Hotel Room Hacking, Understanding Moscow, Rich Roll, Always Go To The Funeral, Lessons From Singapore

We bring you an investigative piece on hotel room hacking, a guide in understanding Moscow, the Rich Roll story, another story on how you should always go to the funeral, lessons from Singapore, a dead giveaway that you will be dumped when you hear the dreaded “It’s not you, it’s me” and that’s about it for today, enjoy the “light” reading.

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As always, click on the headline to be taken to original source. Sometimes I insert my incendiary comments on article excerpts between [brackets].

Today’s post would have shown up on a Sunday but…

I will bring these eclectic must read links as I accumulate them in a weekday when blog action is slow or something else interferes in my life.

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Inside an Epic Hotel Room Hacking Spree

This has nothing to do with our type of hacking, our harmless totally legal hobby. I had heard about this but this guy scaled it. To the point of landing a nine year jail sentence when he was eventually caught. What a dumb ass! I hope he turns his life around. The saddest part about this is that some hotels still have not done the fix, really Marriott? Last two paragraphs warn you not to leave anything valuable in a room you insert the key vertically. You are welcome.

It’s not you, it’s me

You know it’s over when you hear this phrase lol. This is an awesome read that blends Seinfeld, the incredible story of NFL quarterback Ben Roethlisberger and behavioral finance. Very educational with funny (not shocking) videos.

We all are and remain biased, ideological and inherently tribal. It can be dangerously difficult to bear in mind that we are rarely as right and our motives as pure as we tend to assume. As I have written many times, we like to think that we are like judges, that we carefully gather and evaluate facts and data before coming to an objective and well-founded conclusion. Instead, we cut straight to the chase. We are much more like lawyers, grasping for any scrap of purported evidence we can exploit to support our preconceived notions and allegiances. Perhaps worse, the more educated and intelligent we are, the more likely we are to reject facts – because we are smart and sophisticated enough to come up with seemingly plausible counter-arguments.

Understanding Moscow: The Mysteries of the Russian Mindset

If you want to understand Russia, its mad history,  and how Putin is managing it, this is a must read. The author spent three decades there and does a fantastic job. It ends with this:

Putin didn’t invent any of this. He only learned how to masterfully exploit it and to serve this Russian mentality with demagogy, half-truths and lies. That, for me, is the most important realization 25 years after Russia’s rebirth.

How Rich Roll Overcame Addiction to Become a World-Class Endurance Athlete

I had no idea who Rich Roll was. No big deal. But what I found remarkable was how he completely transformed himself…

When I was 39, I was your classic couch potato hurtling into middle age with an existential crisis as well as a health crisis, because I was about 50 pounds overweight. A junk food junkie. [I’ve been] in recovery for a long time for drugs and alcohol, but I think food has always been my first drug of choice.

I have always said that people will change when they cross their threshold of pain. Well, he sure did! Maybe his story inspire you to do too. Or you can read shocking life transforming stories about amenity kits 🙂

Always Go To The Funeral

This sounds remarkably like another link I shared with you recently. But it is not. The article starts with this life advice and then goes into the investing realm and then jumps to our sad state of politics…

Going to the funeral is part of the social contract we have with our families, our friends, and our tribe, both immediate and extended. It’s part of the social contract we have with ourselves. It’s part of the personal obligation that we have to others, obligation that doesn’t fit neatly or at all into our bizarro world of crystalized self-interest, where scale and mass distribution are ends in themselves, where the supercilious State knows what’s best for you and your family, where “communication policy” and fiat news shout down authenticity, where rapacious, know-nothing narcissism is celebrated as leadership even as civility, expertise, and service are mocked as cuckery.

Every highly successful stock-picking investor in the world, value oriented or not, has two things:

1. A boneyard. You think the guys in Omaha haven’t buried a huge number of investments? Please. And they don’t just bury the dead. They cull the weak. Good for them.
2. A duration match between assets and liabilities. To continue with the forest example, it’s all great and wonderful to plant some oak trees that you’re certain will be strong and majestic in 20 years, but not if you need the lumber in 5 years. If you’re pursuing long-lived investment returns, you better have similarly long-lived investment funding, or eventually you will fail as an investor. That’s not opinion, that’s math. So yeah, if you’ve got permanent capital, then you can make permanent investments. But no one has truly permanent capital.

Lessons from Singapore

A politician from South Africa goes to Singapore, this is her account…

I was blown away by the boldness of Singapore’s vision, that a small country with no natural resources had in a single generation moved from extreme poverty to the cutting edge of modernity.

I still find it amazing what has been accomplished. But would it have been possible if the size of the country was not so small? If there was not such a strong leader to take charge? Could this happen in Greece? Nope…not in my lifetime anyway. Or this century, sad!

The article turns kind of grim (or funny, depends on your angle I guess) when the author returns to South Africa and compares the airports 🙂

And I leave you with this…

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