"You must spend so much time in your garden" is the phrase I hear most often from the foot traffic that goes by my home. But while it is certainly seasonal, with needs changing from week to week, once my garden is installed for the summer, I never actually spend more than an hour in it per day, and frequently far less than that. This summer I'm practicing radical avoidance, and I've been impressed at how well the garden is managing itself. I simply make sure I get outside once a day and do these three things.

Either first thing in the morning or at twilight, I grab a hod, a five gallon bucket, and my clean pruners, and I walk around the garden doing these tasks:

1. Weed

As you move around the garden, grab any errant weeds. They grow in the beds, alongside the beds, and in the cracks of the concrete. Pitch them into the bucket. If you do this every day, or even most days, it's not an overwhelming chore. Weeding can also mean winnowing down seedlings if you're growing radishes or carrots, so they're spaced appropriately. I don't use any special equipment, I just pull the weeds out with my hands, doing my best to get as much root as possible. Shake off the weed so you rid it of any good dirt that clings to before it goes in the bucket.

2. Harvest

The fruit, vegetables, and flowers change daily in the garden, so the best way to grab everything at its peak is to get out there most days and look around. If you do, you'll also know what to anticipate being ready from day to day so you can meal plan. The produce goes into the hod, ready to come into the house. If you need to ditch carrot greens or radish tops, you can do that outside and add them to your bucket. Before you come in, you can rinse off everything in the hod with your hose—that's why you want a hod and not a basket.

3. Look for pests and problems

This is also your chance to look for any potential issues. If you see leaves that might have blight, fungus, or virus, use those pruners and cut it out. If the problem is bad enough, cull the plant entirely. If you see pest damage, start flipping leaves over and look for the eggs to remove them. Definitely remove pests as you see them, too. If you need to add Sluggo or a foliar treatment to any plant, now is the time. A few notes: If you do have to cut out or cull, that plant should not go in the bucket but should proceed directly to the trash can. Don't put diseased plants into the compost either at your home or for the city. Also, be sure that you clean your hands and the pruners after you do this pruning/culling with antibacterial soap or spray.

There are other tasks you might encounter as you go about your daily walk around the garden, but unless they're particularly time sensitive (like a leaky hose), you can save those for the weekly task list instead.

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According to a new study published in Nature, researchers found that training AI models using AI-generated datasets can lead to "model collapse," where models produce increasingly nonsensical outputs over generations. "In one example, a model started with a text about European architecture in the Middle Ages and ended up -- in the ninth generation -- spouting nonsense about jackrabbits," writes The Register's Lindsay Clark. From the report: [W]ork led by Ilia Shumailov, Google DeepMind and Oxford post-doctoral researcher, found that an AI may fail to pick up less common lines of text, for example, in training datasets, which means subsequent models trained on the output cannot carry forward those nuances. Training new models on the output of earlier models in this way ends up in a recursive loop. In an accompanying article, Emily Wenger, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke University, illustrated model collapse with the example of a system tasked with generating images of dogs. "The AI model will gravitate towards recreating the breeds of dog most common in its training data, so might over-represent the Golden Retriever compared with the Petit Basset Griffon Vendéen, given the relative prevalence of the two breeds," she said. "If subsequent models are trained on an AI-generated data set that over-represents Golden Retrievers, the problem is compounded. With enough cycles of over-represented Golden Retriever, the model will forget that obscure dog breeds such as Petit Basset Griffon Vendeen exist and generate pictures of just Golden Retrievers. Eventually, the model will collapse, rendering it unable to generate meaningful content." While she concedes an over-representation of Golden Retrievers may be no bad thing, the process of collapse is a serious problem for meaningful representative output that includes less-common ideas and ways of writing. "This is the problem at the heart of model collapse," she said.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Conversation, written by Michael W. Crowder, Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Dean of the Graduate School at Miami University: For many people, the aroma of freshly brewed coffee is the start of a great day. But caffeine can cause headaches and jitters in others. That's why many people reach for a decaffeinated cup instead. I'm a chemistry professor who has taught lectures on why chemicals dissolve in some liquids but not in others. The processes of decaffeination offer great real-life examples of these chemistry concepts. Even the best decaffeination method, however, does not remove all of the caffeine -- about 7 milligrams of caffeine usually remain in an 8-ounce cup. Producers decaffeinating their coffee want to remove the caffeine while retaining all -- or at least most -- of the other chemical aroma and flavor compounds. Decaffeination has a rich history, and now almost all coffee producers use one of three common methods. All these methods, which are also used to make decaffeinated tea, start with green, or unroasted, coffee beans that have been premoistened. Using roasted coffee beans would result in a coffee with a very different aroma and taste because the decaffeination steps would remove some flavor and odor compounds produced during roasting. Here's a summary of each method discussed by Dr. Crowder: The Carbon Dioxide Method: Developed in the early 1970s, the carbon dioxide method uses high-pressure CO2 to extract caffeine from moistened coffee beans, resulting in coffee that retains most of its flavor. The caffeine-laden CO2 is then filtered out using water or activated carbon, removing 96% to 98% of the caffeine with minimal CO2 residue. The Swiss Water Process: First used commercially in the early 1980s, the Swiss water method uses hot water and activated charcoal filters to decaffeinate coffee, preserving most of its natural flavor. This chemical-free approach removes 94% to 96% of the caffeine by soaking the beans repeatedly until the desired caffeine level is achieved. Solvent-Based Methods: Originating in the early 1900s, solvent-based methods use organic solvents like ethyl acetate and methylene chloride to extract caffeine from green coffee beans. These methods remove 96% to 97% of the caffeine through either direct soaking in solvent or indirect treatment of water containing caffeine, followed by steaming and roasting to ensure safety and flavor retention. "It's chemically impossible to dissolve out only the caffeine without also dissolving out other chemical compounds in the beans, so decaffeination inevitably removes some other compounds that contribute to the aroma and flavor of your cup of coffee," writes Dr. Crowder in closing. "But some techniques, like the Swiss water process and the indirect solvent method, have steps that may reintroduce some of these extracted compounds. These approaches probably can't return all the extra compounds back to the beans, but they may add some of the flavor compounds back."

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If you need proof that human beings are not a serious species, all you need to do is consider our attitude towards napping. If you're older than five, napping has a bad rap, and there’s a certain level of shame associated with people who get “caught napping.” Napping always seems to be associated with weakness—apparently you’re supposed to be able to handle sleep deprivation like a boss.

But naps are generally very natural and very good for you. Naps improve cognitive performance, boost your mood, and make you healthier in general. If you find it easy to take a short nap, you probably should, but like everything else in life you need to customize the experience to your own body rhythms and lifestyle. There’s no precise “best” way to nap—but there are some basic strategies you should consider for best napping results.

Four napping strategies to consider

Once you have a good spot to nap in and a good idea of how much time you want or need to nap (see below), you can try different napping strategies to see which one benefits you most:

• The classic "power nap." For most people, a “power nap” of approximately 10-20 minutes in the early afternoon will help them shake off that post-lunch malaise and feel energized for the rest of the day. If you just feel kind of logy and sleepy for a few hours every afternoon, this is probably the best approach.

• A quick coffee nap. If a short nap isn’t helping as much as you’d like, you can mix in the occasional “Coffee Nap.” Drink a cup of coffee quickly, then lie down for 20-30 minutes. It takes caffeine about 10 minutes to start affecting you, and about 45 minutes to reach peak concentration in your blood. That means you can get a power nap in, then wake up just as the caffeine is hitting, giving you an amplified sense of sharpness and clarity.

• The convenient nap. Scheduling a nap at the precise moment when it will benefit you without interrupting your sleep is all well and good, but what if your schedule is insane? Maybe you have a baby who is 100% dictating the sleep schedule in your home, or a job that doesn’t allow much flexibility. In that case, don’t be too rigid—an imperfect nap is probably better than no nap at all. Nap when that baby is sleeping, in that short window when the house is quiet, or during your lunch hour.

• The performance nap. If regular napping doesn’t work for you, don’t write naps off entirely. If you have a stressful or physically demanding task ahead of you—a presentation, a marathon—a short nap a few hours before can really give you a performance boost.

Four tips for better naps

Before you start thinking about your “napping style,” there are a few fundamentals that you should consider:

• Choose the right length. The dividing line between “taking a nap” and “going to sleep” can be blurry, because we all sleep differently. But in general, you don’t want your nap to be too long; Naps as short as 10 minutes can still boost you, longer naps of 20-45 minutes can avoid “sleep inertia” (that groggy feeling you get because you drag yourself awake just as you enter the deepest sleep cycle), and a 90-minute nap will usually wake you up just as you’re exiting that deep sleep. Longer than that and you risk messing up your natural sleep cycle in the evening.

• Don't screw up your schedule. In general, early afternoon is the best time to nap in order to avoid disrupting your sleep cycle. This isn’t a hard rule, though; you have to adjust the schedule depending on your specific internal clock. If you’re a night owl, you can push it later in the afternoon. If you’re the sort to wake up before sunrise, an earlier nap might work better.

• Choose the right space. There’s something wonderful about just leaning back and closing your eyes, but if you want your naps to be as effective as possible, you should curate a good sleep environment: Dark, quiet, and peaceful. Napping in an uncomfortable chair or too-hard surface can also negatively impact your experience. Try to find a space you can easily make into a comfortable, stress-free spot.

• Include buffers. Naps don’t always happen instantaneously, and even if you keep them short you can experience that aforementioned “sleep inertia,” a groggy, slow feeling. Even if you plan a relatively short nap, build in 5-10 minutes before and after so you have time to relax and fall asleep and time to wake up and re-focus.

Whatever your preference, internal clock, or physical needs, there’s no arguing that everyone can benefit from a nap at least sometimes in their life. Figuring out the strategy that works for you can give you all the benefits with none of the downsides.

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