Konik cites Raccoon Nation on PBS which indicates that a racoon's most heightened sense is it's sense of touch, a sense which is increased when the hands are wet or under water.

Is this tied into the popular stories of raccoons which presumably like to "wash their food?" Is it really their sense of touch and affordances which come from that that presses this impression?

https://www.obsidianroundup.org/the-konik-method-for-making-notes/

Eleanor Konik explores, in reasonable depth, how she makes notes and uses Obsidian to manage them. She doesn't talk much about the philosophy of her method in a prescriptive manner so much as she looks directly at her process.

This isn't so much a "rules" set, but takes some pre-existing rules (unstated) and shows how she bends them to her particular needs for outputs primarily in non-academic settings.

• [ ] May be worth coming back to explore this part of the Obsidian workflow at some point for some automation. (@2022-11-08)

While there are rules and processes for taking notes, it's small personal tidbits like this that are harder fought knowledge for the beginner who generally only learns these bits through work and experience.

I'm not sure how frequent this pattern is within fleeting notes, but it's something I do myself to create at least a temporary shorthand context of how things interrelate and which can easily be cleaned up later in the longer form permanent notes.

The tougher thing is to always capture these sorts of things which one won't remember, but which quite often create better and stronger insights down the road.

this is a good example of the personal side of note taking that isn't always outwardly seen

each person's notes will be personal to them

I suspect that this example of Eleanor Konik's is incredibly common among note takers. They may have vast repositories of collected material which they can reference or use, but typically don't.

In digital contexts it's probably much more common that one will have a larger commonplace book-style collection of notes (either in folders or with tags), and a smaller subsection of more highly processed notes (a la Luhmann's practice perhaps) which are more tightly worked and interlinked.

To a great extent this mirrors much of my own practice as well.

She's probably right that too many" influencers" in the space don't have actual context for use.

Love that she links to Andy Matuschak's admonishment about this...

Even though she's very explicitly taken a pro-citation stance earlier in the essay on moral and ethical grounds, Eleanor Konik takes a less hands-on approach to her collection of citations here preferring to focus on the content of a quote rather than where it came from.

Interesting anecdote about personal approach to citations to compare academics and non-academics.

Seemingly both rubber duck debugging and casual conversations with acquaintances would seem to be soft forms of diffuse thinking which may help one come to a heuristic-based decision or realization.

These may be useful, but should also be used in combination with more logical, system two forms of decision making. (At least not in the quick, notice the problem sort of issues in which one may be debugging.)

Abrams, Douglas. “Historian Barbara W. Tuchman on the ‘Art of Writing’ (Part II).” Precedent 9, no. 1 (January 1, 2015): 18–21. http://ssrn.com/abstract=2581159

Interesting view of writing and a short collection of reasonable writing advice. Perhaps a bit too much focus on other writers given the title of the piece. Not sure it was all brought together in the nice bow it may have otherwise had, but interesting nonetheless.

17 betty roGerS, wiLL roGerS 294 (1941; new ed. 1979) (quoting Rogers).

15 A.E. Hotchner , PAPA heminGwAy 69-70 (1966) (quoting Hemingway).

12 Felix Frankfurter, Some Reflections On the Reading of Statutes, 47 CoLUm . L. rev. 527, 528 (1947), reprinting Felix Frankfurter, Sixth Annual Benjamin N. Cardozo Lecture, 2 Rec. Bar Ass'n City of N.Y. (No. 6, 1947).

11 Guy de Maupassant, Selected Short Sto- ries 10-11 (Roger Colet ed., 1971) (Maupassant quoting French writer Gustave Flaubert).

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1beJHWsuB0MJDMqeg_q8pBRWRdQImY-n8E6PttoJLFaM/edit#gid=2032266685

EduTooters, er, Educators, on Mastodon

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1T-IUl72xlbEcaclP7TUA8kgrhDTVSrMwwsi5iIIfsow/edit#gid=0

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13No4yxY-oFrN8PigC2jBWXreFCHWwVRTftwP6HcREtA/edit#gid=1320898902

https://laist.com/news/politics/voter-game-plan

I annotated the hell out of my 2022 midterm ballot!

https://tantek.com/2022/310/t1/sf-ca-election-issues-summary

Thanks Tantek!

https://nicheless.blog/

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vFWP_eBXrjeDqDkmT6PEbxnsZ_QFC4OgEgUHTrJWhhQ/edit#heading=h.3kytjljlyh06

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Greene_(American_author)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ueMHkGljK0

Robert Greene's method goes back to junior high school when he was practicing something similar. He doesn't say he invented it, and it may be likely that teachers modeled some of the system for him. He revised the system over time to make it work for himself.

• [x] Revisit this for some pull quotes and fine details of his method. (Done on 2022-11-08)

Origin of Robert Greene's (May 14, 1959 - ) note taking system using index cards:<br /> Greene didn't recall a specific origin of his practices, but did mention that his mom found some index cards at his house from a junior high school class. (Presuming a 12 year old 7th grader, this would be roughly from 1971.) Ultimately when he wrote 48 Laws of Power, he was worried about being overwhelmed with his notes and ideas in notebooks. He naturally navigated to note cards as a solution.

Uses about 50 cards per chapter.

His method starts by annotating his books as he reads them. A few weeks later, he revisits these books and notes to transfer his ideas to index cards. He places a theme on the top of each card along with a page number of the original reference.

He has kept much the same system as he started with though it has changed a bit over time.

You're either a prisoner of your material or a master of your material.

This might not be the best system ever created, but it works for me.

When looking through a corpus of cards for a project, Robert Greene is able to make note of the need to potentially reuse a card within a particular work if necessary. The fact that index cards are inherently mobile within his projects make them easy to move and reuse.

I haven't heard in either Robert Greene or Ryan Holiday's practices evidence that they reuse notes or note cards from one specific project to the next. Based on all the evidence I've seen, they maintain individual collections for each book project for which they're developing.

[...] like a chameleon [the index card system is] constantly changing colors or [like] something that's able to change its shape at will. This whole system can change its shape as I direct it.

Robert Green appears to use a Globe-Weis/Pendaflex Fiberboard Index Card Storage Box, 4 x 6 Inches, Black Agate (94 BLA) to store his index card-based notes.

How I Write My Books: Robert Greene Reveals His Research Methods When Writing His Latest Work, 2020. timestamp 0:00:30.

syndication link

Robert Greene: (pruriently) "You want to see my index cards?"<br /> Brian Rose: (curiously) Yeah. Can we?? ... This is epic! timestamp

https://mastodon.help/

https://instances.social/

A tool for helping people choose an instance.

https://namelix.com/app/

https://hypothes.is/search?q=tag%3A%27etc556+etcnau%27

Randomly ran across a great tag full of education resources...

Seems to be related to this class:<br /> ETC 556 - Contexts And Methods Of Technology In Adult Education

Description: This course is designed for adult educators in the various contexts, including: higher education, military, non-profit, health and business settings. Through research, readings and collaborative activities, students will gain an understanding of various adult learning methods that include, but are not limited to, training, professional development, performance improvement, online and mobile learning. Letter grade only.

https://catalog.nau.edu/Courses/course?courseId=011553&catalogYear=2223

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

https://tracydurnell.com/2022/11/01/the-addictive-nature-of-twitter/

https://doctorow.medium.com/how-to-leave-dying-social-media-platforms-9fc550fe5abf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Gautier_Ben%C3%ADtez

An RSS feed of my Twitter account, for those who might like it: http://tweetfeed.org/ChrisAldrich/rss.xml

http://docs.tweetfeed.org/

https://9to5google.com/2022/11/03/best-mastodon-apps-download-android/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbUEa9B0wLM

This appears like it might fit the bill for my Call for Model Examples of Zettelkasten Output Processea

<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>Eleanor Konik</span> in The Konik Method for Making Useful Notes (<time class='dt-published'>11/07/2022 12:03:38</time>)</cite></small>

https://forum.obsidian.md/t/alternative-checkboxes-icon-bullets-copy-and-paste/35962

A list of alternative checkboxes or icon bullets for Obsidian (and potentially other platforms). Potentially useful for search and filtering as well.

• [ ] to-do
• [/] incomplete
• [x] done
• [-] canceled
• [>] forwarded
• [<] scheduling
• [?] question
• [!] important
• [*] star
• ["] quote
• [l] location
• [b] bookmark
• [i] information
• [S] savings
• [I] idea
• [p] pros
• [c] cons
• [f] fire
• [k] key
• [w] win
• [u] up
• [d] down

https://www.cold-takes.com/learning-by-writing/

Meh... generic process. Nothing broadly new here. The extended example is flawed because it's a broad thesis by a top level aggregator who doesn't have their own expert level experience (seemingly). Better to start from there, but delving more deeply into the primary literature of people who may have that experience.

https://ibogost.substack.com/p/all-i-want-is-a-place-to-quip

writing, but to what end and for what audience?

Why not keep a waste book like Georg Christoph Lichtenberg and simply publish it? Do you need the approbation?

https://app.sane.fyi/space/kevinmarks-gmail-com-tools-for-thought-87615

An example of the Sane user interface.

https://getblogging.org/

A Ben Werdmuller joint

https://danallosso.substack.com/p/the-aha-atlantic-history-discussion

It's important to distinguish between professional history and popular myths we tell ourselves for cultural or political purposes.

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

Known for having a large zettelkasten.

Compulsory education and changes in curriculum in the United States and some of it's competitors in the late 19th century clearly benefitted advances in commerce, industry, and became a factor in national security.

Bowles and Gintis apparently make an argument in Schooling in Capitalist America that changes in education in the late 1800s/early 1900s served the ends of capitalists rather than the people.

Did Rousseau have an influence on Maria Montessori? Where was the origin of her philosophy?

https://github.com/nathanlesage/academics-on-mastodon#readme

https://buzzmachine.com/2022/11/05/hope-for-a-post-musk-net/

Small town newspapers and libraries could set up Fediverse servers for their constituents as well.

See also: Hometown by Darius Kazemi

https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/02/hey-elon-let-me-help-you-speed-run-the-content-moderation-learning-curve/

https://pruvisto.org/debirdify/

Tool for moving some of your Twitter data over to Mastodon or other parts of the Fediverse.

https://fedidb.org/

https://bridge.birb.space/

This instance is a Twitter to ActivityPub bridge.

https://fediverse.info/explore/people

https://fedifinder.glitch.me/

Extract the fediverse handles of your Twitter followings or list members and import them on Mastodon to follow them all at once.

https://twitodon.com/

https://pinafore.social/

Pinafore is a web client for Mastodon, designed for speed and simplicity.

<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>Jessica Smith</span> in Small Web - Jayeless.net (<time class='dt-published'>07/03/2021 23:34:42</time>)</cite></small>

https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/05/tech/mastodon/index.html

https://theconversation.com/mass-migration-from-twitter-is-likely-to-be-an-uphill-battle-just-ask-ex-tumblr-users-193677

https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-find-twitter-friends-on-mastodon/

We don't talk about the art of reading or the art of note making often enough as a goal to which students might aspire. It's too often framed as a set of rules and an mechanical process rather than a road to producing interesting, inspiring, or insightful content that can change humanity.

This is why one has some broad general rules for keeping and maintaining a zettelkasten. It helps to have some rules to practice and make a habit.

Unmentioned here is that true artists known all the rules and can then more profitably break those rules for expanding and improving upon their own practice. This is dramatically different from what is seen by some of those who want to have a commonplace or zettelkasten practice, but begin without any clear rules. They often begin breaking the rules to their detriment without having the benefit of long practice to see and know the affordances of such systems before going out of their way to break those rules.

By breaking the rules before they've even practiced them, many get confused or lost and quit their practice before they see any of the benefits or affordances of them.

Of course one should have some clear cut end reasons which answer the "why" question for having such practices, or else they'll also lose the motivation to stick with the practice, particularly when they don't see any light at the end of the tunnel. Pure hope may not be enough for most.

Dialectical notes are made at the level of syntopical reading and entail creating a conversation not only between the reader and the author, but create a conversation of questions and answers between and among many texts and the reader.

Conceptual notes are made during the analytical reading of a book and "give answers to questions about the truth and significance of the book."

Adler and Van Doren define structural note making as the sorts of questions one might ask at the level of inspectional reading including: - what kind of book is it? - what is it about? - what is the overall structure with respect to the argument the author intends to make?

General methods of annotating or marking a text:<br /> - underlining, circling, boxing, enclosing, or highlighting - vertical lines in margin - stars, asterisks, symbols, dogears, (implied: bookmarks) - numbers sequencing arguments - page numbers as cross references - writing in the margin: questions and answers - writing in the endpapers

Are there other methods and marks that aren't catalogued here?

The idea of drolleries used as mnemonics is one which quickly comes to mind.

They do mention cross-references to page numbers within the text, but fail to mention links to ideas in other texts. (Perhaps they cover this later under syntopical reading and marking?)

Adler and Van Doren indicate that outlining the arguments and structure of a book on its endpapers is a better and higher measurement of one's ownership of a text compared to a bookplate which only indicates the lower level of "financial" ownership.

Active reading is thinking, and thinking requires expression which can come in many forms including both spoken and written ones.

I like that he acknowledges that expression (and thus thinking) can be done in both oral or written forms.

This reminds me of the purpose of reading at CAA. If you tell no one about it, then it wasn't worth the effort. What new did you learn and how did you pass that on to improve your friends, colleagues, and society?

also includes opening oneself up to open questions one might either ask themselves or those which the author proposes.

The authors don't cover it, but the skimming portion of inspectional reading helps one to build some of the context which the author is attempting to relay. Preloading some of this context will decrease one's mental burden when more deeply and actively attempting to consume a text.

use of "mental card catalogue" as memory

This broadly applies to both oral and literate societies.

Desire, ability, and need are all tough measures however... each one losing a portion of the population along the way.

How can we maintain high proportions across all these variables?

Tech is friction. Tech is just ways of mediating friction."<br /> —Bob Doto #

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8FSENslHF0

https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/848/zettelizers

A thread about what to call those who have a zettelkasten or those who practice the method.

This also has a nod to the idea of "filing". 😁

Example of someone who sees "mystery" in the idea of Zettelkasten, which becomes part of the draw into using it.

https://www.worthpoint.com/

https://www.fastcompany.com/90806657/z-library-ebook-piracy-shut-down-alternatives

https://joinfediverse.wiki/How_to_host_your_own_Fediverse_instance%3F

I've been told since the first day I started working at the Division of Hospital Medicine at @UCSF that my work doesn't bring in $ to cover my salary. It's a narrative of manufactured scarcity, a common tactic in capitalism. The CEO is making $1.85 million plus bonuses.

— Rupa Marya, MD (@DrRupaMarya) November 4, 2022

A Hospitalist’s economic value is in what we *save* the system in terms of quality-driven care and patient throughput (DC/unit time), not in how much we bring in through profees. Because of how the system is structured, you’ll only see our value when we aren’t there.

— Rupa Marya, MD (@DrRupaMarya) November 4, 2022

This sounds a lot like hospitalists fall under David Graeber's thesis in Bullshit Jobs that the more necessary and useful you are the less you're likely to get paid and be valued.

I suspect the ability to track an employees' direct level of productivity also fits into this thesis. One can track the productivity of an Amazon warehouse worker or driver, but it's much more difficult to track the CEOs direct productivity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9QOHaAqhXc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS-b_RUtL1A

LATCH method for search within note taking (Location, Alphabet, Time, Category, and Hierarchy)

https://infiniteconversation.com/

an AI generated, never-ending discussion between Werner Herzog and Slavoj Žižek. Everything you hear is fully generated by a machine. The opinions and beliefs expressed do not represent anyone. They are the hallucinations of a slab of silicon.

Blake, Vernon. Relation in Art: Being a Suggested Scheme of Art Criticism, with Which Is Incorporated a Sketch of a Hypothetic Philosophy of Relation. Oxford University Press, H. Milford, 1925. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Relation_in_Art/BcAgAAAAMAAJ?hl=en

Suggested by

"Relation in Art" by Vernon Blake (1925), because it put art criticism on a quasi-scientific footing, articulated what was great about the art of all epochs (including the Greeks), and intelligently criticised the decline of art in the 20th century.

— Codex OS (@codexeditor) November 5, 2022

Vernon Blake, in a posthumous article in the CTC Gazette from July 1930, wrote a description of a bicycle with balloon tires and small gears, which is now considered the first mountain bike.

https://www.arthurperret.fr/veille/2022-10-22-mise-au-point-salutaire-sur-la-methode-zettelkasten.html

Something I never thought would be written of me, surely.

scathing, but broadly true...

https://www.openculture.com/2014/03/the-harvard-classics-download-all-51-volumes-as-free-ebooks.html

https://www.bartleby.com/hc/

https://www.bartleby.com/nonfiction/

https://library.harvard.edu/collections/reading-harvard-views-readers-readership-and-reading-history

Reading: Harvard Views of Readers, Readership, and Reading History<br /> Exploring the intellectual, cultural, and political history of reading as reflected in the historical holdings of the Harvard's libraries.

https://notebookofghosts.com/2018/02/25/a-brief-guide-to-keeping-a-commonplace-book/

very loose and hands-off on dictating others' practices

nothing new to me really...

Because your note taking practices will grow and evolve, don't get over-involved in too many specifics up front. Start somewhere and see where it goes.

Commonplacing is a personal practice.

"Nullum numen abest si sit prudentia, is unquestionably true, with regard to every thing except poetry; and I am very sure that any man of common understanding may, by proper culture, care, attention, and labour, make himself whatever he pleases, except a good poet." Chesterfield, Letter lxxxi.

See also: https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:The_Works_of_the_Rev._Jonathan_Swift,_Volume_5.djvu/261 as a source

Swift, Jonathan. The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift. Edited by Thomas Sheridan and John Nichols. Vol. 5. 19 vols. London: H. Baldwin and Son, 1801.

https://www.bisley.sk/userfiles/bisley/product/e84b22bf2d7156d048ad076ff74f895d.pdf

https://www.amazon.com/Snap-N-Store-Index-Card-Black-SNS01577/dp/B002VCVCKW/

https://www.amazon.com/Globe-Weis-Pendaflex-Fiberboard-Storage-4X6BLA/dp/B0037852VY/

https://www.amazon.com/MaxGear-Business-Organizer-Storage-Organizers/dp/B07ZB152BG/

https://www.vaultz.com/vaultz-vz01395-black-locking-4x6-index-card-cabinet-double-drawer

These are the type used by various people including Scott P. Scheper.

http://www.shopbrodart.com/library-supplies/archival-supplies/archival-storage-boxes/Archival-Specialty-Storage-Boxes/_/Post-Card-Boxes/

N.B. presuming the 4 1/8" H dimension is even the outer dimension, this means that one can't easily keep tab cut dividers which often go from 4 3/8" to 4 1/2" tall in these boxes with the lids on properly.

Instead, one may prefer their slightly larger microfiche boxes which go up to 4 3/4" which should also presumably fit their microfiche divider guides for sectioning one's work.

Another subtle difference in these two boxes is that the smaller is 60-pt paper versus 40-pt for the larger microfiche box, which means that while sturdy, isn't quite as sturdy.

http://www.shopbrodart.com/library-supplies/archival-supplies/archival-storage-boxes/Archival-Media-Storage-Boxes/_/Microfiche-Storage-Boxes/

These should easily fit 4 x 6" index cards as well as card dividers with taller tabs which commercially don't often get taller than 4 1/2".

See also microfiche divider guides.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/06/books/erin-lee-carr-david-carr-all-that-you-leave-behind-memoir-interview.html

Erin Lee Carr talks about using index cards to write a book about her father, but her practice sounds more like index cards with headings as a means of structuring a story and not actually writing the entire work out on cards.

Stanley Meyer always said, "Don't believe your own publicity."