Please Sleep Through This | Draft Dodging and Tax Dodging | It’s My Party And I’ll Cry

“The shorter your sleep, the shorter your life span. The old maxim “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” is therefore unfortunate. Adopt this mind-set and you will be dead sooner and the quality of that (shorter) life will be worse. The elastic band of sleep deprivation can stretch only so far before it snaps. Sadly, human beings are in fact the only species that will deliberately deprive themselves of sleep without legitimate gain. Every component of wellness, and countless seams of societal fabric, are being eroded by our costly state of sleep neglect: human and financial alike.” – Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“Inadequate sleep—even moderate reductions for just one week—disrupts blood sugar levels so profoundly that you would be classified as pre-diabetic.” – Ibid.

The most life-changing book we have read this year or perhaps the past few years is Matthew Walker’s “Why We Sleep.” I have been running a sleep deficit ever since cadet basic training at West Point and this book is a tour de force on the importance of sleep. It’s perhaps the only book where the author encourages one to sleep while reading it: “should you feel drowsy and fall asleep while reading the book, unlike most authors, I will not be disheartened … I am actively going to encourage that kind of behavior from you.”

As always with all of our book recommendations: we encourage you to checkout the book from your local library although we have provided Amazon links. I use to love owning books but the power of books comes from the ideas and knowledge so my book collection no longer matters to me. I’ve given over ~500 of my books to a close West Point classmate and friend who is still on active duty and is a Special Forces officer, and whose callsign is Scipio Africanus. At the San Francisco public library there are currently 63 holds on 49 copies but it’s worth the wait, and I only had to wait two weeks for the book.

More VIPs Go Missing as Autocrats Flex Their Power: MIssing VIPs is becoming a very real trend. Just a couple weeks ago it was Interpol’s Chinese chief (who is still missing) and now the world is fittingly fixated over Saudi Arabia’s alleged role in the disappearance of Saudi national, and US resident, journalist Jamal Khashoggi. He has not been seen since October 2, when he entered the Saudi consulate in Ankara, Turkey. News stories said a Saudi delegation had arrived in Turkey Friday for a joint Riyadh-Ankara investigation. But on Saturday, a Turkish newspaper reported that officials had obtained an audio recording of Khashoggi’s murder from the Apple watch he had been wearing. Western nations have threatened to punish Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s oil-rich kingdom if investigations show it is responsible for Khashoggi’s assumed demise. Without providing specifics, President Trump said there were “very powerful” things the west could do to hurt the Saudis; he then went on to say that stopping arms sales would be America punishing itself.

Turki Aldhakhil, general manager of the official Saudi news channel, responded in an opinion piece that Riyadh was ready to retaliate “without flinching” the moment US sanctions were imposed, specifically by implementing 30 measures to include cuts to oil production that could lead to prices rising to $100 a barrel. “The truth is that if Washington imposes sanctions on Riyadh, it will stab its own economy to death…” Aldhakhil wrote. His response came after Riyadh’s stock market fell by 7 percent at one point on Sunday, the week’s first trading day. Business leaders as well as media companies including Bloomberg and CNN have pulled out of an investment conference scheduled next week in the Saudi capital.

Additional watch: How China’s Rich and Famous Disappear (Wall Street Journal YouTube video)

It’s My Party And I’ll Cry: German Prime Minister Angela Merkel’s conservative partner in the prosperous southern state of Bavaria, the Christian Social Union (CSU) party, suffered its worst defeat since WWII in Sunday’s election. For only the second time since 1954 the party’s support fell below 40 percent, coming in at 37.5 percent of the vote. The outcome could further weaken Germany’s struggling coalition government. The environmental, pro-immigration Green party almost doubled its voter share to 17.8%, at the expense of the Social Democratic party (SPD) which saw its support cut in half, coming in at only 9.5 percent. The far-right anti-immigrant AfD party garnered 10.7 percent of the vote allowing it to enter the regional parliament for the first time. (Guardian)

Can South Koreans Avoid Serving in the ROK Army by Rocking Out?: The law in South Korea says all able-bodied men must spend at least 21 months in the armed forces, that is, unless they’re top athletes who “enhance national prestige” by winning medals in the Olympics or the quadrennial Asian Games. Now many young South Koreans are questioning the obvious unfairness of the practice of excusing only soon-to-be wealthy athletes from that duty, while countless low-paid young men must serve. South Koreans are now asking whether members of the K-Pop band BTS, the first South Korean musicians to top billboard charts should also be excused from serving in the military. (NYT) Pnut’s publisher has lived and visited a small museum in Grafenwohr (that is in Bavaria) that primarily showcases Elvis’s time in the U.S. Army.

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Plutocrats are Adept at Draft Dodging & Tax Dodging: Confidential documents reviewed by the New York Times show that for the years 2009 through 2016, Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, paid almost no income taxes despite making millions in salaries and investment gains. To reduce his tax liability Kushner used depreciation allowances available to real estate developers that legally gave him massive paper losses year after year without any real-world monetary loss. A tax law professor at the University of California, Irvine said: “The Trump administration was in a position to clean up the tax code and promised to get rid of some of the complexity that certain taxpayers use to their advantage. Instead they doubled down on those provisions, particularly the ones they have familiarity with to benefit themselves.” (NYT)

Projections on Midterm Elections Voter Turnout or Tune-out: Results of a Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that voters are much more likely to cast ballots in this year’s midterm elections than four years ago. Enthusiasm is up across almost all demographic groups, with greater increases among younger adults, nonwhite voters and those who say they favor Democrats for the House. President Trump’s job approval rating has risen five points after tying a record low point in August, but Democrats maintain a double-digit advantage in overall support for Congress. (WaPo)

– “Trump: Jim Mattis ‘sort of a Democrat’ and could quit as defense secretary soon: ‘It could be that he is. I think he’s sort of a Democrat, if you want to know the truth. But General Mattis is a good guy. We get along very well. He may leave. I mean, at some point, everybody leaves. Everybody. People leave. That’s Washington.’” (Guardian)

– “Food for thought: the smart way to better brain health: The human brain is made of food, so what we eat and drink affects our ability to keep a healthy, alert and active mind.” (Guardian)

– “I Was on The World’s Longest Flight. It Was Brutal, But Better: That’s my jetlagged verdict after disembarking from Singapore Airlines Ltd.’s Flight 22, the return of the carrier’s Changi-to-Newark, New Jersey, journey after a five-year hiatus.” They should call this “binge flying.” (Bloomberg)

– “What Do You Do When You Are Anonymously Accused of Rape?: The writer Stephen Elliott is suing Moira Donegan, the creator of the Media Men list.” (NYT)

– “Once you hit this credit score, going higher is a ‘waste of time,’ expert says: ‘Once you’re above 760 you’re getting the best rates,’ Greg McBride, chief analyst at Bankrate, tells CNBC Make It. ‘That’s why obsessing over a score of 800 versus 820 is largely a waste of time.’” (CNBC)

– “U.S. Stocks Became Expensive. Are Other Countries Better Bets?: Just weeks after Wall Street celebrated what by some yardsticks became the longest bull market in history, stocks dropped so sharply that it may have seemed prudent to wonder whether the newest bear market has begun.” (NYT)

“A balanced diet and exercise are of vital importance, yes. But we now see sleep as the preeminent force in this health trinity. The physical and mental impairments caused by one night of bad sleep dwarf those caused by an equivalent absence of food or exercise.” – Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

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