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.
Replied to a tweet by Jan Knorr (Twitter)
Reclipped is on my radar, but I haven’t experimented with it yet. For YouTube annotation, I quite like https://docdrop.org/ which dovetails w/ @Hypothes_is. For other online video I will often use their page annotations w/ timestamps/media fragments.
Liked AJ Sadauskas (@ajsadauskas@aus.social) (Aus.Social)
The thing about Twitter is that it really lacks a lot of the features you'd expect from a true Mastodon replacement. For example, there's no way to edit your toots (which they, confusingly call "tweets"—let's face it, it's a bit of a silly name that's difficult to take seriously). "Tweets" can't be covered by a content warning. There's no way to let the poster know you like their tweet without also sharing it, and no bookmark feature. There's no way to set up your own instance, and you're basically stuck on a single instance of Twitter. That means there's no community moderators you can reach out to to quickly resolve issues. Also, you can't de-federate instances with a lot of problematic content. It also doesn't Integrate with other fediverse platforms, and I couldn't find the option to turn the ads off. Really, Twitter has made a good start, but it will need to add a lot of additional features before it gets to the point where it becomes a true Mastodon replacement for most users. #twitter #mastodon #twittermigration
Likes AJ Sadauskas (@ajsadauskas@aus.social).
Replied to grahamsz (@grahamsz@indieweb.social) (Indieweb.Social)
Anyone got any ideas for a small #indieweb project that might be useful for a small group. I have a super open-ended coding assignment for a class, and could probably stand up something usable in that time if i could find a niche that isn't super full of better-supported projects.
@grahamsz@indieweb.social It could be transformational for many to have a micropub client/service such that a person could log into it and either authenticate to a variety of services APIs (or as a failsafe plug in an RSS feed from services) and then have all of their siloed content automatically copied over to their personal website as it was posted. Essentially PESOS as a service.
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.


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. ()

Read Thinking about starting an open zettelkasten by Andy Sylvester (andysylvester.com)
In yesterday’s post on Chris Aldrich’s overview of zettelkasten techniques, I asked about seeing the zettelkasten itself. He replied saying most of the content was in his Hypothesis account, and sent me a pointer to an entry. I read through a bunch of pages on zettelkasten stuff yesterday, ...
Building a Zettelkasten on the web with an OPML structure is intriguing. I’ve heard about outliners in the space before, but I don’t think I’ve heard anyone using OPML for this specific use case 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.
Acquired Forest Friends Magnetic Bookmarks by galison.com (amazon.com)
Quill and Fox Design illustrated the cute bookworm, squirrel, rabbit, owl, and, just for fun, a red fox and a beaver holding a quill for these Forest Friends magnetic bookmarks from Galison.
Someone special thought my slip box needed a little bit of whimsy. 🐰🦫
Replied to 'Numbers alone cannot save the Welsh language' (BBC News)
The 2022 Welsh learner of the year says achieving one million Welsh speakers can't save the language.
Stop counting and start learning.
A powerful for indigenous language learners.

Cerdd nerthol

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”…