Unusual
Em Dashes, Reading Workflows, and The AI Conversation
This morning I stumbled upon a music track that made me stop and listen. “Un Baile con Horacio” by Jordi Forniés. It’s such a beautiful song. I am very curious about how at times the the melody morphs into a waltz that has a very singular ‘nostalgia’ element.
Ok, let’s jump right into my previous week.
On Personal Projects
I wrote about my latest class on journaling. Last year—when I discovered Skillshare—I made a list of topics that I considered to be good for creating some classes. Journaling was at the very top because it’s such a personal thing to me. I knew that I was doing things differently but when I actually started deconstructing my method, trying to analyze the process and the reasoning behind it all… I realized that there was so much more in there than I had anticipated. It took me about 5 months from the moment I started writing the outline to the moment I hit publish. It’s still too early to know if by sharing this I’m actually helping anyone, but I certainly hope so. Regardless, I’m so happy to be done with this project.
I’m planning an article sharing some my favorite shortcuts that I use in Bear. It should be out in a week or two. These past few days I’ve been updating and simplifying everything so that it’s easier to understand by others. I have to say that while I’m most interested in art, inspiration, and the creative process, I see all of these can be enormously enriched by having a deeper understanding of the whole process of consuming, learning, integrating, and managing knowledge and ideas. That is why I’m so interested in making the best of annotating tools and sharing about this.
On Writing and Reading
This past week I found about em dashes. I may be excused since I'm not a native English speaker, but I was shocked to discover that the longer dash character that I've seen in keyboards all my life has a purpose in writing. Actually, it turns out there's not one specific purpose but a lot of versatile—and somewhat confusing—ways to use it .
While researching about the em dash character and its correct usage I discovered THIS incredible resource on how to write dialogue. This year I’m trying to write more fiction, just as a creative exercise. Finding this article was both exciting but also a bit overwhelming.
I have been trying to figure out a better way to integrate my reading, highlighting, and resurfacing of ideas together with Readwise. Specifically, I've been trying to come up with ways to use highlight-specific tagging. While researching about this I found a Tim Ferriss' podcast episode where he talks with Maria Popova about her reading and writing workflows. It's an episode from back in 2014, but I think the ideas and methods discussed are still very relevant and inspiring. One of them, for example, is the concept of an Index of Ideas. It’s exciting for me trying to translate all of this into a digital workflow.
On Apps & Technology
This past week I listened Rick Rubin's conversation with Tim Ferriss. At some point the conversation shifted towards AI and what it means for artists and creatives. If you are in this group of people I highly suggest you go ahead and have a listen. Rick Rubin talks about how art is much more about a way of being, perceiving, and seeing the world than it is about any end result. Things like these can't be replaced by AI.
For some months I've been transcribing old written journals into digital. For this I've been using dictation software. Otter.ai seems to be leading in this department, but it's only for English language. Happy Scribe offers different languages and is good, but I personally preferred something that was a one payment only. In the end I settled on Just Press Record App which uses Siri's dictation with acceptable results but not near as good as Otter.ai or Happy Scribe. Well, a couple of days ago I found Buzz which is free and is built around AI (OpenAI's Whisper). It supports multiple languages and the results are incredible. Really. If you need dictation software you need to try this out, it's crazy good.
Things 3 just came out with an update for all the functionality they provide with Shortcuts. If you use this app I suggest that you check THIS ARTICLE if you haven't already. It changed everything about how I built my task management system. My usage of shortcuts with Things is somewhat basic, and I'm okay with that, but I guess it's good to have more options just in case.
On Cinema
We’re All Going to the World’s Fair. This is a special one. If you are okay with slow movies that may get a bit uncomfortable—on a psychological level—then watch this. I think this film and its topics are very related to this digital age we are living in. I give it extra points for portraying it all from a somewhat unusual perspective. It can be insightful in a lot of ways, and I don’t think it’s so much about horror as it’s about reality.
We’re All Going to the World’s Fair made me think of another film I love, by the way: All About Lily Chou-Chou. Watch it if you ever get the chance.
Cici. I was very surprised by this film that seems to have little recognition. One of the reasons I watched it was because I generally like the concept of a film within a film, which I knew this one had. However, after a few minutes I was totally invested into the film as a whole. It’s not perfect—by any means—but I still stink it was good.
Oscar nominees are out. While I don’t take these awards as seriously as I once did, I was glad to see some films that I loved from last year listed in there. I highly recommend any of the following: Triangle of Sadness, Tár, The Banshees of Inisherin, Aftersun, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Fire of Love, and Bardo.
There’s some more films in there I’ve been waiting for the opportunity to watch and you’ll most likely hear me talk about this some more in the future :)
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