450 Matching Annotations
  1. Last 7 days
    1. for - evolutionary biology - human culture - why it is dominant - openendedness

      summary - the claim of this paper is that culture is not something unique to humans, but what is is - our open-ended understanding of the world that allows us to fractally nest many different subtasks.

    1. I like to use the term sacred because it because it's the whole stack every floor is sacred right now

      for - the word "sacred" - why I prefer this to "spiritual" - John Churchill

    2. growing up work well that's got about taking more responsibility developing more M mature perspectives on the world and taking a greater degree of um responsibility for our planet

      This is why invite people to set up a 501c3 with FSC bylaws - it is adulting

  2. Oct 2024
    1. Then there are, for example, in the United States, you have to do a a lot more scrutiny of dollars you receive because they don't get taxed.

      Tapping to the MMT theory, if a 501c3 is not taxed, then why does it need dollars??? We are close to some understanding some fundamental incoherencies

    1. for - from - recommendation - from - Michel Bauwens - on Fair Share Commons chat thread, 2024 Oct 17 - context Karl Marx liberation of the individual - to - substack article - Why Human (Contributive) Labor remains the creative principle of human society - Michel Bauwens article details - title: From Modes of Production to the Resurrection of the Body: A Labor Theory of Revolutionary Subjectivity & Religious Ideas" (2016) - author: Benjamin Suriano

      to - Substack article - Why Human (Contributive) Labor remains the creative principle of human society - Michel Bauwens - https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2F4thgenerationcivilization.substack.com%2Fp%2Fwhy-human-contributive-labor-remains&group=world

    1. Fleeting notes

      I've never like the phrase fleeting notes, though it does serve a purpose. It's really a conflation (or portmanteau) of two separate ideas: fleeting ideas and writing them down/capturing them quickly so that they're no longer fleeting. Sort of a noun/verb in form.

    1. At first it is a mistake to think of anything elseexcept the mere jotting down of Ideas. The Ideas shouldbe jotted down, each on its own Card, and the Sub-Headings should be jotted down on their own Cards,a little way 'inland5. Afterwards there will be timeenough to subdivide the topics, and to re-arrange them ;but at the beginning you must concentrate your atten-tion on the Collection of Ideas, and must not think atall about the Arrangement.

      For Miles, getting the ideas down is paramount and they can later be sub-divided or re-arranged.

    2. I often noticed that most Candidates inExaminations used to begin to write their Essays atonce. They never realised that their minds were there-by being distracted and divided among many differentprocesses, each of which is particularly hard even whentaken alone. For all at once their minds are being-called upon to Collect Ideas, to Select and decide whichare important, etc., to Arrange the Selected Ideas, andto Express them. To try all this as a single action is" most extraordinarily unscientific, even if a few brilliantgeniuses here and there have succeeded in the attempt.

      One of the major affordances of using a zettelkasten or card index for writing is that it forces the writer to break things down into their constituent parts, thereby making the entire process of writing far easier and less complex. One can separately focus their attention on the smaller steps of collecting, selecting, and arranging the material before beginning to actually write.

    1. Derailed climate action: Mr. Trump will almost certainly withdraw again from the 2015Paris Climate Agreement, dismantle domestic climate and environmental regulations(particularly those seen to hamper the fossil fuel industry), and actively oppose atransition to green energy.

      for - question - Study on 2024 Trump win on polycrisis - Cascade Institute - why is there such a small analysis on the environment and especially planetary tipping points whilst climate clock is ticking?

    1. If Zettelkasten is the solution, what was the underlying problem?

      Asking my own zettelkasten this question: (responses in no particular order as individual affordances are sure to vary in usefulness by user; some framed as problems while others are framed as affordances, the difference should hopefully be clear to most):

      • information overload
      • mitigating time loss and context collapse in regularly interrupted work
        • Acts as a ratchet and pawl for thinking work
      • tool for thought, and a particularly inexpensive one
      • a catalytic surface for thought - see creativity
      • removal of cognitive bias by allowing direct juxtaposition of ideas
      • "a plan for life and not just a book"
      • creativity acceleration
      • artificial memory storage/improved memory
        • spaced repetition tool
      • improved search by indexing ideas over time
      • Clarity/specificity: it's a reminder to be specific about what you're thinking
      • a system for marshalling resources (collecting)
      • new context creation through context shifting and/or erasure
      • "slow burn" productivity
      • focusing attention
      • fun
      • serendipity generation
      • attempting to look cool by doing what the cool kids are doing (this usually results in failure modes however)
        • related: fear of missing out (FOMO)
    1. Beyond the cards mentioned above, you should also capture any hard-to-classify thoughts, questions, and areas for further inquiry on separate cards. Regularly go through these to make sure that you are covering everything and that you don’t forget something.I consider these insurance cards because they won’t get lost in some notebook or scrap of paper, or email to oneself.

      Julius Reizen in reviewing over Umberto Eco's index card system in How to Write a Thesis, defines his own "insurance card" as one which contains "hard-to-classify thoughts, questions, and areas for further inquiry". These he would keep together so that they don't otherwise get lost in the variety of other locations one might keep them

      These might be akin to Ahrens' "fleeting notes" but are ones which may not easily or even immediately be converted in to "permanent notes" for one's zettelkasten. However, given their mission critical importance, they may be some of the most important cards in one's repository.

      link this to - idea of centralizing one's note taking practice to a single location

      Is this idea in Eco's book and Reizen is the one that gives it a name since some of the other categories have names? (examples: bibliographic index cards, reading index cards (aka literature notes), cards for themes, author index cards, quote index cards, idea index cards, connection cards). Were these "officially" named and categorized by Eco?

      May be worthwhile to create a grid of these naming systems and uses amongst some of the broader note taking methods. Where are they similar, where do they differ?


      Multi-search tools that have full access to multiple trusted data stores (ostensibly personal ones across notebooks, hard drives, social media services, etc.) could potentially solve the problem of needing to remember where you noted something.

      Currently, in the social media space especially, this is not a realized service.

    1. St Columba Columba (521-597), known as Colm Cille in Ireland, went to the west coast of Scotland and to the island of Iona to do penance and escape from the blood spilled in his family battles at home in Ireland.

      for - from - AnMaonaigh - annotation - Christian Monastic Communities - from article - Why Human (Contributive) Labor remains the creative principle of human society - Michel Bauwens - Substack - https://hyp.is/iITCrH2hEe-nIc9iOR4VeQ/4thgenerationcivilization.substack.com/p/why-human-contributive-labor-remains

  3. Sep 2024
    1. That desire for a “digital detox” is frequently brought up amongst typewriter aficionados—it’s an escape from pop-up ads, spyware, AI-generated content, doomscrolling, deepfakes, obnoxious comments sections, and all the other headaches that hit you at Internet speed. A piece of paper in a typewriter, on the other hand, is a simpler connection of your thoughts tapped out letter by letter, mistakes and all.
    1. A justice approach, by contrast, requires at least boundaries that minimise significant harm to human health and wellbeing and to other species (panel 2) while ensuring access to necessary resources and services.

      for - just earth system boundary - why it's needed

    1. My long term vision for Falcon is to make a web application platform which trivializes server deployment. Ideally, a web application can fully describe all its components: HTTP servers, databases, periodic jobs, background jobs, remote management, etc. Currently, it is not uncommon for all these facets to be handled independently in platform specific ways. This can make it difficult to set up new instances as well as make changes to underlying infrastructure. I hope Falcon can address some of these issues in a platform agnostic way.
  4. Aug 2024
    1. Michael: Pam, I have ideas on a daily basis. I know I do. I have a clear memory of telling people my ideas. Um, is there any chance you wrote any of my ideas down? In a folder? A "Michael-idea" folder?Pam: Sorry.Michael: That's unfortunate. How 'bout the suggestion box? There's tons of ideas in there.

      via Season 2 Episode 8: “Performance Review” - The Office<br /> https://genius.com/The-office-usa-season-2-episode-8-performance-review-annotated

      Here we see in Michael Scott's incompetence the potential value of writing down our ideas as we go. Had he written down his ideas, his upcoming meeting with his boss would have gone better.

      Isn't it telling that he hits on the idea of leveraging a commonly used communal zettelkasten structure (the suggestion box) to dig himself out?

    1. The typewriter is a Corona made in 1926.  I came across it in a yard sale and, having no real use for an old typewriter, I bought it anyway!
    1. for - building new sustainable cities

      summary - Building new "sustainable cities from nothing often does not consider the embodied energy required to do so. When that is considered, it is usually not viable - A context where it is viable is where there is extreme poverty and inequality

      to - Why do old places matter? - sustainability - https://hyp.is/vlBLGlQFEe-EpqflmmlqnQ/savingplaces.org/stories/why-do-old-places-matter-sustainability

    1. this is one reason why we forget stuff it is not a like like something that that is telling us that our brains bad but on the other hand the brain is using active forgetting in order to make the most important information the more precise and more pronounced

      for - neuroscience - why brains forget - active forgetting

      neuroscience -active forgetting - leaves behind a small set of salient ideas

    2. Avram Lincoln said I don't like this man I have to get to know him better because getting other people into your perspective

      for - neuroscience - perspectival knowing - why it's important to know other perspectives - perspectival knowing - Abraham Lincoln quote - I don't know that man - I better get to know his perspective

  5. Jul 2024
    1. The UN and its many parts and agencies – from UNICEF to the Universal Postal Union – answer not to humanity nor the world, but the nations that united to join it.

      for - climate crisis - key insight - why UN cannot address the climate crisis

      climate crisis - key insight - why UN cannot address the climate crisis - The UN responds to sovereign states, not to humanity nor to the planet

    1. for - transition - renewable energy - won't work - because - the price is wrong! - Brett Christopher - green energy - the price is wrong - transition - alternative to capitalism - book - The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism won't Save the Planet - Brett Christopher

      summary - This book provides rationale for why capitalism won't scale renewable energy, but a public sector government approach might - What about the alternative of community-owned or cooperative-owned energy infrastructure? A pipe dream? - Is renewable energy just not profitable and therefore has to be subsidized? - Perhaps it could be seen as a stopgap to buy us time until fusion, deep geothermal or other viable, scalable options become widespread?

      from - Planet Critical podcast - 6th Mass Extinction - interview with paleontologist Peter Brennan - https://hyp.is/3ss3Vj9vEe-iDX-3vRVlFw/docdrop.org/video/cP8FXbPrEiI/

    1. book that's sort of making its rounds in the climate World these days um by this author Brett Christopher I foret what it's called 00:31:25 um oh what is it called oh the price is wrong yeah about how Renewables yeah they're cheaper than ever which people always point at those graphs but just because of the way that you know utilities are set up and the energy system works they're not profitable and 00:31:38 they won't be in the near term

      for - book - The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism won't Save the Planet - Brett Christopher

      to - book - The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism won't Save the Planet - Brett Christopher - https://hyp.is/h01Tyj9uEe-rEhuQgFWRuQ/www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/3069-the-price-is-wrong

    1. the question is why are the mitochondria not doing their job why is the self not responding to insulin 00:05:34 that's the issue different tissues different reasons but the main one is the liver

      for - question - health - insulin resistance - why aren't mitochondria within cells not responding to insulin?

      question - health - insulin resistance - why aren't mitochondria within cells not responding to insulin? - The fat cells are being stored in the liver, resulting in - fatty liver disease - The liver stores the fat cells floating in blood (triglycerides) then recirculates it back to the cells. - The cells and liver are caught up in a vicious cycle of "hot potatos" with the fat cells.<br /> - (See Stanford explainer video above)

  6. Jun 2024
    1. Success histories? 4 years into Zettelkasten and not being fruitful

      Let's turn your question around: What exactly are you hoping to get out of it for yourself? Do you have specific goals for your own use?

      You may like the idea of having and using a hammer, but if you don't have a project that requires a hammer, then owning and trying to hammer on random things in an unfocused way is probably not the right tool for your needs.

      reply to u/arealnamestakenreal at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1dko10r/success_histories_4_years_into_zettelkasten_and/

    1. I certainly think 00:05:50 it's our symbolic abilities that have gotten us here tremendous capacities

      for - answer - Planet Critical podcast - Terrence Deacon - We're in existential crisis - but difficult to convey to most people - why? - human symbolic abilities - mass collaboration

      answer - Planet Critical podcast - Terrence Deacon - We're in existential crisis - but difficult to convey to most people - why? - Our symbolic abilities have given us tremendous capacities - Over the past two thousand years, - our ability to communicate - has allowed us to create amazing technologies - Example: James Web telescope - millions of hours of human thought - thousands of people collaborating - now we an look back billions of years - We are no longer isolated minds - Our symbolic capacity allows us to - share thoughts, - collectively plan futures - unlike any other species

    2. we're going to hit some very very hard limits to growth um and yet it's almost like we can't find the language for it

      for - question - Planet Critical podcast - We're in existential crisis - but difficult to convey to most people - why?

    3. we're disconnected from the physical 00:04:07 world at the same time as being intricately and desperately connected

      for - answer - why is the world in crisis?

      answer - why is the world in crisis? - We're disconnected from the physical world at the same time as - being intricately and desperately connected - We take resources away and - produce a lot of waste very rapidly - due to our capacities through science and technology

    4. why is the world in crisis

      for - question - why is the world in crisis? - Planet Critical

    1. Although many projects and ideas share Elinor Ostrom's personal, cooperative and Earth-helping significance, they lack the chain reaction that keeps them going.

      for - quote - chain reaction - why good projects fail - (see below)

      • Although many projects and ideas share Elinor Ostrom's personal, cooperative and Earth-helping significance,
        • they lack the chain reaction that keeps them going.
      • On the contrary, this flame is extinguished by
        • the direct action (fakes), or
        • indirect action (ignoring or taking our attention elsewhere)
      • of the mainstream media that in a certain sense has lost that "code of ethics" of journalism that upheld values; such as
        • truthfulness,
        • independence,
        • objectivity,
        • fairness,
        • accuracy,
        • respect for others,
        • public accountability...
    1. Explicit health checks are not added to official images for a number of reasons, some of which include:
    1. Isn't a simple go get github.com/mayflower/docker-ls/cli/... sufficient, you ask? Indeed it is, but including the generate step detailed above will encode verbose version information in the binaries.
  7. May 2024
    1. the United States was suppressing Democratic movements around the world because if an authoritarian if a communist can win an 00:13:59 election fairly one time that's the end of free and fair elections

      for - key insight - why US geopolitics installed dictatorships - progress trap- US foreign policy that shaped modernity

      key insight - why US geopolitics installed dictatorships - This was the US's rationale to justify the geopolitical mess it created this century: - If you allow democracy in the age of Communism - people might vote for communism, then - kill all the rich people, then - take their stuff, then - redistribute it - You can get a majority support for that in an impoverished country and that was perceived as a threat - So the United States was suppressing Democratic movements around the world - because if an authoritarian if a communist can win an election fairly one time, - that's the end of free and fair elections - So for decades, the US foreign policy agenda was to install dictators to suppress the threat that democracy could produce communism. - But after "communism was defeated" - all these installed dictators around the world that are the direct result of the pathological US foreign policy posed a new, unexpected quagmire - The decades of US foreign policy had created an enormous progress trap that we are all living through now - The US now had to normalize relations with the new world of dictators it had helped created out of its own fears<br /> - A new US foreign policy rule emerged to deal with this fiasco - Stay in your own country - If you want to kill, imprison, brutalize or subjegate your own people, it is fine with the US government as long as it is done within your own state borders - As long as a nation state abuses their own people, the US will continue to: - buy your oil - trade with you - show up at the UN - even have an occasional State event for you - However, Russia broke that rule

    2. what Trump cares about is polling numbers and uh supporting Russia is a losing issue here in America when you look at polls for Americans do you 00:08:53 support additional military aid for Ukraine it's consistently above 60% so Trump flipped on Russia support for this Aid Bill to relieve the political 00:09:05 pressure

      for - US 2024 election - why Trump flipped to support Ukraine aid bill

    1. for - post comment - Linked I - Daniel Schmachtenberger - why good people comply with evil - direct citizen action - networked commons

      summary - A great short video that is a teaser to a longer podcast conversation on the topic of confirmation bias, and recognizing it to empower citizens during this time of rapid whole system change.

  8. Apr 2024
    1. We believe that thelack of a business model that can incentivize ‘genuine’ peer-to-peer applications and the lackof suitable architectural foundations for such applications are the culprit

      ^

    1. When people ask Ruefle why she wastes time with the erasures, she has one of the greatest responses I’ve ever heard: “Because it’s fun and I love it. That’s why.”
    1. A few moment's reflection will showus that if our pieces are too large, we shall not have the same•opportunity of building up. The process of summarising orbuilding up is in fact restricted by the size of the pieces,generally speaking the smaller the pieces the better the chanceto build up. Too large pieces will preclude us altogetherfrom reporting on smaller subjects.

      Here Kaiser touches on the broader themes inherent in the concepts of atomic notes, which might be used to build up new and interesting structures. He doesn't specify the "size of a note" nor does he say that one will "know it when they see it", but he's suggesting something very close to it.

      Rather than define the appropriate size, a feat which is difficult to do at best, he's providing a very narrow set of benefits for encouraging one to cut things down to size as they index them: small pieces are easier to use to build new things.

    2. Since a smaller number can be more easily 29of numbers controlled than a larger one, the aim of or-ganisation obviously is to reduce the numbersto a manageable compass so as to assure adequate control.That is done by dividing the numbers off into groups, depart-ments, classes etc. Thus we may have classes of materials,labour etc, or we may have classes of kinds of materials,labour etc, according to the nature of our business and theextent of our organisation. These classes provide us with thefoundation, the fixed points on which our organisation can bebuilt up.Classification — the mapping out of the various classes— is there- 30fore a subject of the greatest importance in all organisationwork.
    3. Organisation may be called the science of the 27numbers simultaneous control of numbers. Organisa-tion whether small or large, is the directconsequence of numbers and the greater the numbers, the moreneed for organisation. Numbers compel us to organise, withoutsome organisation there can be no effective management, noeffective control

      This is the reasoning for why we'll want an indexed system. The vast wealth of information may be overwhelming, but with the ability to organize and control it (by writing it down and indexing it) we can turn it into something useful.

  9. Mar 2024
    1. By having a longer historical view, it actually tends to extend our time horizons in both directions. So, by thinking more about the past, it sets us up to think more about a long-term future and to challenge ourselves to think more expansively and ambitiously about what might come by having the sense of a wider aperture to think about rather than just thinking about the here and now or what’s coming out in the next cycle.
  10. Feb 2024
    1. The purported reason seems to be the claim that some people find "master" offensive. (FWIW I'd give that explanation more credence if the people giving it seem to be offended themselves rather than be offended on behalf of someone else. But whatever, it's their repo.)
    1. I'm not sure if I should write it in the answer directly, but I could also say that when an OP simply rolls back an edit without preemptively stating any reasoning in a comment etc., that tends to create the impression that OP is misguidedly claiming "ownership" of the content or feels entitled to reject changes without needing a reason.
    1. "There is a large literature relating to twins in their purely surgical and physiological aspect. The reader interested in this should consult Die Lehre von den Zwillingen, von L. Kleinwächter, Prag. 1871. It is full of references, but it is also unhappily disfigured by a number of numerical misprints, especially in page 26. I have not found any book that treats of twins from my present point of view."

    1. mid-twentieth century, Josef Müller-Brockmann and Paul Randconnected design methodologies to the world of business
    2. El Lissitzky, whose posters, books, and exhibitions are amongthe most influential works of twentieth-century design, had a huge impact
    3. scholar and designer Helen Armstrong,

      https://helenarmstrong.info

      She was "emerging" in 2006 when this was written, nearly 20 years ago. She's still a working professor with interesting projects.

  11. Jan 2024
    1. we hear a lot 00:04:00 of these stories that 'We are nothing but' and so the question of what we are is important and fascinating, but it's not nearly as important as, "What do we do next?"

      for - question - what do we do next? - investigate - why "what do we do next?" is salient

    1. Instance methods Instances of Models are documents. Documents have many of their own built-in instance methods. We may also define our own custom document instance methods. // define a schema const animalSchema = new Schema({ name: String, type: String }, { // Assign a function to the "methods" object of our animalSchema through schema options. // By following this approach, there is no need to create a separate TS type to define the type of the instance functions. methods: { findSimilarTypes(cb) { return mongoose.model('Animal').find({ type: this.type }, cb); } } }); // Or, assign a function to the "methods" object of our animalSchema animalSchema.methods.findSimilarTypes = function(cb) { return mongoose.model('Animal').find({ type: this.type }, cb); }; Now all of our animal instances have a findSimilarTypes method available to them. const Animal = mongoose.model('Animal', animalSchema); const dog = new Animal({ type: 'dog' }); dog.findSimilarTypes((err, dogs) => { console.log(dogs); // woof }); Overwriting a default mongoose document method may lead to unpredictable results. See this for more details. The example above uses the Schema.methods object directly to save an instance method. You can also use the Schema.method() helper as described here. Do not declare methods using ES6 arrow functions (=>). Arrow functions explicitly prevent binding this, so your method will not have access to the document and the above examples will not work.

      Certainly! Let's break down the provided code snippets:

      1. What is it and why is it used?

      In Mongoose, a schema is a blueprint for defining the structure of documents within a collection. When you define a schema, you can also attach methods to it. These methods become instance methods, meaning they are available on the individual documents (instances) created from that schema.

      Instance methods are useful for encapsulating functionality related to a specific document or model instance. They allow you to define custom behavior that can be executed on a specific document. In the given example, the findSimilarTypes method is added to instances of the Animal model, making it easy to find other animals of the same type.

      2. Syntax:

      Using methods object directly in the schema options:

      javascript const animalSchema = new Schema( { name: String, type: String }, { methods: { findSimilarTypes(cb) { return mongoose.model('Animal').find({ type: this.type }, cb); } } } );

      Using methods object directly in the schema:

      javascript animalSchema.methods.findSimilarTypes = function(cb) { return mongoose.model('Animal').find({ type: this.type }, cb); };

      Using Schema.method() helper:

      javascript animalSchema.method('findSimilarTypes', function(cb) { return mongoose.model('Animal').find({ type: this.type }, cb); });

      3. Explanation in Simple Words with Examples:

      Why it's Used:

      Imagine you have a collection of animals in your database, and you want to find other animals of the same type. Instead of writing the same logic repeatedly, you can define a method that can be called on each animal instance to find similar types. This helps in keeping your code DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) and makes it easier to maintain.

      Example:

      ```javascript const mongoose = require('mongoose'); const { Schema } = mongoose;

      // Define a schema with a custom instance method const animalSchema = new Schema({ name: String, type: String });

      // Add a custom instance method to find similar types animalSchema.methods.findSimilarTypes = function(cb) { return mongoose.model('Animal').find({ type: this.type }, cb); };

      // Create the Animal model using the schema const Animal = mongoose.model('Animal', animalSchema);

      // Create an instance of Animal const dog = new Animal({ type: 'dog', name: 'Buddy' });

      // Use the custom method to find similar types dog.findSimilarTypes((err, similarAnimals) => { console.log(similarAnimals); }); ```

      In this example, findSimilarTypes is a custom instance method added to the Animal schema. When you create an instance of the Animal model (e.g., a dog), you can then call findSimilarTypes on that instance to find other animals with the same type. The method uses the this.type property, which refers to the type of the current animal instance. This allows you to easily reuse the logic for finding similar types across different instances of the Animal model.

      Certainly! Let's go through each part and explain it in simple terms: ### 1. `this` in Mongoose: - **What is `this`?** In JavaScript, `this` refers to the current context or object. In Mongoose, particularly within methods and middleware functions, `this` represents the instance (document) the function is currently operating on. - **Why is it used?** `this` is used to access and modify the properties of the current document. For example, in a Mongoose method, `this` allows you to refer to the fields of the specific document the method is called on. ### 2. Example: Let's use the `userSchema.pre("save", ...)`, which is a Mongoose middleware, as an example: ```javascript userSchema.pre("save", async function (next) { if (!this.isModified("password")) { next(); } else { this.password = await bcrypt.hash(this.password, 10); next(); } }); ``` - **Explanation in Simple Words:** - Imagine you have a system where users can sign up and set their password. - Before saving a new user to the database, you want to ensure that the password is securely encrypted (hashed) using a library like `bcrypt`. - The `userSchema.pre("save", ...)` is a special function that runs automatically before saving a user to the database. - In this function: - `this.isModified("password")`: Checks if the password field of the current user has been changed. - If the password is not modified, it means the user is not updating their password, so it just moves on to the next operation (saving the user). - If the password is modified, it means a new password is set or the existing one is changed. In this case, it uses `bcrypt.hash` to encrypt (hash) the password before saving it to the database. - The use of `this` here is crucial because it allows you to refer to the specific user document that's being saved. It ensures that the correct password is hashed for the current user being processed. In summary, `this` in Mongoose is a way to refer to the current document or instance, and it's commonly used to access and modify the properties of that document, especially in middleware functions like the one demonstrated here for password encryption before saving to the database.

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    1. I used to treat my personal website like a content marketer, every post carefully crafted to attract leads that could improve my career or get freelance opportunities. However, it robbed me of a lot of joy. Now, I treat my personal website as my “digital home hub”. I’m much happier as a result.
  12. Dec 2023
    1. With specific keyword messages you can compute the Least Common Multiple and Greatest Common Divisor. A keyword message is composed of one or more colons “:” to insert one or more arguments:

      A source of confusion for beginners is why binary messages exist in the first place when they could be implemented instead as keyword messages taking one argument as #lcm: and #gcd:; you could in fact, imagine an alternative syntax with only unary and keyword messages, but it would be cumbersome to read and write. Binary messages improve legibility without introducing too much complexity for the implementors.

    1. Kickstarter will not let me promise rewards within the same month, but the files will be sent to backers soon after the campaign ends.
    1. graph Laplacian

      The Laplacian operator is a linear operator that measures how much a function varies over a simplicial complex. The eigencochains of the Laplacian operator are functions that have a special relationship with the Laplacian operator.

  13. Nov 2023
    1. One of the primary problems with note taking in most of the mid-twentieth century (and potentially well before, particularly as framed in most educational settings) was that students would take notes, potentially review them once or twice for a test, but then not have easy access to them for later review or reuse.

      People collected piles of notes without any ability to reuse or review them. Perhaps we should reframe the collector's fallacy as this: collection without reuse has dramatically decreasing returns. Certainly there may be some small initial benefit in writing it down as a means of sense making, but not reviewing it past a short period of two weeks or even several months and not being able to reuse it in the long term is a travesty, especially in a world of information overload.

  14. Oct 2023
    1. (Weight W1) (Rope Rp) (Rope Rq) (Pulley Pa) (hangs W1 from Rp) (pulley-system Rp Pa Rq) (Weight W2) (hangs W2 from Rq) (Rope Rx) (Pulley Pb) (Rope Ry) (Pulley Pc) (Rope Rz) (Rope Rt) (Rope Rs) (Ceiling c) (hangs Pa from Rx) (pulley-system Rx Pb Ry) (pulley-system Ry Pc Rz) (hangs Pb from Rt) (hangs Rt from c) (hangs Rx from c) (hangs Rs from Pc) (hangs W2 from Rs) (value W1 1) (b) P1. P2. P3. P4. .. Single-string support. (weight < Wx>) (rope <Ry >) (value <Wx> <n>) (hangs <Wx> <Ry>) -(hangs <Wx> <Rx>) - (value <Ry> <W-number>) Ropes over pulley. (pulley <P>) (rope <R1>) (rope <R2>) (pulley-system <R1 > <P> <R2>) (value <R1> <nl>) - (value <R2> <nl>) Rope hangs from or supports pulley. (pulley <R1>) (rope <R1>) (rope R2>) (pulley-system <R1> <P> <R2>) { (hangs <R3> from <P>) or (hangs <P> from <R3>) } (value <R1> <nl>) (value <R2> <n2>) - (value <R3> <nl + <n2>) Weight and multiple supporting ropes. (weight <W1 >) (rope <R1 >) (rope R2>) (hangs <W1> <Rl>) (hangs <W1> <R2>) -(hangs <W1> <R3>) (value <R1> <nl>) (value <R2> <n2>) - (value <W1> <nl> + <n2>) P2. Ropes over pulley. If a pulley system < P> has two ropes < RI > and < R2> over it, and the value (tension) associated with < RZ > is < nl > , then < nl > is also the value associated with rope < RZ > . P3. Rope hangs from or supports pulley. If there is a pulley system with ropes < RZ > and < R2> over it, and the pulley system hangs from a rope < R3 > , and c R1> and < R2 > have the values (tensions) < nl > and < n2 > associated with them, then the value (tension) associated with < R3 > is the sum of < nl > plus <n2>.

      Please explain to me how it is not evident to programmers that this is how we program.. we cannot hold more than seven items at a time. We cannot fracture. As Miller mentioned, 2 3 digit numbers are outside t capacity, but if you multiply them by paper w, if we free your memory, we can let the brain focus on the v

      If you assign the memory function to a diagram, you can let your brain concentrate on the manipulation function.

      Once we codify, we no longer have to keep the information in memory, for example : This hurts my brain

      There are five roads in Brown County. One runs from Abbeville to Brownsville by way of Clinton. One runs from Clinton to Derbyshire by way of Fremont. One runs from Fremont to Brownsville by way of Abbieville. That's all the roads in Brown County, and all the roads in and out of those towns.

      Which towns have roads connecting them directly to three other towns? Which towns have roads connecting them directly to only two other towns? How many towns must you pass through to get from Brownsville to Derbyshire?

      But if we diagram it to a map, all of this makes sense.

      "The learning of numbers and language must be subordinated ... Visual understanding is the essential and only valid means of teaching how to judge things correctly." ~ Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi

      Pestalozzi was the guy who designed the educational system in which Einstein, the most extraordinary visualization of his time, was born q

  15. Sep 2023
    1. Often I don't care to be persuaded or deeply accept and understand an author's perspective, but I still value the information they assemble to support their narrative or argument. This is something that happens quite a bit for me, where I gain lots of really valuable historical background and data from articles or monographs whose interpretation I am never going to buy.

      Sometimes one reads for raw information and background details that one can excerpt or use--things which an author may use to support their own arguments, but which the reader doesn't care about at all.

    1. I don't know why I can't do Evergreen and Atomic Notes.. .t3_16r8k0b._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }

      reply to u/SouthernEremite at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/16r8k0b/i_dont_know_why_i_cant_do_evergreen_and_atomic/

      If you're not using your notes to create or write material and only using them as a form of sensemaking, then perhaps you don't need to put as much work or effort into the permanent notes portion of the work? Ask yourself: "Why are you taking notes? What purpose do they serve?" Is the form and level you're making them in serving those purposes? If not, work toward practicing to make those two align so that your notes are serving an actual purpose for you. Anything beyond this is make-work and you could spend your time more profitably somewhere else.

    1. Why did the chicken cross the road?

      To get to his zettelkasten on the other side!

      But when he got there, he realized he had forgotten the slip of paper with his perfect evergreen note. So the chicken crossed the road once again to retrieve it. But almost as if it were a jokerzettel, on the way back, a gust of wind blew the slip right out of the chicken's beak!

      The chicken tried to catch the runaway slip, but it kept evading him. He chased that slip all over the farm--through the pig sty, over fences, around the grain silo.

      Finally, exhausted but triumphant, the chicken caught the slip and carefully filed it away.

      Moral of the story: Don't count your slips before they're indexed!

    2. Q: Why did the zettelkasten cross the road?

      A: It didn't because Barbara Tuchman, Nicholas Luhmann, Jacques Goutor, Johannes Erich Heyde, and Keith Thomas all recommend only writing on one side.

    1. You can no longer create accounts with Yahoo domains other than "@yahoo.com",
    2. I'm curious: what is the reason for Yahoo discontinuing the "@ymail.com" domain?I'm aware that there's now a 2nd domain option available, "@myyahoo.com", and I recently took advantage of that to create a new address. But "@ymail.com" honestly looks more appealing to me than either of the "yahoo" iterations.
  16. Aug 2023
    1. In fact, it might be good if you make your first cards messy and unimportant, just to make sure you don’t feel like everything has to be nicely organized and highly significant.

      Making things messy from the start as advice for getting started.

      I've seen this before in other settings, particularly in starting new notebooks. Some have suggested scrawling on the first page to get over the idea of perfection in a virgin notebook. I also think I've seen Ton Ziijlstra mention that his dad would ding every new car to get over the new feeling and fear of damaging it. Get the damage out of the way so you can just move on.

      The fact that a notebook is damaged, messy, or used for the smallest things may be one of the benefits of a wastebook. It averts the internal need some may find for perfection in their nice notebooks or work materials.

    1. The object appears to be to keep the child off the labormarket and to detain him in comparatively sanitary surround-ings until we are ready to have him go to work.

      ouch!

    Tags

    Annotators

    1. Zettelkasten for Normies: What Normies Really Need to Know .t3_15sqiq2._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }

      reply to u/SunghoYahng at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/15sqiq2/zettelkasten_for_normies_what_normies_really_need/

      u/SunghoYahng, some of your article sounds like a pared down digital version of a commonplace book which allows for links, so it fits into the older zettelkasten tradition, just not into the more Luhmann-artig version on which this subreddit is generally more focused. Perhaps yours is closer to a digital version of the analog commonplace using index cards that Billy Oppenheimer describes having learned from Ryan Holiday and Robert Greene?

      Often people focus too much on Luhmann's prodigious output and then immediately imply or say you should adopt his very specific system without describing what his system did or why it worked so well for him and his particular needs. Very few focus on what it is that they want to accomplish and how they might use his system or the thousands of variations on it throughout history to come to those goals as quickly and easily as they can.

      You commit a version of this sin in your opening lines:

      The content about Zettelkasten is mostly too long and practically useless. The purpose of this text is to write only what normies really need to know.

      Who are these so-called "normies" and what specifically are they trying to accomplish? You don't define either of them, and possibly worse do it in a negative framing. The system you're describing might be a great one, but for whom? What do you expect them to use it for? What will they get out of it?

      Many people talk about the "magic" of a zettelkasten and then wave their hands at some version of a workflow of what they think it is or what they think it should be. Perhaps what we all really need is a list of potential affordances that different methods allow and how one might leverage those affordances. How might they be mixed and matched? Then users can decide what outcomes they wish to have (writing, thinking, aggregation, bookmarking, collecting, creativity, artificial memory, serendipity, productivity, wiki, spaced repetition, learning, time wasting, etc., etc.) and which affordances are necessary within their workflow/system to effectuate those specific goals? Finally they can pick and choose a specific version of a methodology/workflow and either an analog substrate (index cards, notebooks, memory palace, etc.) or digital tool/application (Obsidian, Roam Research, The Archive, etc.) to save it all in. Of course once you've chosen that analog or digital tool, does it actually have the affordances you want or need in actual practice? Are they easy to use? Practical? Do they save you time? Are they simple or over-engineered? What happens when they scale to a year of regular use or even a lifetime?

      As a simple example, many writers would love a seriously good outliner functionality in their system to pull out the materials they want to work with and then appropriately order them for a potential final written output. In practice, index cards on a big table are fantastic for this process while most (all?) current digital tools are miserable at it. And of course once you've gotten the outline you like in an analog space you have to type it all out to print/publish in a final form, something which the digital affordance of cut and paste would make much simpler. Who wouldn't love a tool that could give you all of these affordances, presuming you needed them?

      While we're on outlining, very few talk about the ease-of-use that some professional outliners like Dave Winer's Drummer or Little Outliner have versus some of the more text-editing focused tools like Obsidian which are generally poor as outliners (if you could even call them that) in comparison.

      If you're interested in folgezettel and outlining, you might appreciate some subtleties in Bob's piece: https://writing.bobdoto.computer/folgezettel-is-not-an-outline-luhmanns-playful-appreciation-of-disfunction/

      cross reference https://hypothes.is/a/OhcWSjxyEe6V8DP9P6WNQQ

  17. Jul 2023
    1. Tell future-you why you did that thing; they can read but don't know what you intended. Oral tradition is like never writing state to disk; flush those buffers.
    1. But I would do less than justice to Mr. Adler's achieve-ment if I left the matter there. The Syntopicon is, in additionto all this, and in addition to being a monument to the indus-try, devotion, and intelligence of Mr. Adler and his staff, astep forward in the thought of the West. It indicates wherewe are: where the agreements and disagreements lie; wherethe problems are; where the work has to be done. It thushelps to keep us from wasting our time through misunder-standing and points to the issues that must be attacked.When the history of the intellectual life of this century iswritten, the Syntopicon will be regarded as one of the land-marks in it.

      p xxvi

      Hutchins closes his preface to his grand project with Mortimer J. Adler by giving pride of place to Adler's Syntopicon.

      Adler's Syntopicon isn't just an index compiled into two books which were volumes 2 and 3 of The Great Books of the Western World, it's physically a topically indexed card index of data (a grand zettelkasten surveying Western culture if you will). It's value to readers and users is immeasurable and it stands as a fascinating example of what a well-constructed card index might allow one to do even when they don't have their own yet.

      Adler spoke of practicing syntopical reading, but anyone who compiles their own card index (in either analog or digital form) will realize the ultimate value in creating their own syntopical writing or what Robert Hutchins calls participating in "The Great Conversation" across twenty-five centuries of documented human communication.

      See also: https://hypothes.is/a/WF4THtUNEe2dZTdlQCbmXw


      The way Hutchins presents the idea of "Adler's achievement" here seems to indicate that Hutchins didn't have a direct hand in compiling or working on it directly.

  18. Jun 2023
    1. The Zettelkasten method aims to help you forget.

      I would argue that it is more subtle than this. It allows you to forget, but the aim is to allow you to learn, remember, and slowly build.

  19. May 2023
    1. “Why do we need to learn [this]?” where [this] is whatever I happened to be struggling with at the time.  Unfortunately for everyone, this question – which should always elicit a homerun response from the teacher

      The eternal student question, "Why do we need to learn this?" should always have a fantastic answer from their teachers.

    1. of course I had done a lot of thinking even before I ever used a ZK, but now I can record, retrieve, and elaborate these thoughts easily so that they accumulate over time to something bigger. Now, writing a paper or grant proposal often comes down to concatenating a bunch of notes.
    1. "[What] I like about the [zettlekasten] system is that it's a constant reminder to to make up your mind and to specify what you what you're thinking."<br /> —Sönke Ahrens, [Tinderbox Meetup - May 7, 2023 00:30:36]

    1. Writing permanent notes was time consuming as f***.

      The framing of "permanent notes" or "evergreen notes" has probably hurt a large portion of the personal knowledge management space. Too many people are approaching these as some sort of gold standard without understanding their goal or purpose. Why are you writing such permanent/evergreen notes? Unless you have an active goal to reuse a particular note for a specific purpose, you're probably wasting your time. The work you put into the permanent note is to solidify an idea which you firmly intend to reuse again in one or more contexts. The whole point of "evergreen" as an idea is that it can actively be reused multiple times in multiple places. If you've spent time refining it to the nth degree and writing it well, then you had better be doing so to reuse it.

      Of course many writers will end up (or should end up) properly contextualizing individual ideas and example directly into their finished writing. As a result, one's notes can certainly be rough and ready and don't need to be highly polished because the raw idea will be encapsulated somewhere else and then refined and rewritten directly into that context.

      Certainly there's some benefit for refining and shaping ideas down to individual atomic cores so that they might be used and reused in combination with other ideas, but I get the impression that some think that their notes need to be highly polished gems. Even worse, they feel that every note should be this way. This is a dreadful perspective.

      For context I may make 40 - 60 highlights and annotations on an average day of reading. Of these, I'll review most and refine or combine a few into better rougher shape. Of this group maybe 3 - 6 will be interesting enough to turn into permanent/evergreen notes of some sort that might be reused. And even at this probably only one is interesting enough to be placed permanently into my zettelkasten. This one will likely be an aggregation of many smaller ideas combined with other pre-existing ideas in my collection; my goal is to have the most interesting and unique of my own ideas in my permanent collection. The other 2 or 3 may still be useful later when I get to the creation/writing stage when I'll primarily focus on my own ideas, but I'll use those other rougher notes and the writing in them to help frame and recontextualize the bigger ideas so that the reader will be in a better place to understand my idea, where it comes from, and why it might be something they should find interesting.

      Thus some of my notes made while learning can be reused in my own ultimate work to help others learn and understand my more permanent/evergreen notes.

      If you think that every note you're making should be highly polished, refined, and heavily linked, then you're definitely doing this wrong. Hopefully a few days of attempting this will disabuse you of the notion and you'll slow down to figure out what's really worth keeping and maintaining. You can always refer back to rough notes if you need to later, but polishing turds is often thankless work. Sadly too many misread or misunderstand articles and books on the general theory of note taking and overshoot the mark thinking that the theory needs to be applied to every note. It does not.

      If you find that you're tiring of making notes and not getting anything out of the process, it's almost an assured sign that you're doing something wrong. Are you collecting thousands of ideas (bookmarking behavior) and not doing anything with them? Are you refining and linking low level ideas of easy understanding and little value? Take a step back and focus on the important and the new. What are you trying to do? What are you trying to create?

    1. Why are folks so obsessed with notes per day? Perhaps a proxy for toxic capitalism and productivity issues? Is the number of notes the best measure or the things they allow one to do after having made them? What is the best measure? Especially when there are those who use them for other purposes like lecturing, general growth, knowledge acquisition, or even happiness?

  20. Apr 2023
    1. Without variation on given ideas, there are no possibilities of scrutiny and selection of innovations. Therefore, the actual challenge becomes generating incidents with sufficiently high chances of selection.

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

    1. Why do so many businesses share their data openly, for free? Most often, the answer is scale. As companies grow, the staff within those companies realize they have more ideas than they have the time and resources to develop them. It’s typically easier to work with other external companies that specialize in these ideas than build them in-house. By creating APIs, a company allows third-party developers to build applications that improve adoption and usage of its platform. That way, a business can build an ecosystem that becomes dependent on the data from their API, which often leads to additional revenue opportunities.
  21. Mar 2023
    1. zettelkasten

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

      Purpose Driven Zettelkasten

    1. By looking at practices of note-taking for their ownsake we can get a better idea of how people performed intellectual work in the past, what caughttheir attention and how they moved from reading to producing a finished work, often via note-taking.
    1. "Personal Knowledge Management Is Bullshit"

      reply to jameslongley at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/2532/personal-knowledge-management-is-bullshit

      I find that these sorts of articles against the variety of practices have one thing in common: the writer fails to state a solid and realistic reason for why they got into it in the first place. They either have no reason "why" or, perhaps, just as often have all-the-reasons "why", which may be worse. Much of this is bound up in the sort of signaling and consumption which @Sascha outlines in point C (above).

      Perhaps of interest, there are a large number of Hypothes.is annotations on that original article written by a variety of sense-makers with whom I am familiar. See: https://via.hypothes.is/https://www.otherlife.co/pkm/ Of note, many come from various note making traditions including: commonplace books, bloggers, writers, wiki creators, zettelkasten, digital gardening, writers, thinkers, etc., so they give a broader and relatively diverse perspective. If I were pressed to say what most of them have in common philosophically, I'd say it was ownership of their thought.

      Perhaps it's just a point of anecdotal evidence, but I've been noticing that who write about or use the phrase "personal knowledge management" are ones who come at the space without an actual practice or point of view on what they're doing and why—they are either (trying to be) influencers or influencees.

      Fortunately it is entirely possible to "fake it until you make it" here, but it helps to have an idea of what you're trying to make.

    1. Because then we have a world in which grown men, sipping tea, posit thought experiments about raping talking sex dolls, thinking that maybe you are one too.
  22. Feb 2023
    1. I find it very tiring haha. As I said in another comment, processing a single chapter can take me a full day or two. However, I keep reminding myself that I would rather spend a day processing a chapter well, and have literature notes to serve me a lifetime (potentially, at least), rather than reading a chapter in two hours and not remember a single thing the next day. When I REALLY need a reminder of this, I just look at my "Backlog" folder which contains old "notes" that are now pretty much useless: I didn't use a reference manager consistently during my first two years of PhD so there are a lot of citations which are unreliable; I didn't really summarise texts, I only read them and highlighted; I didn't use the cloud for a long time, so I lost a lot of notes; and I didn't have Obsidian, so a lot of my notes are just contained within the context of the place I read them, rather than being connected. Seeing three years worth of useless materials, and knowing that I read a couple hundred of articles/chapters but I have nothing to show for it, that makes me more patient when writing my literature notes now. However I also find it very exciting that I can future-proof some of my notes. I feel like I'm working for my future self.

      A partial answer to note taking why.

    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. Deutsch’s index was created out of an almost algorith-mic processing of historical sources in the pursuit of a totalized and perfect history of theJews; it presented, on one hand, the individualized facts, but together also constitutedwhat we might term a ‘history without presentation’, which merely held the ‘facts’themselves without any attempt to synthesize them (cf. Saxer, 2014: 225-32).

      Not sure that I agree with the framing of "algorithmic processing" here as it was done manually by a person pulling out facts. But it does bring out the idea of where collecting ends and synthesis of a broader thesis out of one's collection begins. Where does historical method end? What was the purpose of the collection? Teaching, writing, learning, all, none?

    1. The second purpose of skip connections is specific to transformers — preserving the original input sequence.
    1. Discolored doesn't answer any questions like why the color is gone, why it's your job to fix them or how you even can, or why the player should even care about fixing the color; Discolored just tells you to do it.
    1. https://cathieleblanc.com/2023/02/05/choosing-learning-materials/

      Cathie notices that students skip materials about the theoretical "why" of assignments to get to the simpler assignments.

      This seems to be an issue with some in the personal knowledge management space who want to jump into the technology, the terminology, and moving things about without always understanding what they're doing or why. Many end up giving up as a result. Few books provide reasoning behind the terminologies or building blocks they describe to provide the theoretical why. As a result some may figure it out from long, fraught practice, but it's likely that more are not seeing the results they expect and thus giving up.

    1. According to Shulman, "Cargo-cult is a belief that mock airplanes made of manure and straw-bale may summon the real airplanes who bring canned beef. Reverse cargo-cult is used by the political elites in countries lagging behind who proclaim that, in the developed world, airplanes are also made of manure and straw-bale, and there is also a shortage of canned beef."[29]

      "Екатерина Шульман: Практический Нострадамус, или 12 умственных привычек, которые мешают нам предвидеть будущее". vedomosti/ (in Russian). Retrieved 24 June 2021.


      A Note on the Cargo Cult of Zettelkasten

      Modern cargo cults can be seen in many technology and productivity spaces where people are pulled in by exaggerated (or sometimes even real claims) of productivity or the general "magic" of a technology or method.

      An example is Niklas Luhmann's use of his zettelkasten which has created a cargo cult of zettelkasten aspirants and users who read one or more of the short one page blog posts about his unreasonable productivity and try to mimic it without understanding the system, how it works, or how to make it work for them. They often spend several months collecting notes, and following the motions, but don't realize the promised gains and may eventually give up, sometimes in shame (or as so-called "rubbish men") while watching others still touting its use.

      To prevent one's indoctrination into the zettelkasten cult, I'll make a few recommendations:

      Distance yourself from the one or two page blog posts or the breathless YouTube delineations. Ask yourself very pointedly: what you hope to get out of such a process? What's your goal? Does that goal align with others' prior uses and their outcomes?

      Be careful of the productivity gurus who are selling expensive courses and whose focus may not necessarily be on your particular goals. Some are selling very pointed courses, which is good, while others are selling products which may be so broad that they'll be sure to have some success stories, but their hodge-podge mixture of methods won't suit your particular purpose, or worse, you'll have to experiment with pieces of their courses to discover what may suit your modes of working and hope they'll suffice in the long run. Some are selling other productivity solutions for task management like getting things done (GTD) or bullet journals, which can be a whole other cargo cults in and of themselves. Don't conflate these![^1] The only thing worse than being in a cargo cult is being in multiple at the same time.

      If you go the digital route, be extremely wary of shiny object syndrome. Everyone has a favorite tool and will advocate that it's the one you should be using. (Often their method of use will dictate how much they love it potentially over and above the affordances of the tool itself.) All of these tools can be endlessly configured, tweaked, or extended with plugins or third party services. Everyone wants to show you their workflow and set up, lots of which is based on large amounts of work and experimentation. Ignore 99.999% of this. Most tools are converging to a similar feature set, so pick a reasonable one that seems like it'll be around in 5 years (and which has export, just in case). Try out the very basic features for several months before you change anything. Don't add endless plugins and widgets. You're ultimately using a digital tool to recreate the functionality of index cards, a pencil, and a box. How complicated should this really be? Do you need to spend hundreds of hours tweaking your system to save yourself a few minutes a year? Be aware that far too many people touting the system and marketers talking about the tools are missing several thousands of years of uses of some of these basic literacy-based technologies. Don't join their island cult, but instead figure out how the visiting culture has been doing this for ages.[^2] Recall Will Hunting's admonition against cargo cults in education: “You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library.”[^3]

      Most people ultimately realize that the output of their own thinking is only as good as the inputs they're consuming. Leverage this from the moment you begin and ignore the short bite-sized advice for longer form or older advice from those with experience. You're much more likely to get more long term value out of reading Umberto Eco or Mortimer J. Adler & Charles van Doren[^4] than you are an equivalent amount of time reading blog posts, watching YouTube videos, or trolling social media like Reddit and Twitter.

      Realize that reaching your goal is going to take honest-to-goodness actual work, though there is potential for fun. No matter how shiny or optimized your system, you've still got to do the daily work of reading, watching, listening and using it to create anything. Focus on this daily work and don't get sidetracked by the minutiae of trying to shave off just a few more seconds.[^5] In short, don't get caught up in the "productivity porn" of it all. Even the high priest at whose altar they worship once wrote on a slip he filed:

      "A ghost in the note card index? Spectators visit [my office to see my notes] and they get to see everything and nothing all at once. Ultimately, like having watched a porn movie, their disappointment is correspondingly high." —Niklas Luhmann. <small>“Geist im Kasten?” ZKII 9/8,3. Niklas Luhmann-Archiv. Accessed December 10, 2021. https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8-3_V. (Personal translation from German with context added.)</small>


      [^1] Aldrich, Chris. “Zettelkasten Overreach.” BoffoSocko (blog), February 5, 2022. https://boffosocko.com/2022/02/05/zettelkasten-overreach/.

      [^2]: Blair, Ann M. Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age. Yale University Press, 2010. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300165395/too-much-know.

      [^3]: Good Will Hunting. Miramax, Lawrence Bender Productions, 1998.

      [^4]: Adler, Mortimer J., and Charles Van Doren. How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading. Revised and Updated edition. 1940. Reprint, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972.

      [^5]: Munroe, Randall. “Is It Worth the Time?” Web comic. xkcd, April 29, 2013. https://xkcd.com/1205/.


      Recommended resources

      Choose only one of the following and remember you may not need to read the entire work:

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

      Allosso, Dan, and S. F. Allosso. How to Make Notes and Write. Minnesota State Pressbooks, 2022. https://minnstate.pressbooks.pub/write/.

      Bernstein, Mark. Tinderbox: The Tinderbox Way. 3rd ed. Watertown, MA: Eastgate Systems, Inc., 2017. http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/TinderboxWay/index.html.

      Dow, Earle Wilbur. Principles of a Note-System for Historical Studies. New York: Century Company, 1924.

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