Hi,

Welcome to the Procrastilearning Newsletter, where your time is well spent even though you should probably be doing something else.

• 💡 3 ideas worth procrastilearning over

• 🗣️ 2 quotes to help you refocus

• 🪄 1 tip to keep you on track

3 things worth procrastilearning over

1. A lot of people claim birds aren’t real

They even go on demonstrations about it, insisting that birds are spy drones for the government.

Luckily, these protests are a form of satire. None of these people really believe what they’re saying. Their aim is to have a laugh while highlighting how misinformation spreads and gains traction.

Less funny are the people who claim the Earth is flat. There are 11 million of them in Brazil alone.

2. The video games industry is bigger than the music & cinema industries combined

This has been true for a few years, but it’s accelerating with every passing year. According to 2024 stats, it’s two and a half times the movie and music total.

This difference is partly thanks to smart phones, as the mobile gaming market is just huge.

E-sports (i.e. playing video games competitively for money) have also been agrowing in popularity too, with some claiming that US teens are starting to think “professional gamer” is a realistic career direction. They already think YouTuber is a top aspiration, so being a gamer shouldn’t come as much surprise.

3. The USA & Mexico are fighting about corn

Early in 2023, new Mexico laws stated that there would be no more genetically-modified (GMO) corn in the country and they’d slowly be phasing them out. The government argued Mexico is where corn originated and it has 59 distinct varieties, so it’s a truly significant part of the national identity.

This really annoyed the USA, since 30% of their corn exports go to Mexico. Most of their corn was being imported as animal feed, which tells you how much the Mexicans think of it. Despite this slight, the US is still very keen that Mexican animals continue to eat their GMO corn.

The continuing debate is interesting since biotech is such a minefield. I mean, can you really stop plants cross-pollinating? Once GMO is in a population and a breeze starts up, it seems like its DNA is there to stay and proliferate - and sometimes that DNA is copyrighted too. A panel is working on a final decision due later this year.

2 quotes to keep in mind

1 simple tip to improve your web searches

Use Perplexity instead of Google!

Does Googling something just give you a list of blue links that aren’t exactly what you wanted? Did you try ChatGPT instead and find it makes things up?

Well, Perplexity fixes all this. Search it and it will give you definitive answers, not just links, and carefully show you all its references. Unlike ChatGPT, it doesn’t seem to “hallucinate“ facts either, since it’s so reliant on using up-to-date sources. You can even ask it about what’s happening in the news.

That's all for today. Many thanks for reading. Here’s a photo of a platypus.

Adam

Adam Zulawski
Procrastilearning on Beehiiv / More stuff
Currently reading: Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom

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