Discover more from The Zeitgeist Distilled
In this issue: Brainrot and other Gen Zalpha Slang; mindful and demure; analog is cool again; lessons from the first year of 404 media; AI for a better Fantasy Football draft.
The Distilled Spirit
🧠 Brainrot and other Gen Zalpha Slang ()
Understanding the next generation is important to this parent. English in Progress has created some adept guidance in that subject. I’ve learned that all the TikToks I’ve watched studying Gen Z might give me brainrot.
💃 Embodying Very Mindful (CBS News)
By now, we all know we should be very mindful and demure when we come to work. CBS news interviews Jools Lebron. I think she is really catching a wave of being a bit more mindful towards other people and dressing up a bit. Businesses are jumping into the trend. Corpcore is in after all.
🤵 Analog is Cool Again ()
This generation that is growing up immersed in technology is seeking out analog experiences. People prefer the tactile not the screen and tell automakers so. BookTok is big. This trend towards real is happening all around us — people want to have first person experiences.
🎂 Happy Birthday 404 Media (404 Media)
404 Media was started a year ago by a few refugees from bigger media companies. They ran a lean operation, wrote a bunch of great stories and had a very successful first year. Definitely worth checking out if you like good investigative reporting. They are on top of their game.
The Idea
🏈 AI as your Fantasy GM
AI can be the assistant coach you never had. It can advise you in many ways throughout your season. Here are ways you can approach it:
👁 The first thing to remember is that all the modern AI tools are now effectively multimodal. They can read screenshots of your current roster, draft situation, trade offers and more. No need to retype things. My plan is to use this for draft-night help. Here are the options I am considering:
📖 Perplexity has been really, really useful. It has real-time information in its blood. I built a pretty simple prompt that you can use to kick start your own draft. It gave some decent advice overall and it is better than doing no research and taking whatever Yahoo! or whoever gives you.
💬 ChatGPT has a ton of potential to be a fantasy draft partner. Custom GPTs — the ability to combine knowledge with instructions and interactivity — make for a very compelling draft day tool. But the tool as it exists also has some flaws that make it a bit dangerous to use.
The main challenge is that it has a knowledge cut-off that confuses things at times. Even with a custom GPT with specific instructions and updated teams lists, it still would put players on the wrong team. Even if the advice was generally sound it made me not trust it too much.
All that said — I am going to try it on draft night to see how it can work. I think using it reading my current team roster and who is on the board will be much better and avoid the player-team hallucination issues. It was a good reminder to always keep a human in the loop for any important decisions.
Speaking of keeping a human in the loop it wouldn’t be a Zeitgeist Distilled if we did not have a few sources for further reading. Sources to make you a better fantasy owner today.
Fantasy Football Sources
📨 (Free)
I’ll admit I have not looked hard for fantasy football Substacks, but that was because I found The FF Newsletter pretty early on and the free edition is just that good. They have a paid draft kit I have not explored, but this is well worth the subscription or just the browse if you need inspiration. They highlight a lot of interesting trends.
🌎 ESPN Fantasy Football (Free w/ some paywalled content)
ESPN’s fantasy football page should not be news to anyone. They still maintain a high level of quality. Much of the advice, and enough key advice for a draft kit, are on the free side of the paywall. And many folks have ESPN+ for other reasons so you might well have a login. Their draft kit is a really handy launch pad.
🅰 NY Times/The Athletic (Paywalled)
The Athletic has everything you could need to plan your fantasy draft. I really enjoy their configurable player spreadsheet for exploring options. They have some very high quality writers and they do a great job breaking down the options. Injury coverage is especially insightful and valuable. Included in your NYT all access subscription if you already carry it, probably worth using one of those $1-per-month introductory offers if you don’t have one.
The Look
Pumpkin spice is in the air. It is that season. And it seems that that season keeps creeping earlier. More from Sherwood News.
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