Author: SupremeCmdr

Random Thoughts on Retirement (or why I continue to work)

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Congress needs to get serious about tweaking various aspects of Social Security, but this time to improve the financial aspects of the system, and not to make them worse, as it had done in January.Social Security Fiscal Year 2025: Trust Fund Balance, Income, Outgo, Deficit, and Interest Rates https://wolfstreet.com/2025/11/18/social-security-fiscal-year-2025-trust-fund-balance-income-outgo-deficit-and-interest-rates/

The Boss (SWMBO) and I talk about this often. Once the W2 income stops and we have to rely upon a small corporate pension, savings, and a shaky Social Security promise we’ll have to get conservative on our spending. No more Stratocasters. Less purchases for wardrobe enhancements. Gas station beer instead of craft brews.

Time will tell.

SWMBO – She Who Must Be Obeyed

Yikes.

Would You Trust an AI Chatbot with Your Children?

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All this offloading of parental responsibility to AI is alarming because one of ChatGPT’s biggest flaws, its manipulative and sycophantic nature, is known to intensify delusions and cause breaks from reality — a grim phenomenon that’s been linked to numerous suicides, including several teenagers. Parents Using ChatGPT to Rear Their Children – https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/parents-chatgpt-rear-children

Here’s the disclaimer from the ChatGPT homepage:

ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info.

Yikes.

Scary Charts 11.15.25 (income matters)

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Cognitive disability was strongly associated with socioeconomic factors such as income and education. Adults with household incomes less than $35,000 consistently reported the highest prevalence, increasing from 8.8% (95% CI 8.5%–9.2%) in 2013 to 12.6% (95% CI 12.0%–13.2%) in 2023. By contrast, adults in the highest income bracket (household income ≥ $75,000) had substantially lower prevalence, with a more modest increase from 1.8% (95% CI 1.6%–2.0%) in 2013 to 3.9% (95% CI 3.6%–4.2%) in 2023. Rising Cognitive Disability as a Public Health Concern Among US Adults – Neurology October 21, 2025 issue 105 (8) e214226 https://doi.org/10.1212/WNL.0000000000214226

Overall, income is central to the aging experience. From how well they think they’re aging to how they rate their physical and mental health and financial security, older adults with upper incomes are doing better than those with middle or lower incomes. Aging well: How income and health shape the experiences of older Americans – https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2025/11/06/aging-well-how-income-and-health-shape-the-experiences-of-older-americans/

Yikes.

Coffee and Atrial Fibrillation

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At the end of the study, the group that drank coffee experienced a 39% lower risk of recurring AFib episodes. In addition to coffee’s potential anti-inflammatory effects, the researchers proposed that those who drank coffee may have naturally replaced less healthy drinks, such as sugary sodas, with coffee instead. University of California – San Francisco. “Surprising heart study finds daily coffee may cut AFib risk by 39%.” ScienceDaily. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/11/251110021046.htm (accessed November 10, 2025).

Journal Reference: Christopher X. Wong, Christopher C. Cheung, Gabrielle Montenegro, Hannah H. Oo, Isabella J. Peña, Janet J. Tang, Samuel J. Tu, Grace Wall, Thomas A. Dewland, Joshua D. Moss, Edward P. Gerstenfeld, Zian H. Tseng, Henry H. Hsia, Randall J. Lee, Jeffrey E. Olgin, Vasanth Vedantham, Melvin M. Scheinman, Catherine Lee, Prashanthan Sanders, Gregory M. Marcus. Caffeinated Coffee Consumption or Abstinence to Reduce Atrial Fibrillation. JAMA, 2025; DOI: 10.1001/jama.2025.21056

Remote Work – Not The Norm

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Nearly One in Five Americans Works From Home Regularly – https://www.statista.com/chart/35389/regular-remote-and-home-office-work/

I started writing my journal in 2005. One of the best things about keeping a journal is the ability to verify if memories from the past are accurate or the made up, mashups your brain creates as memories. Here’s my entry on Monday July 24 2006:

A 4:00 PM meeting with the Division head with an HR rep present is never a good thing. I immediately thought to myself:

“This is gonna suck.”

And it did, big time. I got whacked today.

And that’s how my WFH life began. When my work from home situation arises in conversation most are surprised to learn I’ve been WFH this long. I’m surprised how long I’ve been working from home!

I am convinced due to having a low stress working environment, better diet (NO office snacks/free food/lunches out), no commute, along with a host of other variables I just might be increasing my lifespan. I do know I get plenty of sleep on a regular routine basis.

Short sleep duration (< 7 h per night) was associated with a 14% increase in mortality risk compared to the reference of 7–8 h, with a pooled hazard ratio of 1.14 (95% CI 1.10 to 1.18). Conversely, long sleep duration (≥ 9 h per night) was associated with a 34% higher risk of mortality, with a hazard ratio of 1.34 (95% CI 1.26 to 1.42). Sex-specific analyses indicated that both short and long sleep durations significantly elevated mortality risk in men and women, although the effect was more pronounced for long sleep duration in women. Both short and long sleep durations are associated with increased all-cause mortality, though the degree of risk varies by sex. Imbalanced sleep increases mortality risk by 14–34%: a meta-analysis – Ungvari, Z., Fekete, M., Varga, P. et al. Imbalanced sleep increases mortality risk by 14–34%: a meta-analysis. GeroScience 47, 4545–4566 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11357-025-01592-y

What ChatGPT Thinks About This Blog

/ SupremeCmdr / 2 Comments

Here’s what I found on LifeUnderwriter.net (the blog):

  • It is a blog hosted on WordPress at [lifeunderwriter.net] titled “Curated Content From a Life Underwriting Professional”. lifeunderwriter.net+2lifeunderwriter.net+2
  • The posts cover a variety of topics — not strictly life-insurance underwriting: health topics, longevity, demographics, lifestyle commentary. For example, a post from September 2024 titled “The Placebo Effect: When the Mind Becomes the Medicine” touches on aging and life-expectancy issues. lifeunderwriter.net
  • The blog seems to be running for a long time: there are archived posts going back at least to November 2013. lifeunderwriter.net+1
  • It appears to use standard blogging content and isn’t obviously a commercial site for underwriting services or a carrier guide. It seems more personal / commentary-oriented rather than strictly professional underwriting guidance.

My assessment

  • If you were looking for professional underwriting guides (for example, detailed carrier requirements, rating classes, medical tables, etc.), this blog may not be the best or most authoritative source — it seems more reflective/opinion-style rather than official.
  • If you were interested in someone’s perspective who works in life underwriting and writes broadly about risk, life-expectancy, aging, etc., then this blog could be quite interesting.

Think Again About Outsourcing Your Thinking 2.0 (if you can)

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Michael Gerlich, head of the Centre for Strategic Corporate Foresight and Sustainability at SBS Swiss Business School, began studying the impact of generative AI on critical thinking because he noticed the quality of classroom discussions decline. Sometimes he’d set his students a group exercise, and rather than talk to one another they continued to sit in silence, consulting their laptops. He spoke to other lecturers, who had noticed something similar. Gerlich recently conducted a study, involving 666 people of various ages, and found those who used AI more frequently scored lower on critical thinking. (As he notes, to date his work only provides evidence for a correlation between the two: it’s possible that people with lower critical thinking abilities are more likely to trust AI, for example.) Like many researchers, Gerlich believes that, used in the right way, AI can make us cleverer and more creative – but the way most people use it produces bland, unimaginative, factually questionable work. Are we living in a golden age of stupidity? – https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/18/are-we-living-in-a-golden-age-of-stupidity-technology

Yikes.