Lies

 

Cosmic Truths

 

De-Dollarization

This week Brazil and China (above) reached a deal to trade using their own currencies rather than the US dollar. The Chinese are fulfilling their vow from February to open up a clearing house to settle yuan-denominated trades in Brazil, having previously announced similar clearing houses in Pakistan, Kazakhstan, and Laos.

In many ways, this development is inevitable. As of 2021, China accounts for 31.3% of Brazilian exports and 22.8% of their imports, the most of any country. The United States comes a distant second, accounting for only 11.2% of Brazilian exports and 17.7% of imports. 

China has been Brazil’s largest trade partner for fourteen years. At a certain point, both parties were going to raise the question of why their trade should use a third party currency.

The same day that the Brazilian trade deal was announced, another major story hit global currency markets: China settled its first LNG trade in yuan. This development alone would be important enough to bear scrutiny given that much-vaunted status of the US dollar as an energy currency — the ‘petrodollar’ — but reading beyond the headlines reveals something even more surprising. 

The trade was not settled with an energy company in some far-off Middle Eastern country, but instead with TotalEnergies, the French supermajor. With revenues of over $182bn and more than 100,000 employees, TotalEnergies is by far the largest company in France.

This energy deal suggests that ‘yuanisation’ will not be confined to the global periphery. Until recently, suggestions that the BRICS+ countries would dump the dollar and move to new currencies was met with derision. The Brazilian trade deal puts that scepticism firmly to bed. 

But it now appears that the yuan is making inroads into Europe. While the speed of this change is shocking even to those of us paying attention, these developments were presaged by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s controversial visit to Beijing last November.  READ MORE...

Life in 2050

 

Outside the Universe

 

Human Life Span

 

Johanna Quaas, 97, is the world's oldest competitive gymnast. She's pictured here at age 92. (Image credit: ROSLAN RAHMAN / Staff via Getty Images)



Scientists have long debated the greatest possible age of a person, with previous studies placing the limit at up to 150 years. But in the past 25 years, no one has surpassed the record for the world's oldest person, held by Jean Louise Calment, who died at age 122 in 1997.

"This has led people to argue that the maximum life span has been reached," David McCarthy(opens in new tab), an assistant professor of risk management and insurance at the University of Georgia, told Live Science. 

In a new study, McCarthy and his colleagues say they've uncovered evidence that this longevity record will be broken within the next four decades. The team did not propose a maximum age that humans can live to, but rather, they used a mathematical model to project what mortality trends might look like in upcoming years.

However, not everyone agrees with the team's conclusions, experts told Live Science.

In the study, published March 29 in the journal PLOS One(opens in new tab), the scientists analyzed mortality data from hundreds of millions of people in 19 countries who were born between the 1700s and the late 1900s, up to 1969. 

They tweaked an existing mathematical model to explore how the mortality rates among people ages 50 to 100 differed in people with different birth years. They then used this information to predict the ages that people may reach in the future.  READ MORE...

Men and gods

 

Greener

 

Keyboard

 

Invasion of Privacy

 Without my knowledge or approval, whenever I perform a google search on an item I am curious about, information about that item shows up on my phone, on my facebook account, and on my news feed.  

If I am curious about hydrogen cars, then I get ads about hydrogen cars.

If I search for hearing aids, then I get ads about hearing aids.

If I am curious about what an EV is selling for, then I get ads for EVs.

I disregard the ads and it is no big deal, except for the fact that someone is tracking me and what I am looking at and then trying to sell me those items...  If I was browsing in a shopping mall, they would not be able to do that.  

When I am approached like that, when it is uninvited, then the last thing I am going to do is buy from you...  just for spite, I will buy from someone else who did not pester me.

This may be the weay the world is right now, but I am not going to play their games.

Lots of people admire the pesistence of someone who pesters people...  and, I don't deny that those who pester might one day become very wealthy as a result, but not from me.

This invasion of privacy is going to come back and haunt us one day...  but then it will be too late.

Retired Vets

 

Aging

 

Interesting Facts

Glass takes one million years to decompose, which means it never wears out and can be recycled an infinite amount of times!





Gold is the only metal that doesn't rust, even if it's buried in the ground for thousands of years.





When a person dies hearing is the last sense to go. The first sense lost is sight.





Your tongue is the only muscle in your body that is attached at only one end.





The tooth is the only part of the human body that cannot heal itself.





If you stop getting thirsty, you need to drink more water. When a human body is dehydrated, its thirst mechanism shuts off.





Zero is the only number that cannot be represented by Roman numerals.


Kites were used in the American Civil War to deliver letters and newspapers.


The song Auld Lang Syne is sung at the stroke of midnight in almost every English-speaking country in the world to bring in the new year.


Drinking water after eatingreduces the acid in your mouth by 61 percent. Drinking a glass of water before you eat may help digestion and curb appetite.


Peanut oil is used for cooking in submarines because it doesn't smoke unless it's heated above 450F.


The roar that we hear when we place a seashell next to our ear is not the ocean, but rather the sound of blood surging through the veins in the ear.


Nine out of every 10 living things live in the ocean.





The banana cannot reproduce itself. It can be propagated only by the hand of man.





Airports at higher altitudesrequire a longer airstrip due to lower air density.





The University of Alaska spans four time zones.





In ancient Greece,tossing an apple to a girl was a traditional proposal of marriage. Catching it meant she accepted.





Warner Communicationspaid 28 million for the copyright to the song Happy Birthday, which was written in 1935!





Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.





A comet's tail always points away from the sun.





Caffeine increases the power of aspirin and other painkillers, that is why it is found in some medicines.





The military salute is a motion that evolved from medieval times, when knights in armor raised their visors to reveal their identity.





If you get into the bottom of a well or a tall chimney and look up,you can see stars, even in the middle of the day.





In ancient timesstrangers shook hands to show that they were unarmed.


Strawberries and cashews are the only fruits whose seeds grow on the outside.





Avocadoshave the highest calories of any fruit at 167 calories per hundred grams.


The moonmoves about two inches away from the Earth each year.


The Earth gets 100 tons heavier every day due to falling space dust.





Due to earth's gravity it is impossible for mountains to be higher than 15,000 meters.


Mickey Mouse is known as "Topolino" in Italy





Soldiers do not march in step when going across bridges because they could set up a vibration which could be sufficient to knock the bridge down.


Everything weighs one percent less at the equator.


For every extra kilogramcarried on a space flight, 530 kg of excess fuel are needed at lift-off.





The letter J does not appear anywhere on the periodic table of the elements.


And last but not least:


This is called 'Money Bags.'So send this on to 5 people and money will arrive in 5 days. Based on Chinese Feng Shui, the one who does not pass this on will have money troubles for the rest of the year.

Pausing Chat GPT

AN open letter signed by hundreds of prominent artificial intelligence experts, tech entrepreneurs, and scientists calls for a pause on the development and testing of AI technologies more powerful than OpenAI’s language model GPT-4 so that the risks it may pose can be properly studied.

It warns that language models like GPT-4 can already compete with humans at a growing range of tasks and could be used to automate jobs and spread misinformation. The letter also raises the distant prospect of AI systems that could replace humans and remake civilization.

“We call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4 (including the currently-being-trained GPT-5),” states the letter, whose signatories include Yoshua Bengio, a professor at the University of Montreal considered a pioneer of modern AI, historian Yuval Noah Harari, Skype cofounder Jaan Tallinn, and Twitter CEO Elon Musk.

The letter, which was written by the Future of Life Institute, an organization focused on technological risks to humanity, adds that the pause should be “public and verifiable,” and should involve all those working on advanced AI models like GPT-4. It does not suggest how a halt on development could be verified, but adds that “if such a pause cannot be enacted quickly, governments should step in and institute a moratorium,” something that seems unlikely to happen within six months.

Microsoft and Google did not respond to requests for comment on the letter. The signatories seemingly include people from numerous tech companies that are building advanced language models, including Microsoft and Google. Hannah Wong, a spokesperson for OpenAI, says the company spent more than six months working on the safety and alignment of GPT-4 after training the model. She adds that OpenAI is not currently training GPT-5.  READ MORE...

Dangerous AI

 

GPT 4 Explains

 

GPT-5 Could Change the World

GPT-4 may have only just launched, but people are already excited about the next version of the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot technology. Now, a new claim has been made that GPT-5 will complete its training this year, and could bring a major AI revolution with it.

The assertion comes from developer Siqi Chen on Twitter, who stated: “I have been told that GPT-5 is scheduled to complete training this December and that OpenAI expects it to achieve AGI.”

AGI is the concept of “artificial general intelligence,” which refers to an AI’s ability to comprehend and learn any task or idea that humans can wrap their heads around. In other words, an AI that has achieved AGI could be indistinguishable from a human in its capabilities.

That makes Chen’s claim pretty explosive, considering all the possibilities AGI might enable. At the positive end of the spectrum, it could massively increase the productivity of various AI-enabled processes, speeding things up for humans and eliminating monotonous drudgery and tedious work.

At the same time, bestowing an AI with that much power could have unintended consequences — ones that we simply haven’t thought of yet. It doesn’t mean the robot apocalypse is imminent, but it certainly raises a lot of questions about what the negative effects of AGI could be.

It should be noted that other forecasters predict that AGI will not be achieved until 2032.  READ MORE...

Our System

 

Loving KIndness