Internet Todo List for Enthusiastic Thinkers, S1E24

I went to a pizza place. A good pizza place, but not outstanding. I ordered a pizza for myself and sat down at a table by the large, plate glass windows. By force of habit, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and got to interneting.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed motion, as is the function of the corner of the eye. I had never noticed it, but the windows of this pizza place were separated from a busy road by only the sidewalk. The activity of cars and bicycles, the occasional pedestrian, felt special. Like I was closer to the city at this pizza place than I would normally be.

I'm envious when I see pictures of people living in Berlin, San Francisco, or New York. For all the flaws of those cities, it seems like life is more connected there. One sees more people of greater diversity on an average day.

I want to try and see more of Austin. I'm still puzzling out how to accomplish that. I work from coffee shops a couple mornings a week. I suspect that only exposes me to other people who work out of coffee shops. 

I'd love to bike more places, but it feels like that's sacrificing time; not everywhere I want to go is within easy and timely access by bike. The same is true for public transit. Take the bus is trading time for a different mode and pace of transportation.

This is one of the puzzles I want to solve: how can I enjoy a modern, if somewhat progressive American town, without suboptimal trade-offs?

On the psychology of cross-fit and the perception of it as cultish. I first thought of cross-fit as a bit of an insider thing. Now I'm inside, to the extent I've done it for a few months but don't excel at it. I think the cult qualities come from having jargon (clean-and-jerk, WOD, AMRAP) and an orthodoxy (olympic lifting, paleo/caveman diets, no muscle specialization). Really, anything with these qualities can seem like a cult: Extreme Programming, long-form improv, or Bruce Springsteen fandom come to mind as things I'm sure I talk about and sound a bit loony. Nonetheless, it's interesting to consider why it comes off as a cult and think about how we can make the things we're enthusiastic about more approachable.

Mostly summer rolls. I love the way in which Paul Ford thinks and writes.

Jason Kottke on guns and gun crime. I hope some long-term good can come of this short-term sadness. The current gun culture and approach to mental healthcare in America is dysfunctional and not producing the outcomes we need as a society.

This week, Rdio added a truck-ton of Glenn Gould; you should give it a listen. Last week, jazz great Dave Brubeck passed; my favorite recording is a live album wherein the drummer confesses that they played everything about twenty clicks faster than the original album. Dave Grohl seems like a guy who is having a lot of fun doing what he loves; witness, "Fresh Pots". Plus, he's got a great "Animal" of the Muppets vibe.