2,701 Matching Annotations
  1. Jan 2022
    1. Προς την κατεύθυνση αυτή ήταν οι τελετές Πότλατς, που για αιώνες διοργάνωναν οι τροφοσυλλέκτες κυνηγοί της βορειοδυτικής ακτής της Αμερικής, στις οποίες κατέστρεφαν τα πλεονάσματα, δηλαδή αποσυσσώρευαν τον πλούτο.

      Σοκαριστική λύση στο πρόβλημα της ανισότητας: καταστροφή των πλεονασμάτων!

    1. https://www.noemamag.com/the-other-invisible-hand/?utm_source=indieweb&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=indieweb

      Raw capitalism mimics the logic of cancer within our body politic.


      Folks who have been reading David Wengrow and David Graeber's The Dawn of Everything are sure to appreciate the sentiment here which pulls in the ideas of biology and evolution to expand on their account and makes it a much more big history sort of thesis.

    1. Future Reading: Digitization and its discontents. By Anthony Grafton October 29, 2007 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/11/05/future-reading

    2. Manuals such as Jeremias Drexel’s “Goldmine”—the frontispiece of which showed a scholar taking notes opposite miners digging for literal gold—taught students how to condense and arrange the contents of literature by headings.

      Likely from Aurifondina artium et scientiarum omnium excerpendi solerti, omnibus litterarum amantibus monstrata. worldcat

      h/t: https://hyp.is/tz3lBmznEeyvEmOX-B5DxQ/infocult.typepad.com/infocult/2007/11/future-reading-.html

  2. Dec 2021
    1. This code creates a simple web site that queries Wikipedia to get the edit history of a page and renders it as a "history flow" in SVG.
      <figure> </figure>
    1. Historians are aware of all this. Yet the overwhelming majority stillconclude that even when European authors explicitly say they areborrowing ideas, concepts and arguments from indigenous thinkers,one should not take them seriously. It’s all just supposed to be somekind of misunderstanding, fabrication, or at best a naive projection ofpre-existing European ideas. American intellectuals, when theyappear in European accounts, are assumed to be mererepresentatives of some Western archetype of the ‘noble savage’ orsock-puppets, used as plausible alibis to an author who mightotherwise get into trouble for presenting subversive ideas (deism, forexample, or rational materialism, or unconventional views onmarriage).11

      Just as Western historians erase indigenous ideas as misunderstandings or fabrications or outright appropriation of those ideas as pre-existing ideas in European culture, is it possible that we do the same thing with orality and memory? Are medievalists seeing mnemotechniques of the time and not properly interpreting them by not seeing them in their original contexts and practices?

      The idea of talking rocks, as an example, is dismissed as lunacy, crazy, or some new-age hokum, but in reality it's at the far end of the spectrum. It's so unknowable for Western audiences that it's wholly dismissed rather than embraced, extended, and erased.

      What does the spectrum of potentially appropriated ideas look like? What causes their adoption or not, particularly in cases of otherwise cultural heterodoxy?

    2. Intellectual historians have never really abandoned the GreatMan theory of history. They often write as if all important ideas in agiven age can be traced back to one or other extraordinary individual– whether Plato, Confucius, Adam Smith or Karl Marx – rather thanseeing such authors’ writings as particularly brilliant interventions indebates that were already going on in taverns or dinner parties orpublic gardens (or, for that matter, lecture rooms), but whichotherwise might never have been written down

      The Great Man theory of history is the misconception that all the most important ideas can be traced back to a single great individual—usually a man—and ignoring the fact that they had likely been brewing in the social milieu of their time before being encapsulated, like a bug in ember, by a particular writer who then gets an outsized amount of credit for "inventing" the idea.


      I wonder if the effect of social media and ubiquity of communication will dampen this effect?

    3. ‘What is it about the ancients,’ Pinker asks at one point, ‘that theycouldn’t leave us an interesting corpse without resorting to foul play?’

      Part of their point here seems to be that Pinker is suffering from a form of bias related to the most sensational cases which will tend to heighten the availability bias. (Is there a name for this sort of sensationalism effect?)

      Is there also some survivorship bias at play here as well?

      We don't have access to a wide statistical survey of dead bodies from a large swath of times and places which makes it difficult to determine actual numbers.

    1. Possibility of linking (Verweisungsmöglichkeiten). Since all papers have fixed numbers, you can add as many references to them as you may want. Central concepts can have many links which show on which other contexts we can find materials relevant for them.

      Continuing on the analogy between addresses for zettels/index cards and for people, the differing contexts for cards and ideas is similar to the multiple different publics in which people operate (home, work, school, church, etc.)

      Having these multiple publics creates a variety of cross links within various networks for people which makes their internal knowledge and relationships more valuable.

      As societies grow the number of potential interconnections grows as well. Compounding things the society doesn't grow as a homogeneous whole but smaller sub-groups appear creating new and different publics for each member of the society. This is sure to create a much larger and much more complex system. Perhaps it's part of the beneficial piece of the human limit of memory of inter-personal connections (the Dunbar number) means that instead of spending time linearly with those physically closest to us, we travel further out into other spheres and by doing so, we dramatically increase the complexity of our societies.

      Does this level of complexity change for oral societies in pre-agrarian contexts?


      What would this look like mathematically and combinatorially? How does this effect the size and complexity of the system?


      How can we connect this to Stuart Kauffman's ideas on complexity? (Picking up a single thread creates a network by itself...)

    1. Catala, a programming language developed by Protzenko's graduate student Denis Merigoux, who is working at the National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology (INRIA) in Paris, France. It is not often lawyers and programmers find themselves working together, but Catala was designed to capture and execute legal algorithms and to be understood by lawyers and programmers alike in a language "that lets you follow the very specific legal train of thought," Protzenko says.

      A domain-specific language for encoding legal interpretations.

    1. Peruvian letters which was supposedly the letters home by a captured Inca princess who's trapped in France and they're commenting on French society and this is later remembered it 00:50:03 comes out in his late 1740s um it's later remembered as the first book which suggested the idea of the welfare state

      The 1747 book Letters of a Peruvian Woman by the prominent saloniste Madame de Graffigny, which viewed French society through the eyes of an imaginary kidnapped Inca princess, is remembered as the first book to suggest the idea of the welfare state.

    1. there's an expectation that in "good history" (or probably good anything else) reading and understanding primary sources precedes interpretation.

      —Dan Allosso

    1. Midsummer Night’s

      It is a pagan holiday celebrated on the night of June 23rd and on the day of June 24th. It celebrates the incoming summer season and the commemoration of St. Johns. The day is marked with singing, dancing and making bonfires. It is also associated with supernatural appearances.

    2. Midsummer Night

      It is a pagan holiday celebrated on the night of June 23rd and on the day of June 24th. It celebrates the incoming summer season and the commemoration of St. Johns. The day is marked with singing, dancing and making bonfires. It is also associated with supernatural appearances.

    3. THESEUS.

      He was Greek warrior who was known for many feats including the killing of the minotaur, a mythical monster. There are many accounts of how his marriage to Hippolyta came to be. The following sources might have influenced Shakespeare narration of the popular story.

      Link 1: Plutarch's biographical narrations (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/14033/pg14033-images.html#LIFE_OF_PLUTARCH). During the Amazonian war, Hippolyta was influential in brokering, peace between the Athenians and her people. She was set to marry him but died on the battlefield.

      1. Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night's Dream: Texts and Contexts, edited by Gail Kern Paster and Skiles Howard, Bedford/St. Martins, 1999

      Christine De Pizan (1405 - 1521), wrote a popular text about how women should conduct themselves. She also wrote on the relationship between Theseus and Hippolyta. In her version, Theseus ambushed the Amazonians because they were afraid of their influence. On the battle field, Theseus saw Hippolyta and kidnapped her. In order to bring peace, the queen, Orythia, allowed Theseus to marry Hippolyta. Hisotry

    1. tuos Mamertinos

      The Mamertines were Roman mercenaries who settled in Messana before the Punic Wars. Messana is on the corner of Sicily closest to the "toe" of Italy.

    2. Marcellorum

      The Claudii Marcelli, a branch of the Claudian patrician gens. M. Claudius Marcellus recaptured a lot of Sicily and Italy from Hannibal in the 3rd c. BCE, which is why there are statues of him all over Sicily. Cicero gave a defense speech of a Marcus Marcellus in 46 BCE (he had two brothers, all high achievers in politics). Another M. Marcellus was briefly Augustus' heir (he was Augustus' sister Octavia's son) before his untimely death in 23 BCE.

    1. Jacob Leupold, Theatrum machinarum. Theatrum arithmetico-geometricum, Das ist: Schau-Platz der Rechnen- und Meß-Kunst, vol. 7 (Leipzig, 1727)

      Reference that discusses calculating machines and information processors.

    2. critical edition of Harrison’s manuscript: Thomas Harrison, The Ark of Studies, ed. Alberto Cevolini (Turnhout, 2017)
    3. Commonplaces were no longer repositories of redundancy, but devices for storing knowledge expansion.

      With the invention of the index card and atomic, easily moveable information that can be permuted and re-ordered, the idea of commonplacing doesn't simply highlight and repeat the older wise sayings (sententiae), but allows them to become repositories of new and expanding information. We don't just excerpt anymore, but mix the older thoughts with newer thoughts. This evolution creates a Cambrian explosion of ideas that helps to fuel the information overload from the 16th century onward.

    4. Through an inner structure of recursive links and semantic pointers, a card index achieves a proper autonomy; it behaves as a ‘communication partner’ who can recommend unexpected associations among different ideas. I suggest that in this respect pre-adaptive advances took root in early modern Europe, and that this basic requisite for information pro-cessing machines was formulated largely by the keyword ‘order’.

      aliases for "topical headings": headwords keywords tags categories

    5. In § 3, I explain that to have a life of its own, a card index must be provid-ed with self-referential closure.

      In order to become a free-standing tool, the card index needed to have self-referential closure.

      This may have been one of the necessary steps for the early ideas behind computers. In addition to the idea of a clockwork universe, the index card may have been a step towards early efforts at creating the modern computer.

    6. The main hypothesis is that in the use of a card index as a surprise generator, there is nothing particularly surpris-ing if one considers the evolution of knowledge management in early modern Europe.

      This is what I have been arguing all along as I've been doing my research as well.

    1. https://publish.obsidian.md/danallosso/Bloggish/Actual+Books

      I've often heard the phrase, usually in historical settings, "little book" as well and presupposed it to be a diminutive describing the ideas. I appreciate that Dan Allosso points out here that the phrase may describe the book itself and that the fact that it's small means that it can be more easily carried and concealed.

      There's also something much more heartwarming about a book as a concealed weapon (from an intellectual perspective) than a gun or knife.

    1. General Historical Context

      During the Great Migration (1910–1920), African Americans by the thousands moved into industrial cities to find work and later to fill labor shortages produced by World War I. Though they continued to face exclusion and discrimination in employment, as well as segregation in schools and public accommodations, there were fewer barriers with voting for Northern African American men.

      In the 1920s there was a migration of Black Americans from the rural South to urban North which generated an African American cultural renaissance that was named after the popular NYC neighborhood Harlem but spread north and west. This movement marked the first time that mainstream publishers and critics paid attention to African American literature, music, art, and politics. This is where this revolutionary black poetry began. Unfortunately, emerging black writers relied heavily on white-owned publications and publishing houses. With the beginning of the Great Depression, the Harlem Renaissance died down as African American organizations became focused on the economic and political hardships this minority group now faced; however, the renaissance created opportunities and opened doors for a newfound Black culture around the world.

      Maya Angelou, born in 1928, lived through some of the worst oppression and inequality for African Americans. World War Two was occurring during her teenage years. Throughout the time of the war, President Franklin D. Roosevelt coined the term “Four Freedoms” which included freedom of speech, freedom to worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear; despite being eager to fight, African Americans lacked these freedoms while residing in the US. Although slavery had been long abolished, Angelou saw its effects on society and the African American people which led to her inspirational writing and attributes to the civil rights movement.

      The civil rights movement - which occurred mainly during the 1950s and 1960s - was a social justice movement advocating for equal rights for the African American community. The effects of slavery still pursued post Civil War as African Americans continued to face discrimination, prejudice, violence, and racism. Mass demonstrations, televised racial violence, and the desegregation of segregated institutions alongside works of literature, art, and other cultural expressions as a part of the movement led to the creation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This act involved the government much more in the civil rights sector as it eliminated tactics to limit voting, assured racial and religious minorities equal access to public accommodations, prohibited job discrimination, strengthened the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and initiated the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

      To explore this movement in more detail, visit the Civil Rights Movement informational site.

    2. history’s shame

      "History's shame" could be interpreted as an understatement. Slavery generated extensive suffering through tearing apart families, destroying the spirits of African people, and many died. The effects still present today - seen with some still prevalent racist beliefs - demonstrate that slavery changed the course of American history.

      To view more about the history during this time period and how Maya Angelou impacted this crucial era of American history, view the Historical Context page note.

    3. Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

      When talking about her ancestors, Angelou is referring to her great grandmother who was a slave (and passed away in 1942). By saying she is the dream, Angelou is attempting to set an example for others of her race in regards to rising above hard situations. Her goal with her work is to inspire change. She is demanding that society leave behind the negative effects of slavery and history of oppression with intent to rise above.

      Shown through her later works, Angelou's great success with not only poetry, but other aspects of American culture. being a poet of presidents, civil rights activist, filmmaker, actor, dancer, and above all educator. She was the first of many special experiences for the African American community; for instance, she served as the first black female street car driver in San Francisco, she wrote the first script by a black woman to be made into a Hollywood film, and her best-selling, award-winning autobiographical book (I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings) was one of the first ever written by an African American woman to generate widespread readership. Overall successful in her rise above the deep-rooted racist American beliefs as she played a major role in the civil rights movement.

    4. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

      Referencing her personal experiences, she hopes to distance from the bad memories inflicted upon her and her community - leaving behind her race and moving towards equality. Specifically talking about the abuse that she endured as a child, but generally talking about the pain that African Americans were subjected to as a community. She will not let these events bring her down even if the whole world believes she should.

    5. Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes?

      Another set of rhetorical questions, Angelou is painting a picture of defeat. Being direct and pertinent, she is accusing the oppressor for their actions. She is aware that her success is received with bitterness by the racist society. A few interpretations can be drawn from this stanza. This may literally be a picture of a slave who was abused and she is referring to a broken person. But it can also be taken as a person with a broken spirit as this poem is an autobiography. When Angelou was a young child, she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend and informed of his death after he was murdered soon after; the traumatic series of events led her to be almost completely mute for several years. This interpretation can be of her broken heart and broken spirit from those traumatic childhood experiences. Finally, a general interpretation applies this brokenness and defeat from challenge as an experience that everyone can undergo throughout their life - making it relatable and applicable to the general public, or someone who is experiencing similar despair.

    6. history

      With this poem, Angelou's goal is to try and highlight the past wrongs and present realities of oppressed minority groups, specifically African Americans. Here, she is directly referencing the long history that this group of people has with slavery. To explore more behind the extensive history of oppression, check out this timeline for Slavery in America.

    7. bitter, twisted lies

      Angelou is referring to biased literature, opinions, beliefs, etc. that were one-sided and dated. Born in 1928, Angelou was subjected to live through some of the worst oppression and inequality for people of color over the course of her lifetime. Although slavery had been abolished in 1865 following the ratification of the 13th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, she continued to experience its harmful and strong-willed effects on society and the African American people almost a century later. Using writing as an outlet for activism, Angelou and many other colored poets contributed to the great social and political gains for this group with the civil rights movement.

    1. The transformer model introduces the idea of instead of adding another complex mechanism (attention) to an already complex Seq2Seq model; we can simplify the solution by forgetting about everything else and just focusing on attention.
    1. The story is linear (the stages are followed in order, with no going back), uniform (they are followed the same way everywhere), progressive (the stages are “stages” in the first place, leading from lower to higher, more primitive to more sophisticated), deterministic (development is driven by technology, not human choice), and teleological (the process culminates in us).

      This might be the case if the tools drove the people, but isn't it more likely the way in which different people use the tools?

      Which direction gives rise to more complexity?

    1. Good history comes from a combination of sources: in this case, private papers ranging from Lord Curzon’s letters to the diary of a royal tutor; from archival records in Delhi and London, not to speak of parliamentary papers; art, and not just paintings by Ravi Varma, to understand how princes projected themselves; newspaper records, which contain debates and ‘live’ commentary; scholarly material on connected themes; and, of course, anecdotal information from biographies and memoirs, which add texture.

      sources for Anecdotal writing to history fiction

    1. Σε αυτές κατοικούσε κόσμος που απέργησε για καλύτερους μισθούς και σταμάτησε τις απολύσεις στην κατεχόμενη Αθήνα του 1942, που με πολιτική απεργία και μαχητική διαδήλωση στις αρχές του 1943 εισέβαλε στο φρουρούμενο υπουργείο Εργασίας, έκαψε καταστάσεις και πήρε κρυμμένα τρόφιμα, τα οποία μοίρασε στο λαό της Αθήνας και τελικά ματαίωσε οριστικά την κατοχική επιστράτευση με τη διαδήλωση των 200.000 στις 5 Μάρτη στην κατεχόμενη Αθήνα του 1943.

      Αυτα ειναι από τα ουσιώδη κατορθώματα της Αντιστασης στην Γεμρανική Κατοχή.

    1. In 1653, Georg Philipp Harsd ö rffer completes the idea of an excerpt collection as an ordering of paper slips in a box with twenty-four drawers in alphabetical order.

      Georg Philipp Harsdörffer, in 1653, completes the basic idea of an excerpt collection as an ordering of paper slips in a physical box in alphabetic order.

    2. De Arte Excerpendi: Of Scholarly Book Organization by Vincen-tius Placcius. It offers an overview of contemporary procedures, instruc-tions on regular excerpting, and an extensive history of the subject. Placcius expressly warns against a loose form of indexing as pursued by Jungius. 38
      1. Placcius 1689, p. 72.

      Vincentius Placcius in De Arte Excerpendi: Of Scholarly Book Organization (1689) offers a contemporary set of instructions on excerpting knowledge as well as a history of the subject.

      In the book, he warns specifically against the loose form of indexing exhibited by Joachim Jungius. (p72)

    3. the fi rst card catalog in library history in Vienna around 1780.

      The first card catalogue dates to Vienna around 1780.

  3. Nov 2021
    1. ʰᵉʳᵉ ᵃʳᵉ ᵗʰᵉ ᵈʳʸʷᵃˡˡ ʷᵉᵇˢᶤᵗᵉ ᵉᵃˢᵗᵉʳ ᵉᵍᵍˢ

      Please be warned: a friend noticed some very insensitive language I had forgotten about entirely. I've chosen to leave it since this website should not be surfaced in any discovery engines beyond NeoCities... Hoping that isn't a stupid idea.

    1. s now exalting in all of those subsidies and those bailouts and using that to even consolidate themselves even more than they did in 1933 and 1971.

      These are the big stops of capitalism during 20th century and beyond:

      • 1933: Roosvelt nationalized the gold from the private banks
      • 19171: Nixon dismantled [[Bretton Woods]]
      • 2007-2020: Lehman Brothers & #Covid19 crisis consolidated international capital
    1. I spend most of my day in iOS Notes app.

      Did I ever really find this man intelligent??? Things sincerely do make a lot more sense now. Such a specific lack of aspiration.

    1. Seeking to address the reductive opposition both between written and oral texts and between script and print in the Early Modern period, Fernando Bouza, one of Spain's most influential cultural historians, makes an elegant case for the equality and complementary natures of the various modes of communication.

      This may prove an interesting perspective given my own desire to explore some of the same sorts of dynamics in Celtic texts at the border of orality and literacy in the early centuries of the common era.

    2. This looks interesting with respect to the flows of the history of commonplace books.

      Making the Miscellany: Poetry, Print, and the History of the Book in Early Modern England by Megan Heffernan

    3. https://site.pennpress.org/material-texts-2021/9780812236422/textual-situations/

      This looks interesting for a later time...

      Textual Situations: Three Medieval Manuscripts and Their Readers by Andrew Taylor

      Generations of scholars have meditated upon the literary devices and cultural meanings of The Song of Roland. But according to Andrew Taylor not enough attention has been given to the physical context of the manuscript itself. The original copy of The Song of Roland is actually bound with a Latin translation of the Timaeus.

      Textual Situations looks at this bound volume along with two other similarly bound medieval volumes to explore the manuscripts and marginalia that have been cast into shadow by the fame of adjacent texts, some of the most read medieval works. In addition to the bound volume that contains The Song of Roland, Taylor examines the volume that binds the well-known poem "Sumer is icumen in" with the Lais of Marie de France, and a volume containing the legal Decretals of Gregory IX with marginal illustrations of wayfaring life decorating its borders.

      Approaching the manuscript as artifact, Textual Situations suggests that medieval texts must be examined in terms of their material support—that is, literal interpretation must take into consideration the physical manuscript itself in addition to the social conventions that surround its compilation. Taylor reconstructs the circumstances of the creation of these medieval bound volumes, the settings in which they were read, inscribed, and shared, and the social and intellectual conventions surrounding them.

    1. You.com’s big differentiating feature is that it lets people influence which sources they see. You can “upvote” and “downvote” specific categories, so when you run searches, you’ll see preferred sources first, neutral searches next, and downvoted sources last.

      THIS IS LITERALLY THE ANSWER TO SEARCH.

      Just… FYI.

      All you need to do is give users more control.

    1. That's a picture of it in the background. And this organism has the special trick that we call "photosynthesis," the ability to go take energy from the sun and transform carbon dioxide into oxygen. And over the course of billions of years, so starting from two and a half billion years ago, little by little these bacteria spread across the planet 00:07:08 and converted all that carbon dioxide in the air into the oxygen that we now have. And it was a very slow process. First, they had to saturate the seas, then they had to saturate the oxygen that the earth would absorb, and only then, finally, could oxygen begin to build up in the atmosphere. So you see, just after about 900 million years ago, oxygen starts to build up in the atmosphere. And about 600 million years ago, something really amazing happens. 00:07:35 The ozone layer forms from the oxygen that has been released in the atmosphere. And it sounds like a small deal, like we talked about the ozone a couple decades ago, but it actually turns out that before the ozone layer existed, earth was not really able to sustain complex, multicellular life. We had single-celled organisms, we had a couple of simple, multicellular organisms, but we didn't really have anything like you or me. 00:07:59 And shortly after the ozone layer came into place, the earth was able to sustain complex multicellular life. There was a Cambrian explosion of life in the seas. And the first plants got onto land. In fact, there was actually no life on land ahead of that. Another way to see this is, this is kind of a chart of pretty much most of the animals that you guys are familiar with. 00:08:24 And right at the bottom in time is the formation of the ozone layer. Like nothing that you are familiar with today could exist without the contributions of these tiny organisms over those billions of years. And where are they now? Well actually, they never really left us. The direct descendants of the cyanobacteria were eventually captured by plants. And they're now called chloroplasts. 00:08:49 So this is a zoom-in of a plant leaf - and we probably ate some of these guys today - where tons of little chloroplasts are still trapped - contributing photosynthesis and making energy for the plants that continue to be the other half of our lungs on earth. And in this way, our breaths are very deeply united. Every out-breath is mirrored by the in-breath of a plant,

      This would be nice to turn into a science lesson or to represent this in an experiential, participatory Deep Humanity BEing Journey. To do this, it would be important to elucidate the series of steps leading from one stated result to the next, showing how scientific methodology works to link the series of interconnected ideas together. Especially important is the science that glues everything together over deep time.

    1. https://danallosso.substack.com/p/historians-reaction-to-history-of

      Interesting to watch Dan Allosso watch this video and see which parts he responded to.

      There are definitely some nice stopping off points in this overview which may make for some useful research for viewers. It also highlights in its negative spaces and non sequiturs areas which need more research and study to be better understood by historians.

    1. https://danallosso.substack.com/p/help-me-find-world-history-textbooks

      Dan Allosso is curious to look at the history of how history is taught.

      The history of teaching history is a fascinating topic and is an interesting way for cultural anthropologists to look at how we look at ourselves as well as to reveal subtle ideas about who we want to become.

      This is particularly interesting with respect to teaching cultural identity and its relationship to nationalism.

      One could look at the history of Reconstruction after the U.S. Civil War to see how the South continued its cultural split from the North (or in more subtle subsections from Colin Woodard's American Nations thesis) to see how this has played out. This could also be compared to the current culture wars taking place with the rise of nationalism within the American political right and the Southern evangelicals which has come to a fervor with the rise of Donald J. Trump.

      Other examples are the major shifts in nationalism after the "long 19th century" which resulted in World War I and World War II and Germany's national identity post WWII.

    2. I know a number of my subs and viewers are in India and I've noticed on Twitter and on Abhijit Chavda's channel that there's quite a bit of controversy about the way Indian History is taught to Indian students. That interests me a lot, but what I'm PARTICULARLY interested in is, how World History surveys throughout the world cover world history. If part of this involves continuing the narratives introduced by colonizers, like the Aryan Invasion myth, that's relevant to my question.
    3. I also did a bit of web and JSTOR research, and started a new Zotero folder called World History Comparison. Research Rabbit found a bunch of similar titles, but it will be a while before I can get to many of them. I DID, however, ask some people and groups such as the OE Global community on Twitter, and I want to extend that request to anyone who watches this video. I know a number of my subs and viewers are in India and I've noticed on Twitter and on Abhijit Chavda's channel that there's quite a bit of controversy about the way Indian History is taught to Indian students.

      Methods for attacking a research problem about history used here:

      • Web research
      • Journal database research
      • Zotero reference manager stub
      • Research Rabbit (AI search)
      • Reach out on various social media channels

      Not mentioned, but perhaps useful:

      • Standard library search (WorldCat)
      • Internet Archive search (scanned historical textbooks)
      • Off-label and dark web services (Library Genesis, Pirate Bay, etc.)
      • Open access and OER sources (this will probably find newer perspectives and newer texts which sometimes have philosophical outlines of what they're trying to change for the future versus the pedagogies of the past)
      • Current curricula and recommended textbooks at major universities on particular books and potential comparisons to those of the past (perhaps via Internet Archive).
    1. It wasn’t until the twentieth century that art historians determined that the figure was Aristotle

      What evidence was given for this identification of Homer and Aristotle?

    1. The author's hierarchical tags are delimited by dashes(-). I do it by dots(.). That's a convention we have to decide.

    1. He pointed out that the Web still lacks nearly every one of the advanced features he and his colleagues were trying to realize. There is no transclusion. There is no way to create links inside other writers' documents. There is no way to follow all the references to a specific document.

      Shortcomings of today's WWWeb in comparison to what Xanadu has visioned.

    1. «Είναι εμφανής η εμμονή ορισμένων με τη Μεταπολίτευση», μας λέει. «Η πολιτειακή αλλαγή το ’74, το τέλος του μετεμφυλιακού κράτους και η θεμελίωση της πιο μακροχρόνιας και ουσιαστικής δημοκρατίας σε κάποιους έπεσε βαριά. Δείτε με πόση εμμονή λένε “Να τελειώνουμε με τη Μεταπολίτευση”. Το πνεύμα της φταίει για όλα, είναι πνεύμα άκριτων διεκδικήσεων, συντεχνιακού κατακερματισμού και προνομίων. Φυσικά υπήρξαν στρεβλώσεις και καταχρήσεις. Ολοι τις γνωρίζουμε, πάσχουμε από αυτές, τις πληρώσαμε ακριβά. Αλλά η εργαλειοποίησή τους σκοπό έχει να αποδομηθούν και να διαλυθούν οι ιμάντες της μεταπολιτευτικής δημοκρατίας. Τι λένε; Τα Πανεπιστήμια είναι χώροι ανομίας, θα βάλουμε πανεπιστημιακή αστυνομία. Τα συνδικάτα είναι κάτι προνομιούχοι τεμπέληδες, θα περιορίσουμε νομοθετικά την απεργία και τις διαδηλώσεις. Οι ανθρωπιστικές οργανώσεις είναι πράκτορες του Σόρος ή διακινητές μεταναστών, θα τους στείλουμε στον εισαγγελέα. Δείτε πώς δαιμονοποιείται συστηματικά επί χρόνια το δικαίωμα στο συνέρχεσθαι: η διαδήλωση φταίει για τα άδεια μαγαζιά, το κυκλοφοριακό και τον Covid-19. Ξέρετε τι λέει ο κυρίαρχος λόγος που εκπέμπεται από την κυβέρνηση και τα μεγάλα ΜΜΕ; “Σας δώσαμε όσα συνιστούν μια συμμετοχική δημοκρατία και κάνατε κατάχρηση. Σας δώσαμε πολλή δημοκρατία και το παρακάνατε. Ωρα να τελειώνουμε με την πολλή ελευθερία”. Σαν να γυρεύουν ρεβάνς από τη Μεταπολίτευση».

      Πολυ ωραια περιγραφη πως και γιατι επιτιθονται στη Μεταπολιτευση.

    1. Το έλλειµµα του εµπορικού ισοζυγίου από 745 εκατ. δολάρια προβλέπεται ότι θα φτάσει τελικά το τέλος του 1973 τα 2.600 εκατ. δολάρια, δηλαδή περίπου θα τετραπλασιασθεί»…

      Εμπορικό έλλειμα: x3

    2. Ήταν τόσο «τίμιοι» και αντικομφορμιστές όσο και οι τρεις βίλες του Παπαδόπουλου: Μια στο Ψυχικό, μία την Πάρνηθα και μια Τρίτη το Λαγονήσι (η τελευταία ήταν προσφορά του Ωνάση). Ήταν τόσο «πατριώτες» που – εκτός του μέγιστου εγκλήματος κατά της Κύπρου – το βοούν και οι ληστρικές συμβάσεις με «Litton», «Μακντόναλντ», «Τομ Πάππας» και «Ζήμενς» – πάντα η… «Ζήμενς». Ήταν τόσο θεομπαίχτες που έφτασαν να βουτάνε λεφτά ακόμα και από το… παγκάρι! Γνωστή η ιστορία με την ανέγερση του «θαυματουργού» (καθότι… αόρατος) Ναού του Σωτήρως. Μόνο από εκεί, από έναν προϋπολογισμό ύψους 450 εκατομμυρίων, φαγώθηκαν τα 400… 

      Μεγα-σκανδαλα της Χούντας (περα των σαπιων κρεάτων).

    3. Τα φορολογικά έσοδα από τις ναυτιλιακές εταιρείες μειώθηκαν από 109 εκατομμύρια δραχμές το 1968 σε 29 εκατομμύρια το 1972 (μείωση 73%!), περίοδος κατά την οποία ο ελληνικός στόλος αυξήθηκε κατά 16,7 εκατομμύρια τόνους.

      Εξωφρενικές Φοροαπαλαγες σε Εφοπλιστες.

    4. Σε έξι χρόνια οι χουντικοί έκαναν το χρέος 1,5 φορά µεγαλύτερο απ’ όσο είχε αυξηθεί σε διάστηµα 145 χρόνων!

      Χρέος: ~x3

    1. Διότι πρέπει να έχουμε στο μπροστινό μέρος της εικόνας (και όχι στο πίσω μέρος του μυαλού μας) πως το 2015 τον Γενάρη, αν μετρήσουμε το σώμα των ψήφων που πήρε συνολικά η Δεξιά είναι καταθλιπτικό - σε πλακώνει: πήρε 36% (με τη Χ.Α.) και αν βάλουμε και Καμμένο και ΠΑΣΟΚ, πάμε σχεδόν στο 50%. Ο ένας στους δύο Ελληνες είχε ψηφίζει Δεξιά ή μνημονιακά κόμματα! Αυτό δεν παλεύεται μόνο με ένα καλό ιδεολογικό και οικονομικό πρόγραμμα.

      Η Δεξιά ειναι ριζωμένη στα μυαλά των ανθρώπων, οπως φαινεται από ΌΛΕΣ τις εκλογικές αναμετρήσεις μέχρι σήμερα.

    2. Πρώτον, να μην το βάζεις κάτω. Και, δεύτερον, να επικοινωνήσεις όλα τα προβλήματα της κοινωνίας, όχι μόνο τα δικά σου. Η αμφισβήτηση και η αντίδραση είναι η μόνη διέξοδος!

      Απλή συμβουλή από καποιον που δομικαστηκε στη δυσκλία της Δικτατορίας: don't stop!

    3. Ο κόσμος φοβάται. Οχι μόνο λόγω πανδημίας. Ουσιαστικά, ο φόβος στην Ελλάδα δεν έπαψε ποτέ να υπάρχει.

      Σημαντική διαπίστωση, πως ο φοβος ενυπαρχει ακόμα στους Αριστερούς εν Ελλαδι, από καποια που εζησε τη Χούντα.

    1. η νέα μεσαία τάξη που αναδύθηκε την περίοδο εκείνη απαίτησε, όταν ήρθε η στιγμή, τον απογαλακτισμό της από το καθεστώς που την ανέδειξε

      Η Χούντα γεννησε τη Μεσαία Ταξη στη Ελλάδα!!??!

    2. οι πραξικοπηματίες συνέβαλαν τελικά στον πλήρη εκδημοκρατισμό της Δεξιάς και διαμέσου αυτής και της χώρας.

      Ιστορική ακροβασία ξεπλύματος των χουντικών από τις λίγες!

    3. Η χώρα αστικοποιήθηκε, η οικοδομική δραστηριότητα γνώρισε δόξες, το οδικό δίκτυο επεκτάθηκε, ο εξηλεκτρισμός της χώρας ολοκληρώθηκε και πραγματοποιήθηκαν μεγάλης κλίμακας ξένες επενδύσεις. Παρά τις αυταρχικές πρακτικές του καθεστώτος, πολλές τέχνες άνθησαν και η νεολαία προσέγγισε μαζικά τα δυτικά πρότυπα διασκέδασης, κατανάλωσης και ζωής. Η κοινωνία του 1974 μικρή σχέση είχε με αυτή του 1964.

      3η εξωφρενική προταση-ξεπλυμα της Χούντας.

    4. συνέβαλαν τελικά με έμμεσο τρόπο στον ραγδαίο αξιακό και πολιτισμικό εκσυγχρονισμό της. Ιδωμένη λοιπόν από την οπτική του παρόντος, η δικτατορία είτε δεν εμπόδισε τον πολιτικό και κοινωνικό εκσυγχρονισμό της χώρας είτε τον υποβοήθησε, χωρίς βέβαια να επιδιώκει κάτι τέτοιο.

      Εντυπωσιακό ξεπλυμα της Χούντας νο 2.

    5. Η δικτατορία ξεπεράστηκε εύκολα και γρήγορα. Ισως γιατί υπήρξε ένα μικρό διάλειμμα δίχως μεγάλη σημασία.

      Ειναι εκτός τόπο και χρόνου με τη Ελληνική πραγματικότητα ο ξενοτραφής καθηγητής.

    1. Μέσα σε αυτά τα «ιερά» σχέδια συντελέστηκε το θαύμα: είχαν εξαφανιστεί 406 εκατ. δρχ., φυσικά πέρασαν στις τσέπες των επιτήδειων, αρεστών και «ημετέρων» του καθεστώτος – στην υγεία των «κορόιδων».

      406εκ σκανδαλο με δωρεές πιστών και πολιτών φαγανε τα λαμόγια της Χούντας.

    1. This documentary speaks a lot, not only about the Greeks, but also about its creators!

      • 12:40: "the communists had destroyed Papandreou's 1st government ..."

        Talks about the Dekemvriana, where on 3rdof December 1944, 3 months after the country had been liberated from Germans, the police gendarmes under Papandreou's government and backed by British troops and Nazi collaborationists killed 100's of unarmed demonstrators in front of the parliament, signalling the start of the White Terror against the anti-Nazi warriors - most of them from the Left.

      • 19:20: "The MPs are the surgeons, that must cure the victims of a broken down bureaucracy, and a society that has outgrown most of its institutions"

        Again, no mention of the fact that this system was established by foreign powers (UK and then US) against the will of the people after WWII.<br> While DURING THE WARR, people of Greec had elected and run their own government (ΠΕΕΑ), running liberated parts of the country. The members of that government had been motivated and worked with unselfishness for the benefit of the people, had even constituted the legality of female voting, and had built roads and communication networks, all while the Nazi still occupied Greece. That was the "Pillars of Greece" that the British had to bring down in order to establish the loyalist government of Papandreou and subsequent conservative governments.

      • 12:40: one of the rare moments where the newspaper mogul Ελενη Βλαχου talks to the camera. Her opinion apears twice in this documentary, signifying her unconstitutional power ove Greece at that time.

      • 28:00: the greek elites were already accusing the people they were suspicious that their government worked against them...which was, of course, pretty true. Very few cases of pro-people decisions had been made till the documentary was filmed, and most conservative politicians had been starving for more and more power, in the hope that this will transform into wealth.

      • 36:00: shameless propaganda for private education (Doxiadis's university) - nowdays nobody remebers this institute ever existed.

      • 45:30: again, resignation of A.Papandreou's is given out-of-the-blue: it was the palace that accused him and a bunch of high-ranking generals of plotting to establish a communist dictatorship in Greece. A false accusation that led to the Junta, after 3 years of king's puppet-governments. But it was not not the King this time, but the CIA-led Colonels who did the Coup d'état.

    1. Αδικαίωτοι (καθηγητές αυτή τη φορά) παντου, η κληρονομιά της κυριαρχίας της Δεξιάς στην Ελλάδα ειναι μια συνεχής καταφρόνηση οσων πολεμησαν τη Γερμανία.

    1. e.g. Idea from Yuval Harari’s Sapiens that Europe and Asia developed better civilisation than Americas because Americas span vertically lot of climates making it harder to share agriculture progress between different climates.

      Apparently Yuval Harari didn't footnote very well as this idea is directly from Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel which predated Harari's book.

    1. ́his historical interest is fueled not onlyby the rapid growth of the history of readingW of which the study of notetaking is an offshootW

      Where exactly do we situate note taking? Certainly within the space of rhetoric, but also as Ann M. Blair suggests within the history of reading.

      What else? manuscript studies, psychology, others?

    1. Antonin Sertillanges' book The Intellectual Life is published in 1918 in which he outlines in chapter 7 the broad strokes a version of the zettelkasten method, though writing in French he doesn't use the German name or give the method a specific name.[11] The book was published in French, Italian, and English in more than 50 editions over the span of 40 years. In it, Sertillanges recommends taking notes on slips of "strong paper of a uniform size" either self made with a paper cutter or by "special firms that will spare you the trouble, providing slips of every size and color as well as the necessary boxes and accessories." He also recommends a "certain number of tagged slips, guide-cards, so as to number each category visibly after having numbered each slip, in the corner or in the middle." He goes on to suggest creating a catalog or index of subjects with division and subdivisions and recommends the "very ingenious system", the decimal system, for organizing one's research. For the details of this refers the reader to Organization of intellectual work: practical recipes for use by students of all faculties and workers by Paul Chavigny [fr][12]. Sertillanges recommends against the previous patterns seen with commonplace books where one does note taking in books or on slips of paper which might be pasted into books as they don't "easily allow classification" or "readily lend themselves to use at the moment of writing."

      [[Antonin Sertillanges]]' book ''The Intellectual Life'' is published in 1918 in which he outlines in chapter 7 the broad strokes a version of the zettelkasten method, though writing in French he doesn't use the German name or give the method a specific name.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Antonin |first1=Sertillanges |author-link1= Antonin_Sertillanges |title=The Intellectual Life: Its Sprit, Conditions, Methods |date=1960 |publisher=The Newman Press |location=Westminster, Maryland |translator-last1= Ryan |translator-first1= Mary |translator-link1= |pages=186-198 |edition=fifth printing |language=English}}</ref> The book was published in French, Italian, and English in more than 50 editions over the span of 40 years. In it, Sertillanges recommends taking notes on slips of "strong paper of a uniform size" either self made with a paper cutter or by "special firms that will spare you the trouble, providing slips of every size and color as well as the necessary boxes and accessories." He also recommends a "certain number of tagged slips, guide-cards, so as to number each category visibly after having numbered each slip, in the corner or in the middle." He goes on to suggest creating a catalog or index of subjects with division and subdivisions and recommends the "very ingenious system", the decimal system, for organizing one's research. For the details of this refers the reader to ''Organization of intellectual work: practical recipes for use by students of all faculties and workers'' by {{interlanguage link|Paul Chavigny|fr}}<ref>{{cite book |last1=Chavigny |first1=Paul |title=Organisation du travail intellectuel: recettes pratiques à l'usage des étudiants de toutes les facultés et de tous les travailleurs |date=1918 |publisher=Delagrave |language=French}}</ref>. Sertillanges recommends against the previous patterns seen with commonplace books where one does note taking in books or on slips of paper which might be pasted into books as they don't "easily allow classification" or "readily lend themselves to use at the moment of writing."

  4. Oct 2021
    1. social evolution

      A Theory of Change

      How did we get here?

      Yesterday (October 26, 2021), I picked up David Graeber’s book, The Dawn of Everything: a New History of Humanity, written with David Wengrow, at Coles in Abbotsford.

      It is interesting to note that David Graeber was interested in the origins, the beginnings.

      Renowned for his biting and incisive writing about bureaucracy, politics and capitalism, Graeber was a leading figure in the Occupy Wall Street movement and professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics (LSE) at the time of his death.

      https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/03/david-graeber-anthropologist-and-author-of-bullshit-jobs-dies-aged-59

    1. Drawing on path-breaking research in archaeology and anthropology, the authors show how history becomes a far more interesting place once we learn to throw off our conceptual shackles and perceive what's really there.

      Reimagining our social architecture might begin with rethinking our past and origins as a species.

    1. Canada’s Indian Reserve System served, officially, as a strategy of Indigenous apartheid (preceding South African apartheid) and unofficially, as a policy of Indigenous genocide (preceding the Nazi concentration camps of World War II).

      The Doctrine of Discovery

      Since the Doctrine of Discovery was issued by a Papal Bull in 1493, Western Europeans have used this document as legal justification for the genocide, colonization, extraction, and profit from the theft of land and its resources in what they called the New World.

    1. Design for the Real World

      by Victor Papanek

      Papanek on the Bauhaus

      Many of the “sane design” or “design reform” movements of the time, such as those engendered by the writings and teachings of William Morris in England and Elbert Hubbard in the United States, were rooted in a sort of Luddite antimachine philosophy. By contrast Frank Llloyd Wright said as early as 1894 that “the machine is here to stay” and that the designer should “use this normal tool of civilization to best advantage instead of prostituting it as he has hitherto done in reproducing with murderous ubiquity forms born of other times and other conditions which it can only serve to destroy.” Yet designers of the last century were either perpetrators of voluptuous Victorian-Baroque or members of an artsy-craftsy clique who were dismayed by machine technology. The work of the Kunstgewerbeschule in Austria and the German Werkbund anticipated things to come, but it was not until Walter Gropius founded the German Bauhaus in 1919 that an uneasy marriage between art and machine was achieved.

      No design school in history had greater influence in shaping taste and design than the Bauhaus. It was the first school to consider design a vital part of the production process rather than “applied art” or “industrial arts.” It became the first international forum on design because it drew its faculty and students from all over the world, and its influence traveled as these people later founded design offices and schools in many countries. Almost every major design school in the United States today still uses the basic foundation course developed by the Bauhaus. It made good sense in 1919 to let a German 19-year-old experiment with drill press and circular saw, welding torch and lathe, so that he might “experience the interaction between tool and material.” Today the same method is an anachronism, for an American teenager has spent much of his life in a machine-dominated society (and cumulatively probably a great deal of time lying under various automobiles, souping them up). For a student whose American design school slavishly imitates teaching patterns developed by the Bauhaus, computer sciences and electronics and plastics technology and cybernetics and bionics simply do not exist. The courses the Bauhaus developed were excellent for their time and place (telesis), but American schools following this pattern in the eighties are perpetuating design infantilism.

      The Bauhaus was in a sense a nonadaptive mutation in design, for the genes contributing to its convergence characteristics were badly chosen. In boldface type, it announced its manifesto: “Architects, sculptors, painters, we must all turn to the crafts.… Let us create a new guild of craftsmen!” The heavy emphasis on interaction between crafts, art, and design turned out to be a blind alley. The inherent nihilism of the pictorial arts of the post-World War I period had little to contribute that would be useful to the average, or even to the discriminating, consumer. The paintings of Kandinsky, Klee, Feininger, et al., on the other hand, had no connection whatsoever with the anemic elegance some designers imposed on products.

      (Pages 30-31)

    1. Around 1700, the Virginia House of Burgesses declared:The Christian Servants in this country for the most part consists of the Worser Sort of the people of Europe. Andsince . . . such numbers of Irish and other Nations have been brought in of which a great many have been soldiers inthe late warrs that according to our present Circumstances we can hardly governe them and if they were fitted withArmes and had the Opertunity of meeting together by Musters we have just reason to fears they may rise upon us.It was a kind of class consciousness, a class fear. There were thingshappening in early Virginia, and in the other colonies, to warrant it

      This is a powerful example that class consciousness and class fears have driven the building of America since its inception.

      It's been built into our DNA and thus will be difficult to ever stamp out fully so that people will enjoy greater equality, equity, and freedom.

    2. We see now a complex web of historical threads to ensnare blacks forslavery in America: the desperation of starving settlers, the specialhelplessness of the displaced African, the powerful incentive of profit forslave trader and planter, the temptation of superior status for poor whites, the

      elaborate controls against escape and rebellion, the legal and social punishment of black and white collaboration.

      The point is that the elements of this web are historical, not "natural."

    1. The earliest legal restrictions on the nighttime activities and movements of African-Americans and other ethnic minorities date back to the colonial era. The general court and legislative assembly of New Hampshire passed "An Act To Prevent Disorders In The Night" in 1714:[6][7] .mw-parser-output .templatequote{overflow:hidden;margin:1em 0;padding:0 40px}.mw-parser-output .templatequote .templatequotecite{line-height:1.5em;text-align:left;padding-left:1.6em;margin-top:0}Whereas great disorders, insolencies and burglaries are oft times raised and committed in the night time by Native American, Negro, and Molatto Servants and Slaves to the Disquiet and hurt of her Majesty's subjects, No Indian, Negro, or Molatto is to be from Home after 9 o'clock. Notices emphasizing and re-affirming the curfew were published in The New Hampshire Gazette in 1764 and 1771.
  5. Sep 2021
    1. Without some way to escape debt's gravity, all productive labor becomes oriented toward debt-service, and the economy grinds to a halt.

      Michael Hudson's thesis, apparently with nods to Babylonian history of the jubilee, is that without a way to escape the burden of debt, all productive labor becomes captured by servicing debt and causes economies to grind to a halt.

    2. Hudson, meanwhile, is the debt-historian and economist whose haunting phrase "Debts that can't be paid, won't be paid," is a perfect and irrefutable summation of the inevitable downfall of any system that relies on household debt to drive consumption.

      With this description, I want to read Michael Hudson's work.

    1. neoliberalism and social conservatism have frequently coexisted in practice. Yet the alt-right fits none of the previously identified alliances

      Indeed, alt-right is a radical movement (hence the danger if we let it uncontested).

    1. μαρξιστής στοχαστής T. Eagleton έχει γράψει ότι το παρελθόν δεν είναι κάτι το κλειστό και συντελεσμένο, αλλά αντίθετα αποκτάει κάποιο νόημα μόναχα όταν φωτίζεται από την πολιτική πράξη που εκτυλίσσεται στο σήμερα

      Το παρελθόν μας το επινούμε συνεχώς, όσο παραμενουμε ζωντανοί.

    1. In his intriguing book “The Rise Of Christianity,” sociologist Rodney Stark recalls the “Plague of Galun” which ravaged the Roman Empire in 164CE with a death toll of approximately 30% of the population.

      The great epidemic of the second century, which is sometimes referred to as the “Plague of Galen,” first struck the army of Verus, while campaigning in the East in 165 A.D.,

      Semeia 56: Social Networks in Early Christian Environment: Issues and Methods for Social History

    1. The ancient Romans sometimes connected wax tablets with leather or cords, suggesting a prototype of binding. Replacing the wax with leaves allowed many pages to be stacked atop one another, then sewn or otherwise bound together.

      early book prototypes

    1. The Virginians needed labor, to grow corn for subsistence, to grow tobaccofor export. They had just figured out how to grow tobacco, and in 1617 theysent off the first cargo to England. Finding that, like all pleasurable drugstainted with moral disapproval, it brought a high price, the planters, despitetheir high religious talk, were not going to ask questions about something soprofitable.

      Told from this perspective and with the knowledge of the importance of the theory of First Effective Settlement, is it any wonder that America has grown up to be so heavily influenced by moral and mental depravity, over-influenced by capitalism and religion, ready to enslave others, and push vice and drugs? The founding Virginians are truly America in miniature.

      Cross reference: Theory of First Effective Settlement

      “Whenever an empty territory undergoes settlement, or an earlier population is dislodged by invaders, the specific characteristics of the first group able to effect a viable, self-perpetuating society are of crucial significance for the later social and cultural geography of the area, no matter how tiny the initial band of settlers may have been.” “Thus, in terms of lasting impact, the activities of a few hundred, or even a few score, initial colonizers can mean much more for the cultural geography of a place than the contributions of tens of thousands of new immigrants a few generations later.” — Wilbur Zelinsky, The Cultural Geography of the United States, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973, pp. 13–14.

    1. A great advance in the accuracy of household clocks came with the application of the pendulum after 1658. Grandfather clocks begin to spread more widely from the I66os, but clocks with minute hands (as well as hour hands) only became common well after th

      this time.

    2. clocks from the fourteenth century onwards, how far this was itself a symptom of a new Puritan discipline and bourgeois exac

      I do not wish to argue how far the change was due to the spread of clocks from the fourteenth century onwards, how far this was itself a symptom of a new Puritan discipline and bourgeois exactitude.

      For some history of the importance of time with relation to naval navigation and trade, see: Sobel, Dava (1995). Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time. New York: Walker and Company.

    1. I've been wanting to read Zinn, so perhaps this is a good place to follow along? A sort of pseudo book club perhaps?

      It's interesting to see Dan struggle with an obvious listicle article in Forbes as an authoritative source. This example is a great indicator that Forbes online has created far too much of a content farm to be taken seriously anymore. From what I've seen of it over the past several years it's followed the business model of The Huffington Post before Huffington sold it and cashed out. My supposition is that Forbes is providing a platform for people to get reach and isn't actually paying those writers to create their content.

      Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlnYt9NOUAw

    1. Friedrich Nietzsche once identified three approaches to the writing of history: the monumental, the antiquarian and the critical, the last being history “that judges and condemns.”

      Nietzche's three types of historians:

      • monumental
      • antiquarian
      • critical
    1. The minds of other people can also supplement our limited individual memory. Daniel Wegner, a psychologist at Harvard, named this collective remembering “transactive memory.” As he explained it, “Nobody remembers everything. Instead, each of us in a couple or group remembers some things personally — and then can remember much more by knowing who else might know what we don’t.” A transactive memory system can effectively multiply the amount of information to which an individual has access. Organizational research has found that groups that build a strong transactive memory structure — in which all members of the team have a clear and accurate sense of what their teammates know — perform better than groups for which that structure is less defined.

      Transactive memory is how a group encodes, stores, and shares knowledge. Members of a group may be aware of the portions of knowledge that others possess which can make them more efficient.

      How can we link this to Cesar Hidalgo's ideas about the personbyte, etc.?

      How would this idea have potentially helped oral cultures?

      She uses the example of a trauma resuscitation team helping to shorten hospital stays, but certainly there are many examples in the corporate world where corporate knowledge is helpful in decreasing time scales for particular outcomes.

  6. www.library.upenn.edu www.library.upenn.edu
    1. How have chance survivals shaped literary and linguistic canons? How might the topography of the field appear differently had certain prized unica not survived? What are the ways in which authors, compilers, scribes, and scholars have dealt with lacunary exemplaria? How do longstanding and emergent methodologies and disciplines—analysis of catalogs of dispersed libraries, reverse engineering of ur-texts and lost prototypes, digital reconstructions of codices dispersi, digital humanities. and cultural heritage preservation, and trauma studies to name a few,—serve to reveal the extent of disappearance? How can ideologically-driven biblioclasm or the destruction wrought by armed conflicts -- sometimes occurring within living memory -- be assessed objectively yet serve as the basis for protection of cultural heritage in the present? In all cases, losses are not solely material: they can be psychological, social, digital, linguistic, spiritual, professional. Is mournful resignation the only response to these gaps, or can such sentiments be harnessed to further knowledge, understanding, and preservation moving forward?
    1. While the material about just how darn embodied our brains are might have been something of a bummer for someone as uncomfortable being bodied as I am, the material about how much our brains like narratives was just what I wanted to read.

      How might we compare/contrast the ideas behind this with Alex Rosenberg's book How History Gets Things Wrong: The Neuroscience of Our Addiction to Stories?

    1. Thus the idea that ancient Greeks could develop a James Watt style steam engine without advanced guns, wind mills, machining tools, improved mass production systems for iron production etc is rather unthinkable. It is a bit like thinking a society could make a space rocket before having created trains, cars and calculators.

      This idea of past flory is spread among present-day Greeks.

    1. Scott Sampson has argued that we should subjectify nature rather than objectifying it. People are a part of nature and integral to it. We are not separate from it and we are assuredly not above it.

      Can the injection of multi-disciplinary research and areas like big history help us to see the bigger picture? How have indigenous and oral cultures managed to do so much better than us at this? Is it the way we've done science in the past? Is it our political structures?

    1. “What other subject is routinely taught without any mention of its history, philosophy, thematic development, aesthetic criteria, and current status? What other subject shuns its primary sources—beautiful works of art by some of the most creative minds in history—in favor of third-rate textbook bastardizations?”

      ---Paul Lockhart

    1. punctum books encourages projects that profit from formal risks and possibly engage with supposedly outmoded or ‘quaint’ genres—the abcedarium, (auto)commentary, summa, bestiary, dialogue, case study, compendium, speculum/mirror, conduct manual, letter/address, apologia pro vita sua, hagiography, elegy, postcard, telegraph/telegram, inter-office memo, encyclopedia, forgery, hidden writing, source-fiction, natural history, leechbook, atlas, colloquium, colophon, commonplace book, telephone book, rolodex, field report, romance, dialogue, dream vision, catalogue, sonnet cycle, poetics, treatise, manifesto, prosody, calendar, morality play, marginalia, interlinear translation, digest, microfiche, concordance, book of hours, pastoral/eclogue, polemic, epigram, broadsheet, flyer, note-book, breviarium, collationes/collectio, book of nature, testament, proof, manual, pamphlet, miscellany, chapbook, captivity narrative, penny dreadful, testament, manual, discography, catena, liner notes, autopsy, exegesis, rule, antiphonary, legend, fax, travelogue, etymologiae, lai, excerpt, curiosity cabinet, disputation, computus, comedy of errors, soliloquy, essay, bulletin, evangeliary, gloss, meditation, fable, florilegium, myth, fairy tale, purchase order, carbon copy, transcript/transcryptum, blueprint, psalter, micrologue, lyric, daytimer, inventory, annal/chronicle, pipe roll, receipt/invoice, watch-list, charter, canon, and so on ad infinitum. Surprise yourself.

      This is a great list of book types, genres, etc.

  7. Aug 2021
    1. The most common and sensible location for putting down thoughts, critique or notes was the margin of the medieval book. Consider this: you wouldn’t think so looking at a medieval page, but on average only half of it was filled with the actual text. A shocking fifty to sixty percent was designed to be margin. As inefficient as this may seem, the space came in handy for the reader. As the Middle Ages progressed it became more and more common to resort to the margin for note-taking.
    2. Dots and lines are particularly common ingredients of such footnote symbols. Interestingly, their first appearance is not as a connector of comment and text, but as an insertion mark that added an omitted line into the text.

      In a version similar to a footnote, a line and a dot were first used much as we use the carot symbol (^) today for editing to indicate the insertion of a missing line.

    3. The solution to the vanishing bookmark came in the form of what is called a “register bookmark." This type, which looks like a spider with its legs trapped, was securely fastened to the top of the binding (visible below), so it couldn’t get lost. Additionally, the bookmark allowed the reader to mark multiple locations in the book.

      Register bookmark

    1. έγγραφο του «Συνδέσμου των εν Ελλάδι Ανωνύμων Εταιρειών», ενός από τους προδρόμους του σημερινού ΣΕΒ, που καλούσε τα μέλη του να καταθέτουν οικονομική ενίσχυση υπέρ των «Τριών Εψιλον» σε ειδικό λογαριασμό στη Λαϊκή Τράπεζα

      Τα φασιστικά κόμματα στηρίχθηκαν από τους βιομηχάνους.

    1. The impactof such practices upon eighteenth-century visual and material culture is recounted in te Heesen, The World in a Box.

      This reference appears to show some of the historical link between the method of loci in rhetoric with that of commonplacing ideas within books. The fact that the word box may suggest some relational link between commonplacing and zettelkasten.

    2. lexicographers (lexicographi) collated ‘namesin different languages’, while nomenclators (nomenclatores) concentrated on naming the objectsof natural history.
    3. by the eighteenth century, suchchapters were being expanded into sizeable books that functioned primarily as natural historybibliographies in their own right. An early example of this practice was Johann JakobScheuchzer’s Bibliotheca scriptorium(1716).
    1. Media and the Mind: Art, Science and Notebooks as Paper Machines, 1700-1830 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022), 550 pp + 60 figures.

      I can't wait to read Media and the Mind: Art, Science and Notebooks as Paper Machines, 1700-1830 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022)!

      I see some bits on annotation hiding in here that may be of interest to @RemiKalir and @anterobot.

      If you need some additional eyeballs on it prior to publication, I'm happy to mark it up in exchange for the early look.

    1. I am beginning to think that the significant difference is that with songlines, learning is always done in the physical ‘memory palace’ which is constantly revisited. It can be recalled from memory, but is encoded in place. For me, that is way more effective, but I have aphantasia and very poor visualisation, so it may not be as big a factor for others. So recalling your childhood home can be a memory palace, but not a songline.

      Lynne Kelly is correct here that we need better delineations of the words we're using here.

      To some of us, we're taking historical methods and expanding them into larger super sets based on our personal experiences. I've read enough of Kelly's work and her personal experiences on her website (and that of many others) that I better understand the shorthand she uses when she describes pieces.

      Even in the literature throughout the middle ages and the Renaissance we see this same sort of picking and choosing of methods in descriptions of various texts. Some will choose to focus on one or two keys, which seemed to work for them, but they'd leave out the others which means that subsequent generations would miss out on the lost bits and pieces.

      Having a larger superset of methods to choose from as well as encouraging further explorations is certainly desired.

    1. This blogpost by Manfred Kuehn is one of the earliest posts about Zettelkasten I've seen referenced on the early web. It dates from 2007-12-16.

    1. Hesperides, or The Muses’ Garden. Hao Tianhu, “Hesperides, or the Muses’Gardenand its Manuscript History,”Library10(2009),372–404, convincinglyunpacks the complicated history ofHesperides, a manuscript commonplacebook of thousands of passages of contemporary verse and prose extractsarranged alphabetically under headings which exists in two extant versions:Folger Shakespeare Library, MS V.b.93(compiled c.1654–66) and a secondversion based on the former that was prepared for print in1655–65but neverprinted, was cut up in the nineteenth century by James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, and now exists in three Folger manuscripts and seventy scrapbooksat the Shakespeare Centre Library in Statford-upon-Avon. Gunnar Sorelius,“An Unknown Shakespearian Commonplace Book,”Library28(1973),294–308, demonstrates that the source of the Shakespeare quotations cut andpasted into over sixty of Halliwell-Phillipps’ Shakespearean scrapbooks was amanuscript that also once contained the now-fragmentary Folger MSSV.a.75,79, and80, and argues that the manuscript is valuable for the light itsheds on seventeenth-century taste and on how a reader spontaneously editedShakespeare. Beal (III, E), vol.1, part2(1980), p.450, discovered thecompiler’s identity (John Evans), an entry in the Stationers’ Register for1655and an advertisement of1659indicating thatHesperideswas to be publishedby Humphrey Moseley (though it never was), and the existence of FolgerMS V.b.93.

      This provides evidence and at least a date for the idea of cutting up books into scraps and then rearranging them to create a commonplace. Where does this fit into the continuum on the evolution of the zettelkasten idea?

      How was this rearrangement physically done besides the cutting up of pieces? Were they pasted in? Clipped? other?

  8. Jul 2021
  9. uniweb.uottawa.ca uniweb.uottawa.ca
    1. Victoria E. Burke, Commonplacing, Making Miscellanies, and Interpreting Literature, The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Women’s Writing in English, 1540-1680, Oxford University Press Oxford, 2022Editors: Danielle Clarke, Sarah C.E. Ross, and Elizabeth Scott-BaumannBook historyEarly modern literatureManuscript studiesSeventeenth-century women's writing

      This looks like a fun read to track down.

    1. In the Western tradition, these memory traditions date back to ancient Greece and Rome and were broadly used until the late 1500s. Frances A. Yates outlines much of their use in The Art of Memory (Routledge, 1966). She also indicates that some of their decline in use stems from Protestant educational reformers like Peter Ramus who preferred outline and structural related methods. Some religious reformers didn't appreciate the visual mnemonic methods as they often encouraged gross, bloody, non-religious, and sexualized imagery.

      Those interested in some of the more modern accounts of memory practice (as well as methods used by indigenous and oral cultures around the world) may profit from Lynne Kelly's recent text Memory Craft (Allen & Unwin, 2019).

      Lots of note taking in the West was (and still is) done via commonplace book, an art that is reasonably well covered in Earle Havens' Commonplace Books: A History of Manuscripts and Printed Books from Antiquity to the Twentieth Century (Yale, 2001).

    1. Thus we can roughly define what we mean by the art of reading as follows: the process whereby a mind, with nothing to operate on but the symbols of the readable matter, and with no help from outside, 0 elevates itself by the power of its own operations. The mind passes from understanding less to under­standing more. The skilled operations that cause this to hap­pen are the various acts that constitute the art of reading.

      I'm not sure I agree with this perspective of not necessarily asking for outside help.

      What if the author is at fault for not communicating properly or leaving things too obscure? Is this the exception of which he speaks?

      What if the author isn't properly contextualizing all the necessary information to the reader? This can be a particular problem when writing history across large spans of both time and culture or even language.

    1. Since then, the two parties have just about traded places. By the turn of the millennium, the Democrats were becoming the home of affluent professionals, while the Republicans were starting to sound like populist insurgents. We have to understand this exchange in order to grasp how we got to where we are.

      I'm definitely curious about how this about face occurred.

    1. The Corn Field is a region of mythological status where once naughty avatars were sent to think about what they had done.

      "mythological status"

      Reinforcing middle school grammar and writing skills while promoting social learning around topics such as a mythology in a game such as Minecraft or Roblox.

      APB: Ephemeral Flan, Booklady...wilson Huckleberry too

      This annotation flags archive.org's 2009 capture (its earliest) of this Second Life Wiki article. It could also be a launchpad* for an assignment.

      LTI Note archive.org's timeline panel, in the context of constructive learning, could lead to engaging inquiry about particular subjects.

    1. Society can’t understand itself if it can’t be honest with itself, and it can’t be honest with itself if it can only live in the present moment.
    1. Not all the ancients are ancestors.

      I'll definitely grant this and admit that there may be independent invention or re-discovery of ideas.

      However, I'll also mention that it's far, far less likely that any of these people truly invented very much novel along the way, particularly since Western culture has been swimming in the proverbial waters of writing, rhetoric, and the commonplace book tradition for so long that we too often forget that we're actually swimming in water.

      It's incredibly easy to reinvent the wheel when everything around you is made of circles, hubs, and axles.

    1. This new edition is based on an exhaustive two-year study by the Designer of the records that have come to light since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The game combines highly accurate information on the forces the Warsaw Pact actually had with now de-classified reports from the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency regarding what satellite surveillance and HUMINT revealed about their actual plans.
  10. Jun 2021
    1. The introduction could use a referrent to prior examples across history from commonplace books, florilegium, waste books, etc. This general idea has been used for centuries (and is even seen in oral societies before literacy).

      Including a few examples of people who've used the method/ideas before and how it was successful for them could be both useful as well as highly motivating.

    1. The mechanical clock, which came into common use in the 14th century, provides a compelling example. In Technics and Civilization, the historian and cultural critic Lewis Mumford  described how the clock “disassociated time from human events and helped create the belief in an independent world of mathematically measurable sequences.” The “abstract framework of divided time” became “the point of reference for both action and thought.”

      Description of how a technology the clock changed the human landscape.

      Similar to the way humans might practice terraforming on their natural environment, what should we call the effect our natural environment has on us?

      What should we call the effect our technological environment has on us? technoforming?

      Evolution certainly indicates that there's likely both short and long-term effects.

      Who else has done research into this? Do we have evidence of massive changes with the advent of writing, reading, printing, telegraph, television, social media, or other technologies available?

      Any relation to the nature vs nurture debate?

  11. May 2021
    1. should be assigned through a random, mechanical process – something Aristotle considered to be the hallmark of democracy.

      Aristotle want an aristocratic philosopher, totally against allotment?

    1. Preserving history; we often find ourselves using the git blame tool to discover why a certain change was made.
    2. Preserving commit hashes; we use commit hashes in binary names and our issue tracker; ideally, these references remain intact.
    1. If you want the project's history to look as though all files have always been in the directory foo/bar, then you need to do a little surgery. Use git filter-branch with the "tree filter" to rewrite the commits so that anywhere foo/bar doesn't exist, it is created and all files are moved to it:
    1. As Sirianni documents, in the first months of the revolution hundreds of firms were taken over spontaneously from below by groups of workers forming factory committees. But as he also documents, the Bolshevik leadership sought very strenuously to hold back and reverse this wave of spontaneous expropriations

      Interesting book of Carmen Siriani about the factory soviets.

    2. Indeed, as T. H. Rigby demonstrates in his study of the formation of the ‘Soviet’ system of government in Russia

      Must be interesting study to read about soviet Russia.

    1. the mood music of the hard right from the past two centuries: the people in thrall to deceitful elites, awaiting deliverance by those who know and tell the truth

      an idea equally exploited by Hitler and Trump

    1. the maps that one can find on wikipedia or other um avenues you know to would get quick information seem to rely on a theory according to which

      Dr. Florin Curta demolishes the theory that Slavs came from the Kiev steppes of Chernobyl.

    1. Petrus Ramus

      Just making note of the fact that Petrus Ramus was the advisor of Theodor Zwinger and apparently influcnced Jean Bodin, about whom Ann M. Blair writes about in Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information Before the Modern Age.

      I suspect these influences may impinge on my work on the history of memory and its downfall due to Ramism since the late 1500s and which impacts the history of information.

    1. Conrad Gesner, the German author of the founding work of modern bibliography, the boldly titled Bibliotheca Universalis, claimed to list all known extant books in learned languages (Greek, Hebrew, and Latin) of eighteen thousand indexed authors. While he complained of a “harmful abundance of books,” he nonetheless gained his fame by cataloguing them.

      Add to the timeline

    2. Vincent de Beauvais’s Speculum maius, in 1255, was the most ambitious compilation of summaries and excerpts of its time, containing some 4.5 million words.
    3. To extract knowledge successfully from reading was to “deflower” a book, as explained by the preface to the twelfth-century Libri deflorationum.

      Libri deflorationum

    4. Scholars such as Robert Darnton, Peter Burke, and Anthony Grafton have written about the long and colorful history of information.

      Some scholars to delve more deeply into. I've seen all three of these names in the past and have read some of their works.

    1. why do we have an <img> element? Why not an <icon> element? Or an <include> element? Why not a hyperlink with an include attribute, or some combination of rel values? Why an <img> element? Quite simply, because Marc Andreessen shipped one, and shipping code wins.That’s not to say that all shipping code wins; after all, Andrew and Intermedia and HyTime shipped code too. Code is necessary but not sufficient for success. And I certainly don’t mean to say that shipping code before a standard will produce the best solution.

      Shipping code is necessary, but not sufficient for success.

    1. Daniela K. Helbig teaches at the School for History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney. Her research areas are at the intersection of the history and philosophy of technology, and of intellectual history. 

      Pull up other works by Daniela K. Helbig to see what else might be interesting.

    2. Markus Krajewski reminds us that Luhmann’s choice of interlocutor has a precedent in an 1805 piece by the novelist Heinrich von Kleist (see the chapter “Paper as Passion” in this collection).

      precedents for zettelkasten

    3. Ideas have a history, but so do the tools that lend disembodied ideas their material shape −− most commonly, text on a page. The text is produced with the help of writing tools such as pencil, typewriter, or computer keyboard, and of note-taking tools such as ledger, notebook, or mobile phone app. These tools themselves embody the merging of often very different histories. Lichtenberg’s notebooks are a good example, drawing as they do on mercantile bookkeeping, the humanist tradition of the commonplace book, and Pietist autobiographical writing (see Petra McGillen’s detailed analysis).

      I like the thought of not only the history of thoughts and ideas, but also the history of the tools that may have helped to make them.

      I'm curious to delve into Pietist autobiographical writing as a concept.

    1. This is the other kind of novelty-seeking web developer, one who seeks to build on the history and nature of the web instead of trying to transform it.
    1. June Mathis

      Mathis was the first woman executive at MGM and the highest paid executive at age 35. She was voted the third most influential woman in Hollywood after Mary Pickford and Norma Talmadge in 1926, only a few years after this production.

      Mathis worked with Nazimova on four films before Camille, their final collaboration. She was also part of Nazimova's lesbian social circle "the 8080 club" also known as the "sewing circle" a few years later.

    1. Turing was an exceptional mathematician with a peculiar and fascinating personality and yet he remains largely unknown. In fact, he might be considered the father of the von Neumann architecture computer and the pioneer of Artificial Intelligence. And all thanks to his machines; both those that Church called “Turing machines” and the a-, c-, o-, unorganized- and p-machines, which gave rise to evolutionary computations and genetic programming as well as connectionism and learning. This paper looks at all of these and at why he is such an often overlooked and misunderstood figure.
    1. Why are there so many programming languages and frameworks? Everyone has their own opinion on how something should be done. Some of these systems, like AOL, Yahoo, etc... have been around for a decade, and probably not updated much.
    2. Simple fact is that HTML support is different in them because mail clients are so old, or others are allowed to operate in browsers where not all CSS or even HTML can be applied in a secure manner. Older clients have outdated browsers that you'll likely NEVER see brought up to standards; what with Opera's standalone aging like milk, and thunderbird lagging behind the firefox on which it's even built. Don't even get me STARTED on older clients like Eudora or Outlook.