๐ Thatโs a wrap...Here is a present:
by :
Thank you, Alejandro!
***
The most asked for Christmas gift this year is a Gift Card.
***
85% of Canadians and 83% of Americans say they have not paid for news in 2024
***
โThis past summer, Helsinki made an astonishing announcement: as of August, the Finnish capital went an entire year without any traffic deaths. Not a single pedestrian, cyclist or driver died on the cityโs roads. Not. One.โ https://www.not-ship.com/huh-apparently-cars-dont-have-to-kill-people
***
Size of Life
https://neal.fun/size-of-life/
***
Humans With Laptops
Builder.ai hit a $1.5B valuation by selling โAI-built apps.โ
Turns out it was about 700 human developers in India coding by hand.
Bloomberg exposed it.
The hype collapsed.
Builder.ai filed for bankruptcy in May 2025.
Then thereโs Fireflies.ai.
They claimed a $1B valuation and said 75 percent of Fortune 500 companies used their AI meeting bot.
The founder later admitted the โAIโ was just him and his co-founder silently joining calls and taking notes by hand.
Surprise.
They say itโs automated now.
Why Curing Big Diseases Barely Extends Life
Even if we solved major killers one by one, life expectancy would not jump much.
Cure all cancer. Gain about 3 years.
Cure all heart disease. Gain 3 to 4.5 years. Some estimates say less.
Prevent all accidents. Gain about 1.5 years.
Why so small?
Because most big diseases hit late in life.
If one doesnโt get you, another one might. Aging is undefeated.
The huge life gains of the past century came from boring wins.
Clean water.
Sanitation.
Vaccines.
Fewer babies and mothers dying young.
***
Of the largest 10 stocks in the S&P 500 Index in 1985, none are still in the top 10.
***
In fiscal year 2025, Costco sold over 245 million hotdog combos, over 157 million rotisserie chickens, and enough bath tissue to reach the moon and back over 200 times.
***
โFor 94 years, Iโve been able to drink what I want, do what I want & Iโve defied all the predictions of what shouldโve happened to me..Charlie & I...never really exercised all that much. We werenโt carefully preserving ourselves.โ ~Warren Buffett on living a long life.
At Mensa events attendees can signal their comfort level with physical contact by wearing colored โhugging dotsโ on their name tags, such as a red dot for โno hugs,โ a yellow dot for โask first,โ or a blue dot for โhugs welcomeโ. The term also relates to a past attempt to break the Guinness World Record for consecutive hugs at a Mensa event, notes The Seattle Times and Mid-America Mensa.
Speaking of intelligence, drum lessons can positively impact childrenโs cognitive development, leading to stronger skills in memory, attention, coordination, and pattern recognition. Pa, rum, pum, pum, pum...
***
China has a huge tunnel network called the โUnderground Great Wall.โ It may stretch about 3,000 miles through mountain regions. Its main job is to hide and move nuclear missiles so they can survive an attack. The tunnels likely hold storage areas, transport routes for trucks or rail cars, and command centers, though details are secret. The United States has underground sites too, but nothing close to this size. This massive system makes it harder to verify arms control and helps China keep a second-strike ability.
***
Pantones new Color of the Year - 2026 - is Pantone 11-4201 Cloud Dancer. It is an โetherealโ hue thatโs a symbol of a โcalming influence in a frenetic society.โ The color is similar to a blank canvas, Pantone said, and it signifies our desire to begin anew. Looks like dark white to me.
The hex color for Internet colors is #F0EEE9. The color of the background of the below webpage is โCloud Dancerโ
Different organizations are naming different โwords of the year,โ which is why youโre seeing both โrage baitโ and โ67โ for 2025. Each publisher runs its own process, so there isnโt one single official choice
Who picked โrage baitโ?
โRage baitโ (content designed to provoke anger for clicks) is the 2025 Word of the Year chosen by Oxford University Press. Oxfordโs Word of the Year can be a single word or a multiโword expression, as long as they treat it as one lexical unit that captures something important about how people are talking that year.โ
Who picked โ67โ?
โ67โ (also written 6โ7 or sixโseven) is the 2025 Word of the Year selected by Dictionary.com, not Oxford. Itโs Gen Alpha slang that can mean something like โsoโso,โ โmaybe,โ or work as a kind of jokey exclamation, which Dictionary.com highlighted as culturally notable in its own annual pick.โ
Who picked โSlopโ?
โMerriam-Websterโs human editors have chosen slop as the 2025 Word of the Year. We define slop as โdigital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.โ
โ โ โ
I asked Perplexity AI to give me the funniest joke of 2025. It couldnโt, or was reluctant because the question is too ambiguous. But then I asked for this:
10 sources? I think comedian jobs are safe for now...
***
Wanna Boing?
Of course itโs safe for workโฆhttps://boing.greg.technology/
***
Beeple, The Artist Explains
Beeple, the artist who launched the NFT art craze four years ago, is now building $100,000 Robot Dogs That Look Like Billionaires?. https://archive.ph/7408w
They do look pretty cool:
***
All the purchase receipts in Taiwan includes a lottery number.
Use these next time you have to pick your own: ไธ, ๅ
ซ, ไบ, ไธ, ไน, ๅ
***
Since 1961 the global average number of chickens eaten has quadrupled.
***
Researchers recently compared Afghansโ life satisfaction with international datasets dating back to 1946 and found it was the lowest ever recorded. Two-thirds gave a score of 0 or 1 on the 10-point scale.
***
Over many generations, better nutrition and lower disease have led to people becoming taller. And living longer.
***
ZZ Topโs Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill were offered $1 million by Gillette in 1984 to shave their famous beards for a commercial, but they declined, famously stating they were โtoo uglyโ without them, reinforcing their iconic, authentic image that was worth more than the cash.
***
Animal Farm. Shrimp farming dwarfs other forms of animal agriculture by sheer numbers. 51% of farm animals in the world are shrimp. An estimated 230 billion shrimp of various species are alive in farms at any given moment compared to the 779 million pigs, 1.55 billion cattle, 33 billion chickens, and 125 billion farmed fish.
***
Notable Tech & Business Books in 2025
Careless People โ Sarah Wynn-Williams
A raw insider look at Big Tech culture and power.
Why it matters in 2025: Tech companies are under fire for ethics. This book shows why the pressure is rising.
The Thinking Machine โ Stephen Witt
How NVIDIA became the unlikely king of the AI boom.
Why it matters in 2025: Chips run the world. Understanding the players is now a business skill, not a hobby.
Abundance โ Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson
A push to move beyond scarcity thinking in policy and economics.
Why it matters in 2025: Governments are stuck in old frameworks. This book argues growth needs a new playbook.
Start. Scale. Exit. Repeat. โ Colin C. Campbell
A clear guide to start a business, grow it, sell it, then do it again.
Why it matters in 2025: Small business formation is rising again. Many people want a roadmap that actually works.
The Canary Code โ Ludmila N. Praslova
A guide to building workplaces where everyone can thrive.
Why it matters in 2025: Companies are struggling with culture and retention. Inclusion is now a competitive edge.
The Optimist โ Keach Hagey
A narrative look at OpenAIโs rise, tension, and influence.
Why it matters in 2025: AI drives everything from jobs to geopolitics. This book shows the messy fight behind the scenes.
From Click to Boom โ Lizhi Liu
How China built its massive ecommerce machine.
Why it matters in 2025: China remains the global test-lab for online retail. Lessons here predict where ecommerce goes next.
The Shopify Story โ Larry MacDonald
The rise of one of Canadaโs biggest tech wins.
Why it matters in 2025: Shopify shapes online retail. Their journey offers hints for founders trying to scale.
The Psychology of Money โ Morgan Housel
How people really think about money and risk.
Why it matters in 2025: Markets are swinging. Clear thinking about money is a rare superpower.
~ list found at https://www.practicalecommerce.com/notable-business-books-in-2025
Veniceโs iconic buildings rest on millions of timber piles, primarily oak, driven into the lagoon mud, which, preserved by the oxygen-deprived water and hardening over time, form incredibly durable foundations that have supported the city for over a millennium, essentially petrifying into a stone-like material.
***
Sad State?
Chuck Norris can speak braille.
Anything pop out today? Holidays are just about here. If you enjoyed todays edition of CMBF please comment, share, like, follow, subscribe, and suchโฆ
Aging is undefeated ๐ญ Fins: I think Sisu would kick Chuckโs @$$. Did you read any of those books. I had a spell where I tried biz books/broad nonfiction society stuff and now I just canโt.