003 Newsletter - Jan 24, 2026
A smorgasbord of articles on Notebook LM, Demis Hasabis, Better AI prompting, Six Stoic secrets, the laziness tax, photo editing using AI, and buying copper.
Another interesting, fun-filled week.
Frigid temperatures in much of the country. Yesterday, Ontario, Canada was reportedly the coldest place on earth. It was also my brother-in-law David's birthday. In New Jersey, we are getting the brunt of the storm tomorrow, Sunday.
This afternoon, I'm really looking forward to the St. Sebastian festival, including a pot luck food festival at our church. We are planning to take a couple of trays of Punjabi samosas and turon (Filipino fried plantain), both bought from local restaurants.
My first blog post was about NotebookLM features you may be overlooking. Since I wrote this post, I saw on YouTube that NotebookLM can now also help students with SAT test preparation!
Next, I wrote about managing a 4-person AI creative team which can help you write better AI prompts. This was inspired by a 42 Courses newsletter.
Next, a short article on Six Stoic secrets that can help you in conversation with others.
While we are in the marketplace, another investing article on why I bought some copper. This could be a hot stock for 2026?
And while we are in the topic of investing, a YouTube article made me realize the enormous impact of the laziness tax. How small comforts like ordering food delivered to home can cost you massive amounts of wealth in the long run if it becomes a regular habit.
PiXimperfect, the most popular Photoshop YouTube channel, advocated using AI for the bulk of photo restoration work. And a user comment summed up the situation nicely:
The Photoshop guy is telling us to use AI as a graphic designer. It's official, we are cooked.
This week also featured many interesting interviews on YouTube by Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google DeepMind.
Time for some ART?
I saw that in a Demis Hassabi's interview, he mentioned that Contact was one of his favorite movies. I imagined an alien taking out its contact lens, which looked like radio telescopes from the movie Contact. I first got into photo editing in 2018 using Superimpose X inspired by a photo called "The Time Machine."
In under 45 minutes, I was able to create this short clip using Nano Banana Pro and Kling AI.
How the alien takes out his contact lenses, which morph into a time machine.
"Gorblimey, I am the original Big Ben..."
And that's all I have for this week, folks. Stay warm!