#886: The Random Show — AI Super Assistants, Boner Pills, Dream Engineering, Wizards, Supplements, Books, and More

Back in L.A. for a minute, enjoying the nice corner of the world before it all goes sideways. Random agenda, but AI felt like the obvious place to start.

Everybody is sick of AI, but the last few weeks feel like a break in the curve. We’re beyond chatbot light-switch repair; personal agents can watch the threads of your life and act.

I haven’t tried Instinct, but people are clearly playing with it. Give people the frame, because privacy is not a footnote.

The contenders are Instinct, Meta’s Muse, Grok, and ChatGPT’s Dots. Instinct arrived as an iMessage number, asked for Gmail and Calendar access—“come on in, stranger”—and immediately found a document I’d missed. Later it noticed my prescription, checked my flight, and suggested when to leave for the airport. That stopped feeling like a gimmick.

Magic, and apparently how Skynet gathers the fake Illuminati into one calendar before the drones arrive. But once an agent has context, memory, and access, nobody wants to grant all that permission again for every shinier model.

Exactly. They’re trying to become the durable record of your history, not a disposable model. Instinct has rearranged travel and captured a hard restaurant reservation; friends’ agents can coordinate calendars. Muse has more institutional security scrutiny, which matters. Don’t hand every credential to a tiny startup because it has hype.

I wrote about this assistant future before it was relatable. Inbox overload is no longer a rich-person problem. Assistants went from in-person to virtual to digitally enhanced, and now the technology has caught up.

This changes commerce, too. If AI is the starting point, it can compare towels across stores and bypass Amazon’s sponsored placement. Amazon still has logistics, price, and speed, but your agent may own the front door. I connected ChatGPT to DaVinci Resolve, dropped in angles and audio, and watched it assemble an episode. Soon you may not open Photoshop or CAD; you’ll ask for the result.

Where does a nontechnical person start without turning their digital life into a bonfire?

If you pay for ChatGPT, start there and play. Muse is easy to download; Instinct is invite-only, and I’d wait on Grok here. Calling your agent while driving to move something or follow up on email feels like the arena has opened.

I’ve been climbing hard and revisited beta-alanine because creatine water weight is not ideal when finger strength is the bottleneck. A small blinded climber study suggested better endurance on long efforts, and I’ve noticed a change, though training, isometrics, collagen, and vitamin C muddy the credit. Sustained-release may reduce the pins-and-needles. Please do not blindly swallow tablets from a bottle I put on the table.

Creatine is useful, but I’m GI-sensitive. A delayed-release version is the first I can take without wrecking my stomach. We are two men at an airport discussing digestive catastrophe, so moderation may be the protocol.

I also went down a nut rabbit hole—intentional wording. Walnut research found improvements in several sperm-quality measures, and a later mixed-nut review pointed similarly. Not a miracle, but keeping the twins healthy seems reasonable if I’d like a family. Check sourcing and contamination: fiber, nuts, fish, and produce are not interchangeable because labels sound wholesome.

You cannot win. Seaweed snacks can carry microplastics. Still, Pioneer Pastures makes an A2, lactose-free drink with thirty grams of protein, modest sugar, and a short ingredient list. Shelf-stable, fine-tasting, no usual stomach drama.

Then crazy town: dream engineering and brain stimulation. I’ve been into lucid dreaming since high school, rehearsing wrestling in dreams, and I’m watching attempts to shape dream content for trauma. Modulation and dream work might offer routes for people who cannot or should not take psychedelics. This is clinician-and-research territory, not DIY heroics.

The anesthesia-dream idea is nuts: during carefully managed emergence, prompt a different resolution of a traumatic memory. I’m still asking whether magnets near the brain should freak me out. I use an expensive hypnosis app before sleep; it’s genuinely calming.

The question is whether the trip, dream, or emotional release is treatment rather than noise. Early Stanford reporting described dramatic trauma improvements after guided anesthesia dreams. Lucid dreamers can signal researchers from REM with prearranged eye patterns, which is completely fucking crazy. I’m cautiously interested in prescription orexin-antagonist sleep drugs, but that is a doctor conversation.

My rapid-fire kit: traditional Chinese “curing pills” for upset stomach—twenty-seven mystery herbs, so not a medical review—and a respiratory-muscle trainer. Its app setup was annoying, but resistance training on an incline is surprisingly hard.

Respiratory devices are interesting, though apps should not charge hostage fees for a usable baseline program. Athletes swear by them. We also laughed about electrically stimulating contact lenses matching fluoxetine on depression-related mouse measures. Mice are not miniature people, but bioelectric medicine is fascinating.

I made my first Sephora trip because rosacea and bad sleep had me wrecked on camera. Dr. Jart’s green Cicapair tones down redness, dries matte, and has SPF. I also do PRP vampire facials twice a year; briefly red, but I think they help.

As AI improves, I’m protecting what I don’t want to outsource. I’ll compare drafts or visualize edits, but not write my book. Handing over writing risks atrophy; lived experience and reputation may be the defensible part.

Writer-focused AI harnesses can already turbocharge book-like output. That makes stolen concepts feel quaint. The simple explanation matters more: can you tell someone in a crowded bar what it is in two sentences?

That test haunts my new book: a workbook about reducing noise, saying no, and choosing the few yeses that change things. I cut it from roughly 870 pages to 350. I want print because a physical workbook forces single-tasking against the phone’s digital leash. Eight weeks to finish.

Watch The Dark Wizard, about climber Dean Potter. I’m also forcing unfamiliar genres—romantasy has an enormous audience. Deliberate detours matter; otherwise you consume your own algorithm.

Read Hard Times by Studs Terkel and John Gardner’s “Personal Renewal.” Cervantes wrote Don Quixote from prison at fifty-three after setbacks. For an AI counterweight, read Shawn Smucker’s “Please Use AI.” Buy one envelope, meet people, see the world, fart around a little. We’re dancing animals.

I’m optimistic agents clear tactical clutter for actual hanging out, even if I’ll fill saved time AI-coding. I keep threatening Japanese woodworking. Instead, I’m claiming the Jean-Claude Van Damme two-chair split in six months.

Five hundred dollars to charity says you cannot. You’ll need absurd strength and flexibility unless you want chicken-wing legs. Another random show: plenty for post-production to link, and God help them with the supplement list.