🐤 Cut yourself some slack

🏦 Markets: Wall Street liked what it saw in Friday’s economic reports, particularly evidence that wages have increased more slowly than expected. That could be a sign that the Federal Reserve’s efforts to address inflation are starting to work, and stocks ticked upward for a second consecutive day as all three major indexes added more than 2%.

The cryptocurrency market has seen a bit of a rebound in recent days, too, with Bitcoin up more than 2% over the course of the past week.

👩‍🏫 Professor Clinton: Few names in modern American politics have a bigger impact than Hillary Clinton. A pair of presidential campaigns, a term as a U.S. senator, and a stint at the helm of the State Department all followed her eight years as an influential first lady. Now, she’s going to share her wealth of experience with the next generation as a presidential fellow and a professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. She’s also been named a presidential fellow at Columbia World Projects. The institution announced the decision this week and it will all become official next month. As Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger explained: "Given her extraordinary talents and capacities together with her singular life experiences, Hillary Clinton is unique, and, most importantly, exceptional in what she can bring to the University's missions of research and teaching, along with public service and engagement for the public good.”

🧐 Suspicious ceasefire: Russia is claiming that it will observe its Orthodox Christmas with a ceasefire in the ongoing invasion of neighboring Ukraine. According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the reprieve was set to last 36 hours, but Ukrainian officials aren’t inclined to celebrate. In fact, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense indicated that the announcement could be a ploy by which the Russian army will have time to reorganize its mission. The agency tweeted its disapproval, adding: “Isn’t it too late for the Kremlin to think of God?” A top adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy insisted that his country would not be abiding by any such “Christmas truce,” describing it as a “cynical trap” and effort to spread Russian propaganda.

⛔ Suspended lawyer: After a jury determined that conspiracy theorist Alex Jones owed more than $1.4 billion to victims’ families after claiming that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax, new details have emerged about his attorney’s behavior during the trial. According to a ruling handed down by Judge Barbara Bellis this week, Norm Pattis shared confidential information about relatives of the shooting victims with other lawyers. As a result, she determined that the lawyer should be suspended from practicing law for a period of six months. As the judge wrote: “We cannot expect our system of justice or our attorneys to be perfect, but we can expect fundamental fairness and decency.”

🤖 Prohibited tech: While the rise of artificial intelligence-aided web searches has become all the rage since the release of ChatGPT, many educators are concerned that it will negatively impact students’ ability to learn. The chatbot is able to answer queries with a conversational tone that critics believe could be used to replace actual research in classroom settings — and the New York City Department of Education is responding. Agency spokesperson Jenna Lyle said ChatGPT will be banned on public school devices, adding: “While the tool may be able to provide quick and easy answers to questions, it does not build critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, which are essential for academic and lifelong success.”

Each time January rolls around, countless people start the year with lofty goals about how they plan to reinvent themselves or radically improve their lives in some fundamental way. By the time the month is over, however, many of those plans have fallen by the wayside.

Of course, it is always appropriate to consider ways that you can create a happier, more fulfilling life — but there’s no reason that it has to be tied to New Year’s Day. Instead of tying yourself to rigid resolutions, there are other strategies that are more conducive to long-term success, including:

• Pursue incremental, sustainable change. Too often, people are too eager to reverse years of bad habits in a few short weeks or months. This can lead to burnout and frustration, causing you to give up and settle back into an old way of living. Instead, make rational adjustments to how you live and understand that quick fixes are not the answer to your problems.
• Learn and grow from your failures. We’re all imperfect (yes, even you) and failure is an inevitable part of any effort to try something new. For this reason, it’s important to embrace that fact from the outset so it doesn’t derail your plans somewhere down the line. If used correctly, failures can actually help propel your future growth. Looking back on what you did wrong before will help you avoid those mistakes in the future.
• Stop putting yourself down all the time. When it comes to making lifestyle changes, it’s easy to spiral into a habit of self-criticism and doubt. Instead of focusing only on what you need to improve, be sure to take time to identify and celebrate your strengths. Embrace your flaws, change what you can, and realize that your imperfections make you a uniquely wonderful person!

If you’ve tried to buy a new or used car in recent months, you’ve probably noticed that the cost of automobiles has spiked significantly, so what’s causing the surge? Let’s take a look.

Interest rates

The Federal Reserve has been doing its best to bring inflation down, but the only real tool in its arsenal involves hiking the interest rate. This might be good for the economy in the long run, but for now, it’s making it far more costly to borrow money. Each time the rate increases by one point, the average monthly car payment increases by about $20.

The current rate can be as high as 10% now, compared to rates that were just a hair above 4% just one year ago.

Increased demand

As with any consumer product, when demand increases faster than supply the price will invariably go up. Since many folks spend the first year of the pandemic at home and socked away some money in savings, they were eager to spend it — often on luxury SUVs and electric-powered automobiles — throughout 2022.

Semiconductor shortages

The chips that make modern cars operate were in short supply even as more people wanted to buy the vehicles that rely on them. Factories that shut down due to COVID-19 were unable to produce the chips and dealerships nationwide were left with sparse showrooms as a result.

What can you do?

According to recent stats, a record 15% of Americans who financed a new vehicle in the latter part of last year are now paying $1,000 or more each month. While costs and interest rates aren’t likely to go down significantly any time soon, you can stack the odds in your favor by identifying models that dealers are trying to unload and shopping for a pre-owned option if possible.

Throughout most of human history, we’ve relied on our feet, wind-powered boats, or beasts of burden to aid in transportation. This meant that it took a considerable amount of time to get from one region of the world to another.

As a result, even the strongest rulers of previous empires found themselves limited by geography.

The impact of the industrial revolution

With the advent of technologies like steam and combustion engines, all of the previous rules changed abruptly. It was no longer impossible to span hundreds or thousands of miles relatively quickly — and the size of modern-day empires grew substantially as a result.

Take Egypt, for example. Despite wielding significant power over much of its 3,000-year history, it hasn’t expanded its borders very much at all.

And Rome, which was the most expansive empire the world had ever seen at its peak, encountered limits to its scope when it started taking a month or more to reach its outer territories. Even its impressive road system wasn’t enough to overcome this hurdle.

Some empires tried to ignore these limits to their own peril. Portugal tried to expand too far and too quickly, ultimately losing most of its conquered land.

Along with the improved transportation and communication made possible in recent centuries, however, those formerly hard-and-fast rules no longer apply.

The continued importance of rivers

Regardless of the cultural advancements that have allowed for robust expansion, there’s still a compelling reason to build societies along rivers. Not only do they provide water for irrigation and drinking, but they are an ideal mode of transit between communities along a common route.

That’s why a disproportionate number of cities across the United States and around the world have popped up and thrived along large sources of moving, fresh water.