Homemade Retreats, Baby AI, and some very rude Cossacks
I flirted with AI fitness coach, unplugged for 5 days, hoarded health data for future me, scored 100k points, learned of Sphere's immersive Oz, took a French cab ride, and defended procrastination
Well, hello!
Welcome to Mappy Monday, where you may find your next travel adventure, try a new self-experiment, learn an AI tool, or money-saving hack, and discover random things you didn’t know you needed to know. I’ll also tell you what’s new at my MappyEverAfter website - because, well, someone has to.
New on MappyEverAfter: Osage Murders and Riverfront Gardens in Tornado Alley
AI Shenanigans: World’s Smartest AI, Cute Fitness Coach, and a Talking Baby
Experiment: Things That Happened During my DIY Digital Detox Retreat
Travel: The Wizzard and Adrenaline Junkies on the Big(gest) Screen
Health: Keep Yourself Alive for the Next 10 Years
Money: New 100,000-point Bonus with Chase Sapphire
Watch: French Movie “Driving Madeleine”
Read: Ted Chiang’s “Stories of Your Life and Others”
Mind Hack: In Defense of Procrastination
Just because: Listen to Hilarious Historical Letters
Note: I will always tell you if I’m getting any referral bonuses and how much they are. There’s one Easter egg buried in this letter: if you get the Sapphire card with my link, you’ll get 100k travel points and I’ll get 10k. Everybody wins. Tiny high-five!
New on my MappyEverAfter:
Osage Murders and Riverfront Gardens in Tornado Alley
Here, for your reading pleasure, is the 7th installment of our Route 66 road trip! This stretch had scenic riverfronts, terrifying tornados that sent (some of) us running for cover, and a trip to Osage town where history, tragedy, and Hollywood collided in Killers of the Flower Moon.
AI Shenanigans:
Smartest AI, Cute Fitness Coach, and a Talking Baby
Without big fanfare, GPT 4.5 just passed the Turing test (PDF of the test), a famous test to see if a machine can act so much like a human in a 5-minute conversation that a human can't tell the difference.
Also this month, ChatGPT's o3 model scored 136 on the Mensa IQ test - outperforming 98% of humans - and 116 on an offline test, better than 86%. (For context: the average human IQ is 100.) This is huge! Future historians (if there are any left) will point to right now as the moment AI intelligence surpassed the vast majority of humans.
I’ve been playing with HeyGen's AI Avatar Maker. While you can create your own digital double (as shown in this video), I'm taking a pass - the hubby says one of me is more than enough. Instead, I'm having fun chats with their free demo “people”.
I like Bryan, the cute fitness coach, who offered to teach me healthy recipes and gave a very dry "ha ha" when I tried to invite myself over for dinner instead.
I also asked Ann the therapist if binge-watching home renovation shows counted as self-improvement, and she said, “Yes, it can spark creativity, teach problem-solving, and give you a sense of accomplishment if you then try your own renovations.” So there! Plus, they speak 28 languages, Slovak included!
First impression: your future coworkers, or even bosses might look like this - and honestly, they’re already more polite, patient, and smarter than most of us.
Random delightful discovery - a Talking Baby Podcast (just one-off episode so far).
Experiment:
Things That Happened During my DIY Digital Detox Retreat
I unplugged for five days and watched my brain go nuts. Turns out, she’s very sneaky, a drama queen, and kind of a gossip.
5 days
No screens
No internet
No speaking
No to-dos
No inputs, except birds, clouds, and a nightly Eckhart Tolle lesson
Travel:
Vegas - The Wizard and Adrenaline Junkies on the Big(gest) Screen
If you're heading to Vegas this fall, consider adding a yellow brick detour to your itinerary. Sphere, that eye-popping venue with a 160,000-square-foot screen that wraps around your entire field of vision, is rolling out a spectacle.
Opening August 28, 2025: The Wizard of Oz, reimagined as an immersive, technicolor experience, flying monkeys and all.
And, coming in 2026: From the Edge, a globe-hopping dive into the lives of five extreme athletes who flirt with death for a living. Think skiing down near-vertical cliffs, diving into underwater caves, and generally making the rest of us feel like barely sentient potatoes.
We’re definitely not in Kansas anymore.
Here’s my video of the Sphere from really up close! We went to see the Postcard from Earth movie and taught a robot to speak Slovak.
Health:
Keep Yourself Alive the Next 10 Years
Speaking of flirting with death... maybe don't. The health advice I keep bumping into lately is basically: "Just keep yourself alive the next 10 years!" because with the way AI is advancing, tons of diseases that are tricky (or impossible) to diagnose or treat today might be fixable soon.
One little thing I'd suggest is to start collecting your blood test results and other health data somewhere you control, like a simple Google Sheet, or print a paper copy. I started mine 15 years ago during a particularly paranoid WebMD spiral. I'm not saying I'm tracking my A1c numbers with the same obsession some people track their fantasy football stats... but I'm not NOT saying that either.
My doctor only looks for the obvious red flags and keeps the records for just a handful of years before they disappear into the ether.
Seeing long-term trends is where AI will really work its magic, and you'll have a nice pile of health data to feed it. It's wild how much more you (or your current LLM of choice) can already notice when you look at the slow, sneaky changes in your tests. The future you might be very grateful you kept a little breadcrumb trail of your health.
Money:
Limited offer - 100,000-point Bonus with Chase Sapphire Preferred
Speaking of making the future you happy, how about free vacations?
If you live in the US and have been eyeing a premium travel rewards card, now’s the time to jump in:
Chase Sapphire Preferred is offering a massive 100,000-point sign-up bonus after you spend $5,000 in the first 3 months. Yes, there's a $95 annual fee, but that bonus alone translates to $1000 in cash back, $1,250 in travel when redeemed through Chase Travel portal, and potentially over $2000 if you're savvy with airline and hotel transfer partners.
(Update in June 2025: The offer dropped from 100k to 75k points, which is still higher than their regular 60k-point offer, and a great deal)
The catch:
You can only get this bonus once every 48 months, and only if you don’t currently hold any Sapphire card or got more than 4 personal credit cards in the last 24 months.
I get this card every 4 years (yes, I'm one of those points hoarders), and it’s my go-to recommendation for anyone who travels even occasionally. Why? The $95 annual fee is reasonable compared to similar cards, and you get other solid perks: good travel protection and rental car insurance, 3x points on dining and online groceries, no foreign transaction fees, and flexible points that can be used in many ways.
This is one of the most generous bonuses Sapphire has ever had (regular bonus is 60,000 points), and deals like this don't stick around for long.
If you have a big purchase coming up, large bills to pay, or just regularly spend around $1,670 a month, you might as well turn that spending into free vacations (or cash!). Just pay off your card every month to keep the interest at 0%.
Watch:
“Driving Madeleine”
Some movies don’t shout for your attention, they just sit quietly until you're ready.
Driving Madeleine is one of those. It's a French film about a grumpy taxi driver who picks up an immaculate 92-year-old woman for what he thinks is just another fare across Paris. But she wants to take her sweet time, visiting all her old haunts one last time, revealing some fascinating and shocking stories of her past.
What got me wasn’t just the beautiful shots of Paris (though they are gorgeous), but how real their conversations were, the small moments between them. It felt like eavesdropping on actual people.
You can watch it on Kanopy (free if your library or university participates in the program), Prime, AppleTV, or Youtube.
Pairs well with macarons and Kleenex.
Read:
“Stories of Your Life and Others” by Ted Chiang
If you like the kind of Sci-Fi stories that quietly mess with your head and get under your skin, Ted Chiang’s Stories of Your Life and Others might be your next thing. It’s a collection of short stories, and each one feels like its own little universe.
The big one, “Story of Your Life,” is what the movie Arrival was based on.
This book will linger in the back of your mind, in a good way.
Mind Hack:
In Defense of Procrastination
Last week, I took five days off from all devices (as you saw in the Experiment section) - no emails, no phone, just meditating, sleeping, and eating. Nothing else got done.
At first, I thought I’d fall way behind. But as I came back to reality, I realized something interesting: some things on my to-do list either weren’t as important as they seemed (so I just crossed them off), or they took care of themselves, people figured things out without me. Turns out, doing nothing might’ve been doing me a favor.
Maybe I’m not trying to avoid hard work. Maybe it’s my subconscious telling me that I’m not ready, or the task at hand doesn’t really matter. Or, maybe the first step is too big and I need to break it down into smaller pieces.
So now before I beat myself up for procrastinating, I ask what my hesitation may be trying to tell me. Am I genuinely avoiding this, or is there a valid reason my gut is pumping the brakes?
Maybe it’s my inner wisdom, or maybe I’m justifying my dolce farniente. Either way, I’m choosing to believe it’s a feature, not a bug.
Just Because:
Hilarious Historical Letters
I don’t remember who recommended these to me, but if you’re reading this, you’re in for a treat! They are f***ing brilliant!
🏆 Most Elegant Looting:
Olivia Colman reads a 17th century letter from a wife to her husband who happened to inherit her father’s fortune.
🏆 Best Teenage Audacity:
17-year-old Tom Hanks wrote a letter to the legendary director George Roy Hill, listing all the ways he wishes to be “discovered”. Watch it read by Benedict Cumberbatch.
🏆 Best International Smackdown:
These letters are from the year 1675, between Sultan Mehmed IV and the Zaporozhian Cossacks and trust me, you’ve never heard history quite like this. Read by Olivia Colman + Adrian Edmondson.
So there you have it. My work here is done. Hope your brain feels adequately tickled by the future health tech, current point hoarding, and some salty mail from the past.
Be Mappy,
Mags
