Skip to content
By using Twitter’s services you agree to our Cookies Use. We and our partners operate globally and use cookies, including for analytics, personalisation, and ads.

This is the legacy version of twitter.com. We will be shutting it down on June 1, 2020. Please switch to a supported browser, or disable the extension which masks your browser. You can see a list of supported browsers in our Help Center.

  • Home Home Home, current page.
  • About

Saved searches

  • Remove
  • In this conversation
    Verified accountProtected Tweets @
Suggested users
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @
  • Language: English
    • Bahasa Indonesia
    • Bahasa Melayu
    • Català
    • Čeština
    • Dansk
    • Deutsch
    • English UK
    • Español
    • Filipino
    • Français
    • Hrvatski
    • Italiano
    • Magyar
    • Nederlands
    • Norsk
    • Polski
    • Português
    • Română
    • Slovenčina
    • Suomi
    • Svenska
    • Tiếng Việt
    • Türkçe
    • Ελληνικά
    • Български език
    • Русский
    • Српски
    • Українська мова
    • עִבְרִית
    • العربية
    • فارسی
    • मराठी
    • हिन्दी
    • বাংলা
    • ગુજરાતી
    • தமிழ்
    • ಕನ್ನಡ
    • ภาษาไทย
    • 한국어
    • 日本語
    • 简体中文
    • 繁體中文
  • Have an account? Log in
    Have an account?
    · Forgot password?

    New to Twitter?
    Sign up
vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

This is my conversational account. For my work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

Tweets

  • © 2020 Twitter
  • About
  • Help Center
  • Terms
  • Privacy policy
  • Imprint
  • Cookies
  • Ads info
Dismiss
Previous
Next

Go to a person's profile

Saved searches

  • Remove
  • In this conversation
    Verified accountProtected Tweets @
Suggested users
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @

Promote this Tweet

Block

  • Tweet with a location

    You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more

    Your lists

    Create a new list


    Under 100 characters, optional

    Privacy

    Copy link to Tweet

    Embed this Tweet

    Embed this Video

    Add this Tweet to your website by copying the code below. Learn more

    Add this video to your website by copying the code below. Learn more

    Hmm, there was a problem reaching the server.

    By embedding Twitter content in your website or app, you are agreeing to the Twitter Developer Agreement and Developer Policy.

    Preview

    Why you're seeing this ad

    Log in to Twitter

    · Forgot password?
    Don't have an account? Sign up »

    Sign up for Twitter

    Not on Twitter? Sign up, tune into the things you care about, and get updates as they happen.

    Sign up
    Have an account? Log in »

    Two-way (sending and receiving) short codes:

    Country Code For customers of
    United States 40404 (any)
    Canada 21212 (any)
    United Kingdom 86444 Vodafone, Orange, 3, O2
    Brazil 40404 Nextel, TIM
    Haiti 40404 Digicel, Voila
    Ireland 51210 Vodafone, O2
    India 53000 Bharti Airtel, Videocon, Reliance
    Indonesia 89887 AXIS, 3, Telkomsel, Indosat, XL Axiata
    Italy 4880804 Wind
    3424486444 Vodafone
    » See SMS short codes for other countries

    Confirmation

     

    Welcome home!

    This timeline is where you’ll spend most of your time, getting instant updates about what matters to you.

    Tweets not working for you?

    Hover over the profile pic and click the Following button to unfollow any account.

    Say a lot with a little

    When you see a Tweet you love, tap the heart — it lets the person who wrote it know you shared the love.

    Spread the word

    The fastest way to share someone else’s Tweet with your followers is with a Retweet. Tap the icon to send it instantly.

    Join the conversation

    Add your thoughts about any Tweet with a Reply. Find a topic you’re passionate about, and jump right in.

    Learn the latest

    Get instant insight into what people are talking about now.

    Get more of what you love

    Follow more accounts to get instant updates about topics you care about.

    Find what's happening

    See the latest conversations about any topic instantly.

    Never miss a Moment

    Catch up instantly on the best stories happening as they unfold.

    Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 26 Nov 2019
    • Report Tweet
    • Report NetzDG Violation

    Venkatesh Rao Retweeted kees

    Ok starting to kick the tires on @RoamResearch ... this is going to be my starting point.https://twitter.com/adam_keesling/status/1196864450520727552 …

    Venkatesh Rao added,

    kees @adam_keesling
    If you want to try yourself, here's the link: https://roamresearch.com/  Demos / articles: https://roamresearch.com/#/v8/help/page/1wnq-ZAAN … Other resources that were helpful for the understanding what makes good notes: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NfdHG6oHBJ8Qxc26s/the-zettelkasten-method-1 … https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/T382CLwAjsy3fmecf/how-to-take-smart-notes-ahrens-2017 …
    Show this thread
    10:16 AM - 26 Nov 2019
    • 10 Retweets
    • 189 Likes
    • Egemen Şentin Glued2TheScreen +mastodon.social/@GluedToTheScreen Sten Tamkivi human boy 💎 Phil Nunnally 🎧 Vishrut Patel Benop JC Michael Marek
    6 replies 10 retweets 189 likes
      1. New conversation
      2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 26 Nov 2019
        • Report Tweet
        • Report NetzDG Violation

        So it's like workflowy but with transclusion links? I like the premise so far. I've used workflowy half-assedly for years and this zettlekasten thing sounds similar to how I do index cards though way too disciplined.

        3 replies 0 retweets 24 likes
        Show this thread
      3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 26 Nov 2019
        • Report Tweet
        • Report NetzDG Violation

        Not sure I like bulleted lists as the first class citizen. My basic unit is the paragraph and I don't think in lists well. We'll see. There's a soft line break within a bullet point, but no way to just have an unbulleted prose chunk as a page it seems.

        4 replies 0 retweets 37 likes
        Show this thread
      4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 26 Nov 2019
        • Report Tweet
        • Report NetzDG Violation

        What's with this Daily Note thing... is it a soft prompt to create a journal-like log as a throughline for non-chronological notes? Slightly unclear on how this is not a wiki.

        5 replies 0 retweets 26 likes
        Show this thread
      5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 26 Nov 2019
        • Report Tweet
        • Report NetzDG Violation

        My first expt is to try and bring notes from Scrivener for my book project over. I have a folder called "nuggets" that I'm porting manually. Copying smaller fragments to roam and moving larger chunks to a different Scrivener folder. Roam is clearly not for composing long texts.

        2 replies 0 retweets 18 likes
        Show this thread
      6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 26 Nov 2019
        • Report Tweet
        • Report NetzDG Violation

        Wtf is a cose layout?

        2 replies 0 retweets 9 likes
        Show this thread
      7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 26 Nov 2019
        • Report Tweet
        • Report NetzDG Violation

        This thing needs Hebbian synapses. I'm creating a big pile of chaos here, in large part because most of the organization is latent, in rhymes and associations that don't have strong overlap in vocabulary. Still unlinked-mentions is a sort of ersatz Hebbian synapse mechanism

        4 replies 0 retweets 28 likes
        Show this thread
      8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 26 Nov 2019
        • Report Tweet
        • Report NetzDG Violation

        Ok I have my first feature request... email-based page creation. And some way to capture tweets and tweet threads in 1 step as pages.

        1 reply 0 retweets 38 likes
        Show this thread
      9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 26 Nov 2019
        • Report Tweet
        • Report NetzDG Violation

        My dangerous working theory is that if I dump all my unintegrated fragmentary thoughts, discovery notes, and links for book project into Roam, when I work on the chapters of the book, I can search this set of notes or wander the graph to collect up what I need for JIT compilation

        2 replies 1 retweet 40 likes
        Show this thread
      10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 26 Nov 2019
        • Report Tweet
        • Report NetzDG Violation

        So I can confirm one thing: the tool does encourage you to frictionlessly capture latent connections explicitly. I'm not seeing "new" connections as such, but finding it much easier to capture ones I've already seen cleanly.

        1 reply 0 retweets 32 likes
        Show this thread
      11. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 26 Nov 2019
        • Report Tweet
        • Report NetzDG Violation

        Another thing it is forcing me to do is clean up my foundational definitions to avoid creating redundant pages that will create merge-work later. The merge feature is a powerful forcing function.

        1 reply 0 retweets 32 likes
        Show this thread
      12. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 26 Nov 2019
        • Report Tweet
        • Report NetzDG Violation

        I'm creating a real mess here, but hopefully it will lead to enlightenment soon.pic.twitter.com/ej3crR5XEp

        2 replies 2 retweets 36 likes
        Show this thread
      13. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 26 Nov 2019
        • Report Tweet
        • Report NetzDG Violation

        Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Venkatesh Rao

        Hmm... I've reached a point of complexity, where it's actually helpful to create what I called a Dramatis Memetae. Something between an index and a glossary, but with a bit of structure to it.https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1189782933831180288?s=21 …

        Venkatesh Rao added,

        Venkatesh Rao @vgr
        I wish a lot of nonfiction books would start with a glossary. Like some pulp fiction (eg Perry Mason novels) begins with dramatis personae like in plays. Dramatis Ideatae? Dramatis Memetae? Someone latinize these.
        Show this thread
        2 replies 0 retweets 35 likes
        Show this thread
      14. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 26 Nov 2019
        • Report Tweet
        • Report NetzDG Violation

        Yikes, the current view of my graph looks suspciously like a yak. I might have to shave this thing. So far this is a view of a single project. I wonder if I put more disconnected projects in if it will start looking like a zoo.

        2 replies 1 retweet 23 likes
        Show this thread
      15. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 26 Nov 2019
        • Report Tweet
        • Report NetzDG Violation

        Alright, spent nearly 6 productive hours digesting 70% of email notes and 30% scrivener notes from multitemporallty into Roam, and found it improved greatly in the process. Still a condition of Chaos > Order, but Order is now winning.

        2 replies 0 retweets 42 likes
        Show this thread
      16. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 26 Nov 2019
        • Report Tweet
        • Report NetzDG Violation

        To do: * Rest of email and scrivener * ~100 twitter bookmarks * ~50 index cards * ~50 iPhone photos of book pages * ~12 scapple mind maps * ~ half a moleskine equivalent paper notes * ~1 moleskine equivalent iPad pencil notes My second brain clearly has mad cow disease

        4 replies 0 retweets 45 likes
        Show this thread
      17. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 26 Nov 2019
        • Report Tweet
        • Report NetzDG Violation

        This feels right because processing into Roam feels like progress against entropy, not merely porting from one unsatisfactory tool to another. Moving the ball forward rather than sideways. I’m gaining authoritah.pic.twitter.com/pRilIlYB55

        2 replies 1 retweet 49 likes
        Show this thread
      18. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 26 Nov 2019
        • Report Tweet
        • Report NetzDG Violation

        Tentatively, I think this deserves hype it’s getting. If they solve intake, it will be a genuine paradigm shift. They’ve managed to actually do what we tried valiantly to do with trailmeme at xerox a decade ago. I can spot all the things they’ve done right that we got wrong.

        1 reply 5 retweets 80 likes
        Show this thread
      19. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 26 Nov 2019
        • Report Tweet
        • Report NetzDG Violation

        Still wrapping my head around transclusion as a working concept rather than vaporware ideal. It’s not been really necessary so far though I’ve done a few to get a feel for it. I suspect doing a second compression pass after this discovery/intake pass could be transclusion-heavy

        2 replies 0 retweets 22 likes
        Show this thread
      20. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 26 Nov 2019
        • Report Tweet
        • Report NetzDG Violation

        The fact that I put in 6h of work despite intake automation being basically non-existent and high-friction suggests that once even a few basics are in place there (email-to-db would be my most used, followed by something to grab tweets easily) this could really take off.

        4 replies 2 retweets 43 likes
        Show this thread
      21. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 26 Nov 2019
        • Report Tweet
        • Report NetzDG Violation

        I guess I leapfrogged past Notion, and there were a couple of other tools I started using like http://paper.supply  but in view of this, I don’t think others hit the right mix. Hey @vidy___ you still working on your thing?

        1 reply 0 retweets 20 likes
        Show this thread
      22. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 26 Nov 2019
        • Report Tweet
        • Report NetzDG Violation

        Interesting reflection. I wouldn’t have paid much attention to this 20 years ago. I had the heavy lift capacity to hold this kind of big-mass memeplex in my head. There is a sense in which this is a prosthetic particularly well suited for aging brains with big picture fatigue.

        2 replies 0 retweets 53 likes
        Show this thread
      23. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 26 Nov 2019
        • Report Tweet
        • Report NetzDG Violation

        Fox/hedgehog may actually be patterns of aging, based on relative rates of decline of distinctionist, pointillist, phenomenological cognition vs integrative, holistic, reified cognition. I need my second brain to be a hedgehog. Wonder if hedgehogs could use roam as a fox brain.

        1 reply 1 retweet 30 likes
        Show this thread
      24. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 26 Nov 2019
        • Report Tweet
        • Report NetzDG Violation

        Or possibly every tool has a foxy or hedgehoggy bias and this is the key stylistic difference between @fortelabs and @Conaw 🤔 Roam as hedgehog second brain for natural foxes, Evernote as foxy second brain for natural hedgehogs You two should do a podcast conversation together

        2 replies 2 retweets 62 likes
        Show this thread
      25. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 26 Nov 2019
        • Report Tweet
        • Report NetzDG Violation

        That whole idea of the power of centralization in a decentralizing world has 2 solutions: internal and external locus. Either your first brain centralized or your second brain is.

        3 replies 0 retweets 17 likes
        Show this thread
      26. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 26 Nov 2019
        • Report Tweet
        • Report NetzDG Violation

        2x2: x = first brain, y = second brain both from centralized to decentralized CFB/DSB: Hedgehog DFB/CSB: Fox CFB/CSB: Cactus DFB/DSB: Weaselhttps://www.ribbonfarm.com/2014/02/20/the-cactus-and-the-weasel/ …

        3 replies 0 retweets 32 likes
        Show this thread
      27. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 26 Nov 2019
        • Report Tweet
        • Report NetzDG Violation

        This probably also explains why @swardley and I beef over 2x2s and why I don’t really use wardley mapping myself despite recommending it enthusiastically to other people

        2 replies 0 retweets 23 likes
        Show this thread
      28. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 4 Dec 2019
        • Report Tweet
        • Report NetzDG Violation

        Alright one week in, I've settled into some steady habits using roam, so there's a habit attractor here. Progress has slowed to more day-to-day but it still feels like winning the war on entropy as opposed to losing it in scrivener, email, or twitter.

        1 reply 2 retweets 33 likes
        Show this thread
      29. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 8 Dec 2019
        • Report Tweet
        • Report NetzDG Violation

        Gonna start documenting subtle features here. First up: Roam is probably the most efficient prosthetic memory I’ve used, as in, creating efficient recall of thoughts I’ve already thunk and written up. A killer feature when you’ve written as much as I have (good or bad).

        1 reply 3 retweets 36 likes
        Show this thread
      30. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 8 Dec 2019
        • Report Tweet
        • Report NetzDG Violation

        On a scale of 1 to 10, ranking media I’ve used Paper: 1 (no recall aids unless you create ToCs or indices yourself) Email newsletters: 2 (weak searchability, weak theme/thread continuity, weak gestalt, though substack is better than mailchimp) ...

        1 reply 1 retweet 18 likes
        Show this thread
      31. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 8 Dec 2019
        • Report Tweet
        • Report NetzDG Violation

        Twitter: 4 (strong searchability, strong threadability, weak gestalt) Wiki: 5 (strong searchability, medium threadability, strong gestalt) Blog: 6 (strong searchability, strong threadability, strong gestalt) Roam: 8 (all of the above plus low friction update/create/rename)

        2 replies 1 retweet 33 likes
        Show this thread
      32. 24 more replies

    Loading seems to be taking a while.

    Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.

      Promoted Tweet

      false

      • © 2020 Twitter
      • About
      • Help Center
      • Terms
      • Privacy policy
      • Imprint
      • Cookies
      • Ads info