Lonny Likes

Have any questions, comments or feedback on this idea? Feel free to leave a comment here or send an email to admin@crowdsourced.golf and I will be happy to discuss.

G*lfn*w will probably be Crowdsourced Golf’s main competitor because, again, they do actually have the list of all the courses on a map and a rankings view and they already have a ton of users. However, since their interface is messy and outdated, I believe Crowdsourced Golf can crush them once it gets some traction.

The following sites all provided me with inspiration and faith that this niche idea may just work: Keep Trade Cut, The New York Times’ Where Should I Live? interactive page along with wheremightilive.com, the Find My Gluten Free app, the Seed Oil Scout app, getrawmilk.com, Alex Delany’s NYC Wine Shops Map, a map and review of every bagel shop in NYC, a site for finding free campsites, and a site showing the best alcohol available in Norwegian liquor stores.

I’m sure there are also a million more examples that I have not yet discovered. The point is I’m are not reinventing the wheel here, just adding another spoke to a crowdsourced world.

I saw a Cybertruck in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee

Will Lonnquist — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 19:12:14 GMT

For 48 days this Summer, I drove around the eastern half of the country. I headed from Chicago to the southeastern United States before following the Atlantic Coast north and then turning back. These are my notes about what stood out along the way.

Places

My Route

Pigeon Forge, Tennessee is like a caricature of America. It’s an over-the-top strip of pavement, traffic, entertainment and dining stuffed between beautiful mountains. Picture Vegas but targeted at thirteen-year-old boys and bordering on a national park. It’s an absurd place but it’s filled with people having fun.
I saw a Cybertruck parked outside of a hotel on the main drag of Pigeon Forge. It was not parked in a parking spot. It was just parked in front of the hotel’s entrance, seemingly to showcase itself. This felt like something an early Cybertruck owner would want to do, but it also didn’t feel misplaced because of the setting. In Pigeon Forge, this was a perfect place for this truck. The air was already filled with garishness, this only added to it. The whole scene felt like a moment that would intrigue coldhealing, it was uniquely American.

The roads in and around Great Smoky Mountains National Park have to be some of the most fun I have ever had driving a car. You zoom through beautiful forests and up mountains, but it’s not as intense as the roads out West. You are never white-knuckling, just cruising around the cambered curves of many glorious Appalachian highways.
Nowhere else in the US looks like Savannah, GA. Spanish Moss draping from Live Oak trees is an elite look.
Golfing near Pinehurst, NC with the smell of pine straw all around you is hard to beat. Mid Pines Club is a fantastic Donald Ross track in the area.
I’m always in awe of the National Mall’s palatial beauty. I wish there were more of these kinds of marble-stone megastructures throughout the US. This style of architecture conveys an unrivaled spirit of mightiness to me.
Similarly, Niagara Falls has a potency to it. It feels like a sacred site, a place where you can commune with nature. I did not expect to be as impressed as I was.
The University of Michigan’s campus is surprisingly quaint and attractive for a massive university. The rest of Ann Arbor is charming too. I can now see why people become such passionate Michigan fans after spending four years there.
Chicago in the summertime is undefeated. Why did I leave?
I wanted to see parts of the United States that I had never been to and would be unlikely to return to, places like Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. I’m glad I saw these places. For now, I’ve satisfied my craving for exploration within the US.

Thoughts from Behind the Wheel

I love the US Interstate System, or, at least, I love that it exists. It’s an incredibly efficient way to get from one place to the next.
I did, however, spend too much time on the interstate. I went into this trip wanting to spend as little time as possible on the road, but this meant I was always directed on the biggest highways. These routes didn’t leave enough room for spontaneity. I overoptimized. The hours and miles blend together on the interstate. You don’t make that many memories.
In Blue Highways, William Least Heat Moon writes of finding local diners well away from the main highways, “Inside were no interstate refugees with full bladders and empty tanks, no wild-eyed children just released from the glassy cell of a stationwagon backseat, no long-haul truckers talking in CB numbers”. I was one of those interstate refugees and I was surrounded by the other characters he describes. I didn’t particularly enjoy driving alongside this crowd.
Some of my favorite driving was on two-lane highways in Kentucky, Tennessee and Maine. These roads were romantic and serene. I wish I had done more of this instead of so heavily prioritizing efficient routes to my next destination. I’ll make adjustments for any future road trips.
I love Buc-ee’s. I also love Kwik Trip. These are my favorite sights to see when I need gas.
Spotify radio needs to be improved in two specific regards:
- First, Spotify radio tends to get stuck in the same loops after you search for a specific song. I could almost predict exactly what songs the radio would play. This is not a huge problem since I like most of the songs the radio recommends. Their algorithm clearly “learns” your preferences and the company definitely has research showing that people usually enjoy getting recommended that which with they are already familiar. However, I hardly found any new music through Spotify radio. I would like to see slightly more variety in the suggestions going forward. They should randomize it a bit more.
- The second problem is that within these predictable suggestions, there would be certain songs that continually appeared even after I consistently skipped them. There didn’t seem to be any learning going on with what I personally dislike within a genre. I was giving the algorithm feedback by immediately skipping songs, but it did not seem to ever adjust. Yes, I am a listener who likes X artist so it’s fair to assume at first that I would like Y artist, because many other X artist fans are also Y artist fans, but once I demonstrate that I do not like Y artist, they should be quickly dropped from the recommended queue. I hope that these adjustments can occur quicker in the future.

Outstanding Food

Cavatelli Sardi at Saint Bibiana in Savannah, GA
Green Chile BBQ Sauce (and everything else) at Lewis Barbeque in Charleston, SC
Pancita at South Philly Barbacoa in Philadelphia, PA
Campechano Taco at Taqueria Ramirez! in New York City, NY
Cappuccino and Pastries at Tandem Coffee and Pastry in Portland, ME

Other Notable Dining Experiences

I went to a Waffle House for the first time and when I arrived they happened in the middle of their annual health inspection. Halfway through my meal a pissed off employee came out of the back to announce that this establishment had received a B rating for 2024 (honestly, not that bad). He then tossed the manager’s phone at the countertop in frustration. Allegedly, he thought it was his own phone, but that was only sorted out after a slew of curse words were spat from the manager. As all this was happening, a massive midday thunderstorm rolled in so the other employees couldn’t take their desired smoke break. Tension was high but it felt like a quintessential Waffle House experience. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
Bourdain points out, ”Your first two hundred and seven Wellfleet oysters may transport you to a state of rapture, but your two hundred and eighth may send you to bed with the sweats, chills, and vomits”. That’s what happened to me and two friends in Newport, RI. Tough scene. The lowest point of this whole journey.
Buffalo Wings aren’t all that special in Buffalo. They tasted the same as what I’ve always eaten in the Midwest. I’m not necessarily trying to put down Buffalo with this statement, rather wings are fried and tasty wherever you go. I feel similarly about Chicago-style hot dogs. It’s hard to make bad versions of these foods.

Appreciation

I was excited to go on this road trip and I’m thankful I did it. It was the right decision for me. Summers are the best and I was repulsed by the thought of spending another one sitting at a desk looking out at the golden sunshine. So, I went outside and enjoyed it. It felt like summer break. This made me very happy.
I want to extend a heartfelt thank you to everyone who let me stay with them along the way. I’m shocked at how many people I got to see. Everything seemed to align with friends and family being available when I was in town. This really filled my cup up and made my travels so much less lonely. If one of you is reading this—thank you again for your hospitality, generosity, and laundry machines.
Here are some photos I took along the way.

Thanks for reading.

Michigan Football Analytics Society explains,

If you believe in Strokes Gained, you must believe in EPA

Will Lonnquist — Sun, 27 Oct 2024 15:08:38 GMT

There's a common, and correct, assessment that golf usually lags behind other sports in terms of innovation. However, both fans' embrace and broadcasts' employment of the preeminent outcomes-based statistic for the game, Strokes Gained, is years ahead of America's biggest sport, football, which has an identical statistic, Expected Points Added, commonly referred to as EPA.

It's past time that football caught up. Sadly, I've lost faith that this will happen throughout football via a top-down approach where broadcasts and pundits propagate EPA into fans’ lexicons. There’s too much vitriol from the talking heads toward anything related to analytics, even though EPA is anything but voodoo magic once you understand it. To see any change, we'll need a grassroots campaign instead.

So I’m calling on golf fans everywhere: let’s lead the charge on the EPA revolution within football and show the world that golf isn’t so archaic. We already champion Strokes Gained. You don’t need to make any additional leaps to understand EPA’s nature; it’s calculated in the exact manner as Strokes Gained. We must promote EPA similarly as the preeminent tool for analyzing performances and then, hopefully, the rest of the world will join.

Strokes Gained

By now essentially all golf fans, regardless of their seriousness, have encountered the Strokes Gained statistic. It may have been through a broadcast’s graphics or commentary, a Golf Channel show, or somewhere online. The statistic has become, rightfully, the leading method to judge a professional golfer’s skill, which is why it is mentioned so often. Its methodology is brilliant and foolproof.

Strokes Gained is calculated by comparing the average, or expected, number of strokes needed to get the ball into hole from the starting position of a shot to the average number of strokes needed to get the ball into hole from the position of the ball after that shot. The difference between those values produces the metric.

The expected number of strokes to get the ball into the hole from any position is calculated using the average historical outcome from that exact position in terms of distance to the hole and lie.

Strokes Gained was made possible via the PGA TOUR’s ShotLink technology which tracks the position and lie of every single shot. Strokes Gained required the advent of this new data to compute the averages. Mark Broadie was the first to complete this calculation and subsequently pioneered the concept of Strokes Gained.

Here's Broadie explaining how his stat applies to putting in his foundational book,

The key idea in strokes gained putting is to measure putt outcomes against a performance benchmark based on putt distance. The benchmark for pros is the PGA Tour average number of putts to hole out from a given distance. For example, the tour average from 33 feet is two putts. A one-putt from 33 feet gains one stroke compared to the tour average. A two-putt from 33 feet gains zero compared to the tour average. A three-putt from 33 feet loses one strokes compared to the tour avers. Strokes gained putting for pros, then, is the tour average number of putts to hole out from a given distance minus the number of putts taken.

This example uses simple round numbers, however Strokes Gained values are typically fractional. Every single shot, regardless of circumstance, can be assigned an average number of strokes to hole out. For example, as outlined by Broadie as well, a given pro golfer might be tested with an eight-foot putt, which on average takes 1.5 strokes to hole out. If the player makes that putt they would gain 0.5 strokes, since they only used 1 stroke when average player would use 1.5.

If you prefer a visual explainer of Strokes Gained: here you go.

The inherent beauty of Strokes Gained was that it could be calculated anywhere from individual shots all the way up to entire careers and, because its baseline is historical outcomes, there is no debating the validity of its values. This objectivity is part of the reason why so many people reference Strokes Gained nowadays.

Not only does Strokes Gained provide a complete and objective account of player performance, but it also solves many other challenges that prior statistics did not effectively address.

First, Strokes Gained can be, and typically is, normalized on a per-stroke basis. A player that plays more rounds over a season may have a lower cumulative score to par, more top-ten finishes, and make more money than their counterpart, but they may not be the better player. By accounting for the differences in total strokes taken, Strokes Gained easily discerns which players are better on a per-shot basis.

Second, Strokes Gained allows for the breakdown of different skill elements. Prior to Strokes Gained, a given statistic could not easily measure the performance of each individual shot in comparison to all others. Putts could not be easily compared to fairway bunker shots in numerical terms, for example. There were ball-striking statistics, putting statistics, and overall statistics. These could be used in conjunction to form an understanding of a golfer’s strengths and weaknesses, but not compared directly to each other. Strokes Gained measures every facet of the game equivalently.

If you analyze an entire round of golf, you can calculate a player’s Strokes Gained: Overall, but you could also just analyze their tee shots or putts to gain an understanding of their Strokes Gained: Off the Tee or Strokes Gained: Putting, respectively. You can compare any shot or set of shots to any other, precisely. We know that driving it in the rough is worse than driving it in the fairway, but how much worse? Strokes Gained tells you with a definitive number. Good shots gain strokes and bad shots lose them. People always comprehended this, which makes Strokes Gained intuitive. Now there’s a quantitative value to go along with the qualitative assessment.

Finally and critically, Strokes Gained allows for easy and effective rankings of players. The player with the higher Strokes Gained value over some period is the better player for that period. Most often, players are be ranked via Strokes Gained: Overall, or by any of the subcategories (Putting, Around the Green, Approach, Off the Tee), but you can use any criteria you want and Strokes Gained will deliver. We can easily tell how everyone is performing relative to their peers at any granularity using Strokes Gained, such as who performs best on Pete Dye courses.

Ranking players using Strokes Gained also eliminates some of the issues of other ranking systems like the Official World Golf Rankings (OWGR)1. The OWGR is the most used and most important ranking system for professional golfers. It awards points to golfers based on their tournament finish positions, such as 1st or t-34th. The OWGR then ranks the players according to their average points awarded per tournament from the past two years, with more weight applied to the recent events. The downside to a system based on tournament finishes is that runaway performances are not properly accounted for. The fundamental issue which plagues the OWGR is that all players winning an event will receive (roughly) the same number of points. A player could win by 10 strokes or 1 stroke and they will receive the same amount of points from the OWGR. Part of Tiger Woods’ dominance was not just that he won, but that he won by a lot. This is not accounted for in a finish position-based ranking system like the OWGR, but is accounted for through an outcomes-based ranking system like Strokes Gained.

As a corollary, inconsistent success is also not properly classified by the OWGR. Soly and Jon Rahm discuss this phenomenon on a No Laying Up episode (36:45 mark).

While I don’t know the specifics, a player finishing in 12th place in five straight events may receive the same total amount of OWGR points as a player with four missed cuts and one win in those same events due to the asymmetric points allocation for top finishes. Intuitively, this does not feel correct. The consistent high-quality performances of the first player should be rewarded more. Strokes Gained accounts for this as all strokes are weighted equally and the average performance of the lightning-in-a-bottle player is worse than Mr. Consistency.

Similarly, the OWGR awards zero points when a player misses a cut, but that is a broad label for the performance as the player could have missed the cut by one or been in last place. Strokes Gained captures the complete picture of a given performance and should therefore be used to rank the players.

I must shoutout Data Golf because they’ve developed their DG Rankings system using a Strokes Gained-based approach. I believe the DG Rankings reflect the proper rankings of professional golfers more than the OWGR because their methodology is more optimal since it relies on Strokes Gained. They also produce wonderful data visualizations related to Strokes Gained such as their interactive player profile pages.

Though it took time to get here, Golf broadcasts and pre-tournament panels will now discuss the Strokes Gained elements of different players’ games. When mainstream sources of information, like these shows, discuss Strokes Gained it normalizes the previously foreign concept for casual fans. Analyzing performances through a Strokes Gained perspective is the proper way to highlight variance in skill so touching on it in broadcasts assists all viewers. By embracing rather than shying away from helpful advanced statistics, fans become informed on what truly matters when they tune in.

I’ve been pleased with this development in golf and would love to see something similar happen with Football and Expected Points Added, but I don’t think it’s going to. Getting EPA into the mainstream consciousness will require a ground-up approach. One that golf fans, with Strokes Gained already in their back pocket, can lead.

Expected Points Added

Expected Points Added (EPA) is the most commonly referenced statistic in football analytics circles. The stat is based on Expected Points, which measures how many points a team, on average, is expected to score on a possession given a particular field position. A possession’s Expected Points may range from close to 7, which would occur in a situation like 1st and Goal at the 1 yard line where a team is very likely to score a TD, to negative numbers where the defending team is the most likely team to score next, which would occur when a team is backed up deep in their own territory. EPA measures the change in Expected Points that occurs on each play. The great thing about EPA is that it accounts for the fact that not all yards have equal value. A 5-yard gain on 4th and Goal at the 5 is very different from a 5-yard gain on 3rd and 20. EPA captures this and has become the leading way to quantify a team’s offensive and defensive efficiency.

Strokes Gained and EPA are almost identical! They involve the same calculation, just in different contexts. Therefore, EPA also provides all the same benefits as Strokes Gained and solves for the shortcomings of other more common football statistics.

Similar to how Strokes Gained is typically normalized on a per-shot basis, EPA is typically normalized on a per-play basis. In this manner, EPA allows for easy comparison.

EPA also quantifies the different elements of the game. A team’s offense has an EPA/Play and a team’s defense has an EPA/Play Allowed. You can also analyze more selective situations, such as strictly third-down performance or passing plays.

Finally, just like Strokes Gained, EPA accounts for more dominant versions of the same game result. There is a difference in winning by one versus winning by ten, even though both teams achieve the same record. This is reflected in a team’s EPA/Play.

This also means that flukier, one-off performances are not overweighted when determining who the best teams are. One upset win is often the result of costly turnovers by the favored team or explosive plays by the underdog team. Though a win was achieved by the underdog, their EPA/Play was probably not very high. Think about the 2022 Minnesota Vikings. Their record was exceptional (13-4), but nearly all of their wins had small margins of victory while their losses were often blowouts. When it was all said and done, they sat squarely in the middle of the league for both offensive and defensive EPA/Play. This is a must more honest assessment of their competency than what their record reflected.

Let’s survey the current NFL landscape using EPA heading into Week 8 of 2024:

All of the teams’ positions on this chart align with what we see on the field! The teams poised to win the Super Bowl this year are bunched in the upper-right portion of this chart. Instinctively, all football fans know what plays have positive and negative EPA. They are the plays we cheer for, or dread. EPA simply assigns a numerical value to these results. EPA delivers precision in what was previously a murkier eye-test based world. These charts make comparing teams to each other in terms of offensive and defensive performance straightforward and objective.

In the same vain that I shouted out Data Golf, here I must shout out Ben Baldwin. He is probably the best Twitter/X follow for straightforward data visualizations involving EPA. He tweets out the chart above weekly along with other charts explaining teams’ performances on the season sourced heavily from EPA-based metrics. These threads are essential to understanding how teams are performing. Additionally, he runs a website called RSDBM.com where you can create your own EPA-based visualizations with a variety of filtering options.

Ranking football teams has always seemed difficult. With the plethora of different statistics and arguments to choose from it can be hard to come to a consensus on who the best teams are at any point, but it doesn’t need to be that way. Just use EPA. By using EPA, we can easily digest which teams are performing best overall, on offense and on defense. Kevin Cole has a Power Rankings system built using (opponent-adjusted) EPA. This methodology is comparable to the DG Rankings and I trust it way more than any of the junky Power Rankings you commonly find elsewhere.

Sadly, unlike in golf, football has shied away from embracing EPA. Compared to golf fans with Strokes Gained, football fans are much less likely to have ever encountered EPA, let alone know what it stands for.

As I said above, the embrace of Strokes Gained was driven in part by golf broadcasts embedding the statistic in their product increasingly over the past five years. I have lost hope that NFL broadcasts will ever do such a service to their fans. Less informative metrics like completion percentage or narratives like “establishing the run” still drive most NFL discussions, especially on television productions. These talking points lack substance when compared to EPA. NFL broadcasts owe it to their viewers to discuss how teams are performing using EPA, especially since it can be sliced and diced in so many different ways. This will in turn reduce the barrier for casual fans to embrace EPA, but I’ve lost faith that it will ever happen because analytics is often denigrated on NFL productions. Here’s the rap “football analytics” tends to get. This is frustrating because EPA is grounded in reality. It's literally based on what's historically happened.

A package like the following related to EPA would never appear during an NFL game, except for maybe Sunday Night Football.

It’s unfortunate that EPA gets limited to analytics-focused discussions instead of reaching mainstream audiences. It is the statistic to understand football performances and should be the first point discussed in any debate. Just like Strokes Gained, EPA is the signal amidst the noise.

If you, the reader, were hesitant to embrace EPA prior to reading this hopefully you have gotten over that hump now. Being knowledgeable about EPA doesn’t make you a football nerd, even though it may feel that way right now. Once you understand the definition of EPA and what it conveys, there's no turning back.

Golf fans — it’s now time to enlighten the rest of the world.

Thanks for reading.

Click to open in Google Maps

There are many heavily contested elements regarding the structure of this system particularly as it relates to LIV GOLF, which I won’t touch on.

Everything Good in Wicker Park

Will Lonnquist — Sun, 13 Oct 2024 12:21:21 GMT

Wicker Park

Neighborhoods matter. As this post states, “you’re going to spend 1000x more time in your surrounding 5 blocks than you will in any other neighborhood in your city”.

I loved living in Chicago’s Wicker Park. It’s a wonderful and walkable neighborhood with lots to do. Though I recently left, during my time there I tried to explore as much as I could and Wicker Park was easy to explore when I was living in there. However, before I moved, when I would just come by for a few hours on a Saturday or something, I didn’t really know what to do or where to go. I certainly didn’t know how to spend a full day there. I was annoyed that I would feel befuddled as to where to go.

This lack of knowledge by non-residents was not unique to me. Many friends I talked to (typically living on the other side of the river and also a post-grad Chicago transplant) didn’t know what Wicker Park offered and rarely stopped by during their free time. This bummed me out a bit because, again, I enjoyed living there and I wanted everyone to understand why I found it so lovely.

So I’m solving that problem, hopefully.

I made the following neighborhood guide for anyone who wants to explore Wicker Park but craves more direction or wants to know what makes certain places special. The places featured in this guide are the places I returned to over and over.

There are three more sections of this post to follow. First, a link to the Google Maps list I made outlining everything good in Wicker Park. Second, individual overviews on every place featured on the Google Maps list. And lastly, my thoughts on how to spend an entire day doing great things all across Wicker Park.

The alluring patio at Bangers and Lace on Division St.

Note 1: this post is a blatant rip-off of Alex Delany’s Everything Good series which provides guides, much more detailed than mine, to neighborhoods across Manhattan.

Note 2: Wicker Park differs from Manhattan neighborhoods in that it’s essentially a residential neighborhood with a few main business streets, namely Milwaukee Ave, Damen Ave, North Ave, and Division St. My recommendations are concentrated near these business streets. You can see the lack of recs on the right half of the map as those are strictly residential streets. I do, however, recommend strolling through those side streets, such as Hoyne Ave, because they’re tranquil and filled with pretty homes.

Note 3: I tried to avoid brands and chains as much as possible. Most of the places on my guide are small businesses unique to Wicker Park. Yes, I love the Iced Mint Mojito from Phil’z Coffee, and there’s a Phil’z Coffee in Wicker Park but that’s not very interesting to shout out. Similarly, Milwaukee Ave is filled with a lot of big brand name stores like Levi’s and Adidas that are not mentioned.

Note 4: this post is the first of several place/travel-oriented reflections that I’ve been thinking about for the last few months. Expect more soon.

Enough prefacing, here’s the meat and potatoes…

The Map

Here’s the map of my favorite spots. You can conveniently save it within Google Maps.

I inflated Wicker Park a little bit because I needed to capture a couple of places (favorite coffee, best steak, and best restaurant) that fall just outside the canonical boundaries of the neighborhood. So this is really a guide to Wicker Park+.

If you’ve lived in Wicker Park before then you’ve probably been to most of these places. There aren’t too many hidden gems on my list, but a lot of these places are overlooked by publications like Timeout or The Infatuation.

The list is likely missing some things, such as art galleries and stores tailored to women, but I’d prefer to leave things off than speak on them without any first-hand exploration. There are many other great things to do and places to eat within Wicker Park that are not on this list. I only lived there for two years and definitely didn’t get to see everything. Something not being on the list may be due to me never going there, but also maybe I didn’t like it ;). Leave a comment if there’s a place you feel I missed.

Cheers to Wicker Park, and if you find the map useful, feel free to share it with others.

Rundown on Each Spot

Restaurants

Kasama
- Category: Fine Dining
- Slightly outside the bounds of Wicker Park, but I make exceptions for the best meal I ever ate in Chicago. It’s also easily most expensive restaurant in the area for dinner. 13-course Filipino tasting menu with a deserved Michelin star. I still think about the nilaga dish. Very pricey and reservations are tough to get.
- Their Filipino-fusion brunch options and pastries are also exceptional, but, be wary, the line gets insanely long on the weekends. I recommend going just before they open at 9AM on a Winter weekday to avoid this.
- Must try: Ube and Huckleberry Basque Cake
Boeufhaus
- Category: Fine Dining
- Best steak I’ve ever had. Cool ambience. Quite expensive. Go for a special occasion or celebration. Hard not to enjoy yourself if price isn’t a concern.
- You need to sit at the bar to order their burger, which I highly recommend.
- They also offer a butcher shop so you can purchase their quality meats and grill up at home.
- Must try: Dry Aged Ribeye
Mott St.
- Category: Fine Dining
- Classy Asian fusion restaurant serving the food family style.
- Like Boeufhaus, you need to sit at the bar to order their renowned burger.
- Must try: Mott Burger
Dove’s Luncheonette
- Category: Brunch
- Besides the delicious Tex-Mex brunch, drinks, and upbeat staff, I love the interior design and triangular shape of the restaurant. Don’t skimp on dousing your food in their homemade condiments and spice mixes.
- This is probably the place I miss the most since leaving.
- Must try: Brisket Burnt Ends and a Bloody Maria
Via Carducci Le Sorrela
- Category: Italian
- Quaint restaurant with indoor and outdoor dining options and probably the best Italian food in the neighborhood. BYOB. Good place to take your parents.
- Must try: Calabrian-style Calamari
Phodega
- Category: Vietnamese, Lunch, Take-out
- Serves my favorite hot sandwich in all of Chicago, the Viet Dip. Think an Italian beef meets a Banh Mi. It’s incredible. They also have solid Pho and some tasty chicken-and-rice dishes which are great after workouts or a sauna (see below).
- Cheap, fast, and always playing hip-hop. Pick up a punch card if you plan on going here often.
- Must try: Viet Dip sandwich
Small Cheval
- Category: American, Fast Casual
- A Chicago neighborhood staple for burger and fries. Small Cheval is a spin-off from the much-hyped Au Cheval, but I actually prefer Small Cheval’s burger and atmosphere. The burger is simple, think In-N-Out style, but tasty.
- Go on a perfect Summer evening and sit outside.
- Must try: Cheeseburger and fries
Piece Brewery
- Category: Pizza
- Lively spot for pizza with interesting toppings and a surprisingly strong beer list. A foolproof option for dinner with a big group. Central location.
- Must try: Hot Doug's Atomic Sausage Pizza
Taxim
- Category: Fancy Mediterranean
- Rooftop seating which transports you away from the bustling street corner a few feet away. Every dish is packed with spices. Their menu is not dumbed down to an American palette, feels authentic.
- Must try: Anything involving lamb
Komorebi Sushi
- Category: Sushi
- Solid option for sushi. Nothing crazy but you can always get in and they have plenty of options to explore. Utilize their friendly BYOB policy.
- Definitely go here instead of Sushi Taku. Sushi Taku always has lines because it’s all-you-can-eat but their sushi is “low-grade dog food”. Don’t be a sheep.
- Must try: Tequila Roll
Rudy’s Ramen
- Category: Ramen
- No-frills ramen joint that opened recently. Very flavorful broth and quick service. Say hello to the owner Rudy if you see him, he’s usually there.
- Must try: Tonkotsu Ramen
Oiistar
- Category: Ramen
- I prefer the flavors at Oiistar more than Rudy’s but they venture into more innovative territories. These two restaurants compliment each other by serving different lanes. Are you feeling more adventurous? Try Oiistar.
- Must try: Spicy Garlic Shoyumen
Amaru
- Category: Latin-American
- One of the few Latin-American restaurants in Wicker Park, but their best item is actually a cocktail called the Holy Water. One of my favorite drinks in Chicago. It’s strong and prepared playfully. Worth going here just to drink it.
- Must try: Yuka Fries and the Holy Water cocktail
Club Lucky
- Category: Italian
- Old-school Supper Club interiors and a great wraparound patio. Food is solid but not incredible. It’s really about the vibe here. A neighborhood institution.
- Must try: Some red wine and a classic Italian dish
Tortello
- Category: Italian
- The pasta is made fresh in the window right in front of you so they get a lot of points on the aesthetics scale. Great for a date night. Small portions IMO.
- Must try: Tortelli di Burrata
Big Star
- Category: Mexican
- Marg pitchers, outdoor seating, friendly faces, always busy. Another great option for large groups having trouble deciding where to eat or drink. You order the tacos individually so everyone can be satisfied. Never a bad play.
- Must try: Margarita Pitcher lol
Craft Pizza
- Category: Pizza
- One of the few places doing slices in the neighborhood. They aren’t reinventing the wheel, just making yummy, hot, and fresh pizza.
- Must try: doesn’t really apply, whatever slice you’re feeling
The StopAlong
- Category: Pizza and Burgers(?)
- Retro video game-inspired interiors and small but mighty menu. Both their pizza and their burgers are solid. The kind of place where it just feels right to order a Coke to drink.
- Must try: Stop-In Burger
La Pasadita
- Category: Mexican
- Quality, hole-in-the-wall Mexican joint. Great lunch option and you will probably have leftovers.
- Must try: Super Burrito with Carne Asada, if you’re hungry
Falafel and Grill
- Category: Big Ass Lunch.
- Solid Middle Eastern flavors and very generous portions. You are getting two meals for the price of one, which is what kept me coming back. Order some side sauces (tzatziki, spicy, etc.) otherwise the rice can be a bit dry.
- Must try: Combination Meat Plate
Kin Sushi and Thai
- Category: Big Ass Lunch Category
- Is it the best food ever? No, definitely not. But you are going to walk out incredibly full for cheap and sometimes that’s what you need. Their generous lunch deal more than makes up for the lack of quality.
- Must try: nothing really qualifies here, whatever you are craving

Coffee Shops

Ipsento 606
- My favorite coffee drink in all of Chicago is here: the Ipsento Latte. Coconut milk, dairy, honey, cayenne pepper, and espresso. It’s delicious and gets you wired. This is also a good spot to do some work. Lots of seats and outlets.
- Specialty: Ipsento latte
Lost Larson
- Scandinavian minimalist aesthetic here at the expansion of the Andersonville powerhouse with the same name. I’m demanding you order both a drink and a pastry when you go.
- Specialty: Swedish pastries
The Wormhole Coffee
- Funky coffee and funky interiors. A solid option right on Milwaukee Ave. They are open late if you need somewhere to do work in the evening.
- Specialty: Lattes with interesting flavors
Colectivo
- Your favorite yuppie’s favorite coffee shop. They have locations across Chicago and Milwaukee which are usually filled with white girls working on Macbooks. That being said, there’s a reason people like to go here. The coffee and food exceed expectations and it’s a great place to work.
- Specialty: Cozy spaces to work
Electric Mud Coffee Bar
- A good option just north of Wicker Park. Part of the Dark Matter Coffee network. Dark Matter takes pride in sustainability sourcing the best coffee beans and featuring local Chicago artists on their bags of coffee.
- Specialty: Quality beans

Bars

Bangers and Lace
- My personal favorite bar. It has everything I’m looking for (and I happened to live close by): indoor or outdoor seating options, never a line/wait, dapper-yet-divey decor, astounding and ever-changing beer list, fridges stocked with only Miller High Life, and really tasty food. I am glad this became my local watering hole and can’t recommend it enough. Good for any sort of group.
- Specialty: Rotating draft list and Chicago-style hot dogs
Blue Line Lounge
- Many people are saying they have the best martinis in the city. I don’t like martinis so I wouldn’t know. I tried theirs a few times and my main takeaway was, “wow, that’s a strong drink”. Still felt worthy to mention in case you do like martinis. The interior seems like it hasn’t changed since the ‘50s.
- Specialty: Martinis
The Up Room
- This cocktail bar sits on top of the Robey Hotel and provides great views of the Chicago skyline and the sunset. Their drinks are phenomenal as well.
- Specialty: Cocktails with a view
Lottie’s
- A hopping approachable bar filled with people under 30. The demographics of Wicker Park skew older than Lakeview, Lincoln Park, or Old Town so this is a great place to party with younger people. Always busy. Always playing music from middle school that is somewhat cringey but you still know all the lyrics to. Bring your friends to Lottie’s, get some drinks, mingle, enjoy. Shout-out to their merch too — probably the most worn bar merch in Chicago.
- Specialty: Getting drunk with a big group of friends
Dorian’s
- A speakeasy-style spot where you walk through a “record store” to enter. A variety of live music is always on from local performers. Inventive cocktail list and a moody atmosphere to accompany the music.
- Specialty: Cocktails
Phyllis’ Musical Inn (No website either, Instagram page)
- Live music from local performers as well, often doing rock covers it seems. Cash only and very affordable drinks. Their patio really surprised me. Homey space with benches and trees. If I owned a bar, I would try to mimic their patio space.
- Specialty: Live music
Sportsman’s Club
- Great dive bar with a big outdoor space in the back. It feels like you walked into a small town in Wisconsin when you enter, but the house cocktails are anything but simple Midwestern options. Lots of spirits and beers too.
- Specialty: Cocktails
Le Midi Wine Bar
- Chic wine bar with charcuterie plates. I don’t know that much about wine, but the servers (idk if they were sommeliers) were quite helpful in providing enjoyable pours. Not many other wine bars within Wicker Park.
- Specialty: Wine
Easy Bar
- If you want to drink and play pool at a laid-back bar this is your spot.
- Specialty: Pool table that’s never overly crowded
Rite Liquors (No official website but read this instead)
- They both sell liquor and serve liquor here. Please read the article above. A unique bar experience. Often a rougher crowd. The kind of place that doesn’t like yuppies like me moving into Wicker Park. Cash only. Worth checking out.
- Specialty: Cheap beers
The Standard
- Sometimes you are in the mood for an overwhelming amount of TVs, sports, and beers with your boys. Go here if that’s the case. Not the best place to take a girl or a co-ed friend group.
- Specialty: Day drinking for college football
Mac’s Wood Grilled
- Run-of-the-mill bar which packs people in for anything related to MMA or wrestling. Lively atmosphere on these nights and the bartenders are very nice.
- Specialty: UFC Fight Night

Sweet Treats

Kirimu
- Urban Japanese energy radiates throughout this ice cream shop. They offer normal ice cream, soft serve and interesting toppings. Very sweet flavors.
- Specialty: Ice cream and cereal mixed together
VinnyD’s
- Hole-in-the-wall ice cream and fast food store that is only open in the Summertime. A true neighborhood joint. The calories don’t count when you enjoy some ice cream or gelato from here.
- Specialty: Vinny Spinny

Recreation

606 Trail
- Run, walk, bike, or rollerblade along this elevated old trail. There isn’t a ton of green space in Wicker Park so this highly vegetated trail supplements that nicely. You don’t get interrupted by any cars or intersections, just you and the pavement. Hop on/hop off wherever you want. 2.7 miles in total.
Chicago Bath House
- An authentic Eastern European bathhouse experience. Sauna, steam room, hot tub, cold plunge. Get whacked by the branches (platza) if you want. This is the hottest sauna I’ve ever experienced along with the coldest cold plunge. Pro tip: if you are going to eat at the restaurant upstairs between cycles, just wear your robe up there, no need to change. Fun to go with friends.
GreenHouse Garden
- Small garden cared for by the neighbors. Has a few benches and seats. Nice place to go if you are craving alone time for meditation or contemplation.
Wicker Park (the actual park)
- The Farmer’s Market is hosted here, there are “fun-sized” basketball courts, a dog run and a large open field for picnics. Only large-ish park in Wicker Park.
Zen Yoga Garage
- Relatively affordable local yoga studio offering a wide variety of classes. Very welcoming environment to try new types of yoga.

Shops (from a guy who doesn’t really like shopping’s perspective)

Mildblend Supply Co
- Lots of high-quality denim and cool jackets in here. They will also patch holes in any of your garments. The style is very 2010s hipster, but in the best way possible.
Belmont Army Surplus
- Boutique clothing, footwear, and accessories store on the first floor and military surplus reseller in the basement. I never needed any military gear, but I did really like the normal clothes they carried.
Myopic Books
- Iconic book store with a great aesthetic. Lots of used books for sale at a good price. Easy to get lost in here. The one downside is they don’t stock many of the new bestsellers.
Neighborly
- Sometimes you need a cute little gift or card for something. This place is the place to go when that’s the case.
Round Two
- Vintage and streetwear shop. Lots of hyped-up sneakers on the first floor (not my style, but maybe yours) and vintage stuff upstairs. I found a cool Cubs hat and Minnesota Vikings shirt here.
INDEPENDENCE
- The highest quality menswear store in the area. All the pieces are expensive so I never actually purchased anything from them but I would have loved to have swapped my wardrobe with their store. If you are into menswear, this is the only place to find brands like Kapital, Engineered Garments, and Drake’s.
Wilderhouse
- Overpriced home goods and accessories but the owner does curate a beautiful selection. I would say the aesthetic they offer is farmhouse chic. If you would rather support a local business than saving money using Amazon, consider checking this store out.
Trek Bicycle
- Yes, it’s a brand, but there are not many other bike shops nearby. They conduct repairs on your bike speedily and carry any kind of cycling accessory you might need.

Grocery and Liquor

Jewel Osco
- Big, cheap chain supermarket. Always has a BOGO deal on meats. Stocks basically everything you would ever need.
Garden Gourmet Market
- However, one time I needed pine nuts and this way the only store that carried them. Small market with a good selection of upscale ingredients and fresh produce.
Liquor Park
- Best craft beer selection in the neighborhood, carries some really excellent options. One man show (I think). Not the best prices, but a great shop name.
Garfield’s Beverage Express
- Best spirits collection in the area, especially for whiskeys. Solid selection of craft and foreign beers. Also a place to get any sort of cocktail accouterment like bitters and shakers. A one-stop shop for anything alcohol-related.

One Great Day in Wicker Park

Inspired by the New York Times’ 36 Hours in … series, here’s how I would structure one absolutely fantastic, and perhaps gluttonous, day in Wicker Park. Consider these places the best of the bunch, my top recommendations.

I would be remiss if I did not mention that you can take the train from O’Hare directly to the center of Wicker Park, which is not something most fun neighborhoods in American cities can claim. This is another perk of the neighborhood.

So, let’s say you arrive at the Damen Blue Line stop in the morning and are looking to spend a whole day in Wicker Park. Here’s how I would do that:

Walk up Milwaukee Ave from the “Six Corners” to Ipsento 606. Order the Ipsento Latte, the best specialty latte in the city.
Walk along the 606 Trail and enjoy your drink for a while, then find your way back to the Six Corners.
Eat brunch at Dove’s Luncheonette.
Walk through Wicker Park, either the park or side streets, to Chicago Bath House.
Enjoy an authentic Eastern European spa experience. The Sauna is really hot and the cold plunge is really cold so be prepared.
Grab the Viet Dip sandwich next door at Phodega for lunch.
Start happy hour early at Bangers and Lace with some great beers.
Do some shopping along Milwaukee Ave.
For dinner, get a burger from one of many great options. Small Cheval, Mott St. and Beaufhaus get my vote. You must sit at the bar for the burgers at the last two.
End the night with a cocktail, or several, back near the Six Corners at The Up Room (city views), Violet Hour (very posh), or Dorian’s (speakeasy with live music).

Thanks for reading.

I Belong in The River

Will Lonnquist — Wed, 18 Sep 2024 21:46:01 GMT

I. The Book

Like nearly all of Nate Silver’s work, I enjoyed On The Edge. I had a hard time putting this book down and, if I had to bet ;), I’d wager it will have a lasting impact on my life. However, none of these statements are because of On The Edge’s literary merits, though I do really like Silver’s writing style. Rather, this book featured and connected many of my existing interests, which I did not previously realize shared such strong underpinnings. I was fascinated with the material because the topics that Silver spotlights all interest me and the way the different groups featured in On The Edge think is also the way I think. I didn’t take me long to realize I belong in The River.

Due to this realization, this attempt at a book review is injected with many personal notes, especially in the latter half. In some ways, this is similar to how Silver’s own life looms large over the book despite no chapters being explicitly about Silver’s life. Silver wrote about a subset of society as a part of that same subset so he manages to seamlessly weave in personal stories and beliefs. Since I guess I’m a part of this subset too, I’m writing about it similarly. For a more typical review of this book, try this.

Despite my praise above, I have some gripes with the work itself. My main critique is that the book isn’t really about anything. There’s no driving narrative. I found this book most comparable to a fun and hip academic textbook focused on analyzing risk, expected value, and their real-world applications. The chapters build upon each other somewhat, but the content of each is mostly siloed from the rest. The book describes circumstances and careers that have a consistent throughline in their thought process and ideologies, but that’s about it. In another review, the author said it much better:

The book lacks a unifying concept/theory and is something between a memoir and gonzo journalism. There is no big idea, it’s a interview-driven tour of how people of the River (Silicon Valley, Wall Street, gamblers) use probability, and their relationship to The Village (the Liberal Establishment).

I felt similarly when reading Silver’s prior book The Signal and The Noise. The ideas are all related but each chapter seems to just introduce something new that exists in the general world of the given book. The Signal does at least directly advocate for using probability and Bayesian methods to properly evaluate the world. On The Edge advocates for maximizing your expected value in life but comparatively indirectly and without presenting any concrete strategies, except if you play poker or bet on sports.

Another consistent complaint I have with both of Silver’s books is their length. They are quite long and don’t necessarily need to be so. A certain someone, who features heavily in On The Edge, once said:

I’m very skeptical of books. I don’t want to say no book is ever worth reading, but I actually do believe something pretty close to that. I think, if you wrote a book, you fucked up, and it should have been a six-paragraph blog post.

Like a lot of things SBF did, this is probably incorrect, but there is some truth in it. On The Edge could have been condensed. Though I acknowledge that my background on everything Silver discusses is not that of the average reader. I’ll get to this in a bit.

Finally, I felt “The River” was a bit of a forced analogy. I don’t see an inherent reason why these groups should belong to something called The River, other than the fact that this term comes from poker and poker features in the book. There certainly is a connection between the ideas and people presented throughout this book, but a river doesn’t traditionally signify any of the core facets that unite these groups. Regardless, Silver’s nomenclature is now etched into my brain and I can’t think of anything better.

So, why did I open by saying that I couldn’t put this book down? Why did I feel like it was too long? And, importantly, why do I expect it to have a lasting impact on me?

Well, through reading, I realized I am a part of The River. I was already excited to read about each topic individually even before realizing Silver was creating the unifying theory across them all. The book was engrossing because, as the commonalities added up, Silver was defining my tribe, a tribe that I did not previously realize existed.

It was honestly a bit uncanny how much overlap there was between the interviewees in this book and the people and topics that pique my interest. I already follow on Twitter and/or actively read the blog posts from nearly every single one of the people mentioned in the book: Scott Alexander is one of my favorite writers, I follow prominent VCs on Twitter, I’ve researched ‘tight aggressive’ poker strategy, I donate 10% of my annual income to the charities recommended by GiveWell, an institution based on Effective Altruism’s principles, I got super into the Garrett Adelstein-Robbi Jade Lew scandal, etc. The book forced me to reconsider my position that, over time, I became interested in a bunch of disparate topics. Maybe, instead, I became interested in any topic that involves Riverian thinking, as Silver calls it, and that’s why these things intrigued to me.

Consequently, I felt like I already knew everything in the book. I know I’m overstating for simplicity’s sake, but these chapters felt like reviews. I can claim the book could have been distilled into a blog post only because I have immersed myself in these topics over the last several years. The book didn’t introduce much novel information.

Still, understanding that all these camps fit under a single umbrella may be a watershed moment in my life. I now believe, because I‘ve happened to be innately drawn to The River, that I should have a career in The River (or at least seek to maximize the EV of my career more aggressively). I didn’t think this way before reading the book. So, for this, I give the book significant kudos.

I’m not overly shocked any of this happened though. I have been a huge fan of Silver’s work since I discovered 538 in high school. Almost everything Silver published there interested me, particularly his Elo-based sports models. I was an immediate subscriber to his great Substack. If something is interesting to Nate Silver, it is probably is also interesting to me and this book certainly satisfied that criteria.

II. The Upshot

Despite all my interest in Riverian topics and EV-maximizing, I don’t necessarily put any of this into practice. I hardly bet on anything and my young career has not been directly tied to anything mentioned in the book. That should probably change.

The Eisbachwelle

I was recently in Munich where urban surfers ride a permanent wave on a river running through the middle of the city. The dudes shredding in the river seem a lot cooler than the spectators like me on the sidewalk.

I should get in The River.

Luckily, I do already have some mild examples of being in The River so it shouldn’t be such a crazy change. First, In 2022, I finished in the 99th percentile in 538’s (small world huh?) NFL prediction game. Check 88th place. I would have beat the Vegas markets and made good money if I had bet on the games that I identified as being mispriced just like the gamblers mentioned in the book, but I didn’t bet at all. I am beating the market again so far this year in Lee Sharpe’s recreation of the game and it’s kind of pissing me off that I am not making any money off this circumstance.

Someone once asked me about my process for making my predictions in this game, via LinkedIn DM. I remember this vividly because it’s probably the only interesting and legitimate cold outreach I’ve ever received on LinkedIn. Anyways, I reviewed the response I gave and it’s clearly the kind of thinking Nate discusses in his book:

I am a big NFL fan (and also a data analyst and problem solver). This was not my first season playing the 538 prediction game. I played last year and got smoked. I was way too overconfident in some predictions which is how you get punished in terms of points. I would put outcomes at 100%. This is almost a guaranteed way to not finish well.

My second insight from previous year was that their model performs very well compared to the population. It is always around the 90th percentile. So if you just copied the model you would perform very well.

Because of this I changed my strategy quite a bit this year. I would essentially use the model as a guide and adjust slightly off that. From there, I would target a few games per week that I felt the model was misjudging.

This year I felt the misjudgment was quite easy to identify and exploit. Specifically, there was a lot of poor inputs on 538's end related to their QB ELO rankings. They had the legacy QBs like Brady and Rodgers ranked too highly and unsung guys like Geno and Purdy ranked too low. I used this to my advantage.

No matter what, my prediction was within 15 percentage points of theirs. I happened to adjust onto the correct side of the actual outcome throughout the year and consistently beat the model (and most other people). My goal was to beat their model.

Towards the end of the season, I really wanted to move up in the rankings so I started to "press" and make some riskier predictions. This worked out in the short term, but it's not a sustainable strategy.

I don't have a model that I use, however I follow several people on twitter that do. I look at their predictions or advanced statistics weekly before making my predictions. My most important resource is Ben Baldwin. He posts his team EPA/play stats as well as his QB CPOE+EPA/play Index. These are two of the most useful stats IMO. He finished in like 11th place in the 538 game! So clearly whatever model he is running is working, but tailing the info you get from him is a great start.

I would consider myself sharp in terms of the NFL but that mainly comes from getting info from others who are sharper. IDK if this strategy is applicable elsewhere, but if you can find a super-predictor on a topic just follow what they say (or what their model says). And be humble enough to know that they will beat you over time.

I found this to be an interesting recent read:
Astral Codex Ten
Who Predicted 2022?
Read more
3 years ago · 102 likes · 300 comments · Scott Alexander

Secondly, I used to work at a startup which offered me some equity in exchange for (probably) a lower salary when I began my employment. Thanks to reading Jonathan Bales, a quintessential Riverian who is actually not mentioned in the book, I came to understand that this decision may actually be less risky than working at a big and “safe” company because of the expected value of my equity. The larger company is less likely to fold, but you have no personal upside. It is not as safe because your expected value is lower. Thankfully, everything worked out for me as Bales described. The company was bought by a PE firm and I made some money from the equity. However, as soon as that deal went through I knew I was going to leave the company once my apartment’s lease expired. The upside was now gone. It would not be a +EV decision to stay and you should always be maximizing EV. This is Riverian thinking. Now, was the equity so great as to make up for the earnings difference of initially going to a banking or consulting firm over those four years? Probably not. Yet, the underlying lesson remains and it’s a career tradeoff I know I am comfortable with.

I need to be maximizing my upside going forwards. I need to seek out way more equity, to the point where I could make life-changing money. In order to acquire that equity I will need to take on way more risk and that means getting in much earlier or starting my own thing. It also makes the project more likely to fail and, therefore, the life-changing money to never arrive. But the failure is not guaranteed. It may just succeed and that makes it more worthwhile to pursue (given the math works out). Even if my next venture is not blatantly in The River based on its industry, my thought process for diving into whatever it is will be. EV-maxxing my potential earnings is something I had long thought would matter in my upcoming career moves, On The Edge cemented that it will.

Lastly and on a different note, this book helped me understand why some people are not like me. In the book, Silver creates The Village as a foil to The River, but this is not necessarily what I’m describing. Because the topics contained within On The Edge are correlatedly through the underlying commonalities Silver identifies, if you are interested in one you will likely be interested in most, as is the case with me. The flip side is that there are people where nothing in this book remotely interests them. The logic works inversely; if you aren’t interested in a single topic from this book you probably aren’t interested in any of them. The people forming this majority of society have fascinations, worldviews, and thoughts on risk that are fundamentally different from people like me and that is totally OK. A point Silver repeatedly emphasizes is that The River is overwhelmingly male and white. Other demographics are less likely to be interested in this stuff and knowing that difference exists should help me in deciding whether or not someone will be interested in a topic that I want to discuss. Not everyone is like me and I shouldn’t try to force them to enjoy what I enjoy. This is pretty obvious, but nevertheless useful to understand.

Thanks for reading. If any of this got the wheels in your head spinning, I recommend picking up a copy of On The Edge.

Bobby Jones' Meditations

Will Lonnquist — Thu, 22 Aug 2024 16:47:21 GMT

A man who’s achieved remarkable success records many fundamental and timeless principles through snippets of writing. That description suits Marcus Aurelius’ famed Meditations, but it also applies surprisingly well to The Best of Bobby Jones on Golf.

The latter is an assembly of disjointed newspaper columns written by the eponymous golfer and edited by Sidney L. Matthew. Because of its similar composition style to Meditations as well as the content of these columns, Jones’ thoughts on the game feel like a golf-related extension of the ancient Stoic’s writings. Aside from the key difference of their intended audiences—the notes of Meditations were written for private review by only Marcus Aurelius while the columns in The Best of Bobby Jones on Golf were produced to benefit others—these two works are comparable. Though TBOBJOG really only applies to a golfing audience, unlike the extensive applications of Meditations, treating it as a parallel work to Meditations reveals its merits.

It may seem like a stretch to compare this relatively unknown book to the fabled writings of a Roman Emperor, but I fully endorse the connection. The two works overlap substantially. First, a sense of stoicism permeates throughout TBOBJOG. Just as Aurelius writes,

And why should we feel anger at the world? As if the world would notice!

Jones says,

The great trouble with all of us who grumble and swear over the game and spoil an otherwise pleasant afternoon with congenial friends is that we do not understand the game nor ourselves.

To really hit the nail on the head, this passage from Jones’ was found in a column titled “A Philosophic Mind Needed”. It’s no surprise that Jones is petitioning for a stoic attitude on the golf course because he also once said, “golf is the closest game to the game we call life”.

Golf and stoicism seem to go hand in hand. Part of why a golfer may be drawn to stoicism is because of its benefits towards playing your best golf. Ensuring you maintain a level-headed and accepting approach to your play will deliver your best results. However, maybe certain people are predisposed to stoicism and that’s what draws them to golf. It’s a bit of a chicken-and-the-egg situation. Regardless, it’s logical why so many of Jones’ lessons are imbued with stoicism. Marcus Aurelius’ two-thousand-year-old thoughts on how to steady your mindset and embrace any situation are nearly identical to the teachings of many sports psychologists today.

In both golf and life, many of our struggles are strictly internal, even if we do not always perceive that to be the case. Changing your mindset can transform your day or your round. Both Jones and Aurelius are disapproving of humans’ quick irritability as it serves no purpose in achieving our goals. Elsewhere Jones aptly notes,

Although conditions of ground and weather do objectively affect the playing of golf, a great deal of the adverse effect is caused by the state of the player’s mind. A hard wind or a heavy rain inspires in the player a feeling of combativeness or of desperation, and prevents him from going about his business in an equable frame of mind.

These two books are filled with simple and familiar lessons, like the examples above, but they are not trite. It is valuable to be reminded of these easily forgotten truths. Every golfer has had a round derailed by the conditions presented to them. Even if we know we shouldn’t let the conditions dictate our mindset, we still let it happen. It requires work to improve one’s mental game and continually reviewing Jones’ fundamental wisdom proves a useful exercise.

Jones’ lessons have endured just as well as Marcus Aurelius’, albeit on a shorter timescale. The wisdom in both of these books has stood the test of time, and it’s unlikely that actively working to remain steadfast and rational in your mental attitude will ever become poor advice. There is a Lindy Effect at play here. Jones is touching upon eternal lessons. Furthermore, the concepts he discusses in TBOBJOG act as the foundation for lots of modern instructional content, just as stoicism’s core principles continue to inspire modern careers as well. For example, Jones expounds on J.H. Taylor’s phrase “courageous timidity”,

Courageous, to keep trying in the face of ill luck or disappointment; and timidity, to appreciate and appraise the dangers of each stroke, to curb the desire to take changes beyond a reasonable hope of success. There can be no doubt that such a combination in itself embraces and makes possible all the other qualities which we acclaim as part of the ideal golfing temperament for the championship contender as well as the average golfer. When we have pronounced Taylor’s phrase we have said it all.
Golf is not a game of exact mechanical precision. Even the most accurate player in his most effective form must allow himself a certain latitude in playing any kind of stroke.

It seems like Dr. Bob Rotella nearly plagiarizes this exact notion within a chapter called “Conservative Strategy, Cocky Swing” in his book Golf is Not a Game of Perfect. That title itself may have even been lifted from the passage above. For what it’s worth, I highly recommend Golf is Not a Game of Perfect. It totally revamped my mental game.

Additionally, the process of selecting your targets optimally by understanding dispersion patterns and properly respecting penal hazards forms the basis of Scott Fawcett’s DECADE program. Many tour pros use this system and we can seemingly trace its roots all the way back to Bobby Jones based on what he wrote here.

Another significant aspect of both books is that they were written by men at the top of their worlds. Bobby Jones was the best golfer of his era and still regarded as one of the best of all time. Marcus Aurelius is considered one of the greatest Roman Emperors. I give credence to the ideas presented by both authors because of their prominence. I find what these men thought about particular topics more compelling than what someone who achieved far less success thought, particularly since both are highly regarded in history. The approaches they outlined seemed to work for them tremendously. Receiving advice from a champion golfer makes it much easier to trust. Bobby Jones was not a hack at your local muni, he won major championships using the advice he bestows in these columns. It’s worth knowing what he has to say.

Not every column is dedicated to improving and mastering your mental performance, there are many practical tips and commentaries on the game as well. A column on slow play is followed by a column on Allister McKenzie and then a column on getting out of trouble. Jones has thoughts on ball position and your first round of the season. He also offers many firsthand accounts of major championship rounds, good and bad. Jones covers many parts of the game. Nearly all columns remain insightful and useful.

The final commonality between these two books is the lack of any central or continuous narrative. This may appear at first to be a drawback, which is how I felt during my initial read. I felt I had to read each column sequentially, which led to some boredom. Now, after finishing it, I see this as the primary utility of the book and why it is not just worth reading, but worth owning. This structure allows you to dive in wherever you want. Each column stands on its own and, within them, the paragraphs do as well. I recommend starting with the columns that sound most interesting to you and getting to the rest over time. There is no need to read the whole book at once. Take it one column at a time and highlight the passages or phrases that call to you. Then, when your game has left you, quickly find and review a bookmarked aphorism.

There is a value in returning to this book just as there is a value in returning to Meditations. I have returned to Meditations many times since I first read it, but have never completed a full second read. Rather, I reread the passages I have underlined. This method provides the most bang for your buck. After reading TBOBJOG, I began to return to it time and time again in an identical manner to how I returned to Meditations: thumbing through for a single key paragraph and then setting it back down. TBOBJOG could be read once and then set on your shelf to collect dust, but this would be a misuse of the work. Instead, return to it in short spurts when needed.

The problems you are struggling with on the golf course are not exclusive to you. And there is almost certainly sage advice contained within The Best of Bobby Jones on Golf to assist you. Open up the book, find what you need and go.

It is surprising how easy it is to lose sight of the very obvious fact that in golf the all-important necessity is that the ball should be struck truly.

Thanks for reading.

You Gotta Call It A Choke

Will Lonnquist — Fri, 09 Aug 2024 16:26:28 GMT

Rory McIlroy was +3 on the final five holes of this year’s US Open to lose the tournament by one stroke.

Obviously, Rory was not playing this poorly throughout all four rounds. Only when he was on the precipice of winning a US Open and ending his decade-long major drought did his play dramatically falter.

From another perspective, after his 13th hole, Rory was mathematically very likely to win the US Open. Data Golf writes:

Through 13 holes in the final round of last week's U.S. Open, Rory McIlroy had a 2-shot lead over Bryson DeChambeau, and our model gave him a 77% chance of winning.

If that isn’t a choke to you, I don’t know what would be. However, not many big-time golf publications labeled it this way explicitly.

Here are three pieces from some of my favorite golf media outlets:

I highly recommend reading all three because they each approach the tournament’s conclusion with differing and satisfying lenses.

However, the words “choke” and “collapse” are surprisingly absent from all of these articles. Instead, we get words that imply a choke occurred without definitively stating it; words like heartbreak, haunting, and funeral. These are not words anyone would use to describe an event where a strong competitor gets bested by someone simply performing better. Those are words that describe a self-inflicted slow death, a choke.

Why are we dancing around the subject? Look at Rory’s face. I don’t think it can be any more obvious that internally he believes he just choked away the US Open.

Maybe the guarded language used in the pieces above is motivated by some journalistic integrity not to assume what caused the athlete’s actions. Classifying something as a choke is harsh and observers can never be certain a choke occurred. It could just be bad physical execution. Yet, these recaps seemed to approach Rory’s atrocious finish overly diplomatically. I was shocked to never encounter the word choke in any of these pieces. In fact, I had to double-check each one using CTRL+F to ensure this was the case. There seems to be a stigma from professional golf writers against using the word choke, which I find frustrating.

What frustrates me the most is that if we’re not going to call this a choke, we can’t really call anything a choke. The biggest name in golf, who’s a proven winner, had his game completely evaporate down the stretch! I highly doubt we’re going to see more pronounced examples of chokes than this very frequently, if at all. There’s a non-zero chance we never see a choke to this degree in a major ever again.

No doubt, across innumerable group chats, fans described the events to each other as a choke. It’s the simplest assessment of the way things played out. Labelling Rory’s performance a choke properly captures the essence and the lasting memories of 2024 US Open’s finale. Therefore, that’s how one should write about it.

What else needs to occur before golf media unanimously declares a series of events a choke? Because chokes do happen. Chokes are a real thing. We can’t act like they don’t exist. There’s a whole list of them here on Wikipedia. Speaking of which, Wikipedia offers a strong opening paragraph defining a choke:

In sports, choking is the failure of a person, or persons, to act or behave as anticipated or expected.This can occur in a game or tournament that they are strongly favoured to win, or in an instance where they have a large lead that they squander in the late stages of the event. It can also refer to repeated failures in the same event, or simply imply an unexpected failure when the event is more important than usual.

I don’t think we can come up with a more fitting example of a choke based on that definition than what McIlroy did. Rory did not behave as expected. He squandered a (somewhat) large lead in the late stages of the event. Not only were there the unacceptable individual mistakes like the missed putt on 16, but Rory lost the ability to execute with precision down the stretch. He lined up left on 17 and didn’t cut it. He lined up left again on the tee on 18 and didn’t cut it again. The ball was being put in bad spots and greens were being missed. His only real highlight late in the round was a greenside bunker shot on the 17th hole to recover from a poor tee shot. There were many unexpected failures over the last five holes. This was a textbook choke.

I also like how this Bleacher Report article describes chokes via the famous Potter Stewart quote: “You know it when you see it”. With Rory’s final five holes, we all saw it. I wanted to crawl into a hole after watching that collapse as I’m sure Rory did as well.

These golf writers must have seen it too, but they decided to remain disappointingly noncommittal with their language, which misrepresented the core storyline. In my opinion, it’s disingenuous not to label this a choke. Rory’s choke was the crux of the back nine at the US Open, not Bryson winning. Go back to the articles I linked earlier and review their titles. None of them mention Bryson, most mention Rory. Rory was the story and he was the story because he uncharacteristically choked. Over the years, Rory has proven he can close out events, including a recent emphatic win at Quail Hollow. He isn’t a choker per se1, which makes the fact that he wilted under pressure even more revealing and consequential. Rory’s choke allows observers to grasp how important winning that next major and ending his major dry spell is to him internally. He felt immense pressure to win this event because he cared deeply about this result. The choke was only made possible because the event was much more important than usual. That is the story. So it’s not cruel to present this result as a choke, it’s sincere.

The US Open at Pinehurst was the best viewing for a major I have ever experienced2. I was rooting for Rory, but witnessing a choke is exhilarating. Watching athletes quake in the face of their dreams, succumbing to internal fears instead of striving forth into the abyss is captivating. That was an unforgettable and undoubtedly iconic major, made possibly by a choke from one of the world’s best golfers. Please use the words that describe what happened.

Thanks for reading.

There maybe is an argument that he is a choker in majors, but definitely not in standard tour events.

I missed the 2019 Masters because we were busy winning a golf tournament.

What Actually Happened to Justin Thomas at Augusta on Friday?

Will Lonnquist — Fri, 31 May 2024 20:41:11 GMT

I have long wanted to leverage the The Masters’ boundary-pushing "every shot" feature for a post, but could never decide the proper application. However, when chaos descended upon Augusta National during the final few hours of round two this year, I was certain there would be something non-televised and interesting to dissect. Justin Thomas provided the goods. His final four holes of round two caused him to go from inside the top 20 to outside the cut line, the most profound and condensed collapse among any of the top players, and we weren’t shown any of it on TV.

At a glance, Thomas was playing pretty well through his first 32 holes. After a scrappy yet momentum-less round one of even par, Thomas was again even par through his first 14 holes in the second round. Though being merely at even par may appear middling, the course was playing extremely hard on Friday. He was only six shots back of the leaders at the time before disaster struck.

Hardly any of JT’s round appeared on the main broadcast making it ripe for a thorough review utilizing the “every shot” feature. There were several factors leading to a lack of live coverage for JT including his non-threatening position on the leaderboard and lack of outstanding play prior to the event. Beyond that, the frenzied on-course situation also dictated what was being shown as several of the tournament favorites were also still on the course trying desperately to either hold on near the lead like Scheffler or battle to stay inside the cut line like Rahm. There were too many simultaneous storylines to follow all at once and JT’s collapse was one of the odd ones out. Regardless, I was keen to understand how this mess occurred.

In many ways, witnessing the compounding of mistakes and general poor play from tour pros can be more insightful than seeing every shot from the guys at the top of the leaderboard who are pretty much doing everything well. It’s wonderful to be able to see every shot from the best players’ rounds, however these rounds are usually quite boring. A passionate golf fan already knows what one of these rounds looks like. Yet, when a professional is performing poorly, not only is it more aligned with an amateur’s game, but it’s easier to comprehend how bogeys (or worse) are created through incremental errors and also witness how the best players attempt to navigate trouble and avoid big numbers. After a miss, pros do not often attempt risky low-percentage, high difficulty recovery shots to immediately get themselves back in Position A. Instead, they usually execute the most sensible shot based on their newfound circumstances. They demonstrate patience.

Additionally, the visual footage of each shot provided by The Masters adds layers of understanding which the PGA TOUR’s ShotTracer technology cannot. You can see ball’s lie, the course’s slopes, what type of swing the player is making, and the actual ball flight in the recordings. After the shot, you can also see the player’s reactions and body language, which provide additional context into their headspace.

Below I’ll breakdown each shot from Justin Thomas’ final four holes followed by some concluding thoughts. The outermost bullets represent shots being played, the inner bullets provide my commentary. If you want to watch these shots on your own, you can do so here.

Hole 15 - Par 5, 550 Yards

Driver off the tee, just missed the fairway to the left
- Not ideal, but not a terrible shot
  - Many players miss here
  - No vocal or body language reaction
- No direct line to the green for the second shot due to the cluster of trees protruding into the left side of the fairway
- Forced lay-up for second shot
Big slinging hook with a hooded iron around the trees, runs through the fairway into the water short of the green
- First and foremost, massive mistake to wind up in the water
- Bad process in deciding club selection and/or distance to the pond
- There is a benefit in pushing the ball as far down the fairway and close to the water as possible in order to achieve the flattest lie for the next shot, but it’s not worth the risk of truly flirting with the pond, during the footage of this shot you can see the other players in the group’s shots laid back safely in the fairway
- Poor result for executing the shot he intended, the golf shot itself was flawless, it was just the wrong shot
  - A nasty hook around the trees which lands in the middle of the fairway and rolls out a ton is a great recovery shot to have
Penalty stroke
- Drops ball very close to the pond, leaving a short pitch to the green
Hits pitch shot from 53 yards too firm, two-hops over the green and ends on the back fringe
- The swing itself looked quite long for how short of the shot was being played
  - Immediate concerned look on his face indicating he likely he knew hit the ball too hard
- Very poor execution on a short shot, even though this area behind the green was a common miss all week
  - Not the worst leave, but definitely a subpar result on a shot he has likely rehearsed in many times in practice rounds over the years
  - Needed an excellent pitch to provide a chance at salvaging par, now scrambling for bogey
Putts from the back fringe which rolls six feet beyond the hole
- Uphill through the fringe, downhill once on the green
- Putting seems to be the correct play from here, most players putt this shot
  - No issue with the shot selection
- Too firm on the pace of the putt, ball runs beyond the hole and outside of easy tap-in range
  - Below average execution continues, but not the worst leave as the next pull is back up the hill
Six-foot comebacker putt moves left at the end and lips out on the low side
Taps in
- Exacerbated reaction after making the putt
- Clearly a bit frustrated by the outcome despite hitting no horrendous individual shots

Result: double bogey

Hole 16 - Par 3, 170 Yards

Knockdown iron off the tee to a pin perched on the right-hand shelf, lands on the green right of the already right-hand flag, but due to firmness takes a large first bounce over the green and rolls into a bunker
- Poor spot to leave the ball since the upcoming bunker shot will be playing downhill without much room beyond the pin due to the green’s ridgeline
Downhill bunker shot, ball runs beyond the pin on upper tier of the green near the bunker all the way to the bottom/front of the green
- Excellent touch out of the sand, ball lands on the fringe short of the green
- Ball does not stop on the upper ledge
  - Not sure how many shots out of ten are stopping on this upper tier, maybe only two?
  - This reiterates how poor of a leave the tee shot was
- Ball runs away to 44 feet, putting back up the ridge for par
Long lag putt winds up four feet from the hole
- Speed was well judged, however the ball comes to rest on the wrong side of the hole leaving a downhill slider
- Overall very solid effort
Misses four foot putt to the left
- High the whole way
Taps in
- Defeated look

Result: double bogey

Hole 17 - Par 4, 440 Yards

Driver off the tee, missed fairway to the right
- Slight push the right which takes a large bounce further right careening it off the fairway into the pine straw
- Disappointment in voice right when the ball lands and bounces right
- 172 yards to the hole
High cut iron towards left side of the green, ball winds up long and left of the pin
- Difficult angle to the green and pin from here, although not completely blocked
  - Requires lots of skill to find the putting surface from this location, high degree of difficulty shot
- Likely outcome and acceptable miss for his approach shot based on positioning of tee shot
- Intentionally playing left (and possibly long) to minimize risk
- Does not appear to be a totally normal iron swing from JT
  - Very delicate motion, probably concerned about the pine straw
  - However, no physical obstructions to making his desired motion here
Chipping back to the green, ball winds up six feet short of the flag
- Uphill until the green begins, then downhill once on the putting surface
- Bumps it into the upslope and it trundles on
- Again, high degree of difficulty required to get this within tap-in range
- Leaves another makeable, yet not guaranteed putt
Downhill six foot putt misses left
- Lips out on the low side
- Frustrated reaction
Taps in

Result: bogey

Hole 18 - Par 4, 465 Yards

Driver off the tee, way left into the trees
- An “AOC Ball” immediately into the thicket of trees lining the left side of the fairway chute
- Knocked down by the trees as the tee shot only went 231 yards, leaving 225 in uphill for the next shot
- Previous two tee shot misses had missed right so a possible overcorrection for something, although the driver missed left on Hole 15
- Immediate disgust at the ball flight
  - Seemed to stand over the shot slightly longer than his usual length indicating a level of discomfort with his swing and or the shot
Second shot appears to be a short punch from the trees which was not captured by the cameras
- Likely completely dead behind some trees or bushes and this was the only viable option out of the woods
- Shot went 36 yards but not directly towards the pin, it actually went somewhat backwards into the fairway
- Now leaving 236 into the green
Tugs a wood from the fairway to roughly pin high but well left of the green
- Immediate fore left signal again, definitely battling his swing
- Ball lands in the gallery left of the 18th green
- 36 yards to the hole
- Challenging leave since there is no way to go right at the flag with the next shot because of the green slopes, wind, firmness and bunker lurking between the ball and the pin
Incredible pitch shot which utilizes the slopes on the middle of the green to run above and beyond the pin but then trickle back down towards the cup off the far slope
- About as close as possible, great execution
- Still has nine feet downhill for the putt
Putt burns the edge again
- Miss on the right side this time
- Another close call that doesn’t drop
Taps in

Result: double bogey

Final Impressions, Notes, Thoughts

Ben Hogan said, “This is a game of misses. The guy who misses the best is going to win.” JT did not miss the best during this stretch. And in the difficult round two conditions, he did not have the game to recover from his initial misses off the tee.

JT was clearly not totally dialed in leading up to and during The Masters. His results before the event were lackluster, and his putting has been abysmal for his standards. His first round and start to the second round were both scrappy with a lot of missed fairways, so these errant tee shots to close out round two were not totally surprising.

For me, the main takeaway in reviewing JT’s poor finish is how incremental mistakes throughout a hole compound into poor scores. Although very few terrible individual shots were hit by Thomas, things unraveled quickly because he was never able to get back into proper position after a miss and then could not make the necessary putts. Over this final stretch, JT hit zero fairways, zero greens in regulation and made zero relatively shots putts resulting in +7 on four holes. Not good. On every hole the tee shot wound up out of position which, several shots later, caused JT to have a makeable yet tricky putt in order to salvage a decent hole. No holes were played in a straightforward manner due to the misses off the tee. Everything was a battle and the challenging course conditions at the time made it hard to pull off exceptional recovery shots. Smartly, JT typically decided to “take his medicine” after getting out of position, playing safe recovery shots but this wasn’t good enough. Even though there was generally good-not-great execution by JT after the tee shots this only kicked the can down the road until eventually a 50/50 putt arrived. This is not a sustainable way to play golf, especially at Augusta National.

However, this whole story would be different if JT could have made any of his final few putts. If just one of these makeable putts (6 ft, 4 ft, 6 ft, 9 ft) on the last four holes drops then he makes the cut. From a strokes gained perspective these misses cost him 2.4 strokes. It’s hard to find a more transparent example that burying putts inside ten feet is quintessential to success on the golf course. All of these putts were solid efforts, but, like his full swings, these shots were not coming from the best locations. None of these putts were uphill and straight. Most of them were downhill requiring deft touch and added difficulty. If the shots prior to these could have just gotten the ball to within three feet instead, he likely makes them all. But, again, that was very challenging due to the positions he put himself in off the tee.

Finally, JT was hitting the ball in places that Scottie Scheffler simply does not. Scheffler is the standard. Scheffler would never miss in some of these locations, specifically laying up into the water and then pitching it over the green on 15, and also winding up pin-high right in a bunker on 16. The cause of these issues may have been due to misjudging firmness or overestimating distance or just poor execution on JT’s part, but either way JT’s strategy was not optimal. This is something Joseph LaMagna has written about before. JT has a tendency to get too aggressive. Focusing on 16, for a right-handed player and based on dispersion patterns, your misses to the right should never really be equidistant or long of the pin. Misses to the right should wind up short of the target. And while this shot did land short of the pin, the course’s firmness has to be understood and respected. The ball was going to bounce and roll out this day. A different shot or target location needed to be played here. There’s always room to improve one’s game and I’m reminded that I, too, can improve upon my club selection and aim.

Thanks for reading.

The Taste Gap is universal

D.J. Piehowski and Tourist Sauce: Bridging the Taste Gap

Will Lonnquist — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 19:59:25 GMT

Let me introduce you to The Taste Gap, outlined through the following quote from legendary radio personality Ira Glass:

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, and I really wish somebody had told this to me.
All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But it’s like there is this gap. For the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good. It’s not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not that good.
But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you. A lot of people never get past that phase. They quit.
Everybody I know who does interesting, creative work they went through years where they had really good taste and they could tell that what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short. Everybody goes through that.
And if you are just starting out or if you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you’re going to finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you’re going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions.
I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It takes a while. It’s gonna take you a while. It’s normal to take a while. You just have to fight your way through that.

I often return to this quote. My writing here is not at the level where I would like it to be and while that is frustrating and demoralizing, I remind myself that the Taste Gap exists and that I need to continue writing to have any chance at improving. It’s no surprise I’m experiencing the Taste Gap because the Taste Gap exists for all. The Taste Gap does not discriminate, everyone must grapple with it. For instance:

On that note, later tonight, No Laying Up is releasing the first episode of their new season of Tourist Sauce, a golf and travel video series. D.J. Piehowski has been the executive producer for each season. Though it may be oversimplifying things, I would describe these videos as his work. D.J. continues to improve the series with each season. You can watch D.J. bridge across his own Taste Gap with every iteration of Tourist Sauce that gets released, improving the output by taking on this creative challenge again and again. I find The Taste Gap a particularly poignant lens to analyze this new season through since the group is returning to Australia where they filmed the initial season many years ago.

At the time, I found the first season of Tourist Sauce quite enjoyable. I was captivated by the novel concept and the ability to see exotic golf courses which I may never get to play. I watched every episode, and nothing stood out as poorly done or suboptimal. I felt as though NLU were putting out the best version they could. I was excited by what D.J. was creating, though maybe not fully engrossed.

Then, NLU released their most recent season, Tourist Sauce: Scandinavia. After watching these episodes, you can tell the latter is a better work of art. This season was lauded for its dramatic improvements. First, there may be equipment upgrades to the cameras and microphones, but there were also shot composition, lighting, auditory, and storytelling improvements. The final production is more seamless and it’s much easier to get completely immersed within the Scandinavia microcosms being shown.

The most recent season is better than the previous iterations and I feel that D.J. himself would agree with this sentiment. The first season would have been this good if it could have been, but the Taste Gap got in the way. Through hard work and commitment, the series has markedly improved over time, even though each season was the best D.J. could produce in that moment. That is the nature of the Taste Gap.

The flaws and immaturity of the first season are only revealed once an upgraded version exists. Again, I enjoyed the first season of this series, but it pales in comparison to Tourist Sauce: Scandinavia. The old videos were great at the time, but now appear messy. The narratives feel rushed and incomplete. In fact, the videos are way shorter. The camera work is not as pleasing. The audio occasionally clips. And it is harder to follow the players’ rounds of golf. Yet it remains a fun, well-made project even if it no longer appears to be the gold standard. As outlined by the Taste Gap, the first season of Tourist Sauce had the “ambition to be good, but it’s not that good”.

D.J. seemingly has always had the drive to create work as good as his ambitions. We would not have seen the continuous improvement in the productions otherwise. And it is only through the hard work of D.J., and I’m sure the rest of their team, that each season is better than the last. I can all but guarantee that D.J. has wanted to make each Tourist Sauce episode as wonderful as the ones from Tourist Sauce: Scandinavia. These are the videos he has had in his mind all along but translating that cerebral ideal onto the screen is easier said than done. It requires repetition.

It is only by going through a volume of work that you’re going to catch up and close that gap.

Now, we get to return to Australia. Round two of Tourist Sauce: Australia serves as an unearthing of D.J.’s killer taste. The killer taste has always been there and now it can be revealed. Throughout this season, we will get to see how the first season should have looked and felt all along. Tourist Sauce season one will serve as a visible draft, a sketch to be compared against the finished product. It is not often you get to witness someone bridging across their Taste Gap so clearly, but this return of the No Laying Up crew to Australia gives us the opportunity to do so. I am excited to be vividly shown how much this creative endeavor has improved over the past six years.

The new season will be better than the first season but only because of all of the work that has been done between them. This is the visual art that D.J. had probably always wanted to create, but only now do has the ability to do so.

Thanks for reading.

Second Street Housing: Living next to, but not on top of main street by Alfred Twu (alfredtwu.medium.com)

Favorite Essays of 2023

Will Lonnquist — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 04:09:22 GMT

Non-golf

How to Do Great Work by Paul Graham (paulgraham.com)

People who do great work are not necessarily happier than everyone else, but they're happier than they'd be if they didn't. In fact, if you're smart and ambitious, it's dangerous not to be productive. People who are smart and ambitious but don't achieve much tend to become bitter.

Paul Graham has an exceptional collection of writings on his website, but doesn’t publish as frequently anymore. I was excited to read this piece and it exceeded my expectations in terms of its logic, depth and wholeness. His blueprint for what constitutes and how to accomplish great work was motivational as someone who believes they have the capability to do great work. The challenge of achieving something great with your life can be quite daunting, but through the way Paul dispatches it all you want to do is go out and execute. It’s easier said than done, but hopefully I can look back upon my life and confidently say I did great work.

The Techno-Optimist Manifesto by Marc Andreesen (pmarca or a16z)

We believe we should place intelligence and energy in a positive feedback loop, and drive them both to infinity.
We believe we should use the feedback loop of intelligence and energy to make everything we want and need abundant.
We believe the measure of abundance is falling prices. Every time a price falls, the universe of people who buy it get a raise in buying power, which is the same as a raise in income. If a lot of goods and services drop in price, the result is an upward explosion of buying power, real income, and quality of life.
We believe that if we make both intelligence and energy “too cheap to meter”, the ultimate result will be that all physical goods become as cheap as pencils. Pencils are actually quite technologically complex and difficult to manufacture, and yet nobody gets mad if you borrow a pencil and fail to return it. We should make the same true of all physical goods.

I don’t know if I’m fully onboard with the entire vision laid out by Marc Andreesen in this manifesto, but the excitement and positivity that abounds throughout this vision of the future is intoxicating. I highlighted a passage that I do sincerely agree with related to the abundance mindset. The abundance mindset was featured in my favorite essays of 2022 as well. I wholeheartedly believe we should be creating as much energy as possible in order to have an excess, and then channel that excess into beneficial projects that require lots of energy, such as desalination. The rest of the piece continues to offer a reprise from gloomy forecasts for our future. In so many ways human life is better now than it ever has been, let’s keep pushing to continue that trend.

The Brock Purdy Question by Ethan Strauss (House of Strauss)

The conventional wisdom initially has trouble with the arrival of a guy like this, but perhaps it shouldn’t. Neither player, Green or Purdy, would have had a prayer of being drafted in the first place if not for their decision making powers. If a dude’s body type overtly doesn’t fit in the league, he’s obviously bringing something else to the table. Instead of being aghast by an unexpected success, it makes more sense to just realize that an ability that brought a player to the scene has since allowed him to triumph within it. Draymond and Brock think fast and the ironic byproduct is that many are slow to adjust their priors to this reality.

I appreciate the Bay Area sports connection that Ethan weaves here between Brock Purdy and Draymond Green. Finding interesting connections like this is what I am trying to do here at Lonny Likes as well. Framing one’s evaluation of Brock Purdy through the lens of evaluating Draymond Green was novel to me and provided much clarity for how to view the former. Brock Purdy is definitely good at football and he’s good fundamentally because he doesn’t do bad things. Purdy makes quick and correct decisions as a quarterback, even if they are obvious and easy decisions. Just how good Purdy is may be up for debate since he certainly benefits from the strong supporting cast and coaches around him, but Purdy executes well when he has to make decisions. Therefore, just like Draymond, he is good.

Even More Bay Area House Party by Scott Alexander (Astral Codex Ten)

“You know who else wanted to kick out money-changers?” asked the youth pastor. Some of the onlookers cheer, and you think you see a few dollars change hands.
“The moneychangers in the Temple were a housing problem!” objects the YIMBY. “If first-century Jerusalem had been vertically denser, there would have been room for banks in the commercial district. The only reason they had to invade the Temple grounds was because of artificial land scarcity.“
“We don’t even need moneychangers!” says the crypto bro. “Automated market makers can do that! This is all so obvious! People are ignoring it just because of a temporary market downturn, but as soon as crypto goes up again - “
“You know who else rose again?” asks the youth pastor.
“Land value tax could have solved that,” says the YIMBY. The crowd suddenly goes silent. Did he just say that land value tax could have solved the Resurrection of the Christ?

Speaking of Bay Area, Scott Alexander expanded upon his satirical series which mocks the wacky conversations regarding the online zeitgeist that you may encounter at a Bay Area house party. I don’t often laugh when I am reading, but I do when I read these. Don’t miss out on his more recent publication Son of Bride of Bay Area House Party.

Who Predicted 2022? by Scott Alexander (Astral Codex Ten)

The “wisdom of crowds” hypothesis says that averaging many ordinary people’s predictions produces a “smoothed-out” prediction at least as good as experts. That proved true here. An aggregate created by averaging all 508 participants’ guesses scored at the 84th percentile, equaling superforecaster performance.
There are fancy ways to adjust people’s predictions before aggregating them that outperformed simple averaging in the previous experiments. Eric tried one of these methods, and it scored at the 85th percentile, barely better than the simple average.
Crowds can beat smart people, but crowds of smart people do best of all. The aggregate of the 12 participating superforecasters scored at the 97th percentile.

If you aren’t reading Scott Alexander, you should be. Scott was featured heavily in my favorite essays of 2022 and that continues to be the case this year. I really cannot recommend his blog and now Substack enough. He covers so many topics with consistently excellent writing and a variety of styles as shown via the two fantastic but vastly different pieces I have just linked. Not only is he generating humorous tales, but he’s also running prediction contests among his massive, wide-ranging and intelligent reader base. Here, Scott recaps his probabilistic prediction contest for what would would occur in the world in 2022. The results were summarized and released in early 2023. I found the nugget that the performance of the aggregation of the masses’ predictions equaled the average superforecaster’s performance quite interesting. Markets are efficient and this reaffirms there is a lot of value in what a market is predicting. Look for the 2023 prediction contest results soon.

Are you serious? by Visakan Veerasamy (visa’s voltaic verses)

Anyway so– it’s actually quite rational for most people to assume that any other random person probably isn’t serious. That they don’t really mean what they say. Lots of people play-act seriousness for social reasons, but quit when the going gets tough. So it makes sense that lots of people are broadly cynical. Cynicism is a completely reasonable defense against fraud and bullshit. The trouble with cynicism as a defense mechanism is that you can get so good at it that you inadvertently also defend yourself against anything good happening for you.

I want to consider myself a serious person in the way Visa defines it, but I don’t I yet qualify. I am still a deeply unserious person, as are most people. For one, I am deeply unserious about this blogging project, which is something that’s bothered me for years. It’s something that I want to change. This essay was a good reminder that you actually need to do the stuff you are serious about, otherwise you are not serious about them. This pairs well with Paul Graham’s piece that I linked above.

Second Street Housing — so named since the street next to Main Street in many cities is 2nd Street — puts the biggest new apartment buildings behind, not on top of, the main commercial strip, separated by an alley for deliveries. Further back, still within a five-minute walk, are mid-rise apartments, and beyond that, a mix of houses, duplexes, fourplexes and courtyard apartments.

This is a very short read with some lovely renderings. I found the concepts laid out here easy to internalize since I live on street that’s a spitting image of “corridor zoning” in Chicago. My street has taller apartments buildings and businesses, while everything nearby on the secondary streets is strictly residential. I had never really considered the impact of corridor zoning on the urban environment before, but there are indeed several drawbacks which Alfred outlines. I think this new zoning concept would excel since it creates a more gentile urbanism. I’m glad I was introduced to it.

The Reebok Club C 85 Is the Last Sneaker I'll Ever Buy by Jake Woolf (GQ)

After four years of abuse, the soles have been eroded to the point of actually tearing apart. Even the occasional scrubdown of the leather can’t dislodge the dirt that’s so deeply embedded into those chasmic creases. They’ve been disqualified from appearing in any halfway-decent public space. This irredeemable thrashed-ness is proof of my love—and it’s why you, too, should consider the style if you too want a sneaker that’ll never let you down.

An extremely personal and validating choice here. Confirmation bias galore as that excerpt applies perfectly to my former pair of Reebok Club C 85s. I loved those shoes and I never wanted to get rid of them. I had them for about seven years. I never laced them. They were my favorite pair of shoes ever. I have rotated through different white sneakers for the last 15 years of my life and I had created a rule in my head every time I needed new ones: never buy the same pair twice in a row. I told myself I always had to mix it up. For the past year, however, I was at an impasse. I really didn’t want any other shoes, but my current pair had completely deteriorated. Then one morning I woke up and read this piece. My perspective was flipped on its head. What I had previously been dreading, deciding what pair of shoes to get next, did not need to be a decision at all. These shoes are the best; these shoes never let me down. Why change? I don’t need a different pair of shoes, just reup on what you’ve fallen in love with. So that is exactly what I did this Fall. I am once again excited about the future.

RIP

Growing the game vs. showing the game by D.J. Piehowski (No Laying Up)

Golf

Comets by Kevin Van Valkenburg (No Laying Up)

Someday, I know, one of my daughters may have to pick me up when I am broken. There will be a time when my body, or my mind, deteriorates to the point where I cannot hide my weaknesses from them. But that’s okay. There is much to be done in the interim, courses to see and memories to make and majors to cover. All any of us can hope for is that we’ve led a life that makes someone we love want to find us when we’re vulnerable, someone who will prop us up, nurse us back to health, and steer us toward the proper tees, confident this is right where we belong.

A poetic end to Kevin’s piece which announced he was going to be working full time at one of my favorite companies, No Laying Up. The basic desire laid out here stuck with me throughout the whole year. At the end of the day, when we’re in need, all we really want is to be surrounding and supported by those we love.

Golf has a comical amount of inhibitors for new fans. It’s brutally difficult to play, to understand, to follow and, perhaps most of all, to pay for. It takes far too long and is, even on its best days, almost irredeemably dorky.

The PGA TOUR’s Netflix series is not very compelling. When attempting to copy and paste a formula that worked for the opulent and dramatic world of Formula 1 racing on to something that’s almost irredeemably dorky, it probably is not going to excel. This review covered all the positives and negatives of the show fairly. It’s tough to make golf cool, because a lot of the time golf is not cool. It’s almost irredeemably dorky (I love that phrasing), and that’s what primarily shines through in the show.

What makes a golf tournament entertaining? by Data Golf (Data Golf)

In this post we propose 3 simple metrics to capture how entertaining a PGA Tour tournament was. The motivation for these metrics comes from the idea that golf tournaments are more entertaining when 1) there are lots of players with a chance to win, 2) there are frequent and sudden changes in who is likely to win, and 3) there are top players with a chance to win. When all 3 of these conditions are met, it usually makes for an entertaining tournament.

Now that’s an excellent, and correct, distillation of what makes a golf tournament entertaining. This is a valuable way to evaluate golf tournaments. However, what makes this article stand out, since those criteria are relatively obvious to come up with, is that the guys at Data Golf ran a model using these criteria on their live model’s data from the past few years of tournaments. The results of model are then posted illuminating the events which achieved the top cumulative scores. I’ve always thoroughly enjoyed people posting the results of their model, whatever it may be.

The Justin Thomas Dichotomy by Chris Almeida (The Fried Egg)

Is anything actually interesting about Justin Thomas?
To anybody not already interested in golf, the answer is no. Thomas is a third-generation PGA pro from a warm-weather state who played golf at a strong college program. He has two first names and few defining physical attributes—he is not particularly short or tall, not too muscled or scarily slight. He would not stand out at a country club.
This, I think, is why the story of Justin Thomas is so often told through his friendships. It’s easy. A golfer does not become a superstar by simply being very good. There are very few golfers, just one or two in a generation, who are good enough to become stars without selling a story—this is something that players like Bryson DeChambeau and Max Homa understand. Only the great ones are allowed the luxury of being boring. And so, when we look at Thomas and see neither tragedy nor unexpected triumph nor any particular quirk, good or bad, we go searching for something else. Is this the best we can find?

I’ll be the first to highlight any piece which criticizes the flaws of Justin Thomas, but I also thought there was a lot of originality here. Later on, the author touches on the more common complaint about Thomas: his thirstiness. Yet, this critique of Thomas’ character as insipid was something I had never considered before. While I have some additional opinions, this touches on an element of Thomas that I could never quite pinpoint previously. And as a person who has probably spent too much time thinking about Justin Thomas, any new angle or insight is appreciated. This argument helped me paint a more complete picture of who Justin Thomas is, despite never meeting him.

Two Years Since Bryson’s Big Moment by Will Knights (The Fried Egg)

Two years ago on the weekend at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, Bryson DeChambeau grabbed the attention of the golf world, and arguably the larger sports world. After hinting that he would attempt to carry the entire lake on Bay Hill’s par-5 6th hole, the beefy five-layer DeChambeau stepped up and did the damn thing, blasting his tee shot 370 yards. He did it again during the final round and went on to win the event by one stroke over Lee Westwood.

Bryson DeChambeau is a maniac and a weirdo. Though he has chilled out a bit recently, he’s also been in the spotlight way less often since departing for LIV. You probably have forgotten how funny and wacky some of the stuff he has done over the years was. This article provides a timeline of all those incredible little moments. Enjoy a comical trip down memory lane.

Thanks for reading and have a great 2024.

A Truly Substantive Gift for the Golfer in Your Life

Will Lonnquist — Fri, 08 Dec 2023 18:00:51 GMT

If there’s someone in your life who really likes golf, someone who just can’t get enough day in and day out, give them the gift of a Golfer’s Journal subscription.

The Golfer’s Journal is a premium 150-page quarterly magazine filled with contemplative stories alongside magnificent photography discussing all elements of golf. The stories vary in length and tone. After reading some you may laugh, some you may immediately head to the driving range, and some will leaving you sitting alone in silence. You will also find profiles on figures from around the golfing world, such as “Gorjus” George Lucas, that would never get featured in your typical Hudson News selections. The Golfer’s Journal is head and shoulders above the mass-produced competition and while that means it comes with a higher price tag ($90/year), for someone who bleeds golf, it is beyond worth the price.

If, as an outsider, you’ve ever tried to purchase a golf-related gift for the truly obsessed person you may know, you’ve probably let them down. While they hopefully greeted your gift with gratitude and a smile, as all gifts should be, their appreciation was likely feigned. There are enough cheap gimmicks out there that no golf fanatic really needs. The Golfer’s Journal is the opposite. When it lands in the correct hands, The Golfer’s Journal will be wholeheartedly enjoyed.

In the best way possible, you can get lost in The Golfer’s Journal. Reading it cover to cover is an engrossing hours-long experience. Most other golf publications are designed for entertainment, not slow digestion. For a golf lover, The Golfer’s Journal is a respite from the world. Reading The Golfer’s Journal reinforces the shared sense of why we all love the game and why playing often remains a continuum throughout our everchanging lives. The words and images contained within can create the same sense of fulfillment you feel when playing a wonderful evening round.

The Cover of Issue No. 21, shot by Kohjiro Kinno

Upon receiving your first edition of the magazine, you will be immediately struck by the gorgeous photography printed on the high-quality thick pages. In their inaugural edition, they highlighted Kohjiro Kinno, who takes most of the inventive and striking images throughout each magazine. Prior to reading that piece, I had never heard of this artist, but I am very happy to have been introduced to him. You can find some of his astonishing work here. Below is one of my favorites. The high-fidelity imagery in each issue broadcasts how The Golfer’s Journal is not just some printed vessel for schlepping advertisements. The magazine invites you to spend time with it and come back to it, even to just admire the visual beauty.

Tiger Woods at Torrey Pines, shot by Kohjiro Kinno

When you are reading the articles, however, you will find a variety of nuanced and exploratory essays. In Issue No. 13, Tom Coyne writes a short distillation about why golf can be valuable in building and maintaining male friendships. Whether I consciously realized it or not, golf has served this purpose in my life. Golf is an outlet for spending significant time with male friends away from screens, which can sadly be a rarity in today’s world. Nobody else is publishing a piece like this. Coyne writes,

I have seen scores of alpha males turn fragile on a first tee, and witnessed bulls of the business world spiral into meek apologizers, humbled by our game. And humility is essential to real male bonds, so the studies say. The trials of a round of golf can break us down to where, by the 16th hole, four quiet acquaintances have transformed into comrades rowing a lifeboat. We dream of golf that feels easy, forgetting that its struggles give us the gift of vulnerability that we carefully avoid elsewhere in our lives. And vulnerability, it seems, is the prescription for true friendships, which can do more for our well-being that grow our Christmas card list.

Each magazine also features several longer pieces. In Issue No. 15, Andrew Lawrence covers the history of Paspalum grass in great detail, which traces from the Atlantic Slave trade to many modern golf resorts. He details,

Worse, the Comte had no commode for these men, women and children. They could either relieve themselves over the edge of the ship of do their business in buckets — which, with the size of the crowd, overflowed quickly. In addition to the excreta, the cargo floors were consistently glazed in mucus, blood and vomit. In rough seas, the Comte’s portholes were closed, leaving the Africans in her belly gasping for breath and prone to disease. The whole mix made for a steamy, unholy stench that, to the sturdy nose of Alexander Falconbridge, a British slave-ship medic who authored the seminal abolitionist tome An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa in 1788, “resembled a slaughter-house. It is not in the power of the human imagination to picture a situation more dreadful or disgusting.” To help sop up the mess, the ship was bedded with grass pulled from the Angolan deltas.
Today, the same turf lines fairways and greens all over the world.

Here is a harrowing essay, primarily about a strain of grass. Nobody else is publishing a work like this either.

Golf is not without its flaws, and it will likely never shake them. The sport is expensive and elitist. The Golfer’s Journal balances the tension that comes from enjoying golf at seaside courses in places like Kiawah Island and Dubai, locations steeped in exclusivity and wealth, with the dark history of what makes golf in those locations possible. Paspalum grass is used in places like this because of it’s salt-tolerant characteristics, however its history is overshadowed and likely unknown to most. Promoting awareness of this particular dichotomy as well as other inequalities surrounding golf is worthwhile journalism. Though The Golfer’s Journal often focuses on why we collectively love golf, it does not neglect the issues of the game. Increasing our reverence for the world can only make us better individuals and that is what this article did for me.

At the top, I stated that The Golfer’s Journal is a quarterly publication but that definition is a bit limiting. They are also now producing excellent video and audio content, which is free to everyone. Much like the magazines, these other channels are professionally crafted and quite enjoyable. On the podcast front, I listen to each episode of their new Mind Game series. I find these more enjoyable than way than their regular episodes hosted by Tom Coyne, which can be a bit sleepy especially compared to other golf podcasts. On their YouTube channel, there are some wonderful instructional videos containing useful, rarely discussed information. This one is my favorite so far. And try this if you have more time on your hands. Again, if you aren’t a golf sicko then someone spending ten minutes explaining how swaggering body language and intentional practice strokes can make a vast improvement in your putting is likely mind-numbing, but to those who crave this, this is enthralling. The Golfer’s Journal will fill up their cup regardless of how and where they are consuming it.

As I’ve tried to highlight, the merits of The Golfer’s Journal are numerous. It’s my number one gift recommendation to anyone with the golf craze.

Thanks for reading.

Buddy, they know the courts are bad

Will Lonnquist — Fri, 10 Nov 2023 03:31:32 GMT

Everybody talking about the NBA online last Friday night was talking about the courts. Yes, the courts.

Memes were born

If you didn’t watch the games on Friday, it’s likely surprising to hear that the courts were hottest topic. They became the hottest topic because unprecedented and gaudy new designs were rolled out across every game. These new courts got the people talking.

Just to be clear, yes, the court designs debuted by the NBA were really bad. But I believe the NBA fully anticipated and wholeheartedly desired the visceral reactions they received. The second-order effects of implementing such egregious aesthetics prove this was not an ill-considered decision for the NBA.

The migraine-inducing courts were used, and will continue to be used, for the NBA’s new in-season tournament. Friday night, November 3rd, was the opening night of the tournament and the court designs acted as an immediate differentiating factor between these in-season tournament games and your standard nightly contest.

I, for one, was smacked in the face by the court designs. When I arrived at a restaurant for dinner, I had no idea the in-season tournament was happening (my roommate and I were both aware of the concept but assumed it started much later in the season). That quickly changed when I was immediately bombarded by an overload of firetruck red coming from all TVs showing the Chicago Bulls game. I knew something was up and discerned that this indicated the game was part of the in-season tournament. This realization then prompted me to look into what the in-season tournament entailed. While the tournament concept is quite dumb, seeing the court proved useful in forcing me to learn about it.

Later in the night, the Dallas Mavericks took on the Denver Nuggets and created the worst conglomeration of colors I have ever seen on an NBA court. Not only was the high-contrast blue and yellow Denver court wholly unpalatable, but Denver (the home team who knew what the court would look like) wore their black jerseys which further clashed with the court’s color scheme. I almost could not watch. It was awful. Everyone knew it was awful. It got the people talking.

Some “better” designs, which no one would bother to comment on

As seen above, a skillful fan quickly designed some courts with cleaner and more soothing appearances than what the NBA unveiled. It probably took this guy two seconds to imagine what he eventually concocted: keep the known visual language of light wooden floorboards and add some colorful team-based accents inside the three point arc. These designs or something similar seem like a no brainer to implement. If the NBA wanted non-controversial and visually pleasing courts for the in-season tournament they could have easily done that. Yet, they decided instead to produce jarring and frustrating designs.

I simply refuse to believe the NBA felt these were their best designs for the courts with regards to attractiveness. There are some number of real working professionals, likely with backgrounds in graphic design, whose literal job it was to design these courts knowing their efforts would ultimately need approval from NBA executives. There’s no chance these were their best submissions in terms of creating beauty. Clearly, the chosen design template was selected because it served other purposes.

My own meta-meme

There was lots of commentary on the courts, but hardly any was positive. Here’s a guy complaining about the courts, “Seems like no one tested the viewability of these NBA court designs beforehand? They are brutal on the eyes especially when watching a game for 2+ hours on TV”. Every reply to this tweet is also complaining about the courts. Here’s some more negative feedback and mockery. However, I doubt any of these people would have voiced their opinion about the court designs if they were optimized to be widely appealing.

Or take myself for example. I saw the courts and then I researched the tournament structure. Even if I hadn’t seen a game on TV, the same progression would have likely occurred because I would have seen all the posts about the courts online and needed to dive in further. I now know not only what these fierce courts signify, but also the general premise of the in-season tournament. That would not have been the case without the zany designs. In these regards, the rollout of the courts was flawless.

The NBA knew premiering these courts would prove irksome to viewers. That was their goal, because it got the people talking about their new Big Thing.

I have highlighted other examples of this phenomenon in the past. Exhibit A. Exhibit B. In each of these cases the Thing, whether an augmented-reality golfer or a ‘free agent visit’ post, is both novel and provocative. A ton of commentary was generated about these Things compared to what I would have expected. When your Thing is irksome, people have a really hard time keeping their mouths shut. Granted, I do not think these examples were quite as conscious of decisions as what the NBA decided to do, but the premise still holds.

An example of intentional irksomeness can be found in the design of Tesla’s Cybertruck. With its boxy and dystopian appearance, it stands out significantly from other new cars. Nearly everyone online is commenting negatively on the appearance of the vehicle, but they are commenting about the vehicle nonetheless. This leads to the Cybertruck getting way more organic publicity online than almost any other car right now. In this case, I do believe the design was highly intentional in its irregularity, just like the NBA’s new courts. Whatever you think of the design, it’s distinctness is what creates all of the reactions.

The key to being intentionally irksome is that your Thing needs to seem cool, but your execution of Thing must be aggravatingly flawed. You need to be close to achieving something laudatory, while still coming up woefully short. The poor, and obviously poor, execution tortures our monkey brains. We start screaming in our heads and oftentimes to others, “Ugh I really don’t like this! Why did they do it that way? If only they could have done it this other way instead! That would have been so much better!”. Whether people are ridiculing your Thing or suggesting improvements, they are talking about your Thing and spreading it around. For anybody that encountered the in-season tournament courts, it became nearly impossible not to comment on them. I myself made numerous comments while at dinner. It was all I could think about. Regardless of the substance of the comment, every comment benefits the NBA by spreading the word about their new Thing. For the NBA, amassing a lot of commentary may be particularly useful with regards to their ongoing future TV deal negotiations as they can likely argue that fan engagement spiked with the beginning of the in-season tournament.

Creating something irksome, something that’s just not quite right, is a surefire way to drum up engagement online. When you execute on your Thing in a way that seemingly telegraphs to others that you so obviously could have done the Thing better, people will revel in and share their opinion on your supposed shortcomings. Yet while they’re giving you negative publicity, everyone ends up digesting your Thing. I have yet to see a case where the masses are able to withhold their sheep-like comments on something intentionally irksome. Everyone just wants to join in on the fun. Although I wouldn’t recommend it, being intentionally irksome has proven to be a foolproof strategy if you’re looking to create some commotion and are agnostic of its sentiment.

Good publicity is preferable to bad, but from a bottom-line perspective, bad publicity is sometimes better than no publicity at all.
- DT

Just like that everybody was talking about the in-season tournament. 4D chess from the NBA.

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Thanks for reading.

Jordan Spieth has Burstiness

Will Lonnquist — Sun, 17 Sep 2023 23:51:32 GMT

Burstiness

Burstiness is statistics term which Wikipedia defines as, “the intermittent increases and decreases in activity or frequency of an event”. One can analyze a set of events over a given period of time and assign that set a burstiness score.

I first stumbled upon the term “burstiness” when reading the following assortment of links from Erik Hoel. Burstiness was noted as a useful measure to determine if some text had been written by humans or artificial intelligence. In addition to the tweet/website being referenced, Hoel explains,

Burstiness is how often the tone, or rhythm, or even content of writing, changes. Human writing, it turns out, has natural burstiness, since we focus on and emphasize various different things. Why? Perhaps because we have a stream of consciousness—as William James wrote, our consciousness is like a bird, flying from one branch to perch on another, and then dashing to alight on another, and these changes in our attention are reflected in our writing. But ChatGPT is likely not conscious (or if it is, it has a very different sort) and there is no alighting on one branch and then another, because there is no bird, and there are no branches, and nothing is surprising, nor particularly interesting, there is instead just a process mechanically bent on auto-completing the prompt and therefore putting out results completely uniform and self-similar and undifferentiated. A mind like mud.

Jordan Spieth

Through this explanation, I found immediate connections to the differences in playing styles of the world’s top golfers. A similar dichotomy to that outlined between human writing and AI writing can established by how golfer’s play. There are those who create intrigue via the absurd positions and recovery shots they put themselves in and those who plod along never attempting any theatrics. Some golfers play with flair, others play like machines. There are those with burstiness and those without it.

Jordan Spieth definitely has burstiness. He often makes inexplicable course management mistakes and subsequently attempts miraculous recovery shots. His game is variable, but when he’s on he wins. Spieth’s game keeps you on your toes. Even his conversations with his caddie can be riveting.

Spieth is a massive fan favorite on the PGA TOUR. He was third in the Player Impact Program in 2022, behind only Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy. However, he was nowhere near the third best player and likely not even one of the ten best. The discrepancy between these two facts is due to Spieth’s playstyle. When players with burstiness start winning, they tend to quickly become fan favorites. Their mistakes are visible and frequent, but their recoveries are marvelous. Simply, players with burstiness are more entertaining to watch. Moreover, this playstyle more closely aligned with most fans’ own golf games. When players with burstiness capture victories, it resonates strongly with fans.

Burstiness is human and I believe we are attracted to it in life. We want to see Jordan Spieth at the precipice of disaster just barely able to hold on, knowing sometimes he won’t. Spieth’s failures and close calls at Augusta add to his appeal. As in life, we cannot always emerge victorious but having that flair for the dramatic creates intrigue and excitement regardless of the outcome.

Patrick Cantlay

Unfortunately, I also truly believe that the optimal way to play individual professional sports is without burstiness. One shouldn't play like Spieth. Instead you should be a robot; get to the golf course, hit it long, hit it straight, make your putts and leave, levelheaded and emotionless. But where is the vitality in that? Analogously, having a great poker face does not seem to be naturally human. It needs to be learned. Many modern players dedicate themselves to becoming stoic, robotic and clinical when competing. The prototypical current example of this player is Patrick Cantlay.

(This dynamic is not limited to golf. The same is true with other individual sports like tennis or MMA. Think of Kyrgios vs. Medvedev, McGregor vs. Nurmagomedov. Who’s performances feel more like the human experience? Who is the better?)

Cantlay is a slow, emotionless player. He rarely makes mistakes. This past season, he ranked highly in every single strokes gained category but did not win any events. The problem is that Cantlay rarely has any highlights. Cantlay enjoys consistent success in the form of high finishes and large paychecks. He does not enjoy success in terms of winning frequently or gaining support from fans.

Coming off a strong finish at the Masters in April, Cantlay was striping it again the next week at the RBC Heritage. Despite strong results, fans seemed to be rooting against the monotonous Californian. On Sunday, Cantlay’s ball found itself in quite a peculiar spot, resting on a bulkhead just inches from a pond. This is the kind of place you might expect one of Spieth’s shots to wind up, not Cantlay’s. Cantlay took forever to execute his eventual high-quality chip shot. To me, watching this was like watching a robot malfunction. This was a spot he had never been in before and the added variables took him completely out of his comfort zone. He couldn’t adapt quickly. Cantlay has no burstiness.

If you put a gun to my head, started a 5 second timer and told me to blurt out a Patrick Cantlay highlight, I think I would be dead. There really aren’t any. But he’s been one of the best players on tour for years. In terms of on-course results, even if he doesn’t achieve the peaks of winning, he cranks out top tens better than almost anyone. There is success to be had playing without burstiness.

Phil Mickelson

Many golfers have exhibited burstiness over the years, but none more so than Phil Mickelson. Phil has all enthralled fans throughout his career. Phil was the epitome of excitement and volatility on the golf course plus he also won six majors. There is no player with more burstiness and more skill than Phil. Any other player can only be better than Phil in one of those two categories. The economic theory of Pareto efficiency explains why Phil has so much appeal. Here’s a 538 article explaining the concept:

Pareto optimality is helpful for thinking about how to get the most value in a situation that requires trade-offs. For example, if you’re buying a car and you want to maximize size and speed, you could start by ruling out any car that is both smaller and slower than at least one other car. The remaining cars would be maximized for size, maximized for speed, or have a balance of the two qualities, where the cars couldn’t get any bigger without also getting slower, or couldn’t get any faster without also getting smaller. When you can’t gain in one quality without sacrificing another, that’s called the Pareto frontier.

If we modify the variables to be overall skill and amount of burstiness in one’s playstyle, then it becomes clear Phil Mickelson was Pareto efficient.

Fans are attracted to those on Pareto frontier and players on the Pareto frontier cna have different combinations of skill and burstiness to become fan favorites. Tiger Woods was obviously Pareto efficient because he had the most skill, but he also displayed decent amounts of burstiness, just think of his most famous highlights. Phil and Tiger fall on different parts of the spectrum. Phil has more burstiness than Tiger, but less skill. Phil and Spieth would be located similarly on the Pareto frontier for their respective eras.

In the current era without Tiger Woods, Jon Rahm is in the conversation for the most skilled player. He’s insanely good at golf. However, his playstyle is not particularly exciting. If you think of some of Rahm’s big victories from this past season such as the Masters or the Genesis Open, there were no real exciting shots. These victories were captured through 72 holes of high-level execution and poise. This sounds quite similar to my description of Patrick Cantlay, however Rahm has gained fans because of his slightly better skill and ability to actually win. Fans enjoy watching someone who dominates regardless of how they do it. Rahm is Pareto efficient. Cantlay is not pareto efficient because he has less skill than Jon Rahm without any more burstiness. Cantlay is a grey dot on the visual. Phil, Tiger, Spieth and Rahm are all red dots.

Of course, there are many more factors involved in fandom than just these two components. Max Homa has attracted many fans due to his candid social media presence and decent skill. And there are also other off-course reasons to root for (or against) any player, most notably Tiger and Phil. However, skill level and burstiness remain the two most important.

Sahith Theegala

Based on this framework, Sahith Theegala will become beloved among casual fans off the PGA Tour once he wins once (or maybe twice). Sahith’s game is full of burstiness. As PGA TOUR rookie, Theegala was hanging tough with some big names at the 2022 WM Phoenix Open despite spraying his ball into the desert off the tee quite frequently. His ball got an awful bounce on the 71st hole to eliminate the possibility of him pulling off a miracle win. Still, he was punching above his weight and continually pulling off great recovery shots. Theegala has the kind of exciting sporadic play to quickly attract lots of admirers if he can start winning regularly.

If you listen to the No Laying Up podcast, you may have heard them mention that while they are often pulling for Sahith, it is quite stressful to watch him play 72 holes. How similar does that sound to Jordan Spieth? In fact, on an episode earlier this Summer, Tron speaks about Sahith and says, “I’m starting to feel like Sahith is mini-Spieth“ (51:55). Though Tron is lacking the precision with his words to describe why the two are similar, it’s certainly due to the comparable levels of burstiness in their play.

Having burstiness plus winning tournaments is a surefire formula for gaining passionate supporters because it puts a player on or near the Pareto frontier. I believe the missing piece of that equation for Sahith, winning, should come quickly. Don’t be surprised to see him lift a trophy soon and suddenly many more people pulling strongly for him.

This past season the following players all won: Taylor Moore, Davis Riley, Nick Hardy and Kurt Kitiyama. But there won’t be massive crowds pulling for any of these guys anytime soon and the PGA TOUR won’t spam you with content about these first-time winners either. These players lack burstiness. The opposite will be true for Sahith. Sahith embodies burstiness and has a high ceiling in terms of skill. He just needs to secure that first W.

As of today 2023-09-17, Sahith is taking a two stroke lead into the final round of the Fortinet Championship. Hopefully, he can get the job done and this burstiness thesis can be put to the test.

Thanks for reading.

Rory McIlroy, Tribalism, and Hollywood Endings

Will Lonnquist — Wed, 19 Jul 2023 16:35:37 GMT

Happy Open Championship week!

Back in January, Rory McIlroy bested Patrick Reed on the 72^nd hole at the Dubai Desert Classic. Rory, a strong PGA TOUR advocate, took down Reed, a LIV detractor, in a week filled with drama, at least for golf’s standard. The ongoing tension and competition between the PGA TOUR and LIV Golf, along with some “us vs. them” comments Rory made last Fall, prompted me to flesh out some thoughts I’ve had swirling around in my head since last year’s Open Championship. Although the immediate reasons to root for Rory are probably obvious if you followed professional golf over the last 18 months, I have not seen anyone address the underlying dynamics that led to such zealous support for Rory from many fans including myself at last year’s Open Championship.

Much of what was written here had been drafted before the PGA TOUR-LIV merger news was announced. Some of the background info may now be obsolete.

When I saw this tweet, everything clicked into place.

Shooter McGavin would go to LIV, there is no doubt in my mind. He is the perfect candidate. Shooter is seemingly "a LIV guy". He's an aging arrogant slimeball who still draws eyes. He likely would also be enticed by the large, guaranteed paychecks.

Through this parody tweet, however, I came to understand more than just what a fictional character might do in the abnormal reality of professional golf in 2022. I also came to better understand the previously obscured dynamics influencing my own (and other's) rooting interests at the 2022 Open Championship. There were obvious reasons leading me to cheer for Rory McIlroy, which I understood, but I could never quite put my finger on why I was pulling for him so so heavily that week — until I saw Shooter McGavin in a LIV sweater.

In order to understand the stakes heading into the Open Championship, you need to understand the world of professional golf in 2022. For the first time in decades, a threatening rival tour to the PGA TOUR emerged. This led to so much more intrigue, resentment and squabbling from both players and fans compared to an ordinary year and if you are not up to speed, you may already be lost reading this. If you need background info or a refresher on the new Saudi-backed LIV Golf Tour, Zach Helfand's piece in The New Yorker provides an excellent summary (or listen to Zach's discussion with Garrett Morrison of The Fried Egg). Or, if for some reason you need a refresher on Shooter McGavin and Happy Gilmore, here you go.

Though there were many twists and turns along the way, LIV Golf has now established itself as a new prominent tour in the professional golf landscape. Many of the world's top players have decided to join this new tour. Yet with the funding for its gigantic tournament purses and player contracts coming from the Public Investment Fund of a country with a horrible reputation on human rights and disingenuous overall goals for this tour, LIV Golf and the players who have joined are not viewed favorably by a vast majority of the golf community. Generally speaking, the LIV Golf ecosystem represents the Bad Guys to most golf fans.

Continuing with this simplistic view, if LIV Golf represents the Bad Guys, the PGA TOUR and its remaining players represent the Good Guys. The PGA TOUR does do impactful work with charities throughout each season and has a mostly meritocratic system that awards playing opportunities based on performance. The tournaments also have history and we, as fans, can contextualize player performance. The PGA TOUR feels more genuine and fair than LIV Golf, even if it still has its flaws. Throughout this past season, as LIV picked off more and more players, one prominent voice remained steadfast in conveying the PGA TOUR's value while also bashing LIV: Rory McIlroy. Luckily for the PGA TOUR, McIlroy is one of the best players of his generation and his opinions have the ability to sway others. Many pundits thought that if Rory went to LIV, the PGA TOUR might dissolve completely. Because of his calculated comments and stellar performance over the past season, Rory became singular representation of the Good Guys in the eyes of most. He also happens to be a fan favorite who hits the ball a mile if this is starting to sound familiar.

This tug-of-war in the professional golf landscape reached a crescendo at the 2022 Open Championship. This was (A) the 150th playing of the Open Championship, (B) the last major of a non-Ryder Cup year and (C) hosted at St. Andrews, the home of golf. On top of that, the LIV-related feuds were reaching their heights. This was the climax of professional golf in 2022. It seemed there was more on the line here than just a trophy. The outcome of this tournament had the potential to define for the next several years of professional golf.

Heading into the tournament, I felt Rory deserved to win. But I also felt strongly that he would, planting his flag as the conqueror of the game of golf. Though I knew I was rooting for Rory and I knew the immediate reasons why, my fervor seemed more intense than usual. I was not alone in these sentiments. In listening to No Laying Up's live third round recap (If you enjoy golf, please listen/watch these as well), Jaime Weir of Sky Sports joined the show and provided the following predictions about Rory:

It’s destiny. It’s destiny. I’m just, honestly, I’m fighting back the tears. I don’t what I am going to be like in 24 hours time. I’m not going to be able to control myself. I can’t believe it. It’s just, I’m smiling from ear to ear. This is it. It’s time. It’s time for the king to be crowned at the home of golf. (6:20)

He’s enjoying this sort of self-appointed role, as I said, the savior of golf if you want to be as grandiose as that. And, you know, I know it sounds a bit sort of corny but it just seems fitting that Tiger walks over the Swilcan Bridge and lifts his cap to the galleries… just as Rory is walking down the first fairway and Rory tips his cap to Tiger and Tiger tips his cap back to Rory and it feels like of sort of passing of the baton… Here’s Rory who was always going to be the heir apparent to Tiger and he’s going to go and lift that Claret Jug outside the steps of the R&A clubhouse tomorrow. (16:07)

Before every tournament, I typically want someone to win. While they become “my pick”, I am fine if any number of players I support take home the trophy. This week was different, I really wanted Rory to win. In addition, I couldn’t shake this premonition that he was going to. Regardless of what happened, somehow he would find a way to emerge victorious. Hearing a professional sports reporter echo these same thoughts made me feel justified. A single outcome was imminent. This week felt as if we weren’t so much just rooting for Rory as we were bearing witness to his greatness and inevitable victory.

Bringing this all back home, it was only upon encountering Shooter's “announcement” that was I able to reflect on the afflictions disrupting my expectations for this Open Championship. I had fallen into the mental traps of both tribalism and a belief in Hollywood endings which clouded my judgement and expectations of the event.

Last year in professional golf there became Good Guys and Bad Guys. Everything about LIV leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I’m sure many other can say the same. So, in my eyes, when I sided with the PGA TOUR, I sided with the Good Guys. And even though I’m just a fan, it would feel great have to my tribe defeat the others at the climax of the season. Besting a foe opposite feels good to our caveman brains. Since the outcome of this event felt so pivotal, the larger picture here was that Rory winning would prove that supporting him and the PGA TOUR was the correct side to be on. The PGA TOUR, The Good Guys, and all their supporters would emerge victorious. I was imaging how it would feel to have all my criticisms of LIV proved correct all while the main leader of my tribe established himself as the ultimate champion. How blissful the catharsis must be to watch your tribe prevail after many tense and bitter months of competition. I deeply wanted to be proved right so that I could point fingers at the other side. Textbook tribalism.

However, I also deeply expected to be proved right. I heavily owe this mental misconception to the typical endings of Hollywood sports movies. In Happy Gilmore, Happy emerges as the champion. Shooter is tough albeit scummy competition, but ultimately he is bested. The movie exemplifies the classic Hollywood trope where the Good Guy overcomes the mighty obstacles and wins the final competition. It became clearer in hindsight that Rory McIlroy entered this championship as the de facto Happy Gilmore with throngs of fans rallying behind him while LIV Golf [waves hands] was Shooter McGavin. Nobody wants to watch Shooter McGavin win and nobody truly believes he is going to either. Deep down, we all know what’s going to happen. The Good Guy will miraculously find a way through regardless of the challenge. Because of my predisposition to believe in Hollywood endings through films like Happy Gilmore, it seemed there was no other possible champion besides Rory.

But I should know better. Ultimately, this was not Hollywood. In fact, it might as well have been the opposite as Cam Smith defeated Rory in the final round and while they were still playing news leaked that Cam would be leaving for LIV shortly after the tournament. That Sunday did not end as I had expected. The Bad Guys prevailed. Months down the road, came the sad realization that Rory was never destined to win. Nothing in life is destined the way it is in the movies. At St. Andrew’s on Sunday, Rory was just another guy hitting a little white ball around a field sometimes.

There are really no earth-shattering takeaways here and some of these conclusions may seem obvious. However, I found it valuable to go back and reexamine my previous certainty about the 2022 Open Championship’s outcome. We all have our biases and now I am more aware of a few of mine. Looking back, it’s much easier to identify the dynamics at play. David Foster Wallace succinctly sums up what this exercise of analyzing my fandom meant to me:

To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded.

Thanks for reading. Time to go root for Rory again.

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‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Review: Will This Stuff Still Fly by AO Scott (NYT)

Favorite Essays of 2022

Will Lonnquist — Mon, 23 Jan 2023 18:01:19 GMT

Non-golf

A Song of Shapes and Words by Roon (roon’s blog)

Somehow I have become the poster child for the shape jihad, expanded the visuospatial canon a little bit, and fleshed out an unlikely, idiotic, and possibly dangerous ideology around the initial jokes about imaginary cube spinning. Later on I coined the opposite — the “wordcel” slur — and this meme started cooking with gas. But why is everyone fascinated with this distinction? Why are people proclaiming themselves wordcels and rotators? Why did these memes have such evolutionary power in the noosphere?

This is the the kind of thing that can only exist on the internet and that’s why I loved it. What started as niche tech Twitter jokes became a full-fledged essay discussing the origins, definitions and applications of a new dichotomy for sorting people. When this meme was hot I was interested in what exactly these terms meant. Frustratingly, I couldn’t find anything with useful background info. No one had yet created the synopsis I needed. Thus, this article provided immense clarity to me in understanding the origins and context of wordcels vs. shape rotators. Roon, the author, also ostensibly invented and popularized both terms so to get this summary directly from him felt genuine. He also writes beautifully, which was unforeseen from a self-described schizo-poster. Lastly, I found the dichotomy itself is useful for distinguishing people in the real world. My characteristics align more to those of a shape rotator.

The gossip trap by Erik Hoel (The Intrinsic Perspective)

The difference between the horror of crabs in a bucket and a human tribe or group living in a gossip trap is actually that the humans are generally quite happy down there in the bucket. It’s our natural environment. Most people like the trap. Oh, it’s terrible for the accused, the exiled, the uncool. But the gossip trap is comfortable. Homey. People like Jonathan Haidt will look at modern life and scratch their heads in The Atlantic to try to pinpoint when and why the social media algorithm began to spread misinformation and sow discord. They miss the truth, which is that all social media does is allow us to overcome Dunbar’s number, which dismantled a barrier erected at the beginning of civilization. Of course we gravitate to cancel culture—it’s our innate evolved form of government.

This essay is actually a book review massaged and expanded into the presentation of an interesting and believable theory of human societal development. Towards the end the author connects this theory to our new social media age and discusses why he believes that so many feel as though society is in a tailspin. I was fascinated by connection between these seemingly disparate eras of humanity.

I did not find this essay on my own. For that I must thank the prolific Scott Alexander (Astral Codex Ten, Slate Star Codex). If you follow or read his stuff, you are probably already aware of this essay since it won his 2022 Book Review Contest. Anything that wins a competition he hosts is going to be worthwhile so it is no surprise that I thoroughly enjoyed reading this and I am appreciative of being pointed towards to it. This will not be the last time Scott Alexander is mentioned here.

We were voyagers by Visakan Veerasamy (visakanv's switchboard)

I’m increasingly certain that there are others like me in the world, alive right now, quietly suppressing themselves for social reasons. I hear from more of them every month. They suppress themselves because they don’t personally know of any House of Wisdom that they could attend to fully be themselves in. Because the scale and scope of their interests don’t quite correspond with that of those of the people around them, and they don’t know if it’s worth opening up about their inner truths – because they believe, accurately according to their past experience, that the likeliest outcome is that people will misunderstand them. A confused “huh?” is often the best you can hope for. Far better than being mocked, insulted, laughed at, dismissed.
Over the years, I’ve increasingly developed a sense of lightness, clarity, courage and conviction in realizing that these are my people. That when I’m writing for the younger version of myself, and the future versions of myself, I’m writing for them. For us. All of us. I’m a me, but I’m also a we. And there is a deep kinship in that, a deep sense of belonging. And I have decided that I am willing to endure any amount of mockery and misunderstanding from the people who don’t get it, to be a bridge to the people who do. Because more than anything else, that is what I wish I had in my life. A space to understand and be understood.

Often I struggle to open up about my interests. I keep things hidden to myself. However reading this and knowing there are other people like me gave me more internal confidence to share my thoughts. I appreciate when written words can inspire change in real world actions and these passages did that for me.

Culture Mechanics II - Acceleration by Jamie Ryan (Depatterning)

It’s hard not to let these examples influence the way we perceive ourselves and others. And as we try to compete in this context - or merely keep up as the case tends to be - we push our expectations higher and higher, driving and distorting them as far as our creativity and credulity allow.
These dynamics help create a strange circumstance in which almost everyone can feel behind.

This essays discusses types. You have probably heard someone say, "Oh, he's an X type of guy" and from just that one characteristic you can often understand and pass judgements on that person. If you are confused by this, several examples of types are featured in the essay. Types and the act of typing others have become increasingly prominent in modern culture, particularly online culture. The author strongly argues why this trend is unhealthy for humans. Having noticed this phenomenon in my own life, this essay spelled out so much of what I had sensed but never been able to articulate. A lot of what is featured here is built off another essay which lays groundwork for the dangerous social implications of either being typed and applying a type to others. This prior essay was probably my favorite thing I read in 2022, however it was published in 2021. I highly recommend starting there then proceeding to Jamie Ryan’s writing.

Elon Musk Is Better Than You by Michael Huemer (Fake Nous)

First, the amount of money he’s made is a rough indicator of the amount of economic value he has produced, i.e., the extent to which his activities have helped to satisfy other people’s desires, because you get money in a free market by giving other people things they want. (This is unlike how you get money if you’re a government official; if you’re a government official, you get money by threatening to hurt people if they don’t hand it over.)
Now, even if you think this is only a very rough indicator of the value Musk has produced, it still must be that he has produced more value than all but a tiny fraction of humans on the Earth. He didn’t do all this from self-interest (as most rich people do). He created SpaceX in part because he wanted to reduce the time till humanity has a multi-planetary civilization, in order to reduce existential risk. You can wonder about whether this is the most effective way to reduce X-risk. But it’s certainly more than almost everyone else on the planet is doing. What have you done lately to reduce existential risks?

This essay outlines my thoughts on Elon Musk almost exactly. So while it is a bit of a confirmation bias selection, I do I feel strongly that this is the correct, or at least more correct way, to view Elon compared to say a "Billionaires Bad! Elon Bad!" simplistic mindset. I wish more people viewed Elon through the perspective outlined in the piece. Elon’s life goals are incredibly lofty (loftier than whatever yours are!) and, all things considered, he has done a spectacular job progressing towards them. In my opinion, if the world strived to be more like Elon, the world would be a better place. That’s not to say it would be perfect, but there would be exciting visions of the future to pursue.

The action sequences are tense and exuberant, reminders that flight has been one of the great thrills of cinema almost from the beginning. The story is a mixed bag. In spite of the emotional crosscurrents and physical hazards that buffet poor Maverick — his career, his love life and his duty to the memory of his dead friend, to say nothing of G-forces and flak — the dramatic stakes seem curiously low.

I love AO Scott's writing and my thoughts on a movie typically align with his. I usually into a movie blind and read reviews afterwards. The Top Gun sequel/reboot was one of the few movies I saw in theatres in 2022 so it was one of the only reviews I read. Through his reviews, AO Scott has developed the ability to condense the quality and themes of the movie so well without spoiling the plot. Sometimes I’m not sure if a better series of words exist to describe the movie. It's as if he has created the optimal critique; a true "I couldn't have said it better myself" situation. I have encountered this sensation numerous times when reading his reviews and it happened again here. This movie was entertaining but strangely devoid of substance. I enjoyed the big screen experience but I walked away feeling nothing. I plan to read AO Scott’s book, Better Living Through Criticism, this year.

FTX: The $32B implosion by Trung Phan (SatPost)

SBF’s inner circle: Based on very early evidence, it sounds like only an inner circle — less than 10 of the 200+ FTX employees — probably knew of SBF’s scheme. They were running like a $100B+ in crypto trading volume with 3 people living in a Bahamas house (with a major assist from stimulants provided by an on-site psychiatrist). Here is a must-read from CoinDesk: Bankman-Fried’s Cabal of Roommates in the Bahamas Ran His Crypto Empire – and Dated. Other Employees Have Lots of Questions.

The FTX collapse was a rollercoaster tale that is summarized well in this informative and entertaining piece. Since the FTX saga itself felt very "online", I enjoyed the non-traditional format of this post. A large portion is dedicated to a Links and Memes section. I felt this format more closely resembled the way the events unfolded compared to a traditional article.

I wrote a story for a friend by Julian Gough (The Egg And The Rock)

Coming down off the mushrooms, though, the core of the whole complicated, multi-year problem was so clear to me, I could say it in a line: I wrote a story for a friend, but in the end, he didn't treat me like a friend, and I'm hurt.
Well, that simplified everything. I could see now that I was caught in a kind of psychological, or maybe moral, trap: I couldn’t go after the money, because that would turn all this back into an argument about money; which wasn’t what this was ultimately about.
But the universe made something else clear to me, too: if Microsoft didn’t own the End Poem, and yet I had allowed them to distribute it for years, then I had, essentially, given my story as a gift to a couple of hundred million people all around the world (whether they wanted it or not); but I had refused to allow any of them to give me anything in return. And that was a kind of arrogance, too. A blockage in the flow of love.

A late addition to the list, I really relished this winding essay. It begins with the history of Minecraft’s End Poem from the man who wrote the End Poem. Then, the accompanying copywrite and interpersonal issues of this creation are discussed. By the end, the author shares his profound conclusions about life that he came to understand only after going through this complicated, strange period. This is another example of something that can only exist because of the internet. I could not stop reading this and found the concluding method of thinking beautiful.

Scorched Earth by Kate Wagner (main account) of derailluer

Tadej Pogačar couldn’t follow. He visibly suffered. Geraint Thomas passed him with ease. Suddenly our boyish Slovenian was alone. Really alone. Despite how powerful Pogačar has become, how unstoppable he seemed just yesterday, to see this young champion collapse still engenders sympathy, at least in this journalist. How lonely he appeared out there on the bald slopes of Granon, pedaling squares, his face ashen, his jersey unzipped. In the end, when Vingegaard crossed the line, for the first time utterly, undoubtably victorious, Pogačar would lose two minutes and twenty-two seconds in the general classification.

Over the past two years, I have gotten somewhat into professional cycling. During this year's Tour De France, Stage 11 was the defining stage. It was an epic day. Kate captures the entirety of the day while also inserting how she actually felt while watching. I connected with her feelings. Watching the two-time reigning winner of the tour Tadej Pogacar finally crack, getting dusted by his new, young main rival Jonas Vingegaard was shocking and glorious to watch all at once. Cycling, like golf, is a brutal sport. But moments like these are why I love sports. I'm not really sure where else you can get them. For visual context on the specifics of this article, watch this video, though you may become more confused without any knowledge of the jargon. I plan to write about the TDF before it begins next year.

Unfortunately, Kate is the only female present on this list so that something for me to keep in mind as I read more next year.

Designing a New Old Home: Materials and Hardware by Simon Sarris (The Map is Mostly Water)

Old houses harbor much of their charms in the materials themselves, which seem to get better over time, because the wear that the materials take on makes them more beautiful. Raw brass and copper grow a patina. Marble gets scratched or etched. Oiled wood floors get re-oiled, darken with age and get dented. The finishes on these objects are alive. They do not decline so much as they move with time. Even raw plaster, as it is painted and broken and repaired over time, becomes more and more pretty.

This is one part of a very practical series which has no weak points. Throughout the series I learned quite a bit about what it takes to build a home from scratch. Reading this installment, with its stimulating images and substance, got my mind turning more than others. Ideas were presented about design elements and options that I had never considered, especially as a current renter who has no real say over the design decisions. This essay expanded the realm of possibilities for interior design within my brain and I generally agree with Simon’s design aesthetic.

Choose Good Quests by Trae Stephens and Markie Wagner (Pirate Wires)

Even among the talented who choose a path of building, most take safe, incremental bets — another SaaS company, another turnkey consumer startup, another digital Beanie Baby. Such pursuits not only fail to push the world forward, but pose a cost in opportunity. There are important challenges facing humanity that no one is working on, including critical, and even existential challenges. In other words, if you are an exceptionally capable person, failure to pursue a good quest is not neutral. It constitutes a loss for humanity.

Based on these authors’ definition, I believe everyone should strive to choose a good life quest. Plus, I really like the phrasing: choose good quests. It’s so simple. Yet not the easiest thing to actually do. I find it rewarding to work for a company that I believe is pursuing a good quest. Whenever I decide to switch jobs, the ideas laid out here will serve as a guide for me. I never want to look myself in the mirror and know I am pursuing a bad quest. That may be easier said than done. I just saw saw a tweet that frames this same concept more harshly:

Either way you slice it, the point stands: do some good for the world with your career and you will be more fulfilled.

Vanishing People: the Population Crisis by Ryan McEntush (Pirate Wires)

Now, it’s one thing when this age ratio flips in a single country, like Japan, but consider for a moment what it means if the rest of the developed world follows in unison. Gradually, then suddenly, the global economy faces a crisis. Consumption begins to drop all together and the net flows into capital markets reverse. Less consumption means less aggregate demand, triggering a global recession and crippling the still-developing world reliant on these markets. On top of this, a reduction in labor force, in perpetuity, flywheels the consumption collapse and makes global growth incredibly difficult. Meanwhile, the shrinking fraction of young people must shoulder the heavy burden of a growing elderly population. Less tax revenue forces less expenditure, just as the aging population demands it. From a fiscal perspective, this is increasingly untenable for even the wealthiest nations.

Population collapse is an underdiscussed topic and this article contextualized the gravity of the issue. Currently, there is no solution. Population collapse will increasingly become an issue for my generation to deal with and more people need to become aware of its implications. When reading this essay, I was immediately reminded of a Scott Alexander piece that makes an adjacent point arguing against wealthy people limiting the children they have because of climate change concerns. These pieces pair well together and provide underrepresented viewpoints.

Note: I highly recommend Pirate Wires. I featured two posts from Pirate Wires just now, both by guest authors. The primary author is Mike Solana. Sadly, the my favorite articles he wrote from the past year are now paywalled. Maybe I should become a paying subscriber...

The case for more energy by Matthew Yglesias (Slow Boring)

But not only could energy abundance let us get by with less water for our farms, but it could also get us much more water. The oceans are full of water, after all, and we have facilities that can desalinate them. The problem is that desalination is incredibly energy intensive. But with abundant energy, there’s no problem here. You could have lush lawns in the suburbs of Las Vegas.

This essay exposed me to a whole new thought process. There is no reason to make our climate change goal simply net zero by 2050. We can strive for more. We can strive to create a net zero future coupled with bountiful excesses of energy. I immediately connected with this vision because of some guilt I have in my own life. I thoroughly enjoy golfing, but it probably not the best use of water, particularly when you are playing lush green courses in a desert or a drought. However, if there is so much energy available that desalinization can be done cheaply and we can pump water wherever we like then I will not have to feel as guilty. Based on this essay and some others, I would now put myself in the energy maximalist category. I will likely turn this into a full post at some point.

A sappy Giving Tuesday post by Matthew Yglesias (Slow Boring)

I used to walk past panhandlers every day, not give them any money, and tell myself “giving cash to random panhandlers is not a very good way to help people.” And it’s true, it’s not a very good way to help people. But if I did an honest inventory, it’s not like I was doing some other thing to help people instead of giving cash to the panhandlers — I just wasn’t giving anyone any money.
It’s good to cultivate a habit of giving, of feeling grateful for what you have in life, and for feeling good about being a person who contributes affirmatively to doing good. Part of that should be thinking over time about what you are giving to and why. But trying to do something rather than nothing is a big step, and in some ways the most important one.

This passage stuck with me because I have these exact thoughts when in this daily urban scenario. What particularly gnaws at me is when I walk past the same homeless people every day without ever giving any money or other assistance. How can one justify such behavior? Personally, I have dealt with this by committing to the Giving What We Can 10% pledge. I was introduced to the idea through a Scott Alexander essay (told you) which lays out the effective altruism argument for committing to this quota of charitable donations. However, even if effective altruism doesn’t align with your values you can still give to charities you believe in. I was pleased to read that Matt has done something similar as well and he lays out some great practical steps for donating. Charitable giving is another way to do some good for the world.

A Q School DQ for the Ages by Ryan French (The Firepit Collective)

Golf

Morgan Hoffmann left the PGA Tour in search of a cure. He found so much more by Dan Rapaport (Golf Digest, at the time)

Hoffmann was preparing his body for a 10-day urine cleanse—no food, no water, just a cup of his urine in the morning and evening. There is, we should note, no evidence as to the efficacy of this practice—at least not evidence that would withstand scientific scrutiny. Hoffmann doesn’t care. He takes issue with modernity’s definition of the word “science.” He and Chelsea, who has plunged head first into this journey with her husband, rely not on clinical trials or double-blind studies but choice literature, first-hand documentation and anecdotal evidence—because for Hoffmann, accepting his Western medicine-certified diagnosis means accepting defeat.

This was my favorite golf article of the year. It’s a fun zany read which is not something you can say towards most writing about golf. Urine therapy might not even be the wackiest thing that Morgan Hoffman does. I found Morgan’s openness to share his recovery journey a refreshing change of pace to golf’s usually bland, corporate player interviews. This was also a fascinating dive into the health guru subculture. While I don’t believe in everything Morgan does, it seems to be working for him.

Haefner hit his approach, and when the group arrived at the green, Moroz’s ball was on the fringe, just 15 feet from the hole. Haefner, having grown increasingly skeptical, asked Moroz what he was putting for. “Birdie,” he replied. The penalty area where Moroz’s tee shot had entered was thick and for the most part unplayable; in fact, Moroz called it “jungle.” He explained that Smith had found his ball just outside the penalty area, nearly 30 yards ahead (and around a corner of the wooded area) of where the ball entered. Clayton Kucera, an experienced caddie who was carrying for Ni, had seen enough. As Haefner and Ni were putting out, Kucera approached the rules official and explained what had happened. As the group left the green, the rules official returned to where Moroz’s drive had entered the penalty area.

Humans love scandals and this scandal involved a golf qualifying tournament so it was doubling captivating to me. If you have played enough tournament golf, you have certainly encountered cheating and scummy behavior. However, the perpetrator in this story to takes his dishonestly to audacious heights. It’s provocative stuff. There is also a follow-up story when more details came out.

The New OWGR, Incentive Structures, and The Moonshot by Joseph LaMagna (Finding the Edge)

When you tell a player that his best chance of winning the Tour Championship is by playing a heavy fall schedule, and he elects instead to vacation and/or spend some time relaxing with family, he is signaling that winning the Tour Championship is not his top priority. To be clear, I do not blame him. I’m not going to try and convince him that the Tour Championship should be his top priority. But this is why there is no storyline throughout the season for fans to follow. This is why fans don’t consider the Tour Championship appointment viewing.

To some degree, the PGA TOUR is broken. If everything was running optimally something like LIV would never gain any traction. Here, Joseph provides a clear synopsis of what needs to change with regards to the PGA TOUR's schedule to make it more compelling. The PGA TOUR’s playoffs are atrocious compared to other professional leagues in America. As a big fan of the PGA TOUR I want it to be more compelling and I concur with his analysis. It’s time to realign the incentives of the entire PGA TOUR season.

Changes at Augusta National by Andy Johnson (The Fried Egg)

I’m especially excited to see the effects of short-grass expansion on the ninth hole. This is a demanding tee shot, as the fairway slopes hard from left to right, calling for a right-to-left shot shape. But starting in the early 2000s, the rough along the right side prevented weak drives from bounding farther down the hill to the right. The second cut also reduced spin on many approaches, which, as Greg Norman can tell you, is an advantage when you’re hitting into a green with an immense false front. What makes the second shot into No. 9 so stressful to play and compelling to watch is that players must marry distance control with spin control in order to avoid zipping off the front of the green and into an awful place. The short rough mitigated that challenge. But this year, players may not get this benefit as often after missing to the right off the tee. I expect to see some spectacular recoveries that lead to birdies as well as misjudgments of spin that result in bogeys or worse.

Every year, hardcore golf fans are interested in the ramifications of the changes that are made to the course at Augusta National. I found these esoteric musings on the expansion of short grass throughout the property quite satisfying leading up to last year’s Masters. With more changes on the way, I expected another article of this nature from Andy come early April.

That’s it. In making the golf portion of this list I realized how I overwhelmingly get my golf news, thoughts and opinions through Twitter and podcasts. Looking back on this year, I was surprised how few longform pieces on golf I read, and how poorly I catalogued those that I did. I will try and improve on this in 2023. I don't think this is entirely on me however. Look at the replies and quote tweets to this question from Kyle Porter:

There are hardly any longform pieces of writing present in people’s answers! On the flip side, there are also popular longform options that I did not even touch in 2022 such as Geoff Shackelford’s The Quadrilateral. I have begun reading it in the new year after noticing this shortcoming.

I appreciate you making it to the end so I'll leave you with what I do believe to be the answer of Kyle’s question above. Enjoy!

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Lessons Learned from Running My First Marathon

Will Lonnquist — Wed, 09 Feb 2022 18:19:19 GMT

The Power of Compounding

In October 2021, I ran the Chicago Marathon. The situation was much different, however, when I began my training. As a previous non-runner, I could not consider myself running 26.2 miles. My body could not handle it. I needed to improve. I needed to transform myself from unable to able.

Over the summer months, I prioritized my training and ran five days a week for the 16 weeks (112 days) before the race. My two days off per week were dedicated towards recovery and "prehab" for my acclimating legs. All seven days of the week were useful in inching towards my goal of running a marathon. If we apply the same exponential equation as above, 1.01^112 = ~3. Thus, If I improved 1% as a runner each day I showed up to race-day a three times better runner than when I began. An overall improvement of 3x feels about right, but only as a ballpark estimate. Luckily, Strava Premium has a feature that tracks your fitness level with hard numbers. Let's check out the results...

Strava’s Fitness Level metric

At the end of week one of my training plan (y-intercept), my fitness level was 38. On race day (the latter orange circle), my fitness level was 100. I improved my fitness level by 2.6x over the course of my training. The improvement in my fitness level tracks to just under a 1% improvement each day and I may have reached a true 1% improvement each day if not for a brief injury that derailed me after I reached my peak fitness level of 106. My commitment to (almost) always completing my training unlocked the compounding effect of tiny daily improvements. I committed to stacking these slight improvements day after day, week after week and that's the "name of the game" according to the coach of the NCAA's best XC team. No single workout propelled me across the finish line. Ultimately, it was the compounded gains from each training day that allowed me to run my first marathon.

On any given day, I hardly noticed a difference in my ability. A 1% improvement upon yesterday is essentially undetectable. In the moment, it seemed as though as all I did was follow a training plan, execute a training plan, and cross the finish line. There was no sudden breakthrough in ability or fitness. Rather, slow and steady 1% improvements day after day delivered me to a fundamentally different place on race day. These small improvements in my running ability for not even one-third of a year led to a massive change in what was possible for my body.

Accordingly, running a marathon is not about the race, it's about the training. And when it comes to training, it's about showing up. It's about getting the reps done each and every day. The consistency leads to the growth by harnessing the power of compounding. Having said that, reaping the benefits from the compounding nature of small daily improvements is not something limited to marathon runners. Regardless of one's goals, achieving a modest 1% improvement each day in your desired discipline is very attainable and yet these seemingly small changes lead to dramatically different outcomes when stacked on top of each other. If you want to improve at something: get your rep done today and then get it done tomorrow, whatever that rep may be. You will be surprised where you wind up.

Forming New Habits

"The point is the work; the commitment to transform."
Peter Bromka

As much as I wanted to run a marathon, I was not a runner. I needed to form a new habit in order to successfully complete my training to then successfully complete the race. Even though this was something I wanted to do and the idea energized me, merely wanting to do something is not going to make it happen. Throughout the summer, my initial enthusiasm would dry up and there became so many days when I didn't want to run. I didn't want to run because I was tired from work, because my legs were sore, because I would have to avoid other plans. But I knew I needed to run to stay on track. So, my focus became to make it as easy as possibly to complete each run. I noticed certain mindsets and environmental factors made completing each run less of a hurdle and I tried to leverage those to my advantage.

As mentioned above, the most important mindset is that the quantity of repetitions practicing your new habit is more important than the quality of those repetitions. In addition to days when I didn't want to go running, there would be days when I would finish my run irritated because I didn't meet my mileage goal or I ended up taking a walking break mid-way through or I started my run at 830pm and now my night was completely shot. Yet, I still completed a run on those days. And completing that run made it easier on the subsequent days to also get out the door. James Clear writes in Atomic Habits, which I stubbornly read after the race,

"Each time you repeat an action, you are activating a particular neural circuit associated with the habit. This means that simply putting in your reps is one of the most critical steps you can take to encoding a new habit."

This way of thinking is helpful because it underscores that when you do a thing, it becomes easier to do that thing again. So, when trying to form a new habit, ensure you put in the repetitions. It doesn't matter it if was a shitty mile, you ran in a mile.

Another point from Atomic Habits that I mirrored my training is to fervently resist missing two days in a row. When I occasionally missed a training run, I really made an effort to get my next run done. Here Clear asserts:

"The first mistake is never the one that ruins you. It is the spiral of repeated mistakes that follows. Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is the start of a new habit."

Since I committed to never missing two runs in a row, I never got completely off track with my training schedule. This mindset was extremely beneficial in unlocking the compounding power of small improvements. When you miss a bunch of days in a row you are right back to where you started. In visualize form:

Life may get in the way and you may have to miss your rep on a given day. That's not great, but it's fine. However, attack that next day whenever this occurs.

I also noticed it was easier for me to run when I was embedded in my typical routine. Since I was not a runner, I had to prioritize it. Finding time for my run much easier to do when I was at my apartment with no evening obligations. When I did miss runs, there were consistent patterns as to why. First, travelling gets in the way of exercising. Travel days themselves typically leave you with low energy and little free time and then if you are travelling with any sort of group, their priority is likely not to complete a training run the same way yours is. You may have to make some compromises to your training plan when travelling to stop yourself from becoming bothersome to the group. Secondly, I found it much harder to complete my runs when I committed to fun social plans after work. Knowing I had to be somewhere at 6pm motivated me to complete a morning run, but if the comforts of my bed were too great I knew that day's run was basically shot. The consistency of an environment makes it much easier to stick with your new habit. For me, more variables present in my environment meant more chances to go wrong and not complete my run. Simple repeatable routines work best when creating a new habit.

Last year, I wanted to run a marathon but on many training days I didn't want to run. This year, I want to publish articles but, sheepishly, I'll admit most I've found most days don't want to write at all. Writing requires energy and focus and after working I don't really have that. After work, my desires include watching YouTube or, possibly, reading other Substacks. Like I stated above, wanting something is not enough. To begin publishing consistently, I need to apply the concepts I utilized during marathon training. Just as I went from a non-runner to a runner, I want to feel genuine in calling myself a writer by the end of the year. I can create the habit of writing by focusing on creating a repeatable routine, never missing two days in a row, and understanding that anytime I write I am getting somewhere. Execute the task and disregard it's quality while also making it easier on yourself to consistently execute. This is the recipe for forming a new habit.

Transitioning slightly, my ultimate goal for this newsletter is to generate enough revenue to become my full-time job. I know this won't be easy to accomplish and it's only going to occur if I actually write. The final lesson I learned, this time through racing in a marathon, is that the marathon doesn't owe you anything. The marathon doesn't care that you skipped a night out with friends to get quality sleep. It's just you and pavement until the finish line. That next step may be excruciating, but if you don't take it you won't get to where you want to be. The same is true about life. My goals won't come to me. The world doesn't care that I listened to a podcast on how to start a blog. It's still just me and a blank document. In the above essay Peter Bromka writes:

"It’s often too hot or too cold, too windy or too wet. It may be unseasonably one thing or another. When seeking excuses, if you’re lucky, it’ll be so bad, so searing or torrential, that the day will go down in running lore: Chicago ’07, Boston ’18. Excuses that speak for themselves.
But most likely it won’t. Your day will probably be just another day, with issues for you to manage like any other."

Although this quote is more related to outcomes (race-day) than process (training), it still spoke to me in terms of just doing the thing. I can make excuses for why I didn't do an hour of writing each day, but it doesn't matter. My situation is not extraordinary, it's just another day. I need to write to be a writer. The point is the work, so embrace it. Let’s get the "miles" in and see where this project can go.

Marathon and Running-specific Lessons Learned

While the prior sections covered intangible lessons I learned about myself and life through marathon training, below are my actionable tips and tactics if you want to become a better runner or race in your first marathon. Bear in mind, I'm still a total amateur.

If you can't tell by now, your training makes your race so find a training plan and commit to it.
- There are many different options and so it can be tough to know which plan is correct for you until you are in the thick of it, but it should feel like you can handle the progressive increase in load while also pushing yourself.
- There are many free plans online so start browsing there and select what you anticipate will work for you.
- Feel free to switch plans if something is not working! I did.
  - My initial plan had Peak Week four weeks before race day and I felt a four-week taper was too long.
  - I switched to a plan with a two-week taper since that seems to be the consensus modern approach.
- You can adjust which days of the week correlate to which runs, but stay consistent with that adjustment across weeks.
  - If the plan calls for long runs on Sundays, but you want to do them on Fridays that is fine.
  - However, do not change the progression of the workouts (i.e. don't put your speed day right before your long run).
Set realistic expectations with yourself about your goals for the race.
- This can be challenging when you have no reference point.
- I found this book quite helpful in this regard.
  - It is tailored to marathon running and I read it before I started my training.
  - Mentally I was committed to running five days a week, but I didn't know what that would be like. The book helped me on this front as well.
Avoiding injury is an important part of successful training.
- Ramp up your weekly mileage slowly.
- Follow the pacing guidelines of your plan, even if it feels too slow.
- The key is knowing what your body can handle so it does not break down. The easiest way to do this is to never push yourself dramatically more than you previously have, otherwise your body may break down.
  - I was successfully at avoiding injury while in ever-flat Chicago, but while on a family vacation in a hillier part of the country I ended up with knee pain after a few runs.
  - It was not smart to be running hard the uphill sections of those runs like I did. I felt like I was in great shape (and I was, peak Strava fitness level of 106 right before this), but I was not used to running hills. This large change in running conditions led to my only injury throughout training.
- Weekly "prehab" exercises assist your body avoiding injuries.
Tapering, or a reduction in total weekly miles and difficulty, leads to race day success.
- Tapering allows your legs some recovery so they are fresh on race day.
- Strava Premium can also track your "Freshness", which is basically your fatigue level in relation to your fitness level.
  “Freshness” Metric shown via the light gray line
- My freshness reached its highest level on race day and I was very pleased with what I accomplished on race day.
Follow the common online advice for all of the race day logistics.
- Be prepared for anything.
On any long run, you need to find a way to replenish the calories you are burning.
- Gels are commonly used but it takes some time for your stomach to adjust to these harsh substances, so experiment with different options before race day.
- Fueling your body is fundamentally to not bonking.
  - I bonked hard at the end of a long run and it was pretty scary, I felt like I had lost control of my body for 20 minutes.
Tracking your runs keeps you accountable so do it right from the onset of training.
- I used the free version of Strava for basically the whole summer and it provided everything I needed.
Respect temperature.
Alcohol & social activities make it tougher to feel fresh and want to run.
- I did my long runs on Sundays, which made it hard to stay out late and get drunk with friends on Saturdays.
- Be prepared for sacrifices, especially in the latter half of the training plan.
Watching videos of professional runners boosted my motivation to train hard and treat my body right. I found myself watching all the videos from the Tinman Elite YouTube channel.
Strive for morning runs.
- When you work all day and then have to run for an hour, your nights go by quickly.
- Morning runs woke me up and left me feeling great for the remainder of the day.
- Plus, my evening was then wide open.
Running with friends is fun, but also find solace in the solo runs as you will likely have many of those throughout the training.
Finally, on race day, be proud and dig deep.

Thank you for reading Lonny Likes. This post is public so feel free to share it.

“I’m writing for an audience of one. I write for myself.”

Re: LAUNCH

Will Lonnquist — Mon, 03 Jan 2022 18:00:32 GMT

LAUNCH was the first piece and published on the internet. I put it out on my personal website and intended to publish a post a month there. That did not occur. Heading into 2022, I have some revised Ideas for what and where I am going to write on the internet so I decided to revise the essay. My new comments are bolded.

I. Baby Steps

“A year from now, you will wish you had started today”

Karen Lamb

~~Last April~~ In April 2020, I had just turned 22 and was preparing to graduate from college. While attempting to figure out what I wanted to do with my career, I visualized starting a personal website for sharing both original essays and a compilation of the best creative works I have encountered on the internet. Around the same time, Marc Andreesen released his rousing essay “IT’S TIME TO BUILD“. After reading it, I had to grapple with the question of what I would actually be building through a conventional entry-level desk job. I could not successfully provide an answer. However, I felt that through creating a personal site I could begin building a space that fulfills me. While it wouldn’t be building much, it would be a start.

~~Now, a year later, no site has been built. Thus far my relationship with this idea is all ponder and no product.~~ I launched my personal website in 2021, but it was a chore to build out to my liking. However, I recently trimmed down the site to make it simple and sleek. I have built the foundations for my online home. Additionally, with ~~several~~ 18 months of typical 9-5 work under my belt, my prior suspicions have come true: I have not really built much through my job either (This is probably too harsh of a statement, it is hard to build anything in an entry-level position but the company I work for is building something that truly benefits fellow Americans and I find that satisfying). Consequently, my conviction to start this project has reached a decisive point. So, here we are. I’m going for it. I’m doing it. While I wish I had already begun this endeavor, I’m proud to say I’m starting now (May 2021). I’m excited to write on the internet. (Still excited to write on the internet!)

II. What I will be building

Morgan Housel

I will be doing two things on the internet: writing and curating. On my site you will find a link to my essays and articles alongside curated lists of my favorite items (whether that be writings, video, audio, or otherwise) from around the internet and occasionally the physical world.

I've move my writing to Substack. It was much too cumbersome to publish my essays on my site while maintaining a spotless user experience. I have never built a website before so the hours spent doing that detracted from my time and energy to do what I wanted -- write. So, I eliminated that part of the equation. If you are reading this you are on my Substack, I would love it if you subscribe.