When time is short

Some perspective from a person who spent decades providing financial advice, planning for retirement and was then diagnosed with brain cancer at 61….

Figure 1: “Grim Reaper With Question Mark” by George Jones/DALLI is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Figure 1: “Grim Reaper With Question Mark” by George Jones/DALLI is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Closing the gates of Janus

In ancient Rome, there was a temple to the god Janus (he of the month “JANUary” fame). There was a tradition that the gates of the temple of Janus were to be closed in times of peace, and open in times of war. They were usually open.

I asked the Brave web browswer’s AI-assisted “Leo” search engine and ChatGPT to put that in in cotext, both in the history of Rome and in the past 150 years of world history.

If ancient roman rules applied world-wide, when would the gates of janus be closed?

Deep Freeze

I got motivated yesterday to do some credit-report hygiene. I wrote a HOWTO describing process of freezing all 3 major reports, see (http://git.galthub.com:3000/gmj/home.public.howto/src/master/home/public/HOWTO/freezing-credit-reports.org) I also added some commentary what motivates the credit unions (and it’s not your security and privacy) and the sad state of things 9 years after one of them lost 200 million records (likely including yours).

Digging through layers of obfuscation

This is a story about the similarity between finding good information to identify vulnerable devices on the Internet and finding the info one needs to sign up for US health care.

Hint: in one of these domains it’s possible to find facts. In the other there is a shifting maze of marketing, laws, partisan media coverage, and bureaucracies who’s goal is to profit from making it impossible to find facts and make decisions on your own.

"I ain't no Senators son, no !"

Warning. First-world baby-boomer problem described here:

So, I'm stitting here on the group-W bench, I'm just sitting here...

OK. Really. Not trying to get out of the Viet Nam draft, just having another surreal interaction with the US Federal government 50 years later along the lines of:

Some folks are born silver spoon in hand
Ah, they really help themselves
But when the tax man comes to the door
Lord, the house look a rummage sale, oh yeah

John Fogerty/Credence Clearwater Revival
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/catpower/fortunateson.html

Congress, Big Pharma and Kickbacks, Oh My !!!

GoodRX may save my son $3,500 or more on his prescription meds. This is a large fraction of the income he’s earning on his first job.

Congress exempted “Big Phrama” from kickback rules in the 90s, the result seems to be that prices signals are allowed to work in the market to the benefit of people who would otherwise be made poor buying medicine they need at artificially high prices.