Author: Craig Constantine

Sometimes I consult for large corporations

July 24

So Verizon’s new CEO sent me an email…

Where shall I begin?

First — You can’t simply reply. I get it. It’s hard to have a mailbox on the Internet these days. So many bounces, to deal with (I’m serious.)

Second — So when you go to drag-select, copy and paste that “s.sampath@verizon.com” email address, you discover it’s not what it seems.

Pasting into your email client’s “To” field, you actually create a list of multiple recipients: The first recipient is “s”, then the second is “sampath”, etc—none of which are the email address you meant to copy and paste. So you have to type it into your email client. Not a big deal, but probably enough to stop most people. If they really cared, they’d just give us an

<a href="mailto:s.sampath@verizon.com">s.sampath@verizon.com</a>

and let us just click or touch it, et voila!

Okay, but why can’t we copy and paste? Because in the HTML source in their email, it’s actually:

If you can read HTML, you see there are HTML entities jammed in various places in that email address. I had to lookup the entity &zwnj; — that’s a Zero Width Non-Joining space. Meaning it’s not visible (“zero-width”) and it’s job is to keep whatever is left and right from “joining”… in the sense that complex characters can join to make a glyph— For example: An ‘a’ and ‘e’ can join to make the single character ‘æ’ if your language supports that. (But, of course, English does not have any joining characters at all.) I’m confident this is just an artifact of their bulk-email-sending composer software; it’s common for such things to “defend” an email address in the middle of text from harvesting looking for emails. So this wasn’t maliciousness on Verizon’s part.

Third — …but it’s ironic that, in a message that contains, “It’s not just better service — we are setting a new standard, beginning today,” I have to flip between windows as I retype that email address.

Fourth — Because I’m a level-39 nerd wizard, I do reply to these things. (I mean, I start a new email message addressed to that email address.) And because we (said wizards) are quick to anger and regular Internet users (ie, Sampath) are tasty with ketchup, I send things like this…

I’ll followup when I get my 17.5%.

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Marks were made

July 23

A friend and I recently did a 48-hour fast. (One of the low-lights was going to dinner with people on our way to a concert… everyone’s having burgers and salmon, and I’m drinking black coffee. Anyway.) Our design was to finish the fast by doing one of my usual quadrupedal movement (QM) workouts at my favorite tennis courts, and then a run (as best as possible) around 1.75 mile trail loop. Then break our fasts by eating.

By the end of the QM, I was utterly exhausted. For a cool down I worked on a sweat-angel for about 5 minutes. Left a legit puddle where my head was. And then we did the trail run. Several people joined us for the QM and run, and much fun was had by all.

There’s no real takeaway here. Just a photo and a note to myself: Sometimes I push things. Sometimes I push things too far. Where’s the edge?

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And 7 years later?

July 21

What does that mean? It means you can write a post that is directed within the network. If you want to get on the radar of a blogger – write about their ideas and reference them. The lowly hyperlink is a connective tissue that creates a network graph between the nodes.

~ Tom Critchlow, from Experiments in Networked Writing

Critchlow wrote that in 2018. 7 years down the road, all the technology (for the web and blogs) works great, it’s easier than ever to blog, and in 14 years / 5,000 posts I’ve never had anyone (an author of something I’ve linked to) reach out to me. I’m not complaining—I don’t blog as a way to fish for connections like that. (I blog as a way of working with the garage door up.)

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Also, how is this the first time I’ve used the tag “Blogging”?

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Infused

July 19

How did these trillions of potent proteins, originating in thousands of human bodies, find their way to my son’s blood circulation? What historical, social, and economic conditions enabled this extraordinary exchange of substances?

~ Ben Belek, from Is Donated Blood a Gift or a Commodity?

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There are a slew of interesting questions explored in that piece. The question of “gift or commodity” hadn’t even occurred to me.

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A genuine futurist

July 17

With the passing years, I’ve come to recognize that this was Ballard’s true calling—not as a writer of imaginative works, but as a genuine futurist. This is even evident in his novels.

~ Ted Gioia, from How Did a Censored Writer from the 1970s Predict the Future with Such Uncanny Accuracy?

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This is where I admit that I’m not sure if I’ve ever read any of Ballard’s works—although it seems that if I had read them I’d surely remember them?

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Always the horizon

July 15

You could see arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence as a kind of fron­tier, then, which moves for­ward as com­put­er­ized machines take over the tasks humans pre­vi­ous­ly had to do them­selves.

~ Colin Marshall, from Isaac Asimov Describes How Artificial Intelligence Will Liberate Humans & Their Creativity: Watch His Last Major Interview (1992)

I prefer the metaphor of the horizon: always just out of reach. But it’s our curiosity to see what’s there which pulls us ever-forward.

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When does it get good?

July 13

Those last few reps are the money makers — the best return for your effort you’re going to get, but many people don’t even know they’re possible. My usual stopping point felt like just about the end of the road, but it was actually the beginning of a hidden, hyper-rewarding territory where exceptional results happen.

~ David Cain, from Doing More is Often Easier

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That is a critical life-lesson which I learned through Art du Déplacement. Therein we talk a lot about such things as sharing, being strong to be useful, and community. However, the biggest gains are in the personal development. It’s a journey of growth, yes, but more so it’s a journey of personal discovery. «Allons-y!»

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It’s the messiness

July 11

It turned out in retrospect that the messy diversity of the forest had been the source of its resilience. When stresses such as storms, disease, drought, fragile soil, or severe cold struck, a diverse forest with its full array of different species of trees, birds, insects, and animals was far better able to survive and recover. A windstorm that toppled large, old trees would typically spare smaller ones. An insect attack that threatened oaks might leave lindens and hornbeams unaffected. The rigidity and uniformity of the system meant that failures were not small and contained but systemic.

~ Tiago Forte, from Productive Disorder: The Hidden Power of Chaos, Noise, and Randomness

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I’m simply stuck, staring at: “The rigidity […] of the system meant that failures were […] systemic.” I’m filing this under Stuff I Wished I’d Learned 30 Years Ago. I often say that I use systems and structure as a way to multiply my efforts. And that’s true. But I’ve learned that the real reason is that I’m afraid. The big why behind my hyper-organization, maximally-complex systems, and endless aligning of figurative ducks is my desperately trying to control the world around me. With realization comes… the recognition that I have a lot more work to learn to not do.

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Returning

July 9

I recently returned from a whole bunch of movement. I was at the annual American Rendezvous event in Somerville MA, followed by taking the Level 2 ADAPT Coach Certification course. Immediately followed by some just-for-fun hard work at Vandrar Hem.

This morning I sat down on the concrete for meditation and it was sublime. 10, 15, or maybe even 20 minutes of simply sitting and breathing. Weeks of continuously have a “next thing” on the schedule every minute of every day is its own type of exhausting. This morning I was recharging via stillness. But completely still (like being totally active) is not the correct state.

What I had failed to cultivate in my recent travels was equanimity.

Too often, equanimity is described as a practice or technique that aims at the production of something – usually a state of stillness. Other proposed aims include a ‘countercultural’ refashioning of the self: eg, ‘to disarm the way we define ourselves in terms of achievements, fame, praise, and what we’re told should make us happy’, as the meditation teacher Christina Feldman and the psychologist Willem Kuyken put it in Mindfulness (2019); or being compassionate and caring instead of discriminatory and judgmental.

~ Michael Uebel, from Equanimity is not stillness – it is a mobility of the mind

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It matters that you notice

July 7

Whether you’re a binge-watcher or a doomscroller or some other type of time-bider, the following is probably true for most people reading this: There are things you want to do with your life that you’re not doing. You know these things are worthwhile. You know these things are possible.

~ David Cain, from How to Start Doing the Things You Daydream About

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Cain draws our attention (often in his writing) to the noticing part. That is the really difficult part. If you’re not noticing that there’s a tension in your life, then you’ll surely never change.

Beyond noticing comes relaxing into the feeling. Then deciding whether the tension and the feeling represent something to allow to bloom. And deciding what to let go of to make room for that new growth.

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