We bring you the news that the virus will win, register for the latest IHG Rewards 4x promo, economy reopening, Black Wall Street, the best Covid-19 coverage, we talk about bond yields, we travel to Antarctica, China and to see tall skyscrapers, ANA award opportunity that will likely not last long and then again who would want to be on an airplane these days, we watch an amazing documentary about the 1992 LA riots remembering Rodney King, we learn about the eel mafia, the best photography links and lots more still free for you and for me!
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I’ll see you Friday. Be excellent to each other.
COVID-19
I do not want to start like this but here it is, forgive me: The Virus Will Win.
In the fullness of time, many books will be written about why a country as rich, powerful, and scientifically advanced as the United States failed quite so badly at coping with a public-health emergency that experts had predicted for many years. As is always the case, competing explanations will quickly emerge. Some will focus on the incompetence of the Trump administration, while others will draw attention to the country’s loss of state capacity; some will argue that the United States is an outlier, while others will put its failure in the context of other countries, such as Brazil and Russia, that are also faring poorly.
We were on the brink of doing something incredible. And much of the credit for that would have gone to the many ordinary citizens who lived up to their moral responsibility in an extraordinary moment.
Thanks to the effort of millions of people, we were close to a great success story. But because of the failures of Trump and Chauvin, of the CDC and the WHO, of public-health experts and Fox News hosts, we are, instead, likely to give up—and tolerate that hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens will die needless deaths. Pandemics reveal the true state of a society. Ours has come up badly wanting.
Ok, this must be the mvp link of the day. MUST read: The Long Shadow of the Future. The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed how valuable it is for governments to have operational expertise, plan for the long-term and socialize certain risks. Not going to excerpt every line but I should, make the time to read this.
Sobering thread by an MD in the front lines at New York City. Sit down when you read this.
Hey it is not all bad, seriously! Quarantine has changed us — and it’s not all bad. They are: Reducing consumerism, slowing down and putting less pressure on ourselves, prioritizing family and friends, ethical action and activism in our highly interconnected world, exercising daily, baking/vegetarian cooking/growing herbs, spending more time in nature, working from home.
Some good advice on How to Navigate Your Community Reopening, Remember the Four C’s. Close contact, confined spaces, crowds, choices.
How is your State doing? How We Reopen Safely. I see lots of red and yellow and just a few green states, hello?
Hey, it is like nobody warned us. “Totally predictable”: State reopenings have backfired. It is becoming clear that some states reopened too soon. Then again, some did it and they are not seeing positive cases grow. Why? We do not know yet…But these two excerpts just sum it up well in my view:
“We managed to disrupt our economy [and] skyrocket unemployment, and we didn’t control the damn virus,” one scientist says.
The initial lockdown period avoided the worst possible scenario, but the US didn’t use that time to prepare for managing the pandemic in the future. And now we’ve wasted the weeks that have passed since reopening. [What a damn shame!]
MILES & POINTS
HOT CREDIT CARD OFFERS: The Citi Business American Airlines AAdvantage Platinum Select Mastercard offer is 65,000 AA miles. The IHG Rewards Club card offering 140k points too, highest ever. For a standard workhorse card I recommend the 60k Chase Sapphire Preferred card. For a standard premium card I recommend the 50k Chase Sapphire Reserve card. For a standard 2% cash back card I recommend the Citi Double Cash card. Available with my links. Lets move on!
I have added above the 65,000 AA miles offer for the Citi Business American Airlines AAdvantage Platinum Select Mastercard. If you decide to get it, please support the blog by using my links, thank you. Ask in the comments or email me with questions.
Register HERE for the latest IHG Rewards promotion. Earn 2x on your first two stays, earn 3x on your third stay, earn 4x on your fourth stay +. Promotion runs through September 8, 2020.
My guess is this is not going to last very long. ANA’s Removal Of Fuel Surcharges Makes One Of Today’s Greatest Mileage Bargains Even Better!
TRAVEL
This is wonderful: A Poetic Journey Through Western China. For years, Silk Road travelers made the grueling trek past towering mountain ranges and ancient cities now lost to time. Centuries later, one writer attempts to retrace the journey.
I would like to go to Antarctica one day. And hopefully do not add to the long list of dead. A frozen graveyard: The sad tales of Antarctica’s deaths.
We go Charting the Last 20 Years of Supertall Skyscrapers. Amazing to see how many have been built in China.
PERSONAL FINANCE
Let’s talk about yield. Or, to be more precise, the disappearing minuscule yield these days: Farewell Yield. Some good points here…
A lot of what is happening in the markets is of course due to the developments from the global pandemic we are going through. This pretty much sums up my views on the subject. Yes I am pissed off. Reopening.
But now everybody’s sick of being cooped up inside, they want to party!
It’s like the doctor saying you broke your leg and you need to wear a cast for six weeks, but you’re sick of the itch and you remove it after four. Huh? Then again, who is to trust doctors, they’re all about the money, it’s best to trust web research and your friends, after all the medical industrial complex is out to get you.
It’s just raw insanity. People were tired of being cooped up, a bunch of them protested at statehouses, and government officials blinked and started opening up their cities and states. You saw those pics from Memorial Day, well now the results are in…PEOPLE GOT INFECTED!
It’s science.
But we no longer believe in science. There’s no global warming, nothing is definitive so let’s not take any action. Can you PROVE vaccinations are harmless? Can you PROVE there’s no God? Well, until you can, I’m taking my own counsel. Because you know big business is against the people. But we must reopen the country for big business. Huh?
CURRENT EVENTS/POLITICS
Way before George Floyd, we had Rodney King. We did not have phones with cameras back then. One guy carrying an actual heavy video camera filmed his beating and of course the four officers were acquitted. And then the infamous LA riots began. I remember watching them on TV and could not believe my eyes. Kind of sad to see not much has changed since then. Anyway, this is a must watch documentary about that event. Many scenes were new to me. It is almost two hours long. If you are too busy to watch the whole thing, just spare seven minutes if you can, 1.24.00 -1.31.00.
This is great. Reflections From a Token Black Friend. On structural racism, implicit bias, and what white people do (and don’t) say.
This happened way way earlier: Black Wall Street: The African American Haven That Burned and Then Rose From the Ashes. Actually, I only learned about it recently.
ODDZ & ENDZ
This phucking asshole was finally caught! Rwanda genocide: How Félicien Kabuga evaded capture for 26 years.
I had no idea there was so much money in eels, wow! Inside the takedown of Europe’s multi-billion pound eel mafia.
Some entries from the Sony World Photography Awards.
More photography! The Winners of 2020 Street Photography.
BLOG BUZZ
We are now entering BLOG BUZZ, a section for advanced hobbyists and veterans of this fast imploding hobby and also a section where I go on and on about some stuff that happens in my life because it helps me feel better about myself.
Stefan of Rapid Travel Chai continues to do daily video interviews: Upcoming Video Interviews for the Week of June 14, 2020.
Been logging 25 to 30 miles running every week for a while now. My long run this past weekend was this, not bad imho.
I ended up buying the Lenovo Tab M10 Plus tablet and I really like it.
High School graduation for daughter this week. No walking. It is a drive by and then on Zoom, sad! And my birthday next week…maybe I will get tired of this blogging thing one of these days.
I had a relaxing weekend, been a while…
And I leave you with this…Coming via Zoom lol.
TBB
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Thanks for the links. Vanishing yield was quite good. I would have thought something on the performance of active management vs passive over the last.months would have been appropriate. If you push stocks, ok, which ones?
You would think active will finally shine in a period like this? Nope: oh shoot, lost the link I was going to link to, sorry.
If someone is pushing Hertz HTZ…maybe that is not a good sign lol.
I do not push individual stocks. I am no Jim Cramer 😉
What’s your running heart rate? Post that….IMO that is just as important (if not more) than the stats you showed.
I like the pic I posted from my Garmin watch…There are other stats I don’t really understand and usually do not look at. Maybe I should…
Looking at the Heart Rate indicators:
Avg Heart Rate: 147 bpm
Max Heart Rate: 176 bpm
I also see the “Time in Heart Rate Zones”:
Zone 5 > 151 bpm 32.09 (47%)
Zone 4 134-150 bpm 25.15 (37%)
Zone 3 118-133 bpm 9.37 (14%)
Zone 2 101-117 bpm 1.05 (2%)
Zone 1 84-100 bpm 0.05 (0%)
Now if I could only google to figure out wtf cadence is 🙂
Yeah you should definitely be looking at your HR stats. Don’t want to do too many runs where you are in the red zone. I wouldn’t recommend doing runs like the one you described above more than 2-3 times per week. 70-80% of your running should be in zone 3. Doing too many of the runs in zone 5 leads to over training and hitting a wall during a race. Keeping your HR in zone 3 trains your body to burn fat first and then carbs later. You can’t keep your intensity up for prolonged periods by being in zone 5 and burning carbs/having anaerobic exercise. I know it is really silly, but to go faster, you’ve got to run slower. Do the hard days (tempo, sprints, etc) hard, and do the easy days very easy.
Cadence is a measure of foot turnover…how many steps per min you have. High achievers are in the 180s.
Great info, thank you!
Yeah, that 8 mile run was very unusual. I was supposed to take it easy for an hour and then go hard in the last mile…But I felt really good so I just kept pushing it…Will likely not happen again for a long time. Good point to really take it easy on my easy days.
Looked at the cadence indicators of that run: 160 avg, 180 max…I now feel elite…Diamond or Globalist lol
Literally the best thing to help your times and enjoyment would be to add in one day of interval training per week. You have no idea how much until you try it, and are in week 6 or so.
Anyone else see Larry Kudlow on Jake Tapper’s Sunday show? He looked half in the bag, and couldn’t defend the admin now backtracking on its promise to release names and amounts of all corporate loan recipients.
Tapper blew it. He should have just said “What are you hiding? Who are you protecting? Who did you give our money to?”.
FOIA filing likely already on the way over.
We are surrounded by inept assholes
Hey Buzz, thanks for the reminders…we’re in Arizona…oh boy!
All kidding aside, thank you for the links and have a great day.
In Michigan last night I had to get the warm blankets back out!
Feels nice to live in a country that puts the tax euros to work on public health. Pandemics have been around since centuries and any developed country has health departments in place that can track, trace and respond to pandemics.
Sadly the quick reopening of the US shows that people are trying to get back to the normal asap, so I doubt this will change anything. Just with race relations and school shootings. Once in a while an incident will rattle public opinion and perception but nothing major happens in the US. Just like repeated storms that outdo each other in severity doesn’t even convince anyone that climate change is happening 😉
I want to change “this time is different” but…
CONGRATS to the High School graduate! As you know my oldest grandson graduated this past Saturday. THey did the drive up, walk to a podium and pose for pics. Watched it online. The school set it up the best they could for the kids. Hope your ceremony is as best as can be!
Wow…walk to a podium…not sure that is in store for her…as we have explicit instructions to NOT come out of the car 🙂
The Points Guy is selling cards that don’t earn any points:
https://twitter.com/thepointsguy/status/1272673097854976002/retweets
Yes. When you have sales copy content ready to go and then the banks take away the affiliate links..but you can still post it, do not have a link to apply direct (because that would be so hard not make any money on selling a card and helping readers make their life easier would be so ruinous to them so they just have to go find it for themselves) and, of course, never pass the opportunity to pump so many other internal links and of course every other affiliate plastic link the site still sells.
The interesting observation is…they are losing lots of affiliate links and I am starting to wonder IF the banks have now decided to walk away from paying bloggers to sell credit cards…hmmmm. Any one from the inside give me some tips? Off the record!
They did the same when Zach promoted the new iPhone11. Although they had no links, the clicks on the site were tracked using a third party service. I posted the details in FT/EM&PR. They later can use the tracking data to show potential clients on how they can reach out to new demographics. So besides being spacefiller, these blog entries contribute to case studies for marketing pitches.
Amazing how much we don’t know about these things and so many fall for them…
Then again we are at a point here where wearing masks has morphed from a pure public health initiative to a freedom and/or being cool thing…
Yikes all around
Sure it’s a proof of concept. But revenue must be tiny compared to CC compensation. It won’t pay for Brian’s cocaine addiction anytime soon.
4th cc conversion is in the books.
Omg, the $’s have collapsed…We will find out, if they ever become public, that TPG had loads of PPP money…when that stops, expect mass layoffs! My job at TBB is secure though as it is unpaid LOL.
Should be getting my IHG click today too. What’s the prize for the 5th conversion of the month?
Free stock tip?
Free one liner in the next blog post, u can say anything!
Free subscription for my Slack channel?
Thanks!
This Ebay cyberstalking case is wild:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-17/ebay-former-pr-chief-is-said-to-be-executive-2-in-indictment
The allegations sure sound wild…
My first thought when I saw this…a bit too wild perhaps? Maybe the lawyers can work out a $10k settlement or something?
I guess we will find out…
If they DID do all these things…I mean, WTF is wrong with people!
Asking for a friend. What should an employee do if the CEO asks you to terrorize a citizen?
1. Say yes, while looking for a new job
2. Say no, hoping you’ll find a new job soon
3. Quit
4. Notify HR and wait for the pink slip
5. Go all in and hope for a promotion.
6. Document it for a whistle blower suit later 🙂
And book release. Include a story about a 3 some with Elon Musk etc.
Maybe we have some material for a Netflix movie here.