“The act of taking notes in public is a powerful discipline: rather than jotting cryptic notes to myself in a commonplace book, I publish those notes for strangers. This imposes a rigor on the note-taking that makes those notes far more useful to me in years to come.”
“Better still: public note-taking is powerfully mnemonic. The things I’ve taken notes on form a kind of supersaturated solution of story ideas, essay ideas, speech ideas, and more, and periodically two or more of these fragments will glom together, nucleate, and a fully-formed work will crystallize out of the solution.”
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Electric Paint is electrically conductive, water-based, and non-toxic paint, and air-dries at room temperature. It is great for fast prototyping with printed electronics, fixing small repairs in circuits, or painting large interactive murals.
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I love this imagery of celestial phenomena (including northern lights, meteor showers, etc.) in relation to the recent eclipse and aurora borealis. I’ve been thinking about how people in medieval times would have experienced this. According to these broadsheets they were interpreted as signs of the end times (some things never change) and an act of God.
Northern lights observed over Ausburg on March 6, 1582, interpreted as an omen of disaster. 
Report of a northern lights phenomenon observed over Nuremberg on December 28, 1560. The text interprets the natural phenomenon as a warning sign from God. 
Report including a pictorial representation of a northern lights phenomenon (“a great broad long flame”) over Eggolsheim near Forchheim on December 28, 1560. 
Report of northern lights over Nuremberg on January 17, 1572, in the evening from eight o’clock until around midnight. The author of the text compares the northern lights with the heavenly glow above the Temple of Jerusalem and interprets the event as a divine sign of the end-time fire of the impending Last Judgement.
Other Celestial Phenomena
Depiction of a star that was seen in Calabria, with a fire-breathing dragon and the zodiac sign Aquarius. The text includes a prognostication for the years 1585 to 1587, which announces numerous catastrophes and political upheavals. 
Halo or secondary sun apparition over the Elbe on March 21, 1551 with the silhouette of Wittenberg below. 
“The terrible miracle of two earthquakes which happened in Rossanna and Constantinople in 1556”, interpreted as a sign of the Last Judgement, foretold by comets. Note the damage to the Hagia Sophia. 
Report and depiction of a halo and secondary sun apparition on January 16, 1561 over Rottenburg ob der Tauber, which is interpreted as an end-time warning sign. 
“An extraordinary face appeared as the sun.” Report of a halo around the sun on May 12, 1556 over Nuremberg. The celestial apparition was interpreted as a warning from God to mankind. 
The comet that appeared over Augsburg in November, 1577. 
Report on an ominous apparition in the sky of Lonnerstadt near Erlangen, 1558. The weather phenomenon depicted is related to the dragon of the Apocalypse as a sign of the end times in Revelation 12. 
Report of the apparition on March 2, 1561 in Nuremberg. The broadsheet claims that the divine signs should be taken seriously in view of the Last Day and will lead to a penitential life on earth. Most of these come from Einblattdruck, a form of broadsheet that consisted of a title, woodcut, and an account of wonder. These sheets could be created rapidly, disseminated widely, and purchased cheaply. News and current events were thus being printed with greater speed and reach than ever before.
I’m fascinated by the fact these broadsheets have been painted!
I now want to research the process of early woodcut broadsheets.
Browse even more at Zurich’s Zentralbibliothek.
Observations from Solar Eclipse 2024
We experienced a partial eclipse. There was only the tiniest sliver of sun showing. Looking through the glasses at a bright yellow orange cookie with a larger and larger bite missing feels removed. Like it’s hard to believe it’s really happening.
Meanwhile the environmental effect is very real. The light ever so slowly dimming and becoming less contrasted. Like a Supernatural filter descending on the world. (The SPN TV show – not the genre.)
The shadows (when viewed from a longer distance – like tree branches or a colander raised in the air) dance with crescents.
I tried many artsy shots, but the best one seems to be this.
The eclipse challenges our sense of normalcy in a way that feels inspiring re fiction writing. What other small things (the shape of a shadow) can make the world feel magic?
Observations from Aurora Borealis 2024
I can’t believe we could actually see this in Arkansas. To be fair, the effect to the naked eye was very dull (like a mauve smudge on the sky), but the camera was like a portal into another dimension.
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My initial research into GCP seems to originate within the context of SLP who specialize in GLP. One SLP referred to monotropism in relation to GCP.
I’ve saved some quotes here, but I don’t completely agree with everything presented as monotropism in this paper. I think this is based on somewhat outdated research and a narrow view of autism.
“To a person in an attention tunnel every unanticipated change is abrupt and is truly, if briefly, catastrophic: a complete disconnection from a previous safe state, a plunge into a meaningless blizzard of sensations, a frightening experience which may occur many times in a single day. Following such an episode it may take a long time for any other interest to emerge.”
“For a monotropic thinker, if something does not work out as anticipated there are no alternatives available as there would be for a polytropic thinker. Instead of the projected outcome there is total disaster (Lawson, 1998). Total disaster is strongly demotivating.”
“features of the environment which seem obvious to people with diffuse rather than tightly focused attention may be entirely missed.”
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1362361305051398?download=true
See also: https://monotropism.org
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Fascinated by this process of Crafting Ceramic Circuits by Artist Clement Zheng.
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Digital gardens let you cultivate your own little bit of the internet
A growing number of people are creating individualized, creative sites that eschew the one-size-fits-all look and feel of social media
By Tanya Basu
MIT Technology Review, September 3, 2020
“These creative reimaginings of blogs have quietly taken nerdier corners of the internet by storm. A growing movement of people are tooling with back-end code to create sites that are more collage-like and artsy, in the vein of Myspace and Tumblr—less predictable and formatted than Facebook and Twitter.”
“Digital gardens explore a wide variety of topics and are frequently adjusted and changed to show growth and learning, particularly among people with niche interests. Through them, people are creating an internet that is less about connections and feedback, and more about quiet spaces they can call their own.”
“With blogging, you’re talking to a large audience,” (Tom Critchlow) says. “With digital gardening, you’re talking to yourself. You focus on what you want to cultivate over time.”
The author of this post ends by wondering if it will hit critical mass – like that is something to aim for. I don’t think so and I hope not. When something becomes mainstream it is co-opted by capitalism and neurotypical social norms. This is exactly what happened to blogging when it went from something nerds did for love and passion to a revenue stream.
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Questions I’d like to explore… 🔬
Is it perfectionism or is it GCP?
Do we get stuck because we see the whole finished thing in our minds?
Is it executive function or is it GCP?
Do we struggle to find a way in because we are not sequential thinkers and seeing the whole is overwhelming?
Can Iteration be a tool?
The idea does not have to come out fully formed.
What about “rejection sensitivity?”
Could this be happening because we are reliving every rejection we’ve ever experienced? Does it also happen when we are already struggling with flaws (deviations from our internal gestalt) and someone points them out or criticizes it’s unbearable?
How can we rewrite our gestalts?
Can we make more space for imperfection, experimentation, iteration, and discovery?
I think I’ve done this with gardening and pottery and it’s all to do with who I learned those things from and how I think about them. Can I invite that sense of ease and curiosity into other pursuits?
Can we / HOW CAN WE rewrite our gestalts?
Cross Pollination 🐝
Find further research at #gestaltcognitiveprocessing.
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A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden
by Maggie Appleton
“A garden is a collection of evolving ideas that aren’t strictly organised by their publication date. They’re inherently exploratory – notes are linked through contextual associations. They aren’t refined or complete – notes are published as half-finished thoughts that will grow and evolve over time. They’re less rigid, less performative, and less perfect than the personal websites we’re used to seeing.”
As someone who struggles with perfectionism and can get caught up in finding the right container a wild digital garden sounds like a particularly fertile project for me.
“Gardens present information in a richly linked landscape that grows slowly over time… You get to actively choose which curiosity trail to follow, rather than defaulting to the algorithmically-filtered ephemeral stream. The garden helps us move away from time-bound streams and into contextual knowledge spaces.”
This metaphorical contrast of a constantly flowing stream (like social media) versus following your own curiosity down various rabbit holes reminds me of my early days of the internet and an experience I’d like to get back to.
When I realized I wanted to reframe my artist’s log project as a digital garden (or compost heap) it was clear to me that my newsletter was more of a campfire… a space for connection.
Then I continued reading to find this,
“While gardens present the ideas of an individual, campfires are conversational spaces to exchange ideas that aren’t yet fully formed.”
Love it when a metaphor comes together.
And just when I was wondering if maybe it wasn’t all a bit frivolous and I was being distracted from the real work Appleton says,
“Naming is a political act as much as a poetic one.”
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I first heard about this concept from Morgan Harper Nichols,
“[Digital gardens] are online spaces where you can collect or share information…an organically grown collection of ideas, resources, and thoughts. It’s a place that you can create online that encourages continuous learning, exploration, and growth, much like tending to a physical garden. It’s a living ecosystem of interconnected insights where the ideas and concepts can bloom, cross-pollinate, or sometimes wither away. Unlike a static blog post or article that presents a finished thought, a digital garden’s content is often in a constant state of growth and environment.”
I was immediately intrigued. This integrates nicely with my own ideas about creative ecosystems and creative compost.
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I love colloquialisms so I just ordered the audiobook of Landmarks by Robert McFarlane based on a recommendation with these examples from Robin Sloan:
ammil a Devon term for the fine film of silver ice that coats leaves, twigs, and grass when freeze follows thaw
This is something we see a lot in the American south and I am always enchanted by!
sìth “a fairy hill or mound,” is a knoll or hillock possessing the qualities which were thought to constitute desirable real estate for fairies — being well-drained, for instance, with a distinctive rise, and crowned by green grass.
As Robin says – the roots of Darth Vader there.
smeuse a Sussex dialect noun for “the gap in the base of a hedge made by the regular passage of a small animal.”
Dying to hear how this one is said. He recommends a paper copy for the glossary, but I really want to hear how these words are pronounced.