The Gag File - The Phyllis Diller Gag File - Albert H. Small Documents Gallery (accessed:: 2023-08-26 06:09:54)

Not all of the jokes in Phyllis Diller's collection were written by her. Many include comic strips she collected as well as jokes written by others and sent in to her.

One of the biggest contributors to her collection of jokes was Wisconsin housewife Mary MacBride, the mother of five children. Jokes contributed by others include their names on the individual cards.

In this set, you will find cards from the following category: Lockhorns.

https://transcription.si.edu/project/9431

I had some collections of comic strips in my youth, but sadly didn't keep up the practice or them.

BredenbeckCorp, Hanna. “The Evolution of Phyllis Diller’s Career in 7 Objects.” Smithsonian Institution (blog), March 13, 2017. https://www.si.edu/object/evolution-phyllis-dillers-career-7-objects%3Aposts_f0bf8f9142b02dbb88d3d720517f6697

Some of the cards in Phyllis Diller's gag file were numbered, but the curatorial and collections team at the Smithsonian didn't have enough data to determine what these were or what they meant at the time of transcription.

Brief description of items donated to the Smithsonian by Phyllis Diller.

https://transcription.si.edu/phyllis-diller-cards

Finally a source that indicates the full 51 drawers of Diller's gag file.

National Museum of American History Showcases Life and Laughs of Phyllis Diller - Smithsonian Institution 2011-07-26 press release

Costume items donated by Phyllis Diller to the Smithsonian Institution.

Jacqueline Trescott in The Washington Post [Phyllis Diller’s joke file becomes a Smithsonian exhibit] (https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/phyllis-dillers-joke-file-at-the-smithsonian/2011/07/27/gIQAZ0dXjI_story.html)<br /> (accessed:: 2023-08-26 04:59:59)

The National Museum of American History debuted Phyllis Diller's gag file on August 12, 2011 in the Albert H. Small Documents Gallery in an exhibition entitled "Have you Hard the One...? The Phyllis Diller Gag File."

see also: press release https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/releases/national-museum-american-history-showcases-life-and-laughs-phyllis-diller

Repetition of the number 48 for the file drawers in the Phyllis Diller gag file despite photos which show the main file and an additional section with 3 drawers on top.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2839019692842995

00:06:19 segment Laughter in the Vaults from “Famous Donors.” Stories from the Vaults, September 2007. Season 1, Episode 1. The Smithsonian Channel. https://www.smithsonianchannel.com/episodes/1wyzyg/stories-from-the-vaults-famous-donors-season-1-ep-1.

1955 Diller was a suburban housewife with 5 children. Her first stage appearance was at 37 years old at Purple Onion Night Club in San Francisco, CA, and her last show was in 2002 at 84 years old.

Broadway costume from Hello Dolly

Phyllis Diller points to her card index in the video and calls it her "gag file". Curator Dwight Bowers called it her "joke file".

Tom Canavagh, actor/comedian<br /> Dwight Blocker Bowers, curator at Smithsonian

via https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/phyllis-diller-raucous-comic-famous-for-her-withering-oneliners-8069891.html

David Pescovitz in Boing Boing: Help the Smithsonian transcribe Phyllis Diller's jokes at 2017-04-17 (accessed:: 2023-08-26 03:50:15)

Catlin, Roger. “How Many Volunteers Does It Take to Transcribe Phyllis Diller’s 53,000 Jokes?” Smithsonian Magazine, March 6, 2017. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-many-volunteers-does-take-transcribe-phyllis-dillers-jokes-180962384/.

Most of Phyllis Diller's gag files are written one joke to a card, but some have multiple jokes and some even span multiple cards.

(Note this is a secondary source and can/should be verified against the digital files.)

As a preliminary indication, most of Phyllis Diller's index cards were written from the 1960s to the 1980s.

Meghan Ferriter, a project coordinator at the Smithsonian Institution, claimed that the transcription of Phyllis Diller's gag file helped the Smithsonian Transcription Center gain 115 volunteers in a single day.

Phyllis Diller donated her gag file consisting of 51 drawers of Steelmaster card index files (on wheels) along with various dresses, costumes, and wigs to the Smithsonian Institution in 2003.

Note that this source indicates 48 drawers, which is the primary collection/cabinet, but there is also an additional 3 drawer addition which is often pictured, but apparently not counted here). Compare the actual listing: https://collections.si.edu/search/results.htm?q=phyllis+diller+gag+file

“Phyllis Diller’s File Of 53,000 Jokes.” Weekend Edition Saturday. NPR, March 11, 2017. https://www.npr.org/2017/03/11/519807672/phyllis-diller-s-file-of-53-000-jokes.

Was this originally hers? I've used a variation of it for decades myself....

Phyllis Diller had an imaginary husband she called "Fang".

Phyllis Diller called her card index a "gag file".

(It would be nice to have separate confirmation of this as it's a journalist ostensibly quoting a second party.)

Diller's manager indicated that she wrote jokes on paper and had her assistants type them up on 3 x 5" index cards.

Liebenson, Donald. “Classic Hollywood: Remembering Phyllis Diller (and 52,569 of Her Jokes) at the Smithsonian.” Los Angeles Times, May 12, 2017, sec. Television. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/la-ca-st-phyllis-diller-smithsonian-20170512-story.html.

While many sources seem to indicate that Phyllis Diller had approximately 52,000 index cards with jokes, the ultimate tally after the completion of transcription for the Smithsonian Institution seems to have been 52,569 cards.

While the Los Angeles times lists this as the number of jokes, it's far more likely to be the number of cards as some cards I've seen have multiple jokes.

It took three weeks of volunteer effort for transcribers to convert the 52,569 index cards of jokes in Phyllis Diller's gag file into digitized text.

The Smithsonian seems to consistently refer to Phyllis Diller's card index of jokes as a "gag file", but what did Diller herself call it?

quote by Hanna BredenbeckCorp, of Smithsonian on Phyllis Diller's gag file

Quote from Roseanne Barr on Phyllis Diller's card index gag file.

Joke quoted from Phyllis Diller's card index.

Actual origin?

• Susan Wever, a retired librarian from Indianapolis, on Phyllis Diller's card index of jokes.

It took four months for Hanna BredenbeckCorp, a project assistant for the Smithsonian Institution, to scan all of Phyllis Diller's joke cards for subsequent transcription and creation of a searchable digital database.

https://textfx.withgoogle.com/

A Generative AI Primer on 2023-08-15 by Brian Basgen

ᔥGeoff Corb in LinkedIn update (accessed:: 2023-08-26 01:34:45)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Phillips_(political_commentator)

Was there a heavy racist tinge to his version of Southern Strategy? Religious?

Was this the end of government by the people? Government by the corporations had been building up for a long time, and this may have been the fulcrum at which things changed.

Something ironic in a president saying this about the institution which he's running. Almost too meta. And naturally could be said about his own way of running the government.

https://www.dtsheffler.com/blog/2015-08-05-one-thought-per-note/ archive version: https://web.archive.org/web/20220124223433/https://www.dtsheffler.com/blog/2015-08-05-one-thought-per-note/

ᔥ[[abramdemski]] in The Zettelkasten Method (accessed:: 2023-08-25 12:00:07)

https://www.dtsheffler.com/blog/2014-07-21-two-goals-of-note-taking/ archive version: https://web.archive.org/web/20220528093415/https://www.dtsheffler.com/blog/2014-07-21-two-goals-of-note-taking/

ᔥ[[abramdemski]] in The Zettelkasten Method (accessed:: 2023-08-25 12:00:07)

Texts are patient conversationalists always waiting for you to write your side of the conversation into the margin before they continue on with their side of the conversation. Sadly, too many readers (students especially) don't realize that there's a conversation going on.

Link to:<br /> - https://hypothes.is/a/bBwyhkN3Ee6nQNPI5xmSnQ - https://hypothes.is/a/GvRApkN3Ee6LbBPqqX-A5Q

Margins in books and on paper are blank spaces for "dark ideas" asking to be filled in while "reading with a pen in hand" so that the reader can have a conversation with the text.

Link to https://hypothes.is/a/GvRApkN3Ee6LbBPqqX-A5Q on dark ideas

Indigenous cultures can "see" dark constellations (example: the Australian emu in the sky) which are defined empty spaces which are explicitly visible.

Using this concept, one could think of or use blank index cards in a zettelkasten or even the empty (negative) spaces between cards as "dark ideas" (potential ideas which need to be thought of and filled in).

Link to: https://hypothes.is/a/FlqusEN1Ee6XEr_9StPUlA

Lone child nodes cry out for siblings.

When I was in middle school a teacher told me only to put a sub-bullet point in an outline only if it wasn't an orphan (if you had one sub-point it should have at least one sibling, otherwise don't include it). This was miserable advice because it ended trains of thought which might otherwise grow into something.

On the other hand it could be better framed that if you have only one child, you should brainstorm to come up with others.

Notes about what you don't know (open questions), empty outline slots, red links as [[wikilinks]], and other "holes" in tools for thought provide a bookmark for where one may have quit exploring, but are an explicit breadcrumb for picking up that line of thought and continuing it at a future time.

Linear writing in one's notebooks, books they're reading, and other places doesn't always provide an explicit space which invites the reader or writer to fill them in. One has to train themselves to annotate in the margins to have a conversation with the text. Until one sees these empty spaces as inviting spaces they can be invisible to the eye.

abramdemski suggests starting with an idea you're interested in working on and fleshing out when you start your zettelkasten. This harkens back to Montessori teaching philosophies.

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.

Some users find that plastic book rings are easier to use than metal ones.

link to: https://hypothes.is/a/ydzRlENvEe6dBU9X7RfPFw

Rather than using card index boxes, abramdemski prefers using book rings to hold his cards together in batches.

The numbering doesn't matter! (especially as much as people may want it to)

Zettelkasten grow their hierarchies from the bottom-up rather than from the top-down. It's easy to create a hierarchy from the top-down when you know the entire space to begin with, but when you're just exploring and discovering the space, this is impossible, but is build-able if one doesn't get too caught up in perfection from the start.

He's cleverly noticed that many books and articles use a decimal outlining scheme already, so why not leverage that here.

A statement of the common "one idea per card" (or per note). He doesn't state it, but links to an article whose title is "One Thought Per Note".

Who else has use this or similar phrasing in the historical record? - Beatrice Webb certainly came pretty close. - Others?

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.

quote ostensibly from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=En_2T7KH6RA

Which others? where?

To my knowledge there weren't many (any?) examples floating around in 2019.

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.

nice recommendation here :)

I've seen people describing how many cards they think they need before the method is useful, but this is the first time I've seen someone use a timeframe to describe useful effects.

This article was likely a big boost to the general idea of zettelkasten in the modern zeitgeist.

Note the use of the phrase "Zettelkasten method of note-taking" which would have helped to distinguish it from other methods and thus helping the phrase Zettelkasten method stick where previously it had a more generic non-name.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NfdHG6oHBJ8Qxc26s/the-zettelkasten-method-1

A somewhat early, comprehensive one page description of the zettelkasten method from September 2019.

Using Magic: The Gathering boxes for younger children and teenagers might be a more palatable way to introduce the zettelkasten method of note taking to them, particularly when it's a game in which they have a pre-existing interest.

https://www.amazon.com/mtg-deck-box/s?k=mtg+deck+box

https://acritch.com/notepad/

ᔥ[[abramdemski]] in The Zettelkasten Method (accessed:: 2023-08-25 10:12:42)

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/T382CLwAjsy3fmecf/how-to-take-smart-notes-ahrens-2017

ᔥ[[abramdemski]] in The Zettelkasten Method (accessed:: 2023-08-25 10:12:42)

Niklas Luhmann indicates that it may take a number of years to reach critical mass. This may be different for everyone based on the number of ideas they place into it and the amount of work they do in creating connections.

Ward Cunningham, the creator of the wiki, has indicated that he thinks it takes roughly 500 pages in a wiki for the value to begin emerging.†

How many notes and what level of links/complexity is a good minimal threshold for one to be able to see interesting and useful results?

† Quote in FedWiki session on 2021-12-29

https://www.reddit.com/r/Arno_Schmidt/comments/1267heb/arno_schmidt_compulsively_wrote_and_hoarded/

Lots of great anecdotal mentions here which should be tracked down for more authority.

http://classify.oclc.org/classify2/

Timmy Broderick in Evidence Undermines ‘Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria’ Claims In Scientific American at 2023-08-24 (accessed:: 2023-08-25 09:26:00)

Indigenous Storytelling: Our Smallest Warriors, Our Strongest Medicine. Hopkins at Home. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University, 2021. Indigenous Storytelling: Our Smallest Warriors, Our Strongest Medicine. Hopkins at Home. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University, 2021. https://hopkinsathome.vhx.tv/humanities/videos/indigenous-storytelling. .

Storytelling functions as a tool to heal from and protect against historical trauma and ongoing challenges Indigenous communities experience. "It is medicine." —Beltran & Begun, 2013 (quoted in @Okeefe2021 video at 10:41)

Basic knowledge and understanding for me, but nice to have a source for it in particular.

REPORT: Executive Excess 2023 - Institute for Policy Studies by Sarah Anderson in August 2023

see article about this report at https://hypothes.is/a/D6qzfENbEe6qDg8H-IEo6g

Lauren Aratani in CEOs of top 100 ‘low-wage’ US firms earn $601 for every $1 by worker, report finds at 2023-08-24 (accessed:: 2023-08-25 08:20:02)

Journalist John Dickerson [https://twitter.com/jdickerson/status/1458036871531937798 indicates] that he uses [[Instagram]] as a commonplace: https://www.instagram.com/jfdlibrary/ where he keeps a collection of photo "cards" with quotes from famous people rather than photos. He also keeps collections there of photos of notes from scraps of paper as well as photos of [[annotation]]s he makes in books.

syndication links: https://www.reddit.com/r/commonplacebook/comments/16118vy/john_dickersons_digital_commonplace/

This looks like the sort of structure note I might often make as I am a day or two into a literature review for a new area. It definitely helps to scaffold new ideas and identify specific areas which I may want to delve into more specifically. It's definitely been useful for me to begin linking things into other portions of my ZK to find areas of overlap with these new areas, so it's great to see you doing that with your Prometheus note already.

Coming from the science area you may want to look at cells or animals with autofluorescence or areas like green fluorescent protein (GFP) if that is of interest in the area of creatures which produce their own light.

Dan Allosso in Retrenchment, Day 22 at 2023-08-24 (accessed:: 2023-08-24 08:54:05)

https://www.ebay.com/itm/266338818001

Gaylord Bros. 30 drawer library card catalog listed for several months/several times, and finally sold 2023-07-24 for $999.99 (with only one bid) in Whitier California.

$33.33 per drawer

https://www.ebay.com/itm/256167582615

60 drawer library card catalog listed for $1,400 in late May 2023 Sold on 2023-08-11 for best offer (under $1,400)

Likely the same listing on Facebook for $1,100 at https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/271076511951674/

likely went for around $18/drawer

https://www.ebay.com/itm/266379648695

Globe Wernicke card catalog, 6 drawers listed for $250 in July 2023 is $42 per drawer

Is the cohesive nature of Hutchins and Adler's enterprise for the humanities and the Great Conversation, part of the kernel of the rise of interdisciplinarity seen in the early 2000s onward in academia (and possibly industry).

Certainly large portions are the result of uber-specialization, particularly in spaces which have concatenated and have allowed people to specialize in multiple areas to create new combinatorial creative possibilities.

Here Hutchins is again prefiguring C.P. Snow's "two cultures". He makes the argument that by having a shared base of knowledge and culture in our society's past history of knowledge (and especially early scientists and mathematicians), everyone, despite their individual interests and specializations, can be an active participant in a broader human conversation.

The commons as a social glue

Perhaps there's a framing of "the commons" as a larger entity from which we not only draw, but to which we contribute and in which we participate that glues us all together.

Link under: https://hypothes.is/a/mEgAiEIFEe6trVPf7HjFhQ

We need some common culture to bind humanity together. Hutchins makes the argument that the Great Conversation can help to effectuate this binding through shared culture and knowledge.

Perhaps he is even more right in the 2000s than he was in the 1950s?

The dramatic increase in economic specialization of humanity driven by the Industrial Revolution has many benefits to societies, but it also has detrimental effects when the core knowledge and shared base of the society is lost.

Certainly individuals have a greater reliance on specialists for future outcomes (think about the specialization of areas like climate science which can have destructive outcomes on all of humanity or public health outcomes with respect to vaccines and specialized health care delivery), but they also need to have a common base of knowledge/culture and the ability to think critically for themselves to be able to effect necessary changes, particularly when the pace of those changes is more rapid than humans have generally been evolved to accept them.

These various shifts in culture and perspective were concurrent with the shift in education from the formal to the progressive.

See also Education: A Short Introduction

Hutchins indicates that part of the fall of the humanities was the result of the rise of the scientific method and experimental science. In wanting fields from the humanities—like social sciences and history—to be a part of this new scientific paradigm, professors completely reframed their paradigms in a more scientific mode and thereby erased the progenitors and ideas in these fields for newer material which replaced the old which was now viewed as "less than" in the new paradigms. This same sort of erasure of Indigenous knowledges was also similarly effected as they were also seen as "less than" from the perspective of the new scientific regime.

One might also suggest that some of it was the result of the acceleration of life brought on by the invention of writing, literacy, and the spread of the printing press making for larger swaths of knowledge to be more immediately available.

It can be easy to deprive a generation of important pieces of their cultural heritage by omitting any focus on it.

• shiboleth
• philology
• disinterest
• overwhelm

Compare the loss of classical education and cultural heritage by "internal decay" as described by Hutchins in the early 1900s and the forced loss of cultural heritage of Indigenous Americans by the U.S. Government in roughly the same period by re-education and stamping out Indigenous language.

Certainly one was loss through lack of exposure, but the other was outright erasure due to the natures of orality and literacy.

Hutchins attributes the loss of classical education to both internal decay and external confusion, but I would suggest that some of the shift was also the need for industrialization and expanded access.

ouch!

This seems apropos to the situation in which I view Donald J. Trump.

Where does this wealth ultimately go in the long run? Not to the worker, but primarily to the corporation competing against them for the added value.

Writing in 1951, Hutchins is writing too close to the time period of post World War II to have a better view of this topic. He's fashioned far too simple a story as a result.

There was a lack of critical thinking and over-reliance on top down approval which was harmful in the Japanese story of this time period though.

A bulk of America was stuck in a form of economic slavery in the 1950s. See description of rural Texans in Robert Caro's LBJ biography for additional context --- washing/scrubbing, carrying water, farming, etc. without electricity in comparison to their fellow Americans who did have it.

In the 21st century there is a different form of economic slavery imposed by working to live and a culture of consumption and living on overextended credit.

Consider also the comedic story of the capitalist and the rural fisherman and the ways they chose to live their lives.

This is an extreme statement which bundles together a lot without direct evidence.

Written in an era in which there was a lot of pro-Democracy and anti-Communist discussion, Hutchins is making an almost religious statement here which binds education and democracy in the ways in which the Catholic church bound education and religion in scholasticism. While scholasticism may have had benefits, it also caused a variety of ills which took centuries to unwind into the Enlightenment.

Why can't we separate education from democracy? Can't education of this sort live in other polities? Hasn't it? Does critical education necessarily lead to democracy?

What does the explorable solution space of admixtures of critical reasoning and education look like with respect to various forms of government? Could a well-educated population thrive under collectivism or socialism?

The definition of "natural slavery" here is contingent and requires lots of context, particularly of the ways in which Aristotle used it versus our current understanding of chattel slavery.

Purpose of the Great Books of the Western World

Is this the same sort of shift in work noticed by Barak Obama in his four part documentary series Working: What We Do All Day which aired on Netflix in 2023?

Politicians should focus here especially.

Interesting history and possible solutions.

Dewey on the humanization of work front running the dramatic changes of and in work in an industrial age?

Note here the potential coupling of democracy and education as dovetailing ideas rather than separate ideas which can be used simultaneously. We should take care here not to end up with potential baggage that could result in society and culture the way scholasticism combined education and religion in the middle ages onward.

after the common good?

Vico? Giambattista Vico?

note use of "train up" which now seems more like British English usage in 2023

There is a subtle definition of the word "committed" here.

Current day book banners (2022-2023) wouldn't agree here.

definitions: illiberal

Purpose for the work involved or purpose for the worker? Does it show a shift to living to work or working to live here?

Hutchins indicates that John Dewey was misunderstood as a philosopher of education.

Graeber and Wengrow seem to indicate otherwise.

"The educational ideas of John Locke" -- but where they actually his ideas though?

See: Graeber & Wengrow: The Dawn of Everything.

Uncommon use of "liberal artist" as one who uses or practices the liberal arts.

What is the original context of this quote? Which meaning of "the commonplace" does he mean? The generic or the commonplace book?

Dan Allosso in Retrenchment, Day 21 at 2023-08-23<br /> (accessed:: 2023-08-23 12:50:42)

https://highlightpoetry.com/

https://www.edelweiss.plus/#sku=1524879762&page=1

This looks like a fascinating illustrated edition from Andrews McMeel Publishing.

Wardrip-Fruin, Noah, and Nick Montfort, eds. The New Media Reader. MIT Press, 2002. https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262232272/the-new-media-reader/.

↬ Detlef Stern (@t73fde@mastodon.social) (accessed:: 2023-08-23 12:55:47)

Eines der wunderbarsten Bücher, die ich in letzter Zeit studierte: "The New Media Reader". Sowohl inhaltlich (grundlegende Texte von 1940-1994, Borges, Bush, Turing, Nelson, Kay, Goldberg, Engelbart, ... Berners-Lee), als auch von der Liebe zum herausgeberischem Detail (papierne Links, Druckqualität, ...). Nicht nur für #pkm und #zettelkasten Fanatiker ein Muss. Man sieht gut, welchen Weg wir mit Computern noch vor uns haben. https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262232272/the-new-media-reader/

https://www.oliverburkeman.com/onwriting

Oliver Burkerman, of Four Thousand Weeks fame, is testing out zettelkasten based on Ahrens' book.

Good writing is pointing out the interesting things you see to others. It's pre-literate, and even pre-oral.

As long as you know and understand what you're writing, use as many languages as you or your zettelkasten wants or needs.

I'm often working with ideas from other languages and cultures which have no direct translations into English, so I use those native words interspersed with English. Sometimes I don't have words in any language and make up a shorthand phrase in English until I can come up with a better word. Often I'll collect examples of the same "foreign" words in multiple contexts to tease out their contextual meanings as was comprehensively done with large group zettelkasten like the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae and the Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache. I also frequently use mathematical symbols, equations, and other scientific notations, graphs, drawings, color, etc. to make my meanings clear.

I've also worked with historical figures who have had names in multiple languages over the centuries and cross index them in a variety of different languages based on context. As an example, I've got at least 11 different variations of names for Ramon Llull in almost as many languages and variations of transliterations. I try to keep each one in its original context, but link them in my index.

There are certainly zettelkasten out there written in four and more languages as suited the needs of their users. S.D. Goitein certainly used Hebrew, English, German, Arabic, Aramaic in his and may have likely had other languages (Yiddish, Coptic, Egyptian?) interspersed to lesser extents. Adolph Erman certainly used Egyptian hieroglyphs along with German in his. It can easily be argued that their zettelkasten and work required multiple languages.

https://web.archive.org/web/20180627163317im_/https://aaew.bbaw.de/wbhome/Broschuere/abb08.jpg A example zettelkasten slip showing a passage of text from the victory stele of Sesostris III at the Nubian fortress of Semna. The handwriting is that of Adolf Erman, who had "already struggled with the text as a high school student".

At the end of the day, they're your notes, so write them as you like.

Thanks Sascha for an excellent primer on the internal machinations of our favorite machines beyond the usual focus on the storage/memory and indexing portions of the process.

Said another way, a zettelkasten is part of a formal logic machine/process. Or alternately, as Markus Krajewski aptly demonstrates in Paper Machines (MIT Press, 2011), they are early analog storage devices in which the thinking and logic operations are done cerebrally (by way of direct analogy to brain and hand:manually) and subsequently noted down which thereby makes them computers.

Just as mathematicians try to break down and define discrete primitives or building blocks upon which they can then perform operations to come up with new results, one tries to find and develop the most interesting "atomic notes" from various sources which they can place into their zettelkasten in hopes of operating on them (usually by juxtaposition, negation, union, etc.) to derive, find, and prove new insights. If done well, these newly discovered ideas can be put back into the machine as inputs to create additional newer and more complex outputs continuously. While the complexity of Lie Algebras is glorious and seems magical, it obviously helps to first understand the base level logic before one builds up to it. The same holds true of zettelkasten.

Now if I could only get the printf portion to work the way I want...

category theory + zettelkasten... hmmm... feels a bit like Leibniz chasing a universal language

what is a zettelkasten monad?

Might we coin "zettelkastenly" as a function of (box) composed with (manually+cerebrally)?

hand:manually::brain:cerebrally::box:zettelkastenly

I would use the LaTeX \boxtimes symbol for this composition I think....

https://zettelkasten.de/posts/reading-is-searching/

Not a bad piece, but likely obvious for those with any work in formal logic or mathematics. For those without it who are working in nascent zettelkasten, a good introduction.

https://danallosso.substack.com/p/retrenchment-day-20?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=40880&post_id=136303009&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email

Zettelkasten advice:

1. Have a goal in mind
2. Really... have a goal. Write it down.
3. Practice at it, a lot
4. When stuck, read some of the bits below
5. Practice, practice, practice.

Here are a list of some of the strongest books which focus on the topic or cover things from various interesting perspectives: - 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/. (Specifically the first half of the book.) - Barzun, Jacques, and Henry F. Graff. The Modern Researcher. New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1957. http://archive.org/details/modernreseracher0000unse. - Bernstein, Mark. Tinderbox: The Tinderbox Way. 3rd ed. Watertown, MA: Eastgate Systems, Inc., 2017. http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/TinderboxWay/index.html. - Eco, Umberto. How to Write a Thesis. Translated by Caterina Mongiat Farina and Geoff Farina. 1977. Reprint, Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2015. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/how-write-thesis. - Goutor, Jacques. The Card-File System of Note-Taking. Approaching Ontario’s Past 3. Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1980. http://archive.org/details/cardfilesystemof0000gout. - Mills, C. Wright. “On Intellectual Craftsmanship (1952).” Society 17, no. 2 (January 1, 1980): 63–70. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02700062. - Sertillanges, Antonin Gilbert, and Mary Ryan. The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods. First English Edition, Fifth printing. 1921. Reprint, Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1960. http://archive.org/details/a.d.sertillangestheintellectuallife. (Especially chapter seven). - Weinberg, Gerald M. Weinberg on Writing: The Fieldstone Method. New York, N.Y: Dorset House, 2005.

Read one (or two) and then dive in and actually practice (and practice and practice some more) things for a while.

For some of the smaller subtleties which aren't covered in books, try one of the two following collections for individual bits of advice and insight: - https://writing.bobdoto.computer/zettelkasten/ - https://zettelkasten.de/posts/ - https://boffosocko.com/research/zettelkasten-commonplace-books-and-note-taking-collection/

https://thesaurus.badw.de/en/tll-digital/tll-open-access.html

https://kilcullenbridge.blogspot.com/2023/07/castlemartin-owners-company-bids-for.html

https://scrambledgregs.com/fucked-up-shit/sssttteeellllllaaaaaaa/

The sub mention of the other woman was likely Amanda Cavallacci, Myrna Jacoby's assistant in the early 2000s.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZMZez3AoadHUJS9RPmukRAtpe3DJuFv5/view

http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/InterWiki

InterWiki is the idea of having one unified Wiki system distributed across many servers.

https://2023.wpcampus.org/schedule/

https://openlibrary.org/books/OL6960074M/La_phytographie

https://www.erinroseglass.com/

https://bilge.world/text-fuck

https://github.com/ContextLab/human-memory

https://web.archive.org/web/20220926154335/https://patrickrhone.com/2006/05/12/org-fu-uberpost-productivity-whitepaper/

https://randsinrepose.com/archives/the-trickle-list/

https://web.archive.org/web/20210726040837/https://lifehacker.com/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-secret-281626

Jerry Seinfeld used a calendar and crossed off days on which he wrote as a productivity tool. After marking off a few days with "x"s his goal was to not break the chain of work.

https://www.attorneyatwork.com/analog-attorney-5-best-index-cards/

Article about general usefulness of index cards written by a lawyer and for them, though not specific to them as a subgroup.

Makes not of Nock's Dot-Dash cards which were apparently 3 x 5" dash gridded cards similar to Midori's grid notebooks. The website for the company is no longer active. Archived site: https://web.archive.org/web/20171007102414/https://nockco.com/paper/dotdash-3-x-5-note-cards

https://jamesclear.com/ivy-lee

Ivy Lee method: Write down a list of six items to do. Prioritize them and do them sequentially in order until complete. Rinse and repeat.

https://jamesclear.com/buffett-focus

Eliminate the inessential.

https://www.printables.com/model/558873-zettelkasten-index-boxes-slip-box

Someone has designed a DIY printer project for making your own stackable zettelkasten boxes.

See post at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/15wkuel/zettelkasten_index_boxes_slip_box_make_your_own/

https://www.reddit.com/r/ObsidianMD/comments/13mfuez/just_downloadedtried_obsidian_for_the_first_time/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/13nmcym/i_read_the_top_ten_zettelkasten_articles_on/

A list of some popular one-pagers on the Zettelkasten Method.

Read contemporaneously in May 2023

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

https://danallosso.substack.com/p/retrenchment-day-18?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=40880&post_id=136245201&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email

An interesting example of academic administrative bloat discussed here.