Friday, April 21
US Dollar Abandoned
As the BRICS nations have made their opinion on the currency known, more countries are moving away from the US dollar as a reserve currency. Moreover, the collective has recently expressed its desire to diminish the prevalence of the greenback within international trade.
Now, various figures are speaking out on both sides of the development. Specifically, Donald Trump took to his social media platform, Truth Social, to comment on the matter. Stating that the potential unseating of the US dollar’s dominance would be the “biggest defeat for our country in its history.”
As the BRICS nations have made their opinion on the currency known, more countries are moving away from the US dollar as a reserve currency. Moreover, the collective has recently expressed its desire to diminish the prevalence of the greenback within international trade.
Now, various figures are speaking out on both sides of the development. Specifically, Donald Trump took to his social media platform, Truth Social, to comment on the matter. Stating that the potential unseating of the US dollar’s dominance would be the “biggest defeat for our country in its history.”
Now, amidst these actions from the BRICS nations, more countries are moving away from the US dollar as a reserve currency. Importantly, the American currency is threatened by the rising prominence of China as an economic juggernaut. READ MORE...
Thursday, April 20
AGI in ChatGPT
It’s an interesting time in tech, especially with the ChatGPT craze that has put Microsoft front and center again and has even buoyed the hopes of companies like Micron that have seen a 13-year low in memory and storage but know that generative AI will inevitably fire up demand for memory chips.
On the one hand, companies want to try out ChatGPT 3.5 for cost savings with such tasks as content creation and data analysis. On the other hand, hundreds of tech leaders and scientists have recently argued against large experiments with AI that are more powerful than today’s ChatGPT and can pose profound risks to society.
There’s a great deal of middle ground between those two viewpoints, and it’s worth tracking what’s being said.
A survey by a workforce management software company called Workyard looked at 1,000 small to mid-sized digital companies and found 40% are already using ChatGPT 3.5 for automation. It isn’t clear how much the companies are relying on the tool, but Workyard concluded that it could result in cost savings.
For example, Workyard said ChatGPT 3.5 for automating social media management could possibly cut the cost of recruiting and overseeing social media managers by up to 90%. A simple online post for a product when sent to ChatGPT 3.5 under the supervision of strategists could save up to $200 a post, according to Workyard.
Using the tool in email outreach can save up to 24 cents per email based on the average cost of sending an outreach email that can reach 20 cents to 30 cents, including labor, email marketing software, data acquisition and more.
Also, for blog posts, content creation savings could be from $90 to $300 on average per post, compared to the normal cost of $100 to $500 to create social media captions, blog post headers and product descriptions.
One of the biggest areas of focus for chatbots has been for customer service. Workyard said using AI software and downsizing customer service teams can reduce employee expenses by $15,000 a month. ChapGPT- based AI tools cost $500 a month, compared to $3,000 per worker in a 10-person team. READ MORE...
Retire in Comfort
First - retiring means that you are not working full time for yourself or an employer. It means you could do nothing each day or work on hobbies that generate a little spending money. It does not mean dropping down to 30 hours a week or even 20 hours a week. I would say 10 hours a week or less would qualify as being retired.
Second - comfort is defined differently by different people. Comfort is also defined differently depending upon one's geographical location as it revolves around the cost of living in that location.
Third - being retired, in my opinion, means that you are debt free, regardless of how much money you have in your retirement plan. If you have debt, then that obligation means that you are not necessarily work free.
Multi-millionaires who have debt have no reason to worry as their money earns more interest than interest on their debt, so their are making money, in essence.
But, I am talking about only 1-10% of the population. The other 90% do not have that luxury.
Back to Comfort Retiring...
Here in East TN where I live, the cost of living to pay for essentials and taxes is right around $3,000 each month. I would say the range is $2,500 to $4,500...
The average amount of Social Security is about $1,200-$1,500 each month. If we go with the lowest amount and double it for a couple, we are looking at $2,400 each month.
If we say that the average cost of retired living is $3,500, then, that couple only needs $1,100 each month.
OR, $13,200 each year
OR, $132,000 ever decade
OR, $396,000 every three decades
Note: if one retires at 67 and lives 30 more years, then they are 97 years old which is longer than the average life span... so, $400,000 is plenty of money...
However, what about extras?
-->Like a car every 10 years - about $60,000 taking into consideration trade in value.
-->Like 4-6 vacations each year - about $8,000 each year for 15 years or $120,000.
-->Like out of pocket medical expenses or $220,000 on the outside
Therefore, now a retired couple will need another $400,000.... added to the $400,000, we are looking at around $800,000.
INTERESTINGLY - the average value of a home in the US is about $300,000.
Add these two together and one's retirement needs are $500,000
WHAT IS YOUR LEVEL OF COMFORT?
Answering this question will determine what your retirement will look like.
My retirement comfort is different than yours. I require very little to feel comfortable. My current home is larger than I really need. My current yard is larger than I really need. We have no debt. I eat healthy which costs more than buying garbage food. I exercise regularly for free by walking around the neigborhood. I live in a very quiet neighborhood. I drive my vehicle less than 9,000 miles each year. Our home was renovated before we retired to accommodate the handicapped. I enjoy being alone and spend my days writing. I don't care if my writing is published or not... the fact that I complete a lengthy novel is recognition enough for me. The only television I watch is FOX News in the mornings.
My retirement is comfortable and enjoyable, relaxing and fulfilling. I have no desire to have anything more than I already have. I don't work for money. I work for myself and am content. I keep wondering what I would do if I had tons of money and I think I would give it to charity.
What I find interesting is that millionaires and billionaires who have private jets, do so because they want to fly ALONE... with all that money, they still just want to be alone.
Rewriting Laws of the Universe
When we look out at the night sky across vast, cosmic distances using our most sensitive and advanced telescopes, we look back in time. Einstein taught us that light has a finite speed; therefore, it takes light longer to travel to us the further one looks.
Thanks to this, cosmologists have been able to see light dating back to about 14 billion years ago. This light reveals something spectacular and mysterious – the Universe is filled with a sea of energy, waves of tangled electrons and photons in the form of a hot fluid, known as a plasma. We call this plasma the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB).
We cosmologists have precise theoretical and observational evidence that this plasma underwent gravitational collapse with the aid of an invisible form of matter, called dark matter, forming the first stars and eventually forming the organised superstructure that inhabits the current Universe.
However, a mystery still lurked: the properties of this sea of energy seem to originate from what Einstein called “spooky action-at-a-distance” - objects communicating with each other at instantaneous speeds across ridiculously large distances. This is known as the horizon problem.
In 1981, my colleague, Alan Guth of MIT, proposed an elegant solution to this problem. The idea was to introduce a new player called the inflation field that filled the Universe, and whose energy caused space to expand extremely rapidly. The repulsion that arises due to gravitational effects caused by inflation neatly solves the horizon problem – it makes those regions that we thought to be spookily interacting subject to the weird, but well-confirmed, laws of quantum physics.
The theory of cosmic inflation also provided us with a physical mechanism that answers a question that had long troubled cosmologists: how did the seeds of structure originate in a seemingly featureless primordial Universe over 14 billion years ago? READ MORE...
Wednesday, April 19
Against Black History Month
Morgan Freeman tore apart the term "African-American" and argued that the celebration of
Black History Month was an "insult" during an interview with The Sunday Times.
(Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for WarnerMedia)
Actor Morgan Freeman tore apart the term "African-American" and argued that the celebration of Black History Month was an "insult" during an interview with The Sunday Times over the weekend.
"Two things I can say publicly that I do not like," Freeman said.
"Black History Month is an insult. You’re going to relegate my history to a month?"
"Also ‘African-American’ is an insult. I don’t subscribe to that title," Freeman added.
Freeman said that he did not understand why the term "African-American" has become so prominent.
"Black people have had different titles all the way back to the n-word and I do not know how these things get such a grip, but everyone uses ‘African-American.’ What does it really mean?" he asked.
Freeman also argued that people talk about "Irish-Americans" and "Italian-Americans," but not "Euro-Americans."
"And you say Africa as if it’s a country when it’s a continent, like Europe," he added. READ MORE...
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