Hi,

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

3 things worth procrastilearning over

1. Dating apps are crumbling

A few years ago, the dating giant Match's market cap was valued at 30 billion dollars, but last year that sank to 9 billion. Match owns over 40 dating apps, including Tinder, Hinge and OKCupid, so its 70% fall is certainly a reflection of the popularity of these apps.

If you or anybody you know uses them, it's often with a sense of resignation, sometimes even annoyance (Here's a tongue-in-cheek song that might resonate).

But clearly, singles have clearly started looking elsewhere. Supposedly one of the most popular scouting grounds for the last couple of years has been running clubs. And this popularity has even started to become a bit absurd in some cities. Here is an excellent breakdown:

For something less American, but still about the mindset of people who join run clubs, you can't go wrong with Frankie's Cultural Observations: Run Clubs.

The funny thing is that running clubs are probably even passé at this point. The BBC has recently taken a look at what else single people are doing.

2. Carbon dioxide can now be converted into food

So I guess this means we can both slow down climate change and feed the world? Apparently research teams around the world have been working on this for ages, so the latest breakthrough might just speed up a new abundant environmental utopia. It might not be too many years till we’re all eating this stuff regularly - or at least farm animals will.

Is this too good to be true or am I just a misery guts? You can read the study for yourself here either way. There’s no information about the flavour though 🤔

3. You can now use AI to talk to your future self

MIT has made a free online tool that allows you to discuss things with an AI-generated version of your future self. Your anonymised data does end up getting used for research purposes, but a lot of people seem to have found it useful and it’s otherwise free and available right now to all. It starts by getting you to fill in a questionnaire so that the AI has a good sense of who you are. Once you get past that, you can get talking.

Try it for yourself here: https://futureyou.media.mit.edu/

2 quotes to keep in mind

1 simple tip to tell if you're procrastinating or not

"Never mistake motion for action." - Ernest Hemingway

There are lots of activities that seem like they're getting us somewhere. Say you want to start learning to cook properly, so you buy a cookbook or you watch a video about how to cook a jalfrezi. But these activities often aren’t progressing us towards our goal, rather they have us going round in circles. The real progress in learning to cook, say, is actually trying to cook a dish.

So is what you're working on motion or action? It should be clear once start thinking of things through this lens. If it is motion, then figure out what action is actually needed and get going.

That's all for today. Many thanks for reading. Here’s a photo of some gophers hugging.

Adam

Adam Zulawski
Procrastilearning on Beehiiv / More stuff

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