Hi everyone, This is my (first!) monthly update email where you can find a link to all my notes, if you're interested (more on that at the bottom of this email). It's also where I want to touch base a little and see if I can't get a little help from y'all — a little over a hundred of you signed up for the members-only emails (like this one) in the last month, and **I want to make sure I'm doing a good job**. To that end, if you don't mind reaching out to me — either as a reply to this email (it should work now 😅) or via whatever service you prefer — to let me know what you're most interested in, that would be great. Mostly it would be helpful to know: - How did you find me and what made you decide to sign up? - What kinds of things do you want me to focus on? More history? More biology? More science fiction? More fantasy? More worldbuilding deep dives? Also, I'm hoping that my current comment software gets a little more robust soon (the dev is working hard on it!), so if you have any preferences or recommendations, please let me know. I would love to build something here where we share nerdy tidbits and articles with each other, like Yuliya did on the [stamps](https://eleanorkonik.com/stamps/) %% ( [[2021-08-16 Stamps (DRAFT)]] ) %% article. As one last quick thing, I wanted to let you know that the viability of this newsletter really _does_ depend on word of mouth, so if anything I write (including the members-only stuff) seems like something you'd ordinarily forward to a friend, please _do!_ Thank you for all of your support! Now onto some... ## Exciting News - My article [Unusual Governments to Take Inspiration From](https://www.sfwa.org/2021/08/10/unusual-governments-to-take-inspiration-from/) was published on the SFWA blog **🥳** ## CHANGELOG 2021-08 _Note: if you don't want to mess around with actually downloading my notes to poke through the [metadata](https://www.opendatasoft.com/blog/2016/08/25/what-is-metadata-and-why-is-it-important-data), but are curious about what they look like, most are also posted [here](https://publish.obsidian.md/eleanorkonik/)._ - I slightly updated [my folder structure](https://publish.obsidian.md/eleanorkonik/00+Meta/03+Structure/JD+System+2021-08-22) to reflect updates to my highlights workflow to include new sources like [Readwise](https://readwise.io/i/ac9) — raw highlights and annotations now go into my pending folder. - I added some questions about [yawns](https://publish.obsidian.md/eleanorkonik/40+Slipbox/41+Questions/evolutionary+advantages+of+contagious+yawns) and [silver](https://publish.obsidian.md/eleanorkonik/40+Slipbox/41+Questions/silver+in+folklore). - I have a _bunch_ of new [atomic notes](https://notes.andymatuschak.org/Evergreen_notes_should_be_atomic). - I finished reading _Tamed,_ by Alice Roberts. The [notes](https://publish.obsidian.md/eleanorkonik/40+Slipbox/43+References/43.01+Books/Tamed+by+Alice+Roberts) for my [Book Review](https://eleanorkonik.com/book-review-tamed/) %% ( [[Review of Tamed by Alice Roberts]] ) %% are included in the vault if you're interested in comparing and contrasting to get a sense of my writing process. Here's [the link where you can download the notes](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OpA0HQ_wLvtNVrCuve8dlfH6T2c3KfKi/view?usp=sharing) I use to write these newsletters and my other articles. They're in .md ([markdown](https://www.markdownguide.org/)) format, and intended to be viewed with [Obsidian.md](https://obsidian.md/) notetaking software. Do note that I literally zipped this up and sanitized it today, so there might be some spoilers for upcoming stories and mailings, read those at your own risk! Or, you know, compare my before and after for fun, or let me know if there's something floating around in there that you want me to flesh out. Also, if you see anything that looks like it shouldn't be there, like someone's phone number or a copyrighted photo, please let me know, as I tried very hard to remove all the stuff I'm not supposed to redistribute but something might have fallen through the cracks. ## Plans For September - I (finally) finished reading _[Amazons](https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691147208/the-amazons)_ by Adrienne Mayor (it was excellent), but I haven't typed up my notes yet, so that will hopefully happen next month. --- Until next time, ` Eleanor Konik