Power of Compound Interest, 60 Minutes on Havana Syndrome, RIP Daniel Kahneman, The Loneliest Prisoner, Full Worm Moon

Today I am going to share with you a fantastic infographic about the power of compound interest, a follow up investigation by 60 Minutes on Havana Syndrome, RIP Daniel Kahneman, we meet the loneliest prisoner in the US and end with amazing photography of the full worm moon. The regular longer post returns on Friday featuring the usual mix of eclectic curated links along with my commentary, thank you for reading my blog.

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Back with another short Tuesday post. I will see you all Friday with the usual longer post.

 

The Power of Compound Interest

“Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it. He who doesn’t, pays it.” – Albert Einstein

Ever since I left the comforts of working in a Big Four accounting firm to start my own financial advisory practice I have been pounding on the incredible power of compounding by pushing clients to start investing early. I came up with the phrase or maybe I saw it somewhere and stuck with me: “The More You Invest, the Earlier, the Better”.

 

60 Minutes on Havana Syndrome

I have posted here several times about the Havana Syndrome incidents over the years. It appears that 60 Minutes has been investigating it behind the scenes for five years and the producers finally came out with this devastating report, must click imho:

The conclusion is that it is Russia behind this. I wish I could go back and link to that post I told you guys. Just imagine how awkward the US intelligence agencies must feel not admitting it. You know, it is a predicament as it sure looks like an act of war, right? How do you declare war to a country that has enough nukes to annihilate you? This is a balancing act way above my pay grade for sure and hopefully the experts are working on it. And of course, no true “smoking” gun apparently, maybe all this evidence is circumstantial. Maybe that guy speeding with a Mustang in Florida was a true immigrant to the US with the dream of becoming a chef and not a spy…yeah, right.

I always said that all the people who suffered these supersonic/microwave attacks can’t be wrong. Even though I have no doubt that some of them are lining up behind lawyers to score some money in a future class action suit against the US government. I just feel so awful for all the harm caused, the symptoms sound horrific.

Everyone is worrying about what AI can do to us humans. When these weapons the report is dealing with should make us all pay a lot more attention to them instead imho. Because, well, how do you protect against them? We always talked around here how drones changed warfare. If these microwave weapons are perfected, well, we may have not seen anything yet #developing.

A couple of 60 Minutes Overtime short segments are below that go a little deeper into the investigation:

Havana Syndrome in Vietnam: Possible Russian Role in Attack on Americans, New Evidence Suggests

5 Year Havana Syndrome Investigation Finds New Evidence of Who Might Be Responsible

 

RIP Daniel Kahneman

Daniel Kahneman passed away on March 27, 2024 at the age of 90. He was a psychologist at Princeton and ended up winning the Nobel prize in Economics for his research on cognitive biases and judgment heuristics. He is considered to be the founder of Behavioral economics.He showed us all how wrong we can be and often are and how being perceived as rational was always irrational (see what I did there?). Just some links honoring the man:

A moving tribute by Jason Zweig at the Wall Street Journal: The Psychologist Who Turned the Investing World on Its Head.

From The Atlantic by Daniel Engber: Daniel Kahneman Wanted You to Realize How Wrong You Are.

I just loved the paragraph excerpted below:

Kahneman once said that being wrong feels good, that it gives the pleasure of a sense of motion: “I used to think something and now I think something else.” He was always wrong, always learning, always going somewhere new. In the 2010s, he abandoned the work on happiness that we’d discussed during my grad-school interview, because he realized—to his surprise—that no one really wanted to be happy in the first place. People are more interested in being satisfied, which is something different. “I was very interested in maximizing experience, but this doesn’t seem to be what people want to do,” he told Tyler Cowen in an interview in 2018. “Happiness feels good in the moment. But it’s in the moment. What you’re left with are your memories. And that’s a very striking thing—that memories stay with you, and the reality of life is gone in an instant.”

The memories remain.

And if you really wanted to stick to investing, this piece from 2013 is right on target: A Dozen Things I’ve Learned About Investing from Daniel Kahneman.

 

A Man Apart: Is Jimmy Sabatino America’s Loneliest Prisoner?

Talk about you were born to scam. But still, how do you “enroll” here?

The accommodations in The Suites aren’t any more spacious than those found elsewhere in the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum — ADX for short. But they are more exclusive. The Suites consist of a special wing at the far end of everything, tucked behind H Unit, the most secure area of the highest-security prison in the country, a prison within a prison. Only two of the four cells in The Suites are occupied, and those two men are not allowed to interact with any other inmate, including each other. Located a hundred miles southwest of Denver, just outside the high-desert town of Florence, ADX houses more than 300 terrorists, gang leaders, drug lords and other high-risk prisoners in profound isolation; most of its residents are locked in their cells 23 hours a day.

And then there are the two guys in The Suites, the most solitary of men. They are each entombed behind double doors in a seven-by-twelve-foot cell in the most silent corner of the supermax. The bed is a concrete slab covered by a thin foam mattress, the view a patch of sky visible from a high, narrow window. Meals are delivered through a slot in the door. There’s a stainless-steel toilet-and-sink combo, a concrete desk and stool, a shower on a timer to prevent flooding. There’s no one to talk to, but no privacy, either. The men are under scrutiny 24 hours a day, by cameras and listening devices in the cells, by other monitoring equipment during the hour a day they are allowed to exercise alone in a small outdoor cage. FBI agents read their mail and listen in on their phone calls. One of the men is Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the former head of the Sinaloa cartel.

And the other is Jimmy Sabatino…

James Sabatino is 47 years old. He has a rap sheet of financial crimes stretching back to his adolescence. He is currently serving a twenty-year sentence for running a criminal enterprise that engaged in mail fraud, wire fraud, and the receiving and selling of stolen goods. Despite his alleged ties to the Gambino crime family, a few assault charges in his youth and some admitted loose talk about wanting to blow up a courthouse and “clip” certain people who might be inclined to testify against him, he is not serving time for any violent crimes. He’s a con man, not a mad bomber or a drug kingpin. Outside of Florida, hardly anyone has ever heard of him. Yet Sabatino may be the most locked-down, buried-in-oblivion prisoner in the entire federal system. The “special measures” in his case are special indeed. He is prohibited from communicating with anyone on the entire planet, inside or outside of prison, except for two people: his 75-year-old stepmother, with whom he can have fifteen-minute monitored phone conversations twice a month, and his attorney. That’s an even more limited circle of approved contacts than El Chapo is allowed. Such measures are deemed necessary because Sabatino has demonstrated an amazing talent for engineering multi-million-dollar scams even from the confines of prison.

Anyway, I think Jimmy knows himself better:

“These restrictions benefit the public, NOT ME!!” Sabatino wrote in a letter to his trial judge in 2022. “I hate these restrictions. They are terrible, but it is the ONLY thing that stops me. I wonder if you people have any idea of how many crimes [the restrictions] have prevented. Literally it has saved lives!! I don’t get NOTHING from this!”

Netflix special coming?

Also, if El Chapo escapes from this place, you gotta let him free, he earned it lol. #sarcasm

 

Phenomenal Photos of March’s Full Worm Moon

Let’s end with something more cheerful ok?

 

 

This blog started with a focus on miles and points and travel. It has evolved since then. All the miles & points sections return on Friday, along with the other gems you have become accustomed to.

 

TBB
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