10,000 Matching Annotations
  1. Jan 2023
    1. Our analytical groups are: aurochs, birds, bison, caprids, cervids, fish, horses, mammoths, rhinos. Because of exceptionally low numbers we exclude snakes and wolverines. We also omitted sequences associated with apparent human depictions, or images in which such were part, in order to treat these separately at a later date.

      Given the regular seasonality of most animal rutting and parturition, how is it that the human animal evolved to have a more year-round mating season?

    2. We appreciate this is a long span of time, and were concerned why any specific artificial memory system should last for so long.

      I suspect that artificial memory systems, particularly those that make some sort of logical sense, will indeed be long lasting ones.

      Given the long, unchanging history of the Acheulean hand axe, as an example, these sorts of ideas and practices were handed down from generation to generation.

      Given their ties to human survival, they're even more likely to persist.

      Indigenous memory systems in Aboriginal settings date to 65,000 years and also provide an example of long-lived systems.

    3. After omitting any problematic examples (e.g. those with ambiguous numbers of marks or unclear taxonomic identification of associated images), these totalled 606 sequences without <Y> and 256 sequences with <Y>, largely from France and Spain, with some examples from further to the east (Table 1 and Supplementary Material). Chronologically they span the Early to Late Upper Palaeolithic, with the vast majority of examples in the latter.

      the data set

    4. The obvious event is the so-called ‘bonne saison’, a French zooarchaeological term for the time at the end of winter when rivers unfreeze, the snow melts, and the landscape begins to green. This of course varies by several weeks from the south to the north of Europe, but corresponds approximately to late spring. We hypothesize that spring, therefore, with its obvious signals of the end of winter and corresponding faunal migrations to breeding grounds, would have provided an obvious, if regionally differing, point of origin for the lunar calendar.
    5. The sequences of dots/lines associated with animal images certainly meet the criteria for representing numbers: they are usually organized in registers that are horizontal relative to the image with which they appear to be associated, and are of regular (rather than random) size and spacing, akin to the notion of a Mental Number Line being central to the development of mathematical abilities (Brannon Reference Brannon2006; Dehaene et al. Reference Dehaene, Bossini and Giraux1993; Pinel et al. Reference Pinel, Piazza, Le Bihan and Dehaene2004; Previtali et al. Reference Previtali, Rinaldi and Girelli2011; Tang et al. Reference Tang, Ward and Butterworth2008).
    6. These may occur on rock walls, but were commonly engraved onto robust bones since at least the beginning of the European Upper Palaeolithic and African Late Stone Age, where it is obvious they served as artificial memory systems (AMS) or external memory systems (EMS) to coin the terms used in Palaeolithic archaeology and cognitive science respectively, exosomatic devices in which number sense is clearly evident (for definitions see d’Errico Reference d'Errico1989; Reference d'Errico1995a,Reference d'Erricob; d'Errico & Cacho Reference d'Errico and Cacho1994; d'Errico et al. Reference d'Errico, Doyon and Colage2017; Hayden Reference Hayden2021).

      Abstract marks have appeared on rock walls and engraved into robust bones as artificial memory systems (AMS) and external memory systems (EMS).

    7. We also demonstrate that the <Y> sign, one of the most frequently occurring signs in Palaeolithic non-figurative art, has the meaning <To Give Birth>. The position of the <Y> within a sequence of marks denotes month of parturition, an ordinal representation of number in contrast to the cardinal representation used in tallies.

      parturition<br /> the action of giving birth to young

      <Y> potentially one of the first written "words"

    1. 202301041111 Making family podcast with kids

      https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/2488/zettel-feedback-podcast-with-children?

      To extend, it could be an interesting exercise to have the kids call up grandmother and grandfather to interview them with questions about when they were growing up, about their parents, and their grandparents. Then you're also getting some of the family oral history together not only for yourself, but for your children as well as future generations.

      I have a nascent card very much like yours, but not as well fleshed out yet.

    1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYj1jneBUQo

      Forrest Perry shows part of his note taking and idea development process in his hybrid digital-analog zettelkasten practice. He's read a book and written down some brief fleeting notes on an index card. He then chooses a few key ideas he wants to expand upon, finds the physical index card he's going to link his new idea to, then reviews the relevant portion of the book and writes a draft of a card in his notebook. Once satisfied with it, he transfers his draft from his notebook into Obsidian (ostensibly for search and as a digital back up) where he may also be refining the note further. Finally he writes a final draft of his "permanent" (my framing, not his) note on a physical index card, numbers it with respect to his earlier card, and then (presumably) installs it into his card collection.

      In comparison to my own practice, it seems like he's spending a lot of time after-the-fact in reviewing over the original material to write and rewrite an awful lot of material for what seems (at least to me—and perhaps some of it is as a result of lack of interest in the proximal topic), not much substance. For things like this that I've got more direct interest in, I'll usually have a more direct (written) conversation with the text and work out more of the details while reading directly. This saves me from re-contextualizing the author's original words and arguments while I'm making my arguments and writing against the substrate of the author's thoughts. Putting this work in up front is often more productive at least for areas of direct interest. I would suspect that in Perry's case, he was generally interested in the book, but it doesn't impinge on his immediate areas of research and he only got three or four solid ideas out of it as opposed to a dozen or so.

      The level of one's conversation with the text will obviously depend on their interest and goals, a topic which is relatively well laid out by Adler & Van Doren (1940).

    2. Definitely the mate is the most fundamental intellectual aim, I was wandering from the beginning if that was a mate hahah. How is it that you are drinking mate? I’m guessing you are not from Argentina since you speak and write in english and for english-speaking students… Also, I really like this series about the zettelkasten, you explain things clearly and with great humor. I like videos like this one where you show the actual process.

      Process is important and I suspect we need more concrete examples for people to see. I'm reminded of Andy Matuschak's note taking live stream a while back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGcs4tyey18 though some editing, time compression, and inserted images can make it a bit more interesting than watching paint dry.

      Anecdotally, I feel like mate has become at least marginally more popular in the United States in the last few years, or at least enough to enter the consciousness of the cultural zeitgeist at a liminal level.

    1. I think the point is somewhat different. Luhmann was an academic writing for other academics and wrote technically due to fears of misunderstanding by those with a different educational background, as was a quite reasonable fear at the time.

      Was Luhmann's obtuse style, in part, a means of publicly sharing content, but doing so in a way as to restrict the knowledge to those who had an increased level of context for understanding it? How similar is this to the pattern of restricted knowledge in some Indigenous cultures where people passed along knowledge in restricted ways?

      Is there a word or phrase to synopsize this sort of hard to understand academic-speak?

    1. Right now I am building my zettelkasten on my PC but I want to integrate my paper written notes And still add more paper notes in the future. Any ideas how to do this efficiently? I mean a way to make my written notes discoverable from my PC system and keep them organized.

      Usual advice is to move PRN, but what does the spectrum here look like? Collect examples.

    1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIfH-iSGa5M

      2021-05-12

      Dr. Hanan Harif started out as a Geniza scholar but is now a biographer of Shlomo Dov Goitein.

      In the 1920s Goitein published his only play Pulcellina about a Jewish woman who was burned at the stake in France in 1171.

      Had a friendship with Levi Billig (1897-1936)

      You know very well the verse on Tabari that says: 'You wrote history with such zeal that you have become history yourself.' Although in your modesty you would deny it, we suggest that his couplet applies to yourself as well." —Norman Stillman to S.D. Goitein in letter dated 1977-07-20

      Norman Stillman was a student of Goitein.


      What has Hanan Harif written on Goitein? Any material on his Geniza research and his note cards? He addressed some note card material in the Q&A, but nothing direct or specific.

      Goitein's Mediterranean Society project was from 1967-1988 with the last volume published three years after his death. The entirety of the project was undertaken at University of Pennsylvania.

      The India Book, India Traders was published in 2007 (posthumously) as a collaboration with M.A. Friedman.

      Goitein wrote My Life as a Scholar in 1970, which may have some methodological clues about his work and his card index.

      He also left his diaries to the National Library of Israel as well and these may also have some clues.

      His bibliography is somewhere around 800 publications according to Harif, including his magnum opus.

      Harif shows a small card index at 1:15:20 of one of Goitein's collaborators (and later rival) Professor Eliasto (unsure of this name, can't find direct reference?). Harif indicates that the boxes are in the archives where he's at (https://www.nli.org.il/en/discover/archives/archives-list ? though I don't see a reasonable name/materials there, so perhaps it's at his home at Rothberg International School of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem).

    1. Goitein referred to these materials, together with his photocopies of geniza fragments, as his “Geniza Lab.” He had adopted the “lab” concept from Fernand Braudel (1902–85), the great French historian of the Mediterranean, who ran a center in Paris that he and others referred to as a laboratoire de recherches historiques. Between 1954 and 1964, Braudel’s “lab” funded Goitein’s research on the Mediterranean.1

      https://genizalab.princeton.edu/about/history-princeton-geniza-lab/goitein-and-his-lab

    1. Then two things happened. Goitein had bequeathed his “geniza lab” of 26,000 index cards and thousands of transcriptions, translations and photocopies of fragments to the National Library of Israel (then the Jewish National and University Library). But Mark R. Cohen(link is external) and A. L. Udovitch(link is external) arranged for copies to be made and kept in Princeton. That was the birth of the Princeton Geniza Lab. 

      https://genizalab.princeton.edu/about/history-princeton-geniza-lab/text-searchable-database

      Mark R. Cohen and A. L. Udovitch made the arrangements for copies of S.D. Goitein's card index, transcriptions and photocopies of fragments to be made and kept at Princeton before the originals were sent to the National Library of Israel. This repository was the birth of the Princeton Geniza Lab.

    1. Zinger, Oded. “Finding a Fragment in a Pile of Geniza: A Practical Guide to Collections, Editions, and Resources.” Jewish History 32, no. 2 (December 1, 2019): 279–309. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10835-019-09314-6.

      Read on 2023-01-09

      An overview of sources and repositories for fragments from the Cairo Geniza with useful bibliographies for the start of Geniza studies. Of particular interest to me here is the general work of Shelomo Dov Goitein and his 27,000+ card zettelkasten containing his research work on it. There's some great basic description of his collection in general as well as some small specifics on what it entails and some reasonable guide as to how to search it and digital versions at the Princeton Geniza Lab.

    2. The wealthy Egyptian Jacques Mosseri financed excavations in thevicinity of the Ben Ezra Synagogue and in the Basatin Cemetery at theend of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. Hiscollection remained with the Mosseri family and was unavailable forscholars for many years. In 1970, scholars from the National Library ofIsrael were allowed to microfilm the collection, which resulted in the1990 catalog. In 2006, the Mosseri family loaned its collection toCambridge University for a twenty-year period during which thecollection would be conserved, digitized, and studied and then,conditions permitting, deposited in the National Library of Israel. ForMosseri’s account of how he obtained his collection, see his “A NewHoard of Jewish MSS in Cairo,” Jewish Review 4 (1913): 208–16. Formore information on the subsequent history of the collection, see theintroduction to the 1990 catalog; and http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/Taylor-Schechter/jmgc.
    3. Many of the topic cards served as the skeleton for Mediterranean Society and can be usedto study how Goitein constructed his magnum opus. To give just one example, in roll 26 wehave the index cards for Mediterranean Society, chap. 3, B, 1, “Friendship” and “InformalCooperation” (slides 375–99, drawer 24 [7D], 431–51), B, 2, “Partnership and Commenda”(slides 400–451, cards 452–83), and so forth.

      Cards from the topically arranged index cards in Goitein's sub-collection of 20,000 served as the skeleton of his magnum opus Mediterranean Society.

    4. About twenty thousand of those cards are 3 × 5 inches and seven thousand 5 × 8 inches.

      Goitein's zettelkasten is comprised of about 20,000 3 x 5" index cards and 7,000 5 x 8" index cards.

      Link to: https://hypothes.is/a/TEiQ5H1rEe2_Amfzi4XXmg

      While not directly confirmed (yet), due to the seeming correspondence of the number of cards and their corpus descriptions, it's likely that the 20,000 3 x 5" cards were his notes covering individual topics while the 7,000 5 x 8" cards were his notes and descriptions of a single fragment from the Cairo Geniza.

    5. Before they were sent, however, the contents of itstwenty-six drawers were photographed in Princeton, resulting in thirty mi-crofilm rolls. Recently, digital pdf copies of these microfilm rolls have been

      circulating among scholars of the documentary Geniza.

      Prior to being shipped to the National Library of Israel, Goitein's index card collection was photographed in Princeton and transferred to thirty microfilm rolls from which digital copies in .pdf format have been circulating among scholars of the documentary Geniza.

      Link to other examples of digitized note collections: - Niklas Luhmann - W. Ross Ashby - Jonathan Edwards

      Are there collections by Charles Darwin and Linnaeus as well?

    6. In some cases, not unlike his Geniza subjects, Goitein wrotehis notes on pieces of paper that were lying around. To give but one example, a small noterecords the location of the index cards for “India Book: Names of Persons” from ‘ayn to tav:“in red \\ or Gray \\ box of geographical names etc. second (from above) drawer to the left ofmy desk 1980 in the left right steelcabinet in the small room 1972” is written on the back ofa December 17, 1971, note thanking Goitein for a box of chocolate (roll 11, slide 503, drawer13 [2.1.1], 1191v).

      In addition to writing on cards, Goitein also wrote notes on pieces of paper that he happened to have lying around.

    7. The number is even more impressive when one realizes that both sides of many of the cardshave been written on.

      Goitein broke the frequent admonishment of many note takers to "write only on one side" of his cards.

      Oded Zinger doesn't mention how many of his 27,000 index cards are double-sided, but one might presume that it is a large proportion.

      How many were written on both sides?

    8. Transcriptions taken from Goitein’s publications were corrected according to handwrittennotes on his private offprints. The nature of Goitein’s “typed texts” is as follows. Goitein tran-scribed Geniza documents by hand from the originals or from photostats. These handwrittentranscriptions were later typed by an assistant and usually corrected by Goitein. When Goiteindied in 1985, the transcriptions were photocopied in Princeton before the originals were sentto the National Library of Israel, where they can be consulted today. During the followingdecades, the contents of most of these photocopies were entered into a computer, and period-ically the files had to be converted to newer digital formats. The outcome of these repeatedprocesses of copying and conversion is that transcription errors and format glitches are to beexpected. As the Princeton Geniza Project website states: “Goitein considered his typed texts‘drafts’ and always restudied the manuscripts and made revisions to his transcriptions beforepublishing them.” See also Goitein, “Involvement in Geniza Research,” 143. It is important tokeep in mind that only the transcriptions that were typed were uploaded to the project website.Therefore, e.g., Goitein’s transcriptions of documents in Arabic scripts are usually not foundthere. The National Library of Israel and the Princeton Geniza Lab also hold many of Goitein’sdraft English translations of Geniza documents, many of which were intended for his plannedanthology of Geniza texts in translation, Mediterranean People.

      Much like earlier scribal errors, there are textual errors inserted into digitization projects which may have gone from documentary originals, into handwritten (translated) copies, which then were copied manually via typewriter, and then copied again into some digital form, and then changed again into other digital forms as digital formats changed.

      As a result it is often fruitful to be able to compare the various versions to see the sorts of errors which each level of copying can introduce. One might suppose that textual errors were only common when done by scribes using manual techniques, but it is just as likely for errors to be inserted between digital copies as well.

    9. Recently, images ofGoitein’s index cards and transcriptions have been attached to existing tran-scriptions or to shelf marks without transcription, thus increasing the numberof records to over eighty-three hundred (as of May 2018).

      S.D. Goitein's index cards have been imaged and transcribed and added to the Princeton Geniza Lab as of May 2018. Digital search and an index are also available.

    10. Fried-berg Judeo-Arabic Project, accessible at http://fjms.genizah.org. This projectmaintains a digital corpus of Judeo-Arabic texts that can be searched and an-alyzed.

      The Friedberg Judeo-Arabic Project contains a large corpus of Judeo-Arabic text which can be manually searched to help improve translations of texts, but it might also be profitably mined using information theoretic and corpus linguistic methods to provide larger group textual translations and suggestions at a grander scale.

    11. More recent ad-ditions to the website include a “jigsaw puzzle” screen that lets users viewseveral items while playing with them to check whether they are “joins.” An-other useful feature permits the user to split the screen into several panelsand, thus, examine several items simultaneously (useful, e.g., when compar-ing handwriting in several documents). Finally, the “join suggestions” screenprovides the results of a technologically groundbreaking computerized anal-ysis of paleographic and codiocological features that suggests possible joinsor items written by the same scribe or belonging to the same codex. 35

      Computer means can potentially be used to check or suggest potential "joins" of fragments of historical documents.

      An example of some of this work can be seen in the Friedberg Genizah Project and their digital tools.

    12. Since many Geniza studies begin their research with Goitein, the same documents are ex-amined repeatedly (occasionally even receiving several editions), but others that Goitein hadnot cited remain ignored.

      Initial Herculean efforts by a particular scholar in an area can overshadow the study of corpora thereafter. As a result, it can be fruitful to examine the holes they left behind.

    13. Since we do not have in Geniza studies the equivalent of papyrol-ogy’s Berichtigungsliste der Griechisen Papyruskunden aus ̃gypten, a fewkey review articles that contain lists of suggested emendations and notes arealso noted.22

      For an introduction to the Berichtigungsliste and bibliographic details of all its volumes, see https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/research/research-projects/humanities/berichtigungsliste

      A key document in papyrology studies

    14. “In the beginning of my engagement with Geniza studies, I innocently supposed that I didnot need to deal with the original of a document already mentioned by another scholar. To-day, it is clear to me that the Geniza scholar must examine the original even for a docu-ment that has been fully published (even by Goitein), not to mention a document only men-tioned.” See S. D. Goitein, “The Struggle between the Synagogue and the Community” (inHebrew), in Hayyim (Jefim) Schrimann: Jubilee Volume, ed. Shraga Abramson and AaronMirsky (Jerusalem, 1970), 69–77, 71 n. 8 (my translation)

      Geniza studies rule of thumb: ALWAYS consult the original of a document when referencing work by other scholars as new translations, understandings, context, history, and conditions regarding the original work of the scholar may have changed.

    15. Another problem arises from the very nature of documentary material astexts not written for posterity. When reading Geniza letters, one is often in theposition of an uninvited guest at a social event, that is, someone who is unfa-miliar with the private codes and customs shared by the inner circle. Writersoften do not bother to explain themselves in a complete manner when they

      know that the recipient is already familiar with the subject. 17

      17 Indeed, writers often used this shared understanding to stress the relationship they had with the recipients.

    16. Another use-ful work is Shaul Shaked’s Tentative Bibliography of Geniza Documents.

      Shaul Shaked, A Tentative Bibliography of Geniza Documents (Paris, 1964).

      The bibliography in Shaked is considered obsolete, but can be useful when referring to older publications.

    17. Since such collections often hold a large amount of material thatcan be described or referred to in various ways, scholars designate a givenitem with a shelf mark or a call number. An item is usually placed with otheritems in a folder, a volume, or a box, and its shelf mark will identify thelibrary, the collection, the folder (or volume, box, etc.), and the number ofthe item within the folder.4
    1. is zettelkasten gamification of note-taking? .t3_zkguan._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }

      reply to u/theinvertedform at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/zkguan/is_zettelkasten_gamification_of_notetaking/

      Social media and "influencers" have certainly grabbed onto the idea and squeezed with both hands. Broadly while talking about their own versions of rules, tips, tricks, and tools, they've missed a massive history of the broader techniques which pervade the humanities for over 500 years. When one looks more deeply at the broader cross section of writers, educators, philosophers, and academics who have used variations on the idea of maintaining notebooks or commonplace books, it becomes a relative no-brainer that it is a useful tool. I touch on some of the history as well as some of the recent commercialization here: https://boffosocko.com/2022/10/22/the-two-definitions-of-zettelkasten/.

    1. I couldn’t have written this book without the aid of laying out all of thedifferent sections on my desk. I created a hub of cards that had collectivecardlinks on them. Each card was organized by topic and contained subtopicsthat pointed me to various card addresses in my Antinet. I then moved themaround a large table to create the perfect logical layout for this book. Here’sa picture of it:

      Despite doing the lion's share of the work of linking cards along the way, Scheper shows that there's still some work of laying out an outline and moving cards around to achieve a final written result.


      compare this with Victor Margolin's process: https://hypothes.is/a/oQFqvm3IEe2_Fivwvx596w

      also compare with the similar processes of Ryan Holiday and Robert Greene

    2. picture

      Books in the photo include:

      • Ahrens first edition of How to Take Smart Notes
      • Moeller, Hans-Georg. The Radical Luhmann. Columbia University Press, 2011.
      • Ann M. Blair's Too Much to Know
      • V.A. Howard and J.H. Barton's Thinking on Paper
      • Alberto Cevolini (ed.) Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early Modern Europe
      • James Gleick's The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
      • Wright, Alex. Cataloging the World: Paul Otlet and the Birth of the Information Age. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
      • Frank, Stanley D. Remember Everything You Read: The Evelyn Wood 7-Day Speed Reading & Learning Program. Avon, 1992. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35383.Remember_Everything_You_Read
    3. As I detail in a later section

      Search indicates the word "later" appears in this book 123 times, about half of them (57 by a quick count) are in contexts of the author saying he'll explain something later in the book. This is an annoying habit and would be better replaced with links to the exact pages where the material occurs.

      Alternately/in addition to, an index could be immensely helpful here.

      How does a book which speaks so heavily of indices and their value not have an index?

    1. Has anyone read this? “Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information Before the Modern Age by Ann Blair”

      reply to u/alcibiad https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1054a49/has_anyone_read_this_too_much_to_know_managing/

      I don't know everything, but reasonable portion of it comes from Ann M. Blair who is one of the senior scholars in the area of intellectual history. If you want a crash course on the space her book and Markus Krajewski's are probably the two best you can start out with, though keep in mind that they're written for a more scholarly crowd and can be somewhat dense in some places. For those who are fans, below is a quick bibliography of her related work in the space. For those who don't want to wade through several hundred pages of a relatively dense book, some of her shorter journal articles can be quite interesting.

      Blair, Ann M.. “Humanist Methods in Natural Philosophy: The Commonplace Book.” Journal of the History of Ideas 53, no. 4 (1992): 541–51. https://doi.org/10.2307/2709935.

      ———. “Humanist Methods in Natural Philosophy: The Commonplace Book.” In Jean Bodin. Routledge, 2006.

      ———. “Note Taking as an Art of Transmission.” Critical Inquiry 31, no. 1 (September 2004): 85–107. https://doi.org/10.1086/427303.

      ———. “Reading Strategies for Coping with Information Overload ca. 1550-1700.” Journal of the History of Ideas 64, no. 1 (2003): 11–28. https://doi.org/10.2307/3654293.

      ———. “Annotating and Indexing Natural Philosophy,” January 1, 2000.

      ———. “Conrad Gessner’s Paratexts” 73, no. 1 (January 1, 2016): 73–122. https://doi.org/10.24894/gesn-en.2016.73004.

      ———. “Manuals on Note-Taking (Ars Excerpendi).” In Brill’s Encyclopaedia of the Neo-Latin World. Brill, May 7, 2014. https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-the-neo-latin-world/manuals-on-note-taking-ars-excerpendi-B9789004271029_0058.

      ———. “Textbooks and Methods of Note-Taking in Early Modern Europe,” January 1, 2008.

      ———. “The Rise of Note-Taking in Early Modern Europe.” Intellectual History Review 20, no. 3 (August 4, 2010): 303–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/17496977.2010.492611.

      ———. The Theater of Nature: Jean Bodin and Renaissance Science. Princeton Legacy Library. Princeton University Press, 2017. https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691654386/the-theater-of-nature.

      ———. Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age. Yale University Press, 2010. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300165395/too-much-know.

      Blair, Ann M., Paul Duguid, and Anja-Silvia Goeing. Information: A Historical Companion. Princeton University Press, 2021. https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691179544/information.

    1. But keeping a notebook with someone else is hard. The few times I’ve tried with people not married to me, the notebooks have degenerated into slums. People will usually build their own corners, afraid to mess with the words others have put in. And so the thoughts are not properly integrated, they just sprawl, and are not tended to with love. And if someone does try to integrate the collective thoughts, if someone edits other people’s notes when they are away—well, there are few things as frustrating as having someone mess up your structure of thought so it becomes less useful to you.

      Shared group note taking can be difficult as the notes one makes are often very personal and geared toward one's own particular path and needs.

      Group note taking may be easier within a marriage or a company or custom group (particularly as actors are closer to each other in a shared unit) as actors are striving to increase both their shared context as well as their shared priorities and goals.

    2. Are we really on the main branch here? And all of these things that Torbjörn is screaming—are they more or less generative than usual? If less, in what way can I change the way I probe the conversation to make us more generative?

      How often does one meet a conversational partner that is interested in generative thought? This practice takes some work, but how could one particularly encourage it in classroom setting?

    3. This priority list, which was added to deal with the mess the notes became after a few weeks, turned out to be important. It was a ratchet—whenever we happened on a good train of thought, the priority list ensured that we would not drift back down to a lower-quality conversation path. 

      Well made notes, revisited can act as a ratchet to elevate and expand a conversation rather than devolving back to the mundane.

    4. First, I mixed the conversational notes in with my other thoughts. But I’ve since found that keeping the conversational notes separate from other notes is better—it creates a stronger sense of place. Now, I enter the Torbjörn notes, and all past conversations flow up. Mixed in with the other notes, they were diluted.

      Like the affordances with respect to memory, giving notes a "place" can give them additional power.

    1. Kakeibo (Japanese: 家計 簿, Hepburn: kakei-bo), is a Japanese saving method. The word "kakeibo" can be translated as Household ledger and is literally meant for household financial management. Kakeibos vary in structure, but the basic idea is the same. At the beginning of the month, the kakeibo writes down the income and necessary expenses for the beginning month and decides some kind of savings target. The user then records their own expenses on a daily basis, which are added together first at the end of the week and later at the end of the month. At the end of the month, a summary of the month's spending is written in kakeibo. In addition to expenses and income, thoughts and observations are written in kakeibo with the aim of raising awareness of one's own consumption.[1] Kakeibo can be a finished book or self-made.

      There are some interesting parallels with kakeibo and note taking methods. Some have used envelopes to save away their notes in a similar sort of structure.

      Link to https://hyp.is/RVP-plQaEe2t_7Pt7pyTgA/www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n11/keith-thomas/diary<br /> Historian Keith Thomas used envelopes for storing/maintaining his notes

    1. Some conflicts and misreading of what’s the structure of the metadata. When you create some tag in the content - #tag - it becomes a “real” tag to Obsidian and to dataview (an implicit field - file.tags). When in frontmatter you write tag: [one, two] or tags: [one, two] it happens two things: Obsidian (and dataview) read the values as real tags (#one and #two) and for dataview they’re target by file.tags (or file.etgs - see docs for understand the difference) - and attention: file.tags are always an array, even if only one value… even if you write tags: one, two But for dataview tag: [one, two] it’s also a normal field with the key tag (or tags) - that’s why if you write tags: one, two it’ll be read as an array if targeted as file.tags and a string - “one, two” - if targeted as tags As normal tags they’re metadata at page level, not at task level or lists level (that is another thing). As tags field it’s also a page level metadata. Topics above are intended to explain the difference between targeting tags or file.tags. And as file.tags they’re page level. So, if you ask for tasks to be grouped by a page level (parent level to tasks), there’s no way to you achieve what you want in that way… because the file.tags is a list of tags, not a flattened values (maybe with another query, with the flatten command…) A second point is related with the conflict you create when you’re using a taks query with the key tags. Why? because task query is a little confusing… it works in two levels at same time: at page level and at tasks level (a file.tasks sub-level of page level). And the conflict exists here: inside tasks level there’s an implicit field called “tags”, i.e., a field for tags inside each task text. For example: - [ ] this is a task - [ ] this is another one with a #tag in the text in this case the “#tag” is a page level tag but also a task level tag. It’s possible to filter tasks with a specific tag inside: TASK WHERE contains(tags, "#tag") This to say: when you write in your query GROUP BY tags it try to group by the tags inside the task level, not by the field you create in the frontmatter (a conflict because the same key field). In your case, because they don’t exist the result is: (2) - [ ] Task 2 - [ ] Task 3

      https://forum.obsidian.md/t/group-tasks-by-page-tags-using-dataview/47354/2

      A good description of tags in Obsidian and how Dataview views them at the YAML, page level, and task level.

    1. https://mastodon.art/@fediblock

      I boost everything from the #fediblock hashtag that isn't noise, reruns, or user-level. Do your own homework beyond that.

      <small><cite class='h-cite via'> <span class='p-author h-card'>@welshpixie@mastodon.art</span> in "If you're an instance admin/mod struggling to keep up with the fediblock tag, @fediblock is a 'curated' version that filters through the trolling/misuse of the tag and repeat entries, and only boosts the actual proper fediblock content. :)" - Mastodon.ART (<time class='dt-published'>01/05/2023 11:17:52</time>)</cite></small>

    1. Requesting antinet hivemind assistance: ANALOG ACCOUNTING/BUDGETING/BOOKKEEPING .t3_103r4j0._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } Does anyone have any cards or know of any books/chapters/quotes that pertain to analog accounting, budgeting, and/or bookkeeping? For example, In "Paper Machines" Krajewski mentions how Melvil Dewey invented a personal analog bookkeeping system that was... disastrous...and he went bankrupt. That was really good information! Anyone have any leads?

      reply to u/Echo_Delta17 at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/103r4j0/requesting_antinet_hivemind_assistance_analog/

      You should read Paper Machines closer as the accounting uses of Library Bureau products are what made it fantastically profitable in the early 1900s. Ann Blair has some useful references in Too Much to Know. Broadly there is lots of heavy influence of accounting principles in history as applied to note taking evolution, and particularly that of double entry bookkeeping. The idea of waste books plays particularly heavy here.

      I've previously posted some early 1900s photos from Yawman & Erbe of uses of index card filing systems for CRM and other business related purposes: https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/yka3ro/vintage_yawman_and_erbe_card_index_filing_systems/

      Melvil Dewey/Library Bureau ultimately partnered up with Herman Hollerith in a predecessor of what became IBM to supply early versions of punch cards for government contracts. (See Krajewski for this.)

      Feel free to troll some of my other notes for some related references across time: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=accounting

      Curious what you're looking to discover here? A hard target library search for references should get you swimming in details pretty quickly here. I'd love to see what you come up with.

    1. Books and Presentations Are Playlists, so let's create a NeoBook this way.

      https://wiki.rel8.dev/co-write_a_neobook

      A playlist of related index cards from a Luhmann-esque zettelkasten could be considered a playlist that comprises an article or a longer work like a book.

      Just as one can create a list of all the paths through a Choose Your Own Adventure book, one could do something similar with linked notes. Ward Cunningham has done something similar to this programmatically with the idea of a Markov monkey.

    1. https://onyxboox.com/boox_nova3

      @adamprocter @chrisaldrich i really like my boox nova3 color – it’s ✌️ just ✌️ a color-paper android device with a custom integrated launcher/ereader software but it can have f-droid or play store sideloaded on to it. i mostly use it with koreader+wallabag but there surely is an RSS or NNW client that works decently on it in B/W mode via rrix Jan 03, 2023, 12:47 https://notes.whatthefuck.computer/objects/0f1ffdd4-4e27-4962-ae53-0c039494bef9

    1. Hi Chris Aldrich, thank you for sharing your great collection of hypothes.is annotations with the world. This is truly a great source of wisdom and insights. I noticed that you use tags quite a lot there. Are you tagging the notes inside your PKM (Obsidian?) as much as in Hypothes.is or are you more restrictive? Do you have any suggestions or further reading advice on the question of tagging? Thanks a lot in advance! Warmly, Jan

      Sorry, I'm only just seeing this now Jan. I tag a lot in Hypothes.is to help make things a bit more searchable/findable in the future. Everything in Hypothes.is gets pulled into my Obsidian vault where it's turned into [[WikiLinks]] rather than tags. (I rarely use tags in Obsidian.) Really I find tagging is better for broad generic labels (perhaps the way many people might use folders) though I tend to tag things as specifically as I can as broad generic tags for things you work with frequently become unusable over time. I recommend trying it out for yourself and seeing what works best for you and the way you think. If you find that tagging doesn't give you anything in return for the work, then don't do it. Everyone can be different in these respects.

    1. BTW can you please elaborate more on these steps between new source ideas and point ideas? I suppose the source notes are more like bib notes and point notes as main cards.

      reply to u/BlackSwan8043 on https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/102gt6i/what_are_the_technicalities_of_the_antinet/

      I'm not sure anyone has written "the" book on these things (yet), but Dan has certainly written a very good and concise one (and particularly the first half with respect to your question): https://boffosocko.com/2022/08/02/how-to-make-notes-and-write-a-handbook-by-dan-allosso-and-s-f-allosso/. His definitions of source notes and point notes along with examples are in chapter 4 if I recall: https://minnstate.pressbooks.pub/write/chapter/highlighting-and-note-taking/

      Another good source for the sorts of reading practices and thinking/writing involved can be found in:<br /> Adler, Mortimer J., and Charles Van Doren. How to Read a Book. 1940. Reprint, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972.

      It sounds like you're almost there, if not already, so I would recommend spending more time actually reading and writing and you'll refine things for yourself as you go.

    1. https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/103kpxs/table_of_contents_for_heydes_technik_des/

      Table of Contents for Heyde's Technik des wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens (1931)

      I've seen a copy of a version of the table of contents for Heyde's book in German, though I suspect it was from a version from the 1960s or after, though the copy I saw wasn't specified. Does anyone have a copy of the first edition that they could send me a photocopy of the table of contents for a project I'm working on? If you've got copies of later editions those might be useful/helpful as well.

      Heyde, Johannes Erich. Technik des wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens: zeitgemässe Mittel und Verfahrungsweisen. Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1931.

      Thanks in advance for your help!

    1. Facing the Philistine army is King Saul, his general Abner, son of Ner,and the Israelite warriors. They gather between Socoh and Azekah, at theplace referred to as “Ephes-dammim,” or, in another tradition, “Pas-dammim.” Various battles in which David’s heroes were involved (1Chronicles 11:13) occurred at this place. The name Ephes-dammim doesnot appear in the list of the cities of the tribe of Judah, or in traditions laterthan the time of David. Recently, David Adams, who has worked at KhirbetQeiyafa, has proposed understanding the word “Ephes” in this context asthe border, while “dammim” means blood in Hebrew. He therefore explainsthe name as meaning the “border of blood,” in other words, the bloodybattle zone.3
    2. The story includes a detailed description of Goliath’s weaponry: acopper helmet, a coat of mail, a spear, a javelin, and leg guards. Goliath’sequipment has never been found in an archaeological context, and a largenumber of articles have attempted to establish the date of composition ofthe tradition based upon this weaponry. Some date it to Iron Age I (11th–10th centuries BCE), others to the 7th century BCE, and yet others to thePersian period (5th–4th century BCE).4

      Comparing stories of Goliath's weaponry to the known archaeology of the time might help us better place the story and dating.

    3. the city of Khirbet Qeiyafa, radiocarbon dated to the end ofthe 11th and the beginning of the 10th century BCE, existed during theperiod to which the biblical tradition attributes this battle. The question thenarises if and how the excavation at Khirbet Qeiyafa contributes to ourunderstanding of this tradition.

      Since Khirbet Qeiyafa is radiocarbon dated to the end of the 11th and beginning of the 10th century BCE in a location where the biblical tradition situates the battle between David and Goliath, how might its excavation contribute to our knowledge of this time period and these events?

    1. More news organizations will realize they are in the business of impact, not eyeballs

      https://www.niemanlab.org/2022/12/more-news-organizations-will-realize-they-are-in-the-business-of-impact-not-eyeballs/

      Journalistic outlets should be in the business of creating impact and not scrounging merely for eyeballs and exposure.

      Exposure may be useful for advertising revenue with respect to surveillance capitalism, but if you're not informing along the way, not making a measurable impact, then you're not living, not making a change.

    1. TIPOFF was created in 1987 for the express purpose of using biographic information drawn from intelligence products for watchlisting purposes. In 1987 TIPOFF began keeping track of suspected terrorists literally with a shoebox and 3 by 5 cards. Since then the program has evolved into a sophisticated interagency counterterrorism tool specifically designed to enhance the security of our nation's borders.

      https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-107jhrg96166/html/CHRG-107jhrg96166.htm

    1. After Ahrens' book I see an awful lot of people talking about "processing" books. There are too many assumptions about what this can mean and this hides many levels of inherent work involved in analyzing and synthesizing knowledge. I would suggest that we're better off talking about reading them, annotating, excerpting, and thinking about them, or maybe writing about and combining them with other knowledge than "processing" them.

    1. reply to u/shibbywiggy on https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/zzlje4/what_makes_this_special_for_me/

      In his book Sönke Ahrens mentions the Zeigarnik effect and that it works for the slip box method in much the same way that Zeigarnik works for David Allen's GTD, but to my knowledge he wasn't making any sort of attempt to integrate GTD with the slipbox there. Where are you drawing this inference with respect to his work?

      I've noticed the "frankenbaby" phenomenon too and have called it zettelkasten overreach in the past. HawkExpress' original Pile of Index Cards is the closest I've seen to pure GTD with index cards.

    2. Sanke and others seem to try to integrate GTD (Getting Things Done) into the Zettlekasten, thus making a frankenbaby. Having a frankenbaby of my own I shall throw no stones. But GTD is about making this same decision, and being specific about taking in ideas and deciding what to do with it. Without this self-discipline, self-awareness, neither GTD nor Zettlekasten are useful.

      Example of someone who's also noticed the idea of "zettelkasten overreach" though they call it "frankenbaby".

    1. I've seen a bunch of people sharing this and repeating the conclusion: that the success is because the CEO loves books t/f you need passionate leaders and... while I think that's true, I don't think that's the conclusion to draw here. The winning strategy wasn't love, it was delegation and local, on the ground, knowledge.

      This win comes from a leader who acknowledges people in the stores know their communities and can see and react faster to sales trends in store... <br /> —Aram Zucker-Scharff (@Chronotope@indieweb.social) https://indieweb.social/@Chronotope/109597430733908319 Dec 29, 2022, 06:27 · Mastodon for Android

      Also heavily at play here in their decentralization of control is regression toward the mean (Galton, 1886) by spreading out buying decisions over a more diverse group which is more likely to reflect the buying population than one or two corporate buyers whose individual bad decisions can destroy a company.

      How is one to balance these sorts of decisions at the center of a company? What role do examples of tastemakers and creatives have in spaces like fashion for this? How about the control exerted by Steve Jobs at Apple in shaping the purchasing decisions of the users vis-a-vis auteur theory? (Or more broadly, how does one retain the idea of a central vision or voice with the creative or business inputs of dozens, hundreds, or thousands of others?)

      How can you balance the regression to the mean with potentially cutting edge internal ideas which may give the company a more competitive edge versus the mean?

  2. Dec 2022
    1. Conway’s Law is sometimes referred to as “shipping your org chart”. If you’ve been in professional software development for a while, you’ve likely come to respect its power and inevitability. How your team is structured is always visible in the product you produce, and that can often be a bad thing for users. It’s the weird cracks of inconsistency and disconnectedness within a user application that makes you wonder if two parts of the app were made by two different companies.

      The design of a product can often reflect, and not often in a good way, the nature and structure of the team(s) which made it.

    1. Tom MacWright, a software developer in Brooklyn, has firsthand experience with the pitfalls of ActivityPub. As an experiment, he tried to turn his photo blog into an actor that could be followed by users via their Mastodon accounts. It worked in the end—and you can search for @photos@macwright.com from your Mastodon instance to follow his photography—but it wasn't easy.

      Example of how ActivityPub standards don't work in practice, in part because Mastodon is an 800 pound gorilla which actively flauts or adds their own "standards".

    2. "Queer people built the Fediverse," she said, adding that four of the five authors of the ActivityPub standard identify as queer. As a result, protections against undesired interaction are built into ActivityPub and the various front ends. Systems for blocking entire instances with a culture of trolling can save users the exhausting process of blocking one troll at a time. If a post includes a “summary” field, Mastodon uses that summary as a content warning.