An online commonplace book
“Animals arrived, liked the look of the place, took up their quarters, settled down, spread, and flourished. They didn’t bother themselves about the past – they never do; they’re too busy.”
– Badger
Badger knows.
Grahame, Kenneth. The Wind in the Willows (Puffin Classics). United Kingdom, Penguin Young Readers Group, 2008. pg71
“And I remember always that knowledge is made for cutting.”
– Dean W. Ball
From his essay: How I Work
Inspiring, especially the Beethoven bits.
Dean W. Baker, “How I Work,” Hyperdimensional (blog), 2025, https://www.hyperdimensional.co/p/how-i-work.
“Remember all men would be tyrants if they could.”
– Abigail Adams
Abigail quoting a line from a Daniel Defoe poem as a reminder to John of men’s natures.
She gets me.
McCullough, David. John Adams. Simon & Schuster, 2001. pg 102
I seem to have lost my ability to focus and force my way back into a novel. So today I introduced a period of martial law. Never leaving my desk, writing a set amount during a set period of time, all the familiar methods I used to fall back on. There is great satisfaction to be had from looking at the empty page, at your notes, at what you’ve already done, then will yourself, almost force yourself, to write some more, and finding that it actually works. It means I am still able to use my imagination to escape from this world into the imagined world of my novel.
Sheer will. Sometimes it takes sheer will and martial law to type one page.
Pamuk, Orhan. Memories of Distant Mountains: Illustrated Notebooks, 2009-2022. United States, Knopf Canada, 2024. pg 162
The great poems, plays, novels, and stories teach us how to go on living, even when submerged under forty fathoms of bother and distress. If you live ninety years you will be a battered survivor. Your own mistakes, accidents, and failures at otherness beat you down. Rise up at dawn and read something that matters as soon as you can.
– Harold Bloom
Rise up at dawn and read something that matters as soon as you can.
Book preludes are underrated.
12 pages in and this book strikes like a thunderbolt.
Bloom, Harold. Take Arms Against a Sea of Troubles: The Power of the Reader’s Mind over a Universe of Death. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020. pg 13
“We may meet again before all is over, and then again of course we may not. That depends on your luck and on your courage and sense; and I am sending Mr. Baggins with you. I have told you before that he has more about him than you guess, and you will find that out before long. So cheer up Bilbo and don’t look so glum. Cheer up Thorin and Company! This is your expedition after all. Think of the treasure at the end, and forget the forest and the dragon, at any rate until tomorrow morning!“
– Gandalf
Another passage I needed to capture with the quickness.
Why does Tolkien capitalize “Company” ?
Tolkien, J.R.R.. The Hobbit: 75th Anniversary Edition. United States: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012. pp 120
Can there be any day but this,
Though many suns to shine endeavour?
We count three hundred, but we miss;
There is but one, and that one, ever.
As read from Herbert’s poem Easter.
Warm Easter Greetings everyone!
Herbert, George. The Temple. United States, Canon Press, 2020. pg45
I have attempted, in my own life and in this book, to reconcile a love of nature with an affection for machines. In the game of life and evolution there are three players at the table: human beings, nature, and machines. I am firmly on the side of nature. But nature, I suspect, is on the side of the machines.
As read from George Dyson’s AI history book – Darwin among the Machines.
Prefaces are underrated.
Dyson, George. Darwin Among the Machines: The Evolution of Global Intelligence. United States: Basic Books, 2012. pgix
He meticulously cultivated new ideas and distilled them into words. “He walked much and contemplated,” wrote his contemporary John Aubrey. “and he had in the head of his Staffe a pen and inke-horn, carried always a Note-book in his pocket, and as soon as a notion darted, he presently entered it into his Booke, or else he should perhaps have lost it.
As read from George Dyson’s all-to-relevant book on modern times, but was published in 1997 – Darwin among the Machines.
Love a good notebook story. Don’t you?
Dyson, George. Darwin Among the Machines: The Evolution of Global Intelligence. United States: Basic Books, 2012. pg5
Underlying his meticulous craftsmanship and insatiable curiosity was a complete lack of patience for sloppy work, easy solutions, or glib answers. He refused to be satisfied with the ordinary. The young man who would later talk of the “Intergalactic Computer Network” and publish professional papers with titles like “The System System” and “The Gridless, Wireless Rat-Shocker” possessed a mind that was constantly probing, and constantly at play.
Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider named it right the first time. We need to get back to calling the internet the Intergalactic Computer Network immediately.
Like right now.
Filibuster it and get it done.
Waldrop, M. Mitchell. The Dream Machine. United States: Stripe Matter Incorporated, 2018. pg25,26
Floodlights and Goalposts 