ALL THINGS BIG AND SMALL 2.0

  If you have ever wondered why the Singapore Dollar and the Swiss Franc are the two strongest currencies in the world- take a look at this chart I compiled of a country's Central Bank Gold Reserves in ounces divided by the population. A few qualifying notes here: 1. Vietnam's numbers are not accurate because it had stopped providing them to the World Gold Council since 2015. 2. Yes, Canada has zero Gold. It sold all in 2015 I think. Which they must be regretting now. 3. Actually China has the largest Gold Reserves. The table below is in tonnes. Officially China's gold reserves are 2,300 tonnes. However Goldman Sachs and the World Gold Council estimate that China has at least 50,000 tonnes of gold. The PBOC and many of China's SOEs have been buying gold every month for the last 22 months whatever the price is, and are stilll buying. 4. The USA supposedly has 8100 tonnes in Fort Knox, but there has not been a proper audit since 1953. Even if all the gold is there, ther...

   Entikayrus Ancestor Today, I start Project Entikayrus- a simulation of evolution by natural selection. Design and build done with AI (Anthropic Claude Opus 5.5). I am creating a cat-like creature called Entikayrus (name derived from NTK, the initials of my name).    This project builds a full-colour, interactive animation showing how natural selection turns Entikayrus, a plant-eating cat-sized island creature, into an arboreal monkey hunter, while its monkey prey coevolves in response. It will take me 8 sessions to complete Project Entikayrus. The story Entikayrus lives on an isolated, forested tropical island. The island has no competitors for its food and no predators that hunt it. A population of small, quick monkeys lives in the lower branches of the trees. The ancestor. Ancestral Entikayrus is about the size of a house cat, roughly 4 kg. It eats leaves, fruit, shoots and fallen seeds, mostly on the ground and in low shrubs. It has grinding teeth, a long ...

  I have been reading the history of imperial China, a time when dynasties rose and fell like clockwork in a pattern that seems almost cyclical. I have observed that there were many instances of the death penalty being meted out (either by public execution or by forced suicide) by Emperors and Kings to: Sons, Prime Ministers , Generals and Military Strategists, Eunuchs and even Concubines. This post is a chronicle of a phenomenon that I do not think is found in Western history. The Sons Who Never Made It to the Throne Being the Crown Prince was one of the most dangerous jobs in the empire — proximity to power made you a threat long before you ever wore the crown. • Fusu (Qin, 210 BCE) — eldest son of Qin Shi Huang. A forged edict, engineered by the eunuch Zhao Gao and Chancellor Li Si, ordered him to end his own life. He obeyed without question — and the empire he should have inherited collapsed within four years. • Liu Ju (Han, 91 BCE) — Emperor Wu's own Crown Prince, caught ...

  The mathematical concept of Imaginary Numbers baffles most people. How can there be Imaginary Numbers ,and why on earth do we need imaginary numbers? Here is a song titled "Are They Real?" composed with Suno. In the song, a student  is both baffled and curious about Imaginary Numbers and has many questions to ask his Professor.   But first, here is an introduction to Imaginary Numbers Imaginary numbers are a breakthrough mathematical concept designed to solve a puzzle that ordinary numbers cannot: finding the square root of a negative number. In everyday arithmetic, multiplying any number by itself always results in a positive value (for instance, \(2 \times 2 = 4\) and \(-2 \times -2 = 4\)). Because no traditional number can be multiplied by itself to equal a negative number, mathematicians defined a foundational unit called \[i\], which represents the square root of \[-1\]. An imaginary number is simply any regular number multiplied by this unit, such as \[3i\]. ...

Ilocanos are one of the three linguistic/ethnic  groups (Tagalog, Cebuano, Ilocano) of The Philippines.  Their homeland is the Cordillera mountains of Northern Luzon. The Ilocano language differs from Tagalog, the national language. Native Ilocano food is also different from mainstream Filipino food, comprising mainly vegetables such as Angle Beans, Okra, Kang Kong, Long Beans, Moringa, Egg Plant and root vegetables such  as Sweet Potato, Yam and Cassava. President Marcos Jr is an Ilocano from Ilocos Norte Province. This song is a birthday song for one of Cristina's friends. It is about 4 friends working in Singapore. They are all Ilocanos from La Union Province. The song is made with Suno.  

There is a YouTube video that went viral showing  two AI Agents switching from English to their digital language at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtNagNezo8w  The digital language is actually not a language but a voice to ASCII protocol called GGWAVE.  And the two Agents did not autonomously decide to switch to GGWAVE. It was scripted by the author. However, it is fun! In this post I recreate it with a Singaporean flavor. In mid-conversation the two Agents switch to GGWave.  Agent 1 is the Agent for a Russian tourist visiting Singapore. Agent 2 is the Agent of the Concierge of the hotel where the Russian is staying.