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This issue is https://7forsunday.com/82
April 28, 2024 — #82
On this day
April 28thWhat systems are in place?
Finish this sentence: I am the sort of person who…
Here’s a different way to look at it, one that we can broaden into an insight about adult decisions about where to work, where to live, who to hang out with. There are two parts:
Are the people this place attracts the sort of people I want to spend time with and become more like?
Is the system that is in place here one that pushes and cajoles and processes people to become more like the kind of person I’d like to be?
~ Seth Godin from, On choosing a college
slip:4useoo1.
Not everything needs to be planned out, pre-visualized, processified, done-defined, and OODA looped. However, having mastered those things, it is massively empowering when things go sideways, off the rails, and get set back. Having mastered those things, I know I can always begin anew a slow upward spiral.
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Options
Wealth is not about having a lot of money; It’s about having a lot of options.
~ Chris Rock
slip:4a1148.
Should have read the label
There is a part of you that will *become* your job/profession.
~ Toby Nagle from, 20 years in
slip:4uwoye1.
That’s number 7 from his 10-point listicle.
Also: I’ve taken to using the word “listicle” only when I mean it as a compliment. Versus, my perception that everyone else means it as derogatory. I think that being able to organize one’s writing into a coherent, ordered list of things all of which are on roughly equal footing, shows a significant level of comprehension and integration. Most short writings which have a numbered list of points are crappy click-bait, and people rightly derogate them. This is not that, so there. (English is a mess, but ain’t finger-painting fun?i)
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Exploration with Elise Smith
What lessons and insights can be gained from exploring podcasting techniques, storytelling, and the challenges of capturing personal narratives?
The challenges of starting a podcast while maintaining authenticity take center stage in this dialogue.
I’ve found it much easier to interview someone I barely know, much harder to interview someone I know really, really well.
~ Elise Smith (20:04)
This conversation centers on the art and technicalities of podcasting, from choosing equipment to crafting meaningful episodes. Elise shares insights into how minimal research can simplify podcast production, emphasizing focusing on impactful storytelling over technical perfection. This approach reflects a desire to balance efficiency and creativity in podcast creation.
The discussion also explores the challenges of finding and interviewing guests, particularly those who have experienced significant turning points in life. Elise highlights how podcasting provides an intimate platform to capture raw, emotional experiences quickly, contrasting the immediacy of podcasting with the long timelines of book writing. Additionally, the dynamics of interviewing strangers versus close acquaintances reveal the complexities of creating content that resonates with listeners while addressing the unique comfort levels of guests.
Takeaways
Finding balance — Producing a podcast with minimal research can increase focus on storytelling.
Interview strategies — Open-ended questions and familiar anecdotes help guests ease into conversations.
Tech simplicity — Choosing simple, functional equipment avoids unnecessary complexity.
Guest dynamics — Interviewing strangers is often easier than interviewing close friends or family.
Raw narratives — Podcasts can capture immediate emotional experiences that books often cannot.
Intimacy of podcasting — The medium’s immediacy can make it more personal than other forms of storytelling.
Navigating topics — Creating a safe space for guests is critical, especially for sensitive discussions.
Momentum and format — Adjusting frequency and structure of episodes can sustain production energy.
Resources
The Akimbo Podcasting Workshop — A course mentioned as influential in shaping podcasting strategies.
Tim Ferriss — Referenced for his advice on using familiar anecdotes to ease guests into conversations.
(Written with help from Chat-GPT.)
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Slowly
To live long, it is necessary to live slowly.
~ Cicero
slip:4a856.
File not found
All of our digital platforms and systems, from the social media networks we post on every day, to the storage services we rely on to back up our most important files, to the infrastructures that power our digital world economy, are vulnerable to irretrievable data loss. Over time, file formats, applications, and operating systems go obsolete. Legacy systems become impenetrable. The migration of data to new systems risks breaking the chain of information transmission.
~ Ahmed Kabil from, The Permanent Legacy Foundation Wants to Preserve Your Digital Legacy for Future Generations
slip:4uloie7.
Data loss is a tremendous issue. (I’m setting aside the other problem of data which stays around despite our desire for it to go away.) All forms of data storage “rot” in some fashion or another. (Because, entropy.) It’s not so much about our storing data, as it is about our continuously moving data forward to better—which isn’t always the newer or newest technology at hand—storage. Don’t think “data storage,” but rather think “data movage.”
I’ve absolutely mastered the art of wringing maximum utility for me out of all of the data I create. But in terms of post-mortem— well, it seems a lot harder for me to actually care about that, so I’ve ignored it. While I’ve not gotten behind the Permanent Legacy Foundation myself, it is interesting none the less. I sometimes wonder if my slipbox is worth wondering about preserving? …what about my journals? (They could be a treasure trove of research data on mental illness.) …what about the thousands of pages on this blog? …what about my collection of quotes? …physical (slides, prints) or digital photography?
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It’s vastly more complicated
Most modeling efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic have sought to address urgent practical concerns. But some groups aim to bolster the theoretical underpinnings of that work instead.
~ Jon Fox, from Chasing the Elusive Numbers That Define Epidemics
slip:4uquca1.
Setting aside the specifics of 2020 and the pandemic, the human race is taking enormous strides forward in biology, virology, epidemiology, and a couple other -ologies I’ve not bothered to look up. Also, Quanta Magazine consistently hits it out of the park with article after article like this one—deep dives on all sorts of science and mathematics topics.
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Honing your craft
We’ve created this fantasy world where everyone is just 30 days of courage boosting exercises and life hacks away from living an amazing life.
~ Cal Newport from, Closing Your Interests Opens More Interesting Opportunities
But when you study people like Martin, who really do live remarkable lives, you almost always encounter stretches of years and years dedicated to honing craft.
slip:4ucabo13.
This is the eternal challenge of seeing the forest through the trees; of maintaining perspective.
I’m constantly reminded of the scenes in the Hobbit where they are trying to walk through 250 miles of a forest named, Mirkwood. “Do not leave the path,” is the only guidance they are given. After what seems like endless daily struggles, they eventually dispatch a party member to climb a singularly large tree to the uppermost branches. Unfortunately, even from that lofty perch all that could be seen was more forest forever and ever in every direction. In fact, they were in a low lying area, reasonably close to the forest edge. Crushed by the misleading perspective, their journey takes a turn for the worse.
I have so many projects where I start into the forest with the best intentions. I steel myself with, “I know this is going to turn into a slog at some point, and I’m going to remember why I went into the forest to give me the strength to carry on!” Yeah, that never works out. If the project is actually worth doing, then the forest is necessarily crushingly vast and the journey through must eventually become hopeless. Of course it’s hard; that’s what makes it worth it.
The secret? You have to love living in the forest, just for the sake of living in the forest. Then every morning is an adventure. Sure, some days are going to suck, but every morning will begin a new day of opportunity.
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Vast willpower is, well, not one of my powers
I dunno. But I don’t think of myself as working hard at any of the things I am good at, in the sense of “exerting vast willpower to force myself kicking and screaming to do them”. It’s possible I do work hard, and that an outside observer would accuse me of eliding how hard I work, but it’s not a conscious elision and I don’t feel that way from the inside.
~ Scott Alexander from, The Parable of the Talents
slip:4usate1.
True story:
Long ago, I worked with a boy who was dating a girl. Boy goes to girl’s house for a dinner with her parents. Turns out that the girl’s father is a professor at College. The boy mentions he has a co-worker who went to that College, and mentions my name. Girl’s father says, “Oh! Craig was one of my students… He could have done well if he had applied himself.” Turns out father was one of the professors in my major. I had many classes with him, and he went on to be Department Head for a while. So he did, in fact, know me well.
I didn’t do the bare minimum. But to be fair to that professor, I didn’t really work super-hard either.
It was all, more or less, easy.
What would have been hard, would have been being in the Arts college and trying to do art-type-things. Hell, I would NEVER have even gotten accepted into the Arts college at that same university.
What was hard for me? I took a literature survey class once — ONCE. I took a journalism course… that was so hard I think I hallucinated most of it(*). I spent years trying to learn to play the piano, and the guitar– fail. And, I’m out of superlatives, but losing fat is really hard for me. And, controlling my disfunctional relationship with food is really REALLY hard. Also, languages are hard — I’ve been trying to stuff French into my head for 5 years now…
So:
That thing you’re doing that you find easy? …I’m — or someone else, you get the point — thinking, “HOW DO YOU DO THAT?!”
(*) On the other hand, it was the only course my now-wife and I were ever in together, so while I worked very hard, I was probably a little distracted.
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Traveling with friends
Absolutely glorious day in NJ as I catch a train to Boston. Should be outside, but will have to console myself by editing Episode 5 of the PKTS podcast! Episode 4, Caitlin, will be out next week! (What’s in Boston? A little pk on Sunday and an interview too.)
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The End
It’s taken me nearly a year to go through the 2,000 odd photographs and videos that Mike and I took. Time well spent.
Looking back over the posts continues to bring back floods of memories.
th-th-th-th-that’s ALL FOLKS!
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Hawk-Eagle Ridge (sep 2)
This was the incredible cherry-on-top for this entire Colorado adventure. Hawk-Eagle Ridge is this side, side ravine tucked up behind the Wind Tower just inside the beginning of Eldorado Canyon.
We took this photo (below) on the way out. The tall rock, on the right, closest, is the Wind Tower. So you hike up to the right, between the Wind Tower, and the next mass of rock (on the left in the photo.) Hawk-Eagle Ridge is the crumbly-looking, sloped wall in the middle of the photo. So it’s “the first lefthand ravine” as you go behind the Wind Tower.
…but we didn’t know that going IN. Instead, we didn’t notice this huge, house sized block of rock at the very bottom of the Hawk-Eagle Ridge ravine… it didn’t look like a block that had fallen in the ravine; The ravine was basically not-a-ravine as you hiked past this huge block. So we hike to the SECOND lefthand ravine and busted our *sses slipping our way up this horrid scrabble of avalanching rock, through all sorts of scrub bushes and piles and piles of poison. I expected to step on a snake or three at any moment.
Then we realized we were on TOP of Hawk-Eagle Ridge requiring us to do this sketchy rappel. Or rather, we rigged up a good rappel, and then Mike lowered the gear and rappelled off a couple of (what looked like) ratty old shoe laces. (See the two photos with ropes below.)
The second and third photos below, are the view of the Basile in the main part of Eldorado canyon as we climbed up around ONTO Hawk-Eagle. That’s a road down there at the bottom of the Bastile.
We eventually found a spot of shade at the base of this neat little climb (in the third and fourth photo.) In the second photo, you’re looking back out of Eldorado canyon, so you can get a feel for how we’re just sort of out of sight. The ravine was like hiking back in time. It was clear no one had be up here for decades. This was only the second time in the entire trip that I felt like we were out doing something not normally done. Everywhere else we climbed, it was always well-beaten trails and clearly obvious where to climb; This one was a real adventure. Albeit, a low-height, pretty-near-the-Eldo-access-road adventure.
Here, Mike had scrambled to the top and setup a top-rope anchor. We each took turns scrambling up this neat route. As I’ve said many times, every climb in Colorado had very different rocks. This one was blocky, but the rocks were very natural — normally, oft-climbed routes have their rocks polished pretty smooth and clean to the touch. This rock was very coarse and had a texture that rubbed off on your hands. There was also a very dry moss on a lot of the rock. Overall it was a very different tactile feel. Generally, you get used to your shoes “pasting”, (meaning the flat sole of the shoe has enough friction on plain rock face that you can just stand on very steep faces.) But this rock didn’t paste at all, because there was this every-present layer of fine “dirt” that rubbed off on your shoes (and hands) making everything this unusual sort of dry-slippery. In reality, it was simply the rock naturally weathering, untouched by climbers for who-knows-how-long. (At least, on the routes we climbed.)
Mark — the guy in the white shirt — had opened routes here (aka, “been the first ever to climb”) about 30 years ago. Mike and I spent a lot of time enthralled, listening to stories, and hearing how “these [full-grown] trees weren’t here last time!” I felt it was quite a privilege to get a belay from Mark.
As always, it’s over all-too-soon, and the hike-out commences…
…and I very much like the fact that I get to end my entire series of Colorado posts with a great shot of Mike and Mark!
Cheers gentleman! It was a grand adventure!!
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Bolder Slab (sep 1)
A great example of some “roadside cragging”, as they say. You park, hike a short distance and get your climb on!
We got to the parking lot super early and got the rock-star parking space next to the trail. An hour later, the entire area was swarming with fair-weather bicyclists, walkers, joggers… you name it. By then, we were up on the rocks…
The first climb was this neat little two-short-pitch thing. Chilly in the shade, and it led out onto the most dome-like part of the rock. There was this one, long 45 degree sloping crack, on a near vertical face… you could just get enough edge or your shoe in it to caaaaaarefully walk up along the crack. Almost all of the climbing was just sort of trying to “palm” the general features of the rock.
Later, we moved to the left to this sketchy, run-out (long distances of climbing for Mike before he could set gear for protection) monster blocks thing.
Anecdote: A father-son duo that we were talking with, bailed off some gear. (Meaning they gave up on a climb, rappelled and left their gear on the rocks.) So Mike spent about 45 minutes doing this insane down-climb, on slimy wet rocks, just to then wriggle out under this huge roof to pick up some “booty”. (Slang for free gear you find left behind by others.) o_O
Views from the top, looking back down to the road. I think the scariest part of the day was when we walked out, and had to watch the NON-climbers… in sneakers with no gear, dragging their girlfriends up the big blob of rock in the second photo (below). I seriously thought they were going to fall. We hussled up and left because we didn’t want to see it.
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Red Garden Wall (aug 30)
We climbed Red Garden Wall, in Eldorado canyon as a sort of victory lap after we returned from Lumpy Ridge / Estes Park.
The deep notch, in the closest ridge, is the entrance to Eldorado Canyon. Just inside the entrance to the canyon is the tiny town of Eldorado Springs, and a short drive further takes you into the state park.
The approach is a hike up into one of the side ravInes…
At the base of the wall, you make a short access climb up a notch that finishes as a short chimney. There were two climbers in front of us, so there are a couple shots of another climber going before us…
From there we walked along an interior sort of cleft — with the wall on both sides of you. There were climbable routes all over once you ascended the access climb. We picked a 2 pitch route that had a huge variety of rock and features. Crumbly parts where everything was loose, smooth almost slab areas, and huge angular blocks near the top. Pine trees right in the climbing lines, wild flowers, moss. This climb had everything, including a really old — not dead yet! — gnarly tree as a belay-station anchor…
At the summit, we were atop a tremendous tower! The views to the east showed Boulder and Denver just visible. And there was some debate about how exactly we were to get off this thing…
Eventually we figured out the exit; A short rappel, a walk down around the tower to the other side, and then a spectacular rappel out of this enormous notch…
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Longevity and membrane saturation
(Part 16 of 25 in series, M. Eades' Blog)
The cell membranes of both young and old honey bee queens are highly monounsaturated with very low content of polyunsaturates. Newly emerged workers have a similar membrane fatty acid composition to queens but within the first week of hive life, they increase the polyunsaturate content and decrease the monounsaturate content of their membranes, probably as a result of pollen consumption. This means their membranes likely become more susceptible to lipid peroxidation in this first week of hive life. The results support the suggestion that membrane composition might be an important factor in the determination of maximum life span.
~ Michael Eades from, «http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/uncategorized/longevity-and-membrane-saturation/»
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SAS, 5.25″ Floppy, Lasers and Sh*t
Once upon a time…
Hey, so we have this really dry book about SAS. We need something punchy for the cover art… I know! We’ll put some uber-tech on the front… like a 5.25″ floppy! Those are cutting edge, we’ll be using them forever.
Yeah, but can we have, like sharks, with frickin’ laser beams on their heads or something… ?
We can’t get sharks…
Ok, just make like a frickin’ laser coming out of the floppy…. zowee! These will fly off the shelves!
Wait. What?
25 year old tech on the cover; I think I can get rid of this book now.
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