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“People are always looking for happiness at some future time and in some new thing, or some new set of circumstances, in possession of which they some day expect to find themselves. But the fact is, if happiness is not found now, where we are, and as we are, there is little chance of it ever being found. There is a great deal more happiness around us day by day than we have the sense or the power to seek and find.”

— Thomas Mitchell

“Sweat dripped into my eyes as I ran home in 100-degree heat. My legs burned. The sun blazed relentlessly. Approaching the lights, I faced a choice: go straight as usual or turn right to shave off two miles.

I took the shortcut.

That right turn beckoned again on the next run. I yielded. Soon, it became my default route.

Recently, I've fought to reclaim my original path. It's a constant battle against the easy option.

This isn't just about running. It's about life.

Small choices quietly reshape our habits. A single shortcut can dramatically alter our trajectory. The path of least resistance often leads away from our goals.

Shortcuts change more than just the journey. They change us.”

73 Random Facts - The Final In A Series:

61. It would take 19 minutes to fall to the Earth's centre. Scientists have worked this out; they haven't tried it in real life.

62. The Night's Watch cloaks in Game of Thrones were made from Ikea rugs. The show bought the rugs, shaved them down, and dyed them to make the cloaks.

63. The iCarly high school set was also used for Saved by the Bell, and That's So Raven, so it looks familiar!

64. People used to say "prunes" instead of "cheese" when getting their pictures taken. In the1840s, a cheesy grin was seen as childish, so a London photographer told people to say "prunes" to keep their mouths tight. Now you know why people never smiled in old photos.

65. Blue whale tongues can weigh as much as an elephant. Their hearts can also weigh almost a tonne and only need to beat once every ten seconds.

66. Queen Elizabeth II had a stand-in to ensure the sun wouldn't get in her eyes. Ella Slack was of similar height to the late Queen, so she would rehearse big events beforehand to make sure everything was comfortable for the monarch. However, she wasn't allowed to sit on the throne, so she had to squat above it.

67. There's an ant species unique to New York City. Called ManhattAnts, biologists found them in a specific 14-block strip of the city.

68. The Eiffel Tower was originally intended for Barcelona. The Spanish city thought it was too ugly, so Gustave Eiffel pitched it to Paris instead. French critics weren't too thrilled either, but it's one of the most famous landmarks in the world today.

69. Only one Shell garage is actually shaped like a Shell. Eight were built in the 1930s, but only one remains in North Carolina.

70. The shortest commercial flight in the world is in Scotland—regional airline Loganair flies between the islands Westray and Papa Westray. The journey is just 1.7 miles and takes 90 seconds.

71. Dolphins have names for one another. According to National Geographic, dolphins use a unique whistle to distinguish between different members in their pod.

72. The blob of toothpaste on a toothbrush has a name. It's called a 'nurdle', and there was once a lawsuit over which toothpaste company had the right to portray it.

73. There are more than 1,000 types of bananas growing in the world. These can then be divided into 50 categories

Techie Tips:

iOS 18 Tricks You’ll Use:

Journal App Gets Smarter

The Journal app in 18 isn’t just a blank slate anymore. It now tracks stats like how many words you’ve written and how often you write and highlights key moments. You can even view a calendar with past entries marked, making it easier to revisit old notes. It’s a cool way to keep track of your thoughts and milestones without putting in extra effort.

Smarter Siri Suggestions for Journaling’s been hanging around for a while, but in 18, she’s finally getting smarter. If you’re using the Journal app, Siri will suggest entries based on things like your workout sessions, trips, or special events. It’s a subtle nudge to help you reflect on your day, without being pushy.

Copy Specific Edits Between Photos

If you’ve ever edited a picture just the way you want and wished you could apply the same tweaks to a bunch of others, now you can. In iOS 18, you can copy just the filter or just the exposure changes from one photo and paste them onto another. It’s perfect for creating consistency across your photo albums.

Real-Time Math Calculations in iMessage

Need to send someone a quick calculation? With iOS 18, you don’t need to leave the Messages app. Type a math problem in the message, hit “=”, and iOS will calculate it for you. It’s perfect for settling those quick “Who owes what” debates.

Safari Adds Unit Conversions

No more googling “125 euros to dollars.” The Safari browser now has a built-in converter for currency, distances, temperatures, and more. Just highlight the text in Safari, and you’ll see a quick conversion option pop up, making it super easy to get answers without leaving the page.

A Thoughtful eMail Sign-Off:

"My working hours may not be your working hours. Please do not feel obligated to reply outside of your normal work schedule."

Sketchplanations:

The fundamental attribution error is the attribution of the source of behaviour to the character and personality of a person above the consideration of context. It's sometimes described as over-attributing causes to disposition over situation.

In a classic example, if a driver swerves in front of you suddenly, it's easy to attribute the cause of the behaviour to the driver being a jerk, i.e. to their character. What we may not see is that the driver is late to pick up their kids, was distracted by a challenging conversation they just had at work, and they're worried they've gone the wrong way and are driving an unfamiliar car.

If a colleague is late to meet us, we might infer that the person is lazy or disrespectful when, in fact, they may have been held up by a traffic accident, been on the phone with a sick relative, and have had trouble sleeping lately. If we are late for a meeting, it's probably for all sorts of good reasons outside our control.

Like confirmation bias, the fundamental attribution error is a big one that can easily colour our interactions with others without us being aware of it.

Some ways to minimise it include:

Remember that what we see is just a tiny fraction of any other person's life and that we don't see the complete picture.

Minimise judgment, particularly around character and personality.

Avoid jumping to conclusions.

Where appropriate, ask if anything is bothering others.

Build empathy for others as you would for yourself.

Reflect on the positive things others do.

Attribution bias includes a set of more specific biases where we may attribute behaviour to fixed personality traits or characteristics of a person rather than specific circumstances or actions. For example, a child may be labelled a genius or gifted when they actually had a supportive environment and worked hard, or someone may be labelled a loser rather than recognising specific circumstances that led to some failures.

Criticism — one of the four horsemen of relationship apocalypse — can become toxic when it's attributed to someone's personality traits. For example, calling someone 'lazy' rather than sharing how it makes you feel when they don't keep the place tidy.

A form of attribution bias may be applied to whole societies via the Destiny Instinct.

Specific examples of attribution bias include the fundamental attribution error and self-serving bias.

Hanlon's Razor is the adage: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Or sometimes, "Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence."

It appears in a similar form by the inimitable Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as, "And I have again observed, my dear friend, in this trifling affair, that misunderstandings and neglect occasion more mischief in the world than even malice and wickedness. At all events, the two latter are of less frequent occurrence," in The Sorrows of Young Werther.

William James, Churchill, and H.G. Wells also share these sentiments.

The mistake of assuming bad intentions was brought home to me when puzzling about why people kept leaving paper towels in the sinks of the bathrooms at the university. How hard is it to put them in the bin?? A year after assuming my fellow students were either lazy or inconsiderate or both, I was washing my hands when another student dried his hands on the towel, walked to the door, opened it by covering the handle with the paper towel — presumably to avoid the germs — and then aimed his paper towel at the bin which was between the sinks. He missed, and it landed in the sink as he walked off down the corridor. Suddenly, it was clear to me that the hygiene of the door handle was higher in consideration of towel-in-the-sink people than whether or not their towel hit their target (and whether it was worth checking if their towel had hit the bin). It made sense. Someone later moved the bin next to the door, and it didn't happen again.

Besides towels in sinks, I've seen people get mad at others pushing in line when the pushers-in didn't realise other people were queuing. I've seen drivers shouting at another driver who's in blissful ignorance of the trouble they've caused. I've seen agents blamed for terrible customer service when the system is at fault, and customer service blame users when the product is at fault. I've seen people despairing at others leaving litter in the park or on the street when animals had dragged out the mess overnight. I've seen people vilified for not moving down on a train when they weren't aware of the squeeze at the other end. And, usually, I think people aren't smart or capable enough, or in fact wicked enough, to carry out the conspiracies that people credit them for. Very often it's the person assuming bad intentions and getting mad who suffers the most.

To be sure, there are different degrees of negligence. We can all make mistakes, but if you're doing your taxes, it's not okay to make a mistake because you didn't read the instructions. If you're standing on a busy train, you owe it to others to be aware that you may be blocking an aisle, and we should do our best to make sure our rubbish stays where we put it. But none of us are perfect and so often I think Hanlon's Razor has some truth to it.

Perhaps a better formulation of Hanlon's Razor would be, "Before attributing to malice, try attributing to incompetence."

Hanlon's Razor, which encourages us first to consider innocent mistakes rather than assuming ill will, was a submission to Murphy's Law, book two: more reasons why things go wrong, by Arthur Bloch (p52). Murphy's Law is "If anything can go wrong, it will." I've also previously covered Muphry's Law, where, when criticising spelling or grammar, you will make a spelling or grammar mistake yourself.

Article:

Just 8 Minutes Of Tiktok ‘Thinspiration’ Content Is Enough to Affect Body Image:

Nearly half of Australian young people are dissatisfied with how their body looks. Social media have only made body image issues worse for young people, leading them to compare themselves with others and strive for often unattainable - and unhealthy - beauty standards.

TikTok, which allows people to create and consume short videos, has amassed over 1 billion users. Harmful content, including videos that glamorise disordered eating and extremely thin bodies, circulates readily on the platform. Given that most TikTok users are young, we wanted to explore how such content affects young women's body image. Our new study found watching just eight minutes of TikTok content focused on dieting, weight loss, and exercise had an immediate negative effect on body image satisfaction.

Body image and beauty standards

We recruited 273 female TikTok users aged 18 to 28 and randomly allocated them into two groups. People with a past or current eating disorder diagnosis were excluded from the study.

Participants in the experimental group were shown a 7–8 minute compilation of “pro-anorexia” and “fitspiration” content taken directly from TikTok. These video clips featured young women restricting their food intake and giving workout advice and dieting tips, such as describing their juice cleanses for weight loss.

Participants in the control group watched a 7–8 minute compilation of TikTok videos featuring“neutral” content such as videos of nature, cooking and animals.

Using a series of questionnaires, we measured levels of body image satisfaction and attitudes towards beauty standards before and after participants watched the TikTok content.

Both groups reported decreased body image satisfaction from before to after watching the videos. However, those exposed to pro-anorexia content had the most significant decrease in body image satisfaction. They also experienced an increase in internalisation of beauty standards.

Internalisation occurs when someone accepts and identifies with external beauty standards. Exposure to harmful social media content doesn’t always result in harm – it’s when this content is internalised that body image is likely to suffer.

Before the video experiment, we asked participants some general questions about their TikTok use. We also measured preoccupation with “healthy” eating and symptoms of disordered eating.

We found participants who used TikTok for more than two hours a day reported more disordered eating behaviours than less frequent users. However, this difference was not statistically significant. This means the difference between groups did not meet the threshold required for us to conclude it was unlikely to be due to chance.

On a scale used to rate eating disorder symptoms, participants who reported high (2–3 hours a day) and extreme (more than 3 hours a day) rates of TikTok use averaged scores just below the cut-off for clinically significant eating disorder symptoms. This suggests that more than two hours of exposure to TikTok content per day may be linked to disordered eating, but further research is needed to explore this.

Harmful content is widespread.

The content we showed participants in the experimental group is widely circulated on TikTok, not just within “pro-ana” communities. “Clean” eating, detoxing and limited-ingredient diet trends are the wolf in lamb’s clothing of disordered eating, allowing diet culture to be rebranded as “wellness” and “self-care”. This content, alongside fitspiration, often rewards and gamifies excessive exercise and disordered eating.

Social media wellness influencers play an important role in normalising disordered eating and fitspiration content. But hashtags like #GymTok and #FoodTok allow any TikTok user to create and consume content around their and others’ daily eating routines, weight-loss transformations and workout routines.

What’s more, everyday users can circulate dangerous diet-related videos without the backlash a celebrity or well-known influencer might receive for sharing socially irresponsible content.

Our study only looked at short-term consequences of exposure to this sort of content on TikTok. Longitudinal research is needed to see if the negative effects we observed endure over time.

It remains difficult to censor TikTok as users have limited control over the content they’re exposed to. Because they spend much of their time on a personalised “For You” page formulated by an algorithm, a user doesn’t need to search for or follow disordered eating content to be exposed to it.

In our study, 64% of participants reported seeing disordered eating content on their For You page. Examples could include videos portraying binge eating, laxative use or excessive exercise.

Paradoxically, searching for body positivity content may make users vulnerable to seeing disordered eating content.

Our study only examined the short-term consequences of exposure to this sort of content on TikTok. Longitudinal research is needed to determine whether the negative effects we observed endure over time.

It remains difficult to censor TikTok users, who have limited control over the content they’re exposed to. Because they spend much of their time on a personalised “For You” page formulated by an algorithm, users don’t need to search for or follow disordered eating content to be exposed to it.

In our study, 64% of participants reported seeing disordered eating content on their For You page. Examples could include videos portraying binge eating, laxative use or excessive exercise.

Paradoxically, searching for body positivity content may make users vulnerable to seeing disordered eating content.

The most important thing TikTok users can do is be aware that following or searching for any kind of content related to food, body, or exercise may lead to inadvertent exposure to distorted body ideals. Limiting time on TikTok will limit exposure, but our findings show that even less than ten minutes can have a negative effect.

Ultimately, online safety for young people depends on appropriate social media regulation. Without this, upskilling young women on how to avoid harm on social media is a bit like giving them an inflatable life jacket and then leaving them to swim indefinitely against a rip.

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