And a theory of "multilayered social worlds", when fully developed, can be a helpful tool in understanding why, in modern Europe, certain phenomena became common enough to catch the attention of physicians, scientists, artists and philosophers. In a current unpublished work, STP suggests that, if the logic of affinity is properly conceptualized, both in terms of its essentially paraconsistent properties as a social logic and in terms of its historical presentation throughout very different societies, one arrives at the conclusion that modern families – in the sense of nuclear familiar units composed of heterossexual parents and their children – do not logically form a basic "atom of kinship" in Levi-Strauss' sense. That is, in modern capitalist societies, the logic of affinity is not composed in such a way as to form a world of its own, it has little synthetic power. In fact, the logic of affinity is most consistent within capitalist worlds at the points where it is tasked with "stitching together" dynamics dominated by property and value – at the point of contact between family and the production of independent adult workers, or at the intersection between affinity and the State, where the nation-form is born, etc. Because capitalist structures do not respect the internal logic of kinship – which would allow people to socially map not only those that are part of their families and those who are not, but also those that occupy strangely indeterminate positions in this social fabric – it is up to individuals themselves, as they grow up, to develop ways to supplement to this fractured logic. This is what Lacan called the "individual myth of the neurotic": how, in order to become persons  , we must supplement our social existence before other people with an invisible partnership with an "Other", a figure that helps us determine how to distinguish these indeterminate elements of affinity logic and that capitalist sociality does not help to propagate in a consistent and shared way.

More important, perhaps, than the history of psychoanalytic ideas is the history of the problems that motivated them.

Backing out was not too difficult, but did take some work. I encountered the same obstacles as when I went in. After I wiggled my hips out of the hole, which took some time, I had trouble getting my shoulders out. Both arms were overhead at this point. My shirt was getting caught on the rocks and my shoulders were brushing the sharp rocks. After struggling to find a good position I gave up and just pulled my upper body out. SCRAAAAPE! My shirt pulled up over my head, and I had some nice scrapes on my shoulders, but I didn't care. To me this trip was a success. I had pushed myself beyond what I though was possible. I kneeled at the entrance and looked into the narrow passage I had just been in. The rock wall was now at the 11 foot mark (I had pushed it a little with my forward arm). The smallest point was at the 9 foot mark. We were close. Between the work and the excitement I was tired. I just sat on the rope bag, grinning. Whew! What a trip!

The entire time you are lying there you think about how you are going to get back out. And, what if...?

While lying in the darkness, in a passage deep within a cave, one is in a unique position to ponder. A mountain literally resting on top of me, the entire earth lying below. One tiny movement of earth and I would cease to exist. Or worse, to recognize the fear shared by Floyd Collins as he lay there, trapped for days deep within the heart of Mother Earth, incapable of freeing himself from his earthen prison.

My little trip into the passage represented a major milestone in my caving "career". When I began caving I did not feel overly comfortable going through tight spaces. Even the little squeeze at the beginning of this cave was an obstacle to overcome. By pushing myself and forcing myself to try the narrow passages I have become much calmer about tight spaces. Still, this passage represented a new benchmark in small spaces. I had not been faced with anything this small. I don't remember having to take off my helmet before now. With this passage, it is mandatory. As I mentioned before, not only do I have to take off my helmet, but I have to turn my head to the side in order to fit.

I CANNOT believe that we were so willing to get right back into the cave after hearing the scream. Part of the reason I went along with the idea was because B seemed so indifferent to any possible dangers. Even if it were an animal (which I did not believe, but could offer no better explanation), weren't we possibly putting ourselves in harms way? In retrospect I still have difficulty understanding our thought process at that time. We were just too eager to discover virgin cave passages. I now think it can be summed up with one word: testosterone!

I still harbor the fantasy that there is a hidden entrance to the other side of the passage and years ago Spanish explorers hid their treasures in the cave and sealed up the entrance. And it has remained untouched until we find it! B has a more realistic, although more mundane theory. He figures there is more cave on the other side. We'll see who is right.

It is always fun to tell people about the tight squeeze we are going to have to go through to get into the passage. Most people have little desire to voluntarily subject themselves to incredibly tight places. Actually neither do I, but I will do it in order to get to the other side. Good motivation.

In retrospect I can't believe how casual we were about everything that was happening in the cave. At the time the only thing we could think about was getting into the passage. Everything else was just a minor distraction. I do recall thinking that it would be nice to get in and see how the mechanics of the cave worked (where the wind was coming from, what was making the noise, etc.) Now, weeks later, I think of my ignorance and naivete, and shiver.

Then something bizarre happened that I can't quit explain. The dog began exploring as soon as we let her off the rope. She was in hog heaven, sniffing and darting about around our feet. She would run from one person to the other as we made our way back to the work site. At the point the cave splits into four passages the dog seemed to run out of juice. She just stuck right by either B or me. That seemed kind of odd. As we progressed further into the cave she would only stay by B. She seemed edgy. Like she saw something she didn't like. As we approached the short drop-off before the hole, she stopped and would only come further after we coaxed her. The hair on her back stood on end. Finally, as we got to within 20 feet of the hole she began to whimper, and hide behind B. Her tail was between her legs and she was cowering down on the ground. Strange! I have seen her square off with dogs twice her size, but now she acted as if Satan himself was lurking in the darkness. I figured there must have been animals that used the cave as a home, and Whip smelled their scent. Too bad it upset her, because there was no way she was going into the passage. We decided that with this new development (the nervous dog) one of us would work while the other stayed with the dog a few feet away from where we normally rested. We got right back into our routine of drilling, hammering, etc. With our extra supply of batteries we were able to really push hard on the drill and not have to worry about using up the batteries. This did not make our work any easier, but it did speed things up a little bit. Progress was still SLOW. I really didn't mind, though. My journal goes on for a while about the progress we were making. The entire time we worked, Whip did not move. She just laid there on a rope-bag, shivering. She would whimper from time to time. One thing I didn't think about at the time was that she would not take her eyes off the hole. We should have been more observant of this intuitive animal.

I remember that I frequently looked and the hole and thought, "Hey, it's big enough. I think I can squeeze through" only to be disappointed in my attempt. However, even after the first attempt and failure I knew that I would keep working on the hole until I got through. This despite the fact that I knew it would take many more hours of hard work. It actually became an obsession with me. I tried to get out to the cave and work as often as I could. I hoped that the passage led to a larger undiscovered cave that we would be the first ones to enter. I guess the explorer in me wanted to find a new frontier there in the cave. Since B is such an avid caver he was motivated by the same desire to find a new unexplored cave. What we did find was not at all what I expected...

As has been my tradition for all the years I've been caving, the party reaches a point in the cave, usually at the deepest part of the cave, that all lights are extinguished. Complete blackness fills the eyes. For a moment the individual caver strains the eye muscles, focusing in and out with the expectation of catching a crumb of light somewhere in the false night. After several futile moments the caver turns his head at a sound- perhaps another caver- only to have the other senses return, and then heighten. The sounds, smells and feelings that have been overlooked to this point come racing to the caver in perfect detail. The pain of their own behind sitting on the cave floor. The smell of dust, sweat, guano. The sound of modern material shifting on age-old rock as cavers attempt to find comfort on this solid foundation. At the back of every caver's mind at this time is "What if?". What if a person HAD to climb out of the cave with no light. Would he make it? Would he find all of the turns and bends which got him to this place? If not, would a rescue party find him in time? The depth of darkness recognized at this time is something that is rarely experienced outside a cave. Many first time cavers erroneously declare that they have to hold their hand to within 2 or 3 inches of their face before they can see it. The truth is the human eye is incapable of seeing in an absence of light. If they did not hear something coming toward them, they would feel it before they saw it. COMPLETE and TOTAL dark! This exercise is a great way to remind people to take backup lighting.

We even thought about using liquid nitrogen to freeze the rock and make it more brittle!

Ha Ha! In retrospect it is funny how simple I thought it was going to be. I figured a few hours work and we would be in. Had I known how long it was going to take I doubt I would have even begun the project. Had I known what I was going to experience in the cave I never would have returned.

Although if you catch it as an adult it has one major, VERY nasty side effect: something about a measles infection temporarily 'resets' the immune system. Meaning that all your previous immunities, from illness or vaccination, go away. In the western world if you catch measles you will later need to redo your entire childhood vaccination program, just in case.

To address the slippery-slope argument, I think it's pointless to worry about these systems doing too much of our thinking for us. Rephrasing a sentence is a far cry from writing an informed and insightful social criticism essay.

We've yet to see note-taking platforms meaningfully add AI affordances into their systems, but there are hints at how they could in other platforms.

None of the automations I've suggested above are impractically complex or technologically impossible.

Which brings me to our last section: The Block Protocol!The Block Protocol is a project by HASH that hopes to address some of these problems.

The reason these apps are great for such a broad range of use cases is they give users really strong data structures to work within.

One could go further still and highlight a word or words on one’s browser screen and use these as a custom search query.

The second reason might support positive change. The existence of tokens and decentralization means that it’s possible to build resilient open source communities where early contributors and supporters benefit handsomely over time. No one owns these communities, and we can hope that these communities will work hard to serve themselves and their users, not the capital markets or other short-term players.

And that’s the first reason that the blockchain matters—because there’s a chance that it might lead to more open, resilient, market-focused networks and databases. It’s only a chance, though, because all the hype around the tokens sometimes makes it seem more likely that financial operators will simply seek to manipulate unregulated markets for their own benefit.

Because the internet rewards people who own networks so handsomely, these organizations continue to gain in power. Google began by building a database on top of the open internet, and they’ve spent the last twenty years relentlessly making the internet less open so they can fortify the power of their databases and the attention they influence or control.

Okay, so what’s the blockchain? It’s a database. Unlike most databases, it’s not controlled by one entity and it’s not easily rewritten. Instead, it’s a ledger, a permanent, examinable, public database. One can use it to record transactions of various sorts. It would be a really good way to keep track of property records, for example. Instead, we have title insurance, unsearchable folders of deeds in City Hall and often dusty tax records.

The reason the blockchain matters is that it is an agent of change. Just like the transistor and yes, the printing press, when an agent of change shows up, it often leads to shifts that we probably didn’t expect. Understanding it now is more productive than simply being forced to deal with it later.

Now imagine a blockchain/token project in which contributors earned tokens as they built it and supported it. Over time, the decentralized project would go up in value. As the ecosystem and the market delivered more and more utility to more and more people, the users would need to buy tokens to use it. And the holders of tokens would receive either a dividend or have the ability to sell their tokens if they chose. Early speculators would attract more attention, and people with more skill than capital could invest by contributing early and often. As the project reached a steady state, the stakeholders would shift, from innovators and speculators to people who treat their daily contributions as a job without a boss. Innovators could build on top of this network without permission, creating more and more variations and choice using the same underlying database.

So this is my stance on text: always pick text first. As my old boss might have said: always bet on text. If you can use text for something, use it. It will very seldom let you down.

Text is the most flexible communication technology. Pictures may be worth a thousand words, when there's a picture to match what you're trying to say. But let's hit the random button on wikipedia and pick a sentence, see if you can draw a picture to convey it, mm? Here:"Human rights are moral principles or norms that describe certain standards of human behaviour, and are regularly protected as legal rights in national and international law."Not a chance. Text can convey ideas with a precisely controlled level of ambiguity and precision, implied context and elaborated content, unmatched by anything else. It is not a coincidence that all of literature and poetry, history and philosophy, mathematics, logic, programming and engineering rely on textual encodings for their ideas.

and it's incredibly durable

There is no equivalent in any other communication technology for the social, communicative, cognitive and reflective complexity of a library full of books or an internet full of postings. Nothing else comes close.

Text is the most socially useful communication technology.

Text is the most efficient communication technology. By orders of magnitude. This blog post is likely to take perhaps 5000 bytes of storage, and could compress down to maybe 2000; by comparison the following 20-pixel-square image of the silhouette of a tweeting bird takes 4000 bytes: . At every step of communication technology, textual encoding comes first, everything else after. Because it's vastly cheaper on a symbol-by-symbol basis. You have a working optical telegraph network running in 1790 in France. You the better part of a century of electrical telegraphy, trans-oceanic cables and everything, before anyone bothers with trying to carry voice. You have decades of teleprinter and text-only computer networking, mail and news, chat and publishing, editing and diagnostics, before bandwidth gets cheap enough for images, voice and video. You have pagers, SMS, WAP, USSD and blackberries before iPhones. You have Teletext and BBSs, netnews and gopher before the web. And today many of the best, and certainly the most efficient parts of the web remain text-centric. I can download all of wikipedia and carry it around on the average smartphone.

assuming we treat speech/signing as natural phenomenon -- there are no human societies without it -- whereas textual capability has to be transmitted, taught, acquired

Beyond that, I am not sure that he has ever been introduced to the notion of a thesis statement and a supporting paragraph. The argument wanders about, sometime aimlessly, sometimes with a purpose that is at odds with where it began. It's like a philosophical walkabout in Marxist rhetoric.

Frankly, books like this always make me believe that the author lacks the courage of his convictions.

But.... what I found was a morass of academic philosophy, sketchy anthropology, even sketchier archeology and ancient history, all woven into some kind of a discourse around the details of Marx's particular view.

but often I was not entirely sure how exactly this was linked to the core argument of the book. Uh yeah, remind me, what was that again anyway?

I think Marxist state theory has this covered, like so much better

I think Marxist state theory has this covered, like so much better, but thanks, dude

Steffi's review

(did he though?)

up to a point of distortion

Within the reassurance provided by guideposts and repetition, both hypertexts and gardens benefit from punctuation -- from exceptional elements injected that encourage readers to pause, to reflect, to look again.

At times, wilderness is exactly what readers want: a rich collection of resources and links. At times, rigid formality suits readers perfectly, providing precisely the information they want, no more and no less. Indeed, individual hypertexts and Web sites may contain sections that tend toward each extreme.

crafted experience

Gardens are farmland that delights the senses; parks are wilderness, tamed for our enjoyment.

rigid structure can hide a hypertext's message and distort its voice.

Rigid hypertext structure is costly.

Hypertext disorientation most often arises from muddled writing, or from the complexity of the subject. Many hypertexts do not require elaborate navigational apparatus.

Curves, interrupted views, intersections, and incidental detail make small spaces seem larger. Hypertext pathways and intersections, similarly, make small hypertexts appear richer and more varied.

Hypertexts, too, can use formal frames and gateways to good effect, demonstrating design and planning at the outset while also demonstrating a deliberate intent to avoid rigidly codified structure.

parks

Formal gardens

This fluidity helps break monolithic articles and white papers into smaller, more natural units, pieces of writing that can be reread and relinked in new and unexpected contexts.

The key to planning a hypertext garden is to communicate the promise of unexpected delight while assuring the reader that she is not entering an unplanned wilderness.

crafted irregularity

This crafted irregularity engages our senses by offering the promise of the unexpected without the threat of the wilderness.

The garden is farmland that delights the senses, designed for delight rather than commodity.

Unplanned hypertext sprawl is wilderness: complex and interesting, but uninviting.

Revisiting a landmark always suggests closure

So, while it’s natural to laugh about Bored Apes jpegs, or lots of “land” in The Sandbox metaverse being sold for ludicrous sums, to shake our heads in disbelief about yet another NFT-related scam being unveiled, or to be outraged about the environmental impact of cryptocurrencies, it seems to me that the best outcome of a critical evaluation of the NFT phenomenon should be that of triggering a new debate over personal data, pushing us to adopt a more stringent and informed attitude towards the broader issue of digital ownership on the internet, ultimately striving to break out of the current paradigm of digital feudalism. The aim should be that of a fairer, transparent, privacy-minded, and environmentally conscious digital society — allowing direct exchange of digital items protecting both the intellectual property of creators and the rights of consumers — rather than a more profit-hungry and economically unequal one.

I need to read more into it, but essentially, my read on Gothic Marxism is showing the horror of Capitalism, showing it as monstrous, and the use of the Gothic in Marxist and Anarchist theory.

This article explores the sensual, pleasurable element of working with metadata.

This scale, in my understanding, only works when you’re using a system that defines the maximum score (10, or 100) as a baseline, and then removing points based on flaws (like in the case of Olympic sports).

What results is an almost hermetically sealed economy, whose currencies exist only to be traded and become derivatives of themselves. If you squint, it looks like an absurd art project.

They still depend on the old-fashioned pre-blockchain internet, where an artwork would suddenly vanish if someone forgot to renew a domain name.

McCoy and I hoped we might prevent it from becoming yet another method of exploiting creative professionals.

Technology should be enabling artists to exercise control over their work, to more easily sell it, to more strongly protect against others appropriating it without permission.

The idea behind NFTs was, and is, profound.

The lifeblood of the vanguard stack is not its tools but the self-governance surrounding them. Communities, families, and movements can assemble and adjust their stacks over time, wherever possible seeking to make their technological lives ever more vanguardist.

When Fungus Grew to the Size of Trees - YouTube

How do Agora folks tend to save these in their personal notes systems?

thinking a bit about this as well. should I have curation routines for my notes? can I gamify it somehow?

Yet what is most surprising about the seminar is the attention and significance Lacan granted to cybernetics and information theory

Freud didn't get Buddhism, dismissed mediation as infantile "oceanic" feeling.

The most general form taken by these antinomies is...that between force and meaning...within this schema the force term would then be something objective, or at least objectifiable, and thus comprehensible within the terms of natural science, whearas the meaning term would remain outside the net of natural sciences, being determinable only by symbolic means of one kind or another. (p81)

I basically agree with all this, although the more scientific/rationalist part of me wants to just throw it all away with great force.

Freud displayed bad character in the service of bad science.

Wikis allowed multiple users to author and edit pages on the web with a basic web browser.

Slips of paper which were moveable within books or files and later on index cards were a significant innovation in terms of storing and organizing a commonplace book.

The Galaksija's are networked together in to the Galaksija Brain. The city is [[participatory]] and [[municipalist]], and city-wide decisions are made by [[Ask]]ing the citizens through the Galaksija Brain.

Trust]] shares an inverse relationship with [[communication]].

Trust]] synthesizes and [[compresses]]. The more [[complexity]] you deal with, the more you must trust.

Law]] is often used in place of trust. Outside of simple legal systems, use of the law usually signifies a lack of trust.

Also writing this from the future ;) I realize that I haven't added any code to prevent users from writing future journals; but then again, why would I?

turns out [[wikilinks]] are [[fat links]]

Why do we need virtual assistants? How about we just work together and collaborate on things with other humans? Maybe a virtual assistant does the drudge that you wouldn't want to ask another person to do.

uncertainty