We bring you another TBB Best of Web edition: the effects of harmful meritocracy, our deep social media addiction, travel to Kosovo and get ISIS fighter confessions wishing all along this guy was instead spending time with virgins, laugh at excellent Wayne’s World, the alarming declining rates of global fertility and that’s it for today, see you Friday!
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At every Best of Web post I pick the best reads that blew my mind in the previous week. It can be…anything! I like to be eclectic and despise salesy/clickbait/sameold content you read…everywhere else!
As always, click on the headline to be taken to the original source. Sometimes I insert my incendiary comments on article excerpts between [brackets].
How Life Became an Endless, Terrible Competition
Meritocracy prizes achievement above all else, making everyone—even the rich—miserable. Maybe there’s a way out.
This is a must read. Thanks to Nick PFD for bringing it to my attention.
To give you a taste of what this article is about, here is the whole third paragraph:
Today’s meritocrats still claim to get ahead through talent and effort, using means open to anyone. In practice, however, meritocracy now excludes everyone outside of a narrow elite. Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale collectively enroll more students from households in the top 1 percent of the income distribution than from households in the bottom 60 percent. Legacy preferences, nepotism, and outright fraud continue to give rich applicants corrupt advantages. But the dominant causes of this skew toward wealth can be traced to meritocracy. On average, children whose parents make more than $200,000 a year score about 250 points higher on the SAT than children whose parents make $40,000 to $60,000. Only about one in 200 children from the poorest third of households achieves SAT scores at Yale’s median. Meanwhile, the top banks and law firms, along with other high-paying employers, recruit almost exclusively from a few elite colleges.
It gets better from there…
This has wide and severe implications. Is it any wonder that younger people tend to gravitate to the populist very left ideas of Sanders and Warren?
You can read mind numbing repeated posts designed to trick you to click on credit card affiliate links, boring trip reports, weather alerts and mileage runs (really?), Amazon diaper and Amex offer deals. Or you can read my blog to learn something or get entertained. Or BOTH! 🙂 Hey, maybe even get inspired sometimes…
Ok, I am drifting away. The tough part of the Best of Web posts is deciding which five links make the cut!
The machine always wins: what drives our addiction to social media
Another must read, wow! Actually, you know, whatever makes into a Best of Web post is automatically assumed to be a must read 🙂
Social media was supposed to liberate us, but for many people it has proved addictive, punishing and toxic. What keeps us hooked?
Maybe a reason I picked up and enjoy running so much is…that I escape being connected with my phone. I love the silence, observing the nature around me, and just clearing my head while running.
We are all hooked, look around you, we are all like zombies who can’t put down our expensive cell phones that keep buzzing us…I could go on but…Having said that, should I finally upgrade my Samsung Note 5 to the Note 10? 🙂
Here is just a short paragraph:
For those who are curating a self, social media notifications work as a form of clickbait. Notifications light up the reward centres of the brain, so that we feel bad if the metrics we accumulate on our different platforms don’t express enough approval. The addictive aspect of this is similar to the effect of poker machines or smartphone games, recalling what the cultural theorist Byung-Chul Han calls the “gamification of capitalism”.
Yeah, it’s that good. Take some time to read it and try to..contain your addiction ok?
You are welcome.
Confessions of an Islamic State fighter
This is an extensive account of how one dude in Kosovo ended up fighting for ISIS. It shows you how these guys think, how the group operates and…you can’t help but shake your head how messed up these people are.
Too bad he did not fall in battle in Syria, he missed his chance with how many virgins?
How ‘Wayne’s World’ Kicked Off a Comedy Renaissance
If you did not love Wayne and Garth, well, this article is not for you then!
Fascinating accounts how the whole thing started, then on to Saturday Night Live SNL and then how the movie came together and the far reaching influence it launched.
Party on TBBers!
Excellent!
Visualizing Over A Century of Global Fertility
Greece is phucked!
The article has a fascinating table with the fertility rate of more countries.Clearly the bottom ten countries need to do something drastic to survive!
And I leave you with this…Don’t forget to take out the trash for pickup you guys!
TBB
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This guy is on a role!
Lots to read! Thank you.
Bronze! For the Pacific Northwest! (Where we don’t think Warren that that far left, but that’s an argument for another day)
Great stuff here. I saw that article on Meritocracy the other day and started on it but lost it somehow. Glad you spotted it too! Now I can finish it.
Buzz-
I don’t have time to read the fine print. How did they measure fertility?
Also, you missed the breaking news of the day: Review of the SAS amenity kit:
https://www.travelcodex.com/amenity-kit-review-sas-business-class/
We’re all doomed.
Today is catch up day for me, been a bit lazy, you know, summertime and all…
Today’s running plan was a ladder down 10/9/8/7/6/5/4/3/2/1 increasing pace with 1 minute walks between each ladder. Last 2 and 1 minute runs were all out sprints! Walked by my local Panera and staffer gave me a free medium coffee #winning
Holy crap, just checked my conversions and they are so dead as Ingy’s latest “content”, wow. Only positive thing about this is at least he is smiling. I care about all my readers lol. When conversions dry up…I think about…evolving. Maybe it is time?
I did not think RenesPoints could get any worse. And yet…
OMAAT is determined to use all his family members to extract credit card conversions. Sick of his dad’s “free” birthday trips you guys.
Hard to believe the reaction from the bloggers about two very minor changes in the British Airways Visa card. When you can extract conversions from it though…it becomes a “game changer” and other ridiculous non sense.
I am surprised AA has not gone dynamic yet!
AMEX phucks up again and now must send checks for members with referrals. This company just continues to amaze me in…incompetence. Remember the good old days it had the BEST customer service?
Carry on mates…
Hi Ramsey
Party on, George!
Fascinating read on the IS fighter guy.
Good points to think about regarding the competition to “achieve”…I guess it’s part of our animal brain or something.
The Chase BA rebate is nice to have but not the huge game change that certain bloggers are making it out to be, IMHO. But as you say, all about the conversions!
I need to disengage more from my tech. Of course I’ve been saying that for awhile, lol!
Never though I would say this, but maybe Greece will experience negative interest rates in act 14. What a drama.
Travel Is Free Drew sells out to TPG!
Sam called it!
Aw man, that sucks. Another one bites the dust.
It’s all about the hobby Ryan! Oh wait, it”s all about the Chase _______ card conversion I meant to say lol.
Who is next? Ingy? 🙂
I guess that lease tools from friends business didn’t work out. Can’t wait for a TPG articles covering the AirBnB market in Texas.
Your handle made me lol.
Noooo.
Definitely not surprised at the TIF news (ahem, Sam wasn’t the only one to call it!) — he’s one of the few remaining perspectives out there that could add unique value to TPG, and listening to his podcast you get the sense he’d be happy there. Plus, always struck me as strange that he has made no effort since “returning” to monetize his site. I guess good for him for what seems like (for now?) a stable gig.
Still, just very discouraging for the sake of the hobby. It’s really incredible — there’s virtually no one left — other than maybe Andy and the GSTP/Spencer duo — that covers the “travel hacking” / burn side of the frequent flyer programs anymore.
What’s curious to me is that the existence of TPG — and its rapid expansion — seems to suggest that this space shouldn’t be as dead as it is. 100+ employees!
Your handle may be casualobserver but your observations are definitely not casual!
Maybe the comeback was to…show, hey I am back bitches…and see what he can get 🙂
Yeah, very discouraging indeed…
I am depressed. Listening to Joy Division now and #crying Well, not really but you get the idea…
With TPG over 100 employees and growing like this…we can only assume that Ingy DID sell so early and he is too embarrassed to now even come back here and defend himself…It would not be good for his conversions at Pointchaser 🙂
100+ FTEs! Somebody built an empire. What do they all do?? Count CC applications? Relatively speaking, it’s amazing how much an army of one (+interns!) can creat at OMAAT, VFTW and TBB!
Unfortunately I can’t be professional_observer, you’ve got that market cornered.
I do wonder if Rick regrets -to whom- he sold out to, even more so than -when- he sold out. His brand was very much (for better or for worse) newbie-friendly, which even today still seems under-targeted (again, for better or for worse) and with the right money behind him I think could have been a powerhouse like TPG today. What Internet Brands has done with it (and Flyertalk, of course) is just stunning.
Ironically, as crazy as it seems, the whole space might actually be better off if FTG had managed to remain a serious competitor to TPG.
Great observations as usual, thanks!
Lets take it to Friday’s post comments next 🙂