When I ask artist and lecturer Linn Phyllis Seeger about how microblogging might benefit art created today, she tells me “it’s really a question of how to carve out alternative aesthetics and posting practices through formats and platforms that have not been commodified yet”. — Is microblogging the next big art movement? | Plastered
The swamp and the swamp monster: On seeing like a data structure
As human knowledge fragments into trillions of data-points hidden in unreadable databases, there’s a sense of something — legibility, coherence, correlation — dissolving or liquefying. In a very interesting article, [Fear of oozification], the consultant Venkatesh Rao, clarifies this process by naming it, and he charts a path to help us learn “how to stop worrying, and learn to love the ooze”.
Oozification? What are you talking about? Well, here’s Venkatash’s working definition:
“Oozification is the process of recursively replacing systems based on numerous larger building blocks, governed by many rules, with ones based on fewer, smaller building blocks, governed by fewer rules, thereby increasing the number of evolutionary possibilities and lowering the number of evolutionary certainties.”
Oozification is an evocative but perhaps clumsy term. If you don’t like it, you can look at it another way: the triumph of data abstraction and indirection. The authors of another worthwhile article, ‘[Seeing like a data structure]’, offer a clear, practical illustration of the process:
The Destiny of Your Notes Depends on Their Data Model
It feels a little overwhelming to observe the sheer number of note-making apps that promise to “revolutionize your thinking” or something similarly impressive.
I came across a website called the [Markdown Handbook], which lists about forty markdown editors and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
If you’ve felt it’s too much, you’re not alone. Most of these tools offer endless variations of the same features, minor tweaks disguised as major innovations. We have an abundance of options, yet precious little genuine progress.
And with AI ‘vibe-coding’ the field is expanding beyond all comprehension. Everyone can build their own writing app now and some of them look pretty good too. Joan Westenberg’s app [Kerouac] is just one example of how good the results can be.
Recently I read Matt Brown’s essay “[Your Data Model is Your Destiny],” which explores how software companies are shaped by their fundamental data structures. Now he’s an ‘early-stage investor’, writing for a tech start-up audience, but I got it into my head that his principle very much applies to note-making too. Even for something as simple as making notes, the underlying data model, the way your knowledge is stored and connected, determines a tool’s power and longevity.
“do not research simply to decorate your writing with impressive names and references. Research should extend your thinking, not replace it.” — Alexis McElroy, The Muse & The Melody, How to Turn Your Thoughts Into Something Worth Reading. Substack
nvALT is back from the dead?
Surprising news that Brett Terpstra has resurrected the venerable note making app nvALT. Yes indeed, nvALT is back from the dead.
True, we’ve been waiting what seems like centuries for the long-promised, upgraded and massively improved version, nvULTRA to appear, but since it isn’t yet available, at least now there’s an interim solution, a revamped nvALT.
I expect almost everyone who might need a simple note-making app that plays nicely with Markdown files has already long since moved on to other options, such as any one of many text editors, or MarkEdit on the Mac, or nvENVY, or The Archive or Zettlr, or Obsidian or Bear — or you name it.
Still, it’s nice to see nvALT, the (almost) original and (possibly) the best, back in action. Maybe it’ll also encourage a few people to check out Brett Terpstra’s app Marked3, which for anyone working with Markdown files is rather useful. It’s billed as a ‘Markdown preview’ app but it does a whole lot more than that, including things I didn’t know were possible1. And I can confirm that the latest release of nvALT works well with Marked’s ‘streaming preview’ feature.
A while ago, Christian of zettelkasten.de produced a handy guide for using nvALt as a Zettel note archive, though the specialised Zettelkasten apps, The Archive and Zettlr add features that some fans of this approach to making notes may well find indispensable. But since life is complicated enough as it is, I’m an advocate of using the simplest tools you can get away with for A minimal approach to writing notes, and nvALT is useful, fast and simple.
And talking of simplicity and of the (almost) original, the real OG, the venerable Notational Velocity, has been receiving updates recently too, after a long dormancy. It seems to have come back to life with a new release after a remarkable fifteen year gap.
Interesting that these note-making apps still seem useful and relevant after all these years. And hold onto your hat: for the long-awaited nvUltra release, apparently Brett is ‘shooting for 2026 still’.
Now read:
- Enhanced markdown apps you can use for free to make effective notes.
- So many note-taking apps in the app graveyard - but not all are zombies.
- A minimal approach to writing notes.
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Just now I discovered Marked3 will verify your hyperlinks for you and can even do so automatically. ↩︎
I really like writing while on a train journey, and this article about a crazy train trip project in Japan is inspiring. Japan Today.
#WritingLife #Japan #productivity
💬 “I still think the real revolution is to make the world safe for poetry, meandering, for the frail and vulnerable, the rare and obscure, the impractical and local and small.” – Rebecca Solnit
Via Bradley Andrews
💬 “Cut anything into tiny pieces and it all becomes a mass of confusion.” — Seneca, Epistulae Morales, 89.3. Cited by Michel de Montagne in ‘On Experience’ in The Essays: A Selection. Trans. M.A. Screech. London: Penguin Books, 2004. 3.13, 366.
This is true, potentially, of writing notes. It’s too easy to produce fragmentary knowledge.
The solution? Link your notes and create hub or structure notes (there is a difference — see Bob Doto’s post for details) that cluster separate ideas together and lead in useful directions.
📷 In Brittany, France, there’s an area they call ‘La Côte du Granit Rose’ – the Pink Granite Coast. I was happy to find a corner of the New South Wales coast that’s really quite like it.
Birubi Point at Anna Bay, NSW.
📷 I’ve taken a few days out to walk the coast. It was… well, you can see for yourself what it was. This might explain why my writing here has been even slower than usual. But now I’m back, and normal service will resume shortly.
