Welcome to the YCB Apha Newsletter!

What’s up Friends & Family,

Whether we’ve spoken last week or last year, I hope this message finds you well. By virtue of being on this list, you’ll at one point have been given an account and an introduction to the self organizing scrapbook software I’ve been coding called Your Commonbase. I’m pleased to announce that as of January 31st, 2025, Your Commonbase has been launched from the Friends & Family alpha phase to a public(ish?) beta phase.

We’ve got a lot of really exciting stuff coming up over this next phase, and you’ll be hearing a lot more from us (and we hope to hear back from you as well!). The first and most exciting order of business is for me to introduce you to Lauren! 

Lauren is smart as a whip and has worked on really cool stuff from space to chemistry to poetry, she’s a true polymath. If you like me (and I’m gonna assume you do since it's a Friends & Family alpha after all), you’ll love Lauren.

I’ll let her take it from here!!

Hi!

It’s great to meet you. I’m Lauren and I’m going to be running a newsletter for YCB alpha users. I want to find out more about how you are using Your Commonbase and, in the process, build out some guides for future users. 

To give you a sneak peek of what’s to come, the first few emails will revolve around the four core actions: Store, Search, Synthesize, and Share. But over time, I want this newsletter to feature more of your curations like what you’re building inside YCB, the weird connections you’re making, and the unexpected ways you’re using it. Of course, I’ll also drop in product updates and new features so you’ll always know what’s changing.

In order to get to know me better I want to give you a little glimpse into my Commonbase. Here’s an image I recently saved (yes, I’m a huge Hayao Miyazaki fan) and since YCB draws inspiration from the philosophy of commonplace books, I’ve added some of my saved quotes that surfaced as its neighbors:

Luo's post, entitled with "Lying Flat is Justice", illustrates:

I can just sleep in my barrel enjoying a sunbath like Diogenes, or live in a cave-like Heraclitus and think about 'Logos'. Since there has never really been a trend of thought that exalts human subjectivity in this land, I can create it for myself. Lying flat is my wise movement, only by lying down can humans become the measure of all things.

"One of my habits that I want to change is that I often look at Twitter and the news, and I've been thinking about this a lot. I think the reason is quite simple.

People (animals) look at things that are moving or changing. I think there is something like an instinct for that. This is because we need to be careful of things that are moving or changing. This is to avoid danger and to catch prey. You can see this by looking at dogs and cats, but I think that being aware of moving things is part of living itself." -Itoi Shigesato's daily essays

“(talking about when he tells his wife he’s going out to buy an envelope) Oh, she says well, you’re not a poor man. You know, why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don’t know. The moral of the story is, is we’re here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don’t realize, or they don’t care, is we’re dancing animals.” ― Kurt Vonnegut

Now that introductions are out of the way, I want you to know my inbox is always open. If something in YCB sparks a thought, an unexpected connection, or just makes you stop and think, I’d love to hear about it. But no pressure, there’s plenty ahead, and I’m looking forward to seeing what you discover.

Hope I didn’t cut into too much of your dancing time, see you in the next one.

Lauren