Another TBB post featuring the most eclectic links around the web such as our ChatGPT world, the next opioid crisis, Bhutan trip report, airport lounge wars, the stunning Conrad Koh Samui, AI replacing our jobs, complying with the latest tax changes, elder abuse of very rich people, how to turn off AI, emojis and powerful ideas and castles, the best photography links and of course always all of the most important developments in the crazy world of frequent flyer miles and points at the lower half of the post. Have a great weekend!

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This blog started way back in 2012 focusing on my crazy hobby addiction of traveling with frequent flyer miles, hotel and bank points. It has since evolved to curated posts featuring the best web content along with my commentary.

 

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BLOG HOUSEKEEPING

This is truly a one man labor of love operation, enjoy it while it lasts.

Hello from the Park Hyatt in Bangkok, onwards to Malaysia, two nights at the inlaws and then ending this mega trip at the new Park Hyatt in Kuala Lumpur. Looking forward to return to Michigan and the snow, cough.

Every year in mid to late December I do posts with annual best of lists. I will continue these posts again.

 

 

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd” – Voltaire

 

MUST READ GEMS

This article from The Atlantic (why are you not a subscriber?) is a must read: The World Still Hasn’t Made Sense of ChatGPT. OpenAI’s chaos machine turns three.

Please read the whole thing, not going to do it any justice by choosing what to excerpt here. Ok, just one paragraph excerpted below for you. Picked by me, a human:

The world that ChatGPT built is a world defined by a particular type of precarity. It is a world that is perpetually waiting for a shoe to drop. Young generations feel this instability acutely as they prepare to graduate into a workforce about which they are cautioned that there may be no predictable path to a career. Older generations, too, are told that the future might be unrecognizable, that the marketable skills they’ve honed may not be relevant. Investors are waiting too, dumping unfathomable amounts of capital into AI companies, data centers, and the physical infrastructure that they believe is necessary to bring about this arrival. It is, we’re told, a race—a geopolitical one, but also a race against the market, a bubble, a circular movement of money and byzantine financial instruments and debt investment that could tank the economy. The AI boosters are waiting. They’ve created detailed timelines for this arrival. Then the timelines shift.

 

PERSONAL FINANCE

The 2025 tax season is almost here and I am predicting…mayhem. Don’t be surprised if your tax preparer asks you if any of your compensation “qualifies” as tips and/or overtime income. Because you are not likely to get that properly singled out and shown on any of your W2 wage or paycheck statements. Since the latest tax law was passed late in the year it is clear that payroll systems are just not ready for prime time. So, it will get wild in 2025 and some will take it to the limit and let IRS come get them. And with IRS staffing down around 30%…well, good luck! Ok, long intro: ‘No tax’ on overtime and tips will trigger a tax ‘mess’ for many.

Key issue:

For 2025 only, employers will not be required to break out what overtime pay qualifies for the tax break and what overtime pay doesn’t. Beginning with 2026, employers will have to break out qualified overtime compensation as a separate line item by law. And tax filers will be able to refer to that paperwork when completing their 2026 returns in 2027.

Good advice, proper documentation backing up every number on the tax return you file will always go a long way towards winning any battles with the IRS:

Start gathering those pay stubs for 2025 now. Tax filers who don’t receive complete information from their employers will need to review their pay stubs and calendars and create a simple log showing the days and hours they worked overtime. While it’s late in the year, it doesn’t hurt to begin keeping simple logs now, both for overtime hours and tip income.

I see so much wasted bandwidth on what happens in the markets in the short term. Wildly popular podcasts by fellow Registered Investment Advisers talking about individual stocks and what happened to them yesterday or in the space of a few hours is just pure stupid nonsense, just don’t give them the honor of your clicks please. Unless you are watching it purely for entertainment purposes. Investing is always long term. Investing and short term should never be in the same sentence together, period. Good reminder: long term investing gobble gobble edition. Never forget:

The broad takeaway is straightforward: historically, stocks have produced the strongest long-run returns but the bumpiest ride; bonds have been steadier but not as powerful; and cash has been the most stable but the least effective at staying ahead of inflation. Over a 25 year period, a simple 60/40 mix of stocks and bonds historically has had the lowest probability— just 0.1%– of nominal losses. 

Note what the above says: 25-year periods. Not 25 days. Not 25 headlines. The long-term data gets boringly consistent only when you zoom out far enough that individual news cycles stop mattering. Markets wobble all the time because humans wobble all the time, and that part hasn’t changed since the days of tulip auctions and overconfident spice traders. Sometimes there are long stretches where one asset does much better than the others: you can address this by holding a mix of them, not by trying to guess the next winner.

I am not going to elaborate. Because the lawyers employed by this company can bury me. Just going to lay this out here and warn people to be careful out there: ‘Friends end up blocking you’: Northwestern Mutual sold college grads a dream job. They left in ruin and debt.

 

CRYPTO/TECH/SCAMS

Wild story of yet another very rich old man falling for a much younger woman and in the process millions get lost, children are pissed and lawyers get involved and elder abuse is naturally alleged and…just wait for the movie: She Managed His Fortune. How Did She End Up Inheriting It? After the death of his first wife, Gulf & Western president David Judelson married his former banker and left her millions when he died. Now his kids are accusing their stepmom of something sinister.

By 2014, Jim was referring to still-married Eva as his life partner, waving away his children’s concerns about the Gayers and his declining memory. The next year, the children said Eva pressured Jim to make them sign a document agreeing not to contest the millions of dollars in gifts he had given her and planned to provide her. When they objected, Roy said that he remembers Eva pronouncing that “If you won’t sign the agreement, I’ll just have to marry your father,” which she denies.

It gets wilder,  grab your popcorn if you decide to read this.

I like checking out the monthly Ponzi Scheme Blog roundup, here is the latest one for November 2025. Because I like to exercise my neck muscles as I shake my head reading how gullible people fall for obvious scams like:

…promised returns of 1-2% per day, or approximately 547% per year.

…guaranteed returns of 15% per month with a return of principal after one year.

…promising 5% monthly returns through day-trading securities.

…promised returns of 18% to 30% from supposed investments into software and technologies companies and in commodities and currency.

…promising them 200% returns.

…promised returns of 150% over 300 days, paying .5% daily.

…promised returns of 20% from investments in luxury watches, cars, precious metals, alcohol, and startups.

Sticking this anti gambling rant here because it is enabled by tech: The Next Opioid Crisis. This blog is anti gambling and sometimes I wonder what are we doing here promoting this shit smh.

Amid the mania, these platforms are moving deeper into the mainstream: 

• Robinhood, the stock trading app, is expanding in prediction markets with Kalshi as a partner, declaring it’s the “fastest-growing business” it has ever seen. 
• Google struck a deal to integrate odds from Kalshi and Polymarket into its search results so you can ask questions about future market trends. 
• The owner of the New York Stock Exchange agreed to invest up to $2 billion in Polymarket, which is preparing to return to the U.S. after being kicked offshore. 
• FanDuel is joining with derivatives exchange CME to launch a new platform, allowing it to bypass restrictions in states where gambling is illegal.

The most profitable companies all do the same thing: They tap into our flaws and monetize them, then pretend it’s innovation rather than exploitation. We need to have a wider debate about the society we want. Rather than celebrating gambling, we should embrace a different kind of risk: asking someone out, approaching a stranger, investing in relationships with friends and potential mates. [Or maybe read my blog to get educated, entertained and even inspired sometimes. Speaking to the choir here so please spread the word , thank you]

 

AI

Ok, there are some wild headlines around AI. And this one sure is: MIT report: AI can already replace nearly 12% of the U.S. workforce. Models of any kind can be wrong, it is simply too early to guess what will happen. But this is probably true as things stand today:

Early analysis points to significant exposure in white-collar, knowledge-heavy fields that were once seen as relatively insulated from automation. Finance, healthcare administration, human resources, logistics, and professional services such as legal and accounting work are among the areas where existing AI tools, including large language models (LLMs) and other software agents, can already execute many routine tasks.​ In other words, much of the potential disruption sits in more traditional back-office and professional roles that have drawn less public attention in AI debates.​​

If all these AI things shoved at our faces get to you, you may want to check this out: How to Turn Off AI Tools Like Gemini, Apple Intelligence, Copilot, and More.

I am sticking this here to get you to think about which ones of these will be guaranteed not to be impacted by AI: The 20 Highest Paying Careers That Don’t Need a College Degree: