Thursday, January 11, 2024

a concise theory of notes about notes

Previously:

I came across an argument about what exactly makes something a zettelkasten, and then thought: “Zettelkasten” is a pretty great example of how one of the best ways to fuck up a neat idea is to have a bunch of people get really excited about it.

Taking notes is one of those things in the unfortunate position of being:

Surprisingly deep as a subject
Capable of being focused back on itself

I guess nearly any practice can disappear up its own asshole under the right conditions, but some are extraordinarily susceptible.

That’s my working model of what happens. If you can say a lot about something, and you can use the something to say it, well, watch yourself. You might just be teetering on the edge of the pit. People should get a warning about the risks of this drilled into them right around the age they’re ready for something like The Neverending Story or The Princess Bride.

This post is mostly just the short version of meta meta.

tags: notes, notes-on-notes, writing, zettelkasten

p1k3 / 2024 / 1 / 11

thursday, december 14, 2023

it's december
and that old hollow feeling
biding something holy
or forgotten, reappearing

p1k3 / 2023 / 12 / 14

Wednesday, November 15, 2023

reading: more patrick o'brian

Previously: reading: master and commander

After thinking for a while that I should pick up more of this series (apparently for five years), I bought copies of the following:

Post Captain
H.M.S. Surprise
The Mauritius Command

I’m through the first two and about halfway into The Mauritius Command.

These remain really strange and wonderful books. They cycle through subtle and complicated human relationships, absurdly specific sailing nerdery, comedy, tragedy, violence, the machinery of empire.

Every bit worth the time, so far.

tags: reading

p1k3 / 2023 / 11 / 15

Tuesday, November 14, 2023

A windy day. The leaves clattering down out of trees surprisingly late. The sun down behind the hills by 4pm. The cat dissatisfied.

p1k3 / 2023 / 11 / 14

Sunday, August 13, 2023

I revisit this thought:

the ironies of a bunch of hyperliterates using a giant text machine to bootstrap text into a thing that exceeds the bounds of comprehension and then totally overwhelms all the tools of literacy itself

I’ve spent most of my life enmeshed in language, with words as my main power, and also a lot of time dwelling on the insufficiency of language to what life is really like. These days the latter sometimes feels like the main thing about words. Or at least the main thing about the dominant culture of words, the technology and system of them.

The tools of literacy — I don’t exactly mean to run them down. We just live in a time when, for whole classes of human, a kind of hypertrophied literacy has enmeshed and eclipsed the experience of reality. This isn’t so much new as it’s just newly vast, encompassing, interconnected. The language machine is so big, so ramified, that the sheer mathematical accumulation of its products now feeds deafening oceans of noise back into the workings. Whether by this I mean the outputs of machine learning or the behavior of a few billion minds over-saturated with internet bullshit: I’m not sure it even matters.

We’ve all had our part in building this, and you can get endlessly meta about the endless meta of it, which is part of how it exceeds the bounds of comprehension. All of that is… Not really how I want to spend my time. I don’t have any grand thesis here, or at least I don’t have any grand prescription.

There was a time when I was a big word fish in a small word pond, I guess. Somewhere along the way the contemporary internet happened and also I got a job where being a big word fish was a basic prerequisite. Circa now: Sweet Christ am I ever weary of paragraphs. There’s something useful in knowing that, if I don’t chase my own tail about it too much.

p1k3 / 2023 / 8 / 13