To keep their sanity, they must keep the lie alive

For transparency and my own agenda: I strongly dislike our previous government—the Social Democrats, with the support of the Green Party and the tacit acceptance of the Left Party. Politically, I am very far from the Swedish Social Democrats, their partner parties, communism, and socialism.

Videos from both sides show the "tolerant, inclusive, empathetic" Left doesn't practice what they preach. They demand no borders or walls anywhere—yet in Minneapolis, left-leaning protesters are building barricades and creating makeshift "borders" to block streets, federal agents, and access in protest zones.

They claim to fight injustice for the little guy, but the real driver is raw hatred for the Trump administration—disguised as concern for illegal entrants. To justify their clashes, vandalism, and interference, they've convinced themselves their narrative is truth.

The worst part: they must cling to this lie, or face the reality that they've risked themselves and others to defend people who entered illegally—some linked to serious violent crimes.

I don't want to be anywhere near them when the penny drops.

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Thank God for Nvidia

Recently, NVIDIA announced major advances in more energy-efficient AI chips, most notably with their latest platform unveiled at CES on January 5, 2026. At CES 2026, NVIDIA introduced the Rubin platform, which includes six new chips centered around the Vera Rubin accelerator.

This next-generation architecture—following Blackwell—places a strong focus on improving power efficiency for AI workloads.

Key takeaways:

• The Rubin platform is designed to significantly reduce power consumption and costs for AI training and inference.
• It features improved networking efficiency, such as Spectrum-X Ethernet Photonics delivering 5x better power efficiency.
• NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang emphasized that these chips enable far more efficient data center operations—to the point where some traditional cooling systems (like chillers) may become unnecessary.

Thank goodness for non-European companies like Nvidia whose innovations can reduce the strain on Europe's electricity grid, whose instability has increased as Europe demolishes nuclear power plant after nuclear power plant.

Personally, I don't believe these future energy savings—estimated at up to 40% more efficient in some contexts compared to previous generations—will meaningfully reduce the current global energy deficit for AI and computing.

In an ideal world, it could temporarily ease pressure on overloaded power grids worldwide. But unfortunately, I suspect the total energy demand remains roughly constant: as efficiency rises, something new (more AI use, larger models, new applications) will quickly consume the savings.

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We used to be the best in class, now we're the class clown

As a European, I will never have to "worry about" possible interference or takeover by foreign powers. The EU has ensured this by adopting thousands of different regulations that eliminate all innovation and forward thinking so that absolutely no one will be interested in trying to take over Europe within the next 100 years.

As an example of this, one can compare the American company SpaceEx which invents rockets that return to Earth ready for the next rocket, while Europe "invents" the non-removable cap for plastic bottles...

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I ditched Google for AI… and now my robot best friend remembers every stupid thing I ever asked

If someone had told me six months ago that I would be replacing Google with an AI chatbot, I would have questioned their sanity. But today, AI is pretty much the only tool I use. Soon, the phrase "I Googled it" will be something you say when you want to reinforce the time period you're referring to when telling someone when something happened. To be equated with how I mention today that I used AltaVista in the early days of the internet.

The upgrade is ridiculous. No more wading through 14 sponsored ads for “best running shoes” when I just wanted to know if barefoot running is a cult or a legitimate lifestyle choice. No more SEO-optimized lists that start with “In today’s fast-paced world…” and end 2,000 words later with an affiliate link to socks. The AI ​​just… answers. Cleanly. Directly. Like a friend who’s done their homework instead of the one who shows up with three Wikipedia tabs and vibes.

But here’s the plot twist nobody warned me about: the one thing still sabotaging this beautiful human-AI bromance… is me. More specifically, my wonderfully human superpower called forgetfulness. My AI? He NEVER forgets a thing, not even the smallest ones.

I ask it something random at 2 a.m. (“What’s the weirdest law still on the books in Sweden?”), it remembers forever. I circle back three weeks later like, “Wait, what was that thing about the moose thing?” and boom—it quotes me chapter and verse, complete with timestamps and my exact sleepy typos. It's like dating someone with eidetic memory who also takes screenshots of everything while I need to take a picture of which floor of the parking garage I park my car on so I don't have to search every floor when I get back 30 minutes later.

Forgetting, for me, is the essence of being human: it’s what allows us to move on instead of being stuck replaying every embarrassing conversation from 2009. My AI doesn’t have that luxury—or that grace. It carries every detail like an elephant with endless cloud storage. And while that makes it incredibly useful, it also means it can never truly “move on.” It doesn’t get the relief of blurred edges, the freedom to let yesterday’s obsession fade so that today’s wild idea can shine.

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Trump's Greenland Play: National Security... or the Ultimate AI Power Grab?

I believe President Trump’s interest in Greenland is primarily due to the potential for massive future revenues from some of the world’s largest untapped deposits of rare earth elements (REEs)—including neodymium, dysprosium, yttrium, and other heavy REEs like terbium.
Packaging this instead as national security and strategic positioning in the Arctic—with an emphasis on countering Russian and Chinese influence in the region—is brilliant.
An additional dimension is that AI data centers are energy guzzlers—projections from Goldman Sachs Research (e.g., https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/articles/ai-to-drive-165-increase-in-data-center-power-demand-by-2030) show they could drive a 165% increase in electricity demand by 2030, with cooling alone consuming 30–40% of the energy in traditional installations.
Greenland’s Arctic climate offers “free cooling” via natural cold air, which lowers costs and allows for massive, efficient buildings without energy-intensive HVAC.

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Same same but different

For transparency and my own agenda, I strongly dislike our previous government, the Social Democrats with the support of the Green Party and the tacit acceptance of the Left Party. Politically, I stand very far from the Swedish Social Democrats and their partner parties, communism, socialism and the environmental movement.

I couldn't care less about what people look like or where they come from. The only thing that matters in my world is how they behave and what values ​​they have. If I generalize, all types of people are the same regardless of background. However, there are different types of people.

For example, I have never been able to understand those, mainly mothers, who are generally most often found in countries that practice Islam, who are willing to sacrifice both the lives and well-being of their children for a cause. A behavior that has also begun to be discerned among mothers on the left lately.

On several occasions, it has been reported that mothers have brought small children to organized actions in Minnesota where they attack ICE agents in various ways. It's almost as if they want, just like their peers in Islam, that their children be harmed so that their voice and cause will be heard even more. Why else would one bring small children to events where forcibly impeding federal officers like ICE agents is a crime under 18 U.S.C. § 111?!

Personally, I would never in any way expose the world's most perfect teenager to the slightest risk, quite the opposite. My job here on earth is to protect him at all costs. Something that he sometimes, perhaps mostly, finds annoying...😉

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The bookworm vs the troublemaker, who will be the winner in the future?

My prediction below about AI requires a rough generalization of two different personalities, bookworms and troublemakers.

One area that all bookworms have always been able to rely on to excel in is education and later careers. Their incredible dedication and sacrifice of parties, alcohol, and love for the sake of their studies has always paid off.

I predict that future bookworms' time in the limelight may be over. New technological gadgets like glasses with built-in AI that translate, calculate, give real-time answers, etc. on school tests and job interviews will give all the troublemakers everything the bookworms have worked for for free. To top it all off, troublemakers often have significantly better social skills, which will outcompete any bookworm.

The more we learn to use AI, the more our lives will change, for better or worse.

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New year, new beginnings

Over the past 6 months, we have reduced our risk taking and started buying more "safe" stocks with lower dividends. We have also decided to take a small portion of the money we invest and exclude dividend companies in favor of a couple of growth companies. We are well aware that you should not deviate from your plan, but we have come so far in our investment plan that we are prepared to make this small change.

Today we made our first investment in a growth company, we purchased a small number of shares in Ondas Holdings Inc (ONDS). ONDS is our first holding that does not pay dividends.

AI generated image with Grok

Tax money NOT a work

For transparency and my own agenda, I strongly dislike our previous government, the Social Democrats with the support of the Green Party and the tacit acceptance of the Left Party. Politically, I am very far from the Swedish Social Democrats, their partner parties, communism and socialism.

Our tenant-owners' association (HOA or as it's named in Sweden BRF) has an agreement with Stockholm Vatten och Avfall, which is the municipal company responsible for drinking water, sewage and waste management in the city of Stockholm. Stockholm Vatten och Avfall has outsourced waste management to Verdis AB, which is responsible for the part of the area in Stockholm's inner city where we live.

The Stockholm Transport Office is one of the City of Stockholm's trade unions and is governed by politicians on the traffic committee, which consists of the Social Democrats and the Green Party. The Stockholm City Traffic Office is responsible for, among other things, snow removal on local streets, sidewalks and cycle paths.

In Stockholm, you don't pay directly for the general snow removal of streets, sidewalks and cycle paths, as well as waste management – ​​it is financed through taxes, where the municipality hires contractors such as Verdis AB and the Stockholm Transport Office, who then invoice the city.

Today I received a call from the private contracting company Verdis AB because they were unable to collect BRF's waste due to lack of snow removal. The result of this is that I, as a private individual, must perform a service, snow removal, which both I and the BRF pay municipal tax to have performed in order to have our waste removed.

I can only guess how Verdis AB got my mobile number because I have never been in contact with the company. But since Sweden is a far too open society with all our information, I'm just a Googling away.

AI generated image with Grok

I hate to fail

Although it is sad reading, I really like this chart. Unfortunately, I don't think January 2026 will surpass January 2025, so I will have to be patient before I see an improvement. Even though I get angry when I fail, I love my statistics.

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No excuses

That 2025 was a failure is clearly visible in all the diagrams.😞 Even when I include special and supplemental dividends, we did not reach the forecast for 2025.

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Every cloud has a silver lining

Last March I was so sure that 2025 would be our best dividend year ever. Unfortunately the Swedish krona had other plans, which in itself is not bad when I think about what is best for Sweden.

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The result for 2025

Today we received the last 7 dividends for 2025. For the first time ever, we missed the forecast by 7.03% due to the Swedish krona strengthening by approximately 18% between January 1 and December 31, 2025. Which makes SEK one of the world's best performing currencies in 2025. For the first time since I created my Google Sheet in 2017, I have adjusted the exchange rate between SEK and USD for 2026 to an exchange rate that is closer to today's value.

Even though the Swedish krona has punished and continues to punish us, we have no plans whatsoever to move the money from North America to Sweden; on the contrary, we continue to invest on Nasdaq. Despite everything, I am grateful but not satisfied with our dividends for 2025.

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A different kind of pension system

For transparency and my own agenda, I strongly dislike our previous government, the Social Democrats with the support of the Green Party and the tacit acceptance of the Left Party. Politically, I am very far from the Swedish Social Democrats, their partner parties, communism and socialism.

Like pre-industrial and early industrialized Sweden (as in most agricultural societies), the Swedish population relied on a high birth rate, primarily to support their parents in their old age, there are still countries where people secure their pensions by having many children.

At the beginning of the 20th century, a change took place in Sweden and people largely stopped relying on having many children primarily as a way of securing their old age, with the decisive turning point around 1913–1935.

In 1913, Sweden introduced the world's first universal public pension system, a basic old-age and disability pension available to all citizens. In 1935, the system was significantly reformed and strengthened with a more comprehensive universal basic pension (folkpension), which became a cornerstone of the emerging Swedish welfare state.

Even though I gave birth to the most perfect child in the world and therefore should have significantly more 😉, I'm grateful that I don't have to. But given how badly Swedish politicians, and I'm thinking mainly of the left-wing politicians, are eroding Swedish pension money through countless of reckless investments in both green energy and startups, maybe we have to return to the old system...

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Patience is a virtue

As a Swedish investor in the North American stock market, you must have the patience of a saint.

Even though it is January 6, 2026, we are still missing dividends from 7 holdings where the payout date was December 31, 2025. In addition to these holdings, we have another 20 holdings with the same payday where we received the money.

It doesn't appear that these payments are made automatically but are recorded manually by each bank, which should be extremely costly. The reason I believe this is so is that we have several of the same shares in several banks. One of the reasons for this is that we have decided to stop investing on Avanza's platform as they are by far the worst at refunding foreign withholding tax.

We need to let the move from Avanza to Montrose happen organically because we have holdings that were purchased before the EU changed the rules for ETFs and BDCs, we cannot sell and repurchase them, which means this transfer will take time. It is only when a holding is to be sold for some reason that we transfer the money from Avanza. We currently have holdings in Avanza, Montrose, Nordea and Nordnet.

Without my Google Sheet where I track every dividend, we wouldn't have been able to ensure that we get all the dividends we're supposed to. There have been several occasions when I have had to contact the bank concerned because the dividend has not been paid.

AI generated image with Grok

A good result with fake news

For transparency and my own agenda, I strongly dislike our previous government, the Social Democrats with the support of the Green Party and the tacit acceptance of the Left Party. Politically, I am very far from the Swedish Social Democrats, their partner parties, communism and socialism.

A positive consequence of all fake news is that biased news has also begun to receive attention in recent years. Without fake and biased news, we might not have received Community Notes on X.

As an example of biased news, in a debate in the Parliament between the Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and the Social Democrat leader Magdalena Andersson on November 15, 2023,  Magdalena Andersson gave an incendiary speech in defense of her party colleague Jamal El-Haj, who was accused of supporting the terrorist organization Hamas.

On February 9, 2024, barely 3 months after Magdalena Andersson's defense speech in the Parliament, the Social Democrats and Magdalena Andersson had lost confidence in Jamal El-Haj and he was asked to leave the party and his seat in Parliament. On February 12, 2024, Jamal El-Haj announced his resignation from the Social Democrats but retained his seat in parliament, thus becoming a so-called political savage (independent member of parliament).

Neither SVT nor SR has so far questioned Magdalena Andersson about her incendiary speech in defense on November 15, 2023. The Swedish public service broadcasters, SVT and SR, too often fail in their mission to be impartial in their news reports.

Without the debate and Jamal El-Haj's resignation, we might not have had the web-based TV channel and media platform named 100%, which launched on November 15, 2025. According to one of the founders, Henrik Joensson, the platform was a direct result of Magdalena Andersson's verbal attack on him on February 15, 2024 when she questioned who funded his YouTube channel and implied that his content could be part of foreign (e.g. Russian) influence or propaganda.

Without alternative media, I would never have understood exactly how often and to what extent the public service companies, SVT and SR like the BBC, fail in their missions.

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Down the rabbit hole

Recently, several voices, including Stefan Ingves, PhD in Economics, former head of the Monetary and Financial Systems Department at the IMF and former governor of the Sweden's central bank AKA the Riksbank, have been raised in Sweden to abandon the Swedish krona in favor of the euro. This makes the world's most perfect husband's prediction of a future transition feel increasingly more likely.

Before joining the euro area, one must meet the convergence criteria (Maastricht criteria). One of these criteria is to ensure exchange rate stability (ERM II): that is, the krona must have been stable within the exchange rate mechanism (ERM II) for at least two years prior to entry.

Additionally, in addition to several Maastricht criteria, Sweden needs a parliamentary decision to officially apply, which requires a majority in the government AKA the Riksdag. To defend such a decision, a stronger Swedish krona is needed, which may be one reason why the value of the Swedish krona has strengthened against the US dollar by approximately 15–16% over the past year for no apparent reason. Apart from the US's tariff negotiations with the rest of the world.

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