{"id":46911,"date":"2026-09-16T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/?p=46911"},"modified":"2026-09-11T09:29:46","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T16:29:46","slug":"whats-in-my-now-mary-lucia-darst-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/whats-in-my-now-mary-lucia-darst-2\/","title":{"rendered":"What&#8217;s in my NOW? \u2014 Mary Lucia Darst"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Mary Lucia Thao Darst is a filmmaker, writer, and musician. She holds a DPhil in Music from Oxford University and an MA from Columbia University. She is a writer with the Austrian Economics Center, has held three fellowships with the Moving Picture Institute, and is a classically-trained violist and songwriter-composer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mary\u2019s substack \/ digital humanities project:&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/substack.com\/redirect\/f1c3f6fe-3fa0-4ba9-ae92-52aed0aa7a8a?j=eyJ1IjoiMXhmZzB6In0.4ieSFe4rvvESx3-YSOApdZUV-VKuM1Arc6QBuHWifaY\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">www.oxforddawn.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/files\/2026\/09\/wimb-MaryLucia-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-46912\" width=\"588\" height=\"330\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/files\/2026\/09\/wimb-MaryLucia-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/files\/2026\/09\/wimb-MaryLucia-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/files\/2026\/09\/wimb-MaryLucia-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/files\/2026\/09\/wimb-MaryLucia.jpg 1100w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 588px) 100vw, 588px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h4><strong>PHYSICAL<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<ul><li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/substack.com\/redirect\/71e85e15-1ef8-4e51-babc-8285e3b2f96f?j=eyJ1IjoiMXhmZzB6In0.4ieSFe4rvvESx3-YSOApdZUV-VKuM1Arc6QBuHWifaY\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Wacom Intuos tablet<\/a><\/strong>. This is an old, and now discontinued, tablet that my Oxford college gave me for making the illustrations for my doctoral thesis. After I used it for that, I set it aside for several years. But then I started composing music again, and I realized that I could use the tablet and its pen to write music notation into my notation software in a more physically natural way than using a computer mouse. Because the tablet is discontinued, getting the drivers to work with my computer takes a bit of tweaking, but it\u2019s all a learning experience.<\/li><li>Richard Bassett\u2019s book&nbsp;<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/substack.com\/redirect\/43676b82-c8ca-443c-80a2-fdad62fb7232?j=eyJ1IjoiMXhmZzB6In0.4ieSFe4rvvESx3-YSOApdZUV-VKuM1Arc6QBuHWifaY\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">For God and Kaiser: The Imperial Austrian Army, 1619 &#8211; 1918.<\/a><\/strong>&nbsp;His book has been on my TBR for several years now. I\u2019m finally getting around to it, after having read Bassett\u2019s Last Days in Old Europe in the meantime.<\/li><li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/substack.com\/redirect\/7e6fe420-67a1-4e47-b44d-65c758cd48f8?j=eyJ1IjoiMXhmZzB6In0.4ieSFe4rvvESx3-YSOApdZUV-VKuM1Arc6QBuHWifaY\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Audio Technica QuietPoint headphones<\/a><\/strong>. These headphones are old, and they\u2019re in terrible shape cosmetically. They are in such bad shape that I\u2019m not sharing a photo because I\u2019m embarrassed by them. Because Audio Technica has discontinued the model, I can\u2019t replace them. So I just keep repairing them. They\u2019ve been a real workhorse set, surviving audition preparation, film sets, lots of travel, and even serving as adequate studio monitors.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n\n\n\n<h4><strong>DIGITAL<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<ul><li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/substack.com\/redirect\/72e6d3e2-4294-4dcf-8552-addc83902dcf?j=eyJ1IjoiMXhmZzB6In0.4ieSFe4rvvESx3-YSOApdZUV-VKuM1Arc6QBuHWifaY\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Obsidian note-taking application<\/a><\/strong>. During my doctorate, I used Evernote since most people at my institution used it. Then I moved to Notion. However, recently, I had a bad experience of vendor lock-in, so I began moving my notes to Obsidian because I like that the underlying files are plain markdown, and I like the ability to link notes to each other.<\/li><li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/substack.com\/redirect\/a845f5e8-6fc6-4db0-93cf-2d7680bff98d?j=eyJ1IjoiMXhmZzB6In0.4ieSFe4rvvESx3-YSOApdZUV-VKuM1Arc6QBuHWifaY\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Nick Milo\u2019s Linking Your Thinking YouTube channel<\/a><\/strong>. Once I realized I had to move almost ten years of notes from one application to another, I knew I had to take the time to learn how to use Obsidian before starting the migration. Milo\u2019s channel has been invaluable for this. I haven\u2019t taken any of his courses, but given the quality of his YouTube content, I\u2019m open to doing so.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n\n\n\n<h4><strong>INVISIBLE<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\"><p>\u201cStructure must be earned.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Nick Milo quoted this in one of his videos. I don\u2019t know where it came from, but I\u2019ve been batting it around in my mind. I\u2019m someone who tends toward making overly elaborate organizational structures, e.g. too many folders and sub-folders in my note-taking application, but then the structure is so over-engineered that I can\u2019t find things when I need them. This quote has made me slow down and spend several days thinking of how I am using a note, document, music excerpt, etc. before filing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n\n\n\n<p><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/whatsinmynow.substack.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Sign up here<\/em><\/a><em>\u00a0to get\u00a0What\u2019s in my NOW?\u00a0a week early in your inbox.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>issue #271<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47588,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[2303],"tags":[1553],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46911"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47588"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46911"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46911\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46913,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46911\/revisions\/46913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}