Best of Web: Visiting Giza, Letter to my Younger Self, Every Second, Shocking Biases, State Inventions

We bring you the Best of Web links: Visiting Giza, an amazing letter to my younger self by an NBA player from Chicago, a cool page about what happens every second, shocking biases and best state inventions.

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Life In The Shadows of the Pyramids : Filthy Back-Streets of Giza, Egypt

Giza probably qualifies as a #shithole. Can you imagine the One Mile at a Time dude or Brian Kelly The Points Guy visiting here? Lol. You know this blog is different when you read:

Within Giza, there’s a small “tourist district”. It’s shabby, and has few tourists. The streets are literally smeared with shit. Animals are constantly being whipped. At night, I saw three horses, a handful of dogs, and about half-a-dozen cats all hanging out in a huge pile of rubbish, on the main street that enters this “tourist” part of Giza. A herd of goats were living in rubble on top of an abandoned building next to my hotel. This cemented my decision to extend my booking, and spend the entire three days exclusively in this neighbourhood. And, that decision was made before being invited to an Egyptian “Hash Wedding”, on night one.

Letter to My Younger Self

This blew me away, it is a must read.

You are going to need every bit of it. After all that death, you’re going to be destroyed for eight months. There’s nothing you can do about it. The first time you ever see your pops cry will be at Bernard’s funeral. You’re not going to be able to do anything but sit around and be consumed by anger. Anger at your brother’s killers. Anger at God for taking your mother. Anger at life. But then you’re going to pick up a basketball. And I don’t even care if it’s a cliché — it’s going to help. No matter how bad a day you had, you’ll always be able to pick up a basketball and pretend to be MJ.

Every Second

Click to see what happens every second in Spotify, Youtube, Facebook, McDonald’s, Apple and more! This is actually pretty cool stuff! You know what is cooler? You getting a CSP card with my links so I don’t get deflated every day when I look at my metrics lol.

How to Lean Against the Biases in 2018

This is your must read personal finance post of the day. Investing is easy but your behavior is the problem lol. Take some time to read this, you will benefit and you will be enthusiastic for my blog you will tell everyone you come to contact with #dreaming

Accordingly, the idea that we act in our own rational self-interest with any degree of regularity is, quite obviously, ludicrous and falsified every single day by our choices and our lives.

Worst of all, we readily recognize such self-destructive behavior in others but consistently and tragically lack the ability to see it in ourselves.

We just can’t seem to help ourselves. In the immortal words of Pogo, “we have met the enemy and he is us,” but we don’t seem very willing to try to do very much about it.

1. We do what is easy instead of what is right.
2. We feed our short-term impulses rather than our long-term interests.
3. We do what we want to the detriment of what we need.

They aren’t quite resolutions, but a few – often interconnected – suggestions for such leaning follow.

• We need real and broad engagement.
• We need careful argument, which – quite naturally – requires actively listening to one’s opponents rather than merely pausing to figure out your next attack. [Sooooo true!]
• We need understanding. If we assume the other side has nothing substantive in its favor, there is no basis for connection and, in all likelihood, we do not understand the other side or its positions.  [This is why some Trump supporters post here…we need to understand them!]
• We need equanimity. As Tom Nichols argues, “Confirmation bias has to be worn away by a steady plodding refusal to accept the mistaken assumptions of other people.”
• Read. Widely and deeply. [TBB is a reading machine!]
• Write. If you cannot articulate your arguments on paper clearly and cogently, with good supporting evidence, you do not understand them well enough to be able even to have a very good idea if you are right or not. [I should rant more, it makes me feel better, so cathartic!]
• Think. We would all benefit from taking more time simply to reflect and consider.
• We need to demand evidence as a matter of consistent routine. 
• Although the distinction between them is finer than we tend to think, we need to focus more on facts and less on interpretations, opinions and beliefs. 
• We need to slow down. Measure twice. Cut once.
• We ought to simplify our lives and our processes. [Simple is better! I have been a big fan of keeping it simple and I become a bigger fan as I get older!]
• We need well-aligned incentives: “skin in the game.”
• We need to consider – really and truly – that we might be wrong. [I do this all the time!]
• Encourage diversity (of ideas and people as well as in portfolios). Bill Bernstein provides a nice summary on this from an investment context. “Say to yourself every day, ‘I cannot predict the future, therefore I diversify.’” [I do this every morning!]
• Emphasize empowered teams with people who do not all think alike and foster adversarial collaboration. 
• We need to be accountable. That means allowing people to hold us accountable (and demanding that they do so) as well as building in accountability structures.

The most famous invention from each state

The content today has been pretty serious so lets go back to some lighter stuff…These are great!

I had no idea road lines were invented in Michigan! And thanks New York for inventing toilet paper too!

And I leave you with this…

Check out my updated blog lists: Blogs I Love, Blogs I Like, Blogs To Ignore