I bring you the most eclectic content I find online such as Blowing Bubbles, Northern Lights, pandemic positives for the world, watch an insane bee removal, visit Azores Island and Iceland, warn you about indexed annuities and scaling too fast and the second vaccine dose side effects, we dream about Goldman Sachs entering the travel rewards credit card industry and lots more. You all have a great week!
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TRAVEL
There is incredible scenery in this post, wow! The Plan to Protect Indigenous Elders Living Under the Northern Lights. One day I am going to be able to hire a web guru to design pages like this, wow again. Here is another link to it. Would love to visit this place one day…
This is amazing! FPV drone footage at the volcanic eruption in Fagradalsfjall Iceland. And the ending is tops!
This place is in Azores Islands, so pretty!
PERSONAL FINANCE
Excellent post by Jonathan Clements again: Blowing Bubbles. The following three paragraph excerpts are great!
Drawing on economist Hyman Minsky, Bernstein says there are four conditions necessary for a financial bubble to form: easy credit, exciting new technologies, amnesia about the prior bubble and bust, and the abandonment of old, prudent methods for valuing investments.
So are we in a bubble today? I posed that question to Bernstein. “What’s peculiar about right now is there are lots of little bubbles—bitcoin, GameStop, the Robinhood phenomenon, SPACs,” he says. “But they’re relatively circumscribed. There’s no mania about investing in the S&P 500 or a total market index fund.”
What about bitcoin? Like Bernstein, I think it’s a bubble and I’m staying far away. The good news: Even if I’m wrong, it doesn’t much matter. I don’t need to own cryptocurrencies to reach my financial goals. A globally diversified stock portfolio, backed up by a safety net of short-term bonds, should serve me just fine.
Another great post, beware sleazy salesmen selling this crap! Indexed annuities: Have you been framed?
With all the negatives, why do investors seem to love this product, buying tens of billions year after year? The reason is simple. The insurance industry frames the investment decision in a manner that gets investors to focus on the potential for large gains, the principal protection, and the guaranteed minimum return provided by annuities. Investors lose sight of the costs and the lost upside potential. In other words, “you’ve been framed”.
And a few must read excerpts from Too Much, Too Soon, Too Fast:
Some things scale well. Double their size and you get double the output (or more). Other things don’t, and my God is it important to know which is which.
Virtually all investing mistakes are rooted in people looking at long-term market returns and saying, “That’s nice, but can I have it all faster?”
COVID-19
This would have appeared in the TOP PICKS section…But since everything I post is top material, it appears here 🙂 3 Ways the Pandemic Has Made the World Better. Must read. Here is another link.
1. We Now Know How to Code for Our Vaccines
2. We Actually Learned How to Use Our Digital Infrastructure
3. We’ve Unleashed the True Spirit of Peer Review and Open Science
By the time you read this everyone in my family has been vaccinated with the first dose. Vaccinations are now coming at a furious clip in Michigan and Ohio! Heads up on the side effects after the second dose! The Second COVID-19 Shot Is a Rude Reawakening for Immune Cells. Well, we are ready! Archived link.
Another must read showing the deep impact Covid-19 has had in our lives here in the US. Not all negative by the way, including we totally annihilated the flu!
ODDZ & ENDZ
Had you ever heard of José Epita Mbomo, the black Spanish electrician who sabotaged the Nazis? Me neither, what a life story!
This freaked me out, mostly because when I was a little kid a bee stung me when I went to drink water from a fountain…you won’t believe what happened next! Bee Removal in a Backyard Shed. Do NOT try this at home!
Winners in The 2021 Sony World Photography Competition.
MILES & POINTS
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If you do not see a credit card with my affiliate links, perhaps I could refer you? Contact me!
This section is about my hobby addiction of collecting frequent flyer miles and hotel points since the early 1990’s! Feel free to skip this section and parts of the next one if this is not for you.
Newbies: You do not have to follow the advice of the known bloggers, they are in the business of talking up all about travel hacking to sell you their products. It can still be fun and selectively lucrative but nowhere near as much as it was in the past and the future outlook is not good. At all. As each day goes by it is getting harder to justify moves other than getting a 2% cash back credit card back to put all your spending on it and simplify…everything.
It is always great from the perspective of a miles and points addict to see more US banks interested to get into the travel rewards credit card game! It means more new kind of plastic to be issued with, preferably huge, signup bonuses. I am referring to recent news that Goldman Sachs was interested in taking over being the exclusive partner with JetBlue from Barclays. But these contracts with airlines and hotels are multiyears long and change in this little corner of the world comes very slow. And Barclays bank is kind of weird to deal with.
I am trying desperately to get under 4 million miles/points in the bank and…stay there! Looking at all the Spring Breakers in Florida and I continue to shake my head that we may be done with the virus…but the virus may not be done with us.
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.
I have almost never bothered with Expedia, including its bad rewards program. But these guys managed it to make it even worse, wow! Expedia: Points Can No Longer Be Used For Flights.
Today my wife gets her vaccine, so everyone in my household has been vaccinated with dose #1. It is happening…but is it happening fast enough?
It was a very slow weekend here…
And I leave you with this…
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Opinions expressed here are author’s alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, hotel, airline, or other entity. This content has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of the entities included within the post.
Good morning Buzz, great article on Yellowknife. And the finance articles are always greatly appreciated.
Have a great day!
Good to see a reference to Hy Minsky this morning!
With all the people in the household vaccinated you’re likely
to be fired as Outsider Person.
Wow! Quiet here today so… Bronze! For the Pacific Northwest! Great finance article today about growth. I did not know that about Starbucks at all.
More to read, but some has to wait while Real Life intrudes! As always, many thanks for the work you put in on this!
Yeah, slow Monday. So, wife got Moderna…The boys got Pfizer, the girls Moderna…coincidence?
I like the cleansing process I went through…I would say 60% of the time I spent on watching blogs/sites/reading is gone! Just zeroing on Top Picks type material only…
Can’t wait for the CSP and CSR new bonuses…you will see the blogosphere EXPLODE again as it usually does. If I sell none…the writing is on the wall but with my new cleansing operation…so what Lol.
Thank you for the article on the African man that went against the Germans.
Never give up!
“ WEWORK TELLS INVESTORS IT LOST $3.2BN LAST YEAR AS IT WOOS THEM FOR SPAC DEAL”
That story about that dude going against the Nazis was my favorite in today’s post!
My god, seriously? WeWork is not done yet taking money WTF!
Only six items worthy of entry to the next TBB post…whenever that comes!
That’s our supermarket, a mile or so down the hill.
10 dead (so far). I greet and regularly talk with several people who work there. I hope they’re ok, but I feel terrible as I do since their survival means someone else is dead.
I don’t know what to think or feel. Except I know this is no way to live.
I thought about you when I first saw this, glad to see you are okay.
I am tired of going on anti gun rants here, it will make no difference at all. It was evident after Sandy Hill when nothing was done…
I am just too numb to even say anything anymore…
The cleansing progress continues here…
Bye bye Gary at Frequent Flier Miles…just could not take one more asskissing link to VFTW for a post that so many wrote about…even after all these years.
So, after AFAR turned into a credit card whore, it was Matador Network’s turn, bye bye.
I also deleted some “friends” in Facebook and a few Linkedin connections too, just too much Trump shit.
The Feedly is so much more easily managed now and a big source of my stress taken care of.
With just two credit card conversions this month (the only meaningful revenue generator still left here) the process above has made justifying to carry on here much easier for me.
No affiliate link for me for the CSP card yet. And no referral link yet either. While all others are going all out selling it. The CSR affiliate link is in my links by the way.
TBB is finally on the road to align the time spent here with the revenue it generates. It was time after 8.5 years. I think I am good with a couple of posts per week here going forward. Until the cc links are taken away that is, it is amazing I still have them. I get more conversions and more donations——>it will likely lead to more posts. Presently, after losing the Amazon Affiliates revenue source, I am in much better head space.
To aspiring bloggers, decide what you want your blog to bring to you. Trying to grow it in an organic way all by yourself is not recommended unless you are insane like me.
In the meantime, Michigan Covid cases have more than tripled and several school outbreaks after opening…
Left the best news for last: My mother in Greece is finally getting her first vaccine shot today!
Great news about your mother’s first vaccine shot.
Citi closed our TY Preferred card for inactivity. I’m getting sloppy-had 17k TYPs since Bush was in office. My wife said “It’s a blessing”. I think she’s on to something.
A reminder that one can product change to Citi’s Dividens CC. This card gives you 5% back. Easy $300/year.
Frequent Flier Miles’ design reminds me of the early days of commercial internet, when Mosaic was the first browser.
ALL MUST SIGN UP FOR THE EXCITING NEW CHASE SAPPHIRE PREFERRED OFFER. IT IS THE BEST ONE EVER. RESISTANCE IS FUTILE. THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION.
I bet an EKG readout during the typing of this zinger would have looked like 45’s signature from all the self-congratulatory endorphins released. Bravo to your bottomless well of witticisms.