Are We There Yet? vol. 238
The Appalachian Trail spans 2,200 miles along the east coast of the United States, from Mount Katahin in Maine to Springer Mountain in Georgia. With hilly and mountainous terrain, the Appalachian Trail Conservancy’s website describes an “elevation gain and loss equivalent to hiking Mount Everest from sea level to the top and back 16 times.”
“Hiking the entire A.T. is a grueling and demanding endeavor. It requires great physical and mental stamina and determination.” The Conservancy’s website further notes that the typical thru hiker completes the train in 5 to 7 months.
On September 21st, Tara Dower reached the plaque at Springer Mountain that marks the end of the trail and her journey. But Tara is not a typical thru hiker because she completed the trail in just 40 days to break both the men’s and women’s records. She averaged over 50 miles per day, and at times when she fell behind in her pace, she had to pick it back up later and averaged over 60 miles per day during some periods.
For the person attempting to do what she did and run the trail, they are in a category called a “supported run.” A supported runner has people who help pace her, feed her, move her gear each day, and generally keep her spirits high. Her best friend, who was part of her posse, said, “Tara is our racecar. We are her pit crew.”
In addition to just finishing, she raised $30,000 to support Girls on the Run, a nonprofit that organizes running programs for elementary school-aged girls, including my daughter, Isabel, when she was in elementary school. Tara’s record-breaking journey was amazing, but I really like the fact that she did it with the support of a crew of family and friends that just wanted to help her succeed.
Take care and stay safe.
BOOK:
Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI by Yuval Noah Harari
For the last 100,000 years, we Sapiens have accumulated enormous power. But despite allour discoveries, inventions, and conquests, we now find ourselves in an existential crisis. The world is on the verge of ecological collapse. Misinformation abounds. And we are rushing headlong into the age of AI—a new information network that threatens to annihilate us. For all that we have accomplished, why are we so self-destructive?
Nexus looks through the long lens of human history to consider how the flow of information has shaped us, and our world. Taking us from the Stone Age, through the canonization of the Bible, early modern witch-hunts, Stalinism, Nazism, and the resurgence of populism today, Yuval Noah Harari asks us to consider the complex relationship between information and truth, bureaucracy and mythology, wisdom and power. He explores how different societies and political systems throughout history have wielded information to achieve their goals, for good and ill. And he addresses the urgent choices we face as non-human intelligence threatens our very existence.
Information is not the raw material of truth; neither is it a mere weapon. Nexus explores the hopeful middle ground between these extremes, and in doing so, rediscovers our shared humanity.
Learn more about Bob Len here.
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