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- You Keep Eating Plastic. So Do I.
You Keep Eating Plastic. So Do I.
Plus, a fake think tank...
Adam Zulawski
January 23, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
Our lovely misspelt logo by Dall-E
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
via Leonardo.ai
1. You consume a credit card’s worth of microplastics every week
Yes, you may not eat plastic directly, but it turns out most food products unavoidably have microplastics hidden in them.
Handily, a research team in San Francisco recently created an index of 300 products they tested locally. Here’s an excerpt from their report:
We detected plastic chemicals in 86% of the foods we tested.
At least one of the 18 chemicals was found in every baby food, prenatal supplement, human breast milk, yogurt, and ice cream product that we tested, to name only a few categories. We also found plastic chemicals in all the products we tested from Starbucks, Gerber, Chobani, Straus, Celsius, Blue Bottle, RXBAR, Coca-Cola, Tartine, and Ghirardelli.
Plastic chemicals were also in practically all the upscale and healthy products we tested; we tested raw milk and beef straight from the farm, 22 organic foods, and 20 healthy groceries from Whole Foods. Apart from O Organics eggs, all of those products contained plastic chemicals.
You can check out how much plastic is in your Quarter Pounder here. Meanwhile here’s a recent look at levels in UK tap water. You can’t escape microplastics though - they’re even at the summit of Mount Everest.
2. Kids who do chores are happier adults
Apparently. I can’t remember if I did chores as a child - I expect that means I didn’t. And I can get pretty down at times. I guess this means I now have a fun reason to blame my mother for everything terrible ever. Hurray!
3. A fake think tank has been lobbying the US government
The 12 people listed on the website of Beltway Grid Policy Centre don’t exist. And every research paper they make seems to mention how great Pakistan is. What it all points to is a new creative way for foreign governments to use AI to meddle in each other’s policies.
2 quotes to keep in mind
Being right all the time acquires a huge importance in education, and there is this terror of being wrong. The ego is so tied to being right that later on in life you are reluctant to accept that you are ever wrong, because you are defending not the idea but your self-esteem. [...] this terror of being wrong means that people have enormous difficulties in changing ideas.
A good procrastination should feel like you're inserting lots and lots of commas into the sentence of your life.
1 simple tip to improve your mood
Sit up straight.
The mind’s mood is affected by what your body is doing. The most well known is the boost in happiness and energy you get from a bout of exercise. But it can be as simple as stopping yourself from slouching and keeping your head up. The mind follows the body, the body follows the mind.
Now you need to learn to notice that you’re slouching in the first place…
That's all for today. Many thanks for reading. Here’s a photo of a chinchilla in a hammock.
Adam
Adam Zulawski
Procrastilearning on Beehiiv / More stuff
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