Thursday, March 30

Mr. Tambourine Man

 

AI & the Human Condition

 Americans love technology...  Technology companies love technology even more, because of all the revenues it generates...  Technology is making lots of people wealthy as Americans demand more and more technology to make their lives easier and more enjoyable...


LIFE, LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT 

OF HAPPINESS...


We have smart phones and cmputers

We have smart homes and vehicles

We have the internet and social media forums

We have advances in medical technology/surgeries

We have advances in building construction/aircraft

We have Artificial Intelligent Robots that are replacing jobs...


And, it is this last point that, I personally, will become a huge problem once it is incorporated into our lifestyles and into our societies all over the world.

I enjoy watching Scifi movies where robots take over society because they have become sentient.  While this may or may not happen (?), it will be several decades before it does and by then we will have safeguards built into our programming codes to prevent this from ever happening.


However... until then...      AI/ROBOTS will change our society forever and many people are now believing it will not be for the better...


The biggest concern will be the replacement of jobs and what will those displaced workers do???

  • Will they remain unemployed
  • Will they be retrained
  • Will they built robots


What jobs will be replaced?

  1. customer service executives
  2. bookkeeping, data entry, receptionists
  3. manufacturing 
  4. pharmaceutical
  5. retail and courier services
  6. doctors and soldiers
  7. taxi and bus drivers
  8. market research analysts
  9. security guards
  10. restaurant workers


The World Economic Forum (2023) declared that AI/ROBOTS would replace 80,000,000 jobs in 2025.  This is only 2 years away...  what will happen between 2025-2030?  


Technology is moving faster than anticipated and that progression is like a tidal wave and once it crests and begins to fall, the chaos will be devastating...  and when that happens, how quick will OUR GOVERNMENT respond?

Manipulating Quantum LIght


Scientists stand ready to manipulate quantum light, just as Albert Einstein envisioned in 1916.

Researchers from the University of Sydney and the University of Basel successfully managed to manipulate and identify small numbers of interacting photons—packets of light energy. 

According to the team, this work represents an unprecedented landmark development for quantum technologies.

Stimulated light emission—a theory first proposed by Einstein in 1916 that helps explain how photons can trigger atoms to emit other photons—laid the basis for the invention of the laser (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation). 

It’s long been understood for large numbers of photons, but this new research has allowed scientists to both observe and effect stimulated emission for single photons for the first time. Researchers measured the direct time delay between one photon and a pair of bound photons scattering off a single quantum dot, a type of artificially created atom.

“This opens the door to the manipulation of what we can call ‘quantum light,’” Sahand Mahmoodian, of the University of Sydney School of Physics and joint lead author of a research paper published in Nature Physics, says in a news release

“This fundamental science opens the pathway for advances in quantum-enhanced measurement techniques and photonic quantum computing.  READ MORE...

Walmart VERSUS Morons


Read this all the way through. It is eye opening and factually true in every respect.


1. Americans spend $36,000,000 at Wal-Mart Every hour of every day.

2. This works out to $20,928 profit every minute!

3. Wal-Mart will sell more from January 1 to St. Patrick's Day (March 17th) than Target sells all year.

4. Wal-Mart is bigger than Home Depot + Kroger + Target +Sears + Costco + K-Mart combined.

5. Wal-Mart employs 1.6 million people, is the world's largest private employer, and most speak English.

6. Wal-Mart is the largest company in the history of the world.

7. Wal-Mart now sells more food than Kroger and Safeway combined, and keep in mind they did this in only fifteen years.

8. During this same period, 31 big supermarket chains sought bankruptcy.

9. Wal-Mart now sells more food than any other store in the world.

10. Wal-Mart has approx 3,900 stores in the USA of which 1,906 are Super Centers; this is 1,000 more than it had five years ago.

11. This year 7.2 billion different purchasing experiences will occur at Wal-Mart stores. (Earth's population is approximately 6.5 Billion.)

12. 90% of all Americans live within fifteen miles of a Wal-Mart.

You may think that I am complaining, but I am really laying the groundwork for suggesting that MAYBE we should hire the guys who run Wal-Mart to fix the U.S. economy.

This should be read and understood by all Americans. Democrats, Republicans, Independents, EVERYONE!!

To all 435 voting members of congress and the 100 members of the US Senate.  The majority of you are corrupt morons!

Consider your record and reflect on your performance:
a..The U.S. Postal Service was established in 1775.

You have had 246 years to get it right and it is broke.

Stamps cost .58 cents and they may be going up on November 10th to .60 cents

b.. Social Security was established in 1935.

You have had 86 years to get it right and it is broke.

c.. Fannie Mae was established in 1938.

You have had 71 years to get it right and it is broke.

d. The War on Poverty started in 1964.

You have had 57 years to get it right; it never went anywhere and you stole from our Social Security Fund. $1 trillion of our money is confiscated each year and transferred to "the poor" and you want more!

e.. Medicare and Medicaid were established in 1965.

You have had 56 years to get it right and they are broke.

f. Freddie Mac was established in 1970.

You have had 51 years to get it right and it is broke.

g. The Department of Energy was created in 1977 to lessen our dependence on foreign oil. It has ballooned to 16,000 employees with a budget of $24 billion a year and we import more oil than ever before.

You had 44 years to get it right and it is an abysmal failure.

h.. Currently, gasoline is at a record all time high and inflation is the highest it's been in 40 years!

You have FAILED in every "government service" you have shoved down our throats while overspending our tax dollars.

We have a President that had 36 years of experience as a U.S. senator and 8 years as Vice- President. A President that promised to "Build Back Better", our current President is the epitome of a corrupt career politician! We elected an immoral, unethical freeloader that never had a plan except to live on the public dole, a scoundrel who bends the way the political winds blow and can't even finish a sentence without losing his train of thought. Not that he ever had an original thought!

AND YOU WANT AMERICANS TO BELIEVE YOU CAN BE TRUSTED WITH A GOVERNMENT-RUN ANYTHING??

Folks, keep this circulating. Maybe it will end up in the emails of some of our 'duly elected' (they never read anything) but maybe their staff will clue them in on how Americans feel. If you don't think we need to drain the swamp then you just don't plain think!

And please try to understand what's wrong.

We have lost our minds to corrupt career politicians and "Political Correctness"! Someone, please tell me what the HELL's wrong with the people that run this country! We are begging Venezuela for oil. We're "broke" & can't help our own Seniors, Veterans, Orphans, Homeless, etc.,???????????

In the last months, we have provided aid to Haiti, Chile, and Turkey. We are funding the world on climate change! And now NATO, Afghanistan, the Ukraine, and Pakistan...previous home of bin Laden. Literally, BILLIONS of DOLLARS!!! Our retired seniors living on a 'fixed income' receive no aid as our southern borders are overrun by illegals

AMERICA: a country where we have homeless without shelter, children going to bed hungry, elderly going without 'needed' meds, and mentally ill without treatment -etc., etc. We can't take proper care of our citizens. However, Illegals get everything free!!! They are put up in hotels fed meal health care and cash. Imagine if the *Federal GOVERNMENT* gave 'US' the same support they give to illegals and other countries.

The difference between genius and stupid is that genius has its limits. Albert Einstein


Ego


 

The Beach


 

Thursday OpEd


 According to healthcare statistics, almost 72% of Americans over the age of 20 are overweight...  40% are obese...


According to the World Health Organization (WHO), someone who is overweight has a BMI (Body Mass Index) of 25...  someone who is obese has a BMI of 30...

BMI is calculated by taking one's weight and divided that number by the square of one's height...

There is very little difference between a BMI of 25 and a BMI of 30... so, I would say that 72% of Americans over the age of  20 have a weight problem...  and yet, most of our advertising revolves around getting people to eat more and more and more...

It is not illegal yet to sell fat creating food therefore there is no reason to stop advertising for people to eat fat creating food.  Like all other businesses, fat creating food companies continually want to increase their PROFITS...

The other part of of this issue is that it costs more to buy heathly food than it does to buy fat creating food...  so, if you are in a financial crunch, you are going to buy fat creating food.

I had a slim and trim body with a normal BMI until about the age of 60 when I was diagnosed with cancer and took steroids to prevent sickness with my treatments.  After 150 treatments, I had gained 50 pounds and it took me a year to lose 30 pounds by concentrating on not eating much each day.  Exercise does not take weight off...  it simply maintains the weight you have.

So, at 75, I am still 20 pounds overweight which might be considered obese...  I just have not looked at it in that detail.  My activity level has dropped and my eating level should have dropped as well but it hasn't.  Most of my eating is just having something to do, sometimes while I am doing something else and don't really need it.

It bothers me to be overweight but it bothers me even more to see people in their 20s more overweight than I am...  as they get older and older it is going to adversely impact their health.

That will cause healthcare costs to increase as more and more overweight people begin to have health problems.

There will be unintended consequences of overweight Americans in the future as the younger population ages...   like other issues, we will not be worried about that until those problems arrive...  by then, it will be too late for them but maybe help those who have yet to be born.

I have no idea why Americans are on this binge of not caring about being overweight or obese.

A New Life


 

Reassurance


 

Particles


 

The Einstein Tile


A 13-sided tile called “the hat” forms a pattern that covers an infinite plane yet it cannot repeat, making it a long-sought shape known as an “einstein.” A sample of that pattern is shown here.

D. SMITH, J.S. MYERS, C.S. KAPLAN AND C. GOODMAN-STRAUSS (CC BY 4.0)






A 13-sided shape known as “the hat” has mathematicians tipping their caps.

It’s the first true example of an “einstein,” a single shape that forms a special tiling of a plane: Like bathroom floor tile, it can cover an entire surface with no gaps or overlaps but only with a pattern that never repeats.

“Everybody is astonished and is delighted, both,” says mathematician Marjorie Senechal of Smith College in Northampton, Mass., who was not involved with the discovery. Mathematicians had been searching for such a shape for half a century. “It wasn’t even clear that such a thing could exist,” Senechal says.

Although the name “einstein” conjures up the iconic physicist, it comes from the German ein Stein, meaning “one stone,” referring to the single tile. The einstein sits in a weird purgatory between order and disorder. Though the tiles fit neatly together and can cover an infinite plane, they are aperiodic, meaning they can’t form a pattern that repeats.

With a periodic pattern, it’s possible to shift the tiles over and have them match up perfectly with their previous arrangement. An infinite checkerboard, for example, looks just the same if you slide the rows over by two. While it’s possible to arrange other single tiles in patterns that are not periodic, the hat is special because there’s no way it can create a periodic pattern.  READ MORE...

Turn Turn Turn

 

Wednesday, March 29

Rolling Stones

 

Guaranteed Recession in 2023

Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell testifies before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs on 'The Semiannual Monetary Policy Report to the Congress', at Capitol Hill in Washington on Tuesday, July 17, 2018. Jose Luis Magana/AP

From the central bank's latest rate hike to new developments in the ongoing bank crisis, a lot has happened in my absence.

Jerome Powell and co. indicated Wednesday that, financial turmoil or not, more rate hikes could be coming this year.

Markets, on the other hand, expect something else entirely. Futures are pricing in a minimal chance that the Fed's target rate will be the same or higher by 2024, according to CME's FedWatch tool.

This means the Fed and investors are on dramatically different pages (and only one can be correct).

And all the while, Jerome Powell's favorite bond-market indicator is quietly telling us that a recession is all but guaranteed this year.

1. Powell's preferred Treasury indicator is the spread between the yield on three-month Treasury bills and their expected yield in 18 months' time.

On Thursday, the spread inverted by a record 134 basis points. That's steeper than the previous record set in January 2001, two months before a recession struck, Bloomberg reports.


Talk of basis points, yield spreads, and other market jargon is obscuring the key message here: Markets think a recession is guaranteed in 2023.

Remember, an inverted yield curve suggests investors see more risk in the near term. It's a classic warning for a downturn.

Here's how Powell described the indicator last year:

"Frankly, there's good research by staff in the Federal Reserve system that really says to look at the short — the first 18 months — of the yield curve. That's really what has 100% of the explanatory power of the yield curve. It makes sense. Because if it's inverted, that means the Fed's going to cut, which means the economy is weak."  READ MORE...

Crossdressing


 

Cute


 

Truth


 

Living in a UTOPIA

 UTOPIA means an imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect.

PERFECT means conforming absolutely to an ideal type.


Based upon those two definitions, a UTOPIA will never exist but we can imagine

My UTOPIA would include the following:

1.  Everyone would live disease free wit hthe body of a 60 year old for 150 years

2.  Everyone would have all the food, shelter, transportation,  clothing and vacations they ever whether they worked or not

3. Since work is optional, there would be no need for education except for the pleasure of pursuing knowledge

4.  There would be no wars - no agression or terrorism of anykind

5.  What would we do all day?

  • fornicate
  • eat
  • drink
  • walk around
  • take photographs
  • paint pictures
  • sail in boats
  • spend time at a beach
  • write
  • play with animals
  • grow flowers
  • hunt wild animals
  • travel around the world
  • worship
  • exercise

6.  Anything that you ever wanted to do or own would be free

7.  No taxes would be collected

8. Suicide would be outlawed

9.  If you commited a crime, your freedoms and all privileges would be taken away

10.  There would be no competition of any sort as no one likes to lose

11.  There would be no need for marriage and if children were born, the the government would take care of them, if the couple having children did not want them

12.  If you wanted to get a home bigger than your current needs, then you would need to get married and have children or work

13.  The need for greed would be satisfied with work

14.  The need for power and control would be satisfied with work

15.  If one worked, they worked as long as they wanted and then they could leave

16.  Work would be considered a form of slavery as someone would always be working for someone else

17.  No one could take another person's property

18.  All laws could be challenged in court

19.  There would be no governments nor would there be any countries

20.  You could not disrupt another person's happiness or pursuit of happiness without breaking the law

Music


 

Native American


 

Starseed


 

Hummoid Robots


Humanoid robots are advanced robots that are designed to look and move like humans. They are often equipped with sensors and cameras that allow them to recognize human faces and emotions, respond to voice commands and carry out conversations. Humanoid robots can be programmed to perform a wide range of tasks, such as assisting humans in daily activities, working in manufacturing plants, providing healthcare services, and performing search and rescue operations in hazardous environments.

Compared to conventional robots, humanoid robots provide a number of benefits. One of their main advantages is that they can communicate with people in a more intuitive and natural way. They are, therefore, ideal for fields like education, healthcare and customer service, where human interaction is crucial.

Humanoid robots have a lot of potential, but they are still in the early phases of development and have many obstacles to overcome. One of the biggest issues is their high price, which prevents many businesses and individuals from using them. Furthermore, the creation of humanoid robots demands highly developed engineering abilities as well as expertise in a variety of disciplines, including robotics, artificial intelligence and materials science.

Here are advanced humanoid robots in the world to know.

Atlas
Developed by Boston Dynamics, Atlas is a 1.8-meter-tall humanoid robot designed to perform tasks in rough terrain. It is capable of walking on uneven surfaces and can lift heavy weights. Its advanced capabilities enable it to navigate through difficult terrains and debris to locate and rescue people.

The Atlas robot is appropriate for use in industrial settings since it can move large objects and carry out jobs that are hazardous for people. It is capable of performing precise and accurate assembly lines, welding and painting jobs.

Asimo
Developed by Honda, Asimo is a humanoid robot that is designed to perform tasks like running, walking and climbing stairs. It has advanced sensors that allow it to navigate through complex environments.

Asimo has been used extensively in the fields of research, education and engineering to study human physiology, robotics engineering and human-robot interaction. Researchers now have a better understanding of how to create robots that interact with people in a more intuitive and natural way.  READ MORE...

Jimi Hendricks

 

Tuesday, March 28

Future Predictions with Michio Kaku

 

Born Southern White - Raised a Democrat

 Raleigh, North Carolina was my place of birth and 2-3 years later, the family moved to just outside of Alexandria, Virginia which was just outside of Washington, DC.


Our house was less than 1,000 square feet of space that included 1.5 bathrooms, 3 small bedrooms, a kitchen, dinning room/living area.  We had one vehicle that had no heating or air conditioning as my father said we could wear a coat or sweater if too cold and roll down the window if too hot.  We had heat in the house but no air conditioning.  My father caught a bus for the 8 mile ride to his job in Washington.  My mother operated off a very tight budget and each payday, my dad would put money in envelopes for my mother to use.  If there was not money in the envelope, then we did not buy anything from that envelope.  If we needed extra money for whatever, it was taken from the vacations envelope.


We had chores to do everyday that included making our beds.  My dad used his military training to test the quality of how well the bed was made.  We had to help clean the house and prepare for meals and in the summer, we had chores outside to do to keep the lawn properly manicured.  I sold tomatoes and cucumbers door-to-door in the summer for spending money but had to save half of what I earned.  We went to sunday school and church every sunday, even when we were on vacation.  This process contined until I graduated from high school.


Values of the Democratic Party were drilled into our heads during the dinner meal as we also talked local politics as well as world politics.  Our parents making sure we fully understood that the Democrats helped the middle class and poor class and the Republicans favored the business sector and the wealthy who lived off the hard work of the rest of us.


Oddly enough, my Democratic parents did not believe in a large government nor did they believe in government handouts.  They believe every person should have the courage to build himself up with hard work and persistence.  They were against socialism.


Their indoctrination stayed with me until 1982 when I graduated from Wake Forest University with an MBA.  I was 35 years old.


It was easy to realize based upon my new training that my parents were not totally correct in what they believed about business and wealthy people.  It was also about that same time that the Democratic Party was changing as they began giving out more and more entitlements and taking us closer to socialism.


Supply side economics was correct.  If you stimulate the supply side of the equation, the demand side will automatically respond in kind.  Stimulating the demand only creates inflation and a shortage of supply.  Increased wages will not cause businesses to produce more.  It will cause them to produce less in order to preserve profits.  Stockholders control the busnesses and stockholders are made up of people like you and me...


While I now gravitate towards the conservative points of view, I am not yet a Republican because some of their views I have yet to agree with.  In any event, Government should stay the hell out of our lives.  I am for a small government, a strong military for defense, and low taxes.  Government should not be telling me what I should or should not eat, if I should smoke cigarettes or not, if I should drink alcohol or not, or if I should have an abortion.  THOSE ARE MY DECISIONS and MINE ALONE...


Frustrated EV Owners


A recent study by JD Power found that EV owners have become increasingly frustrated with their home charging experience for several reasons, including higher electricity rates and charging speeds.
Declining home charging satisfaction among EV owners

Inflation (via the Consumer Price Index) rose at the fastest rate in roughly 40 years following the pandemic, with the prices of everything from lumber to eggs soaring.

Electricity rates were no safe haven. The latest Energy Information Administration data shows average residential rates rose in the US by nearly 10% in 2022 to 14.96 cents per kilowatt-hour from 13.72 in December 2021.

According to JD Power’s recently released US Electric Vehicle Experience Home Charging Study, rising electricity rates are a significant reason for dissatisfaction with home EV charging.

Perhaps, more importantly, the study also shows only 51% of EV owners had knowledge of their utility companies’ programs to assist with home charging. Adrian Chung, director of utility intelligence at JD Power, explains:

By increasing awareness of available rebates or incentives, EV owners will benefit. This can snowball into helping potential EV owners make a more informed purchase decision, as well as minimizing home charging concerns and supporting greater EV adoption.

Several utility companies offer incentives and rebates for purchasing and installing home EV charging infrastructure. For incentives in your area, you can check with your utility company, or ChargePoint has compiled a list by state.

Another reason for the falling satisfaction is charging speed. Satisfaction improved significantly when moving from a Level 1 to a Level 2 charger.

Although over two-thirds of EV owners use a Level 2 charger, this year’s study found that 2022 and 2023 EV owners are less satisfied than 2021 and 2020 owners.  READ MORE...

Gardening


 

The Majority


 

Dog Saves Cat