Category: 2024
- Was that a rock or a root?
- I wonder if I can save this?
- Nope, not gonna be able to save this.
- Oh man, this is a rocky section of trail.
- Shit, this is gonna hurt.
- How should I land? Brace with hands or tuck-n-roll?
- When is the last time I fell? I can’t remember.
- Ground approaching, prepare for impact.
- FUUUUU….
- Adopt a mindset of tragic optimism
- Create daily and weekly anchors
- Respond, don’t react
- Stay consistent on what you care about
- Use behavioral activation
- Be rugged and flexible
- Reinvest in publishing on a personal domain. I’ve written on the web since I was a kid and I really enjoy the act of working through thoughts and then putting those thoughts out into the world to see what comes back. A personal site allows for writing at a deeper level than social media will allow and I maintain control over the final product. This website – built on the Micro.Blog platform and underlying Hugo CMS – will be my home for that moving forward.
- Integrate with the social web. I’ve consolidated my social media use to Mountains.Social, a decentralized instance of Mastodon that caters to outdoors enthusiasts. The people are friendly, the community is vibrant, the culture is healthy and there are no algorithms. I’m enjoying my time there. Check it out if you’re interested, or not. No pressure. All posts here will automatically cross-post there, as well as Bluesky (although I am not really hanging out there very much).
On Marshmallow Longtermism
Cory Doctorow – writing for Locus Mag and using the Stanford marshmallow experiment as an allegory – tears down the inherent flaws of the conservative premise that self-discipline is a determining factor on someone’s chances in life:
On average, the kids who “fail” and eat the marshmallow rather than waiting and doubling their haul were poorer, while the “patient” kids were from wealthier backgrounds. When the “impatient” kids were asked about the thought process that led to their decision to eat the marshmallow rather than holding out for two, they revealed a great deal of future-looking thought…The adults in these kids’ lives had broken their promises many times: Their parents would promise material comforts, from toys to treats, that they were ultimately unable to provide due to economic hardship.
Conversely, those kids who were able to delay their gratification for double the reward came from wealthier homes:
Which means that the “patient” kids weren’t demonstrating “self-control” – rather, their willingness to wait for a second marshmallow reflected a charmed life in which adults came through with the goodies they promised. That same charmed life saw those subjects enrolled in the best schools, backstopped by tutors and college application consultants, significant parental financial contributions to excellent postsecondary education, and smooth entry into the job market.
Self-discipline and delayed gratification are virtues worth developing in all humans. Our planet and future generations depend on it. But it can only be done when people are on equal footing stable enough to allow for that development.
Dang, the Bluesky product teams have been crushing it. They just dropped some very good anti-toxicity features like detaching quote posts, hiding replies, improved user controls for notifications & blocking lists.
Mouthful of Trail
We have some pretty technical trails here in Western Pennsylvania and I’m usually reliable for a good fall every few months. In my mind, it goes with the territory of running on top of rocks, roots and mud. Even the best and most accomplished trail runners bite the dust. It’s been quite some time – over a year I think – since I’ve taken a digger on a run, but today was my day!
I’ve been getting out early, pre-dawn with a head torch, and pushing my pace on some faster, shorter jaunts. Today, however, I decided at the start that I’d take a relaxed route and go super easy.
The first mile was awesome. Air was a warm 67º F and it hasn’t rained in a week so the trails were perfection. Feeling excellent, I entered the section of North Park’s red trail where the tall pines pierce the sky like wooden daggers.
Then I felt it. You know what I’m talking about. I felt my toe catch on an object underfoot and everything went into slow motion. In no particular order all of the following rushed through my brain prior to my hitting the ground:
And then it was over. There I was, layed out in the wooded darkness, headlamp shining vertically up into the emerging sky, with a mouthful of trail. I spit out the dirt, brushed myself off and took a moment to assess my condition.
All good. Nothing broken. No blood. All I have to show is a few scratches on my knee and elbow, and a bruised ego. Hopefully I’m good for at least a year until the next one.
I really like Brad Stulberg’s six pillars to stay grounded in a crazy world:
There was a significant step forward for the Fediverse yesterday with the launch of sub.club, a payments platform for the social web. After a brief onboarding process, Mastodon users can post premium content to subscribers. It’s not something I’m looking for, but it could be a big unlock for some.
A public request to my REI colleagues regarding our next work retreat: Please don’t leave me behind to summit a 14’er solo, only to get lost and then spend the night alone weathering a storm.
Uh oh. The Grand Canyon has had a water main break that is impacting overnight stays this Labor Day weekend:
The Arizona park’s Transcanyon Water Distribution Pipeline is 12½ miles long, providing water to both the North and South Rim, and it’s about 50 years old. It has had 85 major breaks since 2010, park officials said in an earlier news release, adding that it “is beyond its expected useful life, experiences frequent failures, and requires expensive and continuous inner canyon maintenance work to repair leaks.”
(via The Washington Post)
Someone is cruising Pittsburgh’s downtown and North Side neighborhoods to tag fresh piles of dog excrement with political paraphernalia and the Pittsburgh City Paper needs some answers:
I wasn’t expecting to nearly step in bedazzled dog doo on my way to Le Gourmandine. It was a bizarre sight: nearly fresh canine excrement with little flags donning the phrases “TRUMP DUMP” and “Trumpin’ ‘n Dumpin” stuck into the turds with toothpicks and topped with patriotic sprinkles. So many questions.
The Standard asks, “Why does Gen Z have such bad concert etiquette?”
I dunno. What did boomers think of mosh pits in the 90’s? What did Gen X think of the cell phones that popped up at shows in aughts? All of this seems like a bit of generational hand ringing to me. The kids are alright.
The New Slang
Jason Fried making an analogy that companies are like complex languages where new executives sometimes struggle to gain proficiency:
A casual browse through LinkedIn at C-level folks will unearth many short tenures. 2 years. 3 and a half. Sometimes just 1. It’s incredibly hard to become a high-expectation native speaker in such short order. This leads to what I call “churnover” — a high turnover rate driven by the churn of executives struggling to fully integrate into their new corporate language.
It’s an astute observation. I’ve seen this over and over during my time in retail. A new executive comes in, speaks an entirely different language, is unable to gain traction and ultimately leaves for greener pastures in short order.
The great leaders, however, are able to quickly assimilate into the existing culture. They learn and speak the language of the locals, while working to introduce new and effective colloquialisms as they earn trust across the organization.
Death to the Algorithm
As someone who was born on the blurry border between Generation X and the Millennial generation, I remember a time before the internet and I fondly recollect my curiosity surrounding the emerging internet in the late-90s. The infant internet was an extremely strange place. There were very few rules, even fewer boundaries and – as far as I could gather – no limits to the interconnected potential of this new universe.
I wanted to know how it worked, so I too could have a hand in creating the magic of the World Wide Web. I viewed page sources and inspected elements to learn how HTML and CSS fused together to make websites. I started making my own sites and added them to webrings. Remember those?
AOL gave way to Geocities gave way to Blogger gave way to Wordpress, which led to MySpace which led to Twitter. At the dawn of early social media, I felt just as excited about using the web to connect and share with likeminded people who were equally excited about the promise of digital culture. The early days of Twitter felt like the Wild West. Everyone was exploiting the tech for their own needs via open APIs and user-generated features like the hashtag.
The progress in this space in the early- to mid-2000s was a thing of wonder. We started to see its impact on communities, politics, art + culture, and social justice. Social media had become the great democratizer.
And then somewhere along the line money, user data, and algorithms took over.
Reverse chronological timelines morphed into algorithmic feeds labeled ‘For You,’ but the feeds don’t actually show posts from the people you follow. This helped create the attention economy and influencers were born. Shortly after, the 2016 & 2020 elections helped create a toxic level of political polarization, online echo chambers fortified the barriers between those polarized, and misinformation campaigns continue to feed the flames of the burning social stack.
I’m done with all that. Over time I’ve learned that participating in the attention economy negatively impacts my mental and emotional well being and I am making a conscious choice to walk away from it. In support of this decision, I am rethinking how I spend my time online. Connecting and sharing with people is still important to me, but I want to do it in a mindful and responsible way. Here’s how I plan to do this:
So here’s to hoping I can enjoy a healthy relationship with the internet again. The spirit of the open web was a philosophical pillar for me at one point in my life, and I’m hoping that it will be again. Hello, old friend.
I’ve been in retail technology for a long time, and this is the first time I’ve heard the term Summerween:
For many retailers, the weeks between July 4 and Labor Day have customarily been all about stocking up on lunch boxes, crayons and notebooks for back-to-school shopping. Now, store shelves are just as likely to be filled with cauldrons, candy corn and pumpkins.
I love this photo taken by Cover Three Athletics of my son (playing center, #63 in white) from last Friday’s WPIAL Week 0 matchup between Shaler Area and Butler.
📍 Butler High School, Butler, PA, USA
How will Project 2025 impact the things you care about? 25and.me is an innovative website that lets you select areas of interest. Then it breaks down exactly how it will effect those areas, with page number citations. It’s extremely well done and worth a share.
