Bookmarks

Interesting Links/bookmarks for personal use or sharing with others
Bookmarked Serializing a Book Online: Lessons From My Web 2.0 Memoir by Richard MacManus (Cybercultural)
On the first anniversary of launching my serialized book, I reflect on what I've learned — including the pros and cons of my pivot from Substack newsletter to indie website.
Bookmarked Fundamentals of Point-Set Topology by Michael Miller (UCLA Extension)

Point-set topology is the branch of mathematics that deals with collections of points endowed with sufficient structure to make meaningful the notions of closeness, separation, and convergence. Beginning with familiar notions concerning open sets, closed sets, and convergence on the real number line and Euclidean plane, this course systematically develops the theory of arbitrary topological spaces. Topics include bases and subbases, separation axioms (Hausdorff, regular, and normal spaces), countability (first- and second-countable spaces), compactness and compactification, connectedness, and convergence (nets and filters). Instruction emphasizes examples and problem solving. The course appeals to those seeking a better understanding of the algebraic and geometric underpinnings of common mathematical constructs.

September 24 - December 3 on Tuesday 7:00PM - 10:00PM PT
Fee: $453.00
Location: UCLA, Math Sciences Building, Room 5127

Mike Miller’s fall math class at UCLA has been posted. I’m registering and hope to see you there!

As usual, there’s no recommended textbook (yet), and he generally provides his own excellent notes over a required textbook. I’d suspect that he’ll recommend an inexpensive Dover Publication text like those of Kahn, Baum, or Gamelin & Greene.

If you’re curious about what’s out there, I’ve already compiled a bibliography of the usual suspects in the space:

AI generated featured photo courtesy of Glif Alpha

Bookmarked The Evolution of Biological Information by Christoph Adami (press.princeton.edu)
Why information is the unifying principle that allows us to understand the evolution of complexity in nature
Don’t think I’m just holding my breath waiting for this awesome book. Sometimes I turn blue and fall off my chair. 😰🪑

At least the press is saying Jan 16, 2024 now. Tough luck for those doing their holiday shopping for me.

Bookmarked Topics in Ring Theory and Modules by Michael Miller (UCLA Extension)

Topics to be discussed include the isomorphism theorems; ascending and descending chain conditions;  prime and maximal ideals; free, simple, and semi-simple modules; the Jacobson radical; and the Wedderburn-Artin Theorem.

Ring theory is a branch of abstract algebra that deals with sets—for example, the collection of all integers—that admit both additive and multiplicative operations. Modules generalize the notion of vector spaces, but with scalars drawn from a ring rather than a field. Beginning with a survey of the basic notions of rings and ideals, the course explores some of the elegant algebraic structuring that defines the behavior of rings—both commutative and non-commutative—and their associated modules. Topics to be discussed include the isomorphism theorems; ascending and descending chain conditions; prime and maximal ideals; free, simple, and semi-simple modules; the Jacobson radical; and the Wedderburn-Artin Theorem. Theory will be motivated by numerous examples drawn from familiar realms of number theory, linear algebra, and real analysis.

Mike Miller has announced this fall’s math course at UCLA. 
Bookmarked On the Origin of Species: The Preservation of Favoured Traces by Ben Fry (benfry.com)
We often think of scientific ideas, such as Darwin's theory of evolution, as fixed notions that are accepted as finished. In fact, Darwin's On the Origin of Species evolved over the course of several editions he wrote, edited, and updated during his lifetime. The first English edition was approximately 150,000 words and the sixth is a much larger 190,000 words. In the changes are refinements and shifts in ideas — whether increasing the weight of a statement, adding details, or even a change in the idea itself.
What a spectacular visualization of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.
Bookmarked Indxd (indxd.ink)
Filling up notebooks is great - but what happens when you need one obscure factoid that's stashed somewhere among dozens of notebooks? Searchability is Analog's Achilles heel.

Introducing Indxd
I wanted a simple, searchable index of all the topics in all my notebooks. So I built it, and you can use it too. Indxd lets you quickly enter notebooks and their topics, then search and browse everything.
INDXD is a digital, web-based index tool for your analog notebooks.

Ostensibly allows one to digitally index their paper notebooks (page numbers optional). It emails you weekly text updates, so you’ve got a back up of your data if the site/service disappears.

This could potentially be used by those who have analog zettelkasten practices, but want the digital search and some back up of their system.

ᔥ sgtstretch in @Gaby @pimoore so a good friend of mine makes INDXD which is for indexing analog notebooks and being able to find things. I don’t personally use it, but I know @patrickrhone has written about it before. ()

Bookmarked History of Philosophy - Summarized & Visualized by Deniz Cem ÖnduyguDeniz Cem Önduygu (denizcemonduygu.com)
A summary of the history of philosophy showing the positive/negative connections between ideas
This could be thought of as a form of digital, single-project zettelkasten dedicated to philosophy. It’s got people, sources, and ideas which are cross linked in a Luhmann-sense (without numbering) though not in a topical index-sense.

Interestingly it has not only a spatial interface and shows spatial relationships between people and ideas over time using a timeline, but it also indicates—using colored links—the ideas of disagreement/contrast/refutation and agreement/similarity/expansion.

What other (digital) tools of thought provide these sorts of visualization affordances?

Bookmarked ‘Mere chips from his workshop’: Gotthard Deutsch’s monumental card index of Jewish history by Jason Lustig (History of the Human Sciences | Sage Journals)
Gotthard Deutsch (1859–1921) taught at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati from 1891 until his death, where he produced a card index of 70,000 ‘facts’ of Jewish history. This article explores the biography of this artefact of research and poses the following question: Does Deutsch’s index constitute a great unwritten work of history, as some have claimed, or are the cards ultimately useless ‘chips from his workshop’? It may seem a curious relic of positivistic history, but closer examination allows us to interrogate the materiality of scholarly labor. The catalogue constitutes a total archive and highlights memory’s multiple registers, as both a prosthesis for personal recall and a symbol of a ‘human encyclopedia’. The article argues that this mostly forgotten scholar’s work had surprising repercussions: Deutsch’s student Jacob Rader Marcus (1896–1995) brought his teacher’s emphasis on facticity to the field of American Jewish history that he pioneered, catapulting a 19th-century positivism to the threshold of the 21st century. Deutsch’s index was at an inflection point of knowledge production, created as historians were shifting away from ‘facts’ but just before new technologies (also based on cards) enabled ‘big data’ on a larger scale. The article thus excavates a vision of monumentality but proposes we look past these objects as monuments to ‘heroic’ scholarship. Indeed, Deutsch’s index is massive but middling, especially when placed alongside those of Niklas Luhmann, Paul Otlet, or Gershom Scholem. It thus presents a necessary corrective to anointing such indexes as predecessors to the Internet and big data because we must keep their problematic positivism in perspective.
In honor of Yom Kippur today, I’m celebrating with acknowledgement of Gotthard Deutsch’s “monumental card index [zettelkasten] of Jewish history”. I hope everyone had an easy fast.
Bookmarked Tools for Thinking: a Conference and a Camp by John Borthwick (https://render.betaworks.com/)
Start with a conference: On August 16th we will host a conference at betaworks, bringing together makers and thinkers in this space: Tools for thinking Render Conference. Join us if you are interested, and if you are building something in this space, tell us because we will give you an access code to join for free. The Camp or accelerator program will start in mid September, details on the program are here, and the application form is here.
You had me at “networked commonplace books”…