I like Obsidian for note taking and it does have an infinite canvas, but it feels bolted on. I would love to have a more canvas first note taking app, maybe with folders for visual declutter.

Navigation in default Obsidian is one of the weakest points imo

Have you looked into Affine?

https://affine.pro/

I did, but I would prefer a more local first program.

Reminds me of the old saying “everyone has a pen, but not everyone is a writer.”

Ah fun fact, why do we use the word “right” and “left” but also use the word “right” as correct/lawful and use left as thing that is well, left? A linguist theory says that people always been predominantly right handed, so the way you use tools is the “right” (correct) hand, and the one you don’t, well it’s the hand that is “left”. It’s how the word also became the word for directions as well.

> Ah fun fact, why do we use the word “right” and “left” but also use the word “right” as correct/lawful and use left as thing that is well, left? A linguist theory says that people always been predominantly right handed, so the way you use tools is the “right” (correct) hand, and the one you don’t, well it’s the hand that is “left”.

It's a bit more varied, even in the Indo-European family. What does tend to happen is that the words for handedness get positive (right) or negative (left) associations in idioms, but additional meanings are not universal. In French, "droit" additionally means right (as human right), but not "correct" (yes it does have a bunch of adjacent meanings). In German, "recht" gets to mean "law" or "justice", shared by some Slavic languages ("pravo") -- but not all of them, which have the word "desno", without any association with rights/justice/correctness. The Latin "dexter" gave us "dexterity" and "dexterous", but also nothing alluding to justice. Et cetera.

As an aside, "left" originating from "left over" sounds like folk ethymology to me. Dictionaries point to "weak" as the original meaning.

Latin languages also have the words sinister, izquierdo (which seems to come from esku-okerr - crooked hand) for left.

The tendency to associate the right with positive and the left with negative is pretty much ubiquitous in Western civilization up until fairly recently.

I have a fairly exotic viewpoint on this. The left/right asymmetry (for the lack of a better term) is a small part of a larger asymmetry that's difficult to explain (at least to my satisfaction): up is better than down, light is better than dark, positive is better than negative, higher human faculties are better than lower desires, right is better than left. In my mind, none of these should inherently have a good/bad association. Is a valley worse than a hill? Is a positive electric charge better than a negative one? But, for some reason we have this cultural, linguistic baggage where what seem like highly abstract objects are rooted in a very basic world of good and bad.

I find this fascinating.

I would go as far as to add the male/female asymmetry to this: seemingly senseless, yet historically present. I'd say the rabbit hole truly starts when you get into Western esotherics and see how they associate right, up, light, male, order, knowledge as if they're different expressions of the same thing, and analogously for left, down, dark, etc.

> up is better than down

Makes sense; up gives you a better vantage point, so its easier to see danger. Not to mention that it gives you a fighting advantage; your attacker would have to run uphill to get to you, tiring them out.

> light is better than dark

Humans rely heavily on our sight, and we tend to operate in the daytime. If you were a nocturnal animal, I'm sure you would consider dark to be better than light.

> positive is better than negative

Getting something is better than giving it away.

> I would go as far as to add the male/female asymmetry to this: seemingly senseless, yet historically present

What do you mean by this?

As a native non Indo European language speaker, aware of the many differences to Indo European languages, it is noteworthy that this however is similar in both. Oikea ja vasen, right and left. Oikea ja väärä, right and wrong.

In clothing you have the right side and the reverse side while here it's oikea ja nurja. Again similarities but nurja has this twisted and dark connotation. Or upside down = nurinperin.

Noteworthy that Latin "dexter" (right) pairs with "sinister" (left).

Sinister Dexter Adroit Gauche Left handed compliment Right hand man

Does that go for all languages, or western and mostly germanic languages?

Edit: or maybe indo-european and semitic to be more broad.

Honestly I am not sure, it’s an interesting theory that matches our evolved right handedness as the “right” way to do something, and the other as left. Maybe left handed people were seen as different? And it seeped into language. There is a lot of ifs with and assumptions with this theory.

And we learned nothing of previous hype cycles.

Enshitification in this area will be shift. And there will be grand articles here on HN “nobody could possibly have seen this coming.” Yes we did.

Meh, enshitification is the same, it just happen faster.

Which means the stuff that replace it will also happen faster.

Overall, the quality of the software is likely similar, since AI do not have purpose, and software still largely reflect human will and thinking.

Hear hear.

It seems so innocent. “Just an ad” but the whole influencing industry is kind of a nice word for “manipulation”

When the cost of manipulation is so low, and the repercussions for lying and cheating are not there, everything gets skewed.

It also sounds like people with little ability can use this argument as a way to say “look how difficult this is for humans”

While it’s just a “you” problem. Some folks have better skills, knowledge and comfort with difficult subjects. And that’s fine.

I have been going back some times to flickr and dropped insta, since it’s a crap place these days (like most of the big socials)

The elegance of flickr is just nice and browsing is fun.

I wonder if there are more sites like it.

Saw some other folks starting to use https://glass.photo

That looks really interesting! Ty for that link.

Welcome to the aesthetic world! In the western philosophical and certainly scientific discourse there has since centuries been this drive for objectivity and universals. This has led to great discoveries and thinking. But it’s not the only world, the aesthetic is all about the senses and your place as a subject. It usually invites relativism, sometimes nihilism if you can’t find your ground as an individual in a larger universe.

The world of beauty, art, peace, feeling states is worthy of discovery and like you say, it has a timeless quality.

That’s one good welcome! Even I feel welcomed and I have been hanging out in the music section for ages. Other than the music though I can relate to being a logical/rational person.

They try to make it feel like an “us” browser, but it just comes off as a corp trying to talk cool.

You have to walk the walk too Mozilla! Saying that as a FF for years.

The post yesterday about the teacher who gave students an Apple II and taught assembly was very enlightening and example of how to go forward.