There's a sort of ongoing tension between two different methods of spinning out source notes into atomic notes in @obsdmd and today as I was reading about Civil War era sabre charges and came across a perfect example of why I use the less-common method.

I don't take many notes about history after 1800, but I have a few friends who enjoy sabre fencing so I clicked through when I saw "Did the sabres from the American Civil War actually ever get used as weapons at all?" being asked over at my favorite subreddit, @askhistorians 

Here's a link, btw: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/tm0i07/did_the_sabres_from_the_american_civil_war/

I was most of the way through reading the answer when the follow-up comment at the end — "the psychological effect of a charge frequently was more significant than actual casualties inflicted." — tickled a memory.



Sure enough, when I searched my notes ("didn't I write something down about cavalry charges recently?" ) I found the note "cavalry charges are designed to break enemy morale," which I learned from a different @askhistorians answer, about Cortés' invasion

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/qjv0j1/historians_rightly_point_out_that_cort%C3%A9s_invasion 

Here's what my source note looks like. Note the "1" after the header "cavalry charges are designed to break enemy morale" (which is my paraphrase of the quote) — it's from the block reference count plugin, and means I've linked to that header once.

Many people refactor source notes by moving the quote into a new note and linking to it, or even embedding it. I prefer to embed the quote from the source into the new atomic note. 

This has downsides: searching for the text I want brings up the source, not the atomic note.

I don't mind getting the original source, though — it feels more accurate, and the header is usually handy. 

More importantly, the upside of my method is when I find new evidence of a claim (like I did today), I can add it directly to the atomic note. Synthesis becomes easy.

If I had to store the actual quotes in my atomic note, I feel that it would be less useful. But I also don't want to rely exclusively on my paraphrases: I not only have deep-seated fears of link rot, I often use unreliable wifi. I want the quotes available.

In a source note ;) 

why I use QuickAdd to refactor backwards

1/ Most of us find software 1 of 3 ways — word of mouth, advertisements, or an active search.

With word of mouth, we'll often hear about some super cool useful thing somebody did to utilize software in an amazing way. The friend who introduced me to Obsidian led with

2/ "people are using git to version control their novels!"

I had no idea what git was, but it sounded really cool! 

My friend explained: "It makes it so easy to explore different branches of how a story could turn out, and then roll back if it doesn't work out."

Sounds useful!

3/ Anyway, I poked around the forums some, downloaded Obsidian and tried to figure it out, but couldn't quite make heads or tails of how to use it for worldbuilding notes and writing, which is what I was looking to do. 

I shrugged and went back to Scrivener & focused on writing.

4/ Software like Obsidian or Mediawiki or Scrivener or VS Code or whatever can be overwhelming at first, even when there isn't much of a learning curve. 

Since I'm almost always trying to do something weird that the software is intended for... there's always a learning curve 😭

5/ Originally, I didn't much to organize my research. Then I started a newsletter to help track the most important stuff I dug into each week. 

It felt weird to be using email for my note retrieval, but whatever, it worked. Here's an example of how: https://newsletter.eleanorkonik.com/lactating-egglayers/

6/ What didn't work was the Scrivener beta. 

At the time, the Scrivener Windows beta was ages behind its projected launch date. Plus, I had to go through the reinstallation process every couple of weeks — it felt like I was reinstalling Scrivener every time I sat down to write. 

7/ Every time I sat down to write using the Scrivener beta, I got distracted during the loading screen. I couldn't really revert, though, at least not easily. 

Eventually I couldn't take it anymore and started looking seriously elsewhere. 

8/ I had lifetime access to Novlr, I tried out some other cloud-based word processors, but none ever really felt right. The interfaces always felt limited compared to what I was used to and I couldn't opt out of updates I didn't like.

I found myself looking at Obsidian again.

9/ My problem wasn't so much that the Obsidian was complicated as the fact that I was coming in sideways; most of the people in my circles were using paid, cloud based worldbuilding software like LegendKeeper or Campfire or WorldAnvil. 

10/ The only decent free locally-hosted options were wiki-based, and after struggling with Mediawiki's limitations (and plugin documentation, and weird build dependencies) I knew that wasn't what I wanted either.

11/ But every now and then I'd get frustrated with something with the product I was using — not being able to access my notes when I had crappy wifi at the gym, weird footnotes, struggling to export my data — and find myself looking at Obsidian again.

12/ Eventually I wound up in Discord, asking questions about what was possible, and just dove in and "went for it." 

It wasn't perfect, but with the plugin ecosystem, at least there was hope I could eventually get the functionality I wanted.

13/ Most importantly, once I started messing around with it, Obsidian actually did make sense to me. 

I had been using a markdown-based word processor called WriteMonkey2 for close to a decade, and Obsidian worked perfectly with it. 

14/ I liked being able to keep my metadata in plain text, instead of having to use a GUI interface and complicated stuff in the file menu to render the views I wanted. I liked how easy it was to connect edit letters to the relevant files. 

15/ I also liked that Obsidian didn't do anything weird behind the scenes in my file system — no complicated series of folders creating databases I didn't understand.

16/ I asked a bunch of questions. When I saw people asking questions I had seen others answer, I tried to help out. After a month or so, the devs asked me to be a moderator. 

Now here I am, trying to give back to the community that gave me so much.

& writing, ofc. 😉

Why I chose Obsidian as my Worldbuilding app

I mostly don't go down the "motivational quotes" path, but there's one that has had a huge impact on my ability to Get Things Started. 

It's simple, and it's not 100% accurate, but using it as a mantra is responsible for more of my habit-formation successes than anything else.

I forget the exact phrasing of how I first saw it, but the phrase "don't make the mistake of thinking that tomorrow you will be a different person than you are today" is the one thing that cuts through my natural procrastination urges and get me moving on self-improvement goals.

I say it's not 100% accurate because there's evidence (ironically I can't find where I read it, take that collector's fallacy, I should have saved it) that starting a new habit is easier if you do it at a moment of major life change, like starting a new job or having a kid.

In my case, my kid starting half-day daycare was a disruptive change (the "good" kind of "disrupt") that made for a good time to try to build new habits.

But those kinds of opportunities to trick your brain don't come along often, so in the meantime, I rely on my mantra:

"Don't make the mistake of thinking that tomorrow you will be a different person than you are today" means that when I think to myself "ugh I should start stretching more often" I have created a little trigger in my brain that means my NEXT IMMEDIATE THOUGHT is always...

...if I think I should start doing something impt, that I want to become a new habit, tomorrow — why not start now? 

Why not stretch immediately? Why not fit in some gym time tonight?

I don't mean one-off tasks; I'd never finish anything if I tried to do everything. But habits?

I went to the gym last night and did half an hour on the treadmill and some stretches. I got out of the habit of going to the gym because of the pandemic and some postpartum health problems, but there's no better time than now to start fitting that into my schedule.

Because if I don't think it's important enough to fit it in RIGHT NOW, when I actually have the idea, when it feels fresh and new and exciting, when will I ever?

Obviously sometimes immediacy isn't feasible (like literally right now I can't, because in 10min I need to feed my kid), but taking a concrete step towards bringing the idea into reality is always helpful for me. Once I start something, I usually don't have problems finishing.

Some people are really good at forming habits. I'm not. Even something as simple as brushing my teeth at night is something that I can very easily convince myself "isn't important" because my brain is good at optimizing ROI and weaseling out of things I don't NEED to do.

The tricks my brain plays are mostly beneficial to me; I am very efficient, I don't waste time on low-reward activities, and I constantly re-evaluate things which lets me avoid the 5-monkeys-experiment problem: https://intersol.ca/news/organizational-culture-and-the-5-monkeys-experiment/

But the downside of decisive critical thinking about everything is that it's very hard for me to turn my brain off and let good habits go on autopilot. 

I know a lot of people who eat essentially the same meals every day,  who do their chores like clockwork, etc.

That's not me.

I need mental tricks to be productive, and one of the tricks I learned during therapy in my 20s after a major depressive episode (I'm ok now!) was how to break dangerous thought-cycles and replace them with useful self-talk. 

I will not be a different person tomorrow.

Don't Punt

There was a discussion this morning about the pros/cons of using @obsdmd themes that make frequent breaking changes. I'm considered a power-user of Sanctum, which "moves fast and breaks things," and I wanted to take a moment & share why to me that's a feature, not a drawback.

Obsidian core is very stable. 

But, personally, I expect to spend a couple of minutes every day working around something that doesn't quite work the way I expected it to. I beta test a lot of things for people. Bug-hunting is like a video game to me.

https://eleanorkonik.com/obsidian-replaced-games-now-prolific/

I don't have as many active plugins as someone like @brimwats but I do have 48 plugins installed, and I know full well and good they have bugs, because all software has bugs but complex hobby software provided for free by one developer is statistically more likely to have bugs.

Sometimes Fantasy Calendar's date doesn't iterate correctly, despite the dev's best efforts — and I'm definitely using Fantasy Calendar for things it wasn't intended for. The Pandoc plugin breaks if I have any spaces in my file path, which took me awhile to figure out.

The Primary theme is beautiful but doesn't have support yet for data-task attributes, which I use extensively in my notes — because I am an early adopter. Sometimes, part of being an early adopter is sacrificing backwards compatibility.

And sometimes being an early adopter means taking risks. 

As an @obsdmd moderator, when I have time, I test alpha builds so that Insiders are more likely to have a positive beta testing experience. 

This occasionally blows up in my face and costs me time, but I don't mind.

Earlier this week, I performed an incredibly dangerous sync maneuver that corrupted my own vault — to see what would happen and have a better report for Licat. I had backups in triplicate, but the point here is that I am willing to do risky things & then take the time to fix it.

I don't use Sanctum because I expect it to be relaxing in the sense that it's "stable," I use Sanctum because it is relaxing in the sense that I don't have to fix my own problems — the developer is responsive, which means iterating quickly, and sometimes that breaks things.

There is serenity in knowing that your feedback will be listened to. It's not really the features that have me all-in on @readwiseio — it's that @deadly_onion responds to every single piece of feedback I give him about the Reader app.

He doesn't always agree, but he listens :P

I know a lot of people really want access to Reader, because Reader is great. But one of the reasons it's still in a closed beta is because they are iterating fast and breaking things in some moderately disruptive ways still.

For people who depend on their software to "just work," breaking changes are catastrophically disruptive. 

I am weird in that I get an incredible sense of relaxation from using software where the dev will listen to me, because it means I rarely have to learn to fix it myself.

I'm comfortable waiting and working around broken things because I would rather sit in a kitchen and work while contractors are building out custom cabinets than be stuck in a quiet kitchen where the cabinet doors are broken & I do not have time to fix them — THAT is stressful.

PS: My cousin came over & fixed my cabinet doors last week. He crossed a ton of really dumb little things off my to-do list & I almost wept with gratitude. The fact that I am physically capable of spackling screwholes and adding silicon caulk to a pipe fitting is not the point.

In some ways, what software to use is a question of what you find relaxing and enjoyable. I would rather use Obsidian than more "stable" software that I can't trust to get fixed, but that's not a choice everyone makes.

Enterprise uses OneNote for a reason, yanno? Sanctum let me deprecate my theme, Palatinate, because its dev was the fist person to implement all the features I care about. That's priceless to me.

If sometimes I have to be like "heyyyyy I needed that" when there's a feature update I wasn't expecting, or I need to swap in my own preferred fonts because I have a slightly different aesthetic preference — that's still better than having to update Palatinate for Live Preview.

The tl;dr here is that I will always use occasionally janky software with a response dev I like over stable software that doesn't do literally everything I could ever want, that's like, who I am as a person. 

It's foundational to why I use @obsdmd instead of MediaWiki.

I 💚responsively developed software with nice devs

I've always been interested in political leaders who gain their legitimacy through justice instead of war, especially in Semitic cultures. There are tantalizing clues, but focused resources on the topic have been surprisingly hard to find.

There are a some hints in fiction tho.

Westerns always made local judges out to be really powerful, even more powerful than federal marshals, perhaps because the lawlessness of the American was always critical to the plotlines of those stories.

Judges in the American west "rode circuit" (think "circuit court"), going from town to town. Many towns were too small to justify a permanent presence but too large to just ignore. 

Some modern protestant ministers sometimes do something similar, giving 3+ churches a day!

The (fantastic!) Devil's West series by @LAGilman riffs off of this -- the protagonist takes a turn at riding circuit in her capacity as the Devil's Left Hand (the Devil rules the Territory) and it was a really delightful.

There's something amazing about a fictional character who is respected because she can fairly settle disputes, not because she can kill dangerous beasties or cleverly win wars. 

The Chronicles of Valdemar did a nice job with this, too. 

But it's not a totally unique phenomenon!

Books like Jacequiline Carey's Kushiel's Legacy series look at the alternate method of settling disputes for disparate groups that need an outside arbiter; saving up disputes for a big community gathering, a la the Germanic Althing.

But what I really want to see are ore examples like Andamana of the Canary Islands, who gained enormous respect for her legal insight, and when the ruling class started threatening her, only then hooked up with a local war leader to overthrow them. 

https://eleanorkonik.com/female-judges-deborah-andamana/

I want to learn more about the legacy of the Punic shofetim (sufetes / Judges in the Biblical sense) that isn't just "oh they were Roman magistrates, moving on now." I want to understand why they apparently became more popular in the Punic world AFTER the fall of Carthage.

Carthage absolutely fascinates me, but I'm endlessly frustrated by my ability to learn more about it :(

It's not like "person who makes legal decisions" is unique to Semitic culture, tho. I'm pretty sure it was pretty common for groups who eventually became cattle herders to have a hereditary leader whose job was half judicial and half ceremonial.

Hanging out with #obsidianmd & @the_ubergroup has really showed me that having someone whose is respected enough to be able to settle disagreements is CRITICAL for community building. 

Whatever else polities & societies are, they're also communities in really important ways.