When I was young, which admittedly is a very long time ago, boys wanted to be policemen, train drivers or pilots, and girls wanted to be nurses and hairdressers. How things have changed! Nowadays young folk want to be social media creators, YouTubers or influencers. According to a U.S. survey, 53% of Gen Zs (that’s […]
Deepfake Deception: AI’s Dark Side in Fraud
Artificial Intelligence is all the rage these days, not only to increase productivity at work and find answers to questions and solutions to problems, but also increasingly to create fake photos (remember the picture of the pope wearing a Balenciaga puffer jacket) and videos, and even recreate the voice of celebrities and even long deceased […]
The world’s most expensive substances
A German business magazine this summer published a list of the worlds most expensive materials. If you thought gold, rhino horns and Rhodium cost a bundle, there are substances which are much, much more expensive (and we are talking truly staggering numbers here). Ranks 8 to 10 are held by drugs (the illegal kind that […]
Can money buy happiness?
In my previous post I looked at the distribution of wealth, which then obviously leads to the question of whether money can buy happiness. And according to recent research more seems indeed to be better. This is according to new research by Matthew Killingsworth, a senior fellow at the Wharton School of the University of […]
Global Wealth: The great divide!
According to the ‘Global Wealth Report‘ by UBS, a Swiss bank, 1.5% of the world’s population own 47.5% of assets, while 39.5% of the global adult population only own 0.5%. The wealth pyramid in the report clearly shows what I suppose we all already knew: That a large proportion of global wealth is concentrated in […]
Time to Track Hate
Since the riots in a number of cities across the U.K. this summer, scores of people, mostly men, have been sentenced to lengthy prison terms – and quite rightly so: only immediate and severe punishment can act as a deterrent. What I found particularly shocking is the age of some of those hoodlums: the youngest […]
Striking Gold: Navigating Olympic Spirit vs. Commercial Interests
The modern Olympic Games were founded to celebrate amateur sporting ideals. But times change. As France is gearing up for the 2024 summer Olympics, it’s time to take a peek behind the scenes. Nowadays it’s all about money. Teams and athletes compete for medals, proud to be representing their nation at such a prestigious event. […]
$370’000 per hour
That lawyers among other professionals can charge exorbitant hourly rates for their work is nothing new. But what the three law firms representing Richard Tornetta, the Tesla-investor who while holding 9 shares only in 2018 successfully sued the company over Elon Musk’s $56 billion compensation package now claim is nothing short of outrageous! In total […]
McDonald’s stops AI experiment in the US
In a recent post I have shown how artificial intelligence sometimes is, well, neither artificial nor intelligent. Since then McDonald’s, who were also trialling AI-assisted ordering systems in the US have announced that following a number of rather comical mishaps they are abandoning the tests (at least for now). The technology developed by IBM has […]
Airfare Faceoff: Comparing the Comfort and Cost of Low-Cost and Legacy Airlines
Many of us are regularly travelling be it for work, to go on holiday or to visit family and friends, and if these journeys involved air travel, you might have had to ask yourself which airline to fly with. Most of my own traveling by plane is between Switzerland and the U.K., so besides both […]
The grumpy older man 