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How Walter Breuggemann shaped me
At its best, a family can be ‘a communal network of memory and hope in which individual members may locate themselves and discern their identities’
What to do when you've made some notes: Start writing
The next step after taking notes is to create a finished piece of writing, acknowledging that the first draft may be disorganized but serves as a foundation for improvement.
What I Learned from Bob Doto about Making Effective Notes and Writing a Book
Historian Dan Allosso led a discussion on Bob Doto’s insights on flexible note-taking and writing processes. It emphasised the importance of iterative development and audience engagement. Here are my notes.
Influence is everything: novelty its flimsy dress
What happens when once fashionable ideas get left behind?
I’ve often felt the culture moves on too fast, leaving so much on the table in terms of untapped potential. This is certainly true for pop music. Fashions come and go so fast that they leave great concepts stranded in time. You could write a great glam rock song in 2023, but you would have needed at all costs to avoid staying stuck in 1973. The trick is to avoid descending from homage into mere pastiche.
The Nemesis guide to being early described the fashion cycle as an endless process in which:
“each new thing is supplanted by another new thing, and no linear pattern emerges. Things very rarely reach the plateau of productivity, more often falling straight to Hades through the trough of disillusionment. No one seems to follow up on the hyped project of yesterday.”
THE NEMESIS GUIDE TO BEING EARLY nemesisglobal.substack.com
But it’s worse than that. It’s not just that, mysteriously, no one merely seems to follow up. It feels like they’re not allowed to.
A search for meaning in the palace of lost memories: Thoughts on Piranesi, a novel by Susanna Clarke
Susanna Clarke’s novel Piranesi has got me thinking about memory, identity, the fallibility of writing, and the paradox that intrinsic value might be created rather than found
Who says you have to choose between yourself and others? The case for intelligent generosity
It’s not rocket science but if you want to foster sustainable generosity and human flourishing here’s how to cultivate a balance between caring for yourself and supporting others.
Daniel Wisser’s notecards as art and archive
Daniel Wisser’s exhibition in Vienna features 60 index cards with sketches of stories displayed in a note box (Zettelkasten).
What Tim Berners-Lee Has to Teach About Effective Notes
Tim Berners-Lee’s insights on the interconnected nature of knowledge have inspired a flexible, web-like approach to note-making that mirrors my natural thinking rather than some restrictive categorization.
Leibniz created a haystack of notes that wouldn't fit in his Zettelschrank
Gottfried Leibniz, a prolific yet disorganized thinker, struggled to manage an overwhelming influx of ideas, resulting in a vast but minimally published literary legacy. Is this a cautionary tale or some other kind of tale? I have an opinion.
Sinister Zettelkasten?
The 2025 Sydney Film Festival program features Jodie Foster’s new film, “Vie privée,” accompanied by a marketing image that evokes mystery with index card boxes in the background.