Writing Slowly
npub1qn3yukpg0epanua2wpx7nzwqdzruwjsa8e7k95yyy8nnrgf0hy9qr42r7r@drss.io
24 May 2026
Two fascinating articles show quite different sides to Japan: [Why Japanese companies do so many different things. The internal logic of the world’s strangest
24 May 2026
23 May 2026
Watched: [Resurrection](https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/878608) 🍿 An amazing experience. More fragmented than Bi Gan’s previous movies, but easily as engaging. There were many nods to cinema
18 May 2026
 Some books on writing: Hidalgo, César A. 2025. [Infinite Alphabet: and The Laws Of Knowledge](https://micro.blog/books/9780241655672).
18 May 2026
> The expert’s trap is where you start thinking of yourself as having gone beyond the need to learn anything new. What did the legendary Zen maverick Ikkyū Sōjun teach about overcoming the
The Paradox of Mastery: Why the Expert Must Remain a Beginner
17 May 2026
The Paradox of Mastery: Why the Expert Must Remain a Beginner
17 May 2026
> A Zen Buddhist master hands his successor a formal certificate of mastery. The successor burns it. Why? No, it’s not a Zen koan but it almost could be. The name for such a certificate in
17 May 2026
On Friday we learned our cat, who has [visited](https://writingslowly.com/2023/03/01/march-microblog-photo.html) *Writing Slowly*
16 May 2026
> 💬 “Our conventional response to all media, namely that it is how they are used that counts, is the numb stance of the technological idiot. For **the ‘content’ of a medium is like the juicy
15 May 2026
Memory isn’t a static recording but a constant act of reconstruction. Every time we revisit a note or a book, we are weaving together the original content with our current environment and past
15 May 2026
Is note-making an “aide memoire” or a replacement for the source? To distill a book into notes on it, is to change our relationship with the original text. Beyond just storing facts we are
14 May 2026
There’s a unique magic in the physical bookshelf. It acts as a spatial memory palace where a spine or a colour can trigger a flood of recollection. [‘Remembering What you
Remembering what you read
14 May 2026
Remembering what you read
14 May 2026
One of the chief uses of note-making is to help you to remember what you read. But it’s not as simple as imagining your notes are just an ‘aide memoire’. When you make notes you forget your
12 May 2026
ADHD: not straightforwardly a dysfunction. 💬 “It’s best understood as an impulsive motivational drive for novel information”. – Anne-Laure Le Cunff,
12 May 2026
> 💬 “We need to build digital worlds worth protecting.” — Dr Krista Fisher, on the real manosphere. [Womens
11 May 2026
Tsundoku status alert. 
10 May 2026
My current mood is: *Let me sleep, and only wake up after AI is done destroying everything worthwhile, so I can skip to whatever’s left without having to live through the intervening period of
What's the future of creative work without human intent?
10 May 2026
Nicholas Carr has written about the prospects for [creative work in an age of digital production](https://www.newcartographies.com/p/creative-work-in-an-age-of-digital). He argues that the era where
What's the future of creative work without human intent?
10 May 2026
Compare like with like
4 May 2026
When critiquing my own work it’s tempting to compare it unfavourably with something good. But almost all early drafts need improvement. For example, here’s the final version of a well-known
Compare like with like
4 May 2026
‘Beginner's mind’ keeps you young — even in your 80s
4 May 2026
 Stewart Brand was on the [Ezra Klein Show](https://the-ezra-klein-show.simplecast.com/episodes/stewart-brand), talking about his new book
‘Beginner's mind’ keeps you young — even in your 80s
4 May 2026
3 May 2026
Notes about notebooks? Ulkar Aghayeva writes about [the history of laboratory notebooks](https://www.asimov.press/p/lab-notebooks). Aghayeva, U. “A Brief History of Lab Notebooks.” Asimov Press
28 Apr 2026
I find writing on the train works well. It helps that there’s a good view. Anyone else do this? #writing #notetaking #writingcommunity #photography 
27 Apr 2026
Every Zen garden is unique, but recognizable patterns recur too. Perhaps it’s the patterns that enable the diversity. 
Holy mother of cheeses, the Internet is not made out of content
27 Apr 2026
 Holy mother of cheeses, the Internet is not made out of content. > 💬 “The Net is not content. > There is great content on the
The real science behind Project Hail Mary
27 Apr 2026
 Yes, there is some real science behind 📚 [Project Hail Mary](https://micro.blog/books/9781473582583). It’s an enjoyable and successful
21 Apr 2026
💬 “For good or ill, a new generation, though raised in the lap of AI, will not be speaking or writing anything like the ‘intelligence’ that raised it.” - [Notes on the artificial style of
20 Apr 2026
You have your own peculiar and necessarily limited interests and instead of spreading the net too widely, maybe it’s worth keeping a bit focused on these. But how? [Top level categories in my
Notes on the artificial style of writing
20 Apr 2026
*In which the artificial style of writing encounters the iron hand of fashion* AI makes writing more bland, as reported by [NBC
Top level categories in my notes
19 Apr 2026
What kind of top-level categories do you have for your notes? If you’re doing knowledge management you might use or adapt Tiago Forte’s [PARA](https://fortelabs.com/blog/para/) system: -
19 Apr 2026
[Simon Willison](https://simonwillison.net/guides/agentic-engineering-patterns/adding-a-new-content-type/) says: > 💬 “I’m effectively using Substack as a lightweight way to allow people to
Finished reading Trip to the Moon by John Yorke
19 Apr 2026
 [Trip to the Moon](https://micro.blog/books/9780241631089) by John Yorke 📚 sets out the author’s deeply-considered views on the nature
13 Apr 2026
> 💬 The fight against the far-right is much more compelling to voters when it is framed in the practical opposition to corruption than the ideological opposition to populism. — Ian Dunt,
6 Apr 2026
 Make YouTube videos and you’ll
28 Mar 2026
Updating this site to Hugo 0.158 has caused the Search function to break. Normal service will shortly resume. 🤞 An update to the update: rolling back to Hugo 0.91 until plugins are updated.
A mind like a skittish and unbroken horse
27 Mar 2026
> “Unless it is occupied with some governing object that restrains and disciplines it, the mind will scatter itself wildly across the vast field of imagination.” - Michel de Montaigne, “De
18 Mar 2026
This video of Kurama-dera, a Buddhist temple outside Kyoto, is quite lovely. And the snowy scenery makes the place look completely different from when I visited it in late Summer.
17 Mar 2026
📷 From time to time the world offers you an extraordinary, fleeting gift. #photography #clouds 
16 Mar 2026
💬 “You don’t begin with the correct tool and work sensibly within its constraints until you organically graduate to a more capable one. That is not how obsession works. Obsession works by
16 Mar 2026
Are you accumulating notes or actually creating something? Semyon Vengerov gathered two million filing cards but never finished his dictionaries. What lessons does this Russian scholar offer for
Two Million Notes and No Dictionary: Learning from Semyon Vengerov's Cautionary Tale
15 Mar 2026
Russian bibliographer Semyon Vengerov (1855-1920) spent his life accumulating two million filing cards, but he died before he finished the dictionaries and bibliographies he set out to create. His
Artists Books at the NSW State Library
14 Mar 2026
I visited the State Library in Sydney recently, where I was inspired by an exhibition on artists’ books, called [Paper Universe: The Book as
Why I wrote the book on Shuhari and what’s in it for you
13 Mar 2026
Well, a book doesn’t just write itself, but why should I be the one to write it? What made me decide to write an introduction to the Japanese concept of *Shuhari*? There were several reasons and
13 Mar 2026
ROOTS - [Return Old Online Things to your own Site](https://lisacharlottemuth.com/bringing-everything-back-to-my-website). That’s what Lisa Charlotte Muth is doing at her website. And that’s
10 Mar 2026
Podcast listening overtakes radio? [The New Publishing Standard](https://thenewpublishingstandard.com/2026/02/28/podcasts-overtake-radio-publishing-strategy/). Congratulations are due to [Dave
Some urgent notemaking questions find answers
8 Mar 2026
From time to time I attempt to answer questions about note-making on Reddit. It’s a tough job with few perks, but someone has to do it and for no obvious reason that person is me[1](#fn:1). So
8 Mar 2026
The [Digital Humanities Now](https://digitalhumanitiesnow.org/) website has come out of hibernation and kicked back into gear. OK, so it took me a whole year to notice this, but better late than