Emotional Ignorance by Dean Burnett 📚demolishes the old myth that we only use 10% of our brains. It’s far more complex and interesting than that. My brain is literally parked outside for all but 5% of the time. Yet when I need to go somewhere I need 100% of it. So inefficient! Wait, that’s my car.
Was Dracula foiled by a gang of obsessive note-takers?
May 3 is the date Bram Stoker’s famous novel, Dracula begins. It’s a classic tale of evil, lust and violence and you can follow along from the safety of your in-box with Dracula Daily.1
I was not able to light on any map or work giving the exact locality of the Castle Dracula, as there are no maps of this country as yet to compare with our own Ordnance Survey maps; but I found that Bistritz, the post town named by Count Dracula, is a fairly well-known place. I shall enter here some of my notes, as they may refresh my memory when I talk over my travels with Mina.
The novel is presented as a whole series of notes - journal entries, letters, typed memos and phonograph transcriptions - by a group of bewildered friends (lovers? enemies?), as they try to make sense of the supernatural designs of the mysterious Count. In 1897, when the novel was written, all this seemed new and high-tech. The story, in effect, pits aspirational note-taking against monstrous, blood-sucking evil. You’ll have to read it to find out which of these two tremendous powers wins out in the end.
These days, fortunately, all we have to worry about is ChatGPT taking our jobs. But collecting our notes together and making sense of them, against all the odds, remains as important as ever.
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I have no connection with this site - I’m just obsessed with Dracula. ↩︎
30 years of the World Wide Web. An incredible journey! I recall wondering if it would supersede Gopher. Didn’t have to wonder long. I also remember CompuServe pretending the WWW didn’t exist. That didn’t last long either. www.npr.org/2023/04/3…
More discontent in the world of academic publishing. It’s amazing how far the brightest people have been tricked by the industry. Troubling to see how hard is their climb back out of the well. dailynous.com/2023/04/2…
“The question: what are you making with your notes?” An important question, and a great article from @annahavron
“Everyone needs their own thinking space.” Sometimes it’s a room of your own, sometimes it’s a website of your own. But it’s never Chad’s Garage - because Chad’s garage is not yours.
“Do you know exactly what you want?” It’s a very good question. I do, and my word of the year is “focus”. That’s because I find it very hard to prioritise what I want. I suspect I’m not alone in this
An amazing Femi Kuti concert last night. The recordings are great but they don’t do justice to this band in person. The total confidence that everyone in the audience would be dancing and the complete fulfilment of that confidence.
For two enthralling hours of Afrobeat Femi Kuti gave more energy than all his dancers put together - and they gave a huge amount of energy.
There was a sax solo from Femi that was completely magical. I wouldn’t previously have called myself a fan but I was completely won over. It was a sublime night. Live music at its absolute best. 🎵
📷 Golden early-evening light on the route home.
The Writer’s Journey began as a memo.
Working at Disney during the 1980s, Christopher Vogler saw senior executives using memos effectively. He wrote one to summarise The Hero with a Thousand Faces, as he was sure Joseph Campbell’s book had inspired George Lucas’s Star Wars. He wrote a 7-page memo that became so popular he expanded it into a book. This became the ‘Bible’ for beginning scriptwriters. He called it a ‘practical guide’, since besides summarising Campbell’s ideas on narrative, he showed how they could be used to write film scripts.
Question: what else could start with just a memo?