Hello,

Welcome to an email newsletter that's all about learning about doings but not really doing them. It's fun. Sometimes.

Today's topics:

• How to cluelessly make a logo with AI
• Some new mini-essays of advice for nihilists
• How to maintain a network of people without using Facebook
• The best comment on Twitter's stupidity this week

I hope you find it worth a couple minutes of your time.

Making a logo for Procrastilearning.com

A while ago I made two different logos while messing around with a site called Looka. Unfortunately, I wasn't paying enough attention and didn't save my work in the app 🤷‍♂️ I did find this, but it was a design I didn't really like. So all I have is a couple of low-resolution JPG files - the image I've used at the top of the blog, and the image I put into its metadata:

It's not exactly coherent branding to have two completely different logos. It's actually extremely stupid. I'd also like the logo to have the ".com" at the end, as then it might clearer that it's for something online, not just "here's a random word".

Looka is a logomaker that makes use of AI. I googled 'logomaker ai' to find it and found another app called logomaster.ai. That is some good SEO naming.

I gave the latter a go. It asked me a series of questions, including what colour theme I wanted (I chose yellow because apparently it's "fun"). I hated everything it suggested though. Then it tried to charge me $140 to use the things I hated.

So I've started from scratch to using Canva. Canva and Figma seem to have slowly taken over graphic design in the last few years. Photoshop is still huge but it's more for big companies. You can do most of what you need in Canva or Figma, so there's little point in buying a massive suite of software. I installed Figma but had no idea what I was doing with it. I logged into my old Canva account though and it's super easy to use.

This is what I have so far. You can click on the logos to open them directly in Canva and edit them if you fancy:

Either way, please do reply to this email and send me your feedback, because I am making this up as I go along - as is procrastilearning tradition 🧘‍♂️

Doomer Self-Help update

My mini-essays on Twitter continue. As explained a few weeks ago, I'm trying to establish a new niche called Doomer Self-Help, namely advice for nihilistic people who think the world is unavoidably going to end. If you need some musical accompaniment to the image I've just created in your head, here is an example of the sort of music Doomers listened to in 1981.

Below are some fun highlights from the last couple weeks:

• The Number One Rule for Doomers when Buying Clothes
• Why Procrastination is Actually Really Great for Doomers
• The Fundamental Difference Between Doomers & Preppers
• Why Doomers Should Stuff Themselves & Overeat More Often
• Why Doomers Should Still Complete Their To-Do List Even Though The World Is Ending

How do you keep up to date with all the people you know?

I hate using Facebook. I think it's a huge time suck with little going for it. Its USP of keeping you in touch with people you know was lost a long time ago in the murk of user manipulation and data farming.

The stock market seems to agree that it's rubbish, having sent parent company Meta to its lowest levels in years. Of course, that's also because Meta is spending 250 billion dollars on what sounds like fancy video conferencing to most people.

Some friends tell me Facebook is still good because it has Facebook Groups for different interest groups. I'm a member of some, but none are worth checking on a daily basis. I think there's a more practical reason people still use Facebook.

The real reason Facebook is still many people's go-to daily timewaster is its birthday feature.

Nobody knows anybody's birthday anymore.

I took my birthday off my Facebook profile about a decade ago, so hardly anybody ever remembers it. I get very few birthday greetings because of this absence. Through some misplaced logic, it has led me to genuinely believe that checking whose birthday it is is probably the number one reason people use Facebook every day.

That's also why people don't remember small children's birthdays. Because small children don't have Facebook accounts.

Wishing people a happy birthday is a great simple way of keeping in touch. A little reminder to yourselves that you remember about each other, a little nod to say hello, no need to go into long catch-ups. It's just the right level of interaction most of us need. I don't really use the feature but if I were on top of my networking game, I would.

Sometimes I think I should figure out a way to keep in touch with people better. Like email somebody different once a day to catch up. But it feels exhausting. I think maybe it's gotten worse since COVID - my introversion applies to the digital world now, not just real life.

Dunbar's number does say you can't keep in touch with more than 150 people properly. So I try not to feel too bad.

Sometimes though, I do get ambitious. Sometimes I think I'd like to improve.

Enter Clay.

I'd been on the waitlist for an app called Clay for about a year. It purportedly uses some clever technology to keep on top of all this sort of stuff. I finally got allowed onto it the other day, but so did just about everybody as they released a new public version of the app.

How it works: Clay links up to your email account, Facebook, LinkedIn and other services to create a little digital black book that tracks how well you're keeping in touch with people and encourages you to make it a normal thing you do. It's purely focused on you making intelligent and genuine connection, not watching a video about how Trump supporters think Biden has dementia because he touches children or whatever trash Facebook wants you to watch.

Here is their promo video:

Many of you reading are certainly more sociable than me, so you should try Clay out. Especially if you use an iPhone, as it can integrate directly with your Contacts app on there.

I have 5 invite codes if you want to try it out. Just click this link. I am assuming that link gives us both some sort of cool extra thing, not sure. But it's only for 5 people. It's free, so what do you have to lose?

Tweet of the week

Now that Elon Musk actually does own Twitter after months of silliness, he is trying to figure out how to make it profitable. Twitter is famously a pretty crap business despite being a household name, originally kept afloat by venture capitalists gambling on it and hopium-loving shareholders.

Now Musk is talking about making verified "blue tick" users pay a monthly subscription fee for their little blue ticks. Most of us mere mortals don't really care about this because we don't have blue ticks, but the Twitterati are affronted by the suggestion.

One of the blue tick massive who is annoyed at the suggestion is ultra-famous horror author Stephen King. He even started bickering with Elon Musk about it publicly on Twitter. One account, a fellow blue ticker called Joel Petlin, an NY school inspector, had an objective take on it all:

That's enough of me prattling on. Thanks for reading. See you next time, my friends.

Adam

Adam Zulawski

TranslatingMarek.com / Procrastilearning.com / More stuff

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