Invest in yourself, your family, and your friends. Invest in life. If you need to lose weight, do it. Spend more quality time with your friends, family, and love ones.
Here’s My Number One Investment Idea For 2023 – https://mishtalk.com/economics/heres-my-number-one-investment-idea-for-2023
Lifelong Learning
Scary Charts – 11.02.22
HT to Barry Rithotlz at https://ritholtz.com/ for finding and posting cool charts.
I pass them along because they’re scary.
How’s your 529 plan doing?
Quote for Today – 10.29.22
Yes, change is the basic law of nature. But the changes wrought by the passage of time affects individuals and institutions in different ways. According to Darwin’s Origin of Species, it is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself. Applying this theoretical concept to us as individuals, we can state that the civilization that is able to survive is the one that is able to adapt to the changing physical, social, political, moral, and spiritual environment in which it finds itself.
From a speech delivered in 1963 by a Louisiana State University business professor Leon C. Megginson at the convention of the Southwestern Social Science Association. The text of his address was published in the quarterly journal of the association. — https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/05/04/adapt/
The quote above cites Darwin as the source of the phrase in bold.
Darwin never said it. https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/people/about-darwin/six-things-darwin-never-said
Quote for Today – 09.22.22
Charlie Munger, the billionaire partner to Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway, describes his friend’s day as 80 percent reading—often five hundred pages. Before he invests his client’s money in a company, Buffett puts the odds in his favor by reading everything he possibly can about the company itself and the broader industry. He is not always right, but he is always informed. We might imagine him flying around on private jets, wheeling and dealing, when in fact he is more likely sitting at his desk, reading everything from the great books to technical analysis.
Mr. Buffett’s reading habit provides a powerful lesson for all of us. But most Americans read almost nothing. A friend who teaches at a large public university thinks less than half of his incoming freshmen have ever read a single book in full.
Jeff Deist President of the Mises Institute. Five Keys to Professional and Personal Development accessed online 9/22/22 — https://mises.org/wire/five-keys-professional-and-personal-development
Some good advice, no matter what stage in life you find yourself. This talk was delivered on September 2, 2022, to a student workshop at the Ron Paul Institute conference in northern Virginia.
- Sift
- Read
- Learn Continuously
- Avoid Arguments
- Promote People, Not Just Ideas
Another Sweet Saturday – 09.17.22
Our 1-year RCT indicated that a lifestyle intervention program can be highly successful in older adults with diabetes and chronic comorbidities. In this specific population, lifestyle intervention not only improved glycemic control associated with improved insulin action and secretion but also improved age-relevant outcomes such as body composition, physical function, and quality of life.
Alessandra Celli, Yoann Barnouin, Bryan Jiang, Dean Blevins, Georgia Colleluori, Sanjay Mediwala, Reina Armamento-Villareal, Clifford Qualls, Dennis T. Villareal; Lifestyle Intervention Strategy to Treat Diabetes in Older Adults: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Diabetes Care 1 September 2022; 45 (9): 1943–1952. https://doi.org/10.2337/dc22-0338
From the periods 1988–1994 to 2017 to March 2020, there was an increase in the prevalence of diagnosed diabetes (from 4.6% to 11.7%), but no change in prevalence of persistent undiagnosed diabetes (from 2.23% to 2.53%) or confirmed undiagnosed diabetes (from 1.10% to 1.23%). Consequently, the proportion of all undiagnosed diabetes cases declined from 32.8% to 17.8% (persistent undiagnosed diabetes) and from 19.3% to 9.5% (confirmed undiagnosed diabetes). Undiagnosed diabetes was more prevalent in older and obese adults, racial/ethnic minorities, and those without health care access. Among persons with diabetes, Asian Americans and those without health care access had the highest proportion of undiagnosed cases, with rates ranging from 23% to 61%.
Michael Fang, Dan Wang, Josef Coresh, Elizabeth Selvin; Undiagnosed Diabetes in U.S. Adults: Prevalence and Trends. Diabetes Care 1 September 2022; 45 (9): 1994–2002. https://doi.org/10.2337/dc22-0242
Remember, Stay as Thin as You Can as Long as You Can.
Exposome! (I Learned a New Word Today)
In an extensive review, the team found that the early life exposome, which encompasses one’s diet, lifestyle, weight, environmental exposures, and microbiome, has changed substantially in the last several decades. Thus, they hypothesized that factors like the westernized diet and lifestyle may be contributing to the early-onset cancer epidemic…
Possible risk factors for early-onset cancer included alcohol consumption, sleep deprivation, smoking, obesity, and eating foods. Surprisingly, researchers found that while adult sleep duration hasn’t drastically changed over the several decades, children are getting far less sleep today than they were decades ago. Risk factors such as highly-processed foods, sugary beverages, obesity, type 2 diabetes, sedentary lifestyle, and alcohol consumption have all significantly increased since the 1950s, which researchers speculate has accompanied altered microbiome.
Cancers in adults under 50 on the rise globally – https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/09/220906161454.htm. Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “Cancers in adults under 50 on the rise globally: Researchers identify risks factors and trends behind an increasing incidence of early-onset cancers around the world.” ScienceDaily. (accessed September 7, 2022).
I’ve been cooking a lot this week and decided to give myself a break tonight. Grab a burger maybe some pizza.
Then I read this article.
Maybe I will cook tonight.
Got Kids? READ THIS
Beyond just online platforms, the new survey finds that the vast majority of teens have access to digital devices, such as smartphones (95%), desktop or laptop computers (90%) and gaming consoles (80%). And the study shows there has been an uptick in daily teen internet users, from 92% in 2014-15 to 97% today. In addition, the share of teens who say they are online almost constantly has roughly doubled since 2014-15 (46% now and 24% then).These are some of the findings from an online survey of 1,316 teens conducted by the Pew Research Center from April 14 to May 4, 2022
Teens, Social Media and Technology 2022 — https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/08/10/teens-social-media-and-technology-2022/
Remember my earlier post I Thought I Told You To Put That Phone Down! This earlier post has additional links to other posts on the topic of social media addiction.
Technology addictions, also commonly known as digital addictions or internet addictions, are often overlooked due to the acceptance that society has placed on using digital devices. Technology addictions often go unnoticed by loved ones because the addicted individual may appear as though they are tending to something important such as work-related tasks on their digital device, when in reality hiding behind the screen is something extraneous. When a technological problem does develop and is noticed it is often not viewed as being an imminent risk akin to an addiction to alcohol or drugs because not only is it more acceptable, but it is also not viewed as being acute or deadly. Despite these beliefs, pathological technology use can indeed be pervasive and detrimental to one’s health and well being. In a growing digital age there is a rapid expansion of digital use and subsequent potential for problematic pathological technology use to ensue.
https://www.familyaddictionspecialist.com/blog/the-6-most-common-types-of-technology-addiction
The link provided above is neither an endorsement or evidence of a previous or existing patient-therapist relationship.
Although I will admit to a quasi-addiction to You Tube for new music.
Loneliness and Mortality
The discomfort of loneliness eases with time. You come to accept solitude like a cracked tile in a corner of the bathroom floor. Eventually, you just stop noticing the defect. For older people, however, one crack could easily, quietly, lead to more. Living in isolation, for people over 50, can spur a 50 percent increased risk of dementia, according to the CDC, and a 32 percent increased risk of stroke. Loneliness is also associated with higher rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide. Prolonged isolation is the equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. (And older members of marginalized communities are at an even higher risk for all of the above when they’re socially secluded.) In the years since my mom lost her husband and her friends in Florida, her health declined and her shine dimmed. The woman who owns more makeup than Dolly Parton — including Stila compacts from the early aughts she audaciously calls “my vintage cosmetics” — stopped putting on her face.
My Mom Has No Friends — https://www.thecut.com/2022/08/helping-my-mom-make-friends.html
A beautifully written article. I hope you choose to read the entire piece.
A Plan is Not a Strategy – Update 08.03.22
A few months ago I was thinking about retirement. The funny thing about life at “retirement age” and still working is you think about retirement a lot. See Thinking About Retirement (or just another fine Saturday Morning) While catching up on news I came across several articles on unretirement. I learned the word unretire is actually in the dictionary. See https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/unretire. Rather than retire then unretire I decided I needed a plan. The more I thought about coming up with a plan the more I realized I needed a strategy instead.
So now I’m working on strategy only to realize I’ve had a strategy for many years. I’ve just never taken the time to write it down. It might be time to document my strategy. But it’s been too hot to write and Too Hot to Blog.
Take Home Message: A Plan is Not a Strategy.
Update 08.03.22
For an excellent example of strategy read this piece https://www.noceilingsnba.com/p/the-art-of-presti on how Sam Presti the General Manager of the OKC Thunder epitomizes this definition of strategy.
Quote for Today – 06.12.22
“All journeys have secret destinations of which their travelers are unaware.”
Martin Buber
lifeunderwriter.net 
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