Yup, well said. I think the best planners view it in this lens - as a tool, where room is left for the unknown and there is less of an expectation of "sticking to rigid plan" and more "here's our best guess, it's a living plan and we will adjust and refactor as situation changes"
Great blog post taking the classic 'Scorpion and the Frog' fable and extending it to employer/employee dynamics in the context of "froggy" software engineers and their "scorpion" leaders - managers/scrum-masters/executives
And also the bit where I say that's a reductive framing when you really think about it! We are all frogs and we are all scorpions (but I will concede that some of us are more scorpion than others when we're in the crab bucket - wow that's a lot of animals).
Would appreciate any folks here who have tried both Obsidian and Joplin to summarize the key differentiators for them and which one they ended up on.
(on x platform, Windows/iOS use case here, but just post your needs)
I tried to move to Obsidian from Evernote after they raised the subscription price but wasn't able to onboard successfully - Obsidian seemed powerful but was too customizable for me, had to get back to more pressing day job needs before I could figure out a setup that would work for me, ended up just paying the Evernote fee another year.
I was suffering with Joplin for years and finally found the time to migrate to Obsidian a few months back. So far I'm much happier and more importantly, more productive.
The biggest points are about the UX. My workflow requires switching between multiple notes rapidly (e.g., TODO list, Project 1, Project 2, Employee 1, Employee 2, Meeting Notes 1, and so on) and Joplin doesn't have native tabs. The plugin is only so so but it works only on desktop (I'm on Mac).
On mobile it's a disaster. Doubly so on iPad which is just stretched phone version - working productively on iPad (which is otherwise just fine for my job) is impossible with Joplin. Plus the mobile app has awful design and awful navigation. Who on Earth would put the most used button to the top left corner? Swipe from the left doesn't work of course because the following:
Neither desktop of mobile app follow the system patterns. Keyboard shortucts, if they exist, are different. Navigation is different. Everything is sort of clunky.
I used Dropbox for sync and while it does work, it's very slow and there's no background sync. On a regular day I have to sync about 50 items (some of them are history I guess) which can take a minute or two, which is the time I don't have when I open my phone and want to quickly add an item to the TODO list. Couple that with no conflict resolution and a recipe for data loss is born :-) .
Initial sync on a new phone took me eight fucking hours when I had to keep the phone open and the app in the foreground.
What I do appreciate is the native encryption. Now I do all my work in Obsidian but keep Joplin for the secrets.
So this is the main problems I had with Joplin. Rant over (but you asked) :-)
The mobile design does leave a lot to be desired. It does fit my needs however because usually I am just jotting down a quick idea or reference for later. I can see how switching between multiple notes quickly can be difficult.
Not related to the parent comment but I have been using the math plugin and I love it. It does unit conversion and lots of other things!
I tried both, my Joplin experience is a few years ago so grain of salt and all.
Joplin is open source, doesn't really have a plugin ecosystem, has a custom storage format for its data and is _really_ easy and reliable to sync with WebDav (I had mine set up with Fastmail's webdav while sipping my morning coffee)
Obsidian (my current system for going on 2 years) on the other hand is the closest I've gotten to org-mode with a modern tool, with all the pluses and minuses.
The plugin ecosystem is completely crazy, you can find a plugin for pretty much everything. And you'll lose days of actual work progress bikeshedding the plugin system =)
Data is stored as regular standard files (Canvases are the exception, but there really isn't a standard for stuff like that).
Syncing with third party tools is ... workable if you don't switch platforms quickly - basically if you make a note on your phone and immediately switch to desktop, the note might appear or might not, depends on the phase of the moon. iCloud takes a while to sync and sometimes just freezes, works fine if you let it work. Dropbox, OneDrive etc aren't officially supported and tend to have conflicts.
I actually ended up paying for their sync service and it Just Works - even though it's not the cheapest option, but _for_me_ it's worth it because I regularly use multiple devices in short succession on the same notes.
Submission statement b/c I know Mother Jones gets pilloried as a source by some on here:
This article is a thought-provoking piece that compares today's American billionaires (many of whom have made their fortunes in tech) to the Russian oligarchs that came about post-USSR and the former US uses of the term in the pre Civil War and Gilded Age.
It's an interesting thought piece and speaks well towards how the current class of US ultra-rich got there, and spend their wealth on passion projects and chosen philanthropic endeavors while contributing to the squeeze on the lower and middle class citizens mainly due to our tax code taxing on income and not wealth, and the loopholes that allow them to pay taxes as desired.
In addition to having read several billionaire authors reiterate some form of "what we GOT AWAY WITH in the 80's/90's, you couldn't dream of accomplishing anymore," a son of a Tiger Cub once got drunk and blabbed a bit too much about the insanity of money/insanity (recalled from an 80's child's POV).
I attended college on a 19th Century Robber Barron -funded scholarship, to which I am forever grateful... but there just doesn't ever seem to be a reason to concentrate so much wealth so quickly, undertaxed or not. I read this old cranky bastard's Last Will & Testament and he was just a spiteful, bitter old man that hated his entire existance.
When I think about the endgame of capitalism, I think about the kids in coalmines and the gilded age, the extractive and horrible conditions that allow for widespread unfulfilling company-store-owned worklife to flourish under the guise of progress.
I'm not sure if there are any solid alternatives for this endgame actually, but we may already be in it, and pervasive addiction to me seem to go hand it hand with unhappiness.
“When we push it back into the criminal system, it pushes people back into the shadows,” Ms. Hurst said. “People will die because of this.”
^ this quote from the article speaks plainly why it's dangerous to recriminalize. Agreed w/ your perspective on prior laws hurting disproportionately normal citizens who still had (some) property/livelihood to damage through arrest.
Not agreeing w/ the status quo in Portland, though - from friend's accounts it has become a tough place to walk around. I appreciate the fine line the government is trying to walk here. Hopefully they can accelerate some of the drug treatment options concurrently.
One common theme I've noticed with Progressive policy on the west coast is that well make the progressive amendments to our laws and policies, but we don't have the institutions to support those policies.
At least with Portugal, they have a stick in their policy that enforces treatment and medical attention if you're strung out and using on the street.
Also, Channel 5 did a great piece on the Safe Injection Site in SF. When talking to the "real ones", the safe site made all the difference in people's lives when it was available.
I'd summarize it as - "Sam Altman is an optimist about his ability to lead a for-profit entity and balance that w/ the original OpenAI mission of democratically advancing AI w/ safety in mind. Maureen Dowd thinks that a leader who is great at wooing investors, techies, and lawmakers, and increasingly is downplaying near-term AI risk, is a dangerous choice given the risks expressed by other AI experts."
