🎨 VisualGPT ⋆ 🍩 This is your brain on junk food, and you can fix it ⋆ 🦀 What you can learn about growth from crabs

Thing 1 - VisualGPT: Combining images and text

VisualGPT is like having a magic pen pal 🖋️ who can draw anything you want and tell you what it sees.

• You can ask it for a picture of a cat, and it will make you an adorable image of a furry friend. Meow 😺!
• You can send it an image of a flower 💐, and it will tell you what kind of flower it is. Tulips, yo!
• You can also ask it to edit images based on your requests. Want to make your selfie more juicy? Just ask for more sauce. 🤤

TaskMatrix architecture from Github

That architecture is a bit... much?

Here's the TL;DR

VisualGPT works by combining:

• ChatGPT: you know what ChatGPT is.
• Visual Foundation Models (VFM): models that can process and generate images based on different tasks.

VisualGPT connects ChatGPT and VFM so that they can communicate and exchange information.

For example, when you ask it to draw a picture of a cat, ChatGPT will

• send the text "a cat" to the VFM
• receive an image of a cat from the VFM
• forward the image of a cat to you as a response.

Demo

TaskMatrix demo from Github (click "Downlad images" if you don't see the gif)

You can try it yourself, but it might be a bit involved if you're not technical.

(source 1, source 2, source 3)

Thing 2 - This is your brain on junk food, and you can fix it

Been enjoying chips, soda, chocolate and icecream for over a longer period of time?

It's freakin' hard to stop, isn't it?

Of course there's a study...

A visual representation from the research

The Study

Researches looked at how eating a sweet and fatty snack every day affects the way our brains respond to food.

The researchers asked two groups of people to eat

• a high-fat/high-sugar snack
• a low-fat/low-sugar snack

every day for eight weeks.

They then measured how much the participants liked and wanted different foods. They used brain scans to see how their brains responded to pictures of different foods.

Turns out eating an unhealthy snack every day can change the way your brain responds to food. It makes you want unhealthy food more and healthy food less. Even more - these changes happen even if you don't gain weight or have any other health problems.

Photo by Kobby Mendez

What are you supposed to do with that information?

Bad diet will catch you up sooner or later, so you'd wanna get that under control.

There's hope! Findings also suggest reducing the intake of unhealthy snacks and focusing on healthier options can help improve your brain's response to food and increase preference for low-fat food.

1. Start being mindful of what you eat. I had success tracking what I eat with MyFitnessPal.
2. Reduce your intake of junk food bit by bit. Try replacing them with healthier options like fruits, vegetables, nuts...
3. Plan your meals. This can help you avoid impulse snacking when hunger comes snooping.
4. Get support from friends or family who are also trying to eat healthier.
5. Get help developing a healthy eating plan that works for your lifestyle and goals.

(source)

Thing 3 - What can you learn about growth from crabs?

Comfort creates self care, but discomfort creates self respect.

- Jay Shetty

Photo by Mackenzie Cruz

You need some chill time in your comfort zone, taking care of the number one. It helps you feel the feels (facepalm, Z) and recharge ⚡.

But imagine if you stayed there... No change. No growth. Just waiting for the life to drain out of you. It's hard to have respect for someone who never does anything for anyone.

Crabs grow by shedding their old shells and forming new ones. They have to pull out their entire body parts from the old shell. If they get stuck, they can die!

It's uncomfortable, vulnerable - and required.

Cheers, Zvonimir