Links for Later 9-9-17

1. A collection of reviews/recaps of the new season of Twin Peaks.
2. Bruce Chatwin profile.
3. Comparing algorithms for decision statistics and machine learning.
4. Narwhals beating the hell out of cod with their tusks.
5. Searching for silphium, the prized, probably extinct Roman herb.
6. The impending death of football, as parents stop signing their kids up to play due to brain injury fears. Could not come too soon.

Startup Geometry EP 025 Robert Pool on Peak Performance

Robert Pool is a mathematician, science writer, and, together with Anders Ericsson, the author of Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise. Today, we talk about the use of deliberate practice to improve physical and mental performance, why the 10,000 hour rule isn't what you think it is, the relationship between talent and success (it's less important than you think, what good mental representations will do for you, and why taste is essential to the development of expert skills.

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EP 022 Michelle Warnky on Overcoming Obstacles

Michelle Warnky is the owner of Movement Lab Ohio, a competitor in obstacle races and a traceusse de  parkour (a parkour freerunner). You can see her on American Ninja Warrior, where she's one of a small group of successful repeat competitors, and you can learn how to be a ninja in your own life at her gym.

Today, we talk about her experience as an English teacher in Kazakhstan, how to develop the skills you need to move your body through obstacles, and how she's balanced her roles as solo competitor, teacher and business owner.

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Links for Later 12-31-15

1. A book cave of about 5000 books, made by a student at Yunnan Normal University (via Marginal Revolution).
2. Venture capital disrupts itself.

3. Kobe said he’d go back & tell his younger self "to understand compassion & empathy." I asked why those two things: pic.twitter.com/ZnpNQ2a6W6

   

   — Baxter Holmes (@BaxterHolmes) December 28, 2015

Startup Geometry Podcast EP 010: Nicolas Cole

Today, I talk with Nicolas Cole, a Creative Director with Idea Booth, a branding consultancy and think tank. When he was a teenager, he was a  highly ranked World of Warcraft player and blogger, spending hours online as an Undead Mage while skating through high school. Now, Cole is a Quora Top Writer, author, fitness model, and marketing expert. In this episode, we talk about how he physically and mentally transformed himself over the last seven years, and what it takes to overcome the limitations you impose on yourself.

Listen to us on iTunes

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Show Notes and Links

People are Awesome 2013

The latest annual installment of people doing things that make you want to go out and do those things. (via kottke)

Links for Later 11-16-12

1. Elle Luna: "User research doesn't produce user-centered design." Advice for designers in startups.
2. William Langwiesche joins the French Foreign Legion (for a profile)
3. Kelly Starrett, physical therapist and CrossFit coach
4. "His works in number, bulk, and uselessness are not surpassed in the whole field of learning"

Links for Later 9-1-12

1. Update on the body cooling glove which improves athletic recovery vastly.
2. A short macroeconomic review.
3. Review of David Nutt's Drugs: Without the Hot Air
4. Jon Stewart on Clint Eastwood's RNC chair speech
5. Rachel Maddow on same
6. Flynn's IQ
7. Yoga can't be copyrighted
8. The Music Bed: Royalty free music resource
9. Richard Kadrey's The Devil Said Bang preview
10. The World's Smallest Palladian Villa

Links for Later 7-9-12

1. Not enough scientists, and not enough science jobs
2. How the failure of ACTA is impacting the copyfight
3. Almost 10% of Pennsylvania voters disenfranchised by new law
4. How to teach entrepreneurship
5. Dave McClure, late bloomer or loser?
6. Noahpinion thinks Zero Hedge is a behavioral finance sockpuppet
7. Doctor gets leukemia, sequences own genome with help from a few friends, finds effective treatment.
8. How to scale a wall

Desire and Fear

Ken Bradshaw surfed the largest wave in history. In 2011, William Langwische interviewed him for Vanity Fair.

Bradshaw told me about meeting Noll many years later. He said, “Noll asked me, ‘Do you ever close your eyes?’

“I said, ‘Excuse me?’

“‘At the top of the wave.’

“I said, ‘No! I always want to know where I’m going!’ Then I realized, that’s how he did it. He’d get to some point where it was scary, then just close his eyes and keep going. Because his desire was greater than his fear.”

(via longreads)

Links for Later 2-22-12

1. Third Frontier expands to new accelerator programs
2. How to do guilloche and other patterns in Illustrator
3. Gig poster graphics tutorial in Illustrator
4. The making of Thread's Not Dead, a book about making T-shirts
5. Crowdsourcing tools
6. Jeb Corliss hits Table Mountain
7. Jakprints
8. Bird skull necklace

Links for Later

1. Notes toward an understanding of Obama's economic policy decisions
2. Germanic neopagan denominations
3. A soldier comes out to his father on the day of repeal of DADT. Hard to watch. Good to see.
4. Dave Staley: ways to become Renaissance Florence today
5. A member of the House of Representatives so poor that he cannot feed his family on $200k/year (or maybe $600k)
6. Tennis union may go on strike over too-long season
7. Ryan Gosling

Slingshot Powered Slip and Slide

Welcome to quadroplegia, kids.

Links for Later

1. Rafael Nadal, conceived as a brand
2. Dionne: Obama needs to go big or he'll go home
3. William Gibson on cities
4. Miguel Serdoura's tutor for the baroque lute

Dean Potter

Wingsuit, slackline, BASEjumping,rockclimbing legend and happy mutant Dean Potter received the oral history treatment in July's Outside Magazine:

JIM HURST (climbing, slack­lining, and filming partner who shot footage of Potter’s 2008 freeBASE climb on a 1,000-foot, 5.12+ Eiger route called Deep Blue Sea): I first met Dean when he was cooking at Pete’s. I think of Pete yelling, “Dean, get the fuck in here!”—complaining because Dean was making these blueberry pancakes with piles of ­blueberries for his climbing friends. Before Dean got the job at Pete’s, he was living on saltines and condiments. I think he liked mustard.
POTTER: I got the job as cook at Pete’s because I couldn’t bear being on food stamps anymore. Basically, I worked for a $3-a-night place to sleep, plus breakfast and dinner. I ­remember sitting with my friend Jim Belcer one Christmas Eve, eating salt sandwiches, and we were saying, “Man, this is dumb—this is a salt sandwich.” Now, somehow, I romanticize it. But at the time I wondered, What’s gonna happen when the salt runs out?

Links for Later

1. Oscar Pistorius is "bionic...and hot"
2. Glenn Greenwald dissects the Manning/Lamo Wired chat transcripts
3. Bradley Manning profiled
4. Why the White House wants a big deficit deal
5. George RR Martin
6. Richard Feynman
7. A Macavoy/Fassbinder appreciation Tumblr
8. Airport body scanners still not safe. TSA still in denial

Links for Later

1. How Noelle does watercolor textures in Photoshop


2. Adam's one-legged backflips


3. Alex Shakar's wild publishing story


4. Obama embracing Hooverism


5. Allusions in The Magicians

Prague Skywalkers

File under: people doing remarkable things. I disbelieved what I was seeing while watching this video.



And then I thought, I need to hop a flight to Prague.

Lion Tamer

"I have a whole series of shows planned in my head. I will pull an airplane with my teeth, and I will pull an airplane with my hair. I will also be run over by an airplane. In between each of these acts, there will be lion battles."

-Al Sayed al-Assaway, Lion Tamer

Links for Later

1. Sentences, student teachers and Adam's Apples
2. The un-New York city (via bruce sterling)
3. 100 great cinematic threats (via andrew sullivan)
4. What to say to a cancer patient
5. Rafael Nadal, an appreciation
6. Michael Fassbinder was great in X Men First Class
7. How Magneto Got His Hat
8. "Were-Gay"
9. John Banvard