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- You Can Never Trust Videos Ever Again
You Can Never Trust Videos Ever Again
Plus, having too many interests....
Adam Zulawski
February 22, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes
Hi,
Welcome to the Procrastilearning Newsletter, where you’re free to procrastinate on something healthy before getting back to work. The current format:
💡 3 ideas worth procrastilearning over
🗣️ 2 quotes to help you refocus
🪄 1 tip to keep you on track
3 things worth procrastilearning over
via Leonardo.ai
1. You can never trust videos ever again
Last week, the company OpenAI released footage from their new generative AI project Sora.
In the same way that their hugely-popular app ChatGPT produces words, and their other app Dall-E produces images, Sora is the next evolution: it produces video.
And frankly, it's pretty terrifying. Next year, when it’ll inevitably be flawless, will we even be able to tell what’s real anymore? Images created by Google’s Gemini already seem to be a bit confused about history, so we can only imagine how distorted video is going to be.
Here's an excellent look at Sora from popular tech YouTuber Marques Brownlee:
2. Posting about culture can get you 1.5 million followers
The Cultural Tutor is a popular Twitter account that didn’t exist 2 years ago. Initially anonymous, with a bust of Plato as their avatar and little else, the account quickly grew from strength to strength, thanks in particular to a series of threads about the lack of beauty in modern design.
Recently though, the account's creator has started doing interviews and revealed his identity. Rather than Plato, his real name is Sheehan Quirke. He's in his late 20s and lives in London.
There is a phenomenal breakdown of how he grew so fast here, but I most of all want to highlight his daily routine which is just sublimely unexpected:
He wakes up in the afternoon, sometimes around 4 p.m. He’ll walk around London taking in the city and smoking cigarettes for hours until time is no longer on his side and he knows it’s time to write.
Although he says he tries to put off writing as long as possible to be able to fully think through an idea, eventually you have to sit down and get those ideas into the world.
He’ll then write a Twitter thread about an idea he’s had, or something he’s curious about learning.
He doesn’t use fancy tools, he’ll just write in the native Twitter compose box.
It often takes him into the early morning hours to finish writing, and once he does, he watches the sunrise and falls asleep.
I’m not sure that’s a routine that would work for most people, but it’s worth showcasing here to remind us what strange lives successful Internet people lead.
3. "Quantum jumping" is a thing
In recent years, the concept of parallel universes has been ruining a lot of modern cinema, as dissected here. Now this annoying movie trend feels like it has suddenly infected how people think reality works.
The basic premise is that parallel universes exist (possibly true, since many physicists say it helps the maths work at the quantum level) and that you can connect to the other versions of yourself there (probably not true) who can transfer their skills and knowledge over to you (wtf lol don’t be silly). It's done through a kind of visualisation meditation.
Yes, it is mostly Gen Z on TikTok trying to connect to parallel universes, so I'm not entirely sure they're taking it that seriously. But the trend was started by somebody who’s now 96 years old, so you’d think he’d know better.
The originator Burt Goldman claims he learned to play the piano and how to paint through the technique. If you'd like to have him walk you through one of these meditations, you can do that over on YouTube.
I'm not sure what to make of this trend but I do find it very entertaining, slightly uplifting, and yet also depressing.
2 quotes to keep in mind
Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing.
Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.
1 tip to keep you focused
This is probably going to sound almost too simple:
Avoid having too many interests.
Personally, as a person who has a lot of interests and encourages others to explore theirs through this newsletter (and also runs another newsletter about completely unrelated things), I tend to think more like this Italian guy. But in all honesty, we should all probably just listen to Cal.
That's all for now. Many thanks for reading. Here’s a picture of a giraffe.
Adam
Adam Zulawski
Procrastilearning on Beehiiv / More stuff
Currently reading: The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin
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