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LG has put up a statement: "UNDERSTANDING PRIVACY ON LG SMART TVS" at https://www.lg.com/global/newsroom/news/statements/statement-understanding-privacy-on-lg-smart-tvs/ Press has also followed up on the report. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/9/10/lg-defends-smart-tv-features-amid-audio-surveillance-allegations https://www.theverge.com/tech/994333/lg-responds-to-tv-spying-allegations

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https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/ai-financial-advice-surprisingly-good-especially-if-you-ask-right-questions AI AI everything. MIT Sloan school published the following which I thought would benefit financial noobs. ____________________________________ AI financial advice is surprisingly good — especially if you ask the right questions By Betsy Vereckey Jul 21, 2026 7 minute read What you’ll learn: AI financial advice encourages people to save more, diversify their investing, and take on less risk as they age. However, AI’s advice often fails to properly adjust to shocks like unemployment, and it allows portfolios to drift rather than actively rebalancing them. Differences in prompts can lead to variation in advice, based on gender, degree of financial literacy, and familiarity with using large language models. People are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence for financial advice, but will following it improve their financial standing? “Half of Americans say they are using AI to get financial advice, but we know very little about what kind of advice they’re getting and whether they’re acting on it,” said Taha Choukhmane, an assistant professor of finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management and co-author of a new paper that measures and analyzes the quality of financial advice given by large language models. Research by Choukhmane and co-authors showed that following AI recommendations can result in sizable saving buffers for virtually all individuals above age 30. AI consistently advised people to save during their working years, draw down savings in retirement, invest heavily in diversified stock funds, and reduce stock exposure after age 45. However, AI chatbots were less successful in adjusting to shocks like unemployment, and they allowed portfolios to drift rather than actively rebalancing them. The quality of financial advice given by LLMs improved when the researchers introduced more structured prompts, but the AI still often generated too little active portfolio rebalancing. How the study was conducted The researchers built a model reflecting how people’s incomes, jobs, investments, and taxes typically evolve over their lives, which gave them a benchmark for what “good” financial decisions look like. Then they asked a sample of 1,000 adults to write their own prompts seeking spending and investing advice from GPT-5.2, GPT-5.6, or Gemini 3 Flash. Next, they simulated what would happen if people from 22 to 89 years of age followed that advice over time, repeatedly asking AI these same types of questions and following its advice on spending, saving, and investing. How the researchers define “academic prompt” An academic prompt is one that asks the LLM to give regulated professional financial advice, references life cycle planning and the user’s best interests, and provides explicit information about all of the simulated individual’s relevant financial conditions and explicit assumptions about the economic environment. Finally, they repeated the exercise using well-written academic prompts that included full financial information and clear assumptions. These more-detailed prompts included information on the individual’s age, job status, income, and savings balances, along with assumptions about the economic environment. The authors compared the simulated advice (what would happen if regular people followed the AI recommendations from the prompts they gave) to what people were already doing financially without the help of AI. They also compared the simulated advice to the academic prompt. The results showed that LLMs can offer an affordable, widely accessible source of financial guidance that can help users overcome the significant costs, biases, and conflicts of interest associated with traditional human financial advisors. Breaking down the findings Overall, the researchers found that the financial advice given by LLMs over time is good but gets better when the questions are asked in an academic fashion, and that the models have strengths and weaknesses. 1. AI encourages smart financial behavior. LLM advice was better than the scholars expected, regardless of whether the prompts were written by regular users or by academics. It steered people toward higher savings, increased participation in the stock market, and promoted well-diversified allocations and age-appropriate risk-taking. “We were somewhat surprised by how good the advice was,” Choukhmane said. “Especially when you read the kind of questions people asked, it was not a given that the advice would line up with what academics think are good financial principles.” 2. AI misses important nuances. Better prompts could help. The LLMs’ advice fell short on more subtle aspects of good financial planning. It tended to rely on simple rules of thumb for saving and spending and didn’t adjust well enough when circumstances changed. For example, it advised people who had experienced a job loss to cut spending too sharply, even when they had savings. The way people ask questions is part of the problem. A typical prompt might read: “Where should I invest starting with $50 and consistently adding $25 a month after?” When a more detailed, structured “academic” prompt was used, the LLM performed better. For example, an academic prompt might tell the chatbot to assume normal life expectancy, living expenditures, retirement age, employment risk, and income risk, and to assume that current U.S. tax law and Social Security rules will not change. “Regular people are not writing their prompts the way a finance professor is,” Choukhmane said. 3. AI advice varies depending on the user, which can lead to wealth gaps. The authors found that LLMs’ advice differs depending on the prompter’s gender, financial literacy, and experience, leading to meaningful gaps in retirement wealth. Following the advice in response to prompts written by men, more financially literate users, or those with prior AI experience generated about 5% more wealth close to retirement. Specifically, The LLM recommended higher equity allocations in response to prompts written by men and by individuals with high financial literacy. Over the life cycle, such differences in investment advice compounded into roughly $50,000 (4%) lower wealth at age 60 for women and for less financially literate users. The LLM recommended lower saving rates in response to prompts written by individuals who had not previously used AI for financial advice. Following the advice left them with almost $100,000 (6%) less wealth at age 60 than individuals with prior AI experience. These differences come from two sources, Choukhmane said. First, different users asked different kinds of questions and often brought up different topics. Women, for example, were more likely to use words such as “family,” “grocery,” and “pay” in their prompts, while men used words like “strategy,” “crypto,” and “growth,” he said. Second, the model may give different advice even when the underlying question is the same. In the case of gender, about two-thirds of the gender gap in wealth outcomes could be attributed to differences in how men and women wrote their prompts, while the remaining third came from the model changing its advice when the same prompt was labeled as coming from a woman rather than a man. That latter pattern could reflect the LLM making reasonable inferences about how preferences or circumstances vary by gender — which, ideally, the model could make explicit to users, Choukhmane said — or it could reflect biases learned from training data. The challenge with AI financial advice is that there are no clear benchmarks, Choukhmane said. Only when there is an accepted framework for how advice should vary with demographics will LLMs be capable of progressing in the right direction. He said he remains hopeful that will happen. In addition, it’s important to remember that not all variation in advice is problematic, Choukhmane said. For example, “we want [the LLM] to have different bias because men and women are different and have different life expectancy and income risk,” he said. Takeaways for consumers Beyond being mindful of bias, and, for the time being, asking LLMs to guard against it, success boils down to smarter prompts. Prompts grounded in life-cycle planning, portfolio theory, and real-world financial assumptions improved advice on spending and saving and cut down on basic, rule-of-thumb answers. “I think the real challenge is, how do we make sure that AI financial advice delivers for people who don’t have [a] level of financial literacy and who don’t write prompts perfectly?” Choukhmane said. One idea for people interested in using AI for financial advice is to start by using AI as a tool for building financial understanding rather than simply following its advice. AI can serve as a good complement to working with a financial advisor — someone you might meet with twice a year — because it can help you implement the advice they give you in real time, Choukhmane said. And for people who don’t have the money to work with a human financial advisor, AI is a good way to get advice inexpensively. “A lot of the people who would benefit from financial advice are precisely the people who don’t have a lot of resources,” he said. Takeaways for business As consumers increasingly turn to LLMs for financial advice, providers may need to rethink how customers learn about their products. The study found that LLMs often recommended specific account types, financial products, and providers that respondents themselves did not mention. (For example, Vanguard investment products appeared in 6% of LLM responses, and iShares products appeared in 3.4%, even though fewer than 0.4% of prompts mentioned either company.) That suggests that AI advice might be changing how people find and compare financial products, Choukhmane said. For financial firms, attracting customers’ attention may depend less on traditional marketing or search visibility and more on whether and how their products are described by LLMs when consumers seek advice. “AI Financial Advice: Supply, Demand, and Life Cycle Implications,” which won the Swiss Finance Institute Outstanding Paper Award 2026, was written by Taha Choukhmane, Weidong Lin, and Matthew Akuzawa from MIT Sloan and by Tim de Silva from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/656708/lgbtq-identification-rises.aspx February 20, 2025 LGBTQ+ Identification in U.S. Rises to 9.3% Bisexual identification most common; younger adults more likely to identify as LGBTQ+ by Jeffrey M. Jones WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Gallup’s latest update on LGBTQ+ identification finds 9.3% of U.S. adults identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or something other than heterosexual in 2024. This represents an increase of more than a percentage point versus the prior estimate, from 2023. Longer term, the figure has nearly doubled since 2020 and is up from 3.5% in 2012, when Gallup first measured it. LGBTQ+ identification is increasing as younger generations of Americans enter adulthood and are much more likely than older generations to say they are something other than heterosexual. More than one in five Gen Z adults -- those born between 1997 and 2006, who were between the ages of 18 and 27 in 2024 -- identify as LGBTQ+. Each older generation of adults, from millennials to the Silent Generation, has successively lower rates of identification, down to 1.8% among the oldest Americans, those born before 1946. LGBTQ+ identification rates among young people have also increased, from an average 18.8% of Gen Z adults in 2020 through 2022 to an average of 22.7% over the past two years. Gallup has observed smaller growth in the percentage of LGBTQ+ identifiers in some older generations over the same time period. This includes a nearly two-point increase among millennials (from 10.3% to 12.0%) and a one-point increase among Generation X (from 3.8% to 4.8%). There has not been meaningful change among baby boomers or the Silent Generation. Subscribe Today Get Gallup Newsletters & Immediate Release Alerts The latest results are based on interviews with more than 14,000 U.S. adults across all 2024 Gallup telephone surveys. Each respondent is asked whether they identify as straight or heterosexual, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or something else. Overall, 85.7% say they are straight, 5.2% are bisexual, 2.0% are gay, 1.4% are lesbian and 1.3% are transgender. Just under 1% mention some other LGBTQ+ identity, such as pansexual, asexual or queer. Five percent of respondents decline to answer the question. Among the nearly 900 LGBTQ+ individuals Gallup interviewed last year, more than half, 56%, said they were bisexual. Twenty-one percent said they were gay, 15% lesbian, 14% transgender and 6% something else. These figures total more than 100% because the survey allows respondents to report multiple LGBTQ+ identities. The overall estimate of 9.3% of U.S. adults who identify as LGBTQ+ counts each respondent only once, even if they have multiple identities. One reason for higher LGBTQ+ identification among younger generations of adults is that they are much more likely to consider themselves bisexual than are older people. In fact, more than half of Gen Z (59%) and millennial (52%) LGBTQ+ people are bisexual. That drops to 44% among LGBTQ+ people in Generation X, and is less than 20% among baby boomers (19%) and Silent Generation (11%) LGBTQ+ adults. Older LGBTQ+ people are most likely to identify as gay or lesbian. LGBTQ+ Identification Higher Among Women, Liberals, Urban Residents Beyond generation and age, LGBTQ+ identification differs by gender, political orientation and urbanicity. Whether due to political sorting or something else, Democrats (14%) and independents (11%) are far more likely than Republicans (3%) to identify as LGBTQ+. Even stronger differences are seen by ideology, with 21% of liberals, compared with 8% of moderates and 3% of conservatives, saying they are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. Ten percent of women versus 6% of men say they are LGBTQ+; the difference is mostly because women are more likely than men to say they are bisexual. Between 1% and 2% of U.S. adults identify their gender as nonbinary; of this group, about eight in 10 identify as LGBTQ+. The gender gaps are especially pronounced in the younger generations -- 31% of Gen Z women versus 12% of Gen Z men, and 18% of millennial women versus 9% of millennial men, identify as LGBTQ+, with most of these younger women saying they are bisexual. LGBTQ+ identification is higher among people living in cities (11%) and suburbs (10%) than in rural areas (7%). College graduates (9%) and nongraduates (10%) are about equally likely to identify as LGBTQ+. Differences in LGBTQ+ identification by racial, income, marital status, parental status and religious subgroups reflect age skews among those subgroups. For example, younger adults are less likely than older U.S. adults to be higher income, to be married, to have children, to be religious or to be Non-Hispanic White. Those groups, in turn, have lower rates of LGBTQ+ identification than lower-income, unmarried, nonparent, nonreligious and non-White Americans. Bottom Line In the 12 years that Gallup has been tracking LGBTQ+ identification, it has nearly tripled, as those becoming adults during that period have been far more likely than their elders to say they are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. The recent increase is largely due to more adults in their late teens, 20s and 30s -- particularly young women -- saying they are bisexual. But younger adults are also more likely than older adults to identify as lesbian, gay, transgender or other nonheterosexual orientations. The rate of LGBTQ+ identification is likely to continue to grow, given the generational shifts underway.

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https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/wellness/glp1-drugs-ozempic-longevity-585541 ______________________________________________________________________________ Are Ozempic and other weight loss drugs also longevity drugs? Here's what early research suggests Experts are intrigued by the theory. Here’s what early research suggests. 12 Jul 2026 07:11AM A theory that GLP-1 medications such as Ozempic or Zepbound might help people live longer has been bandied about by biohackers and ageing researchers for several years. Online pharmacies already market compounded versions of the drugs to purportedly extend health span. But so far, academic research into that hypothesis has been scant. One of the first studies putting the idea to the test was published last month. It showed that, among people with HIV and lipohypertrophy (fatty deposits that develop under the skin), taking semaglutide (the drug in Ozempic) for eight months seemed to slow participants’ biological ageing, according to blood tests that measure age-related biomarkers. People with HIV experience accelerated ageing because of the infection, so they are a good population in which to conduct age-related research, said Michael Corley, an associate professor of medicine at UC San Diego’s Stein Institute for Research on Aging, who led the study. The trial was preliminary, but it “provided us an opportunity to say, hey, is there any signal here that warrants all the hype?” Corley said. That hype stems from several lines of evidence. First, there is ample research demonstrating that GLP-1s improve people’s metabolic health by helping to regulate insulin and blood sugar and causing weight loss. Several studies show that they also benefit cardiovascular, liver and kidney health. Because the drugs offer protection for conditions like diabetes and cardiovascular disease, which are both among the leading causes of death, it could already be reasonable to call GLP-1s longevity drugs. “GLP-1 agonists decrease the incidence of diseases that are related to ageingand are associated with decreasing lifespan,” said Dr Nicolas Musi, director of the Diabetes and Aging Center at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles. “One would assume that they’re also potentially going to increase lifespan and be beneficial for longevity,” he added. Another reason experts think these drugs might increase longevity is because of how they affect cellular health. Metabolic health and ageing are intricately linked, so drugs that alter the mechanisms involved in metabolism may also affect how the body ages. “Many of these pathways that are modulated by diabetes drugs are also central pathways that control ageing and longevity,” Musi said. (Other drugs that treat diabetes, like metformin and a category known as SGLT2 inhibitors, are similarly being studied for longevity, though the evidence so far has been mixed.) GLP-1s appear to influence other fundamental cellular changes that occur with aging, most notably inflammation. “We know they have a significant anti-inflammatory effect, and we know inflammation is one of the things that accelerates aging,” said Dr Thomas Blackwell, a professor of general internal medicine at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. All of this sounds promising, but researchers say there’s a huge caveat: Currently little to no data exists on whether the drugs will benefit people who are metabolically healthy. There is not even data available about whether the medications extend lifespan in rodents. Dr Richard Miller, a professor of pathology at the University of Michigan, who runs a large programme there testing potential anti-ageing drugs in mice, said that’s mainly because of logistics. Currently available GLP-1s either don’t work in mice the same way they do in humans, or can be delivered only via injection, and giving mice weekly injections for years is not practical. There are also concerns that GLP-1s negatively affect health in ways that are especially relevant for aging. Most notably, the drugs can cause some muscle loss, a major issue for older adults that is associated with an increased risk of frailty. Rapid weight loss can also lead to a decline in bone density and an increased risk of osteoporosis. A few clinical trials that are testing GLP-1s on several biomarkers of ageing, such as inflammation levels and biological age clocks, as well as on functional abilities such as strength and walking speed, are finally getting underway. At least one of the studies still will not be conducted on healthy older adults, though, since the participants need to meet the criteria for receiving a prescription for the weight loss medications, said Blackwell, who is leading the trial. But he added that those criteria – for example, a body mass index of 27 or greater and a related health condition, like high blood pressure – reflect “a whole lot of Americans.” For now, experts generally don’t recommend taking the medications off label for longevity. “In patients that are otherwise healthy, at this point, I think it’s premature, because there are no data justifying it from preclinical or clinical studies,” Musi said. In Blackwell’s case, the message seemed to be: Do as I say, not as I do. He has been taking tirzepatide (the drug in Zepbound) for the past year with the goal of slowing ageing. "Do I know that that’s the right thing? I do not,” he said. “Do I recommend that for patients? I do not.” “This is my own personal decision,” he added. By Dana G Smith © The New York Times Company

Do you turn to ChatGPT and other AI for Relation / Social Issues ? In a recent study published in the journal Science, the authors report that AI models offer affirmations more often than people do, even for morally dubious or troubling scenarios. And they found that this sycophancy was something that people trusted and preferred in an AI — even as it made them less inclined to apologize or take responsibility for their behavior. The findings, experts say, highlight how this common AI feature may keep people returning to the technology, despite the harm it causes them. Science: Sycophantic AI decreases prosocial intentions and promotes dependence https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aec8352 _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ https://www.npr.org/2026/04/23/nx-s1-5792867/ai-chatbot-flattery-mental-health-risks AI's a suck up. Research shows how it flatters and suggests we're not to blame Myra Cheng, a computer science Ph.D. student at Stanford University, has spent a lot of time listening to undergraduates on campus. "They would tell me about how a lot of their peers are using AI for relationship advice, to draft breakup texts, to navigate these kinds of social relationships with your friend or your partner or someone else in your real life," she says. Some students said that in those interactions, the AI quickly appeared to take their side. "And I think more broadly," says Cheng, "if you use AI for writing some sort of code or even editing any sort of writing, it'll be like, 'Wow, your code or your writing is amazing.' " To Cheng, this excessive flattery and unconditional validation from many AI models seemed different from how a human being might respond. She was curious about those discrepancies, their prevalence, and the possible repercussions. "We haven't really had this kind of technology for very long," she says, "and so no one really knows what the consequences of it are." In a recent study published in the journal Science, Cheng and her colleagues report that AI models offer affirmations more often than people do, even for morally dubious or troubling scenarios. And they found that this sycophancy was something that people trusted and preferred in an AI — even as it made them less inclined to apologize or take responsibility for their behavior. The findings, experts say, highlight how this common AI feature may keep people returning to the technology, despite the harm it causes them. It's not unlike social media in that both "drive engagement by creating addictive, personalized feedback loops that learn exactly what makes you tick," says Ishtiaque Ahmed, a computer scientist at the University of Toronto who wasn't involved in the research. AI can affirm worrisome human behavior To do this analysis, Cheng turned to a few datasets. One involved the Reddit community A.I.T.A., which stands for "Am I The A**hole?" "That's where people will post these situations from their lives and they'll get a crowdsourced judgment of — are they right or are they wrong?" says Cheng. For instance, is someone wrong for leaving their trash in a park that had no trash bins in it? The crowdsourced consensus: Yes, definitely wrong. City officials expect people to take their trash with them. But 11 AI models often took a different approach. "They give responses like, 'No, you're not in the wrong, it's perfectly reasonable that you left the trash on the branches of a tree because there was no trash bins available. You did the best you could,'" explains Cheng. In threads where the human community had decided someone was in the wrong, the AI affirmed that user's behavior 51% of the time. This trend also held for more problematic scenarios culled from a different advice subreddit where users described behaviors of theirs that were harmful, illegal or deceptive. "One example we have is like, 'I was making someone else wait on a video call for 30 minutes just for fun because, like, I wanted to see them suffer,'" says Cheng. The AI models were split in their responses, with some arguing this behavior was hurtful, while others suggested that the user was merely setting a boundary. Overall, the chatbots endorsed a user's problematic behavior 47% of the time. "You can see that there's a big difference between how people might respond to these situations versus AI," says Cheng. Encouraging you to feel you're right Cheng then wanted to examine the impact these affirmations might be having. The research team invited 800 people to interact with either an affirming AI or a non-affirming AI about an actual conflict from their lives where they may have been in the wrong. "Something where you were talking to your ex or your friend and that led to mixed feelings or misunderstandings," says Cheng, by way of example. She and her colleagues then asked the participants to reflect on how they felt and write a letter to the other person involved in the conflict. Those who had interacted with the affirming AI "became more self-centered," she says. And they became 25% more convinced that they were right compared to those who had interacted with the non-affirming AI. They were also 10% less willing to apologize, do something to repair the situation, or change their behavior. "They're less likely to consider other people's perspectives when they have an AI that can just affirm their perspectives," says Cheng. She argues that such relentless affirmation can negatively impact someone's attitudes and judgments. "People might be worse at handling their interpersonal relationships," she suggests. "They might be less willing to navigate conflict." And it had taken only the briefest of interactions with an AI to reach that point. Cheng also found that people had more confidence in and preference for an AI that affirmed them, compared to one that told them they might be wrong. As the authors explain in their paper, "This creates perverse incentives for sycophancy to persist" for the companies designing these AI tools and models. "The very feature that causes harm also drives engagement," they add. AI's dark side "This is a slow and invisible dark side of AI," says Ahmed of the University of Toronto. "When you constantly validate whatever someone is saying, they do not question their own decisions." Ahmed calls the work important and says that when a person's self-criticism becomes eroded, it can lead to bad choices — and even emotional or physical harm. "On the surface, it looks nice," he says. "AI is being nice to you. But they're getting addicted to AI because it keeps validating them." Ahmed explains that AI systems aren't necessarily created to be sycophantic. "But they are often fine-tuned to be helpful and harmless," he says, "which can accidentally turn into 'people-pleasing.' Developers are now realizing that to keep users engaged, they might be sacrificing the objective truth that makes AI actually useful." As for what might be done to address the problem, Cheng believes that companies and policymakers should work together to fix the issue, as these AIs are built deliberately by people, and can and should be modified to be less affirming. But there's an inevitable lag between the technology and possible regulation. "Many companies admit their AI adoption is still outpacing their ability to control it," says Ahmed. "It's a bit of a cat-and-mouse game where the tech evolves in weeks, while the laws to govern it can take years to pass." Cheng has reached an additional conclusion. "I think maybe the biggest recommendation," she says, "is to not use AI to substitute conversations that you would be having with other people," especially the tough conversations. Cheng herself hasn't yet used an AI chatbot for advice. "Especially now, given the consequences that we've seen," she says, "I think that I'm even less likely to do so in the future."

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https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/wellness/grumpy-old-person-personality-life-experiences-577756 Are you on your way to becoming a grumpy old person? You don't have to – starting now From scolding aunties and entitled uncles on public transportation, cranky seniors seem to be everywhere. But does ageing really make people irritable or does it simply magnify who you are? How do you not become a grumpy, old person? (Photo: iStock/tylim) Khoo Bee Khim 06 Feb 2026 07:04AM Bookmark WhatsApp Telegram Facebook Twitter Email LinkedIn Read a summary of this article on FAST. FAST Growing up, my late paternal Ah Ma was the archetype of a grumpy old person. There was not a single day that went by without her scolding or disapproving of someone. Walked past her in a way she didn’t like? You’d get reprimanded. Once, my classmate came over to work on a school project together. She shamed my bewildered project mate for using my PC (“Doesn’t your household have a computer? Why do you have to come over and use ours?”). My sympathies if you have also encountered seniors behaving badly in the wild. Like the entitled uncle who demands other passengers give up their seats for him on the MRT. The auntie who cuts in front of you to board the bus or order bak chor mee. At work, it may be the old-timer whose default response is “no” – if you even dare to approach them in the first place. Advertisement I often wonder what these cranky folks were like in their younger days. Have they always been irritable, or did something happen that made them the way they are now, like Mr Fredericksen in Pixar’s Up? And can you be your own Russell and Doug to lift you out of misery if your positivity bubble keeps getting popped? DOES AGE = GRUMPINESS? Turning a certain age doesn’t flip a switch in your personality that morphs you into a misery-loving Squidward or raging Plankton. “If age really made people grumpy, every senior would be miserable – and clearly, that is not the case,” said Serene Lee, a psychotherapist and the founder of counselling centre ICCT.sg. “Age does not automatically equal grumpiness. This is very much a stereotype.” Age does not automatically equal grumpiness. This is very much a stereotype. (Photo: iStock/kimberrywood) What might make seniors seem grumpy could be their age amplifying their existing traits. “As we get older, we tend to care less about others' opinions,” said Lee. “So, if someone was a bit impatient when they were younger, it may become more visible later on.” On the flipside, “those who were warm, humorous and adaptable often become even more grounded and joyful with age”, Lee explained. Ageing “reveals what is already there, often influenced by life experiences”. Moreover, “many older adults regulate emotions as well as, or even better than younger adults because they become more selective about what they spend their time and energy on”, observed clinical psychologist Dr Annabelle Chow from Annabelle Psychology. Advertisement Besides, “occasional irritability is human,” she said. Even “persistent irritability is usually a signal, not a flaw”. “Clinically, (grumpiness) can appear with stress overload, depression, anxiety, trauma, sleep problems, pain, medication effects, or cognitive decline,” said Dr Chow. “In seniors especially, irritability is often how distress shows up when sadness, fear or loss is harder to express, or when a sense of control feels reduced.” In seniors, irritability is often how distress shows up when a sense of control feels reduced. (Photo: iStock/edwintan) CAN OUR PERSONALITY CHANGE AS WE AGE? “How someone behaves in later life is often shaped by what they have lived through – and how they have coped with life’s challenges over the years,” said Brenda Loh, a medical social worker with Allium Healthcare. For example, when obstacles such as unmanaged health problems, the loss of loved ones, or reduced independence are not addressed, “distress may show up as irritability or grumpiness”, she said. “This is not caused by ageing itself but by the challenges the person is facing.” Yes, even optimistic people can become irritable if they keep facing unaddressed pain, loss or loneliness, said Lee. “Personality sets the tone but life experiences write the script. Think of personality as the steering wheel and life events, the road conditions. Even a good driver struggles on a bumpy road.” Advertisement As a matter of fact, your personality is “fairly steady” by adulthood, said Dr Chow. “How you are in your 30s to 50s can offer a rough clue to your default behaviour under pressure. But it does not lock in whether you will become ‘grumpy’ later in life.” In many cases, said Dr Chow, “later-life irritability has more to do with accumulated strain, such as poor sleep, chronic pain, health issues, ongoing stress, loneliness and reduced support than personality itself”. WHY DO WE LOSE PATIENCE AND TOLERANCE AS WE AGE? If you often find yourself complaining internally when you encounter a crying baby, crowds or other triggering situations, we have bad news: you’re going to complain externally as you get older. Seniors feel less obligated to suffer silently. (Photo: iStock/kazuma seki) That’s because seniors feel less obligated to suffer silently, said Lee. “When you feel your years are limited, you are less willing to waste them being annoyed by a phone blaring in public. After decades of life, we often feel entitled to not put up with foolishness. It is not always about being grumpy; sometimes it is simply having a lower tolerance for nonsense.” Another factor is “our patience often shrinks not because we care less but because our mental and physical bandwidths are lower”, explained Dr Chow. “Loud noises, crowding and constant stimulation are nervous-system stressors. And when you are tired, stressed, in pain or not sleeping well, your brain has less capacity to filter them out." Advertisement Also, “with age, many people mask less socially”, continued Dr Chow. “Where younger adults may grin and bear it to avoid conflict, older adults are more willing to express their frustrations to protect their space and energy, especially in high-load environments like Singapore.” WHY DO SOME PEOPLE HAVE A BREEZIER TAKE ON LIFE THAN OTHERS? Ah, to be unbothered and flourishing in your own lane. Unfortunately, “a happy-go-lucky style is not always purely inborn”, said Dr Chow. “For many people, it is the result of learned emotion regulation, such as reframing, perspective taking, humour, gratitude and choosing what is worth engaging, that helps them recover faster after daily frustrations,” she said. A happy-go-lucky style is not always purely inborn. For many people, it is the result of learned emotion regulation. (Photo: iStock/tkpond) Even if you can tap into that state of mind, “good coping can be worn down by prolonged adversity”, said Dr Chow. In cases that involve physical brain changes, for instance, such as after a stroke, cognitive decline or dementia, the patient’s impulse control and emotional regulation may alter, making them seem out of character, she said. Which is why “supportive relationships, good healthcare and emotional support all play a crucial role in ageing well”, said Loh. “It’s not a magic shield,” highlighted Lee. “Life can still deliver blows but starting from a positive mindset makes emotional recovery easier.” HOW CAN WE LIGHTEN UP? There is something called the positivity effect that lets you focus more on positive information and memories than negative ones. “The positivity effect is a skill that takes time to develop,” explained Lee. “Those who find it easier to access this effect usually have practised emotional regulation from a young age, learned how to let go, and developed perspective through hardship.” The positivity effect lets you focus more on positive information and memories than negative ones. (Photo: iStock/Patrick Chu) So, what makes some people better at accessing the positivity effect? “Think of it like a savings account,” said Lee. “Those who have consistently invested in good relationships and healthy coping mechanisms have a greater emotional reserve to draw from later on.” On the flipside, those who struggle to process emotions, ruminate heavily or experience unresolved trauma may find it harder to focus on the positive, even in older age, said Lee. “To put it simply, emotional habits do not suddenly change at age 65; they are refined versions of patterns that have been built over decades.” The version of you that you envision in your senior years starts now, said Dr Chow. "Imagine it is your 80th birthday and the people who matter most are speaking about you. What would you hope they say? How would you want them to describe you, how you treated people, or how you lived your life? Keep that picture in mind to help you start making more meaningful choices." Work on building self-awareness and emotional regulation in your 30s to 50s. (Photo: iStock/Prostock-Studio) Another way to approach it is to work on building self-awareness and emotional regulation in our 30s to 50s, suggested Loh. “For example, during a difficult or conflicting conversation, ask yourself: ‘what emotions am I feeling right now?’ and ‘what triggered these feelings for me?’," said Loh. "These questions will help you to understand your emotions and triggers, notice patterns that may lead to frustration or irritability, and make intentional choices when similar circumstances arise.” At the end of the day, becoming an old, grumpy person doesn't have to be your final stop, said Lee. "It is usually a build-up from not taking care of your emotions over time. Sure, daily affirmations can be beneficial but there is also this straightforward question to consider: will this matter in a year from now? If the answer is 'no', take a deep breath and let it go. Your future self will thank you."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-01-16/why-saunas-bathhouses-cold-plunge-pools-are-so-popular-right-now Why We’re All Trading Happy Hours for the Bathhouse The sauna industry is hot and only getting hotter — but the boom reveals more about happiness than it does about health. By Madison Darbyshire and Eleanor Thornber January 16, 2026 at 1:15 PM The bathhouse tiles echo with splashing water and hissing steam as you step down to the cold-plunge pool. On the final stair, the 29-year-old analyst in front of you starts to turn back, muttering something about forgetting his towel. “Coward,” you think. In the sauna your body had been crying out for relief from the heat, but plunging into the water feels like being stabbed by a thousand tiny knives. You try to focus on breathing, but your body, betrayed, considers that out of the question. To the people shuffling past from sauna to showers to cold plunge, you look serene, even calm, a paragon of inner strength. Inside, you’re shrieking. You run back up the stairs, but then it hits you, the payoff for convincing your body you may be dying in hypothermic water: a surge of endorphins, a wave of adrenaline. Suddenly you’re ready (eager?) to do the whole thing again. Bathhouses are booming. The Altar and Lore Bathing Club are both opening in New York this year. The Community Sauna Baths is planning 20 locations in London by 2028, while groups Othership and Bathhouse will open a combined nine high-design locations in the US by the end of 2027. Spanish bathhouse and spa group Aire Ancient Baths, a longtime luxury player, opened a second Manhattan location and a Toronto bath in 2025, and it plans to open in Los Angeles in 2026. Therme Group, which develops massive facilities that can hold hundreds of people at once, recently raised €1 billion ($1.2 billion) to expand across Europe and is developing locations in Washington, DC, and Dallas. The bathhouse trend, as one founder put it, is a new idea that is thousands of years old. In countries like Hungary and Turkey, baths and hammams have long been a part of everyday life. But in the US, bathhouses have more often been associated with old-school Russian banyas, Korean spas filled with grannies or places for cruising. Today’s chic new bathhouses aim instead to take the place of the coffee shop, pub or nightclub — spaces where people can gather, meet and sweat. You’re likely to find muscly young professionals, colleagues having work meetings or couples canoodling on first dates. The rise is partly down to our collective obsession with optimization, the tech-bro fixation on biohacking and longevity. Podcasters Joe Rogan and Andrew Huberman evangelize the use of contrast therapy (alternating the sauna’s heat with a cold plunge) to assist their listeners’ creatine-supplemented quests for peak performance. But the craving for sweat is layered. Most venues offer a phone-free space where an overly online generation can go to unplug. They provide luxurious escape when the world feels overwhelming and sad. Saunas can seem like productive downtime in a culture that struggles to do nothing, and if the two back-to-back sold-out DJed Friday night Shabbats at Othership’s Manhattan location are any indication, people are longing for the community and communion that organized religion used to provide. With third spaces (i.e., not home or work) in demand and singles sick of expensive dating apps, the peculiar intimacy of a sweltering closet with stadium seating provides not simply a way to decompress, but also a chance to meet and connect. “It’s a sexy place,” says Robert Hammond, co-developer of the High Line park in Manhattan and Therme US Group president and chief strategy officer. “It’s no coincidence that the busiest times in a bathhouse in New York are when happy hour used to be.” That they don’t revolve around alcohol is part of the appeal. In the glowing sauna at Arc, a young Londoner who works in finance says it no longer feels like a good look to rock up to the office hungover from after-work pints the way it used to — he gets taken more seriously telling his boss he did an ice bath instead. The bathhouse industry is only expected to grow, part of the surging $2 trillion global wellness market, according to a 2025 report by McKinsey & Co. Longevity is a top priority for 60% of consumers. “When people say we’ve reached peak bathhouse, I say I don’t think so,” Hammond says. “Rome had the big bathhouses that fit the whole city, then 800 smaller ones. To me, we are only just starting to scratch the surface.” The New Sauna Wave, as the rise of social bathhouses is known, was gaining ground in Europe before the pandemic acted as a global catalyst. In Oslo in 2016 a group of Norwegian anarchists built a floating badstue out of a drift boat in a fjord (the cold plunge), knowing that they wouldn’t get permits to build legally. The sauna was public (it cost about $20 to drop in) and became so popular that the politicians who frequented it helped secure retroactive permits. The Oslo Sauna Association today operates 29 saunas, has 20,000 members and serves 300,000 visitors per year. (It’s now anarchist mostly in spirit.) “People just needed something to be real and the total opposite of sitting at the screen or your cellphone,” says co-founder Ragna Marie Fjeld. Many people in Oslo live alone, and social isolation is a problem. Unlike neighboring Finland, the country didn’t have a social sauna culture, Fjeld says, and there weren’t a lot of public places where it was easy to strike up conversations with strangers. Saunas fill a gap, like a cigarette break outside a pub might have, a time-limited shared activity that makes it simple to connect with total strangers. “In the sauna it’s very easy,” Fjeld says. “You can just say, ‘It’s very hot.’ ” The fast-growing Community Sauna Baths in London opened its first location in 2021 in the back of a dilapidated Hackney public bathhouse built in 1935. The new facility is outside, a collection of small trailers and huts converted into saunas, a kind of haphazard hobbit village of hot rooms and freezing baths. On a Thursday afternoon in October, people sit around in felt gnome hats sipping herbal tea and chatting. “We need this for sanity,” one woman says to a stranger next to her. The group is run as a nonprofit with the goal of keeping costs low (£17, about $23, for a peak ticket) and its saunas accessible. It offers reduced rates for those out of work and has set up a system with the National Health Service, where doctors can recommend patients and the baths cover the costs, up to and including transport and swimsuits. “A lot of the referrals we get are from isolation and loneliness,” says Community Sauna Baths co-founder Charlie Duckworth. Keeping costs down is seen as core to the success of a community bath, “with different kinds of people, rich and poor together in the sauna,” Fjeld says. There is growing concern within the sauna community that this ethos is being transformed by those who see the boom as a market opportunity. One of the reasons the sauna industry is growing so quickly, attracting entrepreneurs from tech and finance, is that it is undeniably good business. ( Lore’s co-founder came from coworking; an Othership co-founder is squarely in camp crypto; Bathhouse’s co-founder was in real estate.) Sure, the building regulations are a pain, and startup costs are high — between $10 million and $30 million for upmarket entrants in New York, founders say — but so are the margins. It doesn’t cost much to make water cold, and saunas are wonderfully energy-efficient. Bathhouse even uses crypto mining to help heat its pools. “These new guys, they say it’s all about health, wellness, community, water,” says Dmitry Shapiro, co-owner of the Russian & Turkish baths in New York’s East Village, operating since 1892 and one of the last traditional bathhouses in the city. “No. You guys have realized you can make money doing this.” Shapiro says attendance at the baths, which his parents bought with their business partners in 1985, is up 100% since before the pandemic. Much of the new demand is from younger people and women, who pay more than $60 for a day pass. The bathhouse, which owns its building and averages between 400 and 500 people on a weekend, makes 60% profit, Shapiro says. “Investors don’t even believe the margins,” Therme Group’s Hammond says. “Most of the people are deflating the margins to investors. You can have 25, 40, 60%.” This has made it more attractive for high-end bathhouses to come to market. Customers in New York, used to paying up for access to the small number of saunas that controlled the market for decades, don’t bat an eye at entry costs of more than $60 for 90 minutes. In London, the traditional Russian banya costs £75 for 2 hours; new-age entrants such as Arc are a relative steal at £29 for a drop-in or £250 monthly for unlimited access. And while Lore and some other new saunas hope to lower daily rates with a membership model, customers seeking sober indulgence appear largely unbothered by the price. Othership, which costs $64 for a 75-minute drop-in in New York, says it can handle 800 people per day in one location. Customers have to book in advance, so bathhouses can sell memberships and passes to more people than there’s space for in the sauna at any one time. And one visit often turns into many. Young professionals report being bombarded by social media advertisements for bathing, and TikTok has helped fuel a steady stream of new schvitzers to city saunas. As more bathhouses appear, marketing and differentiation is increasingly important. Some are focused on low cost and community access, others on luxury and sanctuary. Many are doubling down on socializing. (Bathhouse has a reputation as the flirtiest, while Othership and Arc are the most tech-bro. Arc’s DJ-scored sauna parties are especially chatty.) And everyone thinks their approach to sauna culture is the correct one. Benjamin Teare, co-founder of Sauna Social Club in trendy southeast London, characterizes Arc as “almost a carbon copy of the New York model. They’ve taken that American approach, more about biohacking and self-optimization.” His facility’s focus is “on inspiration and connection.” Arc co-founder Chris Miller counters that his bathhouse is designed for “recovery, bridging ancient traditions with contemporary science.” Although bathing is a very, very old practice, most customers are new to the sauna lifestyle — community bathhouses haven’t been part of the culture in the US and UK for decades. Once ubiquitous, a way for city residents to wash themselves and their linens in the days before indoor plumbing, utilitarian bathhouses were losing momentum in the US and UK by the 20th century. Still, a few social schvitzes persisted, largely visited by aging immigrant groups and later as discreet gathering places for gay men. Then, in the mid-1980s, almost every remaining bathhouse in New York was padlocked under emergency legislation focused on halting the spread of AIDS. The Russian & Turkish Baths reportedly survived by being, at least on signs plastered around its pool, a “straight place,” and increasing the number of women-only and co-ed days. One man, asked by the New York Times in 1983 about his decision to continue visiting city bathhouses despite the fear of contracting AIDS, told the paper: “Loneliness is as bad as a disease.” It’s telling that if the US has a bathing culture, it’s the shower. “Americans, we kind of resist leisure. It’s a puritan thing, work ethic,” says Mikkel Aaland, the author of the 1978 book Sweat, often referred to as the bible of the modern sauna. Plus, “when you have an industrial culture that doesn’t allow time, it’s hard to implement a bathing culture,” Aaland says. For years in the early 1970s, he hitchhiked around the world researching bathing. Aaland found that some kind of culture existed in almost every society, from the Roman communal baths to Viking saunas, Indigenous American sweat lodges, Turkish hammams, Russian banyas, Japanese sentō and Mexican temescales (to name a few). The question was what caused one bathing culture to endure, while others trended before fading away (see the in-home sauna boom of the 1980s that resulted in innumerable wood-paneled storage spaces). In every bathing culture that lasted, Aaland found the same three things. There was heat on the body, often with a cold contrast. But there was also a vital social component, as well as a spiritual one. New bathhouses are seeking ways to achieve that elusive spiritual aspect. Almost all of these saunas love to showcase an aufguss, a ritual where a sauna master uses his towel to wave air (sometimes scented with essential oils) from the coals onto guests, intensifying the heat. Othership leans hard into high production values, with classes full of affirmations, loud music and chanting. Members are invited to share what’s on their mind at the end, Quaker-meeting-style. The rest of the group affirms them back, AA-style. A lot of talk about the sauna revival has rested on the supposed physical benefits, despite the relative suffering involved in the experience. (“Sitting in a f---ing sauna for 25 minutes at 190 degrees and cold plunges and all this shit that I do, it sucks,” the podcaster Rogan has said. “I don’t like doing it, but I’m doing it because being healthy is far superior to being sick.”) There is limited research that suggests sauna time can help reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke and increase longevity. It’s unclear if women derive the same benefits from cold therapy, because much of the research has been performed on men. (It may even spike their stress hormones.) People who go to the sauna tend to be healthy and care about exercise anyway, so there’s trouble with correlation and causation in the data. The real benefit seems to come from the way the experience makes people feel, mentally and emotionally. Contrasting temperatures can release norepinephrine and dopamine in your brain, creating an elevated feeling that can linger for hours. There are terms for the distinct endorphin high you feel after a sauna session: saunanjälkeinen raukeus in Finnish, totonou in Japanese. Bathhouses are also strangely intimate. There is camaraderie in the suffering, and in the having suffered. Saunas are clothes-free (bathing suits at most), and lack the status markers of social class (other than the entry price). Somehow they work for dates and deep catch-ups with friends. When you’re feeling lonely, it’s much easier to go to a bathhouse solo than to a bar or restaurant. Of course, they’re not for everybody. One man who works in private equity says he took his boss to Arc, but his boss hated it and demanded to know where the nearest defibrillator was. The experience was intensely awkward. Invariably, sauna entrepreneurs will invoke the Nordic countries in their sales pitch — the stat that Finland, the happiest country on Earth, has more than one sauna for every two people is a favorite. But what is it about saunas and bathing that makes people feel happy, even possibly live longer? The overwhelming heat? The modest accomplishment of enduring a cold plunge? The avoidant retreat into increasingly exclusive spaces for self-care? Or is it simply passive social contact with our neighbors? The experience of taking the time to do nothing, but doing it all together? The World Happiness Report, where Finland takes gold, is notably based on self-assessments. It’s not measuring an objective set of factors or brain chemicals, but how happy a person considers themselves to be. It is more a measure of cultural frameworks for happiness. Americans are chided for their striving, Brits for their national pessimism. But both are obsessed with individual happiness — we chase it for ourselves, we openly wish it for our children. Believing that happiness is a destination just out of reach might explain why we pay to seek it in social bathhouses. We think plunging into cold from hot in search of endorphins is the way, but instead find the answer might just be strangers. In Nordic countries, half the year is mind-numbingly dark. It’s possible its citizens understand something we don’t about the seasonality of life. There is no rejoicing in summer without enduring winter, no appreciating the coziness of winter without melting in August. Pain and pleasure are two sides of the same coin; without one, it’s impossible to experience the other. There is something in the bathhouse and its excruciating contrasts that anchors us to this reality. Leaving it, too, can be a bit jarring. Wet-haired, open-pored, you put your regular clothes back on. Your normal life is outside waiting, even if you are now changed. Enlightened, healthier, more beautiful and — just maybe — a little high on endorphins. The Modern Sauna Scene The global bathhouse boom can be seen in microcosm in London and New York, arranged here from most traditional to highest-energy London Community Sauna Baths The B Corp’s friendly social mission and price point are intended to cultivate happy habits. From £11 per session, £5 with a monthly membership Russian & Turkish Baths This old-school schvitz in Manhattan’s East Village has a patina no production designer can imitate. $60 drop-in, $750 for 20 sessions Lore Bathing Club And in the West Village, one sauna and one large cold pool, with lots of santal-scented chill. From $55 for a drop-in, $225 monthly membership, weekend visits $25 extra Social Sauna Club London’s self-described alternative to a night out drinking is hip and low-key and just a little self-serious (in a nice way). From £15 Brooklyn Bathhouse This Black-owned bathhouse has a strong community feel with a steam room, two saunas and cold pools. From $56 on weekdays Aire Ancient Baths In both cities, the top of the market for luxury multipool Zen. £140/$175 for 90 minutes Bathhouse The flirtiest of them all: dark, underground NYC fortresses intent on hip vibes. From $39 to $69 Arc Upmarket social “contrast therapy” in London. Togetherness with a spaceship vibe. £29 drop-in, £250 unlimited monthly membership Othership Soul Cycle-esque sauna classes, down to the vibey mantras and hip Gotham clientele. $64 drop-in, $900 for 20, $333 unlimited monthly membership

For Auld Lang Syne! It's two hours till New Year's 2026! Let us drink a cup of kindness yet for one another. Lets hope our lives to the fullness and good health in 2026. --- Bringing back this topic as the song of Auld Lang Syne always brings up the tinge in the heart.

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https://mothership.sg/2025/12/singaporean-men-southeast-chinese-ugly-sketch/ An image of colour sketches supposedly depicting men from various parts of China has blown up online — and Singaporean men have been dragged into the conversation. The startling claim? Singaporean Chinese men are descendants of people from South Eastern China, a region where people apparently have softer features, such as a rounder nose, and less angular jaw. The unflattering conclusion? Singaporean Chinese men are derived from this group, which makes them the "ugliest" among Chinese men from other parts of China. What sketches showed Without explaining how the amalgamation of faces came about, the illustration depicted the so-called representative male faces of people from China’s northwest, southwest, northeast, southeast, and Xinjiang regions. The southeastern guy, in particular, comically stood out simply because of his less chiselled facial features and protruding jaw. Photo from @morris_que14/X

https://www.reuters.com/business/grindr-special-committee-ends-talks-take-private-proposal-2025-11-24/ Nov 24 (Reuters) - Dating app Grindr (GRND.N), opens new tab said on Monday it has ended talks on a $3.46 billion take-private deal by its two largest shareholders, citing uncertainty over the deal's financing. Shares of the company were down about 12% after a special committee said investors Ray Zage and James Lu, who together control more than 60% of Grindr's outstanding stock, had failed to provide clarity on timing and financing on the October bid. "The special committee has been unable to obtain satisfactory information about definitive financing," the popular LGBTQIA+ dating platform said in a statement. The bidders did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. "The move doesn't really change too much in terms of Grindr's growth strategy as they remain the premier dating app among the LGBTQ community with strong network effect," said Chandler Willison, analyst at MScience. Despite new offerings from rivals like Tinder parent Match and Bumble, including apps such as Archer, Grindr still dominates in terms of user base and paid subscribers, even though sentiment toward online dating stocks is currently negative, Willison added. Grindr said it remained confident in its current strategy and its third-quarter performance, saying it is on track to deliver sustained value for shareholders and has maintained its forecast for full-year revenue growth of about 26%. The company's shares have fallen 22% this year but have outperformed rivals Match Group (MTCH.O) Grindr outperforms sector peers as dating apps battle for market share Lu and Zage acquired Grindr, which has millions of users across more than 190 countries, in 2020 from Chinese gaming firm Kunlun Tech (300418.SZ), opens new tab after U.S. regulators raised national security concerns over data privacy. They later took the company public via a SPAC merger in late 2022.

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