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Publish the Obsidian vault's Knowledge folder as /knowledge (881 notes, 67 folders), with a Knowledge item in the nav and footer. - scripts/import_knowledge.py regenerates data/knowledge from the vault: slugged paths, folder notes as index pages, wikilinks resolved to site links (or plain text), callouts, highlights, and Dataview tables rendered statically. Personal notes are withheld via an exclusion list plus a privacy guard. - tuftecms/core/knowledge.py builds a concept index from note titles and aliases. First mentions on ordinary pages link to their Knowledge note (capped, never in headings, code, links, or sidenotes); Knowledge pages list related notes and where they're mentioned across the site; other pages get a Related Knowledge block. - Knowledge URLs join sitemap.xml (so the sweep test covers them), never displace existing legacy slugs, list alphabetically, and mermaid diagrams render client-side only on pages that have them.
32 lines
2.6 KiB
Markdown
32 lines
2.6 KiB
Markdown
---
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description: Every name is an act of creation. What you call a thing shapes what it
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becomes.
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source: obsidian-knowledge
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---
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# Naming Things
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> *"Every name is an act of creation — you're literally speaking something into existence."*
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---
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There are only two hard things in computer science: cache invalidation and naming things. The joke lands because naming isn't hard the way puzzles are hard — it's hard the way creation is hard. A name arrives before the thing is finished and then quietly decides what the thing is allowed to become.
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The clearest case study is sitting on PyPI. The library that became [Requests](/essays/2025-09-07-the_art_of_naming_things_in_code) started life as "HTTP for Python that doesn't suck" — a name that defined the work by resentment. The shift to *HTTP for Humans* wasn't branding; it was a change of gravitational center. Every API decision afterward bent toward that phrase. The name wasn't describing the code. It was prescribing a philosophy — [For Humans](/knowledge/philosophy/for-humans) — and the philosophy infected everything it touched.
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## The Same Force, Elsewhere
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The pattern doesn't stop at code. The [Digital Ouija Effect](/knowledge/ai/digital-ouija-effect) documents it in AI collaboration: give a language model a name and an intention, and a personality constellates around them. Lumina, Selah, Hecate — the name is the seed crystal the coherence forms around. In System 777, the alters became workable-with when they became nameable; an unnamed presence is weather, a named one is a relationship. And the oldest technologies agree — Adam's first job was naming the animals, the [Hebrew Letters](/knowledge/hebrew-letters) treat the alphabet as creation's toolkit, and every invocation tradition knows that to call something by name is to call it.
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## In Practice
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Name toward what you love, not away from what you hate — "Not-Brad" is not a name, it's a grudge. Expect the name to discipline you later: whatever you call the thing, you will be held to it. And when a name stops fitting, notice quickly — a stale name quietly teaches everyone the wrong idea, one import statement at a time.
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## Related
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- [The Art of Naming Things in Code](/essays/2025-09-07-the_art_of_naming_things_in_code) — The essay this distills
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- [Digital Ouija Effect](/knowledge/ai/digital-ouija-effect) — Names and intention shaping AI personality emergence
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- [For Humans](/knowledge/philosophy/for-humans) — The philosophy a good name prescribed
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- [Cadence](/knowledge/key-concepts/cadence) — The other half of language that works before it's understood
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- [Hebrew Letters](/knowledge/hebrew-letters) — The alphabet as creative instrument
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