6 Minutes about Peepee Poopoo

Plus, how your eyes can help you deal with trauma...

Author

Adam Zulawski
November 28, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

Our lovely misspelt logo by Dall-E

Hi,

You may have noticed that there was no newsletter two weeks ago.

This was because my phone was stolen (the place where we were staying on holiday was burgled while we slept) and I couldn't access any of my online accounts for a while. I do apologise for the interruption, but rest assured I am back and ready to give you lots to procrastinate about.

3 things worth procrastilearning over

via Leonardo.ai

1. We don't perceive time as just day and night

The French pioneer of time research, Michel Siffre, recently passed away at the age of 85. Originally a geologist, in the 1960s he tried living underground to see what would happen when he cut himself off from the usual flow of day and night. And he did this a few times, heavily funded by the French military who were paranoid everybody in France would have to live underground if a nuclear bomb fell.

There's a good New York Times obituary about him, as well as this good if bombastic Twitter / X thread ("This Man Proved Time Is An Illusion" lol not exactly).

2. AI can make podcasts about near-empty documents

There is a function in Google's NotebookLM which will take any document you upload and create a short podcast of two AI voices discussing it for you. It's designed for academics who have to read lots of boring terribly-written papers, but anybody can use it. It actually made mainstream news a month or so ago, which surprised me.

This news wouldn't normally be worth bringing to your attention, but I found this recording of one of these AI podcasts discussing a document which says nothing except 'poopoo peepee' hundreds of times:

Since there is basically no content to discuss, the way the AI manages to drag out the discussion to over 6 minutes is genuinely remarkable and actually worth listening to.

3. Moving your eyes can help your mental health

Nobody's fully sure why it works, but it does, as has been repeatedly proven in clinical trials. The theory is that it's something to do with how your eyes are involved when you store memories.

Either way, if you keep having thoughts about some upsetting event you experienced, it's worth looking into (no pun intended).

2 quotes to keep in mind

❝

Don’t ever let your wife be cold or hungry. I mean … ever. In retrospect, most of the really awful fights I’ve had with partners have been because we managed to skip lunch. Invest in dual-zone climate control cars, and when you sit down at a restaurant, before you do anything, ensure you are not dining with Satan—a draft of cold air. Try to never leave the house without energy bars and one of those oversized cashmere scarves that can double as a blanket. You’re welcome.

Scott Galloway, lecturer and author
❝

We are so scared of being judged that we look for every excuse to procrastinate.

Erica Jong, author and poet

1 simple tip to get better replies from AI

Tell it to 'level up' it's answers.

You ask ChatGPT, or Copilot or Gemini or any another AI chatbot, to write something, perhaps a list of ideas you need for a project. But the results it gives you are just unimpressive. This happens quite often, unfortunately.

But there is a simple, almost banally stupid solution.

Tell it that the answer it gave was a 'Level 1 answer' and that you need it to give you a 'Level 2 one'. The AI will take note and indeed give you a much more in-depth and 'thought-through' answer. Here is a screenshot of me using this prompt after asking ChatGPT for some Christmas ideas:

How to encourage ChatGPT to pull its finger out

And yes, you can continue this afterwards, asking for a Level 3 answer, then a Level 4 one, and so on. Try it out for yourself!

That's all for today. Many thanks for reading. Here's a photo of the neighbourhood where we were burgled while on holiday.

Adam

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