Memory
From the head of Jove
Ise Shrines, Nagoya, 685–Present
Amassing the archive
What were you trying to protect?
Retained as a quality
The significance of love's burden
Mental infrastructure
Memory prompts
To serve as a reminder
The bloodless ghosts of memory
Can you even call it memory?
In our bodies
Memory & Fantasy
I can't remember
Refuges
The odor of raisins
To fill in the gaps
Homes at Night
The brag document
An Article by Julia EvansIt’s frustrating to have done something really important and later realize that you didn’t get rewarded for it just because the people making the decision didn’t understand or remember what you did.
The tactic is pretty simple! Instead of trying to remember everything you did with your brain, maintain a “brag document” that lists everything so you can refer to it when you get to performance review season!
The primacy of interpretation over sensation
A Fragment by Mark LibermanOur memory of exact word sequences usually fades more quickly than our memory of (contextually interpreted) meanings.
More broadly, the exact auditory sensations normally fade very quickly; the corresponding word sequences fade a bit more slowly; and the interpreted meanings last longest.
These generalizations can be overcome to some extent if the sound or the text has especially memorable characteristics. (And the question of what "memorable" means in this context is interesting.)
On Memory Palaces & Visual Computation
An Essay by Taulant SulkoI now use Are.na as a Memory Palace, separating my channels into rooms. For example, I have a channel that I call the Computation Room. It’s pretty generic and includes any type of block that relates to computation.
If I notice a pattern in the computation room I create a more specific channel in that room. I think of that more specific topic as an object within the room.
Then there are the adjacent topics that I often find even more exciting to focus on. For those, I choose a name that corresponds with the nature of a room and also its size. For example I have a channel called the Visual Computing Observatory. In my head I am imagining an actual observatory where I am looking and observing and studying a given topic.
The Method of Loci
An ArticleFrom the time we learn to walk, we start building up spatial memories—recollections of the layouts of physical spaces and their relationships to the objects in them. These memories tend to form fast and stick around for a long time.
The method of loci hijacks our innate aptitude for remembering physical spaces, using it to help us remember other kinds of information with greater ease.
Derrière les fagots
A DefinitionA fagot is a bundle of branches tied with a string. They used to be kept in a corner of a barn or shed, and people used to hide things (wine, valuables, etc) behind them often for a long time, and forget about them. It is a way of saying that [a thing] is very good, but has been forgotten for a long time and recently re-discovered.
Nototo
An ApplicationThe visual workspace for notes. Humans have incredible visual-spatial memory. Leverage that with Nototo.
Art is memory's mise-en-scène
A QuoteRe-learning to learn
An Article by Erica Heinz- Pause at the end of each chapter and try to recall it (Recall)
- Highlight relevant passages for later comparative reading
- Analyze the book once I’m finished
- Explain it to unfamiliar audiences (The Feynman technique)
- Review topics I care about at regular intervals (Space repetition)
Walking through doorways causes forgetting
A Research PaperEntering or exiting through a doorway serves as an ‘event boundary’ in the mind, which separates episodes of activity and files them away. Recalling the decision or activity that was made in a different room is difficult because it has been compartmentalized.
That the mind may not be taxed
A Quote by Thomas FarnabyIn order that the mind may not be taxed, moreover, by the manifold and confused reading of so many such things, and in order to prevent the escape of something valuable that we have read, heard, or discovered through the process of thinking itself, it will be found very useful to entrust to notebooks...those things which seem noteworthy and striking.
The Lorax
Deep in the Grickle-grass
And deep in the Grickle-grass, some people say,
if you look deep enough you can still see, today,
where the Lorax once stood
just as long as it could
before somebody lifted the Lorax away.I speak for the trees!
This thing is a Thneed
"Look, Lorax," I said. "There's no cause for alarm.
I chopped just one tree. I am doing no harm.
I'm being quite useful. This thing is a Thneed.
A Thneed's a Fine-Something-That-All-People-Need!
It’s a shirt. It's a sock. It's a glove. It's a hat.
But it has other uses. Yes, far beyond that.
You can use it for carpets. For pillows! For sheets!
Or curtains! Or covers for bicycle seats!"The Lorax said, "Sir! You are crazy with greed.
There is no one on earth who would buy that fool Thneed!"Biggering
I meant no harm. I most truly did not.
But I had to grow bigger. So bigger I got.
I biggered my factory. I biggered my roads.
I biggered my wagons. I biggered the loads
of the Thneed’s I shipped out. I was shipping them forth
to the South! To the East! To the West! To the North!
I went right on biggering...selling more Thneed’s.
And I biggered my money, which everyone needs.The last of them all
And at that very moment, we heard a loud whack!
From outside in the fields came a sickening smack
of an axe on a tree. Then we heard the tree fall.
The very last Truffula Tree of them all.UNLESS
The Lorax said nothing. Just gave me a glance.
Just gave me a very sad, sad backward glance,
as he lifted himself by the seat of his pants.
And I'll never forget the grim look on his face
when he hoisted himself and took leave of this place,
through a hole in the smog, without leaving a trace.
And all that the Lorax left here in this mess
was a small pile of rocks, with one word...
UNLESS.The word of the Lorax
But now, says the Once-ler, Now that you're here,
the word of the Lorax seems perfectly clear.
UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better.
It's not.