Hi! Modern day vampires are depicted as these charming heart throbs who show up in high schools to charm their soon to be lover whilst beefing with werewolves in an epic teenager love triangle drama. But the medieval people were a little unhinged with how they treated vampires:

If only ancient men knew dying their hair scarlet could save them from a prostate checkup appointment. But those are some bloody facts for the occasion of World Dracula Day. So, don't forget to apply your sunscreen before going out on a sunny day and let's get started with our regular!

Today’s special:

The Affordability Nightmare: Affordability has become worse in the U.S. over the years!

An Artificial Test: What are the implications of AI's rising IQ test scores over the year?

The Creased Currency: Americans are yet to warm up to the idea of cryptocurrency.

The aftermath of the pandemic led not only to prices rising but a complete reset, permanently elevating cost to a higher baseline. From 2021 to 2023, overall prices climbed about three times faster than normal inflation settling at 17–18%. Albeit inflation did simmer down to around 2.4% by early 2026; still households are left with no other choice to pay those elevated prices every day.

What’s transpiring owing to this is a reality where a typical household now spends about $15,400 more per year on basic essentials than it did in 2019. Even with the growth of income, many families aren’t keeping up; households in 30 states effectively lost 3.2% of their income to rising costs.

What remains after using income for paying the basics is just chump change. In 2025, households had about 24.7% of income which translates to $2,170 per month left over on average but in the least affordable states, that cushion shrinks to roughly $800. Rhode Island and Massachusetts have the steepest squeeze, with living costs rising 8 percentage points faster than incomes, while California and New York followed at 7%.

It’s pretty obvious that Americans have a problem: they are financially squeezed beyond just middle class and low-income people. Across 160 metro areas, basic necessities are unaffordable by 20% of middle-class households where they live. In fact, roughly one-third of the U.S. middle class struggles to cover essentials like housing, food, and childcare despite earning what’s perceived as a “comfortable” income.

Meanwhile, problems in the real-world are singing the same tune with food prices rising 2.9% year-over-year in January 2026 and are anticipated to climb another 3.1%. (Also to be noted, utility costs jumped over 6% in the same period). To make ends meet Americans are leaning on credit which to no surprise led total household debt to reach $18.8 trillion by late 2025, with credit card balances penciling in $1.28 trillion.

Policy hasn’t fully done much to alleviate the situation while efforts to cut costs grab headlines; they fail to make an impact. Inflation may have simmered down, but affordability hasn’t recovered. Prices rose fast, continuing to stay high and for millions of Americans, the math still doesn’t add up.

AI has crashed the Mensa party and human dominance on high level logic is perhaps coming to an end? By early 2026 AI became the elephant to be addressed in the IQ conversation following IQ scores of 145 and 141 posted by GPT-5.4 Pro and Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview respectively on the Mensa Norway test.

A benchmark which is usually reserved for the top 0.4% and 99.8% of human intelligence. Now even more mainstream systems are catching up fast with OpenAI’s o3 model recently scoring 136, placing it well above 98% of people.

Forget a gradual timeline with incremental gains, what the world is witnessing looks like a total algorithmic ascent considering it was just a year ago, when AI systems were struggling to break an IQ of 90. Today, they’re doing it without breaking a sweat and dwarfing most humans on the same scale. a jump so sharp that even industry leaders suggest AI is improving by roughly one standard deviation per year.

In this desperation of comparing humans to machines, a systemic glitch is being revealed in the way we’re evaluating what constitutes ‘smart’. IQ tests were designed for humans and never calibrated for machines and applying those standards to it says more about the test than the technology. As Sandra Wachter an oxford researcher puts it “It can be very tempting to use the same measures we use for humans to describe capabilities or progress, but this is like comparing apples with oranges.”

Moreover, AI systems are hardwired on vast datasets, optimized to understand identifying patterns and backed by enormous computational power. All of these factors make it easier to ace the “IQ” performance, which explains why they do so well. As scores rise, perception is starting to shift with 25% of Gen Z believing AI is conscious or is about to be. Yet there’s nothing to worry about; rest assured the reality is less sci-fi; skynet is not about to go online if listening to the experts.

Afterall, AI may simulate high IQ performance, still the general intelligence and self-awareness of humans is lost on the machine. In the end, misreading what their IQ scores actually mean is more of a looming danger than machines akin to humans.

Crypto may have been born out of distrust, but it doesn’t mean it has replaced it or earned trust in return. Even today, a strong 63% of Americans say cryptocurrencies “are not to be trusted,” including 32% who strongly agree. In fact, 35% of bank skeptics distrust crypto, their disillusionment with traditional finance hasn’t translated into enthusiasm in alternatives investments.

That doubt has creeped into the expectations of crypto in the long run with only 5% of Americans strongly believe it is the future of online transactions, compared to 28% who strongly disagree.

In terms of unstable value for both owners and non-owners the margins are very close at 37% and 38% respectively. While cyber-attacks are flagged by 14%, followed by 12% wary of potential access loss. Rising fraud when it comes to Crypto isn’t helping build it’s credibility either. With over $11.4 billion lost to crypto fraud in 2025, as per the FBI followed by investment scams accounting for $7.3 billion, many still associate crypto with high risk rather than reliability.

A closer look at broader datasets and it’s pretty evident that crypto’s reach looks more niche than revolutionary. Gallup finds that the percentage of U.S. adults who own cryptocurrency is only 14% that pales in comparison to 60% without any interest in ever buying it. Even among investors, ownership has managed to climb 17%, up from 2% in 2018 that could be labeled as growth, but not a breakout adoption.

There is, however, one pocket of momentum, with 49% of Gen Z having used a crypto exchange followed by 37% who currently own or use crypto, as opposed to just 5% of Boomers.

Still, truth be told that generational tilt isn’t tipping the national balance to crypto’s favor. Even with 17% of Americans having ever used crypto that figure has stayed flat for three years. Meanwhile, adoption remains concentrated across age groups: only 29% among those aged 18–29 versus just 8% among those over 50.

Marriage may not be the first thing on young people’s minds, but if you had to guess, what percentage of men and women are married today?

[Answer Below]

Answer Here

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