102 Matching Annotations
  1. Jul 2024
    1. Royal Quiet De Luxe Magic Margin Stuck Won't Slide Clean Flush Restore Operation of Typewriter by [[Phoenix Typewriter]]

      50+ year old oil can cause parts of a typewriter to seize and not work properly. Hitting it with some heavy degreaser (lacquer thinner, mineral spirits, etc.) and some compressed air as well as getting the parts moving will help clean these parts out.

    1. Especially users working with Microsoft Office 365 and therefore Outlook noticed very often that login is not possible. Upon closer analysis, it was found that the MS/Bing crawlers are particularly persistent and repeatedly call the reset links, regardless of server configuration or the like. For this reason, a text field was implemented in the backend via the Drupal State API, in which selected user agents (always one per line) can be entered. These are checked by 'Shy One Time', in case of a hit a redirect to the LogIn form with a 302 status code occurs, the reset link is not invalidated.
  2. Jun 2024
    1. In 1967, Samuel founded the History Workshop movement

      "History Workshop movement" here (https://hypothes.is/a/pzSbkDSWEe-GVmsfDdhvrg) is another good example of the serendipity of autocomplete functionality in Hypothes.is helping to link together disparate examples of ideas which I'd long since forgotten. In this case to a tangential idea I'd read about a year prior (https://hypothes.is/a/bxMX5MKJEe2Wkq_zinG3iw) and been interested in, but completely forgotten about.

      Now I've got a link from that to the founder of the movement in 1967.

    2. Each thought or reference to a source was written or pasted onto a single side of a loose sheet of paper. It might be the source itself – an advertisement, a jam-jar label or an extract from a Xerox – it mattered only that it was attributed and subheaded under a theme. Then the notes were filed in groups. Scholarly prestidigitation allowed the pages to be constantly reshuffled so that new combinations of ideas appeared, presuppositions might be overturned and surprising connections thereby generated ... All that was needed was reams of rough paper, scissors and a pot of glue, phalanxes of lever-arch files, and a hole-puncher.

      brief outline of Raphael Samuel's note taking tools and some scant description of the method.

      I love the phrase "scholarly prestiditation" to describe the "magic of note taking" along with the idea of combinatorial creativity.

      Presumably the quote comes from the Samuel piece quoted in the article.

  3. May 2024
    1. His interest in the human psyche, past and present, led him to study mythology, alchemy, oriental religions and philosophies, and traditional peoples. Later he became interested in parapsychology and the occult.

      Fascinating, Carl Jung was into the occult.

  4. Feb 2024
    1. Some weeks ago I explain the philosophy of Antinet Zettelkasten to my girlfriend. She was sceptical at that moment but when she saw my purple metal box full of cards and dividers she started to gather information and with her father made this one. The name is zauberkasten (magic box in german) and this is not the final version. Hope you like folks! :)
  5. Aug 2023
    1. This is a way to make check lists that are more useful. You only fill the box when your all the way done with the task, when you are about half way done you fill the box half way. I learnedabout this from Adam Savage in his book, "Every Tool is a Hammer". He learned about it when he worked at Industrial Light & Magic.Does it have an official name? (screen shots from his book)

      Adam Savage's book Every Tool is a Hammer shows a checklist which has square bullets which can be partially filled in to show the level of completion. He learned the method when working at Industrial Light & Magic.

      via u/AZORIAN_K129 at https://www.reddit.com/r/NoteTaking/comments/15zgbvr/does_this_technique_have_a_name/

    1. one early reader of this write-up decided to use half 3x5 cards, so that they’d fit in mtg deck boxes.

      First reference I've seen for someone suggesting using half size 3 x 5" index cards so that they could use commercially available Magic: The Gathering (MTG) boxes.

      Oxford and possibly other manufacturers already make 1/2 size 3 x 5" index cards.

    2. However, I strongly recommend trying out Zettelkasten on actual note-cards, even if you end up implementing it on a computer. There’s something good about the note-card version that I don’t fully understand.

      Another advising to use the analog method for learning even if one is going to switch to a digital zettelkasten.

      He uses the word "good" here while others may have potentially used the word "magic", but writing in a space that values critical thinking, he would have been taken to task for having done so. In any case he's not able to put his finger on the inherent value of analog over digital.

  6. Jul 2023
  7. Jun 2023
    1. Todd Henry in his book The Accidental Creative: How to be Brilliant at a Moment's Notice (Portfolio/Penguin, 2011) uses the acronym FRESH for the elements of "creative rhythm": Focus, Relationships, Energy, Stimuli, Hours. His advice about note taking comes in a small section of the chapter on Stimuli. He recommends using notebooks with indexes, including a Stimuli index. He says, "Whenever you come across stimuli that you think would make good candidates for your Stimulus Queue, record them in the index in the front of your notebook." And "Without regular review, the practice of note taking is fairly useless." And "Over time you will begin to see patterns in your thoughts and preferences, and will likely gain at least a few ideas each week that otherwise would have been overlooked." Since Todd describes essentially the same effect as @Will but without mentioning a ZK, this "magic" or "power" seems to be a general feature of reviewing ideas or stimuli for creative ideation, not specific to a ZK. (@Will acknowledged this when he said, "Using the ZK method is one way of formalizing the continued review of ideas", not the only way.)

      via Andy

      Andy indicates that this review functionality isn't specific to zettelkasten, but it still sits in the framework of note taking. Given this, are there really "other" ways available?

  8. May 2023
    1. @Will Thanks for always keeping up with your regular threads and considerations.

      I've been keeping examples of people talking about the "magic of note taking" for a bit. I appreciate your perspectives on it. Personally I consider large portions of it to be bound up with the ideas of what Luhmann termed as "second memory", the use of ZK to supplement our memories, and the serendipity of combinatorial creativity. I've traced portions of it back to the practices of Raymond Llull in which he bound up old mnemonic techniques with combinatorial creativity which goes back to at least Seneca.

      A web search for "combinatorial creativity" may be useful, but there's a good attempt at what it entails here: https://fs.blog/seneca-on-combinatorial-creativity/

    2. The magic comes from the repetition of adding your thoughts to the notes you take and reviewing notes regularly.

      Will Simpson feels that the magic of note taking stems from "the repetition of adding your thoughts to the notes you take and reviewing notes regularly".

      I think it sems more from the serendipitous connections and resultant combinatorial creativity.

    3. Links are where the magic happens.
    1. Write down all these slender ideas. It is surprising how often one sentence, jotted in a notebook, leads immediately to a second sentence. A plot can develop as you write notes. Close the notebook and think about it for a few days — and then presto! you’re ready to write a short story. — Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks

      quote is from Highsmith's Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction

      I love the concept of "slender ideas" as small, fleeting notes which might accumulate into something if written down. In saying "Close the notebook and think about it for a few days" Patricia Highsmith seems to be suggesting that one engage in diffuse thinking, passive digesting, or mulling rather than active or proactive thinking.

      She also invokes the magic word "presto!" (which she exclaims) as if to indicate that magically the difficult work of writing is somehow no longer difficult. Many writers seem to indicate that this is a phenomenon, but never seem to put their finger on the mechanism of why it happens. Some seems to stem from the passive digestion over days with diffuse thinking, with portions may also stem from not starting from a blank page and having some material to work against instead of a vacuum.


      From Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks: 1941-1995 (Swiss Literary Archives)

  9. Apr 2023
    1. Seeking to keep Mr. Jory entertained, he idly tossed off a stunt in which he recalled the location of all 52 cards in a shuffled deck.

      Harry Lorayne, having run out of card tricks to entertain actor Victor Jory one evening, invented a trick in which he recalled the location of all the cards in a deck of playing cards. The feat so impressed Jory that Lorayne made it part of his magic act in the Catskills.

    2. Mr. Lorayne did not claim to have invented the mnemonic system that was his stock in trade: As he readily acknowledged, it harked back to classical antiquity. But he was among the first people in the modern era to recognize its use as entertainment, and to parlay it into a highly successful business.

      Harry Lorayne recognized the use of mnemonics as a form of entertainment and parlayed it into a career. Others before him, primarily magicians like David Roth had paved the way for some of this practice.

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

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

  10. Mar 2023
    1. That’s it. That’s what Luhmann did with his Zettelkasten. The magic began when he built up a critical mass of interconnected notes. That’s what will ultimately happen provided you keep at it.

      Somehow building up a critical mass will create "magic"?

      No rhyme or reason here, just "magic"... 🤪

  11. Feb 2023
    1. “These cards are the tools of his trade. He can take any speech and insert some of these zingers and one-liners. Let’s say he’s speaking to a Kiwanis Club. He knew what to put in. If he was talking to a group of firemen, he had a joke about putting out a fire. If you’re really looking for the hand of a president, and how his mind is working, all of these note cards together, in a way, give you the magic of Ronald Reagan.”
    1. Und doch fand er darin nie das, was er eigentlich suchte, sondern etwas Neues, Überraschendes.

      google translate:

      And yet he never found what he was actually looking for, but something new and surprising.

      While you'll only find in your zettelkasten exactly what you placed there, you may be surprised to find more than you expected.

    1. The authors agreed that the ability to conjure ideas "out of thin air" was one of the most compelling parts of co-writing with an AI model.

      Again note the reference to magic with respect to the artificial intelligence: "the ability to conjure ideas 'out of thin air'".

    2. We like to describe Wordcraft as a "magic text editor". It's a familiar web-based word processor, but under the hood it has a number of LaMDA-powered writing features that reveal themselves depending on the user's activity.

      The engineers behind Wordcraft refer to it "as a 'magic text editor'". This is a cop-out for many versus a more concrete description of what is actually happening under the hood of the machine.

      It's also similar, thought subtly different to the idea of the "magic of note taking" by which writers are taking about ideas of emergent creativity and combinatorial creativity which occur in that space.

  12. Dec 2022
    1. 9/8,3 Geist im Kasten? Zuschauer kommen. Sie bekommen alles zusehen, und nichts als das – wie beimPornofilm. Und entsprechend ist dieEnttäuschung.

      https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8-3_V

      I've read and referenced this several times, but never bothered to log it into my notes.

      Sasha Fast's translation:

      Ghost in the box? Spectators visit. They get to see everything, and nothing but that - like in a porn movie. And the disappointment is correspondingly high.

    1. Klaus Kusanowsky uses the ideas of witchcraft or fascination to describe the sort of magic created by zettelkasten use. [0:09:15]

    1. There’s magic within the analog medium incapable of beingreproduced in digital tools.

      A side reference here to magic, but he defers what this is... why mention it if you're not going to back it up here?

    2. Even thoughsuch apps are thought of as a Zettelkasten, the magic that Luhmann builtinto his system is lost.

      I'm not a fan of the magic framing here and I'm not really sure that Luhmann consciously designed or built his system to do this. Prior systems had these "magical" features before Luhmann's.

    1. No es magia.

      I love that he points this out explicitly.

      Some don't see the underlying processes of complexity within note taking methods and as a result ascribe magical properties to what are emergent properties or combinatorial creativity.

      See also: The Ghost in the Machine zettel from Luhmann

      Somehow there's an odd dichotomy between the boredom of such a simple method and people seeing magic within it at the same time. This is very similar to those who feel that life must be divinely created despite the evidence brought by evolutionary and complexity theory. In this arena, there is a lot more evolved complexity which makes the system harder to see compared to the simpler zettelkasten process.

  13. Nov 2022
    1. Honestly, at this point, I don't even know what tools I'm using, and which is responsible for what feature. Diving into the code of capybara and cucumber yields hundreds of lines of metaprogramming magic that somehow accretes into a testing framework. It's really making me loathe TDD despite my previous youthful enthusiasm.

      opinion: too much metaprogramming magic

      I'm not so sure it's "too much" though... Any framework or large software project is going to feel that way to a newcomer looking at the code, due to the number of layers of abstractions, etc. that eventually were added/needed by the maintainers to make it maintainable, decoupled, etc.

  14. Oct 2022
    1. It never helps historians to say too much about their working methods. For just as the conjuror’s magic disappears if the audience knows how the trick is done, so the credibility of scholars can be sharply diminished if readers learn everything about how exactly their books came to be written.

      Except that, seemingly, many historians have written and published about just this very topic!

      People often talk about the "magic of note taking", but it's not frequent that they frame the methods as magician's secrets.

    1. A friend of mine, well versed in all sorts of PKM and stuff, was convinced the ZK was beneficial, but took a long time before you started seeing benefits. My experience was completely different. I think I had about 5 permanent cards established when I made my first jump to a new idea... I don't know if the idea is any good at this moment, but I got a chill up my spine when I did it. I have more cards now, and have had a few more "new thoughts" that I would not have had otherwise. Don't put it off.

      The zettelkasten can be a useful educational substrate for thinking in as few as five cards.

      link to: https://hypothes.is/a/Iwy7MGlMEeyztTNgvCXUOA

    1. Provided with some sort of a card box, whether of metal or wood, oreven of cardboard, the English teacher will find that an era of peace andorder has come over his classe

      Sounds like magic, n'cest pas? 😜

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  15. Sep 2022
    1. https://lu.ma/x7zlzv95

      NoMa Method (note making method)<br /> JOMO mindset (Joy of Missing Out)<br /> MIMO - Mindfully In, Magically Out

      Nick Milo's got WAY too many buzzwords and acronyms. Are we creating a new cult with in groups and out groups using language?

      "Notice when you do" --- the root word of notice and note are related...

    1. https://twitter.com/inkasrain/status/1566410516721016833

      Does anyone know what exactly this is? A friend gave it to me years ago when they visited Jerusalem. I don't read Hebrew. Is it something harmless or should it be shamshed(jew magic)? (attached photo of a mezuzah)

      The idea of "magic" here within a modern religious context is interesting in that it shows the divergence of religion and magic as concepts with respect to cultural practices.

      The phrasing also has a sense of othering the unknown culture with a sense of fear in the idea that the object should be smashed. There's also a lack of basic science knowledge and tinge of superstition implied by the fact that they think that smashing will somehow dissipate the unknown magic.

      So many different cultural indicators of various things going on here...

  16. Aug 2022
    1. Neurath claimed that magic was unfalsifiable and therefore disenchantment could never be complete in a scientific age.[18]
      1. Josephson-Storm, Jason (2017). The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 227. ISBN 978-0-226-40336-6.
  17. Jul 2022
    1. I think claims of magical moments of “emergentcomplexity” where the note system reaches some sortof critical mass and begins spitting out answers like anoracle are probably a bit exaggerated. They sound a bittoo much like the Singularity. But it’s also true, I suspect,that by reviewing our notes regularly, comparing SourceNotes and making Point Notes out of them, anddiligently connecting new ideas into the train of thoughtthey emerged from, we’ll create a tree that will have morebranches and leaves in some places than in others. Thosebranches will be where the action is; where we can expectto find a lot of material we can turn into output.
    1. But it's not a trivial problem. I have compiled, at latest reckoning, 35,669 posts - my version of a Zettelkasten. But how to use them when writing a paper? It's not straightforward - and I find myself typically looking outside my own notes to do searches on Google and elsewhere. So how is my own Zettel useful? For me, the magic happens in the creation, not in the subsequent use. They become grist for pattern recognition. I don't find value in classifying them or categorizing them (except for historical purposes, to create a chronology of some concept over time), but by linking them intuitively to form overarching themes or concepts not actually contained in the resources themselves. But this my brain does, not my software. Then I write a paper (or an outline) based on those themes (usually at the prompt of an interview, speaking or paper invitation) and then I flesh out the paper by doing a much wider search, and not just my limited collection of resources.

      Stephen Downes describes some of his note taking process for creation here. He doesn't actively reuse his notes (or in this case blog posts, bookmarks, etc.) which number a sizeable 35669, directly, at least in the sort of cut and paste method suggested by Sönke Ahrens. Rather he follows a sort of broad idea, outline creation, and search plan akin to that described by Cory Doctorow in 20 years a blogger

      Link to: - https://hyp.is/_XgTCm9GEeyn4Dv6eR9ypw/pluralistic.net/2021/01/13/two-decades/


      Downes suggests that the "magic happens in the creation" of his notes. He uses them as "grist for pattern recognition". He doesn't mention words like surprise or serendipity coming from his notes by linking them, though he does use them "intuitively to form overarching themes or concepts not actually contained in the resources themselves." This is closely akin to the broader ideas ensconced in inventio, Llullan Wheels, triangle thinking, ideas have sex, combinatorial creativity, serendipity (Luhmann), insight, etc. which have been described by others.


      Note that Downes indicates that his brain creates the links and he doesn't rely on his software to do this. The break is compounded by the fact that he doesn't find value in classifying or categorizing his notes.


      I appreciate that Downes uses the word "grist" to describe part of his note taking practice which evokes the idea of grinding up complex ideas (the grain) to sort out the portions of the whole to find simpler ideas (the flour) which one might use later to combine to make new ideas (bread, cake, etc.) Similar analogies might be had in the grain harvesting space including winnowing or threshing.

      One can compare this use of a grist mill analogy of thinking with the analogy of the crucible, which implies a chamber or space in which elements are brought together often with work or extreme conditions to create new products by their combination.

      Of course these also follow the older classical analogy of imitating the bees (apes).

    1. In one of his videos he talks about "approaching the mind of god" or something similar, in a way I can't entirely tell whether he is paraphrasing an early-modern note-taker or saying that's what he thinks he is doing himself. I don't really care whether he's religious or not, unless it compromises the system he's building.

      These always read as hyperbole to me, but it's difficult to explain the surprise and serendipity of re-finding things in one's notes on a regular basis. It's akin to the sort of cognitive dissonance that religious people have when encountering the levels of complexity formed by living systems through evolution. Not having better words for describing the experience, they may resort to descriptions of magic or religion to frame their experiences.

  18. Jun 2022
    1. First, while using the previous retrieval methods, it is a good ideato keep your focus a little broad. Don’t begin and end your searchwith only the specific folder that matches your criteria.

      The area of serendipity becomes much more powerful when one has ideas both directly interlinked, ideas categorized with subject headings or tags, or when one can have affordances like auto-complete.

      The method Forte suggests and outlines allows for some serendipity, but not as much as other methods with additional refinements. Serendipity in Forte's method isn't as strong as in others.

      In this section he's talking about some of the true "magic of note taking" which is discussed by Luhmann and others.

      link to:<br /> Luhmann's writings on serendipity and surprise when using his zettelkasten (Communication with the Slipbox...)<br /> Ahrens mentions of this effect

    2. eventually you’ll have so many IPs at yourdisposal that you can execute entire projects just by assemblingpreviously created IPs. This is a magical experience that willcompletely change how you view productivity.

      another example of the idea of "magical" experience that comes when taking notes. This one isn't about idea creation or even serendipity though, but relates specifically to being "bulk productive".

    1. If Luhmann’s notebox system was not dynamic and fluid and not one of pure order, either, how can one think of Luhmann’s notebox system? In my experience using an Antinet Zettelkasten, I find it to be more organic in nature. Like nature, it has simple laws and fundamental rules by which it operates (like the laws of thermodynamics in physics); yet, it’s also subject to arbitrary decisions. We know this because in describing it, Luhmann uses the word arbitrary to describe its arbitrary internal branching. We can infer that arbitrary, means something that was decided by Luhmann outside of some external and strict criteria (i.e., strict schemes like the Dewey Decimal Classification). (12)12 This arbitrary, random structure contributes to one of its most distinctive aspects of the system–the aspect of surprises. Because of its unique structure, the Antinet is noted as “a surprise generator,” and a system that develops “a creativity of its own.” (13)

      There's some magical thinking involved here. While the system has some arbitrary internal branching, the surprises come from the system's perfect memory that the human user doesn't have. This makes it appear that the system creates its own creativity, but it is really the combinatorics of the perfect memory system with use over time.

      Link to: serendipity of systems based on auto-complete

  19. May 2022
    1. The second way that people use their Second Brain is to connectideas together. Their Second Brain evolves from being primarily amemory tool to becoming a thinking tool. A piece of advice from amentor comes in handy as they encounter a similar situation on adifferent team. An illuminating metaphor from a book finds its wayinto a presentation they’re delivering. The ideas they’ve capturedbegin gravitating toward each other and cross-pollinating.

      Missing from this description is the work that is involved in revisting, re-reading, and interacting with your notes. This is not an easy process, but this paragraph belies the work involved and makes it seem "magical" with the use of the words 'illuminating', 'gravitating', 'cross-pollinating' which are all external processes or forces that don't require work from the individual.

    2. In the digital realm, informationcould be molded and shaped and directed to any purpose, like amagical, primordial force of nature.

      He does build a sense of excitement and magic around the idea of taking notes here, though sadly he's covering up the amount of work that maintaining such a system entails.

  20. Apr 2022
    1. nother factor militating against completeadvice was the notion that methods should be kept secret to be most effective.One author of a university thesis on the topic noted that most scholars were un-willing to share their secrets on note-taking with others. A few advice givers rec-ommended “keeping the secrets of your studies to yourself ” on the grounds thatpeople would be most impressed by achievements that they did not understand.39

      Sönke Ahrens apparently missed this bit of advice.

      link to the Arthur C. Clarke quote “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." which appeared in his 1962 book “Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible”.

  21. Mar 2022
    1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkjf0hCKOCE

      The sky is a textbook. The sky is a lawbook. The sky is a science book. —Duane Hamacher, (1:24)

      Hamacher uses the Western description "method of loci" rather than an Indigenous word or translated word.


      The words "myth", "legend", "magic", "ritual", and "religion" in both colloquial English and even anthropology are highly loaded terms.

      Words like "narrative" and "story" are better used instead for describing portions of the Indigenous cultures which we have long ignored and written off for their seeming simplicity.

  22. Feb 2022
    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.

  23. Sep 2021
    1. Chris, to address your “magic number” concern, instead of doing line-height: 0.5, you can use percentage-based positioning (top: 50%) on the pseudo-element.
  24. Aug 2021
    1. Fukuyama's work, which draws on both competition analysis and an assessment of threats to democracy, joins a growing body of proposals that also includes Mike Masnick's "protocols not platforms," Cory Doctorow's "adversarial interoperability," my own "Magic APIs," and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's "algorithmic choice."

      Nice overview of work in the space for fixing monopoly in social media space the at the moment. I hadn't heard about Fukuyama or Daphne Keller's versions before.

      I'm not sure I think Dorsey's is actually a thing. I suspect it is actually vaporware from the word go.

      IndieWeb has been working slowly at the problem as well.

  25. Jul 2021
    1. YoushouldseewhathappenswhenyouGoogle‘blackgirls.

      This line particularly hit me, as a 'black girl' I have been googling this most of my life. At least anecdotally, I have seen a relative evolution of this search and have felt some of its impact. My family and I were often the only black people in the towns we grew up in, and I used the internet a lot to try and find out what people thought of me. I saw a lot of really negative opinions and did everything I could to reject the 'black stereotype' people always expected of me because I didn't want to be hated or thought of as 'that kind of black'. Now I know the internet, and google in particular, brings up a lot more positivity when it comes to black women, but it feels like whiplash. The kind of content that comes up, though more positive makes me fear the change is due to a marketing trend and not a true social change

    1. Sometimes libraries can be too opinionated and offer too much “magic”. I’ve been using Apollo Client for quite some time and have become frustrated with its caching and local state mechanisms.
    1. To comedians, “material”—their jokes and stories—has always been precious, worthy of protecting and preserving.

      Compare and contrast the materials of comedians versus magicians.

      Collection was an important piece. Protection/secrecy was relatively similar, though with a joke, the item was as ephemeral as a magic act which would have been confounding on it's nature.

      Link to Ricky Jay's collection of magic acts and pieces. Other comedy collections include George Carlin, Joan Rivers, etc.

    1. Now that they are part of comedy history, it can be hard to imagine George Carlin’s most famous routines as anything but finished products. Whether the infamous “Seven Words” from his album Class Clown (released exactly 45 years ago Friday) or the monologues from his hosting of the first-ever episode of Saturday Night Live (which returns for its 43rd season this Saturday), these routines can seem to have sprung fully formed from his mind. But there’s plenty of physical evidence to the contrary.

      It's rarely ever the case (my cognitive bias statement), that anything springs fully formed from the mind.

      Generally there's an infrastructure, a system, a method by which ideas or physical things are aggregated, accumulated, and edited into existence.

      When seeing them well done, they appear magical because we don't see the work or the process. We will often call them genius, when in reality, they're the result of long hard work.

      Take the Pyramids of Giza. They look large and magesterial---and likely moreso in their non-degraded form. But is it so mystical how they may have been built if we were to see the structure and scaffolding that likely went into constructing them?

  26. Jun 2021
    1. Luisa: My favorite genre was fantasy, of course, because at that point, it was an alternate reality where magic and anything was possible. Harry Potter. I grew up with Harry Potter. Grew up with Tolkien, grew up with Eragon, grew up with the series for the Lady Knight, grew up with the Chronicler. Grew up with all these fantasy books. I grew up with them. I still read them over and over and over again because every time you read a book, you find something that you missed and I love that. So yes, reading was my thing [Chuckles]. I love reading.

      Time in the US, Pastimes, Reading, Favorite genres, Favorite books

    1. Prettier intentionally doesn’t support any kind of global configuration. This is to make sure that when a project is copied to another computer, Prettier’s behavior stays the same. Otherwise, Prettier wouldn’t be able to guarantee that everybody in a team gets the same consistent results.
  27. May 2021
    1. Well, since you're reading this, let me tell you a little more about HMR. Magic is actually not such a good think in software development, so if we can demystify HMR a bit, it will probably benefits you when it comes to answer setup questions or, generally, get the most out of your HMR experience.
  28. Mar 2021
    1. Instead of connecting an output to a particular task, you can also choose to let it connect to a track. A track is created by taking a task’s output, retrieving its semantic, and then connecting it to the next available task that is “magnetic to” this semantic.
  29. Feb 2021
  30. Dec 2020
  31. Nov 2020
    1. An additional benefit is semantic identifiers. For example, --main-text-color is easier to understand than #00ff00, especially if this same color is also used in other contexts.
    1. I'm still calling this v1.00 as this is what will be included in the first print run.

      There seems to be an artificial pressure and a false assumption that the version that gets printed and included in the box be the "magic number" 1.00.

      But I think there is absolutely nothing bad or to be ashamed of to have the version number printed in the rule book be 1.47 or even 2.0. (Or, of course, you could just not print it at all.) It's just being transparent/honest about how many versions/revisions you've made. 

  32. Oct 2020
    1. I don't want Svelte to go out of its way to try to catch all these edge cases. It would require lots of fragile heuristics in the compiler. I want a solid compiler I can trust, not something magic but often out of service. I want it the simplest possible.
  33. Sep 2020
  34. Jun 2020
  35. Dec 2019
    1. manes

      "Manes," in this context, are ghosts or spirits of the deceased.

    2. Theseus

      Theseus was the mythical king and founder-hero of Athens. Plutarch's Life of Theseus makes use of varying accounts of the death of the Minotaur, Theseus' escape, and the love of Ariadne for Theseus.

    3. Cornelius Agrippa

      Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535) was author of *De Occulta Philosophia**, known to practice magic, and considered nonsensical by modern natural philosophy.

    4. elixir of life

      The philosophers stone was also called the elixir of life, or thought to create it, and to be useful for rejuvenation and for achieving immortality; for many centuries, the stone and the elixir were the most sought goal in alchemy.

    5. the principles of Agrippa

      In his book De Occulta Philosophia Agrippa suggested that God placed magic in the world to make man capable of transcending the natural sphere and able to influence the superior realms.

    6. philosopher’s stone

      The philosopher's stone, or "stone of the philosophers" (Latin: lapis philosophorum) was a legendary alchemical substance capable of turning base metals such as mercury into gold (chrysopoeia, from the Greek χρυσός khrusos, "gold," and ποιεῖν poiēin, "to make") or silver.

    7. The raising of ghosts or devils

      One incantation in Agrippa's book, De occulta philosophia, was said to conjure demonic beings.

  36. Nov 2019
    1. I’m on cloud nine. Look at this glorious keyboard! An Esc key! Inverted-T arrow keys! A millimeter of key travel! Enough spacing between the keys for our fingers to accurately orient themselves! And keystrokes will probably work, 100% of the time, for years!

      What I would give to have this!

  37. Sep 2019
  38. Nov 2018
    1. Two automatons stood on the table. One, called “The Singing Lesson,” was the creation of Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, the nineteenth-century watchmaker-turned-conjurer, who is considered the father of modern magic. The other was a Chinese cups-and-balls conjurer built by Robert-Houdin’s father-in-law, Jacques Houdin.
    2. Jean Prévost’s “La Première Partie des Subtiles et Plaisantes Inventions,” the earliest known important conjuring book, printed in Lyons in 1584.
    3. Magic is about working hard to discover a secret and making something out of it. You start with some small principle and you build a theatrical presentation out of it. You do something that’s technically artistic that creates a small drama.
  39. app.getpocket.com app.getpocket.com
    1. Two automatons stood on the table. One, called “The Singing Lesson,” was the creation of Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, the nineteenth-century watchmaker-turned-conjurer, who is considered the father of modern magic. The other was a Chinese cups-and-balls conjurer built by Robert-Houdin’s father-in-law, Jacques Houdin.
    2. Jean Prévost’s “La Première Partie des Subtiles et Plaisantes Inventions,” the earliest known important conjuring book, printed in Lyons in 1584.
    3. Magic is about working hard to discover a secret and making something out of it. You start with some small principle and you build a theatrical presentation out of it. You do something that’s technically artistic that creates a small drama.
  40. Mar 2018
  41. Nov 2017
    1. novel method developed within the MAQC-III project utilizing the expression distributions, corrected for noise and batch effects, and assisted by random resampling, to compute DEG scores related to the Wilcoxon U test (Magic, see Additional file 1: Supplementary Note 2)
  42. Oct 2017
  43. Mar 2017
  44. Jan 2017
    1. It’s like magic.

      Mmmm Magic.

      Yes, we can have images and GIFs here, but you have to find a URL for them (hint, you can upload them you your web site, and find the URL for the upload).

  45. Nov 2015
    1. Manhas,asitwere,becomea kind of prosthetic God. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs he is truly magnificent.

      So... our inventions (technology) and how we implement them throughout society can make us god like? Makes me think of how we acquire different skill sets so that we can adapt to different tasks or work responsibilities (wearing different hats - if anyone has heard that metaphor)

  46. Sep 2014
    1. His proposal, derived from synopses of Paracelsus and Jakob Böhme, is that we learn to think of language as magic. Magic is what will substitute for structure, in which case one synonym for post-structuralism is “the occult.” Agamben wants magical signs; this, roughly, is what he means by “signatures,” signs that aren’t just neutral stand-ins for things, tokens or pointers, but charmed symbols vibrating with their own energies, signs that have “efficacy,” “efficacious likenesses,” not marks that you write down but marks that are written across you. Every spoken sentence changes the world and is in that sense a spell or hex. This is probably the clearest instance of the “regression” that Agamben makes central to his method: “the opposite of rationalization,” he calls it. If you are serious about your critique of enlightenment, you are going to need an enchanted epistemology.

      But how is magic not a structure?