Where are the tools for graphing inter-dependencies of areas of study? When entering a new area it would be interesting to have visual mappings of ideas and thoughts.

If ideas in an area were chunked into atomic ideas, then perhaps either a Markov monkey or a similar actor could find the shortest learning path from a basic idea to more complex ideas.

Example: what is the shortest distance from an understanding of linear algebra to learn and master Lie algebras?

Link to Garden of Forking Paths

Link to tools like Research Rabbit, Open Knowledge Maps and Connected Papers, but for ideas instead of papers, authors, and subject headings.

It has long been useful for us to simplify our thought models for topics like economics to get rid of extraneous ideas to come to basic understandings within such a space. But over time, we need to branch out into related and even distant subjects like mathematics, psychology, engineering, sociology, anthropology, politics, physics, computer science, etc. to be able to delve deeper and come up with more complex and realistic models of thought.Our early ideas like the rational actor within economics are fine and lovely, but we now know from the overlap of psychology and sociology which have given birth to behavioral economics that those mythical rational actors are quaint and never truly existed. To some extent, to move forward as a culture and a society we need to rid ourselves of these quaint ideas to move on to more complex and sophisticated ones.

Kate Raworth's Donut Economics thesis is a step in the direction of reframing economics towards cooperation and creating a self-sustaining world.

Emergent note taking: what ants can teach us about notes

Nothing new to me, but interesting to see part of Nicole van der Hoeven's process.

https://www.reddit.com/user/Dangerous-Ratio6448/

reply to ctietze at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/2560/zettel-feedback-functor-yeah-just-that#latest

Kudos on tackling the subject area, especially on your own. I know from experience it's not as straightforward as it could/should be. I'll refrain from monkeying with the perspective/framing you're coming from with overly dense specifics. As an abstract mathematician I'd break this up into smaller pieces, but for your programming perspective, I can appreciate why you don't.

If you want to delve more deeply into the category theory space but without a graduate level understanding of multiple various areas of abstract mathematics, I'd recommend the following two books which come at the mathematics from a mathematician's viewpoint, but are reasonably easy/intuitive enough for a generalist or a non-mathematician coming at things from a programming perspective (particularly compared to most of the rest of what's on the market):

• Ash, Robert B. A Primer of Abstract Mathematics. 1st ed. Classroom Resource Materials. Washington, D.C.: The Mathematical Association of America, 1998.
  • primarily chapter 1, but the rest of the book is a great primer/bridge to higher abstract math in general)
• Spivak, David I. Category Theory for the Sciences. MIT Press, 2014.
  • Spivak had a free draft prepublication version at https://arxiv.org/abs/1302.6946; There's also an open courseware version of his MIT course with a free .pdf textbook (with a 2013 date, but ostensibly a copy of the final published version from 2014) at https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/18-s996-category-theory-for-scientists-spring-2013/

You'll have to dig around a bit more for them (his website, Twitter threads, etc.), but John Carlos Baez is an excellent expositor of some basic pieces of category theory.

For an interesting framing from a completely non-technical perspective/conceptualization, a friend of mine wrote this short article on category theorist Emily Riehl which may help those approaching the area for the first time: https://hub.jhu.edu/magazine/2021/winter/emily-riehl-category-theory/?ref=dalekeiger.net

One of the things which makes Category Theory difficult for many is that to have multiple, practical/workable (homework or in-book) examples to toy with requires having a reasonably strong grasp of 3-4 or more other areas of mathematics at the graduate level. When reading category theory books, you need to develop the ability to (for example) focus on the algebra examples you might understand while skipping over the analysis, topology, or Lie groups examples you don't (yet) have the experience to plow through. Giving yourself explicit permission to skip the examples you have no clue about will help you get much further much faster.

I haven't maintained it since, but here's a site where I aggregated some category theory resources back in 2015 for some related work I was doing at the time: https://cat.boffosocko.com/course-resources/ I was aiming for basic/beginner resources, but there are likely to be some highly technical ones interspersed as well.

https://www.pdfdrive.com/

Scott Scheper returns to r/zettelkasten...

https://kimberlyhirsh.com/2023/04/28/want-to-read.html

👀 How did I not see this?!?? 😍 Looks like a good follow up to Ann Blair's Too Much to Know (Yale, 2010) and the aperitif of Simon Winchester's Knowing What We Know (Harper) which just came out on Tuesday. 📚 Thanks for the recommendation Kimberly!

Hutchins, Robert M., Mortimer J. Adler, and William Gorman, eds. The Great Ideas: A Syntopicon of Great Books of the Western World, Volume II, Man to World. 1st ed. Vol. 3. 54 vols. The Great Books of the Western World. Chicago, IL: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1952.

Hutchins, Robert M., Mortimer J. Adler, and William Gorman, eds. The Great Ideas: A Syntopicon of Great Books of the Western World, Volume I, Angel to Love. 1st ed. Vol. 2. 54 vols. Great Books of the Western World. Chicago, IL: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1952.

Jerry Springer, former Cincinnati mayor and talk show host, dead at 79 by Lisa Respers France, Marianne Garvey

read at 8:12 PM

This is good news!

Reader Question 2: Notes on Paper, Notes in Apps, Here, There, and Everywhere, Should I Just Give Up and Accept the Chaos?

I love the framing of Rubber Ducks LLC as a company to look at personal productivity.

My name’s Richard. I live in Sydney, on the traditional land of Bidjigal people of the Eora nation. Here I write about writing and reading (and what I do when I'm not writing or reading). I'm writing slowly but may at some point speed up. Connect with me on micro.blog or at Mastodon @aus.social@writingslowly. On Reddit, I'm @atomicnotes. via https://micro.blog/writingslowly

In Australia index cards are frequently called system cards,

via micro.blog/writingslowly at https://micro.blog/writingslowly/18676734

https://tantek.com/2023/110/t2/beyond-mastodon-indieweb-own-domain

This Week in the IndieWeb Audio Edition • April 15th - 21st, 2023 by Marty McGuire

Paying for participation | Open Thinkering by Doug Belshaw

The Museum of Modern Art acquires the MIT Press colophon by Chris Walton

Muriel Cooper, the first design director of the MIT Press and a founding faculty member of MIT's Media Lab, designed the MIT Press colophon in 1965. The iconic colophon has been acquired by The Museum of Modern Art in 2023.

The commission had originally been offered to Paul Rand (o Eye Bee M logo fame) in 1962, but when he turned down the offer, he suggested they offer it to Cooper.

Vicky Zhao indirectly frames the answer for "why have a zettelkasten?", especially for learning, as overcoming the "illusion of competence" which is closely related to the mere-exposure effect and the Dunning–Kruger effect.

How To Take Smart Notes (3 methods no one's talking about)<br /> by Vicky Zhao

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5O46Rqh5zHE

Zhao briefly describes Cal Newport's Questions, Evidence, Conclusions (QEC) framework which she uses as a framework for quickly annotating books and then making notes from those annotations later.

How does QEC differ from strategies in Adler/Van Doren?

reply to @AnthonyJohn@pkm.social at https://mastodon.social/@AnthonyJohn@pkm.social/110230007393359308

Perfectionism and Shiny object syndrome are frequently undiagnosed diseases. Are you sure it's not preventing you from building critical mass in one place to actually accomplish your goals? Can't wait to see the essay.

syndication link

Lace card

Harry belafonte vs Animal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBOohuZlAiM

reply to u/MisterTTS at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/1301mhl/any_good_antinet_programs_and_android_apps_out/

I've searched for ages, built programs for myself, and come to the conclusion that there is no really good app or workflow that will allow you to do both paper and digital at the same time without a lot of extra unnecessary repetitive work that doesn't provide you with tangible benefit to pay for itself. The best bet currently to save yourself a lot of time and headache is to pick one or the other and just go with it.

I suspect this reminder is in response to the post just before it at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/12zgyos/i_made_an_antinet_interest_group_in_my_school/ which is a crosspost from r/antinet. The sparseness of the poster's history seems to indicate that it might be a sock puppet of Scott Scheper.

In case some haven't been watching, I'll mention that Simon Winchester's new book Knowing What We Know on knowledge to transmission was published by Harper on April 25th in North America. For zettelkasten fans, you'll note that it has some familiar references and suggested readings including by our friends Markus Krajewski, Ann Blair, Iaian McGilchrist, Alex Wright, Anthony Grafton, Dennis Duncan, and Mortimer J. Adler to name but a few.

Many are certain to know his award winning 1998 book The Professor and the Madman which was also transformed into the eponymous 2019 film starring Sean Penn. Though he didn't use the German word zettelkasten in the book, he tells the story of philologist James Murray's late 1800s collaborative 6 million+ slip box collection of words and sentences which when edited into a text is better known today as the Oxford English Dictionary.

If you need some additional motivation to check out his book, I'll use the fact that Winchester, as a writer, is one of the most talented non-linear storytellers I've ever come across, something which many who focus on zettelkasten output may have a keen interest in studying.

Syndication Link: https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/2558/knowing-what-we-know-the-transmission-of-knowledge-from-ancient-wisdom-to-modern-magic/p1?new=1

++ on the idea of not putting date/time stamps in titles. I have seen a few people using traditional Luhmann-esque numbers in digital contexts. The primary benefit here is that it forces one to create a link to at least one other note and creates small outlines over time. Otherwise one can end up with a large "scrap heap" of orphaned notes that make a lot less sense over time.

mostly testing to see why my YouTube comments seem to be disappearing.... permalink: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkB5FmgUY1I&lc=UgxP6r5pt94uWyK5t1Z4AaABAg

Somehow I've always been disappointed with the two dimensional aspects of the pseudo-diagrams on prior books and articles in the space. If you go with something conceptual, perhaps try to capture a multidimensional systems/network feel? It's difficult to capture the ideas of serendipity and combinatorial complexity at play, but I'd love to see those somehow as the "sexier" ideas over the drab ideas people have when they think of their mundane conceptualizations of "just" notes.

Another idea may be to not go in the direction of the dot/line network map or "electronics circuit board route", but go back to the older ideas of clockworks, pneumatics, and steampunk...

By way of analogy, there's something sort of fun and suggestive about a person operating a Jacquard Loom to take threads (ideas) and fashioning something beautiful (https://photos.com/featured/jacquard-loom-with-swags-of-punched-print-collector.html) or maybe think, "How would John Underkoffler imagine such a machine?"

Now that I'm thinking about it I want a bookwheel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookwheel) next to my zettelkasten wheel!

To write the best story, sometimes you must get out of your own head by Dale Keiger

PESOS example: https://niemanstoryboard.org/stories/longform-narrative-structure-writing-process-profiles/

There's something interesting lurking here on note taking practice as well.

Generic notes for learning may rephrase or summarize an idea int one's own words and are equivalent to basic information or articles as framed by Clark/Keiger. But in building towards something, that goes beyond the basic, one should strive in their notes to elicit experience and generate insight; take the facts and analyze them, create something new, interesting, and unique.

Examples of good writers from Dale Keiger.

Altadena Now » Local Music Promoter Bob Stane Hospitalized, Coffee Gallery Backstage Permanently Closed

The $11.8 billion mistake that led to Bed, Bath & Beyond’s demise by Chris Isidore

Share repurchases of $11.8 billion since 2004 may have led to the downfall and ultimate bankruptcy of Bed, Bath, & Beyond.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Ghazali

The Incoherence of the Philosophers by al-Ghazali marks a dramatic turn in Islamic philosophy away from Aristotle and Plato which had been followed by previous Arab philosophers like Avicenna and al-Farabi.

al-Ghazali practiced a theological form of occasionalism, which suggested that God was the cause of events. This was rebutted by Averroes a century later, but al-Ghazali's influence on Islamic thought broadly won out.

First they came ...

Don't Be a Sucker

reply to u/523tailor at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/12xpq6s/mobility_of_the_antinet/

Many parts of the process are small bits that loan themselves to filling 5 minutes here or 10 minutes there, so mobility is a good thing, especially if you have a schedule that moves you around. I use a few of the following to help on the mobility front:

• Index Card Accessories for Note Taking on the Go | Chris Aldrich
• Review of King Jim A6 size horizontal Flatty Works case #5460 🗃️

Don Lemon Ousted From CNN in Move That Left Him ‘Stunned’ by Michael M. Grynbaum, John Koblin, Benjamin Mullin

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/04/24/business/tucker-carlson-fox-news

Following the settlement with Dominion Voting Systems last week, Tucker Carlson is out at Fox News.

https://www.librarybureausteel.com/index.html

Library Bureau got spun off of Remington Rand and still sells library products in 2023, though primarily shelving units now. It doesn't list any card catalogs as part of its offerings.

Dataview query for table of incoming outgoing links

dataview TABLE length*file.outlinks) as "Outgoing", length(file.inlinks) as "Incoming" where !contains(file.path, "Genie") and !contains(file.path,"Daily") and !contains(file.path,"Private") and !contains(file.path,"Weekly") and !contains(file.path,"FolderA") and !contains(file.path,"FolderB") and !contains(file.path,"FolderC") and !contains(file.path,"FolderD") and !contains(file.publish, "false") SORT length(file.outlinks) DESC LIMIT 50

via timestamp 00:11:23

http://www.cube20.org/

God's number is 20. Proven by Tomas Rokicki, Herbert Kociemba, Morley Davidson, and John Dethridge

To Solve the Rubik’s Cube, You Have to Understand the Amazing Math Inside<br /> by Dave Linkletter

suggested by Matt Maldre's annotations

We've got solutions for the number of configurations there are to solve a Rubic's cube with from 1 move up to 15, but we don't know how many cube configurations there are that can be solved with 16-20 moves.

• Example: the number of positions that require exactly one move solve them is 18, which is counted by multiplying the six faces and each of the three ways they can be twisted.

With respect to the Rubic's Cube, God's number is defined as the minimum number of turns to solve a randomly scrambled cube. Morwen Thistlethwaite proved that it was at most 52 moves in 1981. By June 2010 a group of four had a proof that God's number is 20.

The total number of ways one can scramble a cube is

(3^8 * 8!)(2^12 * 12!)/12

the first term is for how the 8 corner pieces can be rotated by three before returning to their original orientations and the eight! places they can be placed<br /> the second term is for the two ways that 12 edges pieces can be inserted into their 12 locations The bottom 12 is for the 322 ways that algorithms can't solve for a single rotation of a corner piece, or the other algorithms can't swap a pair of corners or a pair of edges.

A Rubic's cube taken apart and put together randomly only has a 1 in 12 chance of being solvable.

Fun to see a Bruno Latour reference in a video on zettelkasten. I recently ran across a tidbit on Latour with respect to zettelkasten in a Jason Lustig paper:

"Moreover, card indexes give further form to Bruno Latour’s meditations on writing: if Latour described writing as a kind of ‘flattening’ of knowledge, then card indexes, like vertical files, represent information in three dimensions, making ideas simultaneously immutable and highly mobile, and the smallness of ideas and ‘facts’ forced to fit on paper slips allowed for reordering (Latour, 1986: 19-20)."

Lustig, Jason. “‘Mere Chips from His Workshop’: Gotthard Deutsch’s Monumental Card Index of Jewish History.” History of the Human Sciences 32, no. 3 (July 1, 2019): 49–75. DOI: 10.1177/0952695119830900.

permalink: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5PDWfWli54&lc=UgwFo3oQLC02KrHrwbh4AaABAg

How I annotate books as a PhD student (simple and efficient)

She's definitely not morally against writing in her books, but there are so many highlights and underlining that it's almost useless.

She read the book four times because she didn't take good enough notes on it the first three times.

Bruno Latour's Down to Earth

Tools: - sticky tags (reusable) - purple for things that draw attention - yellow/green referencing sources, often in bibliography - pink/orange - extremely important - highlighter - Post It notes with longer thoughts she's likely to forget, but also for writing summaries in her own words

Interesting to see another Bruno Latour reference hiding in a note taking context. See https://hypothes.is/a/EbNKbLIaEe27q0dhRVXUGQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5PDWfWli54

Villarreal, Allegra, ed. An Open Companion to Early British Literature: An Anthology and Guide. Pressbooks, 2019. https://pressbooks.pub/earlybritishlit/.

annotations: https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&exactTagSearch=true&expanded=true&addQuoteContext=true&wildcard_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fpressbooks.pub%2Fearlybritishlit%2F*

https://hypothes.is/users/msallegra

https://archive.org/search?query=collection%3A%22harvardclassicsbound%22+AND+%28collection%3Aharvardclassicsbound%29

https://minnstate.pressbooks.pub/ushistory1/

<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>Dan Allosso</span> in Welcome to US History & Primary Source Anthology, vol. 1 (<time class='dt-published'>08/21/2022 14:41:00</time>)</cite></small>

Paulson, Michael. “Aaron Sorkin Revamps ‘Camelot,’ With Challenges Classic and New.” The New York Times, March 22, 2023, sec. Theater. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/22/theater/aaron-sorkin-camelot-broadway.html.

I'm reminded a bit of Dale Keiger's mention of Mark Strand having this same feeling after writing a poem.

https://hypothes.is/a/e8L5wuJlEe29ii_FcRhu4g

The Kennedy administration became culturally associated with Camelot because Jacqueline Kennedy mentioned her husband's affinity for the show in an interview with Theodore H. White for LIFE Magazine following his death and quoted the show's closing lyric: “Don’t let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot.”

Somewhat curious that there's T. H. White of The Once and Future King and a separate Theodore H. White who interviewed Jackie Kennedy following her husband's death with mentions of Camelot.

For Aaron Sorkin smoking was a tool that was part of his writing process.

Aaron Sorkin earned a B.F.A. in musical theater from Syracuse University, but didn't really put it to use until his work on Camelot which opened in 2023.

The sound of one hand packing by Dale Keiger

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5438280716

Manny's description of writing introductory language books using ChatGPT.

Mastering Tinderbox: Training Videos (Complete List)

Tinderbox Meetup April 23, 2023 Video - On Zettelkasten with Sascha Fast from Zettelkasten.de

Attended this live this morning from about 9:20 - 10:34 am.

Notes archived at https://forum.eastgate.com/uploads/short-url/pnp5ngylsg5XNbRicbnD27SwZLa.zip

Original details and other discussion at https://forum.eastgate.com/t/tinderbox-meetup-sunday-april-23-2023-what-does-it-mean-to-use-tinderbox-as-a-zettelkasten-tool-or-tool-for-what-ever-method-we-individually-might-use/6599/32

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4TXkGjKpTo

Zettelkasten - How Categories Emerge by Nicolas Gatien

Gatien uses Scheper's suggested top level categories, but shows that it doesn't take long for things to end up in dramatically disparate areas. As a result, why bother with a pre-defined set of categories in the first place?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdHH3YjOnZE

reply to u/whysofancy at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/12u8gbv/comment/jh61vqw/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

My general advice is to keep things as stupidly simple as possible and use as few tools/platforms as you can get away with.

If you haven't come across them, I highly recommend these two books:

• 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.
• Adler, Mortimer J., and Charles Van Doren. How to Read a Book: The Classical Guide to Intelligent Reading. Revised and Updated ed. edition. 1940. Reprint, Touchstone, 2011.

You might also appreciate the short article by Mills:

Mills, C. Wright. “On Intellectual Craftsmanship (1952).” Society 17, no. 2 (January 1, 1980): 63–70. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02700062.

Chances are pretty good your college/university's library does regular tutorials for tools like Zotero, particularly at the beginning of the term. Raul Pacheco has some good notes/ideas which may be helpful for things like literature reviews: http://www.raulpacheco.org/resources/. For Hypothes.is, try starting with this tutorial by their head of education: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09z5hyBMs8s. If you're using Obsidian with Zotero, I'd recommend this walk through https://forum.obsidian.md/t/zotero-zotfile-mdnotes-obsidian-dataview-workflow/15536 and this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbGJH08ZfCs. If you have other tools in mind that you'd like to use, let the community know and perhaps we can make some suggestions about tutorials, but really, just jump in and try something out. Search YouTube and see what you find.

At the end of the day, start using a tool or two and simply practice with them. Practice, practice, and practice some more as that's what you'll be doing regularly in grad school. Read, write notes, organize them, write short articles or papers as practice. You'll eventually build up enough for a much longer thesis.

reply to u/noobinPython at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/12u8gbv/is_zotero_a_reliable_software_to_transcribe/

Zotero is incredibly powerful and you could use it as a full end-to-end solution if you wanted to. It's particularly good if you're also using .pdf or other digital documents as it has the ability to pull in notes you've made digitally in a variety of .pdf annotation tools including Adobe's Acrobat (free version) which includes highlighting and notes you've made. It does have its own .pdf viewer now which also allows one to read, highlight, annotate, and tag individual pieces of text and then aggregate them into a single file. In addition to pulling in all the annotations into a single note file, one could break them into smaller individual notes per document if desired and these have addressable locations within the system.

Because Zotero is so powerful and can be dovetailed with a variety of other plugins specific to it as well as with other note taking tools like Obsidian, Logseq, etc. I'd highly recommend you try using it with a single document and take some notes to see if it'll work for you. There are surely some tutorials for using it as well as other useful plugins like Zotfile, MDnotes, etc. for your note taking workflows. It's open source and been in heavy use by many academics for over a decade and is actively developed, so it's one of the more robust systems out there. There are ways to do almost anything you'd want to with it from a note taking, reading, and citation management perspective, so searching and learning a bit about its features and functionality will get you a long way. Out of the box, it's reasonably intuitive, but there are lots of advanced features internally and even more features using a variety of plugins. Just the ability to have a browser extension and a keyboard shortcut to save all the bibliographic metadata of a source in a second or less and the ability to spit out full references for sharing with others has made it a godsend for me even if it did nothing else. Searching around will provide you with a huge amount of video tutorials and ways of using it either by itself, in conjunction with Zotfile, or dovetailing it with dozens of other tools.

Personally I use it in combination with a variety of other tools including Hypothes.is and Obsidian for a comprehensive workflow, but it could do incredibly well as a note taking tool just by itself.

Mills, C. Wright. “On Intellectual Craftsmanship (1952).” Society 17, no. 2 (January 1, 1980): 63–70. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02700062.

Cross reference published version from 1959, 1980: https://hypothes.is/a/7NmPckD4Ee2-r1NbihZN2A

Read on 2022-10-01 14:10

annotation target: urn:x-pdf:0138200b4bfcde2757a137d61cd65cb8

https://yellowbirchoutfitters.com/

reply to u/mazzios at https://www.reddit.com/r/englishmajors/comments/12vkt1a/best_ereader_with_annotating_capabilities/

I go out of my way to read .pdfs in my browser (laptop and/or mobile/tablet) so that I can use web.hypothes.is as a tool for quickly annotating, note taking, and tagging. (It also works for anything web-based.) It's reasonably easy to pull the data out (even by cut and paste) into other programs and tools like Obsidian if necessary. All of my infrastructure here is free. Hypothes.is makes a fantastic commonplace book set up for research, but I do a more refined zettelkasten structure within Obsidian for advanced thinking, writing, and eventual output.

Another solid option for digital copies is to read them within something like Zotero that will aggregate highlights/notes and allows tagging.

I don't do it as often, but the Calibre program has an e-reader and some annotation functionalities.

Kitt Betts-Masters has some excellent videos comparing some of the best in class e-readers. Try: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifDi2SsQjQM. I don't have one yet, but I'm about to get either the Supernote A5X or the Boox Note Air 2 Plus after looking into some of this extensively. I'm not 100% sure that the user interface and data portability will be exactly what I'm hoping for though.

Exporting notes from Kindle manually works for non-pdf e-books, but the interface isn't as quick and easy. Generally I've not found Libby to be useful at all from a UI or data export functionality.

At the end of the day, sometimes a pile of index cards works best. If you've not read Sonke Ahrens (Create Space, 2017) or Umberto Eco (MIT, 2015) yet, they may be highly useful.

Tom Hanks: Uncommon Type

From 2012: A typewriter renaissance

Decorative boxes with Rolodex like bars for keeping memories on a desk.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/798326374/directory-telephone-address-book-zande

Zande was making the Phonedex in Sweden by some time in the 1960s.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/265844599407

The product information from the Phondex indicated that Memindex was established in 1902

Memindex, Inc. of Rochester, NY manufactured a plastic "Phonedex" in the mid-20th century. It was made of Dow Chemical Styrene and sat underneath a standard rotary dial telephone and contained index cards with one's lists of phone numbers on them.

reply to u/Insomnia_Incarnate at tk

A zippered Lochby Pocket Journal could work reasonably well for this and the notebook could be slipped into the pocket or simply sit inside the wallet zippered.

Perhaps a bit larger, but still functional, you could consider the Flatty Works #5460 which fits up to A6 notebooks. As an A7 notebook is smaller/thinner, this would potentially be more comfortable as a wallet than for A6 notebooks.

A quick search on Etsy will find some interesting variety as well as potential custom options.

Why the Single Note Matters by Sascha Fast

Diligence is required.

Reply to u/PanasheP_24 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/12t0qk6/learning/

You might find this framing interesting: The Zettelkasten Method of Note Taking Mirrors Most of the Levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy

reply to u/After-Cell at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/12noly2/rebinding_a_book_for_more_margin_space/

The historical practice of "interleaved books" was more popular in a bygone era. If you search you can find publishers that still make bibles this way, but it's relatively rare now.

Given the popularity and ease of e-books and print on demand, you could relatively easily and cheaply get an e-book and reformat it at your local print shop to either print with larger margins or to add blank sheets every other page to have more room for writing your notes. For some classic texts (usually out of copyright) you can "margin shop" for publishers that leave more marginal space or find larger folio editions (The Folio Society, as an example) for your scribbles if you like.

Writing your notes on index cards with page references is quick and simple. These also make good temporary bookmarks. Other related ideas here: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=tag:%22interleaved%20books%22

Have I just coined "margin shopping"?

In using a typewriter, "shadowed" letters can be remedied by using quicker, short keystrokes. Or as William Forrester said, "Punch the keys for God's sake!"

Of course it also goes without saying that one should also use a backing sheet which will also help the longevity of the platen.

I recently watched the documentary Aby Warburg: Metamorphosis and Memory (Wechsler, 2016) via Kanopy (for free using my local library’s gateway) and thought that others here interested in the ideas of memory in culture, history, and art history may appreciate it. While a broad biography of a seminal figure in the development of art history in the early 20th century, there are some interesting bits relating to art and memory as well as a mention of Frances A. Yates whose research on memory was influenced by Warburg’s library.

Of specific "note” is the fact that Aby Warburg (1866-1929) had a significant zettelkasten-based note taking practice and portions of his collection (both written as well as images) are featured within the hour long documentary. You'll see it in the opening scenes in the background during many of the interviews, but there's also a portion featured at the 30 minute mark which looks at a few of his zettels. Like several other zettelkasten practitioners he had a significant zettelkasten practice but did not publish much, but did lecture quite a lot and had outsized influence both during his life as well as posthumously and his zettelkasten and research remain as an archive for scholars who still study and extend his work.

Sadly, I'm unable to catch any screenshots from the film due to technical glitches, but if folks can figure out how to pull some out, I'd appreciate them.

Aby Warburg's extant zettelkasten at the Warburg Institute's Archive consists of ninety-six surviving boxes (of 104 or possibly more) which contain between 200-800 individually numbered index cards. Dividers and envelopes are used within the boxes to separate the cards into thematic sections.

The digitized version is transcribed in the original German and is not available translated into English (at least as of 2023). The digitized version maintains the structure of the dividers and consists of only about 3,200 items. It can be searched at https://wi-calm.sas.ac.uk/CalmView/Aboutcatalogue.aspx. As examples one can find the record for box 4a on "the Renaissance" at https://wi-calm.sas.ac.uk/CalmView/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=WIA+III.2.1.+ZK%2f4a&pos=1 and the physical divider inside box 4a for "Jakob Burkhardt" with subsections listed at https://wi-calm.sas.ac.uk/CalmView/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=WIA+III.2.1.+ZK%2f4a%2f2&pos=1

The Warburg Institute archive had this sample photo of some of his decorative/colorful boxes:

Has anyone visited the Warburg archive in London before?

syndication link

The searchable digital archive for Aby Warburg's zettelkasten at The Warburg Institute: https://wi-calm.sas.ac.uk/CalmView/Default.aspx

https://wi-calm.sas.ac.uk/CalmView/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=WIA+III.2.1.+ZK%2f4a&pos=1

Example of record for ZK box 4a on the Renaissance.

https://wi-calm.sas.ac.uk/CalmView/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=WIA+III.2.1.+ZK%2f4a%2f2&pos=1

An example of a digital record of a physical divider in Aby Warburg's zettelkasten for Jakob Burkhardt with subsections listed.

Ref No: WIA III.2.1. ZK/4a/2<br /> Title: Jakob Burkhardt Briefe<br /> Physical Description: Divider<br /> Contents: Subsections: 1rst level: Vorträg Burckhardt 1927 Sommersemester [appr. 56 items, numbered and unnumbered]; 2nd level: Burckhardt an Nietzsche; 3rd level: Brief Nietzsches an Burckhardt 6 Januar 1889. 2nd level: Jakob Burckhardt und die nordische Kunst Conversations Lexikon, Burckhardt Festwesen, zu Rougemont Cicerone, Wanderer in der Schweiz, Hedlinger, Hedlinger.

https://wi-calm.sas.ac.uk/CalmView/Aboutcatalogue.aspx

Aby Warburg's extant zettelkasten at the Warburg Institute's Archive consists of ninety-six surviving boxes which contain between 200-800 individually numbered index cards. Dividers and envelopes are used within the boxes to separate the cards into thematic sections.

The digitized version is transcribed in the original German and is not available translated into English (at least as of 2023). The digitized version maintains the structure of the dividers and consists of only about 3,200 items.

A full catalog of Aby Warburg's 104 index card boxes (reference: WIA III.2.1.ZK) are available online by way of The Warburg Institute's online database at http://wi-calm.sas.ac.uk/calmview/. They are catalogued at the file level.

via https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/archive/archive-online-catalogues

https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/hc/

reply to u/noobinPython at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/12rfku6/how_has_the_zettelkasten_system_changed_the_way/

Historically there is the popular idea of a waste book, which originally comes from double entry accounting, in which one might keep quick scribbled notes and ephemera. Upon reaching a quiet space for work and reflection one would then transcribe all the most important ideas into a more permanent place in their commonplace book or zettelkasten. I suspect this historical practice is part of where Ahrens came up with the often used terms "fleeting notes" and "permanent notes" which serve the same purpose.

I follow this practice and either have a small pocket notebook (usually a small Field Notes) or an index card at hand for writing things down throughout the day. Then every evening or every few days at worst, I transcribe/rewrite the idea.

As examples, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg's Waste Books were ultimately published and were highly influential. Isaac Newton developed his version of the Calculus in his waste book.

Aby Warburg: Metamorphosis and Memory. Documentary, Biography, 2016. https://www.kanopy.com/en/lapl/video/5913764.

Written, Directed and Produced by Judith Wechsler<br /> Wechsler2016

Telegram and telephone destroy the cosmos. Mythical and symbolic thinking strives to form spiritual bonds between humanity and the surrounding world, shaping distance into the space required for devotion and reflection, the distance undone by the instantaneous electrical connection. —Aby Warburg, [00:13:14] quoted in Aby Warburg: Metamorphosis and Memory (Original quote??)

Aby Warburg's views on art history and memory may have a lot to say with respect to our cultural movement of destroying and removing Civil War Monuments which glorify the "Lost Cause" of the South in the United States.

Frances Yates has apparently indicated how influential Aby Warburg's library and its structure was on her work and research.

direct reference for this?

Aby Warburg, scion of a major banking family died on October 26, 1929, just two days before Black Monday on October 28, the stock market crash which marked the end of the "Roaring Twenties" and the beginning of the Great Depression.

Could family influences or changes at that time have caused small, but underlying issues relating to the crash at that time? What was the reaction of the Warburg family on early Monday the 28th?

Aby, as the oldest, would have inherited the bank, but by arrangement with his younger brother in their youth apparently gave it to his brother in exchange for books.

The classification is anything but indifferent. The manner of shelving the books is meant to impart certain suggestions to the reader, who, looking on the shelves for one book, is attracted by the kindred ones next to it, glances at the sections above and below, and finds himself involved in a new trend of thought which may lend to additional interests to the one he was pursuing.<br /> —Claudia Wedepohl on the design of Warburg's library, [00:44:19] in Aby Warburg: Metamorphosis and Memory

Provides a similar sort of description of the push towards serendipity and discovery found in one's zettelkasten as well as that in Melvil Dewey's library classification and arrangements.

For art is not only something which is aesthetic relevant, but it's relevant in so many other dimensions too, partially, and intellectually, and there's a lot of knowledge enclosed within the artworks. —Michael Diers [00:12:03], art historian in Aby Warburg: Metamorphosis and Memory

Just as Warburg's suggestion that an album of collected stamps could help us to understand the world visually if all other images were lost, perhaps subsections of traces of other cultures could do the same.

The entire range of emotional stirrings, aggression, defense, sacrifice, mourning, melancholia, ecstasy, triumph, et cetera, is expressed through the revival of movements, gestures, and postures, that is pathosformel: the expressive formulas of emotion either taken from ancient modes or reappearing as mnemonic traces in successive works.

Original source for this? (Likely in German as original.)

Warburg is talking about the expression of current art through the lens of the classical arts and there is a throughline of "mnemonic traces" through out time.

I just watched the documentary Aby Warburg: Metamorphosis and Memory (Wechsler, 2016) via Kanopy (for free using my local library's gateway) and thought that others here interested in the ideas of memory in culture, history, and art history may appreciate it. While a broad biography of a seminal figure in the development of art history in the early 20th century, there are some interesting bits relating to art and memory as well as a mention of Frances A. Yates whose research on memory was influenced by Warburg's library.

Also of "note" is the fact that Aby Warburg had a significant zettelkasten-based note taking practice and portions of his collection (both written as well as images) are featured within the hour long documentary.

Researchers interested in images, art, dance, and gesture as they relate to memory may appreciate this short film as an entrance into some of Aby Warburg's more specialized research which includes some cultural anthropology research into American Hopi indigenous peoples. cc: @LynneKelly

syndication link

Stream of Consciousness to Atomic Notes: A Powerful Note-Taking Workflow

Broadly a workflow that takes journaling/morning pages and then progressively refines them into atomic-like notes.

Uses the idea of open loops from the GTD-space.

Frans Johansson's "Medici effect" which describes innovation arriving from an admixture of diversity of people and their ideas sounds like a human-based mode of combinatorial creativity similar to that seen in the commonplace book/zettelkasten traditions. Instead of the communication occurring between a person and their notes or written work, the communication occurs between people.

How is the information between these people crystalized? Some may be written, some may be in prototypes and final physical products, while some may simply be stored in the people themselves for sharing and re-sharing over time.

https://www.bookwhisperer.ink/

Fox settles Dominion defamation lawsuit for $787.5 million, avoiding trial

Will there be an apology?

This news has broken in the last two hours and many outlets are reporting it. It doesn't appear on the Fox News homepage.

does my zettelkasten make writing... harder?

Worried about self-plagiarizing in the future? Others like Hans Blumenberg have struck through used cards with red pencil. This could also be done with metadata or other searchable means in the digital realm as well. (See: https://hypothes.is/a/mT8Twk2cEe2bvj8lq2Lgpw)

General problems she faces: 1. Notetaking vs. writing voice (shifting between one and another and not just copy/pasting) 2. discovery during writing (put new ideas into ZK as you go or just keep writing on the page when the muse strikes) 3. Linearity of output: books are linear and ZK is not

Using transclusion may help in the initial draft/zero draft?<br /> ie: ![[example]] (This was mentioned in the comments as well.)

directional vs. indirectional notes - see Sascha Fast's article

Borrowing from the telecom/cable industry, one might call this the zettelkasten "last mile problem". I've also referred to it in the past as the zettelkasten output problem. (See also the description and comments at https://boffosocko.com/2022/07/12/call-for-model-examples-of-zettelkasten-output-processes/ as well as some of the examples linked at https://boffosocko.com/research/zettelkasten-commonplace-books-and-note-taking-collection/)

Many journal articles that review books (written in English) in the last half of the 20th century which include the word zettelkasten have a negative connotation with respect to ZK and frequently mention the problem that researchers/book writers have of "tipping out their ZKs" without the outlining and argument building/editing work to make their texts more comprehensible or understandable.

Ward Cunningham has spoken in the past about the idea of a Markov Monkey who can traverse one's atomic notes in a variety of paths (like a Choose Your Own Adventure, but the monkey knows all the potential paths). The thesis in some sense is the author choosing a potential "best" path (a form of "travelling salesperson problem), for a specific audience, who presumably may have some context of the general area.

Many mention Sonke Ahrens' book, but fail to notice Umberto Eco's How to Write a Thesis (MIT, 2015) and Gerald Weinberg's "The Fieldstone Method (Dorset House, 2005) which touch a bit on these composition problems.

I'm not exactly sure of the particulars and perhaps there isn't enough historical data to prove one direction or another, but Wittgenstein left behind a zettelkasten which his intellectual heirs published as a book. In it they posit (in the introduction) that rather than it being a notetaking store which he used to compose longer works, that the seeming similarities between the ideas in his zettelkasten and some of his typescripts were the result of him taking his typescripts and cutting them up to put into his zettelkasten. It may be difficult to know which direction was which, but my working hypothesis is that the only way it could have been ideas from typescripts into his zettelkasten would have been if he was a "pantser", to use your terminology, and he was chopping up ideas from his discovery writing to place into contexts within his zettelkasten for later use. Perhaps access to the original physical materials may be helpful in determining which way he was moving. Cross reference: https://hypothes.is/a/BptoKsRPEe2zuW8MRUY1hw

Some helpful examples: - academia : Victor Margolin - fiction/screenwriting: - Dustin Lance Black - Vladimir Nabokov - others...

reply to Sara Martínez at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQPvrcksjUA&lc=UgzbdJ1cdxkjnN0DBOl4AaABAg

Sara, here are some creative/art-related examples that might help:<br /> Dancer/Choreographer Twyla Tharp used a slightly modified slip box method that included much more than notes on cards for her dance-related work. She describes the process well in chapter 6 of her book "The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life".

If you're into art and image-based work, Aby Warburg had a zettelkasten with images. Search for details on his "Mnemosyne Atlas" at The Warburg Institute at the School of Advanced Study University of London which has some material you may appreciate.

Product designer khimtan has a visual zettelkasten practice you can find examples of on Reddit in the "Antinet" sub.

A variety of comedians like Phyllis Diller, Joan Rivers, Bob Hope, and George Carlin had zettelkasten practices for their comedy work.

Eminem has a fantastic, but tremendously simple zettelkasten for songwriting. Taylor Swift has a somewhat similar digital version which she has talked about using, though she doesn't use the word zettelkasten to describe it.

syndication link

She may have some material on her YouTube channel on the zettelkasten output problem.

Typewriter mystery game

How do we better distinguish the margins between histories, biographies, and hagiographies and the motivations of the writers who produce them?

How do we better underline these subtleties to the broader publics outside of historians and other specialists?

When Academic Historians Tackle Hard Histories by [[Martha S. Jones]]

Vintage Remington Rand Library Card File Single Half Table Top Index Dovetail - eBay

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