Effective Note Taking, Reducing Emissions, and Science Fiction
Building a second brain. Composite materials in aviation. Breaking down Ted Chiang's fiction.
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The Perfect Note Taking System: Build a Second Brain
During my quest to find the best note taking method, I tried Notion, Evernote, Google Docs, and other popular tools. I was not able to stick to any of them for more than a week.
Since these tools have beautiful designs and are easy to use, I found my inconsistency surprising. Life revolves around the principle of least friction. In his #1 New York Times bestseller Atomic Habits, James Clear posits that good habits must be obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying. Notion checked each box, but I was never able to get past the dashboard page.
On the other hand, Obsidian is often described as a software with a steep learning curve. Its default interface is ascetic, not aesthetic:
And the inside of a note is similarly minimalistic:
There’s nothing obvious, attractive, easy, or satisfying about Obsidian at first glance.
However, after using Obsidian, my note taking (previously inconsistent, unproductive, and just about nonexistent) has become an integral aspect of my learning, my identity, and my life.
I believe Obsidian is so distinct from traditional tools that it merits at least a trial period. Fundamentally, it relies on Zettelkasten, or connected thought. Obsidian has a built-in hypertext function, forcing a user to revisit previous notes in new contexts. Its graph feature neatly visualizes the links between notes. Here is an example graph, with each dot representing a note and each line representing a connection….
Reducing Emissions from Aviation Using Composite Materials
Composite material is a combination of materials in both the physical and chemical aspects of properties. They have been used to replace metals for almost half a century. When they are combined, they create a material that can enhance properties such as strength, weight, and resistance to electricity. Composites may have only recently started to replace metals, but they have existed since 3400 B.C.
Carbon fibers, which are commonly used in the field of aerospace engineering, are created when fibers are heated to extreme temperatures to rearrange their atomic bonding pattern. After they are carbonized, they are further heated in a furnace with a gas mixture without the presence of oxygen to prevent burning. When heated, they lose their non-carbon atoms and some carbon atoms. The remaining carbon atoms that weren’t lost are tightly bonded as crystals in a parallel axis from the fiber. The fibers in the structure that have not bonded well are oxidized with oxygen to provide better chemical bonding.
Additionally, carbon fibers are usually combined with other materials to form a composite. The most common addition to this is plastic resin, which makes a carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) that is extremely light and strong. They are made when a carbon fiber layer is backed with fiberglass. Another commonly mentioned addition is graphite, which produces reinforced carbon-carbon composites. They are primarily used for their extremely high heat tolerance.
Carbon fibers are used in aerospace engineering and other composites are increasing fuel efficiency. Composite materials tend to have significantly less mass than metals, thereby allowing aircraft to burn less fuel and further reduce emissions. Stephen Heinz, Vice President R&I for Solvay’s Composites business unit, mentioned, “Considering the fuel burn of a plane represents more than 95% of its carbon footprint, any impact on its consumption has a big effect….”
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Ted Chiang’s Stories and the Role of Science Fiction
Ted Chiang is lauded as one of the best living science fiction writers. His work has won four Nebula awards, four Hugo awards, and six Locus awards.
Today, I will be introducing three insightful stories from his short story collections Stories of Your Life and Others (2002) and Exhalation: Stories (2019): Liking What You See: A Documentary, What’s Expected of Us, and The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling.
Liking What You See: A Documentary
The popular perception of science fiction involves aliens, warfare, and spaceships. A brief foray into Chiang’s stories dispels this notion. Liking What You See: A Documentary imagines calliagnosia, a treatment which blinds someone to beauty, through anecdotes from children with calli, pro-calli activism leaders, doctors, calli-only private school directors, and others. In just under 13,000 words, Chiang explores the ethical and societal implications of calliagnosia from all angles.
Though calliagnosia does not exist in real life, the parallels are evident. Chiang focuses on the effect of media on our psychology:
"We become dissatisfied with the way ordinary people look because they can’t compare to supermodels.”
He explores the disruptive effect of technology on real life interactions:
"The more time any of us spend with gorgeous digital apparitions around, the more our relationships with real human beings are going to suffer.
And he addresses how cultural and societal norms lag behind technological developments:
"Beauty isn't the problem; it's how some people are misusing it… [Calli] lets you guard against that. I don't know, maybe this wasn't a problem back in my parents' day. But it's something we have to deal with now."
Calli represents filters, editing, generative artificial intelligence, and other technological tools used to simulate an engaging simulacrum of reality
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Issue #12