Hello and welcome back to Mortgage Advisor on FIRE. A very short post this week. Things have gotten in the way, so apologies for the brief update.
Weekly Update
The debacle with Ikea rumbles on. They are offering no reasonable solutions. It’s difficult to know what else we can do other than to keep applying pressure. Every major item has been faulty, and sending the items back will be a pain. Ikea delivered to our apartment, but will only collect from the street and the items will have to be taken apart for that to happen. I just don’t have the spoons to deal with that right now.
I’ve been struggling with some quite severe elbow pain. I felt a spike of pain the other day when I was pressing something down on the table, and it’s still aching now as I type this. I’m going to try and rest it for the next few days and if it’s no better I’ll see my GP.
As with the last few weeks, I’m not sure where the time has gone. The days seem to pass slowly but the week seems to flash by. So, not a very interesting weekly update, I’m afraid.
What is Art?
Yeah, I don’t think I’m going to satisfactorily answer this question in just a few hundred words but a recent news item grabbed my attention. In the Colorado State Fair a man entered a piece of art that won first prize in the fine arts category. The image is stunning, and I can see a fair demand for prints as people look to have it on display. What is unusual about this work is that it was generated by an AI text-to-image generator.
Some people are complaining that the man behind the work should have been more upfront about how the image came to be. The man of the moment, Jason Allen, states that he was clear and transparent about using software called Midjourney.
When I first heard about this incident, it was framed in such a way that implied a computer created the art from nothing. Reading into this a little more, it seems it’s more complicated than that. The image was created by Allen using the software in much the same way a traditional painter would use a brush.
When I initially thought that it was an image created by computer with no human input, I was thinking that this image could not be art, as art requires intent, and emotion. Having read a little more about it, I think it’s a fascinating piece of work and I don’t see any problem with classifying it as art.
Support Mortgage Advisor on FIRE
I love writing this blog, and I’ve met some great people because of it. Maintaining a website costs money though, and if you want to say thanks for the content I publish, consider a donation to my virtual tip jar on the link below:
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/davidscothern
2022 Goals – to be achieved by 31/12/2022
1 – Reduce weight to 90kg. (Current weight 125.9kg).
2 – Complete 10 “classic” books (4/10)
- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1866)
- Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (1851)
- Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897) ✅
- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961)
- The Iliad by Homer (8th century BC) ✅
- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (1844) ✅
- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (1867)
- A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (1859)
- Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (1862)
- Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (1605) ✅
3 – Read 10 authors I’ve not read before (14/10)
- John Birmingham ✅
- Nicole Perlroth ✅
- Sabine Durrant ✅
- Luke Smitherd ✅
- Max Skittle ✅
- Harlan Coben ✅
- Jo Spain ✅
- Kate Elizabeth Russell ✅
- Kiersten White ✅
- Rob Hart ✅
- Edward Aubry ✅
- Marina J. Lostetter ✅
- S. J. Morden ✅
- C. J. Tudor ✅
What Am I Doing?
What I’m reading: Hostage by Clare Mackintosh.
What I’m listening to: The Golden Couple by Greer Hendricks.
What I’m watching: MCU in timeline order.
Hostage is starting to feel like a book that will never end. I sit down to read and get just a few pages in before mental exhaustion creeps in. I’m not that far in to The Golden Couple so can’t comment too much. Our MCU marathon continues and we have just started the first Guardians of the Galaxy film. I think it’s probably at this point that humour became a little too OTT in Marvel films. I don’t have a problem with there being some humour in these movies. Thor: Ragnarok showed how it can be used effectively. The problem with recent MCU films is that they don’t let scenes breathe. Emotional moments are capped with a “humerous” quip to take the sting out of the scene.
Financial Update
Assets
Premium Bonds: £8,200.00 (no change from last update).
Stocks and Shares ISA: £61,133.68 (down £886.77 from last update).
Fuck It Fund: £1,000.00 (no change from last update).
Pensions: £53,697.81 (down £784.40 from last update).
Residential Property Value: £229,159.00 (no change from last update).
Buy-to-Let Property Value: £147,876.00 (no change from last update).
Total Assets: £501,066.49 (down £1,671.17 from last update).
Debts
Credit Card: £0.00 (no change from last update).
Residential Mortgage: £181,721.51 (down £786.36 from last update).
Buy-to-Let Mortgage: £105,301.46 (down £15.28 from last update).
Total Debts: £287,022.97 (down £801.64 from last update).
Total Wealth: £214,043.52 (down £869.53 from last update).
Investment Income in 2022: £3,174.94 (target £6,000).
Biolink and other links
You can now find all my social media pages by checking out my Biolink:
bio.link/davidscothern.
Also, check out Darren Scothern’s blog which talks about autism, being autistic, and general mental health:
Mortgage Advisor on FIRE. 
Looking good. Steady is king.
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