Category: Trends & News

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Three solid ideas to help you get started

In October of 2008, a plumber from Ohio named Joseph Wurzelbacher made national headlines when he confronted US Presidential Candidate (then Senator) Barack Obama at a campaign rally: “Your tax plan’s going to tax me more,” Joe told Senator Obama. The confrontation sparked a sensation, and Joe became known nationwide as “Joe the

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The Bolsheviks aren’t coming. They’re already here.

The average Westerner who hasn’t traveled very much believes Moscow to be a cold, bleak, desolate capital city that’s filled with Stalinist-era architecture and a population that lives in utter misery. But the reality of this place is nearly the complete opposite. Moscow is a bright, beautiful, cosmopolitan city. I’ve always found Moscow

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The ridiculous return of the Zimbabwe dollar

Here’s our Friday roll up of the most absurd and concerning articles we came across this week. Jail time for offensive image in Great Britain Recently some idiot teenager in Britain edited an image of Prince Harry into something that was stupid and racist. This moron clearly intended to be offensive. His photo

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Texas wants to make sex jokes illegal

Here’s our Friday roll up of the most absurd and concerning articles we came across this week. UK bans advertisement with “harmful gender stereotypes” UK bureaucrats will now decide if ads and commercials are too offensive. New regulations ban advertisements with gender stereotypes “that are likely to cause harm, or serious or widespread

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Yikes! Japan has more people over the age of 80 than under the age of 10

Earlier this week the United Nation’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs released its 2019 world population report… and there were a number of very interesting findings: 1) World population continues to grow slightly, but the rate of global population growth is at the lowest level since at least 1950.  2) Global population

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Rejoice. The end of Banking is nigh.

On January 3, 2009, about six months before I launched Sovereign Man more than a decade ago, the Bitcoin blockchain came into existence. 50 bitcoins were mined by the network’s creator in that very first transaction. And within a few days, the first open-source Bitcoin software was released. Few people noticed. By October

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Celebrating 10 years from the oldest hotel in the world

In the year 705 AD, a Japanese entrepreneur named Fujiwara Mahito opened a small inn at the foot of the Akaishi mountains in central Honshu. At the time, few people probably thought the inn would last very long. Fujiwara didn’t know anything about being an innkeeper… he had been groomed to follow in

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Four insane data privacy scandals, just from this month

For this Friday’s roll-up of bizarre and disturbing stories from around the world, we found ourselves zeroing-in on some ridiculous data privacy violations. Soccer app spies on fans The Spanish soccer (sigh, OK– football) league, known by fans around the world simply as La Liga, knew that most pubs across Europe showing its

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Meanwhile, over on Planet Japan

It was only a few days ago that the Japanese government’s Financial Services Agency published its oddly-titled “Annual Report on Ageing Society”. (Like everything in Japan, English translations often hilariously miss the mark…) This is a report that the Ministry of Finance puts out every year. And as the name implies, the report

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As Hong Kong refuses to bend the knee…

Sun Tzu, the legendary Chinese general of the 6th century BC Zhou Dynasty, famously wrote in the Art of War: “When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men’s weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to a town, you will

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Who would possibly do something so crazy? Pretty much everyone in Japan.

It was precisely 20 seconds past 9:44am on November 14, 2017 that Japan Railways train number 5255 departed from Minami Nagareyama Station on the outskirts of Tokyo. Hardly anything seems noteworthy about a train leaving a station. It happens countless times each day all over the world. Except THIS particular train was supposed

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Not too shabby for a place with no natural resources…

There are truly so many things to love about Hong Kong. Most visitors would probably gush about the exotic night life or legendary cuisine (the Cantonese, they say, eat anything with four legs… except the table.) All of those things are fine and good. But at the top of my own list of

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