. How Gertrude Teaches herChildren

      Swiss educator Johann Pestalozzi (1746-1827) developed a holistic teaching philosophy in How Gertrude Teaches Her Children based on John Locke's ideas and used it to open his own schools.

      See copies at https://archive.org/details/texts?query=How+Gertrude+Teaches+Her+

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Heinrich_Pestalozzi

    10. Aristotle, who had said, many centuries before in Politics (BookVIII): ‘No one would dispute the fact that it is a lawgiver’s prime duty to arrangefor the education of the young. In states where this is not done the quality of theconstitution suffers.’

      Current American climate indicates that Republicans take this quote of Aristotle's to heart, but they're not closely thinking about how they define "education". They're definitely not defining it with respect to John Locke's views in Some Thoughts Concerning Education which encourages political systems that move away from an electorate that is subservient to authority.

      see: https://hypothes.is/a/upfxCtSiEe2wrdd3cOo-Lg for John Locke

    11. In his essay Of the Conduct of the Understanding, Locke frowned upon those

      ‘who seldom reason at all, but do and think according to the example of others, whether parents, neighbours, ministers...for the saving of themselves the pains and trouble of thinking and examining for themselves’ (p. 169).

    12. 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.

      Is there a better direct quote from Locke for this indirect one?


      Oddly, large portions of the religious right and Republican right are highly subservient to authority while simultaneously espousing the idea of "freedom".

      Apparently the base definition of "freedom" on the right has shifted in large portions of American culture.

    13. 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...

    14. best reading, latest school start age—is sometimes called the‘Finnish paradox’

      The Finnish paradox stems from the fact that despite Finland having one of the latest school start ages in the world (at the age of 7), they also have one of the highest literacy achievements as well.

      The paradox is only perceived by those who may feel that hammering knowledge into children's heads from a young age is the best method of education.

    15. Samuel Butler had made the phrase ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child’immortal in his satirical poem Hudibras.

      While the original proverb appears in King James Version of the Bible, Book of Proverbs 13:24, the satirical poem Hudibras is the first appearance of the quote and popularized the aphorism "spare the rod and spoil the child".

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudibras

      https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/spare_the_rod_and_spoil_the_child

      syndication link: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hudibras&oldid=1148518740

    16. He even offeredgrim warnings about children’s bowel movements, stressing the absolute needfor regularity. Regularity should not be achieved, however, at the expense ofdensity or compactness in the, ahem, product, for ‘People that are very loosehave seldom strong thoughts or strong bodies’ (p. 22, original emphasis).

      Locke stressed the need for regular bowel movements in children in his book Some Thoughts Concerning Education and presupposed a link between the looseness of one's stool and the weakness of their bodies. This seemed to be a moralism rather than a question of general health and eating habits which continued into even my own childhood.

    17. Not only does Locke providean intellectual foundation for Rousseau’s view of the child as an experimenter,we can also see the seeds of Rousseau’s notions of the plasticity of the child’smind

      John Locke provides some intellectual foundation in his Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693) for Rousseau's Émile (1762) progressive and empiricist perspectives of teaching and learning.

    1. Luhmann, Niklas. “Improved Translation of ‘Communications with Zettelkastens.’” Translated by Sascha Fast. Zettelkasten Method, April 5, 2023. https://zettelkasten.de/communications-with-zettelkastens/.

    2. I decided to translate the German “Zettelkasten” as “Zettelkasten” since I consider this an established term.

      An example of a bi-lingual German-English speaker/writer specifically translating and using Zettelkasten as an established word in English.

    3. Without variation on given ideas, there are no possibilities of scrutiny and selection of innovations. Therefore, the actual challenge becomes generating incidents with sufficiently high chances of selection.

      The value of a zettelkasten is as a tool to actively force combinatorial creativity—the goal is to create accidents or collisions of ideas which might have a high chance of being discovered and selected for.

    4. But if you think in evolutionary models, randomness has a prominent role. (9)9 Without it, nothing progresses anyhow.

      Nothing progresses without randomness.


      Think about this for a bit. True/untrue? Provable? Counterexamples?

    5. Compared to this structure that offers actualizable connection possibilities, the relevance of the actual content of the note subsides. Much of it quickly becomes useless or is unusable for a concrete occasion. That is true for both collected quotes, which are only worth collecting when they are exceptionally concise, and for your own thoughts.

      Luhmann felt that quotations aren't worth collecting unless they were "exceptionally concise, and for your own thoughts."

    6. The Zettelkasten provides combinatorial possibilities that were never planned, never pre-meditated, or never designed in this way.
    7. The Zettelkasten needs a couple of years to reach critical mass.

      I find that this is not the case. Even a few hundred cards is more than enough to create something interesting.

      Though what does he mean specifically by "critical mass"?

    8. A Zettelkasten that is constructed based on our instructions can achieve high independence. There may be other ways to achieve this goal. The described reduction to a fixed-placement (but merely formal) order, and the corresponding combination of order and disorder, is at least one of them.

      The structural components of Luhmann's zettelkasten which allow for "achieving high independence" are also the same structures found in an indexed commonplace book: namely fixed placement (formally by the order in which things are found and collected) as well as combinations of order and disorder (the methods by which they can be retrieved and read).

    9. Similarly, you must give up the assumption that there are privileged places, notes of special and knowledge-ensuring quality. Each note is just an element that gets its value from being a part of a network of references and cross-references in the system. A note that is not connected to this network will get lost in the Zettelkasten, and will be forgotten by the Zettelkasten.

      This section is almost exactly the same as Umberto Eco's description of a slip box practice:

      No piece of information is superior to any other. Power lies in having them all on file and then finding the connections. There are always connections; you have only to want to find them. -- Umberto Eco. Foucault's Pendulum

      See: https://hypothes.is/a/jqug2tNlEeyg2JfEczmepw


      Interestingly, these structures map reasonably well onto Paul Baran's work from 1964: Paul Baran's graphs for Centralized, Decentralized, and Distributed systems

      The subject heading based filing system looks and functions a lot like a centralized system where the center (on a per topic basis) is the subject heading or topical category and the notes related to that section are filed within it. Luhmann's zettelkasten has the feel of a mixture of the decentralized and distributed graphs, but each sub-portion has its own topology. The index is decentralized in nature, while the bibliographical section/notes are all somewhat centralized in form.

      Cross reference:<br /> Baran, Paul. “On Distributed Communications: I. Introduction to Distributed Communications Networks.” Research Memoranda. Santa Monica, California: RAND Corporation, August 1964. https://doi.org/10.7249/RM3420.

    10. The result of working with this technique for a long time is a kind of second memory, an alter ego with which you can always communicate. It has, similar to our own memory, no pre-planned comprehensive order, no hierarchy, and surely no linear structure like a book. And by that very fact, it is alive independently of its author. The entire note collection can only be described as a mess, but at least it is a mess with a non-arbitrary internal structure.

      Luhmann attributes (an independent) life to his zettelkasten. It is effectuated by internal branching, opportunities for links or connections, and a register as well as lack of pre-planned comprehensive order, lack of hierarchy, and lack of linear structure.

      Which of these is necessary for other types of "life"? Can any be removed? Compare with other systems.

    11. (Alternating numbers and letters helps the memory and may be an optical aid when searching notes, but is of course not enough).

      The alternation of letters and numbers helps to create some visual differentiation of various branches, but how does it help the memory? Help as in it's easier to search for these sorts of combinations versus remembering strings of only numbers?

    12. A content-based system (like a book’s table of contents) would mean that you would have to adhere to a single structure forever (decades in advance!).

      Potential definition of a table of contents: A table of contents is a linear ordering or traversal of of specific material which could potentially be found within an index.

    13. A content-based system (like a book’s table of contents) would mean that you would have to adhere to a single structure forever (decades in advance!).

      Starting a zettelkasten practice with a table of contents as the primary organization is difficult due to planning in advance.

    14. after decades of using the Zettelkasten it might become impossible to access it from your place at the desk. To mitigate this issue, it is recommended to use normal (thin) paper instead of (thick) index cards.

      After having used his zettelkasten for 26 years, Luhmann mentions that he chose normal paper as his substrate for note taking over thicker index cards to save on storage space and particularly to make it possible to keep more material closer to his desk rather than need to store it at larger distances within his office. This allows more slips per drawer and also tends to have an effect on productivity with respect to daily use and searching.

      One might need to balance this out with frequency of use and slip wear, as some slips in his box show heavy use and wear, especially at the top.

    15. 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.

    16. There are two ways for a communication system to maintain its integrity over long periods of time: you need to decide for either highly technical specialisation, or for a setup that incorporates coincidence and ad hoc generated information. Translated to note collections: you can choose a setup categorized by topics, or an open one. We chose the latter and, after 26 successful years with only occasionally difficult teamwork, we can report that this way is successful – or at least possible.

      Luhmann indicates that there are different methods for keeping note collections and specifically mentions categorizing things by topics first. It's only after this that he mentions his own "open" system as being a possible or successful one.

    17. It is an obligatory condition for communication that both partners can surprise each other. Only in that way can information be created in the respective other. Information is an event that happens inside the system. Information is created when a message, an entry [of a note], is compared with other possibilities. Therefore, information is only created in systems that possess a comparison schema (even when this schema is merely: “this or something else”).
    18. If you have to write anyway, it is pragmatic to exploit this activity by creating a system of notes that can act as a competent communication partner.
    19. But don’t count on fast reaction times since I am taking a break from Luhmann because of a Luhmannian overdose.

      "Luhmannian overdose"—Ha!

    1. Armstrong, Dorsey. King Arthur: History and Legend (Course Guidebook). Great Courses 2376. Chantilly, VA: The Teaching Company, 2015.

      King Arthur: History and Legend. Streaming Video. Vol. 2376. The Great Courses: Literature and Language. Chantilly, VA: The Teaching Company, 2015. https://www.wondrium.com/king-arthur-history-and-legend.

    1. Introducing Substack Notes<br /> by Hamish McKenzie, Chris Best, Jairaj Sethi

    2. In Notes, writers will be able to post short-form content and share ideas with each other and their readers. Like our Recommendations feature, Notes is designed to drive discovery across Substack. But while Recommendations lets writers promote publications, Notes will give them the ability to recommend almost anything—including posts, quotes, comments, images, and links.

      Substack slowly adding features and functionality to make them a full stack blogging/social platform... first long form, then short note features...

      Also pushing in on Twitter's lunch as Twitter is having issues.

    3. There are more than 35 million active subscriptions to writers on Substack, including more than 2 million paid subscriptions.

      As of April 2023, only 5.7% of Substack active subscriptions are paid.

      How exactly do they define "active" subscriptions?

    1. There is no real difference if you think about the boundaries between reading and notetaking. Moving the eyes over text: Sounds like reading. Highlighting key words while reading: Still sounds like reading. Jotting down keywords in the margins: Some writing, but still could count as reading. Writing tasks in the marings (e.g. "Should compare that to Buddhism"): Don't know. Reformulating key sections in your own words: Sounds like writing. But could be just the externalisation of what could be internal. Does make a difference if you stop and think about what you read or do it in written form?

      Perhaps there is a model for reading and note taking/writing with respect to both learning and creating new knowledge that follows an inverse mapping in a way similar to that seen in Galois theory?

      Explore this a bit to see what falls out.

    1. By the way, I would now revise the sentence you quote to read: "Fixed numbers, abstracted from any content-based order relying on the entire structure has ..."

      It would seem that the version of the translation of Luhmann's Communication with Zettelkasten at http://luhmann.surge.sh/communicating-with-slip-boxes is more up to date than the older archived version at https://web.archive.org/web/20150825031821/http://scriptogr.am/kuehnm because it takes into consideration smaller updates like this.

      See: - https://github.com/Zettelkasten-Method/luhmann.surge.sh/commits/master/communicating-with-slip-boxes.html

    1. How do I store when coming across an actual FACT? .t3_12bvcmn._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } questionLet's say I am trying to absorb a 30min documentary about the importance of sleep and the term human body cells is being mentioned, I want to remember what a "Cell" is so I make a note "What is a Cell in a Human Body?", search the google, find the definition and paste it into this note, my concern is, what is this note considered, a fleeting, literature, or permanent? how do I tag it...

      reply to u/iamharunjonuzi at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/12bvcmn/how_do_i_store_when_coming_across_an_actual_fact/

      How central is the fact to what you're working at potentially developing? Often for what may seem like basic facts that are broadly useful, but not specific to things I'm actively developing, I'll leave basic facts like that as short notes on the source/reference cards (some may say literature notes) where I found them rather than writing them out in full as their own cards.

      If I were a future biologist, as a student I might consider that I would soon know really well what a cell was and not bother to have a primary zettel on something so commonplace unless I was collecting various definitions to compare and contrast for something specific. Alternately as a non-biologist or someone that doesn't use the idea frequently, then perhaps it may merit more space for connecting to others?

      Of course you can always have it written along with the original source and "promote" it to its own card later if you feel it's necessary, so you're covered either way. I tend to put the most interesting and surprising ideas into my main box to try to maximize what comes back out of it. If there were 2 more interesting ideas than the definition of cell in that documentary, then I would probably leave the definition with the source and focus on the more important ideas as their own zettels.

      As a rule of thumb, for those familiar with Bloom's taxonomy in education, I tend to leave the lower level learning-based notes relating to remembering and understanding as shorter (literature) notes on the source's reference card and use the main cards for the higher levels (apply, analyze, evaluate, create).

      Ultimately, time, practice, and experience will help you determine for yourself what is most useful and where. Until you've developed a feel for what works best for you, just write it down somewhere and you can't really go too far wrong.

    1. Hi I am getting confused as to how to tackle a whole book or research paper and the production of notes. I'm doing a literature review as part of a phd, so academic level critique needed. The referencing I can easily cite at the end of the note so that isn't a concern. Does one research paper produce many notes, how does one title these notes please? Is it the concept or the book etc. thank you (sorry I am trying to move this to the other section but cannot see how to do this, I realise I've posted in the wrong place) Zoe

      reply to ZH215 at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/2545/lit-review-template-or-not#latest

      For a literature review, you might find Adler & Van Doren more immediate and interesting (compared to Ahrens), particularly chapter 20 on syntopical reading. This may help you to better focus your annotating and note making practices. Consider it a big conversation, but all the participants are writing instead of speaking.

      Adler, Mortimer J., and Charles Van Doren. How to Read a Book: The Classical Guide to Intelligent Reading. Revised and Updated edition. 1940. Reprint, Touchstone, 2011.

      While the more significant notes can be useful in the long run and can be used as the backbone of your work, I often personally find that my shorter annotations and highlights/tags in a literature review are incredibly helpful for comparison and contrast later, so don't discount the value of these.

    1. The first rule of analytical reading can be expressed asfollows : RULE 1. You MUST KNOW WHAT KIND OF BOK YOU AREREADING, AND YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS AS EARLY IN THE PROCESSAS POSSIBLE, PREFERABLY BEFORE YOU BEGIN TO READ.
    2. 20

      Revisit the question from earlier about dialectical notes and "separate sheets". See: https://hypothes.is/a/QJ-tsNKvEe20jVORiPEA0g

    3. Since they are made concerning several books, not just one,they often have to be made on a separate sheet ( or sheets ) ofpaper. Here, a structure of concepts is implied-an order ofstatements and questions about a single subject matter. Wewill return to this kind of note-making in Chapter 20.

      The authors recommend making dialectic notes on "a separate sheet (or sheets"). Presumably here, this is because the notes don't relate to just one text, but to multiple. This doesn't seem to have the same underlying cause or need as that suggested by Konrad Gessner or others to keep separate sheets for individual ideas, but we should revisit this when we get to chapter 20.

    1. Labour Exchange - Encyclopedia

      Encyclopedia Britannica 1911

    2. Based on yesterday's discussion at Dan Allosso's Book Club, we don't include defense spending into the consumer price index for calculating inflation or other market indicators. What other things (communal goods) aren't included into these measures, but which potentially should be to take into account the balance of governmental spending versus individual spending. It seems unfair that individual sectors, particularly those like defense contracting which are capitalistic in nature, but which are living on governmental rent extraction, should be free from the vagaries of inflation?

      Throwing them into the basket may create broader stability for the broader system and act as a brake via feedback mechanisms which would push those corporations to work for the broader economic good, particularly when they're taking such a large piece of the overall pie.

      Similarly how might we adjust corporate tax rates with respect to the level of inflation to prevent corporate price gouging during times of inflation which seems to be seen in the current 2023 economic climate. Workers have seen some small gains in salary since the pandemic, but inflationary pressures have dramatically eaten into these taking the gains and then some back into corporate coffers. The FED can increase interest rates to effect some change, but this doesn't change corporate price gouging in any way, tax or other policies will be necessary to do this.

    3. Why do we devalue education? Is it such a commodity now that its transmission value is worth pennies on the dollar?

      Is Government requirement and support for education part of what causes the devaluation of the "educational market"? If so, how would one decouple this process to increase the wages of educators? Is a capitalistic version the best way to go, or is it better to socialize it further and inject more money into it versus other choices?

      Major nationwide strike forming minimum wage with variances for local consumer indices and city/state costs of living? Something which would drive competition for child care and teaching spaces? Wages that would push up the social value of education? Create a market for competition for teachers at the local level as well as between areas?

    4. Link to: https://hypothes.is/a/lV19ytGBEe2ynWMu34UKUg

      This depreciation is done at the lowest level of exchange and caused the system to collapse rather quickly. What level is our current exchange done at such that the inequalities are pushed up multiple levels making the system seem more stable? How is instability introduced? How could it be minimized?

      Our current system is valued both by time and skill (using the measure of payment per hour).

      Compare this with salespeople who are paid on commission rather than on an hourly basis. They are then using their skill of sales ability and balancing time (and levels of chance) to create their outcomes, but at the same time, some of their work is built on the platform that sales management or the company provides. Who builds this and how do they get paid for it? Who provides sales leads? How is this calculated into the system costs?

      How do these ideas fit into the Bullshit Jobs thesis?

    5. Tradesmen, too, were quick to see that the exchange might be worked to their advantage; they brought unsaleable stock from their shops, exchanged it for labour notes, and then picked out the best of the saleable articles. Consequently the labour notes began to depreciate; trouble also arose with the proprietors of the premises, and the experiment came to an untimely end early in 1834.

      The labour exchange at Gray's Inn Road which began on September 3, 1832, which was based on Robert Owen's idea in The Crisis (June 1832), eventually collapsed in 1834 as the result of Greshham's Law in which "bad money drives out good." In this case, rather than money the object was the relative value of goods which were exchanged based on Labour notes. Labour notes were used to exchange unsaleable stock in shops for labour notes which were then used to purchase more valuable goods. This caused depreciation of the labor notes ultimately causing the experiment to collapse in 1834.

    1. In 1882, work first started on the Sagrada Familia, Antonio Gaudi’s art nouveau masterpiece in Barcelona, Spain. The basilica is still under construction today.

      The Sagrada Familia basilica began construction in 1882, in Barcelona Spain. The art nouveau building designed by Antonio Gaudi is expected to be completed in 2026.

  3. Mar 2023
    1. Edward Pressman, Film Producer Who Bet on Unsung Talent, Dies at 79<br /> by Neil Genzlinger

      One of my favorite producers...

    2. “The hardest thing I’ve learned over the years is that I’m getting paid a lot of money to produce a movie, but sometimes the best thing to do is nothing,” he told The New York Times in 1992, when he was making “Hoffa.” “I don’t need to impose myself.”Nonetheless, he knew he played a vital role.“It’s the creative urge that makes me work,” he told American Film magazine for a 1988 article. “The pleasure is, to some extent, vicarious, but it’s no less creative for that. It is creating a world by bringing together creative financing with creative filmmakers. In a sense, producing can be compared to conceptual art.”
    3. Two years later, he produced Mr. De Palma’s comic drama about a disfigured composer who sells his soul, “Phantom of the Paradise,” which has become a cult favorite.
    1. At the University of California, Berkeley, Tom studied physics and then literature, graduating with a B.A. in English. He also ran a film society and played on the varsity golf team.

      Tom Luddy ran a film society while in college at the University of California, Berkeley.

    2. Mr. Luddy at the 2017 Telluride Film Festival. The festival became a gathering of devotees to the religion of filmmaking, and Mr. Luddy was its most fervent believer and its main officiant.

      "religion of filmmaking"

    3. “I Vitelloni,” Federico Fellini’s 1953 film about a group of young men on the brink of adulthood drifting about in a small Italian village, to George Lucas before he made “American Graffiti.”

      Tom Luddy introduced George Lucas to Federico Fellini's I Vitelloni before he made American Graffiti.

    4. It was a measure of Mr. Luddy’s influence, The Times noted in 1984, that he showed “The Italian,” a 1915 film that is considered a model for the immigrant-gangster epic, to Mr. Coppola before he made “The Godfather,”
    5. As director of special projects for Francis Ford Coppola’s company American Zoetrope, he produced movies like Paul Schrader’s “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters” (1985), a complicated film about Yukio Mishima, the eccentric Japanese author who killed himself publicly in 1970 — a passion project that Mr. Schrader has described as “the definition of an unfinanceable project.” Mr. Luddy was its tireless booster and supporter, funding it early on with his American Express card.
    1. Open the YouTube video you want to watch and press Ctrl+M. This keyboard shortcut can make YouTube hide the process bar even you haven’t paused the YouTube video.

      To capture a Youtube video screenshot without the player controls, use the Hyde browser extension and the keystroke Ctrl+M to hide/unhide the controls.

      Further, one can use the Windows Snipping Tool via Win-Shift-S to effect a screenshot to the clipboard for saving and editing.

      https://youtubedownload.minitool.com/youtube/how-to-hide-youtube-bar.html

    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.

    2. The Scrum method, which is powered by Post-it® Products, breaks up a project into bite-sized modules. It helps to track each task through various stages of completion, and ensures that everyone on the team is aware of progress and updates. It can help turn thoughts into actions, and actions into achievement.

      Seeing this, I can't help but think about some of the ads from the early 1900s for filing cabinets and card indexes which had similar named methodologies for productivity, but which were also advertisements for purchasing the associated physical goods.

      Examples: Shaw-Walker, Yawman & Erbe, etc.

    1. The Lost Art of Library Card Catalogues<br /> by Claire Voon

      Broadly a synopsis/advertisement for The Card Catalog: Books, Cards, and Literary Treasures (Chronicle, 2017), which I've put on my to read list.

    1. zettelkasten

      (free of this context, but I need somewhere just to place this potential title/phrase...)

      Purpose Driven Zettelkasten

    1. I do my thinking with pen on paper. Digital tools, even (or especially?) the note-taking ones, are just not for me. <br><br>They may be easy to access or carry around, but what’s the point if they constrain the output?

      — Julia Pappas (@JuliaPappasJoy) March 30, 2023
      <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

      A common issue of many digital note taking apps is that while they may have ease for cutting and pasting data into them, moving data around, visualizing it in various forms, and exporting it into a final product may be much more difficult. At the opposite end of the spectrum, physical index cards are much easier to sort, resort, and place into an outline form to create output.

    1. By asking students to share their annotations openly, we help students to see a wide range of annotation practices, thus demystifying what has often been a private, individual practice.

      Of course, some of the private, individual practice can be terribly formed and generally useless for many, so it becomes imperative that students have some strong modeling here from the rhetorical side. What exactly do "good" and "useful" practices look like? How are these annotations used after-the-fact? What purposes do they serve? Can they be reused? Even with open annotations, there is still a lot of additional practice and use which happens beyond the visible annotation which is hidden.

      How can we leverage the open annotation and the following process (for example that of Ahrens2017 or Eco2015, 1977) to show more of the workflows of not only learning/understanding/sensemaking, but then taking that material to apply, analyze, evaluate, and then subsequently create new material?

      I see a lot of this sort of community sensemaking in the fora for digital note taking tools like Roam Research, Obsidian, Tana, etc. People there may sometimes be more focused on workflows for productivity sake, but there's a lot of subtle learning about note taking practice which is also going on between the lines.

    1. DeRosa, Robin. Interdisciplinary Studies: A Connected Learning Approach. Rebus Communities, 2016. https://press.rebus.community/idsconnect/.


      found via <br /> Sheridan, Victoria. “A Pedagogical Endeavor.” Inside Higher Ed, August 9, 2017. https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2017/08/09/robin-derosas-oer-pedagogical-endeavor.

      On first blush it looks like I've read portions of some of these chapters as blogposts on the authors' original websites. Should be interesting to see how those are linked/credited.

      Given the writing contained in the book it would be interesting to see Pressbooks and/or the Rebus Community allow support for having the lead of a project be credited as an "editor" on the front page rather than to default them as an "author".

    1. Sheridan, Victoria. “A Pedagogical Endeavor.” Inside Higher Ed, August 9, 2017. https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2017/08/09/robin-derosas-oer-pedagogical-endeavor.

    2. In the fall of 2015, she assigned students to write chapter introductions and translate some texts into modern English.

      continuing from https://hypothes.is/a/ddn4qs8mEe2gkq_1T7i3_Q

      Potential assignments:

      Students could be tasked with finding new material or working off of a pre-existing list.

      They could individually be responsible for indexing each individual sub-text within a corpus by: - providing a full bibliography; - identifying free areas of access for various versions (websites, Archive.org, Gutenberg, other OER corpora, etc.); Which is best, why? If not already digitized, then find a copy and create a digital version for inclusion into an appropriate repository. - summarizing the source in general and providing links to how it fits into the broader potential corpus for the class. - tagging it with relevant taxonomies to make it more easily searchable/selectable within its area of study - editing a definitive version of the text or providing better (digital/sharable) versions for archiving into OER repositories, Project Gutenberg, Archive.org, https://standardebooks.org/, etc. - identifying interesting/appropriate tangential texts which either support/refute their current text - annotating their specific text and providing links and cross references to other related texts either within their classes' choices or exterior to them for potential future uses by both students and teachers.

      Some of this is already with DeRosa's framework, but emphasis could be on building additional runway and framing for helping professors and students to do this sort of work in the future. How might we create repositories that allow one a smörgåsbord of indexed data to relatively easily/quickly allow a classroom to pick and choose texts to make up their textbook in a first meeting and be able to modify it as they go? Or perhaps a teacher could create an outline of topics to cover along with a handful of required ones and then allow students to pick and choose from options in between along the way. This might also help students have options within a course to make the class more interesting and relevant to their own interests, lives, and futures.

      Don't allow students to just "build their own major", but allow them to build their own textbooks and syllabi with some appropriate and reasonable scaffolding.

    3. In the fall of 2015, she assigned students to write chapter introductions and translate some texts into modern English.

      Perhaps of interest here, would not be a specific OER text, but an OER zettelkasten or card index that indexes a variety of potential public domain or open resources, articles, pieces, primary documents, or other short readings which could then be aggregated and tagged to allow for a teacher or student to create their own personalized OER text for a particular area of work.

      If done well, a professor might then pick and choose from a wide variety of resources to build their own reader to highlight or supplement the material they're teaching. This could allow a wider variety of thinking and interlinking of ideas. With such a regiment, teachers are less likely to become bored with their material and might help to actively create new ideas and research lines as they teach.

      Students could then be tasked with and guided to creating a level of cohesiveness to their readings as they progress rather than being served up a pre-prepared meal with a layer of preconceived notions and frameworks imposed upon the text by a single voice.

      This could encourage students to develop their own voices as well as to look at materials more critically as they proceed rather than being spoon fed calcified ideas.