Happy Monday Apexians!
We’re starting off today with a bit of a heavier subject, lessons learned by a financial advisor after the passing of his father. It has a lot of tactical stuff regarding end of life planning but also quite a bit of emotional subjects too such as living with grief. It’s very powerful.
9 Lessons I’ve Learned About Death and Money [Kindness Financial Planning] – “These are the 9 lessons I learned about death and money during his 7 year battle with Stage IV Lung Cancer, increased cognitive impairment, relapse after 20 plus years of being sober, his death, and life post-death.
As a financial planner, I’m privileged to be alongside people as they experience death in their own lives. I hear what it’s like and help people plan to make it easier on their survivors.
I’ll borrow a bit from my work and incorporate themes I’ve seen in my career, but most of this is my first hand experience, including fighting the healthcare system, how the legal system is not well set up for aging, and tips you can take to make it easier on your loved ones.”
Next, we lighten things up a bit – here’s a crazy story about what they’re playing around with at Johns Hopkin’s APL:
Scientists at APL Are Creating Food From Thin Air [Johns Hopkins Magazine] – “APL’s in-development system uses electricity, water, and engineered microbes to pull carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and trace minerals—such as magnesium, calcium, and iron—out of the air. Next, an electrochemical process involving common metals like tin and copper converts the CO₂ into acetate. From here, researchers can trigger a chemical reaction or introduce microbes to convert the acetate into simple sugars like glucose.” This is wild!
OK, so here’s another food related story and it’s completely by accident but related to money because California just increased the minimum wage for fast-food workers to $20 an hour:
‘Eat the future, pay with your face’: my dystopian trip to an AI burger joint [The Guardian] – “CaliExpress by Flippy claims to be the world’s first fully autonomous restaurant, using a system of AI-powered robots to churn out fast-food burgers and fries. A small number of humans are still required to push the buttons on the machines and assemble the burgers and toppings, but the companies involved tout that using their technology could cut labor costs, perhaps dramatically. “Eat the future,” they offer.”
All things being equal, is it better to have a person make it or a robot? I’d probably prefer the robot? It sounds like we’re a bit aways from them actually being able to make good burgers and fries but probably not that far away.