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Creatix / February 17, 2026 The New Golden Rule: 10% of Your Portfolio in Gold For decades, conventional wisdom suggested keeping a small allocation to gold — maybe 2% to 5% — as “insurance.” But the world has changed. Persistent deficits, geopolitical fragmentation, monetary experimentation, and structurally higher debt levels have altered the macro landscape. In this new era, it may be time for a revised principle: The New Golden Rule: Keep 10% of your portfolio in gold. Not 50%. Not an all-in bet. A disciplined, structural 10%. Let’s explore why. 1. Gold Is Monetary Insurance in an Era of Monetary Experimentation Since 2008, central banks have expanded balance sheets at unprecedented scale. The era of quantitative easing (QE), near-zero rates, and aggressive liquidity injections permanently changed investor psychology. Gold performs one critical function:  It is no one else’s liability. Unlike bonds, it carries no default risk. Unlike cash, it cannot be printed. Unlike equities,...

Creatix / February 17, 2026 The Big Bang is often described as the moment the universe began. But in modern cosmology, it’s more precise to say that the Big Bang describes the early expansion of the universe from an extremely hot, dense, and unusually smooth state. We have strong evidence that this happened. What we don’t have are answers to some of the deepest questions surrounding it. Here are the five biggest mysteries that still keep cosmologists awake at night. 1. What Caused the Big Bang? The Big Bang theory works beautifully when describing the universe after it began expanding. But rewind the clock all the way back to time zero, and current equations break down. General relativity predicts a “singularity”, a point of infinite density and temperature. But infinities in physics usually signal that a theory has reached its limits. To understand what truly happened, we likely need a theory of quantum gravity , something that unifies quantum mechanics and gravity. Until then, we d...

Creatix / February 16, 2026 1) The 2026 Winter Olympics Have Set a Modern U.S. Viewership Record The Milano-Cortina Games are averaging roughly 26.5 million U.S. viewers across NBC broadcast and streaming — about a 93% increase over early Beijing 2022 numbers. More than 200 million Americans have engaged with NBCUniversal winter coverage this season. Strong storytelling, marquee events, and digital access have reignited national interest. 2) Winter Sports Debuted at the Summer Olympics Before the Winter Games existed, figure skating appeared in 1908 and 1920, and ice hockey debuted in 1920. 1924 Winter Olympics was originally labeled “International Winter Sports Week” and only later recognized as the first Winter Games. Since 1994, Winter and Summer Olympics have been staggered two years apart. 3) The First Winter Olympic Gold Medalist Was American Charles Jewtraw won the 500m speed skating event in 1924, earning the first gold medal in Winter Olympic history. His victory permanently l...

Creatix / February 15, 2026 Why We May Not Be That Far from a Conscious Robot — Especially If Its “Mind” Lives in the Cloud For decades, the image of a conscious robot has been cinematic: a metal body with a glowing artificial brain inside its skull. But that picture may be technologically outdated. If consciousness is not a mystical substance but an emergent pattern of integrated information processing, then it does not require all computation to sit inside a head. It may require architecture, integration, embodiment, and continuity streamed over a computer server, not a single "brain". And that changes the timeline dramatically. The Substrate Shift Human consciousness runs on biological substrate — neurons, glial cells, electrochemical signaling. But many researchers argue that what matters most is not the biology itself, but the pattern of computation and integration. If that’s true, then a robot’s body could act as: a sensor platform, a motor system, a local reflex proces...

Creatix / February 14, 2026 Happy Valentine’s Day!  Marketing mixes chocolate and romance. Let's take a look. I. The Neuroscience of Chocolate: Why It Feels So Good Chocolate is not just candy. It is a neurochemical event . When you eat chocolate, especially dark chocolate, several things happen: 1. Dopamine: The Motivation Molecule Sweet and fatty chocolate activates the brain’s mesolimbic reward system , the same circuitry that responds to winning, sex, novelty, and social approval. The key player is dopamine. Dopamine is anticipation. Desire. The signal that says: “This matters. Do it again.” Chocolate’s combination of sugar and fat is evolutionarily powerful. Your brain evolved in scarcity. Dense calories meant survival. So the circuitry is ancient and strong. 2. Endorphins and Opioid Signaling Chocolate stimulates endogenous opioid systems, contributing to that warm, comforted feeling. That’s why chocolate is often associated with emotional soothing. 3. Serotonin and Mood Carb...

Creatix / February 13, 2026 Every major technology has triggered the same fear: this will replace humans. However, across the full arc of human history—from sharpened stones to artificial intelligence—the opposite has always happened without exception. We don't think this time will be any different. The economy will keep expanding. Smart humans will need to continue learning and adapting.  Technology (tools and methods) always expand the economy. It never contracts it. This isn’t optimism. It’s arithmetic. 1. The First Machine: The Wedge The earliest technologies were not grand inventions but geometric insights . A sharpened stone (a wedge) allowed a human arm and hand to do more work than biological muscle alone. Cutting meat, shaping wood, breaking bone, building shelter: each action became faster and cheaper in energy. The result wasn’t unemployment among hunters. It was surplus : More food with less time More time for toolmaking, teaching, cooperation Larger groups sustained on...

Creatix / February 12, 2025 When it comes to job creation in the US, there are very good years, very bad years, and anemic years like 2025. Supposedly, 2026 started strong in January, but it is hard to trust the January numbers knowing that there are estimates subject to revision. The revision in 2025 was quite dramatic. Initially, it had been estimated that the economy had added  +584,000 jobs (as initially published). This was re vised down to only  181,000 jobs (seasonally adjusted).  Yes, that means that  403,000 fewer net jobs were created in 2025 than initially reported. This is an almost incredible and unprecedented 69% downward correction.  To be sure, we have had worst years in the US in the last 25 years. When recessions hit, net job losses hit the millions. Below are the numbers from 2000 through 2025. The list shows how many jobs were added (gained) or lost each year since 2000. Take a good look:   2000: +1,948,000 2001: −1,763,000 200...

Creatix / February 11, 2026 Every time humanity expands production capability, the economy expands to bring capacity. The lever expanded muscle. Steam expanded motion. Electricity expanded productivity. The internet expanded information. In the next 50 years, two forces will converge: AI robotics and the space economy . Together, they are poised to expand the economic frontier again in a big way; structurally. I. Robotics: The Expansion of Labor Robots are not just machines. With AI, they become smart labor . For the first time in history, intelligence itself, not just muscle, can be scaled. Factories already run with industrial robots. Warehouses deploy autonomous systems. Surgical robots assist doctors. Agricultural robots harvest crops. AI systems design chips, optimize logistics, and discover molecules. This will only continue growing in the near future .  What changes over the next 50 years is not the existence of robots; it is their pervasiveness . As hardware costs decline ...

Creatix / February 10, 2026 After Super Bowl 50 and Bad Bunny's historic record-setting Puerto Rican tribute, the halftime show crossed a line it can’t uncross: fragmentation of choice. The spectacle kept getting bigger, louder, more expensive, and paradoxically, less universal. The very success of the halftime show exposed its central contradiction: the bigger the audience, the harder it becomes to please anyone in a meaningful way. What we’re seeing now isn’t decline. It’s expansive   fragmentation —the same force that reshaped media, retail, and entertainment over the last two decades. And fragmentation doesn’t shrink markets. It expands them. The Core Problem: Mass Appeal Is a Myth The Super Bowl is the last true mass-audience event remaining in American culture. But music culture no longer works that way. Rock fans, hip-hop fans, and Latin/reggaeton fans don’t merely have preferences; they have identities, histories, and expectations that can’t be compressed into a single 12-...

Creatix / February 8, 2026 Lindsey Vonn is one of the most accomplished and recognizable athletes in the history of alpine skiing. She's a four-time overall World Cup champion, Olympic gold medalist, and has been the face of women’s downhill skiing for more than a decade. Known for her speed, resilience, and repeated comebacks from injury, Vonn built a career defined as much by pain and recovery as by podiums.  At the 2026 Winter Olympics, long after most athletes would have stepped away, she attempted one final return, despite carrying a serious knee injury. She was seeking to end her career on her own terms. What followed was not a fairy-tale finish, but a dramatic and controversial moment that reignited old questions about courage, responsibility, autonomy, and whether there is ever a clear line between bravery and recklessness in elite sport or in life in general. There’s a particular kind of courage that shows up at the very end of a career. Not the fearless kind that launche...

Creatix / February 7, 2026 1. Defense Super Bowls are usually decided by who breaks last—not who flashes first. Seattle’s defense is physical, disciplined, and built to suffocate explosive plays. They generate pressure without constant blitzing, tackle well in space, and force offenses to drive the field snap by snap. That style travels, ages well under pressure, and historically wins titles when the lights are brightest. 2. Offense  Seattle doesn’t depend on a single trick or superstar. They can beat you multiple ways. An elite receiving threat stretches defenses vertically and horizontally, the run game keeps defenses honest, and the quarterback doesn’t need to play hero ball to win. That balance is deadly in a Super Bowl, where defenses are elite and one-dimensional offenses get exposed. 3. Coaching This is the quiet edge. Seattle plays composed football under very discipline coaching that leads to:  fewer panic decisions, fewer procedural mistakes, better situational ...

Creatix / February 6, 2026 You can think of the modern news cycle as  attention extraction for ransom . Politics, crime, outrage, scandals, breaking alerts, are not just information. They're neurological stimulus hijacking ancient survival circuitry in your poor brain. To succeed in life you need to treat your brain, not only as your most important organ, but as your best friend. You have to feed it good content; not the inflammatory garbage that the typical news cycle has to offer. Do yourself a favor. Quit the news. Your life will improve.

Creatix /  February 5, 2026 COVID Changed Food Prices Forever  Ask almost anyone how grocery prices feel compared to 2019 and you’ll hear the same answer: “Everything’s way more expensive.”  The COVID-19 pandemic didn’t just raise prices. It established a new order in the food industry.  Before COVID: Cheap, Predictable, Invisible In December 2019, food prices were boring. That was the point. Supply chains were optimized for efficiency, not resilience. Most Americans never thought about fertilizer shortages, global shipping lanes, labor availability, or weather in Spain affecting olive oil. Food was background noise. COVID ended that illusion. The First Shock: 2020–2021 When the pandemic hit, food inflation didn’t explode immediately. Instead: Processing plants shut down or slowed Farm labor became scarce Shipping containers didn't move on time  Governments injected trillions of dollars into demand against limited supply This didn’t just raise prices—it changed ...

Creatix / February 4, 2026 What do you call someone who speaks two languages? Bilingual. What about three languages? Trilingual. What about only one language? American. We laugh because it lands uncomfortably close to home. Learning a foreign language is not in our comfort zone in the US. And that’s exactly why it might be the best un-American skill you should work on. Why Americans Don’t Learn Languages It’s not laziness. It’s environment . America is huge. English is the language that rules the business world. Movies, music, business, science, the internet, and the world default to English. You can live an entire life here and almost anywhere without ever needing another language. Need is a powerful teacher, and we generally don't have it when it comes to learning another language. We're blessed with English. There’s are many angles involved: “Why learn another language when we don't need to? Why learn when everyone else either knows English or should just learn it? Are ...