The information tidal wave overwhelms and I float amongst the flotsam with dread and with delight, every morning when I sit down to pick up where I left off.
And I left off all over the place. I have emails and essays substack drafts that are easy to start, and apparently impossible to finish. Meh.
I want to know more. I want to understand the jargon. I want to make connections that satisfy my need to comprehend. I want synthesis; distillation; insight!
That is my own private struggle to sip from the Firehose of Data, and it leads to less, not more posts in any public place.
And so, midweek in this autumn muddle and incapable of creating a finished exposition on any of these dangling threads of personal curiosity, I will share some of the floaters from today’s shipwreck. Apologies.
Maybe when the days get short, the muse will settle back into her Winter Writer state of mind and hang with me for a few months until spring opens the doors that winter will soon close. The winds will keep me at my desk.
TAMING THE INFORMATION TSUNAMI 🌊
In curating a personal graph or database of information, the individual bits from your curation and life in general tend to fall in one of two baskets: Folders or Tags.
NOTE: For some younger person just confronting this issue of finding places for digital scraps, notes and documents so they can be found again, this choice is crucial. (Duh. Most people I know have no need for this at all, but one or two of you might.)
► For the FOLDER CROWD
… consider the Johnny Decimal system. Think Dewey Decimal of libraries of yore. But it is created BY YOU and FOR YOU.
The Johnny Decimal website, where you can find the official guide, examples, and FAQs. If you’re inclined this way, the concept of this system will click. If not, no click. Search Johnny Decimal or check out 14.02 The Decimal Workbook║J•D
► For the TAGS CROWD
Consider creating (hash)tags for IDEAS not Notes. It is ideas and concepts that you want to find each other in a month or a decade. Just keep up with your TAGSonomy as it grows, or you’ll be dogpaddling in the deep end.
Build Your Knowledge Flywheel: Organise Your Ideas, Not Your Notes
Notes don’t matter, the ideas they convey is what matters.
So rather than thinking about notes as “snippets of text” or “documents”, I invite you to think about notes as representing ideas.
Becoming your own Anthropologist 🧗♀️
This is related in a way to the “filing systems” mentioned above. This might be the notes that go into your JohnnyD system. And it turns out, it describes what I have been doing for two decades: Creating field notes from a life lived in the context and with appreciation for of the natural world and the Cosmos.
Self-Anthropology: Become your own anthropologist with personal field notes
Digital Archeology and Visual Technology 📸
This project is amazing. Mexico City is built on top of much history. Here is yet another instance of new tools creating new in-sights!
A Portrait of Tenochtitlan • 3D reconstruction of the capital of the Aztec empire.
Biology of Dragonflies 🪰
Getting The Shot 📸
I am using this free camera more and more often (in manual mode).
Physics and Beauty 🌈
This WIRED article was of interest, since TIME is a topic I keep coming back to—time and time again, so to speak.
And I love it when the AHA! of connection happens. Within the article, a name was mentioned. Wilczek. He created something called a “time crystal.” Sounded like something from HitchHiker’s Guide. ButI have heard that name. January, this year—I went right to it.
And he is the one who espoused the notion that Beauty is a guide to knowledge Oy! The article on time is good, but it is his synthesis of beauty and physics that attracts me most from this rabbit trail.
Frank Wilczek is the Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2004, he received the Nobel Prize in physics. His books include A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature’s Deep Design and The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces. His new book is Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality.
Frank Wilczek — Beauty as a Compass for Truth | The On Being Project
Dear me, David, I think this is for too grand a lean for a Folk Writer. But I will feel free to appropriate some of these phrases for my upcoming AI CV/BIO this has made me think about.
Once again Fred has written on an eclectic mix of topics that stimulates the reader into new explorations. Thanks Fred.
from Poe.com:
Ode to the Eclectic Writer
Oh, eclectic writer, master of words,
Your pen dances on pages like graceful birds.
With a kaleidoscope mind, you weave tales,
Blending genres, bending rules, and never fails.
In your ink-stained hands, worlds come alive,
A symphony of voices, diverse and thrive.
From fantasy realms to historical lore,
You traverse dimensions, forever explore.
Your words are a tapestry, vibrant and bold,
Each sentence a story waiting to unfold.
You paint with prose, a palette so vast,
Embracing the shadows and light of the past.
In one breath, you whisper sweet romance,
Then plunge us into thrilling suspense.
You challenge conventions, break the mold,
Reinventing narratives, creating the untold.
Your characters breathe with life and grace,
Complex souls in this writer's embrace.
Heroes and villains, flawed and true,
They leap from the page, captivating and new.
Oh, eclectic writer, you defy definition,
With every tale, you spark our imagination.
You blend the boundaries, blur the lines,
Creating worlds where the extraordinary shines.
Your words are a symphony, melodies untamed,
A chorus of voices, forever unnamed.
We, your readers, are forever in your debt,
For the worlds you conjure, we'll never forget.
So, raise your pen, dear writer, and let it roam,
Through genres and styles, make the unknown your home.
For you, the eclectic scribe, inspire us all,
To embrace our uniqueness and let our voices call.