#ponderposting

i heard you dear reader you saw my last post and said well lulu what exactly is so special about the notes you are doing

basically this. i mean its not an original structure by any means, but the pattern is to be applied to my own work. i started with just studying Matsuchak's notes and the key ideas from that but the plan is to branch out to analyses of readings (because my shitty margin annotations are nothing tbh compared to an interconnected system of ideas) and also probably connections across sociology and my actual work because well, my job unfortunately for my dumb ass, really does have a lot of cases where some applied sociology can cut through the fog a little

really the key takeaway that i really think is the core of all of this is what Matuschak says in his note knowledge work should accrete

"We should strive to design practices systems which yield compounding returns on our efforts as they accumulate over time."

i mean look im just rattling this idea around in my head like. I am firmly anti tiktok and broadly, I don't use social media. This is about the only exception I think? Something I notice especially in older people (my parents, but also some of the parents I work with) is they become exceedingly attached to the phone screen, almost like older generations would complain about us doing when we were always on the damn phone as teenagers.

Tiktok especially spawned this advent of "instant media" -- videos and slideshows that are minutes or seconds long, and meant to be consumed in a tiny bite just like that.

I really think that when you become engrossed and pulled into "instant media" platforms and their content, especially ones that have vicious, predatory algorithms (Tiktok birthed it but they all do now) it eats away at your capacity to pay attention. I know its cheesy but I feel it is true.

And look I get it, I literally have ADHD and take the adderal, it fixes me and makes me normal again and I still jump from task to task like a damn jumping BEETLE or even a little flea. But I have a running list of tasks that are pending as I do so, and I (usually) never push myself beyond the capacity of workload I can handle at once.

And it is very much a "you are not immune to propaganda" situation literally @ myself. Sorry to be annoying about it but that is the purpose of this tangent basically! We are all being assaulted by things that are chipping away at our attention span -- even just going out in public and waiting for a dang drink for 5 minutes you watch 8 advertisements on whatever shitty TV they have barely hanging on the wall! But then you (I, we) go home, and turn on the TV to watch some more, or scroll on some feed that endlessly assaults us, and you know, the brain never gets a chance to just stop and Ponder. Think. Wander the dunes of your brain with one specific concept, see where it takes you.

So that's what all this is about basically.