Ada Palmer
Feeling of finally finding a citation I've been looking for for SEVEN YEARS! Hunting down a thing I heard about in a lecture 20+ years ago from a historian now, alas, no longer with us. But I found it! And now I'm so giddy I can't think about anything else! (No I won't say what it was -- spoilers)
Jul 24, 2023 at 6:06pmWeb
Show threadJulesJul 24, 2023

@adapalmer the joys of academic life! Yay and hooray!

(Seven years? Yikes!)

Show threadOkazuYuriJul 24, 2023
@adapalmer Congrats! I've lost the citation to an article that I had to read in grad school that I think of all the time. It was from the before times, so searching for it online pulls up nothing and the author's name is lost to me.
Show threadClifton RoystonJul 24, 2023

@adapalmer

Does it seem to you it's gotten a lot harder to find academic references online than it was 10 years ago? More recently I've found attempts to search things often end up at one or another paywall, university or publisher, without enough details to be sure paying would get me the thing I'm trying to find.

Show threadAda PalmerAug 3, 2023
@CliftonR Since my university affiliation speed routes me through paywalls without alerting me to them, I don’t know. Which is itself a symptom of a problem: those with academic privilege edit & publish most of these things but are actively prevented from noticing how hard they are for people without that privilege to access.
Show threadClifton RoystonAug 5, 2023

@adapalmer

Since I am privileged along so many dimensions, I'm not used to thinking of myself as *not* privileged, but this is one that I hadn't considered.

Show threadAlakestJul 24, 2023

@adapalmer I'm no scholar (or, at best, a poor scholar in the parlance of the Tao Te Ching) but I understand something close to that feeling.

I once read in a Gregory Bateson book (Ecology of Mind) at the beginning bit the following:

"Information is the ultimate amphibian"

The idea stuck with me.

Years later I tried to find the source and I couldn't find *that* copy, nor did Google find it.

Still haven't.

Got the domain name and made a graphic though.

http://www.ultimateamphibian.com/

Ultimate Amphibian

Show threadDr. Ben WolfeJul 25, 2023
@adapalmer Heh! And I thought sending students after “things everyone knows but rarely say in papers” was bad.
Show threadGillesJul 25, 2023
@adapalmer
Excellent. I hope to soon answer a question I was asked about that long ago.
Reference librarians, even if retired, never forget.