A step-by-step beginner’s guide to using generative AI to boost your creative output — Looking to start your own business but not sure where to begin? I’ll share with you a story about a fellow Portuguese entrepreneur who took a concept and turned it into a profitable business. This young entrepreneur had a fantastic idea for a print-on-demand company. With no prior experience in…

The next stage of capitalism is being determined by the rise of silicon minds. Silicon minds are the stage above AI, and describe a computer capable of replicating human-level thought. They will direct the robots who do all the work; there will be no jobs that provide wages for humans. …

Or any of the others — I truly cannot understand the reason people think Bitcoin or any other virtual coinage will become our currency. This is very much like thinking that the supposed truth of your religion will be taken up by everyone else. That’s not likely to happen. Though some CryptoHeads do have a religious…

But you do you, ‘kay? — Yes, I suppose that if you think a cheap clone running Linux is the same as a Mac, then the Mac certainly does cost more. But that’s not why I have a hard time seeing a new Mac as an expensive purchase, because for you, some dirt cheap Linux or…

These living paycheck-to-paycheck stories continue to get more absurd — I love MarketWatch stories on absurd personal finance. Are these people actually real or does the author make them up?

Lessons learned from my mom getting scammed — I am learning so many lessons about finance and fraud that I never wanted to know. My mom has been attacked and scammed out of most of her money. She didn’t have much to begin with but it is still a tangled web to unweave. Just three weeks ago I…

Not too much money. — Inflation is here, and there are a lot of explanations for it. People who worry about the monetary supply — especially people in the deflation-loving cryptocurrency world — blame it on excessive money creation during the pandemic and uppity workers demanding higher wages: https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-remote-work-makes-you-less-productive-wrong-2022-6 Anti-monopolists blame inflation on price-gouging. This…

Do their reasons stack up? — As an economist, I’m not a Bitcoin fan. Something seems off about it all. That is a feeling shared by many of my colleagues. But at the same time, because I am one of the economists who has actually studied Bitcoin and blockchains, I hold a fascination with it. As…

Because why wouldn’t I want a mouse jiggler? — I guess randomly searching through Amazon isn’t doom scrolling, but I don’t have a word for it. Maybe Zon Scrolling? Whatever you want to call it, I seem to do it fairly often. Sorry, I lied. I do it almost every day. In fairness, I do it because I have…

Fourteen years old and next to nothing there — Between 2008 and 2010 I set up three Wordpress sites. One was “Working For Yourself”, another was “Unixish”, and the other was “Pretty Much Retired”. I had forgotten about all of them and only came across them because I happened to be searching for something else, and up they popped. …

Though “Why did you buy this?” was her initial question — Years ago, I rather foolishly set up a mail rule that forwards any message from Amazon to my wife. The purpose of that was so that she doesn’t have to ask me if something she orders has shipped. …

A few watts here and there can’t matter — Yes, I have a Kill-A-Watt meter and a Belkin whichamajiggy that does the same thing. I don’t recall exactly why I ended up with both of these except to say these things are known to happen at Amazon, and they refuse to accept responsibility, so here we are. It’s not…

I’m surprised to see so little enthusiasm for tech — I recently mentioned working with a contractor who doesn’t like text messages. That really surprised me. It truly baffles me. Phone calls suck up much more time and interrupt your day much more. If you let them go to voice mail, you consume more time accessing them, going through them…

Why has there been so much aggressive — and borderline-unhinged —resistance from Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz when it comes to Starbucks workers organizing to create unions? Let’s first make sure everyone is on the same page with what has been going on — it has been a whirlwind. Key bulletpoints: …

For me and my wife anyway — or is it? — We recently had a contractor remove the stupid whirlpool tub from our bathroom. I wrote about the hows and whys of that at Death of a Bathtub if you care. The contractor noticed my Apple watch and commented that an old fashioned Timex was all he needed. In fact, he…

For whatever that was worth — In the late nineties and early two thousands, my APLawrence.com was a very popular tech site concentrating on Unix. I know that it was popular because my weblogs showed 300–400 thousand unique monthly visitors and Google Ads paid me thousands of dollars per year. That all fell apart with the…

Or that could be water — Such a lovely month! Almost $200 from writing came in from last month’s tom-foolery and literary scalwaggery. As the hourly effort put into the production of these works seldom exceeds two hundred minutes per day, one can easily imagine what sort of rewards greater effort would return. Unfortunately, I lack…

And good riddance regardless of the cost — Our home in our new retirement community came with a whirlpool tub. We never would have bought such a thing, and in fact had intended to order a home with only a shower, but someone had specced this out for their ideal home, their mortgage fell through, the location was…

A leasing plan makes more sense, I think — Apple apparently plans to offer iPhones on a “rental” plan in addition to the outright purchase and iPhone Upgrade plans available now. I put “rental” in quotes because I expect this to be much more like a car lease than renting a floor sander from the hardware store. The difference…

A new challenge for the McEwan brothers — A wise old man asked his son a question. “If you cut down a tree, how much is it worth?” “I’m not sure, dad. £50 or £60.” “What if you cut it up into small logs and sell it as firewood?” “I could get £200 to £300 selling it to…