Tickled pink

Good morning Staker! Here’s what’s cookin’ today. Now there’s an option for all you doomscrollers, how not to give in to temptation, a whole new perspective on monkeyin’ around, and let’s head back to 1980 with today’s trivia 🤣

Let’s get into it!

Doomscrolling is a common source of misery for regular users of social media. The wretched and never-ending timeline acts as a stream of often divisive, enraging, nonsensical, or sloppy content.

But therein lies the problem, doesn’t it? The act of scrolling itself isn’t necessarily the issue; after all, the early days of the internet generated the term “surfing the net,” which was really the same thing as doomscrolling, but without the doom.

In that regard, a developer named Lyra Rebane has created a simple site that replicates the scrolling experiences of X, TikTok, and Instagram, and Facebook, but the only things that populate the timeline are Wikipedia articles.

The site is called Xikipedia, and you can either choose to create filters that aggregate Wikipedia pages based on your preferences, or you can generate a timeline of completely random articles.

For example, the first four articles that popped up for us were a page dedicated specifically to eyeliner; a page about an unincorporated community in Kansas called Schulte; another page about Italian culture in the 13th century called Duecento; finally, a page about luxury fashion brand Coach New York.

Needless to say, you could likely fall pretty deep into the rabbit hole of Xikipedia. The difference between it and other social media platforms is that it’s very unlikely you’ll feel as if the world’s end is imminent afterwards.

Everyone succumbs to temptation every now and then, but it’s seemingly less common for the most successful among us.

This outcome is often attributed to the successful being ultra disciplined, but according to James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, it’s not discipline per se that keeps the train on the tracks.

Speaking with the Mel Robbins Podcast in January, Clear outlined the common denominator shared by those with great success and great discipline.

“The common pattern is that they are in situations where they’re tempted less frequently,” he said.

“You don’t need to try to be more disciplined. You don’t need to wish that you were a person with more willpower. You need to take a little bit of time to design an environment where you’re not tempted as frequently…that could mean simple things like not having chips in the house or not having cigarettes in the house or things like that.”

In other words, it’s unrealistic to think the human mind—no matter how committed—can withstand constant temptation. The real disciplinary secret is staying out of situations in which energy will be wasted on trying to stay the course; instead, create a path that doesn’t have traps you could fall into in the first place.

Ultimately, there are always going to be traps set for us that we don’t see coming. When we haven’t spent energy avoiding unnecessary ones, the ones set for us will be more navigable.

The capacity toddlers have to build forts and pretend they’re in a fantasy world or simply host a dinner party with their dolls is something previously thought to be unique to humans.

Playing pretend is at least part of the foundation of human creativity, but a Science study conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins University suggests apes share the same capacity for imagination.

Study co-author Christopher Krupeny and his team conducted multiple experiments involving a bonobo named Kanzi. Raised in a lab, he became thoroughly communicative, learning how to speak to humans by synthesizing images and symbols; he also taught himself how to create simple tools out of stone.

Scientists have hypothesized primates’ ability to imagine before, based on unconfirmed examples—including females in the wild carrying sticks as if they were babies, or captives playing with pretend blocks.

Kanzi observed the researchers pouring pretend juice in two glasses, and then pouring one out. They asked him which one he wanted, and he pointed to the still “full” one 68% of the time. When using actual juice, he pointed to the full one nearly 80% of the time. They replicated this with grapes in jars, and got mostly the same outcome.

Some skeptics believe the only way to actually confirm Kanzi was playing pretend would be for him to pour the fake juice himself and keep the “full” glass to “drink.” Still, the study provides a bedrock for future research into the minds of the many endangered ape species.

Hello 1980

Happy Monday Staker! We’re taking a look back to this week in 1980, with today’s trivia. Complete the game and earn a shot at a $25 eGift Card ;)

Winner will be notified on Tuesday afternoon. Keep an eye on your inbox and don’t forget to check your spam folder!*