#10 - Buenos Aires, The Halo Effect & Going a Little Too Far

From the city of fury & fair winds 🌬🔥

Halo Hola from Buenos Aires, where the steaks are superb and cheap, the sun is shining almost all the time¹, a radically new president is bringing hope to a disastrous economy… and there are almost as many bloody² mosquitoes as there are “AI” projects.

Oh, and of course, where fútbol is life.

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🕳 Random Rabbit Hole

The Etymology of Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires in English means “good airs” or “fair winds”, the latter being the intended meaning by the 16th century founders.

Somewhat paradoxically however, the resident porteños (“people of the port”), call it la Ciudad de la Furia (“the City of Fury”) because of its wild charm.

The name Buen Ayre comes from Bonaria hill (from “bon aire”) in Sardinia, where the stench of the swampland below couldn’t be smelt. The old city swamp was rampant with mosquitoes³, which carried malaria (“mal aire” = “bad air”).

In the early 14th century, a chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary was built on this hill after the Spanish (Aragon) conquered Sardinia. The legend goes that in the later part of that century, a storm caught a ship near the island forcing the sailors to dump all the cargo. But the one box containing a sculpture of the Virgin of Mercy reached the coast⁴, which was taken to the church and venerated with the invocation of Virgen del Buen Aire (“Our Lady of Good Air”) as a patron of sailors.

In 1536, Spaniard Pedro de Mendoza, founded the first settlement at Buenos Aires and named it Nuestra Señora Santa María del Buen Ayre (“Our Lady St. Mary of the Good Air”).

The port settlement was abandoned after being attacked by indigenous peoples but another Spaniard Juan de Garay established a new settlement there in 1580. This is why they say Buenos Aires was founded twice.

De Garay retained the original name but extended it to Ciudad de la Santísima Trinidad y Puerto de Nuestra Señora la Virgen María de los Buenos Aires (“City of the Holy Trinity and Port of Our Lady Virgin Mary of the Good Airs”"). This was the city’s first official name and was shortened to Buenos Aires in the 17th century.

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💡 Critical Thinking

Biases – The Halo Effect

(the bias, not the band)

As mentioned in the previous issue, this is a big year politically, with both the US and UK having elections, so more than ever we need to have beliefs that aren’t the result of political or ideological biases but deliberate reasoning.

The Halo Effect (a.k.a. halo error) is a cognitive bias that occurs when a person’s impression of someone/something in one area influences their opinion of that person/object’s other characteristics.

It’s the (unconscious) behaviour of making judgments about someone/something based on unrelated things. For example, when a person is attractive, we may tend to assume they’re also intelligent and kind.

We see this all the time in marketing too, when a customer is biased towards certain products because of good experiences with other products from the same company.

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✍ Fellow Writer & Teacher 👨‍🏫

Going a Little Too Far

I have an old high school buddy with whom I constantly chat about crypto, economic trends, and stocks. He’s a lead software engineer at NASDAQ now and we were talking about the merits of IC vs PL (individual contributor vs people leader).

He loves technical management and being up to date on the latest tech without getting into the nitty-gritty of code, whereas I love the flexibility of not having to worry about other people’s work and being able to travel whenever I want.

This, coupled with our constant talks about higher-risk investments while we’re young, immediately reminded me of

Louie Bacaj

’s recent post from just a few days earlier. I shared it with my mate and he came back with one sentence from it.

It’s now pinned to our Telegram chat.

Louie, apart from being a really cool guy I always love seeing on Zoom, is the reason I started this newsletter. An “I’m going to do it one day” idea became a reality when I joined Louie and

Chris Wong

’s Newsletter Launchpad course and for that I’m really grateful to the both of them.

And the best way to thank them is to take this S-P-A-M as far as it can go. ✌

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🎶 Music & Art

Melodeath – The Halo Effect

(the band, not the bias)

In the previous issue I introduced one of my favourite bands, The Halo Effect, but then realised I was remiss to have not included it in an issue including the bias… Well, it’s not like there’s a limit to sharing songs from one band!

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😈 Devil’s Word of the Week

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Halo, n. – Properly, a luminous ring encircling an astronomical body, but not infrequently confounded with "aureola," or "nimbus," a somewhat similar phenomenon worn as a head-dress by divinities and saints. The halo is a purely optical illusion, produced by moisture in the air, in the manner of a rainbow; but the aureola is conferred as a sign of superior sanctity, in the same way as a bishop's mitre, or the Pope's tiara. In the painting of the Nativity, by Szedgkin, a pious artist of Pesth, not only do the Virgin and the Child wear the nimbus, but an ass nibbling hay from the sacred manger is similarly decorated and, to his lasting honor be it said, appears to bear his unaccustomed dignity with a truly saintly grace.

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Thanks for reading! I’m off to see the SUPERCLÁSICO 😱🤩

Prince 🦊

1. Suck that, Europe

2. Too easy

3. I feel connected to history now 🦟

4. You CAN make this shit up.