A song from Canada you might enjoy: 🎵Goûtons du plaisir, from the album Au Coeur de l’Aube by Genticorum.
🎙️Why is everyone going to Japan?
That’s the question addressed by an episode of the Search Engine podcast.
By ’everyone’, they implicitly mean Americans, which is odd since most visitors to Japan come from China. Still, it’s a very interesting discussion.
Can you make tamagoyaki?
We have a rectangular Japanese-style omelette pan in our kitchen. These pans are called makiyakinabe (巻き焼き鍋), and they’re sometimes square rather than oblong, depending on which region they belong to. But just because we have one of these pans doesn’t mean we really know how to use it. This pan is typically used to make the Japanese rolled omelette, known as tamagoyaki, but you can also make dashimaki tamago with it, which is usually made with dashi stock, or usuyaki tamago, which is a thinner omelette, or iri-tamago, which is more like scrambled eggs.
There’s certainly a knack to making rolled omelette, Japanese-style. In Jiro Dreams of Sushi, the classic documentary film of a culinary obsession, Jiro’s apprentice, Daisuke Nakazawa, speaks of how he was required to make tamagoyaki two hundred times before Jiro pronounced it fit for serving to customers. He recalls how at last, after all this practising-to-make-perfect, Jiro called him ‘shokunin’, an accomplished artisan:
“When I finally did make a good one, I was so happy I cried. It was a long time before Jiro referred to me as a shokunin. I wanted to say, ‘You just called me a shokunin, didn’t you?’ I was so happy that I wanted to throw my fist into the air, but I tried not to let it show. That’s what you strive for after all these years."
In this famous woodblock print from around 1835, Hiroshige depicted a riverside ryōtei (traditional restaurant), the Ōgiya, which was well-known for its tamagoyaki. Founded in 1648, the business still exists as a takeaway stall near Ōji Station, run by ‘15th generation owners’.
Watch a clip of Daisuke Nakazawa describing his journey to becoming a shokunin, while cooking tamagoyaki.
And here’s a short video showing how to make dashimaki tamago.
Further reading:
The heart of the craft: an encounter with the spirit of Shokunin
I’m the author of Shu Ha Ri: The Japanese Way of Learning, available now.
What I'm writing in October 2026
The main purpose of my collection of notes, organised according to the Zettelkasten principle, is to help me complete writing projects, mainly small but sometimes large too.
I’m always jotting down thoughts and ideas to use in my ever-expanding blog empire. For example, for some time I’ve been making notes on ideas about data structures. Soon these notes will see the light of day as an article or two.
And I’m constantly working on larger projects which inch very slowly towards fruition. At the moment I’m working on a sequel of sorts to my book, Shu Ha Ri. The Japanese Way of Learning. And I’m also working on a memoir about a journey around Ireland with my father thirty years ago.
As I’ve written about, my writing process oscillates between notes and drafts, so really it’s quite hard to separate the Zettelkasten notes from the drafts. Together they constitute a miniature working environment in which I think and write. Having said that, my writing system does keep them separate. The drafts are on a one-way journey to publication of some sort, whereas the notes are modular and can be used again in different contexts.
My aim is to reconfigure networks of concepts to create new knowledge and insight.
One area where I feel there’s scope to do things differently is in my reading. At the moment I seem to be reading more material than I’m making notes on. This feels a bit like a wasted opportunity. I need to be more systematic with my process here. Perhaps I can slow down my reading pace to let my notemaking keep up. I’m not one of those people who frets if I haven’t made 300 notes about a single book. I’m content with a dozen (provided it’s the right dozen, of course). But there’s a couple of books with nothing at all noted. I must make a time to correct this.
Read more:
How to write an article from your notes.
Why not publish all your notes online?
I found a way to create order from my jumbled notes
Three worthwhile modes of note-making, and one not so worthwhile.
Apocaloptimism, is that even a word?
The AI Doc on Netflix, subtitled ‘How I became an Apocaloptimist’, was a little disappointing Wikipedia. It mainly tried to showcase ‘both sides’ of the argument about AI heralding the end of civilisation. It was interesting to see how uncomfortable everyone seemed to be when addressing existential questions about AI’s future development. But I’m not convinced the main question is whether or not we should have children – even though the interviewer, Daniel Roher, seemed to think it was.
Along the way there was quite a bit of angst about computers making people redundant both materially and spiritually. I’ve written about how fear of AI is nothing new and how the concept of Promethean shame, where we feel embarassed not to be machines, has been around for quite some time. And for the record there’s no need to feel ashamed of being yourself, though the very idea does demonstrate a deep-seated, pre-existing cultural anxiety about human vulnerability.
Among the interviewees was at least one ’effective accelerationism’ cheerleader. To say the least it whiffed strongly of regulation for thee but not for me. And it all seemed very religious, but not in a good way. Also there’s the argument, implied at least, that if we don’t destroy the world quickly with data centres then the world will be destroyed.
Seems like it’s apocalypse if you do and apocalypse if you don’t. Maybe I’m just out of touch with how to make money these days.
The graphics were good though, especially the hand painted notebook entries. But if you haven’t seen Daniel Roher’s previous documentary, Navalny, I suggest you watch it first.
That really is terrifying.
Now you can listen to Writing Slowly
As attentive readers of this website will know, I’m happily using micro.blog as the site’s hosting platform. Micro.blog has a surprisingly wide range of features and it comes with several associated mini-apps, which provide easy access to those features. One of the apps is called Wavelength, and it has just been updated. This has inspired me, finally, to actually make use of it.
Wavelength makes it easy to edit and publish voice recordings and now with Wavelength I’ve been recording my voice, reading aloud a number of the longer articles on this site. So if you navigate to one of these posts (nearly twenty of them so far) you might find there’s now a little ’listen’ button, which will enable you to hear me speaking my own written words.
Why bother doing this? Well, so far it’s been quite fun, and you might just enjoy the opportunity to hear the person behind the writing.
I feel these days it’s more important than ever to lean into our own humanity. Sure, you can get a better, more professional experience elsewhere, enabled no doubt by AI automation and by the mimicking of human experience rather than the real thing. But as I’ve pointed out before, my range is me.
There’s an increasing amount of slop online and this is one small way to show my words are handmade and originated from a real person.
I’m celebrating the human touch and trying to respect you, dear reader, as a real person too.1
You’ll be relieved to know that while I might still insist on writing slowly, I speak at a reasonable speed.
So do let me know what you think, and whether I sound like you imagined I would. And if you’d like to subscribe to the weekly e-mail digest, there’s never been a better time to do so.
Talking of which, now would also be a pretty good time to check out my book, Shu Ha RI. The Japanese Way of Learning, for Artists and Fighters.
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unless you’re actually a bot, scraping my voice to make scam adverts to send to my friends and family – in which case, my respect will be commensurately diminished. ↩︎
Some close, others open, but more and more, bookshops are becoming venues for live events, and thereby contributing to the knitting together of communities of literacy and ideas. What’s happening where you are?
Read more: Bookshops in Sydney: how’s it going?
#BookShops #Sydney
Bookshops in Sydney. How's it going?
In the house by the ocean where we’re currently staying there’s a copy of Annie Dillard’s collection of essays, For the Time Being. In the inside back cover there’s a label from the store where it was purchased: Norton Street Books in Leichhardt, Sydney. That book shop has long since closed, so long ago that I’ve never personally heard anyone mention its existence. But then this year when Berkelouw Books, also on Norton Street in Leichhardt, announced they were shutting down I realised I’ve been living in Sydney for long enough now to have experienced the closure and opening of many bookstores over the years.
A good decade before COVID, around 2010 there was a period when it felt as though there was a real culling of Sydney bookshops. This was around the time Dymocks closed several of their CBD branch stores to focus on just their flagship store on George Street. Each closure felt like the end of an era. Cumulatively it was seriously worrying. And then the turmoil grew worse.
📷 A bluebottle (Physalia utriculus), washed up on the beach.
#photography #wildlife #Australia
Faint praise for categories
Author and activist Rebecca Solnit isn’t too keen on the apparent eagerness to categorise.
“Categories too often become where thought goes to die. That is, there’s a widespread tendency to act as if once something has been categorized, no further consideration is required.” — A is for Airtight Categories
I’m not all that keen on the established categories myself. Not in my notes, anyway, and often not in my life. I’m not looking for categories. Instead, I’m usually looking for patterns.
I feel that placing an idea or concept in a category tends to close down further thought, like closing the lid on a box. In contrast, discovering a pattern tends to be just the start of consideration, of enquiry, of conversation, not the end of it.
Patterns invite a sense of wonder; categories tend to deny it. As Solnit said I her book Hope in the Dark, “the Moon is profound except when we land on it”.
Being quick to categorise can look like a neat short-cut to understanding, but it often doesn’t work out that way. Established categories can hide more than they reveal. Relying on them can be a way of fooling yourself into believing you know more than you do. One of the reasons I write slowly is to allow myself space and time to think through my ignorance — and to think things through by writing them down. Solnit says:
“We live in a time where people are more isolated then ever from the kind of private, personal engagement where you can wonder, doubt, improvise, or just admit you don’t know, and where many of us are instead more than ever in the para-public sphere of social media where you perform for an audience of casual acquaintances and strangers who may savage you if you get anything wrong or even seem weak or uncertain or uncommitted.”
Well, I feel being uncertain or uncommitted isn’t necessarily a sign of weakness, and writing slowly isn’t necessarily a sign of laziness. Look where certain, committed and fast has got us in recent times.
And admitting that you don’t know, far from being a sign of ignorance, is often a hallmark of expertise. That’s the paradox of mastery. It’s why the expert must remain a beginner.
One kind of category I do have time for is the category that no one has thought of yet. Creating new categories of thought is how the world is re-made. It’s curious that those who are the keenest on categories tend to be the least receptive to the idea that we just made them up.
“The stars we are given. The constellations we make. That is to say, stars exist in the cosmos, but constellations are the imaginary lines we draw between them, the readings we give the sky, the stories we tell.” ― Rebecca Solnit, Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics.
Further reading:
- Improve your notes and your life with two-word phrases.
- Does the Zettelkasten have a top and a bottom?
- Even the index is just another note.
- Top level categories in my notes.
- When it comes to writing notes, how much mess is just enough?
