Should I keep blogging? →

Published September 23, 2022  ·  All posts on Sep 23  ·  ,

This is not a passive-aggressive maneuver to get you to scroll to the bottom, read the footer and consider supporting my work. (It would mean a lot though if you did.)

This is a serious question which I ask myself at a frequency approaching every minute. All the benefits are not directly measurable.

Exposure — In order to ensure I have material to write posts, I have various processes and systems that force me to skim an insane amount of stuff pretty much every day. If you imagine skimming my weekly email in a second or two, that’s 7 items. I skim about 300 to 500 items every day. A small number each day catch my attention enough that I toss them on my read-later queue. There are 764 things on that queue at this instant. It takes me significant time to read them, but often just a few seconds to realize, “yeah this is going to be a blog post” (and then I go on reading to the end and then I write the post.) If I stopped blogging, would I still do all that work to be exposed to ideas?

Learning — Writing blog posts creates a third “imprint” in my mind. First a glance, then a read, and then thinking about it. Even if I sometimes abort the blog post mid-writing, it’s still three different repetitions. And I have software that feeds me my own blog posts (“what did I post 10 years ago, today?” etc.) so I am constantly re-reading everything on this site; that’s more repetitions as things drift into history.

Integration — If I write a blog post about it, I generally try to figure out its relationship to everything else. Adding blog tags is the most obvious bit of integration. But figuring out what to pull quote involves deciding what is salient to me. And deciding which part(s) I want to focus on, magnify, or disagree with requires further integration.

Writing — Thoughts swirl in my mind. Characters appear on my screen. There are several skills one can work on between those two sentences.

All of that goes into feeding my personal growth and priming my curiosity. Since good conversation is powered by genuine curiosity, all that stuff also enables my person mission.

Should I keep blogging? It doesn’t feel like stopping is realistically an option.

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Destruction →

Published September 22, 2022  ·  All posts on Sep 22  ·  

If you spend your time focusing on the things that are wrong, and that’s what you express and project to people you know, you don’t become a source of growth for people, you become a source of destruction for people. That draws more destructiveness.

~ Tracy DiNunzio

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Logical conclusions →

Published September 22, 2022  ·  All posts on Sep 22  ·  

In its original Latin use, the word genius was more readily applied to places — genius loci: “the spirit of a place” — than to persons, encoded with the reminder that we are profoundly shaped by the patch of spacetime into which the chance-accident of our birth has deposited us, our minds porous to the ideological atmosphere of our epoch. It is a humbling notion — an antidote to the vanity of seeing our ideas as the autonomous and unalloyed products of our own minds.

~ Maria Popova from, Darwin Among the Machines: A Victorian Visionary’s Prophetic Admonition for Saving Ourselves from Enslavement by Artificial Intelligence – The Marginalian

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This is a delightful meander across time and authors.

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Influence →

Published September 21, 2022  ·  All posts on Sep 21  ·  ,

The opinion of a revered writer or thinker can have a deep influence on society; it can also be a big obstacle to understanding real truth.

~ Leo Tolstoy

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Sheer nonsense from the jump →

Published September 21, 2022  ·  All posts on Sep 21

This is sheer nonsense from the jump. Americans don’t have, and have never had, any right to be free of shaming or shunning. The First Amendment protects our right to speak free of government interference. It does not protect us from other people saying mean things in response to our speech. The very notion is completely incoherent. Someone else shaming me is their free speech, and someone else shunning me is their free association, both protected by the First Amendment.

~ Ken White from, Our Fundamental Right To Shame And Shun The New York Times

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This is long (by Internet standards, so maybe 5 minutes?) but borders on a being a ribald savaging of a New York Times editorial. Bully for Ken White. He had me at the byline. If you’re not a fan of White, it’s still worth reading until the part I’ve quoted. If you read that far, you may just become a fan of White’s writing. (And of course there’s more of him quoted here too.)

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WPKM with Gabby St. Martin, Adrienne Toumayan, and Alice Popejoy →

Published September 20, 2022  ·  All posts on Sep 20  ·  

Women’s Parkour Movement – with Alice Popejoy, Gabby St. Martin, and Adrienne Toumayan

What are the goals, challenges, and experiences shaping the Women’s Parkour Movement (WPKM) and its annual gatherings?

Volunteer organizers reflect on the balance between leadership, inclusion, and community building in parkour.

For me, the women’s parkour movement space is much, much more about the feeling of being accepted and valued for what it is and who it is that you are and whatever you’re bringing to the table.

~ Alice Popejoy (26:45)

Whether parkour companies are sharing more female movement because of guilt or social pressure, the fact that it’s happening and we’re seeing more of it is a good thing.

~ Gabby St. Martin (43:08)

The conversation focuses on the Women’s Parkour Movement (WPKM) organization, emphasizing the need for safe, empowering spaces for women and non-binary individuals in parkour. Gabby, Adrienne and Alice discuss the origins, leadership transitions, and ethos of the annual gatherings, highlighting the importance of fostering inclusivity, play, and body positivity. They share personal stories of discovering parkour and finding strength and community within women-centered spaces.

Challenges like representation, leadership diversity, and societal biases are explored, alongside positive trends in visibility and inclusion. The discussion touches on the broader implications of creating platforms that amplify underrepresented voices, with reflections on the impact of movements like “#MeToo” and strategies to build empathetic, inclusive communities.

Takeaways

Creating women-focused parkour spaces — fosters empowerment and community building.

Importance of inclusivity — ensuring spaces welcome women, non-binary individuals, and other underrepresented groups.

Volunteer leadership — highlights the dedication and personal sacrifices of organizers.

Play and creativity — emphasized as key elements of parkour practice in these spaces.

Challenges of representation — ongoing efforts are needed to improve visibility and leadership diversity.

Cultural shifts in parkour — moving toward valuing diverse styles beyond power and strength.

Addressing gender-based issues — from biases in coaching to ethical challenges in leadership.

The role of social media — visibility for women in parkour is increasing but requires further equity.

Resources

Women’s Parkour Movement — Includes event details and registration.

Queen City Documentary — Showcases female parkour athletes, and the need for inclusive spaces in parkour.

Recommendations for Increasing the Number of Women and Girls in Parkour — Alice Popejoy’s analysis of representation in parkour.

On Equal Prize Money and Women’s Participation in Parkour Competitions — Adrienne Toumayan’s article on women’s participation in parkour competitions.

Bonfire WPKM — Event fundraising merchandise.

Art of Retreat — Workshops discussing gender, inclusion, and leadership in parkour.

(Written with help from Chat-GPT.)

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Learning to see →

Published September 20, 2022  ·  All posts on Sep 20  ·  , ,

Most people to this day think of [the sciences and the arts] as so radically different from each other. But I want to posit a different way to look at it. It comes from what I think is a fundamental misunderstanding of art on the part of most people. Because they think of art as learning to draw or learning a certain kind of self-expression. But in fact, what artists do is they learn to see.

~ Ed Catmull

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Our sense of what’s possible →

Published September 20, 2022  ·  All posts on Sep 20  ·  

The people we’re surrounded by limit or expand our sense of what is possible.

~ Brett McKay from, «https://www.artofmanliness.com/people/relationships/sunday-firesides-relationships-over-willpower/»

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That’s a perfect turn of phrase from McKay. I love to find myself exposed to new people; those moments where I think, “that’s interesting!” are like single-serving sized friends (with hat tip to Chuck Palahniuk).

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Strategy →

Published September 19, 2022  ·  All posts on Sep 19  ·  

Most of us in life are tacticians, not strategists. We become so enmeshed in the conflicts we face that we can think only of how to get what we want in the battle we are currently facing. To think strategically is difficult and unnatural. You may imagine you are being strategic, but in all likelihood you are merely being tactical. To have the power that only strategy can bring, you must be able to elevate yourself above the battlefield, to focus on your long-term objectives, to craft an entire campaign, to get out of the reactive mode that so many battles in life lock you into.

~ Robert Greene

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Cursive →

Published September 19, 2022  ·  All posts on Sep 19

It was a good book, the student told the 14 others in the undergraduate seminar I was teaching, and it included a number of excellent illustrations, such as photographs of relevant Civil War manuscripts. But, he continued, those weren’t very helpful to him, because of course he couldn’t read cursive.

~ Drew Gilpin Faust from, Gen Z Never Learned to Read Cursive – The Atlantic

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People of a certain age know that cursive is no longer taught and that of course there must be people who can’t read or write cursive. But I certainly wasn’t clear on when the sun actually set. (Hint: Teaching of cursive ended in 2010.)

What struck me in this article was how Faust’s not knowing about the sunset of cursive knowledge sparked an interesting discussion among himself and the students in his class. Rather than rail against the cessation of cursive education, I’m left with interesting questions: I was taught a specific, super–simplified form of cursive. I know there are other styles, even hardcore calligraphy, which I can barely read. While there are lots of reasons trotted out for why cursive should be taught, maybe I should go through the effort of learning another form of cursive to put my efforts where my mouth has always been? If my cursive knowledge—for example—opens up my ability to access certain documents, wouldn’t it be better (my own argument goes) to learn another form, or to practice even more, to access even more?

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