Supercentenarian passes peacefully in her sleep
The oldest living person on record passed away August 19th, peacefully in her sleep. Living in Catalonia, Spain, Maria Branyas Morera was 117 years old and something of a legend on Twitter.
Maria saw two world wars, two pandemics, and unfathomable technological change. Born in 1907 San Francisco, she moved to Spain as a child, where she later inherited her title “Super Àvia Catalana” on social media. She attributed her longevity to simple pleasures like enjoying nature, good friends, good fortune, and good genes.
Centenarians, people who made it to 100 years, are becoming more common, with over 722,000 worldwide. As you might expect, supercentenarians (+110 years) like Maria are much more rare, with only 250-300 known globally. The title of the world’s oldest living person now belongs to 116-year-old Tomiko Itooka of Japan.
Alas, the point of life isn’t to get to the highest number. It’s to see your family grow, and remain healthy and fit enough to enjoy all the moments until the end. Maybe the point for you is something entirely different…
A new tech trend I’m following
Maybe things will pivot, as they tend to do, and this trend will vanish overnight. Or it could become widely adopted and critically important in our regular lives.
That’s right, I’m talking about your “digital brain” – a term coined by fellow marketer and co-founder of FitSmallBusiness.com, Dave Waring. Honing in on the specific subject of self-hosted LLMs, Dave has created an avenue for access to AI without surrendering your own thought processes and content to a massive for-profit data warehouse. Three of the most prominent of these data centers are owned by Microsoft (ChatGPT), Meta (Llama) and Google (Gemini).
While there are some clear considerations with self-hosting your own AI, such as your computer’s processing ability, it’s worth noting that my 2023 MacBook Pro has handled everything I’ve thrown at it so far.
Follow the journey with me at DaveWaring.com.
Hint: if you’re a real enthusiast on self-hosted LLMs and would enjoy connecting with like-minded folks on the subject, you can register on Dave’s Discourse site and document your own journey there.
A book I recently finished
Tears of Autumn written by Charles McCarry in 1974, dives deep into the personal life of protagonist and American spy Paul Christopher, not only implying the lengths he was willing to go to discover truth, but also the risks he calculated as he embarked on a global mission to reveal the true culprit of JFK’s assassination while also protecting his friends, colleagues and the love of his life.
This spy novel offers yet another thrilling theory about the infamous presidential assassination plot. And it kept me enthralled. Author McCarry is graceful in his writing, hilarious at times with a rather dry sense of humor. He paints Christopher as an honest spy, if there ever was one, who was not afraid to get his hands dirty when duty called. As you read Tears of Autumn, you’ll want to be mindful of important details – strewn throughout the book – that are mentioned nearly in passing. Reading the book is itself an experience that will draw out the spy mind inside you. Enjoy!
Bonus: the championship you didn’t know you needed to see
The StaplerCup is the Forklift Operator Championship hosted each year in Germany, and it is take VERY seriously. Enjoy the best of the best forklift operators.
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