I have been following the Youtuber (among other roles they play), Ali Abdaal for a while as I enjoy their tech reviews and productively discussions. In his weekly newsletter this week he features a piece written by his assistant, Elizabeth Filipsabout her productivity and on why you should “Why You Should Listen To Your Lazy Self”, which is interesting though when I checked out her YouTube channel I found the following video about knowledge information systems.
Why I have a 2nd Brain
I am always on the look out for the next best note taking app or to do app as I am perennially over indexed on what I can get done in a day and have a hard time not saying “yes” at the office.
In this video she talks about the following:
Brains are for making connections and not for storing information.
I found this especially profound and pertinent to how I think about knowledge management and information curation.
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Newsletters are a new take on the old media distribution and curation model, which leverages an reliable and old technology: email. (I love email; a wrote about newsletters back in 2017. Since my original writing newsletters have become even more prevelant and now a large player in the email newsletter space is Substack is launching a reader style app.
The Verge has an interesting article on the topic, which includes a review on beta software a little history on the reader space It is an interesting move as newsletters are seen as response the walled garden approach for social media as email is open though a newsletter company is now offering a reader app to collect your newsletters (it does supposedly allow for users to add RSS feeds).
I will need to check out the reader and also see what the response from others newsletter services like Tiny Letter or Revue. Is this the start to a new walled garden or just a way to share newsletters?
I don't understand some things about the "don't tag your hate" philosophy. Â I'd like to understand better. Â To be up front about some of my motive for asking: I think I might disagree, but it might be that I only disagree with a strawman version of it -- I'd like to give it a fair shake. Â And I'm curious about information curation strategies, how social norms and knowledge indexing/retrieval interact, and various philosophies and approaches.Â
I've written before about the many motivations for tagging on Tumblr, and how sometimes these conflict. Â In general, I think of Tumblr (like the internet more broadly) as being similar to a library in some ways, and the tags are the card catalog (shush, youngsters -- that's what we used to use as an index ;) ). Â That is -- it's a collection of things people are saying, indexed by topic. Â
In my analogy, if I want to find out what people are saying about topic X on Tumblr, and if I want to figure out which authors are the ones I want to become penpals with, I look up topic X in the card catalog, then go see what people are saying. Â This works equally well for X = #giantsquid, #Ferguson, #cancer, #TomCruise, #TomxCher, etc. Â The library shows me all the things people are saying about these topics, regardless of sentiment.
Now, if I go into the #Ferguson or the #cancer tags, presumably nobody is there to squee. Â But if I go into the #TomCruise tag, it's possible it's more of a mix -- people wanting to squee over the actor and his appearance, neutral news about him, people wanting to critique his acting and/or his personal life, and everything in between.
Say I'm there because I want to criticize some of his choices (maybe in a nuanced fashion, but maybe I have stronger opinions like "Tom Cruise shouldn't be allowed custody of his children"*), and want to compare notes with others doing the same thing. Â Perhaps I should eventually go find the subgroup of the #TomCruise discussions that negatively address Tom Cruise -- maybe there's a #TomCruiseNegativeOpinions or a #ScientologistScum tag or something. Â But I initially don't know how to find that subcommunity. Â If I want to find discussion about Mr. Cruise of any sort, I start out in the obvious tag.
What if I instead want to squee, and the tag is full of squee-harshing? Â In my mind, I can do a few things:
Find the authors I like in the tag, subscribe to them, and stop hanging out in the tag
Block or blacklist certain authors or phrases (thank you, XKit!)
Start a separate tag dedicated to my sentiment of choice (#TomCruiseSquee, #HandsomeCruise, e.g.)
Telling a subset of people discussing Tom Cruise that they can't index their stuff in my card catalog, or can't use the primary tag, seems extreme. Â But possibly that's because I'm erroneously using a library analogy.
I do have questions, also, about how far "don't tag your hate" extends. Â Like I said, I assume people in the #ferguson and #cancer tags aren't seeking squee -- is it only a fandom thing? Â Does it apply to all topics in fandom? Â What if I want to talk about racism and misogyny in Top Gun in the #TopGun or #TomCruise tags? Â Or talk about how I think Tom Cruise plays a lot of problematic and poorly written characters?* Â Or if I just saw one of his movies and hated it, and I want to write about it in the #TomCruise tag (and/or the #JackReacher tag) to find others who felt similarly and discuss why? Â Is all that okay under this philosophy, or not?
I'm guessing that what's being targeted is (though I'd like to hear from others about the boundaries) is more the hate mongering and taunting of people who like #TomCruise. Â ("PEOPLE WHO LIKE TOM CRUISE ARE GARBAGE SCIENTOLOGY APOLOGISTS," e.g.) Â I feel like that's just trolls, though -- people seeking to stir up shit and get a reaction. Â If they get a reaction, they'll keep doing it, and they won't stop because you tell them to. Â So rather than trying to draw boundaries around a subset of behavior in the tag (which is difficult to do without ruling out some non-trolling content, and which won't be effective against trolls anyway), I'd prefer to just blacklist those trolls or trollish words/phrases and not try to change the rules for the library or its card catalog.
(I will gently tell my friends when I think they're showing biases or being unfair or unkind. Â But I've never found it effective to engage with trolls, so I try not to.)
Does that make sense? Â Am I using a poor analogy? Â Am I missing something? Â I'd love to hear from people who disagree and gain a better understanding of others' views.
Edit:Â people have had some helpful and thought-provoking responses. Follow along if you're interested!
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* All Tom Cruise opinions made up as examples. Â I picked a topic that I thought would be relatively non-inflammatory among my followers. Â I don't have actual strong opinions, though I've liked some of his films.
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