The primary point this chart reinforces is to stay away from hospitals, “medical care” and colleges! Contrary to popular opinion, these are NOT essentials!

The other key focus of this chart is the overall 92.6% inflation. This is a “lie”. This is what the government and media want you to think. The real rate of inflation (devaluation of the dollar) for this same period has been 380%. So you should be asking yourself: “Has my income quintupled (multiplied by five)?” To keep pace, your income, if it started at $50,000 per year in 2000, should now be $250,000 per year. If not, you are losing ground to inflation!

Everyone should also understand the value of investing! Good investments can earn income for you without you having to work. Use gold to maintain wealth. For the past 20 years gold has increased 602%. Even if you factor out the incredible rise of the past two years, gold has gone from essentially $588/ounce to $2000/ounce before the recent skyrocketing of price. That’s a 240% increase.

This year (2026) we very well may see gold go from the current $4,200 to $6,000 per ounce by the end of the year. That’s a 50% increase. Far more than inflation!

The stock market has been absolutely insane so far this year. My personal rate of return is over 50% so far this year. If that continues, I’m on pace to double the value of my investments this year! My point is that rather than whining about the rich getting richer, join them at their own game and at least try to maintain and improve your own financial situation.

Sure, the game is stacked against us. We can’t exploit it like the extremely wealthy can, but we can still take advantage of it!

As everyone competes for attention (and I whine that nobody reads my articles), we find ourselves living in a world where routine things are hyped. For example:

“Forget Fiat: Silver Explodes 10% to $67.81“

Obviously I’m pro precious metals (I dislike using the term “bullish”), but if you keep a close eye on silver spot prices you’d be well aware that they bounce around a lot and a 10% change in one day isn’t exactly headline news. Well, okay, it’s a big deal but it’s way over the top to use a word like explodes.

They aren’t even technically correct. If you take the very momentary bottom price of the past two days and compare to the very highest price (which occurred after that article was published) you get a 9.6% rise. Nobody times it perfect, so let’s not get too excited about these swings.

So is silver back on the rise? Or is this just another one day bounce?

My assumption is that my readers generally aren’t checking financial market prices daily. If you are then I’m sure you realize how much that can drive you crazy as every time Trump says something prices dramatically drop or rise. Perhaps my articles can serve as a way to remain aware of the financial markets without getting drown in hype?

As long as Trump remains in office, I’m expecting the volatile headlines and dramatic financial changes to continue to occur. We can let that drive us crazy or we can just accept it for what it is. So far this year, I see two major forces impacting the financial world: Trump statements and the “AI” hype. If you’ve done a good job investing, this year has been extremely good for you.

I’m in a fortunate position to compare my personal investments (a one time seed amount 18 years ago) vs my employer’s 401k (13 years). This allows me to observe that I’m blowing away the “market” with my investments while the managed 401k (that I can’t control) limps along relatively speaking. This year has been fantastic so the 401k also looks very good, but pales compared to my investing decisions.

So far this year, on average, my very small personal investment account has been gaining at a rate that pays me double what I earn at my job. There is a lot of bouncing as typically two out of three days are very good gains and the third day is a small give back.

My 401k gets a constant flow in of new investment money (automatically withdrawn from my paycheck every two weeks) and yet in 13 ½ years of this, each year contributions being roughly double what I originally put into my IRA in 2008, my 401k is still lagging far behind. But in the neighborhood. So this year I have roughly equivalent sized accounts that I can compare. It’s not unusual for my 401k to gain a small amount in a day when the IRA gains twenty times that amount!

Why am I babbling about my own investments? What I’m trying to do is to get my readers to stop thinking that 10% to 15% annual returns on their investments are “good”. If you are using a financial advisor, you might want to ask them why you aren’t getting 25%, 30% or so far this year to date over 50% returns. Are you being to conservative and careful?

My strategy is to use gold and silver as my conservative and careful investments while my stocks are allowed to go wild.

Writing these articles is a struggle for me, because when I read my own writing it sounds like I’m an arrogant ass bragging about my own success. {laugh} I feel the same way when I read other financial people writing about their own success. This makes me feel foolish that I didn’t start being serious about investing long, long ago. Why did I wait until just before retirement?

Inflation, true inflation (devaluation of the dollar), has been killing the typical person for decades. It’s a slow death, a form of slavery. It’s motivation for me to write these articles because I’m convinced that if you don’t “join them” (utilize investments – aka Capital Gains – in addition to working) then you are going to watch your future slip away into financial mediocrity.

So as I retire and try to give back to the world, my hope is that by sharing these thoughts I will help others improve their lives.

Precious Metals:

• Gold: $4,222

• Silver: $68

As of the moment, gold and silver seem to have bottomed out for now. I’m expecting gold to reasonably reach $6,000 per ounce by the end of the year. Yes, it should be a good purchase now (at $4,200/oz). Silver has had a lot of hype about the industrial usages and the ongoing multi year shortage. If you listen to the non-hype experts, that work in the refining industry, they confirm the expectation of $6,000 per ounce as a quite likely high end expectation for gold this year, but don’t expect the drama and excitement of silver that we had in the past year.

What is interesting with gold’s rise over the past few years is that normally with these high prices you’d see gold being sold (like jewelry) but that’s not occurring now. People and institutions are buying gold and not selling. More and more, people and central banks around the world are not trusting fiat money and continue to build gold reserves to firmly back their wealth.

If you aren’t paying attention to financial news, perhaps you aren’t aware that the biggest IPO (Initial Public Offering) in history just occurred with Elon Musk’s SpaceX. To educate myself, I decided to participate too so I committed to buying shares before it was released to the public and opened to trading. As expected, once SpaceX became available for open trading, my shares rapidly gained in value → a 24% gain today. Not a bad day’s profit! It won’t surprise me if SpaceX values crash a couple times in the near future. That’s okay, I’m in it for the long run. I did offer some of my shares for sale if the price bounces up a bit more, but the rest I expect I’ll keep for years and most likely will buy more during any upcoming “crash”.

I’m heavily invested in “space” because I think it has a great future for profits. The SpaceX IPO had a very interested effect on the market. Earlier this week it “decimated” most of the strongly growing stocks as those were sold off to raise cash to buy SpaceX. Once raising cash for SpaceX was done, those stocks have been bouncing back very rapidly.

The other impact was that most other “space” stocks took dramatic falls. Naturally I used that as an opportunity to buy more of them as they bottomed out.

Hopefully my articles provide a refreshing different point of view as I don’t join in with the popular trend of predicting the next doomsday. My view is that one person’s doomsday tends to be another person’s boom. The trick is to make sure doomsday doesn’t come for you.

What will next week bring? Will Trump declare peace with Iran and then attack another nation? Who knows! I’m sure it will be an entertaining ride. Try not to drown, learn to surf and enjoy the times!

“We just launch it and we know everything will be dead – everything that will be found there in this particular area will be dead,” says Kokhanovskyy. “There is no connection to the drone at all, you cannot see the video, nothing… Everything it sees will be killed.”

Without venturing into sci-fi plots like Terminator, humanity should give serious consideration to the implication of a machine, making independent decisions, killing a human.

I’m quite “pro-robot”. I think they will be fun (but expensive) toys. Of course robots have been boosting industrial production for a long time now, but humanoid, general purpose robots will be something of a new thing in two to three years. They will even be helpful around the house. Imagine having a robot to hold things while you work on something. Or instead of having crappy, unreliable Google Home playing whole home music for you, perhaps a robot would come with a good sound system and follow you around playing your favorite music?

What is the point to war?

Take a moment to ponder that, get past the knee jerk reactions of war being necessary to defend against evil tyrants. This train of though rapidly leads to “he said, she said” blame as to who “started it”. I’m firmly of the opinion that you can not trust the media to give you an accurate picture of why a war actually started.

Is war for population control? Hopefully anyone with the slightest bit of a moral compass would agree that war is not an acceptable way to keep population from growing too rapidly.

To resolve conflict between nations, that isn’t able to be settled with negotiations, our modern world has developed economic warfare. Certainly a more civilized approach than murdering each other. Robot combat might be an escalation of economic warfare that drags humanity back into violence.

My concern is that if we don’t object to military usage of robots, we will soon find our world has become a tyranny of whomever (nation or corporation) is most technologically advanced. This is closely related to saying whomever is wealthiest enough to afford the best robots.

But isn’t this better than humans killing other humans? I don’t think so. Erasing the moral implications of murder from warfare encourages and legitimizes more warfare.

How do we stop the development of killer robots? First, the employees of any company doing such work should refuse to work on these projects. If that doesn’t work, we need society wide opposition to these companies to shut them down.

But won’t our enemies just develop something and we will be defenseless? Perhaps. Perhaps we could develop these robots but have a strict and 100% enforced ban on deploying them unless our nation is actually invaded. (defensive usage only)

For further reading on this topic, see my previous article from April 28, 2026: Killer Robots

My proposal, and what I intend to live myself, is a 5-5-5 strategy. Here we will assume that you have invested a non-trivial amount of money in preparation for retirement.

A fundamental for this strategy is the assumption that your basic costs of living are covered by other sources than your investments. Not everyone is going to fit this model.

Here in the USA, Social Security is often relied upon to fund our retirement. Some may call this socialism, others may call it shifting of responsibility, others may just point out how poorly Social Security has been implemented.

How much you get from Social Security is based on how much you paid in (aka how much you earned during your career). This means that those earning below median income probably won’t get enough from Social Security to afford the basics of life (food & shelter). These are the people least capable of investing but also those who are in most need of it!

If you are young enough that you haven’t looked at the numbers (or haven’t checked the Social Security website for your personal projection), my SS will be roughly 33% of what I’m earning at the end of my career (which extremely unusually is half of what I was earning in my 20s! But as I’ve said and should be obvious, I’m not exactly an average person).

Can you live on 33% of your income?

Whether or not this is before or after tax money is a bit complicated but most likely only 85% of your Social Security will be taxed and you’ll be at a lower tax rate. You might want to use 12% tax as a rough guide. So if you get $36,000 per year for Social Security, your after tax amount that you could budget with would be $32,328. Unless you’ve fully paid off your mortgage, that probably “isn’t enough to live on”.

Thus a major factor to comfortable retirement is setting yourself up with low expenses. This may mean moving to a state with lower property values. This is what I have done. My goal was to have my cost of living be well below how much I will be paid by Social Security (plus my pensions).

“Wealth is what you have minus what you want.” - So to be wealthy, want less!

Now, let’s say you have accomplished this, admittedly difficult situation, and have your expenses below your fixed income (Social Security & Pensions). Now what do we do with that pile of money you have invested?

My suggestion is that your aim is for at least a 15% annual return, obviously it’s better to earn 25%, but from what I’ve seen few people have been able to match that success long term. So let’s assume you are successful at earning 15%.

Take 5% and re-invest it to compensate for inflation (otherwise you will be losing wealth over time). Take 5% and re-invest it to grow your wealth (you do want to leave your children with some massive inheritance, correct?). That leaves you with 5% that you have permission to spend.

Ignore actual performance of your investments each year. Some years will be good, others will be poor.

A financial advisor may say you need to have two million dollars saved up in order to retire, but I think with care you don’t need anywhere near that much. Let’s say you’ve managed to accumulate only $100,000. If you take 5% of that, it would be $5,000 a year you could blow on a fun vacation or nice new toy. Obviously if you have more saved you would have more available to spend on silly luxuries.

In my case, assuming I can continue to maintain a greater than 25% rate of return, means that my situation hopefully will actually be 5-5-15 → 5% compensation for inflation; 5% growth; 15% permission to play with / spend on toys and luxuries.

However, I am doing a little bit of the normal advice and shifting some of my investments away from “high risk, high return” into more stable investments. Thus I’m really only planning on 20% rate of return and thus 5-5-10.

Why do I advise a 5-5-5 strategy?

The first 5% acknowledges the real rate of inflation (devaluation of the dollar) is 5.7% not the propaganda numbers the government publishes.

The second 5% acknowledges our human instinct to save and prepare for the future. We are instinctively terrified of “rainy days” in the future. Fear of starving to death is a very powerful instinct! This also addresses our instinctive desire for improvement. We thrive on feeling like we are improving. We are happy if we are losing weight, getting wealthier, buying a nicer car, a bigger house, a prettier girlfriend / wife (this one is the truly stupid one to chase!).

The third 5% gives you permission to spend. Don’t waste the rest of your life “preparing for the future”. Live in the here and now!

“What are you actually saving for?”

Closely related is his question: “What are you retiring to?”

Both Dan and David emphasize the point that for the average person there are “12 Good Years” (60 to 72). The key concept here is that if you’ve done a good job of saving, you now need to learn how to spend! Don’t wait until it is too late to enjoy your life savings.

While this is an extremely important and valuable concept, it’s also important to consider that each person is an individual and we don’t all fit into “average”. Many people never make it to 60 or they make it but are in such terrible health they can’t enjoy it. Others are dancing and living a great life at 90, 100, 110 (okay, its a pretty small population at 110 but there are people over 110 that are enjoying very functional lives).

Dee Dee brings up the topic of whether there is something we can do to extend those “12 Good Years” and Dan mentions one of the key things that is killing our health: lack of physical activity. Yes! Stay physically active. The most healthy things I know are: dancing, walking, and swimming.

Longevity studies associate having a good social life as being perhaps the strongest factor associated with long and healthy life. As we retire (aka “age”), our social circle shrinks. Our friends and family die, we have less money to afford social activities, we have less energy to go “out” and engage with others.

That all sounds very depressing, so I’d like to offer an alternative view: it’s not social activity but rather mental stimulation which is truly healthy. Thus if you are engaged mentally and fascinated by the world, that may be every bit as valuable and healthy as “having coffee with some friends”. Hopefully I’m not wrong because I love curling up with a good book and I hate going out to bars.

If we get back to the question of “What are you saving for?”, it seems to me that many are saving for surviving an economic collapse. The most important thing I would contribute to that is do not save in dollars (fiat currency). If you want security and a nest egg against financial collapse the best preparation for that is to own gold and silver.

All in all, I think David and Dan have an excellent point: give yourself permission to spend. Perhaps set a goal for what you want to leave to your children or grandchildren, but then with the rest give yourself permission to spend. Budget wisely, but keep in mind you most likely will spend less as the years go by (settling into a quieter life), so front load that spending a bit. Whether that is in your fifties, sixties, seventies or eighties.

At the end of the podcast, Dan mentions that he is forty three. Thus confirming that he and I have very different points of view, not disagreement, but different points of view. Dan’s time framing would indicate that my “good years” are almost over and I haven’t even started retirement yet!

Some of us didn’t wait for retirement to enjoy our lives. We took the trips we dreamed of, we tried the ideas that interested us.

Anyone can give you financial advice, some of it better than others. From my view, the world is full of mediocre advice about “numbers”. Dan is quite right that the focus should be on what goals you have for retirement. Those goals should not be a number. A goal isn’t worth much if you never do it. I’m not saying you should expect to accomplish all your goals (if you do you aren’t thinking far enough). We should all have more goals we want to strive for, but we also shouldn’t put off doing things just because we feel like we should save up more money first!

One of my challenges is that some of the big expenses I am planning for are not available yet. Self driving cars are something I’m very much looking forward to, but I suspect it will be three more years before we truly have them. Competent and intelligent robots are another thing I’m very intrigued by, but alas that is also three or more years in the future.

In the meantime, perhaps I’ll get a cat?

Do you remember that TV show? Don’t misunderstand me, children are brilliant. Those young minds absorbing information and regurgitating it are simply amazing. They do however lack experience. They don’t always have the best judgment.

“Agents” are the new buzzword in AI. Everyone wants to turn these little monsters loose to solve all the problems.

Remember the cute old days (was that really just two years ago) when you could ask AI who held the record for walking across the English Channel and AI would happily give you an answer, while it was completely unaware that humans can’t walk on water.

Yes, all the trillions of dollars being invested into AI have produced a more impressive toy… err… oh they like to call it a tool. {smile}

Now we are told that agents can do incredible things for us (and they can), if we are willing to spend twenty five times as much money. Are you letting the AI con-man pick pocket you?

Remember, Simulated Intelligence still isn’t intelligent. But it is faster. A lot of hot water, used to cool the computers, bears witness to that!

Next time you are tempted to deploy an army of AI agents to work for you, visualize that army as a whole bunch of fifth graders. They work cheap (cheaper than adults), but they don’t always exercise good judgment.

Supervision is a good idea. Both with fifth graders and with AI agents.

Silver and gold have been fantastic “investments” for the past five years. When silver and gold go up in price, the profitability of the mining companies goes up too. This of course is reflected in very nice gains in stock prices.

While gold is a great way to preserve wealth, it isn’t a “wealth generator”. Silver is more volatile and has higher buy/sell premiums than gold, thus generally I’ve avoided silver in favor of gold. However mines are a different story. Mines are businesses, they make money. Properly chosen and timed, buying mining stocks can create wealth for you.

Currently gold and silver are taking a bit of a break. This gives us an opportunity to consider investments without the pressure and rush that can come when prices are rapidly rising. Prices always bounce around, for the past thirty days gold spot price is down -2.13% and silver spot price is up 4.22%.

That’s a big change from the past year where gold was up 34% and silver was up 124%.

To avoid repeating the same thing for each mine, a few basics of the silver mining market essentially apply to all companies. Returns in 2025 were fantastic, returns for the past three months have been negative. This demonstrates how their stock prices reflect spot prices. The gains can be magnified though with stock prices gaining twice as much as spot price gains.

Compared to my other investments, my investments in silver mining have gained very poorly (roughly a gain of 4.7% in less than five months – downright terrible compared to my other investments). While things aren’t looking great at the moment, I have great faith that by the end of the year we’ll see a very different picture.

To research all of the companies doing silver mining is far beyond the time I have available. So here are some comments on silver mining companies that I have invested in:

ANPMF (Andean Precious Metals Corp) – they mine in two locations: “Golden Queen” Soledad Mountain Operation in California, primarily silver but some gold; “Empresa Minera Manquiri” in Bolivia mining substantially more silver than their California mine produces.

Andean employees about five hundred people. They claim to try and hire local people (their goal is 100% local labor). As a sample, in California they pay electricians from $28 to $52 per hour.

Over the past three years their stock price has grown 729%. Last year’s growth was 231%. This illustrates how such an investment can blow away investing in index funds and the stock market in general. If you want real growth, you need to target (invest in) the right things!

Andean is currently at $4.83 per share. It looks like $4.60 would be a pretty good price to buy it at. If you were more aggressive for a bargain you might go for $4.50 (but may not get it).

AYA (AYA Gold & Silver Inc) – they have three mines in Morocco, primarily mining silver. Their mine “Zgounder” is a rare silver-only mine! (usually silver is mined as a byproduct of mining for other metals)

Over the past three years their stock price has grown 225%. Last year’s growth was 137%. They are currently at $20.95. They would probably be a pretty good buy at $17.

DSVSF (Discovery Silver) – they are currently proposing a name change to “Discovery Mining” as they just bought a gold mine. They mine in Canada and Mexico.

Over the past three years their stock price has grown 800%. Last year’s growth was 168%. They are currently at $6.23. They would probably be a pretty good buy at $5.60.

KUYAF (Kuya Silver Corp) – Kuya mines in Canada and Peru. They have invested recently to dramatically increase their production.

Over the past three years their stock price has grown 122%. Last year’s growth was 210%. They are currently at $0.62. They would probably be a pretty good buy at $0.58.

My investments have avoided the Mexican silver mines because of the trouble they have had with criminal activity hijacking shipments and kidnapping workers. Also I’ve favored mines that are focused on silver, rather than producing silver as a byproduct of other mining operations.

Silver has become more critical in electronics, the demand appears to be rapidly increasing. Sooner or later we can expect silver’s spot price to start rising again.

Space

Virtually impossible to separate from the defense sector. The Artemis missions to the moon and the upcoming SpaceX IPO have brought this sector into the public eye. Companies are booming. The long term potential is huge.

Silver Mining

Often very low priced stocks, silver is likely to stay “down” / stable for a few months, but long term the potential is huge (2025 was an example of just how dramatic the gains can be). Demand for silver is increasing, production is difficult and slow to increase, pretty much a guarantee for increased profits. Avoid Mexico (damn drug cartels are expanding into silver crimes).

Robotics

Basically goes hand in hand with AI and Space. I’m expecting this to boom in the next couple years (it’s booming already). We are on the verge of robots going from being toys not really able to do much (or being industrial) to suddenly being versatile and very capable and affordable (at least for the upper middle class and above). Robotic technologies will be critical for space exploration / exploitation.

Nuclear

Energy is always in demand and the new “small modular reactor” companies have great potential for massive growth (huge profits). Fusion is still the holy grail but not yet working at a commercial scale (thus fusion is a very high risk / very high return investment).

Quantum

Quantum is one of those badly abused terms (much like “AI”). This is very much like fusion power, very high risk / very high return (if anyone can actually make something practical and usable). Some of the “quantum” companies are really just new encryption methods or random number generators (both are surprisingly valuable).

Tech / “AI”

The powerhouse engine of the US economy. Huge gains are being made, but that’s the challenge, do you buy into something when it is at it’s all time high?

Banking

Evil but profitable. JPM – JP Morgan may be the best, perhaps only one worth investing in.

Oil

Boomed big with the Iran war, dropping now.

Solar

The boom is probably over. Still extremely useful for the right application (space & remote areas). Rising silver prices may seriously hurt the solar business in two ways: pushing prices up (not cost effective) or quality issues as copper is substituted for silver leading to inferior products. Twice now I’ve made fantastic returns on properly timed investment into solar, but I’m dubious about future opportunities.

Real Estate

I’m avoiding real estate as there is too high of a risk of another bubble burst.

Business

These are what I consider general, non-glamorous businesses. Generally these are “slow and steady”, no huge profit potential. Casey’s seems to be a good one.

To “diversify” a bit I bought a little bit of “CUT” – an ETF investing in timber (wood) – absolutely terrible investment.

Dividend Stocks

Instead of investing for price increase, these are more steady revenue generators. There are plenty that deliver pathetic returns. But some that are delivering 15% to 25% may be an excellent way to earn solid reliable good returns. These can be tricky to find. Many of them are in real estate and I’m skeptical of investing in real estate currently. A bubble might burst and these would become garbage.

A friend suggested “STEW”. I bought just a little to observe it. Very modest gain in stock price and dividends running only about 5% per year (on par with inflation). Basically a waste of money.

ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds)

Basically someone else bundles together investments into a number of stocks. This usually means a “safer” investment but also virtually guarantees a lower return. I prefer to buy individual stocks. I’ve only bought a few ETFs.

General Notes:

AI (Simulated Intelligence) is extremely unreliable for stock / investing information. Very hit and miss. Sometimes very handy (explaining basic concepts), but often 100% confused (individual stock / company information).

Basic strategies: Buy with long term plans, not “get rich quick” hopes. Buy individual companies, at least for myself I’m far better at picking good companies than an ETF or managed fund. Buy for “big potential”. For me success has come from buying multiple high risk, high return stocks. Basic concept: two high risk stocks where one doesn’t gain anything but the other returns 40%+ averages out to 20% returns (it’s really awesome when they both return 40%+), that’s much better than a single “safe” investment that only returns 10%.

Disclaimer: Of course I’m not a financial advisor and this is not advice. Follow your own instincts. (ignore the fact that my rate of return blows away Warren Buffett)

I’m not in need of making money, I’m about to retire. Subscribe or donate, it’s definitely appreciated and helps justify the time spent writing these articles, but unlike other financial guys, I’m not pushing you to give me $1,000 a year. Plenty of people will give you advice, much of it free, much of it very expensive. Unless you know a politician, any money spent on such advice is probably just making someone else rich.

I’ll put my mouth where my money is! Without charging you a cent! (Donations are always welcome!)

Citrini Research charges $1,000 a year for their Substack membership, they charge $10,000 a year for their enterprise research. No doubt they provide better research than I can. If you can afford them, that’s awesome, feel free to share some of their nuggets of wisdom with me. 😇

If you are paying attention to space and investment news, you’ve no doubt heard about the anticipated IPO (Initial Public Offering) of SpaceX. This is expected to raise one trillion dollars! That is one huge bet on the future of space exploration / exploitation. SpaceX earned over $18 billion dollars last year!

I’ve been pro “space” for my entire lifetime. My childhood was in the 1960s following along with watching the moon landing on TV in 1969. Of course we also had Star Trek, 2001 A Space Odyssey and then Star Wars. Humans have a long history of being fascinated with space.

What does this have to do with investing money?

We have finally reached the point where commercial exploitation of space is big business. Anyone with GPS and a cell phone should be well aware of the essential role of satellites to provide this service.

Being a fan of Firefly (best TV show ever made that promotes freedom), the company Firefly (FLY) caught my eye when they did their IPO shortly after successfully landing on the moon. I’ve bought shares of Firefly several times now starting seriously on October 21, 2025 (at $26.66). The lowest I’ve paid for their stock was $16.67. They are now at $44. Overall in just over a half a year my rate of return is 77.87%. Not bad at all for a half a year!

Rocket Lab (RKLB) was another company I was keeping my eye on and finally made several purchases in February at an average cost of $72.06. Rocket Lab is now at $134.28. Thus in less than three months I’ve got an 86.34% rate of return! Eat your heart out Warren Buffett.

LUNR (Intuitive Machines) is rapidly evolving into a major player in space missions with the successful IM-1 and IM-2 missions, including the first commercial spacecraft to land and operate on the Moon. Forthcoming flights are IM-3, IM-4 and IM-5. LUNR cooperates with many other companies to create successful missions. They have proven mission success with 300+ spacecraft launches, 100 satellites in orbit and 3,000 collective years in orbit. Purchasing LUNR earlier this month, on May 7^th at $24 per share, they are now at $33.67 per share, giving a current rate of return of 40.29% - again absolutely phenomenal for a 13 day return!

AST SpaceMobile (ASTS) caught my attention in December just before they started a one year long plan for putting a lot of “Bluebird” satellites into orbit. These “Bluebird” satellites will provide full bandwidth communications directly to cell phones without any special hardware or phone modifications. Freedom from the tower! They are partnered with over fifty mobile network operators, with nearly three billion combined subscribers. I bought ASTS on December 2^nd at $53.12 per share. They are now at $89.58 per share. They have had some trouble which brought them down from their peak of $129.89 per share. Despite this drop, my rate of return in six months is currently at 68.64%.

ARKX, this is an ETF (Exchange Traded Fund) that invests in a number of “Space & Defense Innovation” companies. I’ve bought some at various times over the past six months for an average price of $31.21. They are now at $34.64 per share. This is “only” a rate of return of 11%. That’s respectable if you double it to 22% for an annual rate of return. But this illustrates the difference between targeted investing in companies you believe in vs letting someone else manage your money. ETFs can be the “safe” way to go if you are willing to settle for lower rates of return, with the benefit of less volatility (fewer days of pulling your hair out when prices crash temporarily).

Also I’ve invested in ARKQ, which is an ETF that invests in “Autonomous Technology & Robotics” (a lot of this technology will be used for space missions). Like ARKX, this is a good return but very similar to the moderately good returns for ARKX.

On a typical day (like today), my rate of return is usually about triple the rate of return from managed funds (like my 401k provided by my employer). Each person has to decide their own tolerance for risk (and ability to predict the future). Personally I have a very high tolerance for risk and my investments are almost always aimed for future returns (three to five years from now).

Generally it rubs me the wrong way when other investors “toot their own horn” bragging about how great they are doing. I’m just a normal guy. I don’t have millions or billions of dollars invested, but I’ve done very well with the very little that I’ve had available for investing. Still, I wanted to share some concrete data, not just vague advice or vague bragging.

Is it “too late” to jump on the space investment bandwagon? Certainly not. The Artemis mission that just circled the moon with human astronauts has generated excitement and buzz. SpaceX’s IPO is generating more buzz and may steal the thunder of other companies for the next couple months. SpaceX’s IPO might actually create some opportunities to buy some of these other companies at a bargain. When a future Artemis mission lands humans on the moon there will be even more buzz and excitement (and investing). Artemis III (more testing) should launch in 2027. Artemis IV is currently targeting a human moon landing in 2028.

There is no need to rush and buy some stock “tomorrow”, there should be plenty of opportunities to spot good investments over the next few years.

Don’t crash and burn! Or if you do, please don’t blame me! One of my approaches to investing: “Never risk more money than you can afford to throw away”

Standard disclaimer: I’m sharing some of my thoughts and experiences, this should not be interpreted as financial advice!

My proposal is: “Homo Dulcis”

Dulcis is Latin for “sweet”.

The idea is that as human settlements grew larger and larger there was more pressure to be able to resolve differences and get along with each other. Think about puppies and kittens. Are you more likely to fight with an angry dog or a cute puppy?

Which leads to better survival? Aggressive fighting? Or charming socialization?

The Dutch historian, Rutger Bregman, coined the term “Homo puppy”.

A study was conducted in Siberia to transform naturally aggressive silver foxes into friendly animals. In just a few generations of breeding it was successful. American Brian Hare, thought about this and realized that the friendlier animals were also more intelligent!

If you want to breed intelligent animals, you don’t select for intelligence, you select for friendliness! The same neurotransmitters associated with friendliness, serotonin (the “happy hormone”) and oxytocin (the “love hormone”) also are what drive growth of the hippocampus.

Part of the theory is that as human settlements grew there was pressure to get along with each other and this would have also resulting in mating pressure. Imagine the people who were most aggressive and unfriendly being ostracized and having fewer opportunities to mate.

This has been observable in my own life. Many men, this is guys around forty years old, have said “I want to be you when I grow up.” Nice guys don’t “finish last”, nice guys find plenty of women that are attracted to them.

The common myth that women are attracted to “bad boys” is misleading. What women are really attracted to are good guys that can generate excitement.

Individual mileage may vary. 😇

We can reflect on this and be worried that “phones” are reducing (friendly) socialization and this may dumb down the population. A grim future for humanity unless we can reverse this trend. Take off the masks, don’t social distance, let’s be “Homo Dulcis”. Let your sweetness shine!

Why? Because fiat currencies and excess government spending have infected nations worldwide.

This substack article from Germany has some excellent discussion which I’d like to quote. I’ve used Google translate to mass translate the article but several concepts Google translate is weak on and provides inaccurate translations, but it’s still good enough to get the meaning intended.

BlingBling

Eine Anleitung zum Reichwerden

Irgendwann beginnt ein System zu kippen, wenn die Menschen das Gefühl verlieren, dass sich Arbeit überhaupt noch lohnt…

Read more

a month ago · 19 likes · 1 comment · BlingBling

The numbers are slightly different than in the USA but the concept is the same:

The growth of the money supply (aka inflation) exceeds the growth in salaries and is substantially more than any cash investment (like a CD or savings account) pays.

So to build wealth you need to build investments that earn a decent return. As I’ve mentioned before, aim for 25% and don’t settle for less than 15% annual rates of return.

Also retaining wealth is best done with something that doesn’t lose value: gold.

Google has added a 4 GB download to Chrome without bothering to notify users. Perhaps that doesn’t bother you, but I’ve got an old computer with very little space left on the C: partition and Chrome doesn’t allow installing somewhere else.

If you don’t want this bloatware it requires a bit of technical work on your end.

First Open a Tab with Chrome “chrome://flags/”

Then find an option “Enables optimization guide on device” and set that to “Disabled”

I would also disable “Prompt API for Gemini Nano” as above ^^^.

Restart Chrome, then shut down Chrome.

Then use your file manager (aka “Explorer”) and find a folder:

...\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\OptGuideOnDeviceModel

Delete everything inside that.

Chrome seems a bit resistant to this so you might have to check again and try again. They may fight against users disabling this so you may also have to revisit this again in the future.

Update: Chrome is definitely fighting this. You might not notice it reappearing again because it may take your system a while to download 4 GB. So far I haven’t found a way to permanently prevent this. I might have to ditch Chrome.

Update 2: Looks like we have to go into geek mode and really fight this:
Update your hosts file with the following lines:
127.0.0.1 optimizationguide-pa.googleapis.com 127.0.0.1 optimizationguide.googleapis.com 127.0.0.1 ml.googleapis.com

Restart your computer or open a command prompt in administrator mode and run:

ipconfig /flushdns

Warning: if you don’t know what a hosts file is, you probably shouldn’t touch this (ask your tech savvy child to help you).

Update 3: I set write permissions to deny on the OptGuideOnDeviceModel folder, but all this seems to do is cause Chrome to download the file to a temp file in …\AppData\Local\Temp\chrome_chrome_BITS_14600_641043547 - so that seems to prevent installing but it still wastes 4 GB on your C: drive.

Update 4: I found a website that describes a registry edit (editing your registry is always dangerous) which appears to actually work:

https://pureinfotech.com/stop-chrome-gemini-nano-download-windows-11/

(the same directions work on Windows 10)

Warning: editing your registry is dangerous and can cause your computer (well Windows anyway) to stop working, so make a backup of your registry first, etc, etc, etc (How come I never follow my own advice?)

Pro-Tip: Even if you’ve spent your life (career) doing geeky things, the world is full of curious geeks who almost always have solved such issues before you. Search and copy them. Don’t trust AI. Simulated Intelligence will be happy to tell you how to fix this but confidently will get it wrong (but usually has some great hints toward the right direction.

I don’t use Chrome as my primary browser but there are some websites that won’t work on better alternative browsers.

Rather than considering a person as an entire entity with an “age”, it is probably more accurate to consider a person as made up of many organ systems (skin, brain, kidneys, liver, etc). Essentially you die when your “oldest” organ system fails.

If we try to think of reversing aging of an entire person we get the fairly absurd image of taking an old person and turning them into a child. That’s not my idea of reversing aging.

Reversing aging is better looked at on an organ by organ basis. A simple and visible example is skin. The obvious sign of aging skin is wrinkling.

Certainly we know we can slow or reverse wrinkling of skin with adequate intake of vitamin C and lysine. Perhaps throw in a bit of hyaluronic acid too.

Another example is hair loss or hair color loss. Again, these are difficult challenges but we are having some success reversing them.

Another one is hardening and/or narrowing of arteries, which we can also reverse with Vitamin K and proteolyic enzymes. If aging is inevitable, then how come my blood pressure, at chronological age 66, is so low that a twenty year old would be envious of it?

When I first started seriously studying Medicine / Health / Metabolism / Anti-Aging / Nutrition, twenty years ago, one concept hit me as extremely important: the human body has amazing self repair mechanisms. We don’t age because of time, we age because of accumulating damage faster than it can be repaired.

The closest we can come to overall “anti-aging” seems to be boosting mitochondria function. Improve your energy production and pretty much everything else improves.

The makers of TA-65 would like you to believe the secret to reversing or slowing aging is lengthening telomeres. They would be happy to sell you expensive TA-65 pills to address this. They tend not to emphasize that the amazing results they have had also depend on a comprehensive nutrition program (perhaps key being omega 3 fatty acid supplementation).

Comprehensive success is difficult and expensive currently, but in my opinion it certainly is possible. Our current limited success poses the concept that yes, reversing aging is possible, we just aren’t very good at it (and most approaches are fairly expensive for the typical person).

My expectation is that in the near future we will see inflation rates like the 1980s again.

One of the huge problems is that the average person doesn’t know what inflation is and the government misleads us about what the rate of inflation is. This morning I read an article from Germany with an interview with Marc Faber.

Mark gave a very good description of inflation:

“Inflation is essentially an increase in the money supply and a destruction of purchasing power. The official consumer price indices capture only a part of reality. Inflation for different households is very different.

For a housewife, inflation is when food becomes more expensive: potatoes, rice, milk, vegetables. For a tenant, inflation is when rent rises. For families, higher insurance premiums, school fees, taxes and fees are also inflation. Many households can’t save at the end of the month because the cost of living has risen so sharply.

Governments have an interest in low-declaring inflation. If official inflation is only two per cent, pensions, wages or welfare benefits will have to be adjusted less strongly. Private economists often come up with higher numbers. In America, in my view, the actual price increase over many years was more likely to be between five and twelve percent annually. In Germany, perhaps a little less, but even there, people feel more inflation than the official figures suggest.”

My own calculations show that the US dollar has lost purchasing power at an average rate of 5.7% per year since 1985.

So if you haven’t been getting 5% raises from your job every year, you are losing purchasing power over your lifetime. This is why the typical person is feeling like they can’t afford life.

Sure we can actually afford a fairly decent life, but not as nice as we could fifty years ago!

This is grim information of course, so what can we do about it personally?

An obvious improvement would be to get paid more for your job. For a heck of a lot of people, that’s not practical.

One first step is to preserve wealth by saving in gold, not dollars. If you bought gold in 1985, your rate of return now would be about 9.5% per year, that’s well above the 5.7% real inflation rate so your savings would actually be growing.

Gold is a safe way to preserve wealth, but it’s not a great way to create wealth.

To build wealth, we want to consider the concept of letting money work for you, instead of you working for money.

Thus we look at making investments, the most common being the stock market. The important thing here is to realize that your stock investments are only really worth something when you actually sell them (which you don’t want to do while building wealth). The other critical thing to realize is that you should be aiming for a rate of return greater than 15% per year. If you are really good, you might hope for about 25% rate of return per year (long term).

What do you think? Am I accurately predicting that soon we will be facing a very different world that we aren’t used to, with high inflation rates often exceeding 10% per year?

I start with an einkorn tortilla. No unhealthy modern wheat. I warm the tortilla up for a few minutes at 275 degrees so I don’t have a “soggy crust”.

Put some Carbone’s pizza sauce (or whatever pizza sauce you like) on, then sprinkle on: healthy salt, celery seeds, turmeric and some ginger powder.

Add onions, I put a lot around the edges of the sauce to help avoid any cheese or sauce spilling out the sides during cooking.

Add sliced green olives and then layer on some good raw (not pasteurized) healthy cheese from grass fed A2 cows.

Add some cut up gyro meat (which of course you bought from a farmer that engages solely in healthy farming practices).

Add some banana peppers and sprinkle on some garlic.

Bake at 375 degrees in a convection toaster oven for about 11 minutes.

Enjoy!

Upper management is a bit drunk on the idea of reducing costs by using simulated intelligence and firing humans, but it turns out that isn’t always a rosy picture. Some people are realizing that humans are actually better (more cost effective) than simulated intelligence, even at some tasks where AI is considered to be an excellent fit.

Another headline: “Companies Face AI Buyer’s Remorse”

https://gfmag.com/technology/companies-face-ai-buyers-remorse/

This article discusses a few companies (55%) are regretting hiring AI and laying off people.

“Last year, McDonald’s admitted defeat and took out automated orders.”

Yes, simulated intelligence is an amazingly powerful tool. But it has to be used appropriately. It doesn’t just blindly replace humans.

Before we can answer the question of whether or not soulmates exist, we first have to define what a soulmate is.

This topic was inspired by two of Dee Dee Vincino’s conversations / podcasts:

The first was with Jenna McCarthy. At 1:25:00 Dee Dee asks “speed questions” the first of which was “okay, soulmate, myth or true?” to which Jenna answers “myth”.

https://rumble.com/v78jd1g-the-writer-who-says-what-youre-thinking-jenna-mccarthy.html

The second was with Meg Keene. Dee Dee and Meg didn’t discuss soulmates but this was an interesting conversation about relationships and marriage.

https://rumble.com/v794ura-the-woman-who-reached-80-million-peopleand-is-back-to-defend-marriage-meg-k.html

Who knew that flying on an airplane was a good way to meet women?

So what is a soulmate? Is this a perfect person?

If you think a soulmate is perfect then I have to agree with Jenna. There is no such a human that is truly perfect.

My definition of a soulmate is someone that is as close to perfect for you, as you will find in the world. A person who you are completely comfortable with. Someone you trust without any doubt. Someone that you want to be with “all the time”. No “separate vacations”, no regular “girl’s night out” or “boy’s night out” needed on a frequent basis. A soulmate is someone you want to breathe the same oxygen with twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, every day of the year, for every year of your life.

That’s not to say that a break now and then, a moment away from each other, isn’t good. It is! But time apart shouldn’t be needed.

Will you have disagreements? Sure, but they should be rare and with the chemistry you have with your soulmate it should be intolerably uncomfortable to maintain a disagreement with them. Imagine trying to hold two magnets apart. Sooner or later (usually very soon) they will click back together. They simply can’t be held apart.

Why am I qualified to speak about soulmates? Well, I found one. My wife Cathy was phenomenal. If you passed her on the street you’d no doubt think she was just an average, sweet lady. She was a match for me. That’s not to imply she was perfect (or that I was perfect), but simply that we worked together!

Evidence that this was a magical match would be that I asked her to move in with me five days after we first met. She flew home to New York, packed up her kids and drove halfway across the country to live happily ever after. No complicated conversations, no negotiations, just silent awareness that we should be together. Communication at a non-verbal level.

Have I had other terrific relationships? Yes, absolutely! My life has been full of many wonderful relationships, but none on the level I had with Cathy.

My personality seems to be well suited to getting along with a lot of people. So if you can get along with a humble guy, with an ego and confidence the size of Montana, then you can probably get along with me. If you have an abrasive personality, then you are probably at a disadvantage to finding a soulmate.

Let’s take a moment to talk about the physical aspect of a relationship. Yes, physical connection is very important. With your soulmate, making love is a completely different experience than sex you’ve had with others. If you don’t have an almost constant desire, even after a decade of being together, to make love, then you probably haven’t found a soulmate.

Certainly I’m not the only one to have enjoyed a wonderful marriage. We tend to hear about the nightmare relationships. Those troubles are what get “air time”. But no doubt, many wonderful marriages quietly exist drawing no attention.

How likely are you to find a soulmate? In my opinion, extremely unlikely! Perhaps one in thousands or millions of matches. In other words, the odds are very much against you. Don’t expect to find a soulmate in your lifetime, but if you do, then appreciate the heck out of them!

Is there only one soulmate for each person? Of course not. Out of eight billion people, there are probably a few that would be soulmates with you.

Considering how rare soulmates are, my advice is that if you find someone that is a really good fit for you, then be 100% happy with them (even if they don’t quite qualify as a soulmate). Communicate, put in the work, maintain a great relationship. Don’t second guess.

After reading this, has your mind changed? Do you think soulmates exist? Have you found one?

Two of these Phantom MK1 robots (they cost about $100,000 each) were reported to be deployed in February in Ukraine. In theory they were limited to only “supply carrying tasks” but that in five to ten years they will be fully combat capable.

Time magazine reports: “And on this late February morning, it brandishes assorted high-powered weaponry: a revolver, pistol, shotgun, and replica of an M-16 rifle.”

We’ve seen previous reports that Ukraine actually used (different) robots to capture a position (Russian soldiers surrendering to robots).

Maybe I’m naive, but I’d like to see humanity eliminate war instead of turning it over to robots to conduct. What are the moral implications if robots are killing humans (the other side doesn’t have robots to fight back with)?

Certainly we can use the excuse: “If we don’t do it, our enemies will.” But is that really a good excuse?

Perhaps we should pull the plug on funding wars rather than escalating them?

Trying to be practical, we should rename the “Department of War” back to the “Department of Defense”. The USA should lead the world in de-escalation. Cut our military budget to set an example and allow other nations to also cut their military budgets. Focus on defence only. Take an attitude of “woe be to any nation that actually attacks us” with a clear statement that if a nation attacks us, we won’t just defend ourselves, but we will then proceed to conquer and eliminate that aggressive nation.

We should engage with other nations only in diplomatic efforts and use economic incentives to encourage the other nations to behave as we wish. This could be a hard pill to swallow for many, as we don’t agree with the way other nations conduct their internal affairs, but we must keep foremost in our minds that every human has a different viewpoint. It’s not morally just to impose our viewpoints on anyone else.

To quote Time magazine: “An additional worry is that AI is far from perfect. As anyone who has used ChatGPT or Google Gemini knows, LLMs make mistakes, known as hallucinations, all the time, as generative tools confidently produce false, misleading, or nonsensical information not based on training data.”

Even if a killer robot doesn’t hallucinate, is this really the future we want?

“Human Warfare” seems like an oxymoron to me.

• Coconut Oil

• Raw Honey

• Three Eggs

• Olive Oil

• Baking soda

• Cinnamon

• Vanilla

• Coconut Flour

• Almond Flour

• Shredded Coconut

• Maca

• Water

• Dates

Combine coconut oil, honey, eggs and vanilla. Then, add and mix, coconut flour, almond flour, baking soda, cinnamon and water. Then mix in dates, coconut, and maca.

Using stone pans, lined with parchment paper, place about a dozen balls of dough to be baked.

Bake at 330 degrees for 18 minutes

Enjoy warm with a mug of tea (or hot chocolate).

A typical handgun fires a bullet at between 700 to 1,200 mph. A rifle fires bullets at more like 1,700 to 3,000 mph.

Space debris travels about 17,500 mph! Ouch! That’s one fast bullet! You don’t want to get hit by a piece of space debris, especially not out in space where the environment is very hostile, downright lethal when you consider there is no air up there!

Luckily, space is really, really huge, but as we humans fill it with more and more junk it is becoming more and more hazardous to do space travel.

It’s about time that we start seriously launching space garbage trucks!

A few nations have started testing their ability to destroy dead or rogue satellites, but it’s dubious their actual intent is to clean things up. These attempts so far seem more like proving their military capabilities to eliminate enemy satellites. The methods are mostly rockets fired from Earth using a kinetic collision to obliterate the satellite. Other methods include chemical sprays to blind cameras. Okay, that’s not going to clean anything up, that’s purely a military concept.

There have already been a few actual collisions in space.

The Russians tested, in 2021, a hit to kill kinetic missile. This was beyond reckless and received worldwide condemnation. The targeted satellite was blown into more than 1,500 pieces of metal in the same orbit as the International Space Station.

Will the space frontier follow the model of the wild west?

Who should establish and enforce laws in space? Currently we have a hodge podge of vague agreements. How long will it be before a conflict forces a test of “law” in space?

Should our current governments rule space? We’ve done a crap job of getting along with each other here on Earth. Would we do any better in space?

Starlink, in their terms of service, states: “For services provided on Mars, or in transit to Mars via Starship or other colonization spacecraft, the parties recognize Mars as a free planet and that no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities. Accordingly, disputes will be settled through self-governing principles, established in good faith at the time of Martian settlement.”

It sounds to me like Elon Musk has nominated himself to be sheriff of space. This sounds pretty good to me actually. Certainly I like this approach better than the current corrupt governments extending authority into space.

Naturally the UN says this is illegal and that SpaceX has no authority in space.