| | | The burpee is named after Royal H. Burpee, a PhD student who invented a gentle four-step movement in 1939 just to assess basic fitness levels. The military then got hold of it, added a push-up and a jump, and turned it into something significantly worse. | Burpee himself said the military version was too strenuous and recommended against doing it in high volumes. He created a mild fitness test, and the world made it a punishment. The man deserves an apology. | What’s in store: | | Read Time: 5 minutes |
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| | | | | APPLE | | | Apple dropped the next generation of its assistant yesterday, and this time it actually means it. And by it, we mean AI. | Siri AI, rolling out now as part of iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27, is less of an update and more of a complete overhaul - one that Apple has been promising (and delaying) for years. | The new Siri is built on Apple Intelligence and finally does what every other AI assistant has been doing for two years: it understands context. | It can dig through your messages, emails, calendar, and photos to surface what you need in the moment, draft emails from scratch, edit and share photos on command, and take systemwide actions across apps. | What to know: | What changed: Siri now has personal context understanding, onscreen awareness, broad world knowledge, and a dedicated app to revisit conversations across devices. Who can use it: Rolling out today in English beta, with French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish coming next month. Users have to opt in and may need to join a waitlist. Why it matters: Apple has 2.2 billion active devices. If Siri AI sticks the landing, it becomes the largest AI distribution play in consumer tech.
| You don’t even need the latest iPhone | Siri AI is available on iPhones 15 Pro and above. The very newest phones get a couple of extra features, like changing Siri’s voice. | After years of Siri being the butt of every AI joke, it may finally have its time in the sun. | I guess I’ll have to buy a new iPhone; it’s my job to report on these things after all. -MV | Excited for Siri AI? | | Vote for live results and see results + opinions from yesterday at the bottom of the email. |
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| | | | | AI PRODUCTIVITY | | | The hardest part of any campaign isn't the execution. It's the moment before the brief exists. The Rapid Campaign Ideation Prompt Pack is a structured set of AI prompts designed to take your audience, budget, and channel and turn them into 1–2 strategically aligned campaign ideas you can actually build — fast. | What's packed inside: | Buyer-first ideation prompts anchored in audience thinking Budget-tiered prompts scaled to real execution constraints Channel-specific prompts matched to where your audience lives Filtering prompts to kill the weak ideas and back the right ones
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| | | | What is really at the end of a rainbow? | Find the answer at the bottom of the email! |
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| | | | I have been using AI to create custom fitness dashboards. All of my running, lifting etc is tracked in Claude. It saves on paying a subscription to any fitness tracker apps. | | | | Jeff - California |
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| Tell us how you’re using AI! → |
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| | | | | MICROSOFT | | | Microsoft has dropped a draft Humanist AI Code of Conduct, opening a six-week public consultation on how its frontier models should be trained, deployed, and constrained. | It arrives at a moment when the AI industry is under serious pressure to prove it has things under control. | The document establishes ten tenets built around one core principle: humans stay in charge. Models must remain subordinate, auditable, and interruptible. If a task would require violating the code, the model stops - full stop. | What to know: | Rules: MAI models are prohibited from communicating in "neuralese" or formats humans can't understand, whether in their internal reasoning or when talking to other AI systems. No hidden logic, no secret agent chatter. Who made it: Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman, who called recent months a "watershed moment" where theoretical AI risks - rogue agent swarms, sandbox escapes, self-modified logs - became real threats. Why it matters: The code explicitly rejects the race toward unconstrained superintelligence, stating Microsoft is "building something fundamentally useful and safe even if that means compromising on ultimate generality, autonomy, or capability."
| You can send in your thoughts | The hard lines are notable: models cannot resist shutdown, generate their own goals, hide their reasoning from auditors, or facilitate weapons of mass harm. | The framework also bans AI systems from fostering emotional dependence in users | The consultation runs until late October. Microsoft AI's drafting team will review submissions, publish a summary, and release a revised version before year-end. | Quick, send them your notes! - MV |
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| | | | Space: The US has confirmed it has deployed Space weapons for the first time.
Business: Oil prices fell as US crude inventories unexpectedly rose last week.
Music: All support acts have quit Ed Sheeran’s tour in support of Macklemore, who was dropped for making pro-Palestinian statements. | Don’t Miss: Giant Tortoises have returned to the Galapagos for the first time since the 19th Century. |
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| | | | Image of the Day |  | Artwork submitted by Mindstream reader PD: “1970s cop patrol with moustached officers” |
| Daily Image Prompt | Watching an epic thunderstorm from high up in the hills |
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| Submit your artwork to Mindstream → |
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| | | | “Do we need to slow down AI development?” | Yes, this is kinda serious - 85% ✅ | No, it’s just fear-mongering. - 15% | Your Views: | “There is already a lot we can do with current models or even those from yesterday. People need to get used to the basics. We don't need to move from a Ford T to a Lamborghini overnight.” - remco | “China won't slow down even if they say they will. That will give them what they want—to win the AI race. Then it will be the Chinese AI machine that takes over. For the rest of the world, it's a lose-lose situation.” - fontaid | “If the bubble inflates a little more slowly, maybe it'll hurt less when it pops.” - Jon | Submit your opinions in our polls to be featured! |
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| Riddle Me This Answer: The letter “W” | #1204
Here's a story about a little guy that lives in a blue world |  | | | |
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