Thermonator, the first “flamethrower-wielding robot dog,” is legal in 48 US states.
At first I thought this wasn’t real after reading this article but it is.
You can now buy a flame-throwing robot dog for under $10,000 — https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/04/you-can-now-buy-a-flame-throwing-robot-dog-for-under-10000/
I had to watch the video. I suggest sound off if you don’t want to poop in your pants.
A very astute reader asked a very simple question: Why is this scary? So I went back and looked at my post. I thought I had completed the post but obviously not. The chart lacked context. So here’s the rest of the post I thought I posted. Welcome to my Senior Moment.
The relatively high labor force participation of Boomers may be beneficial both to them and the wider economy. Some retirement experts emphasize working longer as the key to a secure retirement, in part because the generosity of monthly Social Security benefits increases with each year claiming is postponed. For the economy as a whole, economic growth in part depends on labor force growth, and the Boomers staying in the work force bolsters the latter.
Baby Boomers are staying in the labor force at rates not seen in generations for people their age — https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/07/24/baby-boomers-us-labor-force/
What I forgot to include in the post now follows.
After finishing and posting Even More Random Thoughts on Retirement – November 2023 something kept bugging me. So I thought about this for a while and uncovered what was bugging me. The following quote bugged me:
To ease the anxiety of retirement, consider delaying Social Security to get a larger monthly check and perhaps also purchasing immediate fixed annuities. I plan to do both.
What We Lose — https://humbledollar.com/2023/08/what-we-lose
Specifically the part of the quote in bold bugged me. I thought to myself, nice plan. But how many people can afford to buy an immediate fixed annuity? I can’t. How many people actually defer Social Security until age 70 to maximize their monthly payments?
Well, get ready for the ugly. It’s Scary Chart time.
Answer: 4%
Why just 4%?
Answer: 97% of people who retired sooner than planned did so due to health and employment issues.
Source: https://www.transamericacenter.org/retirement-research/23rd-annual-retirement-survey
Some retirees get fabulous bull markets right when they leave the working world while some retire into the teeth of a bear market.
How The Market Shapes Your Portfolio — https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2023/11/how-your-market-shapes-your-portfolio/
And some retirees will leave the working world straight into a world of high inflation.
Just beyond the guests and beyond the hornbeam trees where I’ve strung fairy lights for the party, I think I can see my future. The grind of work is finally over, my retirement dream cued up. April in Paris! Reading by the sea! Spanish lessons in Antigua so I can better speak to my grandson. I’ll be playing with him, too, in the open-ended days my children rarely knew with me. I’m not saying I deserve a life of ease. But I worked hard to earn my retirement, dropping giant chunks of my salary into company and government pension plans throughout those forty years. It’s time for the famous social contract to hold up its end of the bargain and take care of me, the way it did my father before me, to deliver on the idea that retirement is my right after a life of work and the promise that I will have the time and means to enjoy it.
Except none of that happened. The year since my retirement party has not been a dreamy passage to a welcoming future but a nerve-shattering trip into the unknown. My debt is swelling like a broken ankle; my hard-won savings may or may not be sucked into the vortex of an international market collapse. Can I keep my house? Who knows? The macro-economy is messing with my micro-economy. The future keeps shape-shifting. And none of the careful planning I put into my retirement is going to change that.
The End of Retirement — https://thewalrus.ca/the-end-of-retirement/
So beware of statistics. The reason why more Baby Boomers are working is because they have to.
Thank you Ol Red Hair.
My favorite excerpt from the letter:
Let’s be honest, some people in academia are horrible, arrogant, selfish and narcissistic. And no matter how much the people at the top say they deal with bad behaviour, the nasty folk do have an annoying habit of getting promoted. The way in which academia selects and rewards particular skill sets produces an over-concentration of people who are low on empathy. I’ve met a lot of those ‘special’ colleagues over the years (no names mentioned obviously). I will not miss them one jot. They create a toxic working environment , dominate the discourse, ride roughshod over the rules, and cause a great deal of harm to others and get away scot-free. They’ve done me significant mental damage, but I can now happily forget them and move on with life.
My recommendation to anyone starting out in academia is stand your ground, challenge these energy vampires and politely make it clear that you don’t want to play their stupid toxic games. They really don’t have the power that they want you to believe they have, even though the system tends to promote them to roles that are beyond their emotional competence to fulfill. Pity them for the lack of other things to do with their lives. And, remember that 98% of what we do as academics is of no importance at all out there in the real world, so when a self-entitled colleague insists that their work on their favourite gene is earth-shattering; more important than anything you could ever do; and a good reason for their career to be advanced faster than yours; just smile and ignore them. Do your own thing, at your own pace. Have a life outside the university and remember that it’s just a job.
https://journalofhumannutritionanddieteticseditor.wordpress.com/2023/11/27/thats-it/
There just aren’t enough billionaires…
Manhattan’s Trophy Apartments Are Gathering Dust — https://www.curbed.com/2023/11/luxury-central-park-billionaires-row-hudson-yards-weak-sales.html
In just three years, the share of U.S. adults who say they regularly get news from TikTok has more than quadrupled, from 3% in 2020 to 14% in 2023.
More Americans are getting news on TikTok, bucking the trend seen on most other social media sites — https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/11/15/more-americans-are-getting-news-on-tiktok-bucking-the-trend-seen-on-most-other-social-media-sites/
While TikTok is an engaging entertainment and social connection platform, there are better sources for in-depth personal financial advice. Many finance content creators sell the allure of quick wealth and success, leading neophyte investors to risky decisions that may have lasting consequences.
TikTok Personal Financial Advice Not To Take —https://due.com/tiktok-personal-financial-advice-not-to-take/
This will not end well.
Every employee probably knows the difference between productive work and what a new report by software company Slack calls performative work – merely looking but not actually being busy. The data in the release shows that workers in some Asian countries – namely India, Japan and Singapore – seem to spend more time appearing to be working than employees in other places.
While Indians spent 43 percent of time in performative work, that number was 37 and 36 percent in Japan and Singapore, respectively. For comparison, U.S. respondents and those from Germany said they only appeared busy for 28 and 29 percent of the time. One outlier in Asia was South Korea, also with a low of 28 percent of work hours spent in “pretend mode”.
Who’s Only Looking Busy at Work? — https://www.statista.com/chart/30591/performative-productive-work/
And now we have a new productivity mantra…
Now that you’ve taken a break and worked on the root causes of your problem, it’s time to embrace a whole new mindset around work, money, and success. This is going to sound radical, but I want you to give yourself permission to achieve less.
The latest productivity mantra that we all need: ‘Achieve less’ — https://fortune.com/2023/08/16/latest-productivity-mantra-achieve-less-careers-mental-health-stress/
But The Boss may not agree with this new mantra…
While the debate over productivity in a remote office setting continues, one Australian woman is fighting back against her employer after being accused of not typing enough while working remotely.
Remote Employee Fired for ‘Low Keystroke Activity’ During Working Hours After 18 Years of Employment — https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/remote-worker-fired-for-low-keystroke-activity/457578
There’s a new description of the ideal job…
A lazy-girl job is any job that can be done from home within the standard 9-to-5 and has undemanding tasks and easygoing managers.. the jobs pay enough money ($60,000 to $80,000) for a young adult to live off but not feel pressure to work above their contracted hours.”
The term was coined in May 2023 by Gabrielle Judge, a 26-year-old career influencer. Judge told The Wall Street Journal that she was aware the word lazy would have a negative connotation, but she wanted to spark a conversation. “Lazy-girl jobs aren’t roles where you can slack off,” she said, “but career paths where your work-life balance should feel so awesome that you almost feel like you’re being lazy.”
Lazy-Girl Jobs Are Trending with Gen Z—Here’s How to Find One — https://www.rd.com/article/lazy-girl-jobs/
“Lazy-girl job” is one of the worse uses of the English language I’ve encountered because the use of the word “lazy” is bad. Really bad. The definition of any job done from home with undemanding tasks and easygoing managers is also bad. Really, really bad. A friend once told me the key to his success. With most jobs and careers the majority of us will be average performers (think bell curve). All you need to do to put yourself on the path to success is to be a little better than average. This lazy girl job thing is cultural acceptance of average or worse than average.
Working hard is not a guarantee of success. But not working hard is a guarantee of failure.
Source: 3 in 4 managers find it difficult to work with GenZ — https://www.resumebuilder.com/3-in-4-managers-find-it-difficult-to-work-with-genz/
Source: Millennials or Gen Z: who’s doing the most job-hopping — https://www.careerbuilder.com/advice/blog/how-long-should-you-stay-in-a-job
There’s no malicious intent here. I’m not playing generational war games. Any relationship you see between these two survey results could simply be spurious.
Or not.
Most of the time I just delete shit like this. Then, unsurprisingly I get another text.
What chat? Why do I feel like I’m being targeted?
HomeVestors, the self-proclaimed “largest homebuyer in the United States,” goes to great lengths to distinguish itself from the hedge funds and YouTube gurus that have taken over large swaths of the real estate investment market. The company says it helps homeowners out of jams — ugly houses and ugly situations — improving lives and communities by taking on properties no one else would buy. Part of that mission is a promise not to take advantage of anyone who doesn’t understand the true value of their home, even as franchisees pursue rock-bottom prices…HomeVestors cautions its franchisees never to take advantage of sellers who are unable to understand negotiations. But by the time he left that evening, Evans had a contract to buy the house for roughly two-thirds its value, signed in Casanova’s shaky script.
The Ugly Truth Behind “We Buy Ugly Houses” — https://www.propublica.org/article/ugly-truth-behind-we-buy-ugly-houses
Full disclosure – I have no clue who sent me these text messages and the source may not be HomeVestors.
Please read then share the entire article. You can’t be too safe nowadays.
The more I think about this form of elder abuse the angrier I get. Then again, maybe I did have a conversation about a different property.
This text message was for a property I don’t own.
I’m actually not WFH (working from home) today but reading about WFH. And I learned some new things about the world today. One of my favorite tidbits of unsolicited advice comes in the form of this question:
Do you live to work or work to live?
As Gartner research shows, workers want a more “human value proposition,” with 65% of survey respondents agreeing that the pandemic made them rethink the role that work should have in their lives. For all of our talk for decades about work-life balance, people finally feel in their bones what that means. The big question has shifted from “How does life fit into work?” to “How does work fit into life?”
How to Motivate Employees When Their Priorities Have Changed — https://hbr.org/2023/05/how-to-motivate-employees-when-their-priorities-have-changed
Nice to see others coming around to my way of thinking. The strongest motivation I had to establishing a WFH life was to not have work dominate my entire life. Not once have I felt lonely working in my home office. But apparently some WFH people get lonely.
When I first made the switch to working remotely, I was elated. I had been commuting for years, which regularly constituted 12 or more hours stuck in traffic each week and resulted in incalculable levels of stress and frustration. When I began working from home, in addition to regaining my lost commuting hours, I loved my new ability to focus on my work without the distraction of an open-plan office environment.
However, as time progressed, I started to feel lonely. I was able to laser-focus on my work, but my interactions with others were driven solely by virtual meeting agendas or email. I noticed I was becoming less enthused and more withdrawn. I spent too much time scrolling social media because I was silently craving connection with others. I was slowly but steadily becoming isolated.
Is Your Remote Job Making You Lonely? — https://hbr.org/2023/05/is-your-remote-job-making-you-lonely
Maybe you should turn your camera on during meetings.
A recent survey of 4,200 work-from-home employees found that 49% report a positive impact from engagement when their cameras are on during online meetings, and only 10% felt disengagement from turning on cameras. As leaders are figuring out hybrid and remote work, they are facing the challenge of deciding whether to encourage employees to keep their cameras on during meetings. This decision has a significant impact on communication, engagement and trust-building within the team. I can attest to that from my experience helping 21 organizations transition to long-term hybrid work arrangements.
The Pros and Cons of ‘Cameras On’ During Virtual Meetings — https://www.entrepreneur.com/leadership/the-pros-and-cons-of-cameras-on-during-virtual-meetings/450959
Then again, there may be a good reason why people have their cameras off.
A May 2022 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta estimates that the number of working age Americans (25 to 54 years old) with substance use disorders has risen by 23% since pre-pandemic, to 27 million. A figure that’s about one in six of people who were employed around the time of the study. It’s caused a 9% to 26% drop in labor force participation that Karen Kopecky, one of the authors of the report, says continues today.Drug recovery firm Sierra Tucson concluded from a November 2021 survey that about 20% of US workers admitted to using recreational drugs while working remotely, and also to being under the influence during virtual meetings. Digital recovery clinic Quit Genius found in August 2022 that one in five believe that substance use has affected their work performance, also according to a survey.
Remote workers with substance use disorders face ‘rude awakening’ in return-to-office mandates — https://fortune.com/2023/05/13/remote-workers-substance-use-disorders-return-to-office-mandates/
OK, enough about WFH. Time to get back to thinking about retirement because (I am) Flunking Retirement.
lifeunderwriter.net 
You must be logged in to post a comment.