Rob Jefferies

Real Simple: A New Study Finds Yet Another Reason to Eat More Fruits and Veggies–and It’s Surprisingly Unexpected

A recent study published in Sleep Health suggests just that. Researchers found that “those who ate more fruits and vegetables–and consumed more complex carbohydrates such as whole grains–experienced longer periods of deep, undisturbed sleep,” the study reads. “People who met the CDC recommendation of five cups of fruits and vegetables per day could see an average 16% improvement in sleep quality compared with those who ate none.”

I sleep so much more deeply when I eat well. Simple foods, cooking at home, lots of hydration, and no alcohol have a real impact.

PYMTS - The Cybernetic Teammate: When One Human Plus AI Equals Two

The research from Johns Hopkins Carey Business School and MIT Sloan School of Management found that people working with AI produced 60% more output than those working without it, while maintaining the same quality. They also exchanged 23% fewer messages, showing less time spent coordinating and more time completing tasks. The pattern suggests that AI is reshaping collaboration. People focus on context, reasoning and judgment. Machines handle repetition, data and scale. The result is more work done in less time, with fewer steps.

Effective decision-making requires a relentless drive for understanding the truth on the ground. It’s about understanding your biases and actively working to negate them.

“In psychology there are at least two biases that drive this pattern. One is confirmation bias: seeing what we expect to see. The other is desirability bias: seeing what we want to see.” – Adam Grant

To combat these biases, ask yourself:

1. If you were actively trying to disprove this belief, where would you look?
2. What would a neutral observer see that you might be missing?
3. Six months from now, what might you wish you’d paid attention to today?

Ever since I was a kid I loved backpacks. I still do. I love the different styles, materials, design choices and use cases. If that sounds like you then I recommend watching.

One Designer vs. One Mystery Box — 24 Hours to Build a Backpack (EP 4)

Watching an expert designer take a bag of random materials into a finished prototype was a joy to watch. Especially to see the designer John Bachman tear up at the end of the 24 hour challenge. Watching him appreciate how far he had come during his career was touching.

ILM Visual Effects Artist Breaks Down Hidden VFX

I’m always fascinated by the artwork and creativity of movie making, especially with digital tools.

One of my career aspirations is to do work that someone would make a documentary about how I do it. So many of these about Pixar-like work and so few about being on a Teams call.

Curiosity Question

How much energy does it take to make a new vs. a recycled aluminum can?

Answer

Estimate for one aluminum beverage can (ChatGPT)

• A typical 12-oz (≈ 355 mL) aluminum can weighs about 14–15 grams.
• Producing 1 kg of aluminum from ore requires roughly 15 kWh of electrical energy.
• Therefore, producing 0.014 kg (14 g) of aluminum requires about:
  • 15 kWh × (0.014 kg / 1 kg) = 0.21 kWh (~ 720 kJ)
• Making one can from virgin ore: ≈ 0.2 kWh of energy.
• Recycling that same can uses about 5 % of the energy:
  • 5 % of 0.2 kWh = 0.01 kWh (~ 36 kJ)
• So recycling one can requires roughly 0.01 kWh in ideal conditions.

“Aluminium recycling saves 95% of the energy needed for primary aluminium production - International Aluminium Institute”

This year Apple switched back to aluminum for the iPhone 17 after a short stint using titanium for it’s phones. So how does aluminum recycling compare to titanium recycling?

For titanium, the recycling rate and energy savings are much more modest, due to challenges such as contamination, alloying, oxidation, and difficulty in remelting or reprocessing titanium scrap to high-purity structural grade.

Curiosity Question

Is there a year 0 AD? Does time go from 1 BC to 1 AD or is there a year 0 somewhere?

Answer

There is no year 0. It goes from 1 BC to 1 AD.

Why no year 0?

- The BC/AD system was devised in the 6th century by a monk named Dionysius Exiguus.
- He based it on what he thought was the year of Jesus’ birth.
- At the time, the concept of “zero” as a number wasn’t in use in Europe, so he didn’t include a year 0.

So who was Dionysis Exiguus and why was he the one to create a new date system?

Exiguus, an Eastern Roman monk, created the system in 525 AD though it was not widely used until the 9th century. The system was created in order to calculate Easter.

The year 1 AD was believed to have been the year of Jesus’s conception. “Evidence exists that Dionysius' desire to replace Diocletian years with a calendar based on the incarnation of Christ was to prevent people from believing the imminent end of the world. At the time, some believed that the Second Coming and end of the world would occur 500 years after the birth of Jesus.”

Here’s a short YouTube video that covers Exiguus’s creation of the revised date system.

Some of the most impactful people and leaders that I have met have been curious. They have asked excellent questions which cut right to the heart of the problem or idea. Some people I’ve noticed are just naturally curious about so many things. Things that I would find absolutely mundane.

So that got me thinking. How do I become genuinely more curious?

So I asked ChatGPT:

I’m curious about how to become more curious about the world. Where do I get started?

ChatGPT gave me a six point which was helpful from an academic point of view but not very applicable. Then, at the bottom it listed this:

Here’s a simple daily practice to spark curiosity:

1.	Write down one question you don’t know the answer to.
2.	Spend 10 minutes exploring it.
3.	Share what you found with someone else.

The sharing part matters — curiosity multiplies when it’s social.

That’s an excellent idea… now where do I get started?

Watch Jason Cyr’s video “Obsidian + Cursor AI: Organize 2,000+ Notes in 10 Minutes” on how to apply Claude Code to automate your weekly review.

Recently I’ve been trying to free myself of the algorithmic news feeds and get back to the old school web using RSS readers and direct news sources.

I’ve made progress getting there, but one area that I continue to struggle with is reading publishers in the Apple News+ app like The Wall Street Journal and Outside Magazine without getting sucked into the algorithm on the homepage.

I wanted a way to go directly to each content section bypassing the main feed. With a little research, I managed to find a way using shortcuts to create a direct link to those sections bypassing the general news feed. Here’s how to do this yourself.

Building the Shortcut

The following creates a simple shortcut that when run opens a popup menu providing options for each of the publishers added to the list. Once clicked it will launch the appropriate source: Apple News, Safari, or iOS app taking you directly to the source.

Here’s what it looks like.

Here are the steps to get this done:

1. Open up Shortcuts and create a new Shortcut
2. From the Action Library on the right select “Choose from menu” and drag it onto the canvas.
3. Add options each of your sources.
4. Under each source search and include an option for “Open URLs” and paste in the link from Apple Notes shown above or any other URL you want. In this example, I’m opening two Apple News sections plus The Verge’s website.

Finding Apple News Section Links

Here is how you can find the direct link to a section in Apple News. This is from the left navigation in the MacOS news reader. Choose the Copy Link option and paste it into the URL field in the step 4 above.

To run the shortcut you can:

• Run the shortcut directly from the Shortcuts app
• Add the shortcut to the home screen on your iOS device by editing the shortcut, clicking on the down arrow on the shortcut’s name and selecting “Add to Home Screen”
• On MacOS you can also select the “Pin In Menu Bar” option to make it quickly selectable from the address bar.

Well, that didn’t take too long. In my previous post, I’m Grateful For Stage 1, I wrote about enjoying the pre-enshitiffcation phase of large language models and being grateful of this period in the technology.

Manton Reece from micro.blog posted about the future of ads within ChatGPT. I really hope they do not make them obtrusive. Using Amazon has become frustrating with paid placement ads.

I completely understand the need to generate revenue to drive innovation and recoup investment/sunk costs of developing any product. I just hope that user experience doesn’t lose out to revenue generation.

This sounds like an excellent way to generate diverse ideas to address problems. Trust is paramount.

When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed.

Chatham House Rule | Chatham House – International Affairs Think Tank

“As you gain experience you lose fear.” - Simon Sinek

Simon Sinek: You’re Being Lied To About AI’s Real Purpose And We’re Teaching Our Kids To Not Be Human!

Working with Copilot feels like I’m working with Ralph Wiggum with a dash of Lisa Simpson thrown in.