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Then and Now
Then
> You Need 10,000 Steps A Day.
> 2010 According to the law, beginning acceptance of your IRA distributions by April 1 of the year after you reach age 70 is mandatory. Failure to do so will result in a huge penalty.
> Here’s What Top Trend Spotter Faith Popcorn Sees for 2016
By Eileen Daspin
December 30, 2015
fyi: Faith Popcorn predictions – escape, escape, escape & micro-clans
http://fortune.com/2015/12/30/faith-popcorn-predictions-2016/
We [Faith Popcorn’s BrainReserve] invented the word cocooning in 1981. Little did we know it would become super cocooning and uber- cocooning and now even bunkering. I mean, the tourism decline… 74% of Americans fear ISIS. So I think people are terrified.
Fortune Global Forum conference and [Fortune editor] Alan Murray said 40% of workers will be replaced by robots, which we’ve been saying for years. I say, robots will replace practically everything.
With the year drawing to a close, Popcorn spoke with Fortune about the ways 2015 changed our culture, the fear that robots will steal our jobs, and the real reason people are obsessed with Minecraft.
> Why A Long-Term-Disability Policy Is More Important Than Pet Insurance
by Michelle Andrews
KHN – October 11, 2017
> 2012 — The 4% Rule: The Easy Answer to “How Much Do I Need for Retirement?”
> Nobody talking about AI.
> Trump 2010 Politics
In 2010, Trump began a political transformation, shifting from generally supporting President Barack Obama to sharply criticizing him, notably promoting the discredited and racist “birther” conspiracy theory that falsely claimed Obama was not born in the United States.
That same year, the New York State authorities notified Trump University—later renamed the Trump Entrepreneur Initiative—that its use of the word “university” violated state law, as it was not an accredited academic institution.
August 2010, the Donald J. Trump Foundation donated $10,000 to Generation Rescue, a nonprofit led by Jenny McCarthy that promotes the scientifically debunked claim that vaccines cause autism.
While Trump publicly considered a presidential run in 2012, stating he was seriously thinking about it for the first time, he had not yet declared candidacy by the end of 2010.
NOW….. What has changed?
Thanks to May for sending!
Meet the Texas Democrat Who Earned Joe Rogan’s Presidential Nod
State Representative James Talarico isn’t afraid to fight Republican (TRUMP) gerrymandering—no matter what it takes.
A 36 year old middle school teacher turned politician with a A Harvard masters going for his seminary degree. Best weapon against Christian nationalists.
The Accidental Step Count Scam
That 10,000 steps goal? The real story behind it is a little wilder and less science-forward than you might think.
2025 Long term health insurance is even more important
If you or your loved ones depend on your income to cover everyday expenses and maintain your quality of life, long–term disability insurance (through your employer, purchased privately or both) can provide financial peace of mind and may be worth it depending on your financial situation.
We know Long-term exposure to outdoor air pollution linked to increased risk of dementia
We know Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was True | The New Yorker
Stanford To Continue Legacy Admissions And Withdraw From Cal Grants
According to the law, beginning acceptance of your IRA distributions by April 1 of the year after you reach age 73 is mandatory. Failure to do so will result in a huge penalty.
The 4% Rule is was never really true in the first place and is definitely so last century.
“Fred Kruger: How much Bitcoin should you own?
Here’s my answer:
Age 20: 0.1 BTC
Age 35: 1 BTC
Age 50: 10 BTC
I think if you can hit these numbers, you will be good.
For 20 year olds, you need to do whatever you can to get that first 10 Million Sats. Not easy, but doable.
For 35 year olds, you need 1 BTC more than you need that fancy car, or downpayment. In 20 years, that could be worth 10 Million. That’s your retirement.
For 50 year olds, 10 BTC should be enough to retire on in 10 years, selling some or borrowing against it.
Pump assumptions into this calculator: https://bitcoincompounding.com/
1. What is the dollar value of your bitcoin
2. What do you assume the AAR will be over the next 30 years at 4 year increments
3. What would you need to draw down to cover 4 years of expenses.
4. What’s the expected inflation rate.”
Everything is AI. Why?
Because the Technocrats Peter Thiel / Elon Musk both AfriKKKaners need to make more money.
Dead need right to delete their data against AI, lawyer says
Judge sends ChatGPT-using lawyer to AI school with $5,500 fine after he’s caught creating
Can we predict future prices of equities using AI
65% of Gen Z Concerned Over AI Consider Switch to Trade Career
Gen Z workers are questioning the value of college, rethinking corporate paths, and increasingly considering hands-on, AI-resistant careers.
AI reshapes the job market:
72% believe AI will reduce entry-level corporate job opportunities in the next 5 years, and 17% believe these roles will be eliminated outright.
65% don’t believe a college degree offers protection from AI-driven job loss.
Nearly 1 in 5 (18%) have little to no confidence their current career path will be relevant in the next 10 years.
How Gen Z Is Responding to AI Disruption
As AI accelerates, many Gen Zers are taking action:
40% are teaching themselves new skills or earning certifications.
29% are looking at entirely new industries.
18% are rage applying to jobs out of frustration.
Harvard Reveals $116 Million Investment in BlackRock Bitcoin ETF
Harvard’s investment portfolio held 977 BTC worth of shares in BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin ETF at the end of 2025’s second quarter.
The university’s holdings in the popular Bitcoin fund ranked as its fifth largest investment, just ahead of its investment in Google’s parent company Alphabet.
▓▓▓—▓▓▓—▓▓▓
Exclusive / ‘Founders Films’ aims to remake Hollywood with patriotism, Palantir and Ayn Rand https://www.semafor.com/article/07/20/2025/founders-films-aims-to-remake-hollywood-with-patriotism-palantir-and-ayn-rand
How I Watched Google’s Gemini Hallucinate and Delete My Files
https://anuraag2601.github.io/gemini_cli_disaster.html
One in six US workers pretends to use AI to please bosses
https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/22/ai_anxiety_us_workers/
Tech Billionaires Accused of Quietly Working to Implement “Corporate Dictatorship”
“Instead of democracy, we will have basically tech feudalism — fiefdoms run by tech corporations. They’re pretty explicit about this point.”
https://futurism.com/billionaires-corporate-dictatorship
US senators introduce bill to make it easier to sue over AI pirating
https://nypost.com/2025/07/22/business/us-senators-introduce-bill-to-make-it-easier-to-sue-over-ai-pirating/
THEN – THE INTERNET WORKED
YOU CAN VISIT ANY SITE
NOW
The UK now requires ID to read about Middle East politics. After this ruling, using Wikipedia could be next. Once sites require age verification for the UK, there’s little stopping them doing the same in the US.
Wikipedia operator loses court challenge to regulations under UK Online Safety Act
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/society-equity/wikipedia-operator-loses-court-challenge-uk-online-safety-act-regulations-2025-08-11/
Creditors allege that FTX Bahamas liquidators deliberately delayed large repayments.
Whoever controls FTX’s assets is incentivized to generate fees, making it natural for them to prolong the bankruptcy process to maximize profits.
Their interests are clearly misaligned with those of the creditors.
Perplexity offers to buy Google’s Chrome browser for $34.5 billion
NOW on record as we await Court order if Google must divest Chrome. For $35B, Google can control the outcome. Their problem is massive “signal loss” – they lose access to user browsing data likely worth much more to them (including YouTube). 1/2
There is a scenario where users win – Google must provide pubs’ more choice in crawling web, and loses Chrome, Android and adtech data signals due to privacy and antitrust enforcement / laws. Core biz – Surveillance capitalism – under threat for them. 2/2
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/12/perplexity-google-chrome-ai.html
Good coverage by Press Gazette. “It appears Google lives in an entirely separate reality, one where they haven’t been the web’s largest parasite extracting value from almost every revenue stream while giving precious little in return.
NOW
“They are trying to rob Texans of the ability to
select the representatives of their choice, the
most fundamental part of our representative
democracy. And now they are threatening to
literally remove elected officials from their
positions, remove the people’s representatives
from those positions of public trust.
This is a page out of an authoritarian playbook
that we’ve seen in other countries, and it should
be alarming to all of us. Not just Democrats but
independents and Republicans, too.’
Rep. James Talaricoon Texas Republicans’ attempts to rig voting maps
to give themselves five more seats in Congress.
NOW A 54-year-old man impersonated an ICE agent during a robbery in Northeast Philly earlier in June. “The policies coming from the current administration in Washington, D.C., are making it easier for U.S. citizens to commit crimes against marginalized people, such as immigrants,” said Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner. (Philadelphia Police Department)
https://msmagazine.com/2025/07/10/men-impersonating-ice-agents-immigration-customs-attack-women-maga-trump/
NOW
The Fortune 100 increased their profits by $100 BILLION last year.
Meanwhile, they laid off 73,000 workers.
These same corporations have spent $3.2 TRILLION on stock buybacks since the last round of Trump tax cuts.
Anyone still think corporate tax handouts “trickle down?”
2025 Over the past 5 years, #Bitcoin has easily outperformed all major asset classes with a staggering 58.2% CAGR.
The closest competitor, QQQ, delivered 16.28%, followed by SPY at 13.68% and gold (GLD) at 10.49%.
Bitcoin remains in a league of its own.
Wolff: This is a key issue right now in the way the WH is looking at the Epstein scandal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLwYCCx03-4
The fear is that Ghislaine Maxwell can tie Trump to the details of what Trump and Epstein called the Committee.
The Committee consisted of Trump and Epstein in their efforts to get girls for Prince Andrew.
NOW $70 BILLION NEW JERSEY STATE COMMON PENSION FUND BUYS #BITCOIN EXPOSURE VIA $MSTR
ANOTHER PENSION GETS OFF ZERO. MASSIVE
LLMs are an echo of recorded memories. They are not fresh thoughts. People are confusing an echo for cognition. They don’t think at all. People are conflating “thinking” with spitting out information based on ingestion of data by actual thinkers (humans) based on a probability matrix. Artificial intelligence lacks intelligence at all. The term AI itself is deceptive, as is the entire AI industry.
They don’t just ‘not think like us.’
They think without remembering they’ve thought.
We’ve built pattern matchers that forget their own patterns.
Imagine solving calculus every day but never knowing you know math.
@GaryMarcus
No matter how much LLMs mimic the patterns of human language, they are not like us. They sound like us, but they don’t think like us.
Always regard them like the weird function approximators they are; never trust them.
David de Bruijn @dmdebruijn
An important point @GaryMarcus –a leading AI thinker– makes here.
LLMs are *designed* to be human language pattern-machines. They’re designed to *mimick* us.
For LLMs to “think”, an argument is needed to move from mimicking to actuality. No such argument has been given.
Trump’s casinos were money laundering fronts for the Italian and Russian mob.
Inside Trump’s Atlantic City Mobbed-Up Empire
Intelligence, Organized Crime, Report
https://spookyconnections.com/2025/07/21/inside-trumps-atlantic-city-mobbed-up-empire/
Women in Technology @womenintech
Rest in power
Oxford Internet Institute @oiioxford
We are deeply saddened to report the death of Dame Stephanie “Steve” Shirley CH, DBE, OBE – visionary IT entrepreneur, philanthropist, and founding donor of the Oxford Internet Institute. Her journey from refugee to entrepreneur to philanthropist was extraordinary. 1/
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1955230151286956509.html
THEN
Explorer Juan de Ayala finds a new island off the west coast of Spanish California, which he names Isla de los Alcatraces, “on account of the abundance of birds that were on it.”
His men call it by the colloquial term “Alcatraz.”
@pboockvar “Of course, there was always inflation. There’s no such thing as no inflation. It’s just lower inflation than what they want. We always have inflation, inflation is not transitory, it always goes up. It’s just the rate of change that we’re debating here.” –
‘Self-termination is most likely’: the history and future of societal collapse
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/02/self-termination-history-and-future-of-societal-collapse
people are fundamentally egalitarian but are led to collapses by enriched, status-obsessed elites, while past collapses often improved the lives of ordinary citizens.
Today’s global civilisation, however, is deeply interconnected and unequal and could lead to the worst societal collapse yet, he says. The threat is from leaders who are “walking versions of the dark triad” – narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism – in a world menaced by the climate crisis, nuclear weapons, artificial intelligence and killer robots.
“”He really likes her,” said Steven Hoffenberg, a former mentor to Epstein who pleaded guilty in 1995 to running a massive Ponzi scheme, of Trump and [Ghislaine] Maxwell.”
@realDonaldTrump
https://politico.com/story/2019/07/21/jeffrey-epstein-trump-clinton-1424120
“He really likes her,” said Steven Hoffenberg, a former mentor to Epstein who pleaded guilty in 1995 to running a massive Ponzi scheme, of Trump and Maxwell.
“He was friendly with her father.”
In the 198os, Trump and Robert Maxwell, the Czechoslovak-born owner of London’s Daily Mirror tabloid, rubbed shoulders on the high-flying Manhattan party circuit.
An item from a May 1989 gossip column placed Trump and both Maxwells at a party aboard the elder Maxwell’s yacht, named the Lady Ghislaine, that featuredcaviar flown in from Paris and former Republican Sen. John Tower of Texas. The item notes that Trump compared his own larger yacht with Maxwell’s.
As it happened, Trump’s yacht, the Trump Princess, had originally belonged to theSaudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi – the uncle of slain Washington Postcontributor Jamal Khashoggi – and Maxwell’s yacht had originally belonged toone of Adnan’s brothers.
Two years later, Maxwell fell off his yacht in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and drowned, a sensational death that was ruled accidental.