Evaporation

This was a sample data set from 1996 through mid-2019, but maybe the most shocking number is the 2018 one: after just a year, one in every sixteen links from the Times’ website to an external source had stopped working. The Times already has an attribution problem; this just makes it worse. The researchers point out that URLs within U.S. Supreme Court opinions fare even worse, with about half of links not working as originally intended.

~ Nick Heer from, The Collective and Rotting Hallucination That Is the Internet – Pixel Envy

slip:4upoli3.

I’m not picking on the Times nor the Supreme Court, link rot is everywhere. Heer does a nice job of laying out what’s really going on; it’s not just that the links are ceasing to work, but also that the actual contents of digital stuff is changing. (And that’s all in addition to problems with data corruption and degradation.) However, his article is really about highlighting some of the neat things people are doing to preserve things. It’s worth clicking through just for the anecdote about how “Nookd” curiously appears in one edition of War and Peace.

And on the other hand, we’re all painfully aware that our lives are becoming more public and we’re losing our privacy. If you put it anywhere on the Internet, we can generalize and assume it’s eventually going to become public. In some cases, it’d be exactly what we want for things to rot— or maybe it’d be better to say:

In some cases, it’d be exactly what we want for things on the Internet to evaporate.

É•

Merlin Mann

Some time around 2005—if memory serves, which it probably doesn’t—I discovered the work and blogging of Merlin Mann. Back then, he was neck-deep in a project called 43 Folders: Time, Attention, and Creative Work. It’s self-described as, “[a] website about finding the time and attention to do your best creative work.” The first post there is dated 2004, and the last is gloriously frozen in place from 2011.

There are so many things to mention about that project. Ahhhhhhh, the halcyon days when we all thought “website” was a cool word. (I’m now in the “web site” encampment.) Mann is the guy who, for better [my opinion] or worse [many others’ option], brought “inbox zero” to everyone’s awareness. He also spent years experimenting with processes, and I went on a magical, multi-year journey experimenting with something called the “hipster PDA.” If forced to choose, I’d say Mann is the guy who most greatly influenced my process thinking.

There’s a phrase in cooking, mise en place, meaning to have everything in its proper place before starting. (The classic example of failure in this regard is to be half-way through making something only to realize you’re missing an ingredient and having to throw away the food.)

Well Mann is the guy who—in my opinion—has done the most to improve processes for knowledge workers and creative people. I’m not sure if he’s ever said it explicitly, but a huge part of what he did was to elevate knowledge workers and creatives by cultivating a mise en place mindset.

É•

Organic

But then I realized a larger, unsettling truth: Much of the food grown in this country isn’t the medicine it should—or used—to be. We’re collectively getting sicker, not healthier. And for others to have the same healing I was privileged to experience; we must start with the soil.

As a man named J.I. Rodale once said:

“Healthy Soil = Healthy Food = Healthy People.”

~ Jeff Tkach from, Our Healing Begins in the Soil – Rodale Institute

slip:4urobo1.

When you’re growing up, you don’t really notice where you are doing it. Your parents, (or legal guardian(s) or perhaps even the State,) chose where you were planted. Bereshith, you’re planted in a very tiny space, then gradually moved to progressively larger spaces with fewer physical boundaries. Until one day you realize there’s basically no one left telling you what to do nor where to do it. If you never really thought about it, and nothing forced you to move, you’re probably still close to that original very tiny space, and probably still close to the progressively larger spaces too.

Then one day—I really do hope—you start to wonder what’s happened before, in the wherever you are now. I’ve a litany of, “woa, that’s cool!” historical bits and pieces found in my surrounds. But that the idea of “organic”—all of it, the word, the principles, everything—originated with one guy, within walking distance of my home, that’s sort of amazing. Rodale, (the family members, and the eponymous companies,) have done a lot—some good, some bad—but I find it unsurprising they did it here, in the Lehigh Valley. There’s a lot this area has going for it.

É•

Flow with Claudia Velandia

How does the creative process of hosting a podcast foster meaningful connections and insights for both the host and listeners?

The exchange examines the balance between preparation and spontaneity in meaningful dialogue.

The intention of the podcast was always just listening to flow. Let’s allow the creativity to flow through us. So now sometimes when we are so focused on our mind about what is next, what’s going to be said next, and planning ahead, we close ourselves to the possibility of allowing for the insights that can come from a deeper place, more wisdom that can bring more light to the conversation.

~ Claudia Velandia (1:46)

The conversation explores the creative dynamics of podcasting, emphasizing the role of flow and intentionality. Claudia describes how her podcast began as a way to capture the insightful, spontaneous conversations she shared with friends. Over time, the podcast evolved to include guests whose journeys provide value to listeners. She reflects on the challenges of staying present and resisting the urge to overly plan, as such planning can limit the emergence of deeper insights and wisdom.

Claudia shares how setting intentions before recording helps create an open and authentic environment. She discusses how mindfulness practices, such as meditating and grounding oneself, foster connection and creativity. The discussion also touches on broader themes of success, which Claudia defines as staying aligned with her purpose and enjoying the process. She emphasizes that even a single listener connecting with the podcast’s message makes the effort worthwhile, reinforcing her commitment to creating meaningful content.

Takeaways

The importance of flow in conversations — Allowing spontaneity and creativity to emerge can lead to deeper insights.

The role of intentionality — Setting clear intentions shapes the tone and outcome of interactions.

Staying present — Being mindful during a conversation creates a stronger connection with guests.

Evolving creative projects — Starting with personal inspiration can lead to broader engagement and impact.

Redefining success — Success can be measured by alignment with one’s values rather than external metrics.

Mindfulness practices — Techniques like meditation help in grounding and setting the stage for meaningful work.

The power of small audiences — Even reaching a single person meaningfully validates the effort of creation.

Resources

Wake Up: How to Get Out of Your Mind, Stop Living on Autopilot, and Start Choosing Your Best Life â€” A book written by the guest that reflects her approach to intentional living and personal development.

The Art of Living Podcast â€” The guest’s podcast exploring meaningful conversations and personal growth.

(Written with help from Chat-GPT.)

É•

Lulled into a trap

We tend to think that what we see is all there is — that there is nothing we cannot see. We know it isn’t true when we stop and think, yet we still get lulled into a trap of omniscience.

~ Shane Parrish from, The Island of Knowledge: Science and the Meaning of Life

slip:4ufote2.

Admiral Ackbar called it correctly in Return of the Jedit, and this too is a trap. There are many paths to the top of the mountain, but they are generally of two types: the harder, science ways, and the softer, experiential ways. Both of those types have their traps. If one is strictly a follower of the hard, science paths up the mountain, one will be lulled into this trap of faux omniscience. And if one is a strict follower of the soft, experiential paths, one will be lulled into a trap of… well, I’ve not travelled much on those paths. My prescription is those travelers would do well to try these hard, science paths more. Therefore, I should try those soft, experiential paths more.

Which path are you currently on, and do you have a pattern of choosing one type over the other?

É•

Gorge-ous

Sometimes I take photographs, but usually not many.

I flipped over the way I think about taking photographs: I only take a photograph if I have a plan for doing something with it. When I took these, I was thinking that they would be good to share as a blog post—if you’re far away from Watkins Glen, you’d enjoy a bit of a virtual visit. I’ll also capture a photograph if I know someone would appreciate receiving it; at someone’s 90th birthday party, I corralled 50 people into a group photo—and then had it large-format printed, framed and delivered as a gift. …and I printed smaller copies for others, and one is framed and hanging in our house. I’ve set up multiple digital photo-frames, to which images are added by my emailing them to special addresses. The one in my sight has 500+ images that span my photography as well as selections from my father’s vast slide-film collection. There’s an enormous collection on my blog in the Photos category posts, and the best-of-the-best are on my featured photography page.

I have vast processes for everything related to my images. Custom software for managing them in archives, including automagic duplication and checksumming to protect against data degradation. (Hint: A backup of a corrupted image is also corrupted.) I have backups to the “cloud.” I have a recurring “maintenance” todo item that prompts me to go through the photos I’ve taken and move them through all my processes.

And I’m fully aware, that shortly after I die, this small eddy of organization where I’m pushing away entropy will be swept away. That’s precisely why I work so hard (although not actually that often) at doing something with the images.

É•

Like waves crashing on the beach

It isn’t clear why you’ve been sent back. Maybe it was a cosmic accounting error, or a boon from a playful God. All you know is that you’re here again, walking the earth, having been inexplicably returned to the temporary and mysterious state of Being Alive.

~ David Cain from, How to Remember You’re Alive

slip:4uraho14.

But first, pardon me while I get a song stuck in your head… like, all-day stuck.

She could hear the cars roll by
Out on 441
Like waves crashin’ on the beach
And for one desperate moment there
He crept back in her memory
God it’s so painful
Something that’s so close
And still so far out of reach

~ Tom Petty, but you knew that

Tom Petty died in 2017—I hope that wasn’t a spoiler. It seems, based on my quick search, that his last public performance included this as the last song he performed. omg the feels. Stop, go watch that entire 7-minute video. If that doesn’t move you…

There’s a moment late in the video where the jumbo-screen behind them says, “without YOU, there’d be no US” — or something close to that second part, it’s obscured. I think that points to something exceptional about TPatHB. Forty years, and grateful for the experience of that specific night.

Now, reread the pull-quote and then read Cain’s suggested practice.

É•

More reason to worry

For even peace itself will supply more reason for worry. Not even safe circumstances will bring you confidence once your mind has been shocked—once it gets in the habit of blind panic, it can’t provide for its own safety. For it doesn’t really avoid danger, it just runs away. Yet we are exposed to greater danger with our backs turned.

~ Seneca

slip:4a225.

Patterns where there are none

Last week, one of your fellow readers hit reply—replies come directly to my personal email box—and shared some thoughts about connections and interesting juxtapositions in the week’s email. After I pointed out that the patterns they commented on, were simply a byproduct of how I write and how the email is assembled automatically, they rightly observed, “Lol, humans finding patterns where they don’t exist. A timeless classic.” I completely agree, and our power of pattern-finding is an awesome tool.

I was reading, and found a new-to-me Einstein quote. (You’ll find it soon, some time in February.) When I capture a quote from someone already in my collection, I have to check; There are ~800 quotes these days and sometimes I “find” one I’ve forgotten. (Surprisingly though, I can usually tell on sight if it’s in the collection already.) This led me to a search for “einstein” here on the blog. (There’s also a tag for Albert Einstein, but the search nets more posts including those I failed to tag.) I found a quote already on the blog—but not the new one that prompted it all—that was so old, it wasn’t in my collection. I fixed that, leading to a very old blog post, with a very high slipbox address, 4a784: Part of a Whole. And also 4a789: Do You Have a Question? Those were posted in 2013.

They’re about curiosity and broadening our sphere of compassion. Which sounds a lot like my just-barely-one-year-old vision and mission.

My vision is a world where everyone can flourish. My mission is creating better conversations that spread understanding and compasion.

So, as a human here finding connections, that’s a breadcrumb from 8 years ago hinting at the path I took to today. Awesome.

É•

Embarking on writing

What’s it for?

For as long as I’ve been recording podcasts I’ve wanted to figure out how to learn more, and retain more, from the conversations. An audio recording of a good conversation can be a good experience for the listener; It can be good experiential learning. But the conversations contain so much more—facts sure, but also connections to other people, projects, stories, new perspectives, insights—which I know I’m missing. If something prompts my memory, I can recall the experience of the conversation, but everything else is either never learned, or if it was, I’ve subsequently lost it.

I’m reminded of…

If you remember what an author says, you have learned something from reading him. If what he says is true, you have even learned something about the world. But whether it is a fact about the book or a fact about the world that you have learned, you have gained nothing but information if you have exercised only your memory. You have not been enlightened. Enlightenment is achieved only when, in addition to knowing what an author says, you know what he means and why he says it.

~ Mortimer Adler, author of How to Read a Book, 1972

There are multiple levels of understanding and learning, contained in each conversation. At the root of my feeling that I’m missing out is the knowledge that I’m only retaining the most-superficial level of the experience.

Who’s it for?

It’s obviously for me. But by doing the writing in public everyone who finds a specific episode interesting would be able to capture and retain more of those “levels of experience” for themselves.

What does success look like?

As I mentioned, my urge to do something more with the conversations is not new. In the Movers Mindset project, I have already experimented with ways to enable others to get more from each conversation. Two efforts in particular are worth discussing.

First, I’ve pushed the concept of episode notes to the limits of sanity. We have guest images, embedded audio player, guest pull-quotes, transcript excerpts, highlights, and the entire thing is organized by chapters—the audio files have embedded chapter information if your player-app supports it. Each section is cross-linked to the corresponding part of the full transcript; The transcripts are organized into sections which are linked back to the episode’s page. This takes massive effort involving myself, Melissa, Rev.com, custom software, and hours of time. Here, take a look at, Selene Yeager: Menopause, Health, and Writing.

Second, I’ve created a tool which enables exploring the episodes. If you were looking closely at Selene’s episode notes, you’ve seen one part of this already. The tool enables choosing a perspective, (for example, how did they answer the signature, three-words question,) and that perspective is dynamically inserted into the page that you saw. There are many other perspectives which you can interact with. (Imagine an old-fashioned, twist-adjustable kaleidoscope; the tool I built is the kaleidoscope and you’re pointing it at the entire Movers Mindset project.) If you want to try something mind-bending, take a look at, Exploring the Movers Mindset Project, where I explain it in more detail, and which includes embedded controls for playing with the current perspectives in real time.

Beyond those to efforts, I’ve always wanted to write something based on the Movers Mindset conversations. Unfortunately, they’re quite long adding to the difficulty of finding a “chunk” to work on. One of my goals in creating the Podcaster Community, was to create a short-form-conversations companion podcast. (Look for Podcaster Community wherever you listen, or you can play the episodes via embeds on the community’s forum.) Those conversations are targeted at 20 minutes which usually leads to a single, clear thread appearing in each episode. This gives me terrific material to work with as I explore how to get at the deeper levels of learning within each episode.

On July 15, 2021 I put up an article, On Storytelling, which is based on the first episode of the Podcaster Community’s companion show. That article was an experiment, and based on the responses it was a successful experiment.

Just figuring out how to write that article was an experiment. First I spent hours talking to various people about how to write an article from a conversation, and about what style, format and voice should be used in such an article. I tried a variety of tools for writing; Not simply “which text editor” but rather what process should I use. I tried: Listening and then starting with a blank page; Dumping the transcript into a spreadsheet (transcript in one column with a cell per block of dialog from each speaker) and converting each cell into corresponding prose in a second column; Working conceptually outwards to an outline of principles or topics, and then working back inwards to create prose. I eventually settled on a way to directly transform the raw transcript into a finished piece. Even though I’ve settled on a way to do it, it remains hard work. It took me three hours to write that experimental article. All of that to say: I’ve only done one, but I’m confident I can now do many more.

How many could I write? There are already 40+ episodes of the Podcaster Community’s show. I estimate there are 300 pieces of Movers Mindset episodes that could be articles. (Many episodes have 3+ threads of discussion, each the size of one of the Podcaster Community’s entire episodes.) I’ve also begun recording short-form-conversation episodes for Movers Mindset. With recording continuing across multiple projects, I have an effectively unlimited supply of raw material.

What’s the problem?

To free up enough time to write consistently, to make meaningful progress, my projects need to become a source of income for me. Movers Mindset has some patronage revenue, (you people are awesome,) and the Podcast Community has a core group of supporters, (also awesome,) which are covering its costs. But neither of them currently supports my life and creates space for this new writing.

My questions are…

Are the conversations valuable?

Would it be valuable to create articles from the conversations?

Would you be willing to support my writing efforts by supporting the Podcaster Community, or by supporing Movers Mindset?

É•