It’s real! ...so I’ll probably be tweeting on it somewhat regularly starting in a few weeks for a bit. It was ~150% as much work as the sports gene and I’m proud of the effort. I’ll aim to be mostly interesting and only a little annoying, but feel free to tell me how I’m doing!
1/🧵 It's been a week. The woman in my profile pic, FrancesHesselbein, passed away yesterday — at 107. (Was still working at leadership institute she founded in NYC.) That's me w/her 👇. She's 103.5 in that pic (taken by
@mkonnikova
). Not. Bad. I want to share a bit about her...
according to The Accountant's Story, by Pablo Escobar's brother and accountant, it took $2,500 a month to buy enough rubber bands to hold together the incoming cash
To learn more about the crisis (and solutions) of local news, check out
@AndrewYang
talking w/
@elizwgreen
...from my writing room...(look I’m not a professional lighting person but she still looks great and is the best)
There are 3 problems with our media that are fueling polarization: 1. The closing of 2,000 local papers, which are typically not very partisan; 2. Cable news maximizing audience share by adopting political stances (Fox); and 3. Social media’s supercharging of conspiracy theories.
No surprise:
"Brent Clark is often asked by other parents how he and his wife Anne nurtured Caitlin to become the basketball star that she is.
His answer? Get your children engaged with as many different activities as possible, sports or otherwise."
4-yr sanction. Arbitration panel determined that Salazar:
1) Administered a prohibited method
2) Tampered and/or attempted to tamper with NOP athletes’ doping control process
3) Trafficked and/or attempted trafficking of testosterone.
Alberto Salazar, the famed Nike coach who guided Britain's Sir Mo Farah to Olympic glory, has been found guilty of doping violations and banned for four years, the BBC understands 1/5
The various “sure thing” type Kawhi predictions reminded me of writing this in Range. (And if those forecasters are true to form in the aftermath, they’ll blame either timeline or some freak occurrence for barely missing)
both these guys were h.s. track stars...but Metcalf, man--I want to say "drive phase," but I feel like
@StuartMcMillan1
might get mad at me. So just admire the center of mass and rhythm rising at the start
revived my newsletter. Quote of the week is from a 2007 paper: "The presence of a large reservoir of SARS-CoV-like viruses in horseshoe bats, together with the culture of eating exotic mammals is a time bomb."
At Olympic Trials, they were talking about how recent h.s.-grad Hobbs Kessler says rock climbing helps his core and keeps him calm, and then cut to him and he was yawning on the line. 😂 ...he won his 1500 heat
#OlympicTrials
You heard it here people. If this gets a mere 9,245,176 likes then Pablo will run the 135-mile Badwater Ultramarathon in Death Valley.
...In case he means we need to hit that number exactly, let's be careful about going over.
I don't have a
@Simone_Biles
hot take. But I have a conversation with a friend and gold-medalist whose words having been ringing in my ears these last few days.
#SimoneBiles
To me,
@gg_runs
embodies the highest values we idealize in human beings, both in competition and in the wider world. An absolute inspiration
#bravelikegabe
Asked in 2000 by
@GolfDigest
how to raise the next Tiger Woods, Tiger replied:
"My dad has never asked me to go play golf. I ask him. It's the child's desire to play that matters, not the parent's desire to have the child play. Fun. Keep it fun." 1/
Djokovic certainly played a lot of tennis as a kid, but has said skiing was his first passion, and the choice of which way to go was up to him (click image to see full quote)
@stevemagness
What are the chances those blocks are actually perfectly sensitive to the thousandth for every person and shoe that sets up on it? I'm guessing basically none
"It turns out that, if you ask yourself 'Can I keep going?' rather than 'Can I make it to the finish?' you’re far more likely to answer in the affirmative." by
@sweatscience
Personal news: I'm a podcast host! Those who know me will be totally unsurprised that my first episode has cognitive scientist
@sianbeilock
troubleshooting a choking-under-pressure problem with a listener. (Also, the listener update at the end is wild.)
@PabloTorre
No need for secret documents to get Hitler's view on Black people. In "Mein Kampf," he blamed Jews "for bringing negroes into the Rhineland, with the ultimate idea of bastardizing the white race."
...Presumably why Nazis then forcibly sterilized Afro-German children
“To this day, my dad has never asked me to go play golf. I ask him. It's the child's desire to play that matters, not the parent's desire to have the child play.” -Tiger Woods (2000)
man what a great review by JimHolt in
@nytimes
. Really thoughtful,mostly positive (which just means nice for me), and he uses my own hobby horse (restriction of range) to critique me in a totally productive way I can learn from. Couldn't ask for better
Fascinating new study on work "hot streaks" finds that, at any age, streaks are reliably preceded by a period of broad exploration.
Researchers analyzed 26,500 artists, film directors, and scientists, and found that their most impactful works were clustered in streaks 1/
Just to emphasize: if you've recovered, your blood plasma may treat others who are ill. If you'd consider donating it (as
@smart_MS3
will) there's a 30+ institution collaboration to collect, distribute, study this ASAP. Please register here if interested
If you feel embarrassed wearing a mask while running, know that back when I was fanatical about not missing miles I used the moving walkways in the Denver airport like a treadmill for several miles. 😶
Always finding interesting stuff when cleaning out old reporting files...like this guide on doping to avoid detection given to some athletes in the 1980s
Back in college I was filling out an application and couldn’t use a certain printer in the athletic facility because it could be deemed an improper benefit. …With this SCOTUS ruling NCAA printing is just going to be the Wild West
Write-in candidate! Texas A&M
@athiiing
set two collegiate records on the same day, and is literal world-leader in an event that isn't either of those two
Was most unexpected to get on this shortlist, and I’m unduly excited that they gave us a copy of the six books last night. I’m starting with the winner! Invisible Women by
@CCriadoPerez
Reading
@BStulberg
’s new “Practice of Groundedness” this morning, and my brain keeps returning to the special ops mantra “slow is smooth, smooth is fast”
One of the myriad problems with forcing a kid to choose a single sport early, or with forcing selection early--before anyone knows much about their interests or abilities--is that you increase the chance of a bad match.
#matchquality
#samplingperiod
“What our orthopedics are telling us," Silver says, "is they're seeing wear-and-tear issues in young players that they didn't used to see until players were much older." ...and some of the physical literacy quotes are devastating. Must read by
@Baxter
imo
Just saying, Darwin used to tear up his books, file parts under themes of inquiry, and made personal indexes to them. As Howard Gruber observed, he used books "as tools for getting knowledge, not as exhibitions of knowledge already crystallized."
I became a parent just before Range came out. 🤯
In the new afterword, I reflect on how the research in the book informs my own parenting.
....Plus a new story, new research on career matching, and a surprise from my chat with Serena Williams.
“Anything said in advance of a pandemic seems alarmist. After a pandemic begins, anything one has said or done is inadequate.” -former health secretary Michael Leavitt
Today’s the 20th anniversary of my friend Kevin Richards’s death.(He’s to my rt.) Undiagnosed HCM, collapsed following a race. I got into journalism to write about sudden cardiac death in athletes. That’s the writing I cared most about, though hard to know if it helped anyone.
My conversation with
@DavidEpstein
on a wide variety of topics, including his books Range and The Sports Gene:
-withering technologies brought back to life
-to study widely or deeply in one's field
-martian tennis
-practice
Great conversation
I've done some drug cartel reporting, and still blown away by
@gingerthomp1
's work. This story on compromised DEA Sensitive Investigative Unit getting innocent Mexicans kidnapped and killed is jaw dropping
#longreads