noun : an accumulation of loose stones or rocky debris lying on a slope or at the base of a hill or cliff.
Those fundamentals matter — and if you’re not doing them yet, they’re worth implementing. But if you’ve already got the basics down and are looking for some lesser-known strategies to enhance your sleep, we’ve got you covered below.
~ Brett McKay from, 45 Tips — That You Haven’t Heard a Million Times Before — to Improve Your Sleep
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Ironically, I was up at 4am when I read this.
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What new formats and practices best transmit Art du Déplacement’s culture—beyond technique—so practitioners can reflect, connect, and grow together?
Art du Déplacement’s culture is deepened through «partage», reflective practice formats, and distinctive training like vision work and night missions.
Still, I had the fear, but I knew where I was, where I was going, [and] how— I knew myself better, basically. So this very strong experience with my friends, and this strong experience of failure— That was really an in between moment for me. […]There is before that training session at the «Dame du Lac» experiencing all this. And then there is me discovering more about my inner self and being very different in the way I approach fear.
~ Stany Foucher (1:33:00)
The discussion frames Art du Déplacement as a living culture rather than simply a set of techniques. Stany’s recently published, French-language book is highlighted as a deliberate choice, made with the awareness that language shapes who can engage with the ideas. (Craig and Stany hope that an English translation can eventually be created which captures the subtlety and depth of the material.) The strengths of books—slower pacing and deeper digestion—are compared to the reach and immediacy of video. This leads to exploring audio as a practice medium, with the idea of podcast-led movement sessions modeled on audio yoga classes. The conversation also touches on the value of building shared reference points across the community, so practitioners in different places can connect through common experiences.
Practice design is a recurring theme. The Movers Mindset Pause project is discussed as a way to help practitioners form a cycle from discovery to reflection to change. Coaching is discussed as more than sets and repetitions, incorporating environment, questioning, and reframing experiences. Public-space QM is described as a way to normalize human movement in busy urban settings, reducing self-consciousness and building autonomy. The pair note the importance of training “vision” as a standalone capacity, distinct from fear management or technical skill.
Maybe one thing that I’m trying to focus on sometimes is this vision element of the discipline. Vision is really a topic by itself. If you just try to be in an analyzing mode, you know, trying to analyze the environment and be— not measuring, but just feeling— not for the sake of techniques, but just vision for vision. Maybe new things can arise.
~ Stany Foucher (58:00)
They describe silent, “night missions” where participants select a distant, barely visible endpoint and navigate to it without touching the ground, focusing on presence, creative pathfinding, and trajectory rather than named techniques. Other modalities—lifting, carrying, climbing, and playing on varied terrain—are folded into practice to broaden capacity. Social aspects like shared meals, walks, and storytelling are recognized as essential for transmitting culture, complementing formal training.
But something that I really get, also from those years of training, and maybe you don’t see it is, all the questioning behind it. I cannot think of a training that would not end with a question— [an] open question from—especially from Jann [Hnautra]—just reflecting on what you did. Why were you in that state of mind when we’re doing this movement? Why did you want to stop when you were doing the QM? Lots of questions and reflecting on what you did. I think this is an important piece of the training.
~ Stany Foucher (28:00)
Personal philosophy surfaces through parenting analogies—providing environments where children retain innate movement abilities—and a formative story of a major failure that marked a clear “before and after” in approaching fear. The conversation closes with reflections on building community connection despite geographic distance, testing new formats for sharing practice, and maintaining a loop where ideas, movement, and reflection continually reinforce each other.
Takeaways
Language shapes reach — Choosing French vs. English determines who can read, hear, and benefit.
Books slow the pace — A book supports digestion of concepts that video often rushes past.
Podcast as training — Audio sessions can guide live movement for listeners who learn by hearing.
Build a reflection loop — Journaling and the Pause practice embed discovery to reflection to efficacy.
Coaching beyond technique — The value includes questions, environment, and pointing in the right direction.
Normalize movement in public — Holding QM sessions in busy spaces reduces self-consciousness and increases autonomy.
Train vision explicitly — Treat “vision” as its own topic, not only fear or technique.
Use night missions — Silent, goal-directed traversals cultivate presence and creative pathfinding.
Mix natural modalities — Lifting, carrying, climbing, and terrain play (rocks, slopes) broaden practice.
«Partage» matters — Sharing stories, meals, and walks transmits culture that classes alone can’t.
Parenting reframes coaching — Provide safe environments so kids don’t lose what they already have.
Failure as inflection point — A hard setback created a clear “before/after” in approach to fear.
Resources
https://wiseflow.fr/ — Stany Foucher’s website for his book, podcast, and more.
Art du Déplacement: Au delà de saut — French-language book discussed as framing the culture beyond movement; available as EPUB globally and in print within Europe.
Wise Flow — Stany’s French-language podcast.
craigconstantine.com — Craig’s personal web site with links to everything he does.
Movers Mindset’s Pause — The new Pause publication is a weekly email publication designed for movement professionals—coaches, teachers, gym owners, and practitioners—who want to slow down and reconnect with their deeper why.
Stany Boulifard Mallet: Art du Déplacement, the Yamakasi, and motivation — Stany’s first appearance, back in 2018, on the Movers Mindset podcast.
Art du Déplacement (ADD) — Information about Art du Déplacement in general.
Parkour & Art du déplacement: Lessons in practical wisdom – Leçons de sagesse pratique — Vincent Thibault’s 2015 book discussed in this podcast. The book contains both the French and English text. Don’t confuse it with the similarly named, but completely different book, “Parkour and the Art du déplacement: Strength, Dignity, Community”, published in 2014. There is also a second edition, which is French-language only.
Out on the Wire — Book by Jessica Abel recommended by Craig as a book about podcasting, presented as a graphic-novel-style work interviewing leading creators.
Meditations — Book by Marcus Aurelius (translated by Gregory Hayes) mentioned by Craig as his most-read book.
Quadrupedal Movement (QM) — A practice and movement pattern emphasized in this episode and in Art du Déplacement generally.
Communication with Vincent Thibault — Vincent Thibault’s episode on Movers Mindset.
Move NYC — Public event in New York City mentioned by Craig in reference to normalizing human movement in busy spaces.
Joan of Arc Garden, in Quebec City — Location and statue mentioned by Craig as a setting for personal reflection.
(Written with help from Chat-GPT.)
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Actually, flow — the state of “effortless effort” — was coined by Goethe, from the German “rausch”, a dizzying sort of ecstasy.
Friedrich Nietzsche and psychologist William James both considered the flow state in depth, but social theorist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, is the true giant in the field.
~ from, How to Enter a ‘Flow State’ on Command: Peak Performance Mind Hack Explained in 7 Minutes
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A tidy tour of the history and current status of what we know about flow state.
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Ira Glass is a champion for the Many Voices that public radio’s mission says it values. This American Life is not the voice of record, but a record of the voices around us. The stories are as fully strange and hopeful and funny and harsh and romantic as America itself…and occasionally all at the same time. They sprawl outside the usual standard-issue broadcast confines, telling about the way it actually was, what it felt like, what really happened. Ira is their shepherd, their piper. But it was not always that way. Ira’s Transom Manifesto, which will appear in serialized form over the course of his time with us, begins with his utter lack of talent at this work. We think Ira’s failures will give you hope. — Jay Allison
~ from Ira Glass – Transom
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This is a sprawling, multi-part piece by Glass. It’s part manifesto and part autobiography. It’s well worth the read. I know my may seem odd—it’s just the opening paragraph that’s written by Allison.
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The other day—I forget why—I decided to put on some music, and I just happened to be working standing-up (at my adjustable height desk.) An hour later, having made huge strides on work and on changing my mood, this occurred to me.
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If you’re regularly having arguments with well-informed people of goodwill, you will probably ‘lose’ half of them–changing your mind based on what you’ve learned. If you’re not changing your mind, it’s likely you’re not actually having an argument (or you’re hanging out with the wrong people.) While it can be fun to change someone else’s position, it’s also a gift to learn enough to change ours.
~ Seth Godin from, How to win an argument with a toddler
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It warms my heart whenever anyone describes an argument—what an argument actually is, not rather a fight which too many people refer to as an “argument.”
I’m not the tantrum-throwing child Godin is (among others) referring to— but too often I can be the next child over in the stereotypical classroom: The petulant one. Yikes!
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These are examples of what we call “friendterpreting.” We use this term to describe the times when a hearing or deaf signer steps into a spontaneous, informal, or conversational interaction to play some sort of language-facilitating role with another hearing or deaf friend, usually a signer as well.
~ Rachel Kolb and Timothy Y. Loh from, How Deaf and Hearing Friends Co-Navigate the World
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I remember when seeing someone using ASL was unusual—At first, TV programs that were important, or which really wanted to reach deaf people—that the signer was all I could really see. Now, ASL is so common that it’s just people talking; arguably, it’s even more polite than regular talking which is always audible, versus ASL which is easily out-of-sight. I’ve even considered advocating my wife and I start learning ASL now… partly because eventually one of us will be deaf enough that we’ll need it. But—and I would never have thought of this 40 years ago—it’s also extremely useful for communicating in situations where one cannot be heard.
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The need for such a contest more than 100 years ago is revealing enough, but the reaction of the judges to the prize-winning plan turned out to be even more so — and it says a lot about why business models for audio production and broadcast remain a struggle.
~ Julia Barton from, In 1924, a magazine ran a contest…
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If one squints slightly, it’s all just the same issue: Things consume resources—radio, TV, podcasts, web sites for blogs, social media platforms—and take people’s time to create. It’s not possible for everyone to listen (read, web surf, etc) to everything for free, because reality is real.
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Watching a fire, too, fills the eyes and releases the imagination to drift.
~ Matt Webb from, Beach daydreams, lost at sea
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For a few years now we’ve had a standing date for camping near a beach at the end of summer. This little collection from Webb touches on some of the why.
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If it’s used in the right way, I love it, of course! I mean, I used to joke that the goal of a filmmaker is to be Fellini-esque, you know, when your name means something in that way? We often say something was a very Fellini-esque experience. So if you say a film is Cronenbergian… I like that. The thing that does bother me a little bit is “body horror,” because I never use that term! It was a young journalist who invented that term and it stuck, it’s out of my hands. But I would never have thought that what I did was body horror.
~ Patrick Heidmann from, David Cronenberg – The Talks
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I recently managed to get caught up on The Hansel and Gretel Code, a podcast from my friend Curtis Cates. (I started years behind, so that I had 42 hour+ episodes to listen to.) It was so worth it. First off, great podcast on a very interesting to me topic. Also, I learned about the concept of metalepsis.
Reading the Wikipedia page doesn’t really do it justice. But listening to Curtis talk about metalepsis, and in particular unpacking all the context around some innocent seeming word or phrase really made it clear. For example, in certain centuries and in certain circles of well read people, “planing the planks of our coffins” isn’t just an interesting phrase… for those certain people it brought to mind a whole other complex social and political issue complete with its own colorful players.
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Around the U.S., about 90,000 tons of nuclear waste is stored at over 100 sites in 39 states, in a range of different structures and containers.
~ Gerald Frankel from, How and where is nuclear waste stored in the US?
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This is probably silly, but I’ve always imagined that one day we’d master nuclear fusion. (Fission is “splitting” versus fusion which is “combining.” Our currently nuclear generation is a very complex chain reaction of the fission variety.) To run a fusion reactor requires—literally—the temperatures inside the sun. I’d always hoped we’d be able to dump (teeny tiny amounts) of our current nuclear waste into our fusion reactors… we’re everything is stripped apart to protons and electrons. The perfect waste disposal system. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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And then the light of an older heaven was in my eyes
~ Doug Muir from, Occasional paper: The Light of an Older Heaven
and when my vision cleared, I saw Titans.
— Alan Moore
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A wonderful quote to open a wonder-filled article.
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This is the paradox of our time: the very tools designed to free us from labor are trapping us in an endless cycle of escalating work. As our productivity increases, our standards and expectations rise even faster, creating a psychological Jevons Paradox that threatens to consume our humanity in the pursuit of ever-greater output. We become victims of our own efficiency.
~ Tina He from, Jevons Paradox: A personal perspective
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After I looked up Jevons Paradox, I couldn’t agree more with He’s point. It seems the way to break the paradox is to simply sit in “not doing”— To simply be useless. Perhaps not all of the time, but definitely some of the time.
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No one doubts human beings are special—indeed unique. After all, people are (to our knowledge) the only ones pondering evolution, not to mention creating symphonies and skyscrapers. Still, that is not saying much: All species are unique, or else they would not be distinct species in their own right. Each species can do things humans only dream of, whether flying or diving deep under the sea.
~ Alexander Werth from, The Problems of Evolution as a “March of Progress”
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Anthropocentrism is one perspective. There are many others worth considering too because the more one learns, the better one is able to make moral choices.
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The next day NBC’s president decided to make an exception to the network’s ban on recorded sound in order to interview Morrison and play a portion of the recordings. (Yes, both NBC and CBS banned recorded sound over their air, and would continue to do so for another decade. […] ).
It’s telling that the lesson America’s big radio networks took from this incredible eye-witness recording was simply, “Nope, no more of that!” As sound scholar Michael Biel pointed out, “This is…the first time that a recording was allowed to be broadcast on NBC, and I can count on my fingers the other times that NBC broadcast recordings — knowingly and unknowingly — until the middle of WWII.”
~ Julia Barton from, Hell Yeah: Airships!
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Barton’s Continuous Wave is a must read for anyone interested in audio, radio or podcasting— this article in particular.
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As we gathered data, surveyed people and set up experiments, it became clear that those tiny shortcuts – sometimes hailed as a hallmark of efficient communication – undermine relationships instead of simplifying them.
~ David Fang from, Why you should think twice before using shorthand like ‘thx’ and ‘k’ in your texts
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After I thought about this a bit, this seems to be a clear benefit: We’re really good at trying to imagine (and predict) what other people are really thinking. We pick up subtle clues from body language and more, and we do it subconsciously. So why wouldn’t we also pick up subtle clues in a medium like text?
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Only with Substack does anyone perceive creator branding as being subservient to the platform — something that ought to be seen merely as an interchangeable CMS — like that.
~ John Gruber from, Daring Fireball: The Substack Branding and Faux Prestige Trap
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I’ve tried a few different things on Substack. (None of them ever took off, and each of them I subsequently moved to web sites I directly control.) I’ve always felt something was off, and lately I’ve been souring more on the whole platform. This piece by Gruber puts a clear, fine point on what I dislike about Substack.
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Here’s the actual thing. Robots: Make incorrect assumptions. Misinterpret clear direction. Claim they know when they don’t. Make mistakes. Lie.
Who else does this all the time? Every single human. Like. Always.
~ Michael Lopp from, Every Single Human. Like. Always.
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This is what makes the LLMs feel different. So far, computers have always been perfect—except when they’re wrong/broken. That’s fundamentally not how people are. LLMs came along and they’re imperfect. Always. Just like people.
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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 ‌ — 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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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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