3,874 Matching Annotations
  1. Feb 2022
    1. Steven Johnson indicates that the word processor is a terrible tool for writing because it doesn't have usable affordances for building up longer pieces from one's notes or basic ideas.

      He discusses his specific workflow of note taking and keeping ideas in Scrivener where he arranges them into folders and outlines which then become the source of his writing.

      Different from the typical zettelkasten workflow, he's keeping his notes hierarchically organized in folders based on topic keywords and only later when creating a specific writing project making explicit links and orders between his notes to create longer pieces. It's here that his work diverges most dramatically to the zettelkasten method described by Sönke Ahrens.

    1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._(Dorst_novel)?

      This was mentioned to me at an IndieWebCamp event today.

      Seems interesting with respect to the meta portions of books.

      Looks like the sort of thing that @remikalir and @anterobot may be interested in.

    1. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1494322378142359554.html

      from https://twitter.com/NeilLewisJr/status/1494322378142359554

      Context:

      Some news: yesterday I learned that, by faculty vote, my bid for tenure/promotion was not approved.<br><br>I feel many things, but not shame or regret. I am so proud of our work during our time at yale, and angry that this version of that work will come to an end, this end.

      — Michael W. Kraus (@mwkraus) February 16, 2022
      <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
    1. 苏轼给的建议是,一本史书,要读很多遍,每一遍都只专注于一个层面,所谓“每书数过,一意求之”。想研究政治政策,就着重于书中的奏章言论;想搞懂典章制度,就着重于书中官职升迁礼仪往来,想看明白地理建制,就着重于书中的地名沿革山河变动。

      苏东坡八面受敌读书法

    1. https://collect.readwriterespond.com/monks-a-polymath-and-an-invention-made-by-two-people-at-the-same-time-its-all-in-the-history-of-the-index/

      Great find Aaron. Thanks for the ping.

      I've gone back further than this for the commonplace and the florilegium which helped to influence their creation, though I've not delved into the specific invention or general use of indices in the space heavily. I suspected that they grew out of the tradition of using headwords, though I'm not sure that indices became more popular until the paper by John Locke in 1689 (in French) or 1706 (in English).

      I'll put Dr. Duncan's book into the hopper and see what he's got to say on the topic.

    1. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-28/index-history-invention-made-simultaneously-800-years-ago/100690782

      The idea of the index was invented twice in roughly 1230.

      Once by Hugh of Saint-Cher in Paris as a concordance of the Bible. The notes towards creating it still exist in a variety of hands. The project, executed by a group of friars at the Dominican Friary of Saint-Jacques, listed 10,000 words and 129,000 locations.

      The second version was invented by Robert Grosseteste in Oxford who used marginal marks to create a "grand table".

      The article doesn't mention florilegium, but the head words from them must have been a likely precursor. The article does mention lectures and sermons being key in their invention.

      <small><cite class='h-cite via'> <span class='p-author h-card'>Aaron Davis</span> in 📑 Monks, a polymath and an invention made by two people at the same time. It’s all in the history of the index | Read Write Collect (<time class='dt-published'>02/15/2022 21:22:10</time>)</cite></small>

    1. https://every.to/superorganizers/the-fall-of-roam

      A user talks about why they've stopped using Roam Research.

      I suspect that a lot of people have many of the same issues and to a great extent, it's a result of them not understanding the underlying use cases of the problems they're trying to solve.

      This user is focusing on it solving the problem of where one is placing their data in hopes that it will fix all their problems, but without defining the reason why they're using the tool and what problems they hope for it to solve.

      Note taking is a much broader idea space than many suppose.

    1. Bjork, Robert A. 2011. “On the Symbiosis of Remembering,Forgetting and Learning.” In Successful Remembering andSuccessful Forgetting: a Festschrift in Honor of Robert A. Bjork,edited by Aaron S. Benjamin, 1–22. New York, NY: PsychologyPress.
    2. Schmidt, Johannes F.K. 2013. “Der Nachlass Niklas Luhmanns –eine erste Sichtung: Zettelkasten und Manuskripte.” SozialeSysteme 19 (1): 167–83.

      I'd like to read this but suspect there isn't an English translation lying around.

    3. Sull, Donald and Eisenhardt, Kathleen M. 2015. Simple Rules: Howto Thrive in a Complex World. Boston; New York: Houghton Mifflin
    1. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/an-ancient-greek-astronomical-calculation-machine-reveals-new-secrets/

      Overview and history of the Antikythera mechanism and the current state of research surrounding it.

      Antikythera mechanism found in diving expedition in 1900 by Elias Stadiatis. It was later dated between 60 and 70 BCE, but evidence suggests it may have been made around 205 BCE.

      Functions

      One of the primary purposes of the device was to predict the positions of the planets along the ecliptic, the plane of the solar system.

      The device was also used to track the positions of the sun and moon. This included the moon's phase, position and age (the number of days from a new moon). It also included the predictions of eclipses.

      Used to track the motions of the 5 known planets including 289 synodic cycles in 462 years for Venus and 427 synodic cycles in 442 years for Saturn.

      Risings and settings of stars indexed to a zodiac dial

      Definitions

      metonic cycle, a 19-year period over which 235 moon phases recur; named after Greek astronomer Meton, but discovered much earlier by the Babylonians. The Greeks refined it to a 76 year period.

      saros cycle, the 223 month lunar cycle which was used by the Babylonians to predict eclipses. A dial on the Antikythera mechanism was used to predict the dates of the solar and lunar eclipses using this cycle.

      synodic events: conjunctions with the sun and its stationary points

      People

      Archimedes - potentially the designer of an early version of the Antikythera mechanism

      Elias Stadiatis - diver who discovered the Antikythera mechanism

      Albert Rehm - German philologist who the numbers 19, 76 and 223 inscribed on fragments of the device in the early 1900s

      Derek J. de Solla Price, published Gears from the Greeks in 1974. Identified the gear train and developed a complete model of the gearing.

      Michael Wright - 3D x-ray study in 1990 using linear tomography; identified tooth counts of the gears and understood the upper dial on the back of the device

      Tony Freeth - author of article and researcher whose made recent discoveries.

    1. https://reallifemag.com/rank-and-file/

      An interesting example of someone who fell into the trap of thinking that a particular tool or tools would magically make them smarter or help them do a particular line of work without showing any deep evidence of knowing what they were doing. The discussion here flows over a number of mixed note taking domains with no clear thrust for what they were using it pointedly for. The multiple directions and lack of experience likely doomed them to failure here.

    1. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-02-09/riverside-sohcahtoa-teacher-viral-video-mocked-native-americans-fired

      Riverside teacher who dressed up and mocked Native Americans for a trigonometry lesson involving a mnemonic using SOH CAH TOA in Riverside, CA is fired.

      There is a right way to teach mnemonic techniques and a wrong way. This one took the advice to be big and provocative went way overboard. The children are unlikely to forget the many lessons (particularly the social one) contained here.

      It's unfortunate that this could have potentially been a chance to bring indigenous memory methods into a classroom for a far better pedagogical and cultural outcome. Sad that the methods are so widely unknown that media missed a good teaching moment here.

      referenced video:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu4fulKVv2c

      A snippet at the end of the video has the teacher talking to rocks and a "rock god", but it's extremely unlikely that she was doing so using indigenous methods or for indigenous reasons.

      read: 7:00 AM

    1. In our current global networked culture that puts so much emphasis on the virtual and the visual, the mind and the body have become detached and ultimately disconnected. Though physical appearance is idolised for its sexual appeal and its social identity, the role of the body in developing a full understanding of the physical world and the human condition has become neglected. The potential of the human body as a knowing entity – with all our senses as well as our entire bodily functions being structured to produce and maintain silent knowledge together – fails to be recognised. It is only through the unity of mind and body that craftsmanship and artistic work can be fully realised. Even those endeavours that are generally regarded as solely intellectual, such as writing and thinking, depend on this union of mental and manual skills.

      The Thinking Hand: Existential and Embodied Wisdom in Architecture by Juhani Pallasmaa

      https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Hand-Existential-Embodied-Architecture/dp/0470779292/

      This sounds a bit like some of the physical and external memory ideas in The Extended Mind by Annie Murphy Paul.

      This book came up in Dan Allosso's book club on How to Take Smart Notes.

    1. https://interconnected.org/home/2021/02/10/reservoirs

      I like that he suggest to watch out for longevity as it's been rare for an app or set up to last longer than 20 years. Portability in note taking is key.

      Editing can become a time suck, so don't do it and rely on the system to unearth the things you thought might be important in the future. Accrete ideas and make connections. They'll eventually begin outgassing new ideas (like layers of fermenting trash in the town dump).

    1. The Arizona Kith and Kin Project Evaluation, Brief #2: Latina Family, Friend, and Neighbor (FFN) Provider Characteristics and Features of Child Care They Provide

      Really important for our project

    2. Providers in the Child Care Subsidy System: Insights into Factors Shaping Participation, Financial Well-Being, and Quality

      Important

    3. Lessons Learned: Strategies for Working With Kith and Kin Caregivers

      Can we obtain this?

    4. Characteristics of Home-Based Early Care and Education Providers: Initial Findings from the National Survey of Early Care and Education

      Central to our work

    5. Promising Practices in Policy for Home-Based Child Care: A National Policy Scan

      Important for our work

    6. Studying the Effects of Early Child Care Experiences on the Development of Children of Color in the United States: Toward a More Inclusive Research Agenda

      A bit old, but important for our research.

    7. New Research on Subsidized Family, Friend, and Neighbor Providers: Implications for Investing in Quality

      Important to our work

    8. Supporting High Quality Informal Child Care in Detroit.

      This seems very relevant to our work

    9. A Demographic Comparison of the Listed Home-Based Workforce and the Children in Their Care

      This would be important background information for an analysis of racial-ethnic match

    10. From a Parent’s Point of View: Measuring the Quality of Child Care

      Not sure about this - see if relevant?

    11. Hispanic Children’s Participation in Early Care and Education: Type of Care by Household Nativity Status, Race/Ethnicity, and Child Age

      Really important for thinking about diversity among Latinx providers

    12. Child Care Affordability Is Out of Reach for Many Low-Income Hispanic Households

      Could be important for background and rationale

    13. Getting Ready for Quality: The Critical Importance of Developing and Supporting a Skilled, Ethnically and Linguistically Diverse Early Childhood Workforce

      could help in rationale and background

    14. The LA Advance Study: Participation, Outcomes, and Impacts of First 5 LA’s Workforce Development Programs

      Skim to see if they found anything related to FFN care

    15. Caughy, M.O.B., P.J. O’Campo, S.M. Randolph, and K. Nickerson. “The Influence of Racial Socialization Practices on the Cognitive and Behavioral Competence of African American Preschoolers.” Child Development, vol. 73, no. 5, 2002, pp. 1611–1625. Caughy, M.O.B., and M.T. Owen. “Cultural Socialization and School Readiness of African American and Latino Preschoolers.” Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, vol. 21, no. 3, 2015, pp. 391–399.

      Really interesting - not sure it's directly related to our goals.

    16. Parental Preferences and Patterns of Child Care Use Among Low-Income Families: A Bayesian Analysis

      Could be important

    17. Ethnographic Approaches To Child Care Research: A Review Of The Literature

      might be interesting

    18. Gluing, Catching and Connecting: How Informal Childcare Strengthens Single Mothers’ Employment Trajectories

      important for our work (though a bit dated)

    19. What Can CCDF Learn from the Research on Children’s Health and Safety in Child Care?

      might be good to read

    1. The problem almost certainly starts with the conception of what we're doing as "building websites".

      When we do so, we mindset of working on systems

      If your systems work compromises the artifacts then it's not good work

      This is part of a broader phenomenon, which is that when computers are involved with absolutely anything people seem to lose their minds good sensibilities just go out the window

      low expectations from everyone everyone is so used to excusing bad work

      sui generis medium

      violates the principle of least power

      what we should be doing when grappling with the online publishing problem—which is what this is; that's all it is—is, instead of thinking in terms of working on systems, thinking about this stuff in such a way that we never lose sight of the basics; the thing that we aspire to do when we want to put together a website is to deal in

      documents and their issuing authority

      That is, a piece of content and its name (the name is a qualified name that we recognize as valid only when the publisher has the relevant authority for that name, determined by its prefix; URLs)

      that's it that's all a Web site is

      anything else is auxiliary

      really not a lot different from what goes on when you publish a book take a manuscript through final revisions for publication and then get an ISBN issued for it

      so the problem comes from the industry

      people "building websites" like politicians doing bad work and then their constituents not holding them accountable because that's not how politics works you don't get held accountable for doing bad work

      so the thing to do is to recognize that if we're thinking about "websites" from any other position things that technical people try to steer us in the direction of like selecting a particular system and then propping it up and how to interact with a given system to convince it to do the thing we want it to do— then we're doing it wrong

      we're creating content and then giving it a name

  2. Jan 2022
    1. https://words.jamoe.org/highlight-question-and-answer/

      A somewhat disingenuous reframing of the Cornell notes method. They've given it a different name potentially for marketing purposes to sell in a book. At least HQ&A is a reasonable mnemonic for what the process is.

      They do highlight the value of modality shift from reading to thinking about how to formulate a question and answer as a means of learning. They don't seem to know the name or broader value of the technique however.

      This question technique is also highlighted in the work of Andy Matuschak and Michael Nielsen. Cross reference: https://andymatuschak.org/prompts/ and their quantum mechanics course experiments.

    1. https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2022-01-14/a-spanish-data-scientists-strategy-to-win-99-of-the-time-at-wordle.html

      Story of a scientist trying to optimize for solutions of Wordle.

      Nothing brilliant here. Depressing that the story creates a mythology around algorithms as the solution rather than delving in a bit into the math and science of information theory to explain why this solution is the correct one.

      Desperately missing from the discussion are second and third order words that would make useful guesses to further reduce the solution space for actual readers.

    1. Schmidt, J. F. (2018). Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: The Fabrication of Serendipity. Sociologica, 12(1), 53–60. https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/8350

      A quick overview of Niklas Luhmann's zettelkasten and it's basic shape with a few interesting quotes. Nothing really brilliant or new here for me. There were two portions mentioning computer science which gave too much credulity to the comparison between the zettelkasten and a computer and erased the earlier history of these techniques. I'm hoping that there's far more in the longer article in the book Forgetting Machines.

      I'm a bit irked to continually find that Luhmann's second system is still incomplete and particularly section 9.

    1. https://smithery.com/2022/01/14/making-the-most-of-moments-that-matter/

      A company created a custom commonplace book for attendees of a conference. Not sure how they tummeled people into using them in interesting ways though.

      Could also have done something along the lines of a sketchnote process as well. I liked their idea of having stickers to place in these as well, though that's more of a scrapbook process...


      <small><cite class='h-cite via'> <span class='p-author h-card'>Tom Critchlow </span> in Tom Critchlow on Twitter: "Love this meditation from @willsh on building artefacts, commonplace books, and more: https://t.co/zJmkMcaUN2 (and look at those physical keys they forged for a workshop!!!!)" / Twitter (<time class='dt-published'>01/22/2022 23:05:44</time>)</cite></small>

    1. A short, interesting essay with some useful quotes. Sadly much of it is derivative of many other sources I've read and studied, so this is a rather unenlightening little work for me. This piece and the popularity of the book from which it derives may have helped to popularize some of the ideas of memory going into the late 80s and early 90s however.

      There are some interesting tidbits of the use of memory with respect to psychoanalysis into the 1900s with figures like Freud and Jung, but one would need to go deeper than the brief suggestions in the final paragraphs here.

    1. Until recently[30][31][32] there have been almost no attempts to compare the different theories and discuss them together.
      1. Letelier, J C; Cárdenas, M L; Cornish-Bowden, A (2011). "From L'Homme Machine to metabolic closure: steps towards understanding life". J. Theor. Biol. 286 (1): 100–113. Bibcode:2011JThBi.286..100L. doi:10.1016/j.jtbi.2011.06.033. PMID 21763318.
      2. Igamberdiev, A.U. (2014). "Time rescaling and pattern formation in biological evolution". BioSystems. 123: 19–26. doi:10.1016/j.biosystems.2014.03.002. PMID 24690545.
      3. Cornish-Bowden, A; Cárdenas, M L (2020). "Contrasting theories of life: historical context, current theories. In search of an ideal theory". BioSystems. 188: 104063. doi:10.1016/j.biosystems.2019.104063. PMID 31715221. S2CID 207946798.

      Relationship to the broader idea in Loewenstein as well...

    1. saw that tumblr post again about this being a culture of people who built MASSIVE settlements and then every 60-80 years just burnt them to the ground, so need to read up on the wikipedia page at some point

    1. 後來藉由Reading note的方式,發現能讓閱讀後的記憶持續更久,忘記時也能藉由筆記迅速找到需要的資訊
    2. 文章篇幅長就比較容易有看了就忘的情況,常常一個段落要重複看幾次才能掌握其中的訊息,抑或是在文獻綜述階段閱讀的參考文獻等到要實際寫論文時記憶已經模糊
    3. 看這類句子先看動詞部分,能夠更理解句子的主要意思而非糾結於專業單字上,閱讀速度也有所提升
    4. 在大學以前所閱讀的英文文章大多是考試時的短文抑或是詞彙較日常的小說,而學術型論文中有大量不同專業領域的單字,若還是保持著以往邊看邊查單字的的習慣,閱讀速度則大幅降低,也比較難記住文章的重點內容
    5. the internal mechanism of research articles

    Tags

    Annotators

    1. In this respect, Krajewski’s distinction between ‘search machines’ and ‘scholarly ma-chines’ is insufficient. Cf. Krajewski, ZettelWirtschaft, 66–7

      What does Alberto Cevolini mean here? Read the reference to determine.

    2. Christoph Meinel, ‘Enzyklopädie der Welt und Verzettelung des Wissens: Aporien der Empirie bei Joachim Jungius’, in Enzyklopädien der frühen Neuzeit. Beiträge zu ihrer Er-forschung, ed. Franz M. Eybl (Tübingen, 1995), 162–87; Richard Yeo, ‘Loose Notes and Ca-pacious Memory: Robert Boyle’s Note-Taking and its Rationale’, Intellectual History Review 20 (2010), 335–54; Alberto Cevolini, ‘The Art of trascegliere e notare in Early Modern Ital-ian Culture’, Intellectual History Review 29 (2019), forthcoming.
    1. An incredibly short, but dense essay on annotating books, but one which doesn't go into the same sort of detail as he gets in his book length treatment in How to Read a Book.

      Missing here is the social aspect of annotating a book. In fact, he actively recommends against loaning one's annotated books for fear of losing the details and value in them.

    1. Severi (2015) discusses evidence for the use of pictographicwriting systems among the indigenous peoples of NorthAmerica, and why their characterization as ‘oral’ societies ismisleading in many ways.
    1. https://lindylearn.substack.com/p/lindylearn-reflections-roadmap-and

      Some interesting ideas to watch here.

      I remember a Twitter app service that was built around Twitter lists that I was an early user of, but I'm not able to find it now. I'm not sure if it's even still around after Twitter killed off a lot of their API access years ago.

    1. https://pauljacobson.me/2022/01/11/learning-vim/

      Thanks for this Paul. I've heard the learning curve is relatively steep as well. It certainly helps to have some clear and useful tutorials, so thanks for sharing the best of what you've found. Maybe I'll make the same jump you've done as it's always something I've wanted to tinker around with.

    1. Bush 1939 Warning: Biblio formatting not applied. BushVannevar. Mechanization and the Record. Vannevar Bush Papers. Box 138, Speech Article Book File. Washington D.C. Library of Congress. 1939.

      Original paper that became The Atlantic article As We May Think (1945).

    1. http://www.focaalblog.com/2021/12/22/chris-knight-wrong-about-almost-everything/

      Chris Knight is a senior research fellow in anthropology at University College London, where he forms part of a team researching the origins of our species in Africa. His books include Blood Relations: Menstruation and the Origins of Culture (1991) and Decoding Chomsky: Science and Revolutionary Politics (2016).

      Another apparent refutation of Graeber and Wengrow.

    1. https://www.persuasion.community/p/a-flawed-history-of-humanity

      David A. Bell teaches history at Princeton and is the author, most recently, of Men on Horseback: The Power of Charisma in the Age of Revolution (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020).

      Critique of Graeber and Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything

      Where is he right? Wrong? How does this dovetail with the evidence within the book?

    1. https://jon.bo/posts/can-blogging-be-simple/

      Syndicated copy: https://twitter.com/jondotbo/status/1475581785874612234


      Has some hint of the IndieWeb space here. My first thought is of micro.blog---for a reasonable subscription price it's relatively easy for folks to get started and allow customization and flexibility if they want/need it.

      It also tries to meet users where they're at, so if you've already got a site you can still participate and it can provide services one may not want to self-host like a social reader, webmentions, micropub, etc.

      To encourage people to write its UI starts out with short Twitter like notes, and if you keep writing, it provides you with a "title" field to turn a post into an article.

    1. https://snarfed.org/2022-01-08_happy-10th-birthday-bridgy

      Congratulations Ryan! Thanks so much for all your work on Brid.gy and for/on behalf of the bigger community. I'm sending my reply directly from my own website to underline some of your point, but I'm going to have send a like using Twitter with hopes that it feels some of the love as well. 😁

      Thanks again!

    1. https://t73f.de/blog/2020/zettelkasten/

      Sounds like Detlef Stern actually saw the Marbach exhibition on "Machines of the imagination".

      He's also got a fairly large list of software that is commonly used to create a digital zettelkasten.

    1. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1477714767854850049.html

      original thread: https://twitter.com/garwboy/status/1478003120483577859?s=20

      This takes a part Johann Hari's Guardian article Your attention didn’t collapse. It was stolen, but it does so mostly from a story/narrative perspective. Burnett is taking the story as a science article (it was labeled "psychology") when it's really more of a personal experience story with some nods to science.

      Sadly the story works more on the emotional side than the scientific side. It would be nice to have a more straightforward review of some of the actual science literature with some of the pros/cons laid out to make a better decision.