Well, hello!
Welcome to Mappy Monday, a free monthly newsletter, where you may find your next travel adventure, try a new self-help experiment, learn about an AI tool, or money-saving hack, and discover random things you didn’t know you needed.
📦 From the Mappy Archive: A Month in Bali on a Tight Budget
🤖 AI Shenanigans: The Robots are Here!
🧪 Experiment: Gravity Games - Aerial Silks vs. Acroyoga
🌍 Travel: Cat in a Castle and a Creamy Duel
🌞 Health: A Little Reminder of Attia’s Rule
💰 Money: Podcasts that Pay off
🎥 Watch: Finally, Stranger Things!
📚 Read: Craig Mod’s Things Become Other Things
💡 Mind Hack: A Perfect Recipe for Burnout
🎈 Just because: Optical Illusion - Ames Window
Note: I will always tell you if I’m getting any referral bonuses and how much they are. There aren’t any in this letter.
📦 From the Archive:
A Month in Bali
As days get short and cold in Slovakia, my mind drifts back to Bali.
The island smelled of incense and motorbike fumes, tiny palm-leaf baskets of flowers and rice lined the cracked pavements alongside plastic trash and stray dogs. We lived on coconuts and banana pancakes and snorkeled through coral reefs, eye to eye with Nemo. Bali was paradise, just with all its wiring showing. MappyEverAfter.com/a-month-in-bali/
🤖 AI Shenanigans
The Robots are Here
This month, I’ve been mainly playing with a highly sophisticated form of intelligence. One that screams for milk, blows raspberries, and doesn’t have an off switch. But, while I’m blissfully trapped under my niece’s real-life sleeping baby, I have plenty of time to soak up the future:
Meet Figure 03, a humanoid robot that shows up in demos loading a dishwasher, playing with a dog, working the laundry machine, fluffing pillows, and grasping ceramic plates with a precision that makes it look ready to move in. It’s not quite Arthur from Passengers or Data from Star Trek, but for a moment, it does seem like your dream helper is finally here.
That’s the highlight reel, though. The testing footage is more honest, showing the robot unable to lift clothes from a hamper or fold a T-shirt. The founder of Figure, Brett Adcock, says that with a bit more time and data, the robot will be ready for prime time with a price tag of about $20,000. While it appears incredibly capable and poised to revolutionize domestic chores, this guy is definitely not ready to navigate a home with anything fragile and precious, like, you know, tiny humans.
🧪 Experiment:
Gravity Games - Aerial Silks vs. Acroyoga
Aerial Silks always seemed so much fun! When I saw a beginner course costing 32 Euros for 4 lessons (a third of the price it would cost back in the US), my eyes lit up and I enrolled.
But let me tell you, if you want a swift, painful lesson in humility, climb onto a piece of fabric hung from the ceiling.
The hubby and I used to do Acroyoga, which often looks impossibly hard but is surprisingly achievable with the right teacher, technique, and partner. “I can’t believe I just did that!” kind of thing. I figured aerial silks would be similar.
I was wrong. So, so wrong.
Aerial silks look ethereal and effortless, but in reality, it’s a full-body workout that requires a ridiculous (to me) amount of strength.
To make things worse, my classmates float gracefully in the air, wrapping sheets of fabric around their feet and knotting themselves into beautiful poses, while I look like a damp, tangled caterpillar and question every life choice that led me here.
But hey, if you’re the dumbest person in the room, you have the most to gain.
🌍 Travel:
Cat in a Castle and a Creamy Duel
I played a tourist in the Slovak capital, Bratislava, winding my way through the historic Old Town and up to the castle gardens which were pretty, even if not exactly Versailles. The castle itself gleamed white, like a new pair of sneakers.
A short walk downhill sits Mačkafé, the city’s cat café. (“Mačka” means “cat” in Slovak. Cute, right?) It was cozy, affordable, and full of feline drama. I ordered a Viennese coffee, basically a glass of whipped cream with a splash of coffee. The waitress warned me that the black cat sitting beside me mustn’t touch the cream for medical reasons.
Sure enough, the cat leapt onto the table and, before I could react, swatted at my cup, scooped a pawful of whipped cream, and sat there, licking it smugly while the waitress shot me an accusing stare. Meanwhile, the culprit sat there with its greasy whiskers, looking all innocent, like, “She made me do it!”
Later, I browsed secondhand shops, tried on wool coats and tweed trousers, imagining myself riding a horse at Balmoral. In the train on my way home, an English-speaking lady disembarking turned back and shouted at me: “Be happy!” A fitting, if slightly intense, sign-off to a small adventure.
Some cat (and Bratislava castle) pictures for your vicarious delight:
🌞 Health:
A Little Reminder of Attia’s Rule
According to Dr. Peter Attia (and countless studies), physical strength and endurance are several magnitudes more important for health and longevity than anything else you can do for yourself. A recent banter between Dr Attia and Dr Huberman gave birth to “Attia’s rule,” which essentially states:
You shouldn’t be allowed to discuss the nuances of your diet, supplements, or anything health-related until:
Your *VO2 max is at least at the 75th percentile
You’re able to dead-hang for 1.5 - 2 minutes
You can farmer-carry 75% (women) or 100% (men) of your body weight for 2 minutes (split between your hands)
You can hold a wall sit or air squat for at least 2 minutes.
*VO2 max is the maximum amount of oxygen your body can absorb and use during exercise. It measures your aerobic fitness level. You can estimate your VO2 max by measuring your performance of simple exercises like brisk walking or step-ups (you’ll find the instructions in the link above).
The score you’re shooting for is “Excellent” or “Superior” VO2 max based on your age and gender:
💰 Money:
Podcasts that Pay off
Lately, I’ve been getting my financial pep talks through podcasts. My current top three:
Moonshots with Peter Diamandis:
Listening to the Moonshots podcast has had an unexpected side effect on my finances. While Peter and his team are very clear they are not giving investment advice, they spend ages analyzing the tech companies poised to change the world. So, I started a little experiment: I invested small amounts in some of the publicly traded companies they’ve discussed, from biotech to AI. So far, the returns have been impressive. (This is not investment advice.)
My First Million:
Imagine the guy next door turns out to be a hugely successful business founder and is chatting about business ideas over coffee. That’s the vibe. Real people sharing their weirdest wins and surprisingly doable tools for success.
Side Hustle School:
A daily dose of “if they can do it, maybe I can too.” Each short episode tells the story of an ordinary person starting a side gig - from candle-making to AirBnB for dogs - what worked, what flopped, and what they learned.
🎥 Watch:
Finally, Stranger Things
Here’s the thing: When this series came out almost 10 years ago, I somehow thought it was for kids and never gave it a second thought.
My family, with the final season starting next month, decided to re-watch the entire series, so I happily jumped in. It has become our nightly ritual after the baby falls asleep.
Beyond the 80s nostalgia and witty sci-fi horror, it’s a great, low-pressure way to bridge generational gaps in a family, one Demogorgon at a time.
📚 Read:
Craig Mod’s “Things Become Other Things”
While I was mastering peekaboo, the hubby, 6000 miles away, read books. This is his pick for the month:
Things Become Other Things by Craig Mod is part travelogue, part quiet heartbreak, and entirely an encouragement to lace up your shoes and walk until something inside you changes. Mod wanders through Japan’s old pilgrimage trails and meets innkeepers, fishermen, and one kid who asks, “What the heck are you?”. It’s less about the miles and more about the silence between them, that sneaks up on you when there’s no Wi-Fi and your only companion is your own mind. Beautiful, grounding and strange in a rather magical way.
💡 Mind Hack:
The Perfect Burnout Recipe
I was reviewing my notes from a John Hopkins course on Psychological First Aid. Specifically, the part where they outline the perfect plan for achieving total emotional and physical burnout.
Do not try these at home:
Be a perfectionist. Never acknowledge or celebrate your own success or competence.
Avoid physical exercise. Remember, it’s unpleasant, and it makes your muscles ache.
The glass is always half-empty. Maintain a completely pessimistic outlook on everything.
Skip breakfast. And when you do eat, make sure it’s junk food.
Blame everyone but yourself. Hold your parents, lack of soulmates, unethical capitalist society, and various conspiracies responsible for all your failures and shortcomings.
Be responsible for everything and everyone. Your sole task is to ensure that every single person around you is completely happy.
Try to control and manage every person and every situation around you.
Sleep the bare minimum required to keep you technically alive.
Cultivate guilt. Feel overwhelmingly guilty at the end of the workday or over the weekend because you know you could have helped more.
The Ideal Daily Regimen: Sleep until you are starving. Eat until you are tired enough to sleep. Use alcohol to relax. Use stimulants to get energy.
Note: For that one person that might not get it, this list is sarcastic. Please do the opposite.
🎈 Just Because:
Optical Illusion - Ames Window
So there you have it. We traveled from Bratislava to Hawkins with a layover in Japan - all in a span of 10 minutes. Better take a nap now.
Be Mappy,
Mags
