Issue 120 makes it to the digital stands with minutes to spare.  Four months of publishing a daily newsletter have been a tug of war between pleasure and pain.  A new level to the Stoic Challenge today, more on the nightly journal before the News Hits.  Stories about the incredible innovation of cheaters and a story that will change Rocky's early morning protein routine.  As late as this one is getting out, see you tomorrow!

Today's Daily Stoic Challenge could be an extension of yesterday, Make Someone’s Day.  Or if you also did the 7-Day Happiness Challenge last week, it's in line with several of those practices.  The difference here is the word reconnect, which means to reach out, communicate and try to stay in connection with that person.  It is hard to reach out to someone you already feel wrong about disconnecting with in the past; it's next-level stuff to reach out, and it means when you connect back up, you will do your best to stay in contact with them. 

Changing the Night Journal post, ask yourself the same three questions, throw your answers into the comments, and we will highlight some of the responses.

Reading Casey Newton’s Platformer newsletter today, he talked about an interview he did on his podcast Hard Fork with Cherie Shields.  The discussion is about ChatGPT and education; Shields is a high school English teacher and takes a pragmatic view of ChatGPT and other technology in her classroom.  Part of this conversation reminded me of the Rubrics my kids bring home from school to help them break down a paper or a project.  A rubric is a scoring tool, and teachers would give them to students to assist with the requirements necessary for a good grade on the assignment. 

Kids who can go to parents or teachers with the "I don't know how to do this line" grow up to be workers who go to supervisors with the same questions.  I tell my staff and people I work with on projects the same thing I used to say to my kids.  Please show your work and meaning, and show me every step in writing you have already taken and where it didn't work.  Half the time, breaking it down like that solved the problem – the other half, we got to the real problem and solved it with a better understanding.

ChatGPT and Web Search Engines, for that matter, do the same thing.  If you want ChatGPT to write your essay, lesson plans, and marketing reports – you first have to feed it the right questions, analyze the results, edit those results and move the information into your templates.  Life is a series of multiple-choice prompts and partial answers. 

The Wall Street Journal has a strange story of remote workers going to extravagant lengths to keep the digital eyes of supervisors or systems from thinking they have “unshackled” themselves from the matrix.  Here are a few of the tricks remote workers use to keep the computer from going into sleep mode:

The winner is – Mouse Fan – this ingenious contraption keeps your mouse moving as the fan moves back and forth, sending your cursor around and around.

We stopped tracking hours almost 20 years ago; we are fortunate we have to hire high-talent, super-disciplined professionals who are used to working on writing projects or technology.  When they work does not matter to us; what they produce does.  We have always been on the ChatGPT side of this argument, never the old-school, "we've always done it this way" side.  If you can produce excellent project work in 6 hours a day, there is no need to wait for a clock to tell you what to do next. 

If you are really good at what you do – you can write about the guy who wraps his wired mouse around a fan!

Do you like eggs?  The average price of a dozen eggs has gone from under $2.00 to almost $4.00 in the last year.  Part of that can be attributed to all food prices that are going up but add a bird flu outbreak, and Rocky will have to find another source of protein to crack into his morning pre-run gulp.

Fun Facts:

Source: United Egg Producers.

[Music Notes]

Words | Music | Art | Unknown

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Thank you for spending a few minutes with us!

With A Shout newsletter is written by Johnny Christian with the support of a thousand idea bits and the help of many people.

X/O