Steve Homepage This site is not about rodents. I like rodents. They are intelligent, clean, and mostly just trying to get by. Just Rodents is a loose ...
The machine that catches honesty and misses the cheating Two students hand in the same essay. One of them wrote every idea in it herself and asked an AI to tidy the prose. The other typed a prompt, pasted the output, and went to the pub. Feed both through a commercial AI detector at the standard threshold and, more often than not, they come back with the same verdict: flagged. That is not a…
TL;DR, says Steve the Hypothetical Gerbil: Heal LA has identified that doing more than one thing at a time works better than doing one thing at a time. This is called "wellness stacking." It costs considerably more than doing one thing at a time. There is a concept. It's called stacking. It means doing two self-care things at once. Meditating while you brush your teeth. Journalling with your…
TL;DR, says Steve the Hypothetical Gerbil: There is a wellness treatment that involves alternating hot and cold water. It has existed in Scandinavia for roughly a thousand years. It is free, if you have a lake. It now costs $8,999 in Manhattan Beach. Steve would like a word. There is a treatment. It involves cold water. And hot water. Alternating. This practice has existed in Scandinavia for…
Steve’s TL;DR: A newsletter about newsletters offers free advice on choosing what to write about, then reveals the real problem is your logo, which can be fixed for $199, reduced from a retail price that has never existed. Steve remains, as ever, hypothetical, which is more than can be said for some of the credentials below. Somewhere around 2005 I spent more time than I’ll admit on the Warrior…
I've been reading posts on Medium.com again. I know. I should know better by now. But it remains an excellent source of material for someone with my particular interests, which is to say, watching people sell things and thinking about what they're actually selling. This week I found an article about using Pinterest to sell digital products on Gumroad. The article contained three links to digital…
The $647 Lie-Down With Lights There is something almost beautiful about the simplicity of relaxation. You lie down. You close your eyes. You listen to something calming. You stay there for twenty minutes. This is not complicated. Which is why the internet has been working very hard to complicate it. BrainTap is a system built around an app and a headset. The app costs $29.99 a month (about £24 for…
The First Sale System Steve the Hypothetical Gerbil's summary, for those in a hurry: A Medium confessional leads to a Gumroad page selling AI prompts that generate the exact kind of digital product the Medium confessional was written to sell you. Both come with a "proof" screenshot. The two screenshots are the same screenshot. I have seen better-constructed nests made from a single sock. There is…
How a discredited 1930s cancer treatment became a five-star Amazon category Steve the Hypothetical Gerbil's summary, for those in a hurry: A German doctor made coffee enemas central to a 1930s alternative cancer regimen. It didn't work, and cancer organisations still warn it can be dangerous. Nearly a century later, Amazon sells the kit with next-day delivery, and the reviews are the most honest…
When Real Science Becomes Luxury Supplement Theatre Image: Men's Health, accessed 9 July 2026. Reproduced under fair dealing for the purposes of criticism and review. TL;DR (Steve says): IM8 is not fake. That is what makes it interesting. It is a real company, with real credentials, real ingredients, and at least some real science behind it. But the marketing wraps that reality in pricing…
Or: How Facebook Keeps Showing Me the Same Medical Scam in Different Shoes I'm 71 years old. Facebook knows this. Facebook also appears to believe I am one twinge away from buying any vibrating plastic device placed in front of me by a man in a white coat. It is not entirely wrong about the twinges. I get these ads constantly. Bad backs. Creaky knees. Stiff shoulders. Burning feet. Collapsing…