Links

CNBC’s full interview with Liberty Media Chairman John Malone (LINK)

Disney’s Kevin Mayer | Full interview | Code Media 2019 (video) (LINK)

WarnerMedia CEO John Stankey | Full interview | Code Media 2019 (video) (LINK)

This Man Is a Junkyard Billionaire (LINK)

Lessons From 24 Years of Operating: Bowl America, Inc. (LINK)

Banking on the Future: Why our most hated institutions will become our most beloved (LINK)

The Long View Podcast: Charles de Vaulx: Why Value Investing Has Slumped but Will Rebound (LINK)

Planet Money Podcast: #953: Three Sides Of A Car Loan (LINK)

Kyle Bass: "China: The Most Reckless Financial Experiment In History" (Hedgeye Investing Summit Video) (LINK)

Health Care Lessons from Dr. Keith Smith - by Russ Roberts (LINK)

Here’s to the Crazy Ones (LINK)

The Fascination With the Skin of a Dead French Revolutionary - by Sarah Zhang (LINK)

Whack 'em or nuke 'em: How to deflect a killer asteroid - by Phil Plait (LINK)

Links

From Gene Editing to A.I., How Will Technology Transform Humanity? (LINK)

Five big thinkers — Regina Barzilay, George Church, Jennifer Egan, Catherine Mohr and Siddhartha Mukherjee — puzzle over the future of the future.

The end of the beginning (video) (LINK)

In his now annual state-of-innovation talk at the a16z Summit in November 2018, Andreessen Horowitz’ Benedict Evans walks through where we are now in software eating the world… and how things may continue to change over the next 10 years.

Thoughts and notes from Liberty Investor Day 2018 (LINK)

Facebook and the Age of Manipulation - by Evan Osnos (LINK)

Pivot Podcast with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway: Facebook’s dirty tricks (LINK)

The Complicated Legacy of Stewart Brand’s “Whole Earth Catalog” (LINK)

A massive change: Nations redefine the kilogram [H/T Linc] (LINK)

Links

CNBC's full interview with John Malone (~55 minutes) (LINK)

Real Vision has made the full interview with Stanley F. Druckenmiller, which was filmed in early September, freely available for all (LINK)

How This All Happened - by Morgan Housel (LINK)

The story of how America evolved from 1945 to 2018.

How Warren Buffett Is Expanding His Overseas Real Estate Empire [H/T Linc] (LINK)

Why I love fertilizer - by Bill Gates (LINK)

How to Weigh Your Options and Decide Wisely: Benjamin Franklin’s Pioneering Pros and Cons Framework (LINK)

How Amazon Picked HQ2 and Jilted 236 Cities ($) (LINK)

A Reckoning With the Dark Side of the Restaurant Industry ($) [H/T @trengriffin] (LINK)

On the other hand, young cooks’ heightened expectations don’t always take into account low wages or difficult labor, restaurateurs say. Dreams of fame and fortune have driven growth in culinary schools and programs and encouraged thousands of students to finance this education with debt. 

Last year, 672 culinary programs were accredited by the ACF, compared with roughly 100 in 1998, Ms. Brust says. More than 39,000 students matriculated from two-year or four-year culinary degree programs accredited by the ACF last year. Yet the Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts the creation of only 14,100 new chef and head-cook jobs by 2026. There will be 10 times as many “cook” jobs, but these pay half as much. 

Restaurant cooks make a median wage of $12.10 an hour, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Culinary-school graduates are no exception, even at top-tier restaurants in expensive cities, a number of restaurateurs say. While some top chefs can earn six figures, the median annual wage for chefs and head cooks is $45,950, according to the BLS.

Focused Compounding Podcast: Talking MicroCap Investing with MicroCapClub's Ian Cassel (LINK)

Capital Allocators Podcast: Michael Lombardi – Leadership Through Football (LINK)

Related book: Gridiron Genius

Seth Godin talks about his new book on his podcast (LINK)

Jocko Podcast 151: How to Really Implement Change. Different Leadership Styles. Balancing Discipline. Different Jiu Jitsu Styles. (LINK)

The Myth Of the Traumatized Neanderthal - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Links

How an Intelligence Expert Helps Wall Street Mavens Think Smarter (LINK)

Defensive Decision Making: What IS Best v. What LOOKS Best (LINK)

Balance Is Underrated - by Sean Iddings (LINK)

How One Family Built $8 Billion Startup Far From Silicon Valley (LINK)

The Experience Economy - by Ben Thompson (LINK)

Inside John Malone’s World ($ Barron's) (LINK)

Productivity Growth II: Can the U.S. Economy Stay Airborne Without It? - by Frank Martin (LINK)

Marathon's Richards Has a Recession Warning for Overleveraged Companies (video) [H/T @valueshadow] (LINK)

Has the “Everything Bubble” begun to deflate everything? (LINK)

Be Afraid of Economic ‘Bigness.’ Be Very Afraid. - by Tim Wu (LINK)

Related book (just released): The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age

Ray Dalio on the Masters in Business podcast (LINK)

Ray Dalio reflects on today’s great powers and how they will handle their deep-seated differences (LINK)

Inside Bill Browder’s War Against Putin (LINK)

The next great war - by Graham Allison (LINK)

Links

"It just stands to reason that you copy, very much, the people that you do look up to, and particularly if you do it at an early enough age. So I think, if you can influence the...role models of a 5-year-old or an 8-year-old or a 10-year-old...it’s going to have a huge impact. And of course, everybody, virtually, starts out with their initial models being their parents. So they are the ones that are going to have a huge effect on them. And if that parent turns out to be a great model, I think it’s going to be a huge plus for the child. I think that it beats a whole lot of other things in life to have the right models around.... Even as I’ve gotten older, I’ve picked up a few more. And it influences your behavior. I’m convinced of that.... And it’s not complicated. Nothing could be more simple than to try and figure out what you find admirable and then decide...that the person you really would like to admire is yourself. And the only way you’re going to do it is take on the qualities of other people you admire." --Warren Buffett

"There is no reason, also, to look only for living models. The eminent dead are, in the nature of things, some of the best models around. And, if a model is all you want, you’re really better off not limiting yourself to the living. Some of the very best models have been dead for a long time." --Charlie Munger

Warren Buffett's interview on Bloomberg last week (video) (LINK)

John Malone: 'I told Warren Buffett not to invest in Bill Gates before Microsoft went public' [H/T Linc] (LINK)

A Conversation with Paul Graham - Moderated by Geoff Ralston (video) (LINK)

The Next Financial Crisis Lurks Underground - by Bethany McLean (LINK)

Related book: Saudi America: The Truth About Fracking and How It's Changing the World

How the Chinese business elite think of America... (via John Hempton) (LINK)

The Absolute Return Letter, September 2018: Private Credit Demystified (LINK)

Tesla, software and disruption - by Benedict Evans (LINK)

All Things Sales! 16 Mini-Lessons for Startup Founders (LINK)

“Cheesy Dad” Readings and Reflections - by Chris Pavese (LINK)

Links

Full Transcript of the Daily Journal Annual Meeting 2018 (LINK) [Note: If you read this, I recommend listening to the joke Munger tells at the 39:28 mark in the audio version (in his reply to Question 4) when you get to that part, as it is way more entertaining to hear him tell it than just reading it.]

Private Equity: Overvalued and Overrated? - by Dan Rasmussen (LINK)

GORILLA BATTLES: Q1 2018 On What Amazon Means For The Rest Of Us (LINK)

Direct Wisdom from John Malone (LINK)

Labor 2030: The Collision of Demographics, Automation and Inequality [H/T @AlexRubalcava] (LINK)

A Chinese Casino Has Conquered a Piece of America (LINK)

Washington’s $500 Million Financial-Storm Forecaster Is Foundering ($) (LINK)

Invest Like the Best Podcast: Pat Dorsey Returns – The Moat Portfolio (LINK)

Sebastian Junger Never Owned a Smartphone (and Why This Matters) - by Cal Newport (LINK)

Jordan B. Peterson on 12 Rules for Life (video) (LINK)

Related book: 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

A 30-part BBC Podcast Series: Living With The Gods [H/T Tamas] (LINK)

Neil MacGregor explores the role and expression of shared beliefs in communities around the world. 

Links

"Most of the money I've made in my life has been when other people don't like what's going on. When things are cheap, that's the opportunity." - John Malone (Source)

An excerpt of Boyar Research's Forgotten Forty report from last year (in exchange for inputting contact information). This report provides their clients with their 40 best ideas for the year ahead, and this excerpt has a good overview of some of the names they follow.... Link to: The Forgotten Forty: 2017 Issue

Best in Class: Lessons from Publicly Traded Enterprise Saas Companies [H/T @AlexRubalcava] (LINK)

An interview with John Huber of Saber Capital Management and the Base Hit Investing blog (LINK)

Morgan Creek Capital Management - Q3 2017 Market Review & Outlook Letter (LINK)

How I Built This Podcast -- Ben & Jerry's: Ben Cohen And Jerry Greenfield (LINK)

EconTalk Podcast: Tim Harford on Fifty Inventions That Shaped the Modern Economy (LINK)

Related book: Fifty Inventions That Shaped the Modern Economy

The show so far, a continuing series [on the Trump Administration to date, according to Tyler Cowen] (LINK)

How a Skeptic Became a Stoic [H/T Daniel] (LINK)

Related book: How to Be a Stoic 

Links

CNBC's full interview with Liberty Media's John Malone (video) [H/T Will] (LINK)

One of tech's most successful investors says Silicon Valley's unicorns need to 'grow up' (article and video) (LINK)

Blackstone May Do Its Cleverest CDS Trade Again [H/T Matt] (LINK)

Structures of power: author Michael Lewis on Donald Trump, Wall Street women and Harvey Weinstein [H/T Linc] (LINK)

Business Lessons from Ben Thompson of Stratechery - by Tren Griffin (LINK)

Exponent Podcast: Episode 132 — Successful Disappointments (LINK)

How Entrepreneurial Management Transforms Culture and Drives Growth (LSE podcast) (LINK)

Related book: The Startup Way - by Eric Ries

Kim Jong Un’s North Korea: Life inside the totalitarian state (LINK)

A Chess Novice Challenged Magnus Carlsen. He Had One Month to Train. ($) (LINK)

The da Vinci Pause (LINK)

What DNA Says About the Extinction of America’s Most Common Bird -  by Ed Yong (LINK)

New Zealand’s War on Rats Could Change the World - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Book of the day: The Way We Live Now - by Anthony Trollope [Tim O'Reilly mentioned this book near the end of his chat with Tim Ferriss, when discussing how reading bestselling novels during a given time period can be a great way to learn history, as it gives one a sense for the way people thought about things during that time. And he mentioned the The Way We Live Now as a book about the great railroad bubbles of the 1860s.]

Links

The Advantage Of Being A Little Underemployed - by Morgan Housel (LINK)

Related previous post: Deep Work sessions, and tips

John Malone on trust (LINK)

Brazil stocks plunge 10% on emerging political scandal (LINK)

Union Square's Wilson on VC Market, Twitter, Snap & Uber (video) (LINK)

Boring Google - by Ben Thompson (LINK)

a16z Podcast: For Your Ears Only (LINK)

When it comes to spycraft — or rather, “tradecraft,” as they say in the biz — what do the movies get right, and what do they get wrong? In this episode of the a16z Podcast (recorded while on the road in D.C. for our annual Tech Policy Summit), Michael Morell — former Deputy Director and twice-Acting Director of the CIA — talks all things tradecraft and tech with a16z partners Matt Spence and Hanne Tidnam.

Poli'ahu: Time-lapse of telescopes and stars dancing under Hawaiian skies (LINK)

***

As I've mentioned before on this blog:

When it comes to the macro, I like to take the approach of being a risk-identifier--as opposed to being a forecaster--and so listening to people who are intelligent and spend way more time on certain macro things than I do helps me get a sense for whether or not I might be missing something big while I spend most of my time thinking about individual companies.

And in the above light, I recently read Steve Keen's latest book, Can We Avoid Another Financial Crisis? It was great overview of the importance of private debt in the economy, where many countries currently stand in regards to private debt levels, and what risks that might entail. While many of the major debt risks have been well described elsewhere in regards to places like China and Hong Kong, he mentions several others and gives a great overview of Minsky's 'Financial Instability Hypothesis' on pages 14-21. Timing of when debt burdens becoming too unsustainable is hard or impossible to predict (which is a reason why, most of the time, value investors ignore the macro), but Keen does give some plausible reasons for why the Australian and Canadian economies in which many, including Keen, have been warning about for years seem likely to finally hit a big rough patch at some point within the next 3 years or so. Keen also has some good charts on country-by-country debt levels on his website, HERE. 

Links

Warren Buffett in New HBO Documentary: ‘I’m Getting Down to Salvage Value’ (LINK)

The Benjamin Graham Financial Network - By Jason Zweig (LINK)

Narrative and Numbers: How a number cruncher learned to tell stories! - by Aswath Damodaran (LINK)

Related book (just released): Narrative and Numbers: The Value of Stories in Business

National Western Stock Show Citizen of the West John Malone known for loyalty, can-do Western spirit [H/T @FrancoOlivera] (LINK)

Related book: Cable Cowboy: John Malone and the Rise of the Modern Cable Business

a16z Podcast: Machine Intelligence, from University to Industry (LINK)

Six Questions for Shane Parrish (LINK)

Stephen Hawking’s Productive Laziness (LINK)

In the 1980s, at the height of his intellectual productivity, Stephen Hawking used to head home from his office between five and six. He rarely worked later. 

Here’s how he explained his behavior to his PhD student Bruce Allen (now a professor at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics): 

“Bruce, here’s some advice: The problem with physics is that most of the days we don’t make any major headway (on our projects). That’s why you should do other stuff: listen to music, meet good friends. There’s one exception to this rule: If you find a solution for a given problem, you work 24 hours a day and forget everything else. Until the problem is solved in its entirety.”

A Break in the Search for the Origin of Complex Life (LINK)

Book of the day: Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety (There is also a PBS documentary that originated from this book, which aired a couple of days ago, HERE. And be sure to check out the Freeman Dyson bonus video, HERE.)

Links

What Ben Franklin Could Teach Us About Civility and Politics [H/T @rationalwalk] (LINK)

Related books: 1) A Benjamin Franklin Reader; 2) Benjamin Franklin: An American Life - By Walter Isaacson; 3) Benjamin Franklin - By Carl Van Doren (a little longer than Isaacson's biography)

John Malone on CNBC (Video 1, Video 2)

a16z Podcast: What’s Next for Technology and National Security? (LINK)

To Understand Facebook, Study Capgras Syndrome  - by Robert Sapolsky [H/T The Browser] (LINK)

Book of the day (which I've seen several fund managers recommend over the last few weeks): Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley

Links

Walt Mossberg interviews Jeff Bezos at Code Conference 2016 (video) (LINK) ["I make sure all of my meetings do not have tight agendas. I don't like a tight agenda on my meetings because tight agendas assume you know where you are going; which for a certain kind of meeting is right (if you're doing like a weekly business review and you're going through a metrics deck, that should have a good agenda). But most meetings are not like that. Most meetings should be used for a kind of mild brainstorming or something like that where you are really doing a lot of wandering. Wandering is super important. Thinking you know exactly where you're going is a kind of lack of humility that doesn't let you invent." -Jeff Bezos]

John Malone Talks TV Biz, Presidential Politics and His TCI Regret in Candid Q&A [H/T @chriswmayer] (LINK)

Phil Knight on Charlie Rose (video from about a month ago) (LINK)

Related book: Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike

Buffett Awaits $8 Billion of ‘Bad News’ With Kraft Heinz Payment (video plays) (LINK)

Oil Change: Affluent Saudi Arabia Goes to Work [H/T @jasonzweigwsj] (LINK)

Daniel Tarullo: The One-Man ‘Judge and Jury’ for Banks [H/T @jasonzweigwsj] (LINK)

Risky Reprise of Debt Binge Stars U.S. Companies Not Consumers (LINK)

The Absolute Return Letter - June 2016 (LINK)

Mutual Fund Observer, June 2016 (LINK)

Book of the day (recommended by Marc Andreessen as being the best biography on Walt Disney): Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination - by Neal Gabler

Links

The Edge Annual Question 2016: WHAT DO YOU CONSIDER THE MOST INTERESTING RECENT [SCIENTIFIC] NEWS? WHAT MAKES IT IMPORTANT? (LINK)

Warren Buffett Arrives in Europe: Seeking Quality Companies to Preserve and Protect (LINK)

Related book:  Berkshire Beyond Buffett

Hayman's Bass Sees Energy as Investment Opportunity as Glut Ends (LINK)

John Malone 1994 interview [H/T @Find_Me_Value] (LINK)

Other People’s Yachts: Churchill and his Money, or Lack of It [H/T @ChrisMayerAgora] (LINK)

Related book: No More Champagne: Churchill and His Money

Five Good Questions for Arthur Benjamin about his book The Magic of Math (video) (LINK)

Clips of a number of famous founders on how they got started (Bezos, Jobs, Oprah, Branson, Page, Zuckerberg) (video) [H/T @iancassel] (LINK)

Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee: President Barack Obama (video) (LINK)

Book of the day: How to Talk to Anyone: 92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships

Links

Getting caught up on a few links after a little time away...

Notes from the Berkshire Hathaway 50th Anniversary Symposium (Market Folly, ValueWalk)

Prominent film company focuses documentary lens on Buffett [H/T Linc] (LINK)

How does Charlie Munger recommend dealing with adversity? (LINK)

Shane Parrish talks to Chris Dixon on The Knowledge Project (LINK) [Shane is also starting a membership program that is worth considering, HERE.]

John Malone interview on CNBC (video) [H/T Santangel's Review] (LINK) 

"I'm an investor. When I see opportunity to create value for my shareholders, I tend to want to dabble in that. So that effort to position capital, to anticipate value creation, I think is my job."

How to Become a Better Reader (LINK)

Related book: How to Read a Book

Latticework of Mental Models: Reciprocation Tendency (LINK)

Related book: Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

Robert Shiller at the LSE discussing Phishing for Phools (LINK)

Robert Shiller's Talk at Google for Phishing for Phools (video) (LINK)

Beyond Banking: under attack on all sides (LINK)

Huge Valeant Stake Exposes Rift at Sequoia Fund [H/T Linc] (LINK)

ACHAL BAKERI, LEARNING MACHINE - by Sanjay Bakshi (LINK)

Managing a creative culture (LINK)

Related book: Creativity, Inc.

The Bill Simmons Podcast - Episode 19: Malcolm Gladwell (LINK)

HBO's Bill Simmons talks to best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell about Grantland's abrupt demise, public funded sports arenas/stadiums, new owner syndrome, Tom Brady's never-ending career, the corrupt NCAA, Obama's next job and how America needs a sports czar more than ever.

The Saudi Wahhabis are the real foe: We must take our fight to the preachers and financiers of terror - By Nassim Nicholas Taleb (LINK)

Some highlights from the book Seneca: A Life (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4)

Some interesting books I've seen recommended by others: 

The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science

Rationality for Mortals: How People Cope with Uncertainty

Homicide

I Think You'll Find it's a Bit More Complicated Than That

Links

Elizabeth Holmes on Charlie Rose (video) (LINK) [And the video of her May commencement speech at Pepperdine which is mentioned in the interview, is HERE. "Success is not a result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire."]

Richard Thaler talks to Google about his new book, Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics (video) [H/T ValueWalk] (LINK)

How a curmudgeonly old reporter exposed the FIFA scandal (LINK)

Related books: Foul!: the Secret World of Fifa; Bribes, Vote Rigging and Ticket Scandals (2006); Omertà: Sepp Blatter's FIFA Organised Crime Family (2014)

Bruce Greenwald on Challenges Finding Opportunities [H/T ValueWalk] (LINK) [There are also a few more videos from First Eagle, HERE.]

InvestingByTheBooks interviews William Green about his book, The Great Minds of Investing (LINK)

Why Did John Malone Invest in Lions Gate? (LINK)

Meet the Journalist Who Fooled Millions About Chocolate and Weight Loss (LINK) [This also reminds me of an article Peter Bevelin mentioned in one of my interviews with him: Why Most Published Research Findings Are False.]

How Ink Is Made (video) [H/T The Late Show Podcast] (LINK)

The Pillars of Creation: What's changed? (LINK)

In Michael Lombardi's interview with Shane Parrish, he mentioned Evan Thomas' biography of Robert Kennedy as being one that had a big influence on him. It looks like Thomas is set to come out with a biography on Richard Nixon in a couple of weeks, which Walter Isaacson recently recommended: Being Nixon: A Man Divided

Links

Merryn Somerset Webb interviews Hugh Hendry (Part 2) (LINK)

John Malone Talks At Liberty Investor Conference [VIDEOS] (LINK)

Evan Osnos wins the non-fiction National Book Award for his book Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China (LINK) [The MP3 CD also comes out in a couple of weeks and is currently priced at just $12.33.]

Related previous post: Evan Osnos on Charlie Rose

Behavioral market failures (LINK)

Rick Bookstaber: On Death with Dignity (LINK)

Christensen Institute: What else should KIPP be doing with blended learning? (LINK)

Related book: Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Schools

Farnam Street: How Do People Get New Ideas? (LINK)

Related quote: "I have been speculating...what makes a man a discoverer of undiscovered things, and a most perplexing problem it is. Many men who are very clever, -- much cleverer than the discoverers -- never originate anything. As far as I can conjecture, the art consists in habitually searching for the causes and meaning of everything which occurs. This implies sharp observation and requires as much knowledge as possible of the subject investigated." -Charles Darwin

Mavericks Lecture 2012: John Malone

This is from last year, but the previous posted reminded me of it, and it doesn't appear I had posted it before.


Link

...................

Related book: Cable Cowboy: John Malone and the Rise of the Modern Cable Business

John Malone on the Future of Media

Found via ValueWalk.


Link

The Benefits Of Being Bilingual – By Jonah Lehrer

Samuel Beckett, born in a suburb of Dublin in 1906, was a native English speaker. However, in 1946 Beckett decided that he would begin writing exclusively in French. After composing the first draft in his second language, he would then translate these words back into English. This difficult constraint – forcing himself to consciously unpack his own sentences – led to a burst of genius, as many of Beckett’s most famous works (Malloy, Malone Dies, Waiting for Godot, etc.) were written during this period. When asked why he wrote first in French, Beckett said it made it easier for him to “write without style.”

Beckett would later expand on these comments, noting that his use of French prevented him from slipping into his usual writerly habits, those crutches of style that snuck into his English prose. Instead of relying on the first word that leapt into consciousness – that most automatic of associations – he was forced by his second language to reflect on what he actually wanted to express. His diction became more intentional.

There’s now some neat experimental proof of this Beckettian strategy. In a recent paper published in Psychological Science, a team of psychologists led by Boaz Keysar at the University of Chicago found that forcing people to rely on a second language systematically reduced human biases, allowing the subjects to escape from the usual blind spots of cognition. In a sense, they were better able to think without style.