What’s in a title? →

Published May 29, 2020  ·  All posts on May 29  ·  

Should I write the title first, or last?

Should the title be a clear signpost of what is to come?

…or should the title prepare the reader?

…prime their mental state, jar them out of common trains of thought, give them the first bit of context, …

Should the title be short, or loquacious?

An interrogative or a statement.

Should the tense (present, past, passive, active, …) match, or provide counter-point?

If I practiced by writing 2,509 titles would I be able to write a title for a post on titles?

Could I remove the titles entirely?

Should I remove the titles entirely?

What is my intention for having titles? (Hi Angie!)

Should I have the same intention each time I’m composing a title?

Could the title be revealed last—only after the piece is read?

Email has a subject line; not a title line.

Does a title convey the subject?

…always? …sometimes? …maybe it never should?

Can a subject be a title?

Could a title contain the subject but also serve some as-yet-undiscovered-by-me purpose?

Should a title set the tone?

…create tension? …allude to the subject?

…and be short?

Do people judge what I write by the title?

Do people who read a lot of my posts, versus those who are having their first experience, use the titles differently?

Or maybe the title’s primary purpose is to serve as a mental bookmark for the piece after it’s been read?

Wait. What was I going to write about today?

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Point Reyes Lighthouse →

Published May 28, 2020  ·  All posts on May 28

Serious work →

Published May 27, 2020  ·  All posts on May 27  ·  

Well, then, are we teachers the only idle dreamers? No; it is you young men who are much more so. For, indeed, we old men, when we see young ones at play, are keen to join in that play ourselves. Far more so, then, if I saw them wide awake and keen to join us in our studies, should I be eager myself to join with them in serious work.

~ Epictetus

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Nikkie Zanevsky: Coaching, inclusivity, and empathy →

Published May 27, 2020  ·  All posts on May 27  ·  

Nikkie Zanevsky: Coaching, inclusivity, and empathy

How can inclusive coaching practices and a focus on empathy improve learning and growth for diverse groups in movement disciplines like parkour?

When she first learned about parkour back in ’06, Nikkie Zanevsky never dreamed it would lead to her quitting her day job and starting her own movement company. Nikkie sits down to reflect on her approach to coaching, structuring classes, and creating an experience for her students. She shares her own methods of learning and growing, and how it impacts her coaching. Nikkie shares her insights on success, inclusivity and gender in parkour, and the importance of starting before you’re ready.

For me, my favorite part of coaching is activating everyone in the space to work with each other and to learn from each other, but I feel like I can do that better if I know something about each of the people and how to activate that.

~ Nikkie Zanevsky

The conversation explores the integration of empathy, inclusivity, and diverse movement modalities in coaching practices. Nikkie discusses her approach to creating a supportive environment for learners of all ages and skill levels. She emphasizes the importance of understanding individual needs and fostering collaboration among participants.

Key themes include the role of failure as a pathway to growth, the psychological barriers faced by older participants, and the value of blending disciplines like parkour, strength training, and playful movement. The discussion also highlights how societal expectations can influence participation and the importance of challenging norms to create equitable learning experiences.

(more…)

Don Beeson | Overlanding, Combatives, and Event Missions Recap →

Published May 27, 2020  ·  All posts on May 27

On Castbox.fm — Don Beeson | Overlanding, Combatives, and Event Missions Recap

How can survival, evasion, resistance, and escape (SERE) skills intersect with and enhance the practice of Parkour?

Teaching Parkour athletes to slow down offers unexpected lessons in awareness and strategy.

The nice thing about teaching and in working with the Parkour community, when I noticed this last year, when I first came is that how enthusiastic everyone is to learn in general, everyone is very athletic, everyone’s very physically minded and very intelligent. A lot of the things that I teach people are picking up very quickly.

~ Don Beeson (1:12)

The conversation explores how military survival and resistance training techniques intersect with Parkour, revealing unexpected similarities between the two disciplines. Practical skills like navigation, situational awareness, and movement efficiency demonstrate significant overlap, and Parkour practitioners’ adaptability in both urban and wilderness environments is highlighted. The enthusiasm and curiosity of the Parkour community provide a rewarding teaching environment for instructors with military backgrounds.

Additionally, the discussion touches on night missions and team-building exercises at the Art of Retreat, showcasing how structured physical challenges reinforce leadership, communication, and problem-solving. The conversation goes into the value of slowing down and appreciating movement in new ways, emphasizing the mutual benefits that arise when different communities exchange knowledge and skills.

Takeaways

Crossovers between Parkour and SERE training — The overlap between survival training and Parkour skills provides valuable insight into movement and adaptability.

Navigation and map reading — Parkour practitioners gain new skills by learning topographic navigation techniques from survival experts.

Team-based challenges — Collaborative exercises during night missions foster leadership, communication, and teamwork.

Slowing down to learn — Moving slowly and deliberately enhances situational awareness and leads to better movement decisions.

Mutual learning — Survival instructors learn efficient movement techniques from Parkour athletes, enriching their own teaching methods.

Resources

Art of Retreat — Annual Parkour leadership and education retreat where the conversation takes place.

(Written with help from Chat-GPT.)

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Cognitive biases →

Published May 26, 2020  ·  All posts on May 26

Cognitive biases are systematic patterns of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment, and are often studied in psychology and behavioral economics.

~ List of cognitive biases from, List of cognitive biases

While that may seem blasé, it’s worth a look.

…ok, back? Great.

Now gape dumbfounded at the majesty of a modern image format, SVG mixing a magnificent design, with infinite scalability, dynamic styling and clickable links. Just click on this already:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Cognitive_bias_codex_en.svg

Hey also, as far as I can tell, the word “blasé” correctly written as a word in English does include the diacritical mark. I wouldn’t have believed you if you’d told me there were any properly English words with accents, but it seems that this is now a thing in the last century or so! (to wit, https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-English-words-that-take-an-acute-grave-accent-or-any-other-diacritics-if-you-prefer )

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Est provocationem →

Published May 25, 2020  ·  All posts on May 25

Today, I’m drawn to considering refinement of an idea I’ve mentioned a few times.

It’s clear to me that it’s impossible to be happy if my mind is unable to focus. Years ago, I regained my ability to intentionally focus, by disempowering the world—disabling as many as possible of the pathways for everything and everyone to actively grab my attention. Then I set about railing against everyone who has not yet regained their own ability to focus, (or perhaps, has never learned to focus.)

Internally, I often use an idea which I believe I stole from mathematical analysis. When facing some question, the idea is to find the largest contributor, and get a handle on that first; that’s the first-order item. Then find the next largest contributor, and get that second-order item sorted. And so on.

A few decades ago, the largest impediment to my being able to intentionally focus was external distraction. Having now sorted that first-order item, I can turn to the second-order item: Everyone’s inability to focus is polluting my attention. I remain easily distracted by others’ inability to focus.

Est provocationem!

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Yes please →

Published May 24, 2020  ·  All posts on May 24

Test ideas by experiment and observation. Build on those ideas that pass the test. Reject the ones that fail. Follow the evidence wherever it leads. And question everything, including authority. Do these things and the cosmos is yours.

~ Ann Druyan from, Wonder and the Sacred Search for Truth: Ann Druyan on Why the Scientific Method Is Like Love

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Triple bank shot! Brain Pickings/Maria Papova, Ann Druyan and Carl Sagan. Brain Pickings is one of the web sites where I have read every single post. Time well spent in my opinion.

Presented for your consideration without further comment. :)

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Death by metal box →

Published May 23, 2020  ·  All posts on May 23

(Postcript: Hey! Almost died yesterday. For the umpteenth time. This is not a joke. I didn’t realize I needed to write about it—until I started typing.)

Recently it’s become necessary for me to make many commuting trips approximately an hour-and-a-half each way. Something came up, just as COVID-19 started, which trumps the stay-at-home-order for me—at first, sporadically in February, March, April and now straight-up five-days-a-week in May, I’m in the car commuting. Never mind why, just roll with me here. I’m now on the road a lot, like a regular commuter. It started when there was no one on the roads, and now things are starting to pick up—just starting mind you, I cannot imagine what this is going to be like soon, as things get back to normal traffic levels.

If you… you specifically reading this right now… have been, (or are,) commuting to your job by car. YOU ARE INSANE. “But I need the job/money!” …when you’re dead? Cool story bro’.

I’m not being hyperbolic.

I’ve driven a shit-ton since I was 16. I had a long distance relationship for years, driving 2, 3, and even 5 hours one-way to say, “hello!” I drove a delivery truck for a few years back in high-school. I’m nuts; I even have routines I use, (at all times,) to avoid losing focus. I’ve been in two accidents, both not my fault—both situations with kamikaze drivers. One literally nearly killed me; I was traveling at 60mph in my first Jeep. On a deserted highway. At midnight. When I was CREAMED from behind by someone doing ~90. (Stop here and try to figure that out.) It spun the Jeep—howling tires and tire smoke and those racing-car hour-glass skid marks… and I hit the guard rail. Also, three separate times since February—HOLY FUCKING SHIT SRLSLY T H R E E people have tried to kill me on the road since February! 1) On a two-lane highway curving left, a manic in the left lane, heads for the right-hand exit ramp through me; I managed to navigate between him, and the guy already on the ramp saving us all. 2) A sleepy driver coming off third shift, in the left lane, on the highway, micro-sleeps and veers through my driver’s-blindspot clipping me off the road, into the median towards the on-merging ramp traffic just as that median space went to zero; again, I saved everyone. 3) An oncoming Amazon delivery truck, rounding a bend, turns left across my path, in the rain; my rainy driving skills save everyone for the win. I can go on if you’d like more examples of driving incidents in the past where my skill has explicitly saved me. Once on a metal-grate bridge in the poring rain, in lane width restricted construction, two lanes, slow flatbed tractor trailer in the left lane, me declining to pass on the right, pissed people behind me, down slight grade at end of bridge, road curves right, truck gently touches his brakes and the trailer slides into my lane… would’ve caught me against the right-hand barrier but instead I smugly read the license plate on the trailer; There have been countless times avoiding being hit from behind in sudden braking situations, people crossing center-lines, tail-gaters, people cutting me off. Being on a road is attempted-suicide.

Every single time I narrowly avoid death I think: That is how I am going to die. Right there, like that, in a car. Once, twice … 42, 43, … 206, 207, 208, … how many times can I get lucky? I’ve seen ground-up people in car crashes as I slow-maneuvered around the accident! That’s how I’ll die. Right there under that truck, in that ditch, wrapped around that tree avoiding that other car. I’m going to die a slow, painful death in an automobile. Is it worth it?

oh. I see this is a rant… ok I’m good with this being a rant.

If you are commuting, YOU ARE INSANE. Save your own life and STOP. Quit your job. You can’t spend the money when you are dead. The people you are “working for” prefer you alive.

I’m straight-up begging for a $1-per-gallon gasoline tax to be routed exclusively into a dedicated driving enforcement arm of the State Police—four person officer teams always working in two cars for the stop. (Each stop should take, mandatory, a minimum of half-an-hour on the roadside. So everyone knows it’s hurts even to get stopped.) Also, mandatory every-5-years driver privilege/license re-testing with an evaluator-in-the-car driving test. Also, I want mandatory escrow accounts to qualify for a license—NOT JUST INSURANCE! I want you to put up a $250,000 secured bond before you can get a license. You’re balking? Wait, what value have you placed on your life?

omg ima stop now

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Doing what you love →

Published May 22, 2020  ·  All posts on May 22  ·  ,

But the fact is, almost anyone would rather, at any given moment, float about in the Carribbean, or have sex, or eat some delicious food, than work on hard problems. The rule about doing what you love assumes a certain length of time. It doesn’t mean, do what will make you happiest this second, but what will make you happiest over some longer period, like a week or a month.

~ Paul Graham from, How to Do What You Love

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There have been just a few bits about this topic arranged on the Internet. I’ve written several times here myself, and linked to many things like this one from Graham. The ultimate point that I’d like to make is simply that the necessary part of solving the problem for yourself is to ask yourself such questions.

If you’re simply going through life reacting to whatever you find before you, then any arm-chair, ivory tower, philosophizing about the meaning of life, one’s purpose, or finding one’s Life’s Work, is completely pointless. I’m not criticizing going through life in reacting mode; if one is crushed by situation or station, then you necessarily have your work cut out for you.

But presuming you have some slack—and be honest, you are on the Internet, so you have enough slack…

Presuming you have some slack, what questions are you asking yourself?

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