Manfred Kuehn calls it quits.

http://takingnotenow.blogspot.mx/2015/12/the-end.html

I am sorry to get this news. I've enjoyed reading Manfred's commentary on note-taking for many years. I hope he reconsiders after some time to reflect on his decision, but if he doesn't, I appreciate all his thoughtful posts.

Steve Z.

It's a pity. I learnt a great deal from it. I hope it gets resurrected or reborn in another form.

I also am saddened that Manfred Kuehn has announced he will no longer blog. Take Note is always interesting and, while as the name suggests, it is mostly about notes and note-taking, I find Manfred is delightfully eclectic in his writing. I learn a lot from his posts, and will continue to dip into Take Note's archives for it seems whenever I do something new and interesting awaits.

Daly



Dr Andus wrote:

It's a pity. I learnt a great deal from it. I hope it gets resurrected
or reborn in another form.

I meant, of course, to write Taking Note. I apologize with a red face for misnaming this blog which I had hoped to honour, along with its creator, Mandred Kuehn.

Daly

Daly de Gagne wrote:

I also am saddened that Manfred Kuehn has announced he will no longer
blog. Take Note is always interesting and, while as the name suggests,
it is mostly about notes and note-taking, I find Manfred is delightfully
eclectic in his writing. I learn a lot from his posts, and will continue
to dip into Take Note's archives for it seems whenever I do something
new and interesting awaits.

Daly



Dr Andus wrote:
It's a pity. I learnt a great deal from it. I hope it gets resurrected
>or reborn in another form.

Quite unfortunate, but I understand. Though, it's doubly sad in that he probably just gave that creepy nutjob exactly what he wanted but I'm also aware of the emotional toll having a dedicated troll can take.

He is reconsidering after getting an outpouring of support. I hope he continues,

http://takingnotenow.blogspot.mx/2015/12/reconsideration.html

That is good news, indeed!

Daly

Mark wrote:

He is reconsidering after getting an outpouring of support. I hope he
continues,

http://takingnotenow.blogspot.mx/2015/12/reconsideration.html

I've checked from time to time to see if the Taking Note blog had come alive. Today (1 December 2020) I see that the blog has been removed from Blogspot entirely. The blog is still available on the Internet Archive.

Manfred's voice on this topic is still missed.

I’m one that read it, loved it, and was sad to see it go. What I DIDN’T know is that he went on to write 143 additional posts over the next three years! I have read dozens of these so far. In case others didn’t know...

2016: https://web.archive.org/web/20191205083532/http://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2016/
2017: https://web.archive.org/web/20191205083602/http://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2017/
2018: https://web.archive.org/web/20191205083532/http://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2018/
URLs to his archives by year (after the goodbye post).

Don’t navigate using the “older posts/newer posts“ as it won’t work. Use the year/month/post menu on the right side of the screen. Gotta love the Internet Archive.

Yes, I discovered Taking Note comparatively recently (from this forum, I believe), and very much enjoyed Manfred’s broad range of references.

Someone reached out on Twitter and asked if I knew anything about what happened to the blog. I immediately came here, knewing someone here had to know something. It's really sad to see the blog gone. In the context of the 2015 announcement, this is less of a surprise. Didn't know about that phase of MK and the blog until today.

I reached out to Manfred to let him know that many people on this forum have lamented the loss of Taking Note. He wrote back and told me that his wife has Alzheimer's and with the pandemic he is her only caregiver, a job that takes most of his efforts and time. (He gave me permission to share this here.) But he was grateful to learn that his blog had meant a lot to the folks here. What he actually wrote was, "I appreciate it more than you can know."

Steve Z.

Stephen,

I am sorry to learn that Manfred's wife has Alzheimer's. Understandably, his hands are full, especially at this time of pandemic. I will keep Manfred and his wife in my thoughts and prayers.

Please let Manfred know that I am one of the people who very much miss his blog.

Back on 27 December 2015, I had written: 'I also am saddened that Manfred Kuehn has announced he will no longer blog. Take Note is always interesting and, while as the name suggests, it is mostly about notes and note-taking, I find Manfred is delightfully eclectic in his writing. I learn a lot from his posts, and will continue to dip into Take Note’s archives for it seems whenever I do something new and interesting awaits.'

Since then I kept going back to his blog, reading the occasional new post. However, in the process, I think I managed to read all that he had posted over the years. Many of his posts I have read more than once - all-in-all a most satisfying read. It would indeed be good if an appropriate home on the web could be found for his posts. Perhaps someone here could approach Manfred about the possibility, and with his guidance take it on. Given the upsurge in interest about note taking, and a new generation of note taking apps, such as Obsidian, Notion, and Roam, I think there would be an appreciative audience for Manfred's posts.

Daly

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

I reached out to Manfred to let him know that many people on this forum
have lamented the loss of Taking Note. He wrote back and told me that
his wife has Alzheimer's and with the pandemic he is her only caregiver,
a job that takes most of his efforts and time. (He gave me permission to
share this here.) But he was grateful to learn that his blog had meant a
lot to the folks here. What he actually wrote was, "I appreciate it more
than you can know."

Steve Z.

In my quote from 2015, it should read Taking Note, not Take Note. I apologize for my carelessness.

Daly

I hope those of you who stopped reading Taking Note, when he announced the end of the blog, will follow the Internet Archive links (I posted in this thread) to three more years of great writing.

I have a friend who was a student of his at Boston U. He says he was the greatest professor he ever had because he didn’t just teach philosophy, he actually lived the examined life. He said he learned SO many things from Professor Kuehn — much of it beyond philosophy. Somehow most of us, that know him only from his blog, are probably not surprised at all to hear that. A blog on “note taking” was a blog on so many erudite topics and Kuehn showed all of us his reputation as a polymath. Great philosopher, great man. I’m so sorry to hear about his wife and the struggles of being a sole caretaker — especially during these difficult times. Thank you SZ for taking the time to touch base with him and pass along our affection for him and Taking Note.

Donovan, thanks for the archive links.

Daly

I'm sorry to hear about Prof. Kühn's wife; I had looked up the blog in question "regularly", i.e. all some 3 or 4 months, and since every time, the most recent post was from Nov (or Dec?) 2018, I was aware of an alleged old age problem already, but in Kühn himself, since never any "explanation" or similar post had been added.

All the more so, now, the blog being gone, with archive.org or something the only way to find its content, I ask myself if google.blogger discards such dormant blogs after 2 full years of inactivity, automatically, or if Kühn had it discarded, and if so, why?

Fact is, the earlier posts - I had stored every post of interest to me in my own system anyway - had been much more "interesting", no, even much more relevant, for most of them, than later ones, but then, the scope was such that Kühn would have needed, and then needed to process, much external input from the relevant research fields, an effort understandably less and less pressing with (old) age and the absence of a "business model" (be that in $$ or in recognition), so I am not surprised in the end.

On the other hand, somebody above saying something like, "from 2015 here, I'm not surprised": No, my memory is somewhat better, Kühn then left, saying somewhat along the lines, "I don't need that." in response to lack of respect in the conversation, but he didn't imply in any way that he would also stop his own blog, all to the contrary, and he was very active in that for some time after indeed.

This being said, I'm really sorry for the Kühns and their dire situation.

22111 wrote:

On the other hand, somebody above saying something like, "from 2015
here, I'm not surprised": No, my memory is somewhat better, Kühn
then left, saying somewhat along the lines, "I don't need that." in
response to lack of respect in the conversation, **but he didn't imply in
any way that he would also stop his own blog, all to the contrary, and
he was very active in that for some time after indeed.**

Wrong. He returned to posting later, without everyone knowing, after announcing the end of the blog On Dec. 27th, 2015. That’s why I linked to the ‘16, ‘17, ‘18 posts on the Internet Archive.

He wrote:

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 26, 2015

The End
This will be the last post on this blog of mine. I enjoyed posting for the longest time, and I know that some of the more than 780,000 visitors over the last eight years have also enjoyed some of my posts. But the posting has become more burdensome of late. I never expected to be thanked for my efforts, as I mainly did them for my own benefit to figure out what I thought about some of the things important to me. But I did not expect to be accused and insulted by someone hiding behind a pseudonym either. It takes away from the pleasure of writing in this form. I don't need this.

But, as I said before, thanks to everyone who has been following this blog.
POSTED BY MK AT 12:21 PM

( https://web.archive.org/web/20160111115841/http://takingnotenow.blogspot.mx/2015/12/the-end.html )

Donovan wrote:

A blog on "note taking" was a
blog on so many erudite topics and Kuehn showed all of us his reputation
as a polymath. Great philosopher, great man.

@ Donovan: many thanks for the web archive links to Taking Note
@ Steve: many thanks for reaching out to M. Kühn.

I find it really surprising that a blog with more than 780,000 visitors over eight years has been taken down, just two years after its last post. Without going into Hercules Poirot mode considering how this particular case may have occurred, we may have to accept that this is the future of all things that are free on the internet. As humanity keeps outputting petabytes of information, much of it worthless and often even of negative value, storage is recycled and the only priority logic may be FIFO -- first in first out.

My Evernote database of web clippings now goes back 12 years; that's not much in terms of human culture, but it is not unusual at all for me to remember a piece of important information, find it in my database, and then check the original link only to find that it is no longer there.

I am thankful for the web archive and I am thankful for Chris hosting this nice forum, even if I seldom post to it nowadays for lack of time. The forum will soon celebrate 15 years in this incarnation, and includes the archives of outliners.com which had started more than 6 years earlier...

@ Chris: it goes without saying that if you ever need financial contribution to cover the hosting costs, I'll be more than happy to chip in.