Push Against US Dollar

Countries around the world have embarked on an irreversible agenda to divorce from the US dollar, according to veteran investment guru Matthew Piepenburg.

In a new interview at the Deutsche Goldmesse conference with the Soar Financially YouTube channel, Piepenburg, partner at emerging markets-focused Matterhorn Asset Management, says that economic powerhouses are now clearly attempting to “break ranks” with dollar supremacy.

He says that the raising of interest rates by the U.S. Federal Reserve is pushing nations like China and Russia to adopt settlement systems that don’t rely on USD.

Besides China and Russia, which are both part of the BRICS coalition, the family office guru says that 41 other countries are now following suit, perhaps concerned with the way the US has treated Russia during its conflict with Ukraine.

“So when that dollar gets higher, because Powell is raising the rates, that becomes more onerous and painful for the rest of the world and they begin to break ranks. Asia in general, China and Russia in particular are very big rank-breaking nations. And, of course, they’re bringing 41 other countries alongside to have trade settlements outside the US dollar.

And so there’s no doubt that the weaponization of the dollar, even the petrodollar comes into this because there’s threats to the petrodollar market and the demand of the petrodollar and the strong dollar. So a strong dollar was a real gut punch for years it became even more of a gut punch when we weaponized that dollar when we took Russia off of the STR and the SWIFT and of course froze its FX reserves. Other countries raise their eyebrows in alarm and looked differently in our thinking of ways to go around and break with the dollar.”   READ MORE...

US Crime

 

Harry Belafonte

 

Quantum AI Braids Non-Abelian Anyons

Researchers were able to observe the curious effects of braiding non-Abelian anyons for the first time. Credit: Google Quantum AI

Google Quantum AI has observed non-Abelian anyons for the first time, a breakthrough that could revolutionize quantum computing by making it more robust to noise and leading to topological quantum computation.

Our intuition tells us that it should be impossible to see whether two identical objects have been swapped back and forth, and for all particles observed to date, that has been the case. Until now.


Non-Abelian anyons — the only particles that have been predicted to break this rule — have been sought for their fascinating features and their potential to revolutionize quantum computing by making the operations more robust to noise. Microsoft and others have chosen this approach for their quantum computing effort. But after decades of efforts by researchers in the field, observing non-Abelian anyons and their strange behavior has proven challenging, to say the least.

In a paper published in the journal Nature on May 11, researchers at Google Quantum AI announced that they had used one of their superconducting quantum processors to observe the peculiar behavior of non-Abelian anyons for the first time ever. They also demonstrated how this phenomenon could be used to perform quantum computations. 

Earlier this week the quantum computing company Quantinuum released another study on the topic, complementing Google’s initial discovery. These new results open a new path toward topological quantum computation, in which operations are achieved by winding non-Abelian anyons around each other like strings in a braid.

Google Quantum AI team member and first author of the manuscript, Trond I. Andersen says, “Observing the bizarre behavior of non-Abelian anyons for the first time really highlights the type of exciting phenomena we can now access with quantum computers.”  READ MORE...

Its Just MJ

 

The Endless Game of Life

What bothers me more than anything else in life, aside from Liberal Stupidity, is that I had no say so in my birth.  I had no choice in my skin color, in my personality, in my mental or physical abilities, my location, or the year that I was going to be born into.

While my choices were my own and may have been influence by others and events like the Vietnam War, I am convinced that my life is predetermined and that who I am today and will be in the future had already been decided before my birth.  Of course, there are many people smarter than me who disagree with me...  but, this is what I believe.

Because of my birth, I was automatically put into a situation where I was given so many years to live.  After which, I die but who really knows what happens then with my spirit.  Does it enter another body?  Does it live forever as a spirit?  Does it float aimlessly in the universe?  Can it travel between dimensions or back and forth in time?  Can it travel to other galaxies?

No one really knows those answers but to me they are valid questions.  In the meantime, I am here on earth, in the USA, in the state of Tennessee, living in a community that is full of other retirees, spending the last 20 years of my life, differently than I spent the first 74 years of life.

What exactly does that mean?

First of all, I am retired...  not working for myself or for an employer.  Receiving social security and living off my savings for the rest.  I retired in 2015, So, I am in my 8th year of retirement.

Second of all, my health is not the best although I feel relatively healthy, mainly because I eat healthy and exercise.  But, I am fighting cancer, have had a massive heart attack, and had 5 lower back disks fused a year ago which has dramatically altered my lifestyle.  Others may not be as fortunate as me.

Third of all, my days are all pretty much the same.  I wake up anywhere from 7am to 9am, drink coffee while watching the news, work on my blogs and novels, walk, cook meals for a couple of days, watch no more than 1-2 hours of a series or 1 movie, then I am off to bed.

This routine might change if there is a doctor's appointment, or my wife and I need to do some shopping.  It could also be disrupted by neighbors in the community who want to visit, or if we decide to go out to eat.

Obviously, when we go on vacation this routine is violated.  We have traveled all over but recently we have just been spending a week or two at Myrtle Beach.

Finally this routine is violated with yardwork which typically happens once a week from April to October/November.  Yardwork usually lasts about 2 hours and consists of mowing and trimming.

There is one good issue here that I failed to mention and that is that I am never bored and/or sit around trying to think of something to do.

Racing

 

Problems with Electric Cars

DRIVERS have been issued an urgent warning regarding serious problems with electric cars despite their soaring popularity.

Electric vehicle technology is improving at a rapid pace, with a wider choice of cars and advancements in overall range, battery efficiency and public charging availability.

It's seen sales of electric cars become increasingly popular across the globe.

The latest figures released by the International Energy Agency (IEA) suggest almost one-in-five new cars sold worldwide this year will be either full battery electric or plug-in hybrid models.

In total, 14 million EVs are expected to be sold this year, up from around a million in 2017.

But although electrification of the global vehicle fleet brings less pollution, there is also cause for concern.

EV's are by no means perfect and there are some issues which appear to be putting a real dampener on increasing sales, reports NewScientist.

SUVs have been growing in popularity in recent years, accounting for 42 per cent of all car sales in 2020.

And electric SUVs have also gained ground, representing roughly 35 per cent of electric passenger car sales in 2022.

Christian Brand at the University of Oxford has labelled trend towards larger cars a “mobesity” epidemic.  READ MORE...

Motivation

 

Laser Aircraft Carrier

 

Breakthrough in Fusion Energy

After generations of trying to produce the power of a star on Earth, a successful nuclear fusion ignition happened in the middle of a December night and was over in 20-billionths of a second.

That’s more than 100 billion times shorter than the Wright Brothers’ first, 12-second flight — but a brief, shining moment that could have even bigger implications for humanity.

But while the science teams at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are still buzzing over their Wright-Brothers moment, we only remember that name because their third flight stayed in the sky for 39 minutes.

The nuclear fusion reaction must be repeated, extended and scaled before the comparison sticks. And the race is on to make it work.

“But that’s what makes it so exciting, right?” lead scientist Tammy Ma told CNN. “The potential is so great for clean, abundant, limitless, affordable energy. It will be tough. It won’t be easy. But it’s worth doing.”

Ma’s office is a giant box of lasers the size of three football fields in the corner of a 7,000-acre lab in Livermore. Running across the soaring white ceilings are miles of square tubes holding 192 of the most energetic lasers in the world, all snaking toward a round room at the center.

The very middle of this target chamber becomes the hottest place in the solar system every time they run a fusion experiment, and it is covered with enough gleaming machinery that J.J. Abrams used it to portray the warp core of the USS Enterprise in “Stark Trek Into Darkness.”

With a legacy of delays and cost overruns, the National Ignition Facility was wryly nicknamed the “National Almost Ignition Facility,” or “NAIF,” by critics in Congress. If not for its work studying nuclear weaponry without the need for test explosions, the program might have lost funding years ago.

But now, for the first time since breaking ground in 1997, the National Ignition Facility can finally live up to its name. In December, 192 of the most energetic lasers in the world heated up a tiny pellet of hydrogen atoms with such force, they fused together to create helium and — most importantly — excess energy.

A little more than 2 megajoules of energy going into the target chamber became 3.15 megajoules coming out — a modest gain of around 50%, but enough to make history and allow scientists to call the experiment a true success.

The five attempts since have all failed to repeat it.  READ MORE...

Sky Flash

 

Buc-ee's

 Buc-ee's in Sevierville, TN will be the largest store in the USA at 74,000 square feet but the record will soon be broken with a 75,000 square foot store in TX...

The Buc-ee's in Sevierville will have 120 gasoline pumps and according to the law, each pump tank can only hold 1,100 gallons which means, this store will only be able to have 132,000 gallons underground.

Why is this important to me?

If a new place like Buc-ee's is going to invest that much money in underground storage, then the management of the company is not too worried about gasoline vehicles being replaced by Electric Vehicles.

Between 2023 and 2030 when this 100% EV situation might take place, Buc-ee's might be making so much money, that they will not care about switching to ELECTRIC.

Personally, I don't think 100% EV compliance will take place before 2040... l especially with the enormous cost of switching over and the availability of petroleum crude oil throughout our country.

DON'T SPEND MONEY UNLESS YOU HAVE TO....  or, unless you are a billionaire and need a tax write off.

Kissing

 

Global Control of AI Needed

FILE - Computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton, who studies neural networks used in artificial intelligence applications, poses at Google's Mountain View, Calif, headquarters on March 25, 2015. Hinton, a computer scientist known as the "godfather of artif".

 (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File / AP Newsroom)

Geoffrey Hinton, who recently resigned from his position as Google's vice president of engineering to sound the alarm about the dangers of artificial intelligence, cautioned in an interview published Friday that the world needs to find a way to control the tech as it develops.

The "godfather of AI" told EL PAÍS via videoconference that he believed a letter calling for a sixth-month-long moratorium on training AI systems more powerful than OpenAI's GPT-4 is "completely naive" and that the best he can recommend is that many very intelligence minds work to figure out "how to contain the dangers of these things."

"AI is a fantastic technology – it’s causing great advances in medicine, in the development of new materials, in forecasting earthquakes or floods… [but we] need a lot of work to understand how to contain AI," Hinton urged. "There’s no use waiting for the AI to outsmart us; we must control it as it develops. We also have to understand how to contain it, how to avoid its negative consequences."

For instance, Hinton believes all governments insist that fake images be flagged.  The scientist said that the best thing to do now is to "put as much effort into developing this technology as we do into making sure it’s safe" – which he says is not happening right now.

"How [can that be] accomplished in a capitalist system? I don’t know," Hinton noted.  When asked about sharing concerns with colleagues, Hinton said that many of the smartest people he knows are "seriously concerned."

"We’ve entered completely unknown territory. We’re capable of building machines that are stronger than ourselves, but we’re still in control. But what if we develop machines that are smarter than us?" he asked. "We have no experience dealing with these things."

Hinton says there are many different dangers to AI, citing job reduction and the creation of fake news. Hint on noted that he now believes AI may be doing things more efficiently than the human brain, with models like ChatGPT having the ability to see thousands of times more data than anyone else.

"That’s what scares me," he said.     READ MORE...

BeeGees

 

Mothers Day

 

My Mother

My mother died about 5 years ago, just before her 96 birthday.  She lived a long full life after being born and raised in Winston-Salem, NC.  She only attended college for a semester due to financial constraints but compensated by reading as many books as she could, doing research in the public library, talking with scholars, and visiting historical sites all over the world.  She was well traveled in the US, Mexico, Canada, Scandanavia, Europe, Russia, India, China, the Middle & Far East, and Australia.

I would not be far off if I made the claim that she read a book a week, 50 books a year for 60 years...  which would work out to about 300 books during her lifetime.  The books were best sellers, historical, religious, archeological, etc.

Each summer we took a two week vacation that was totally based upon education.  In the car, she would read a book out loud about the site we were going to visit.  When the family traveled through Europe on our way to Cairo, Egypt, my mother had me read The Agony and The Exstacy learn about Michelangelo.

My mother, when we lived in Alexandria, VA took me to all sorts of museums and art galleries in Washington, DC and well as to the National Theater to see Broadway Plays:  My Fair Lady, Carousel, West Side Story, The Music Man, and several others.  Not sure why she took me and not my sister and I never thought to ask her.

My mother, more than my father, had a huge impact on my life and she will always be in my mind and heart until the day I die.

Classic Sunday Morning Newspaper Cartoons

 

USA