Links

John Hussman made a 19-minute video with his thoughts on the proposed tax bill (LINK)

The Senate’s tax bill is a sweeping change to every part of federal health care [H/T @Atul_Gawande] (LINK)

Would all Industry Titans of the 19th Century be in Prison Today? - by Ian Cassel (LINK)

Leithner Letter No. 215-221 (LINK)

Related book: The Bourgeois Manifesto

Tyler Cowen chats with Douglas Irwin whose book, Clashing over Commerce: A History of US Trade Policy, Cowen thinks is the best history of American trade policy ever written (podcast) (LINK)

Freakonomics Radio (podcast): Are We Running Out of Ideas? (LINK)

Economists have a hard time explaining why productivity growth has been shrinking. One theory: true innovation has gotten much harder – and much more expensive. So what should we do next?

“Light Touch”, Cable, and DSL; The Broadband Tradeoff; The Importance of Antitrust - by Ben Thompson (LINK)

a16z Video: The API Economy (LINK)

The new generation of computers is programming itself | Sebastian Thrun and Chris Anderson (video) (LINK)

Authors@Wharton Speaker Series presents Sir Richard Branson (video) [H/T ValueWalk] (LINK)

Gary Taubes talks with Shane Parrish on The Knowledge Project Podcast (LINK)

Related book: The Case Against Sugar

Hummingbirds Are Where Intuition Goes to Die - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Links

"The doctor is not infallible and does not know everything, and it's a shame that we need to thrust him into a position where he has to seem infallible in order to make everybody feel good. Because we are much better off if he's very aware of how highly fallible he is and how little we do know. That's how progress happens. You start by acknowledging what you do not know." - Michael Lewis

Why a Value Investor Decided to Buy Bitcoin (LINK)

Bitcoin isn’t exactly your classic value investment. It’s one of the most volatile assets in the world, and it doesn’t have much of a “book” value – unlike a company that owns physical assets, Bitcoin can’t sell its headquarters if things get rough. There is, of course, no Bitcoin headquarters. 

But Murray Stahl, a longtime value investor who now manages $5.5 billion at his New York-based investment firm Horizon Kinetics, considers Bitcoin “the ultimate value investment.” His original $7 million investment from two years ago has ballooned as Bitcoin’s price has soared, and he now holds about $100 million worth. As of Monday, each Bitcoin is worth about $9,500.

Note.... Howard Marks' comments about Bitcoin in his last memo ("Yet Again?"), which he wrote after chatting with the Horizon Kinetics team and others, are also worth revisiting (starting on page 4).

Michael Lewis chats with Eric Topol (LINK)

Related book: The Undoing Project

Pro-Neutrality, Anti-Title II  - by Ben Thompson (LINK)

Soft Robots Acquire Origami Skeletons for Super-Strength [H/T Linc] (LINK)

A review of some of the bids to woo Amazon’s HQ2 to other cities and states shows it’s not all about the money. In some cases democracy itself is a bargaining chip. [H/T Techmeme] (LINK)

Invest Like the Best Podcast: Angel Investing and Trend Spotting, w/ Joanne Wilson  (LINK)

Tim Urban talks with Tim Ferriss on Tribe of Mentors Podcast (LINK)

The Decades-Long Quest to Make Virus-Proof Mosquitoes - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Sputnik at 60 - by Vaclav Smil (LINK)

The 2nd edition of Smil's Oil - A Beginner's Guide also appears to be available to purchase in paperback early next year (available on Kindle now).

Links

"The great lesson in microeconomics is to discriminate between when technology is going to help you and when it's going to kill you." - Charlie Munger

Five Things I Am Doing Differently Today vs. Five Years Ago - by Robert Vinall [registration required] (LINK)

Paul Johnson and Paul Sonkin on the Capital Allocators Podcast (LINK)

Related book: Pitch the Perfect Investment

Business Lessons from Katrina Lake of Stitch Fix - by Tren Griffin (LINK)

The regulatory case against tech giants (continued): Why concerns about information overload could cripple the platform-monopoly model. (LINK)

TED Talk -- The science of cells that never get old | Elizabeth Blackburn (LINK)

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Audible added another 100 books to its current $4.95 sale (which ends November 28, 2017 @ 11:59 PM PT). Here are a few of the new titles that stood out to me (see the previous post for the other notable titles):

The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World

Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us

An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales

Economic Facts and Fallacies

The Greatest Story Ever Told - So Far: Why Are We Here?

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"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts." - Winston Churchill     [H/T Fred Wilson]

Links

"Perhaps the most persistent mistake I encounter is investors overpaying for the hope of growth. It always seems seductive to rotate to something proffering the hope of growth, but all too often we forget the lags that typify turning points. This is made all the more dangerous when the markets concerned are trading on massively elevated valuation multiples." - James Montier (May 2008, via 

Value Investing)

A beautiful story about Frank Perdue (LINK)

The Uncertain Future of Bitcoin Futures (LINK)

Dan Pink talks with Dan McGinn, author of Psyched Up (podcast) (LINK)

***

There are some good titles in Audible's latest $4.95 sale. Some of the ones that stood out to me are below:

The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon

Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

American Icon: Alan Mulally and the Fight to Save Ford Motor Company

The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth

The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story

The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything

The Pixar Touch

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are

Biology: The Science of Life (The Great Courses)

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money

Unstoppable: Harnessing Science to Change the World

Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers

On Intelligence

Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

Confessions of an Economic Hitman

iWoz: How I Invented the Personal Computer and Had Fun Along the Way

Hitch-22: A Memoir

Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

Links

"Obviously the stock market is quite irrational in thus varying its valuation of a company proportionately with the temporary changes in reported profits. A private business might easily earn twice as much in a boom year as in poor times, but its owner would never think of correspondingly marking up or down the value of his capital investment." - Ben Graham

Leonardo's Principles - by Ray Dalio (LINK)

Related book: Leonardo da Vinci

Connor Leonard on the Invest Like the Best Podcast (LINK)

Spin Gold From Spinoffs: A Portfolio Of 5 Castoffs Trounces The S&P 500 - by Mohnish Pabrai (LINK)

Not all risk mitigation is created equal - by Mark Spitznagel [H/T Jim] (LINK)

Amazon tells Australian retailers to prepare for orders from Thursday (LINK)

Katrina Lake, Stitch Fix founder & CEO, on CNBC (video) (LINK)

Latticework of Mental Models: Manufactured Memories (LINK)

Tyler Cowen on the Longform Podcast (LINK)

TED Talk -- Mariano Sigman and Dan Ariely: How can groups make good decisions? (video) (LINK)

TED Talk -- Scott Galloway: How Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google manipulate our emotions (video) (LINK)

Related book: The Four

Edge #504: "A Difference That Makes a Difference" - A Conversation With Daniel C. Dennett (LINK)

How Coral Researchers Are Coping With the Death of Reefs - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Stewart Brand on The Tim Ferriss Show (podcast) (LINK)

Tim Ferriss' new book was also released this week: Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in 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 

John Templeton, Warren Buffett, and Robert Wilson interviews by George Goodman (aka Adam Smith) (circa 1985)

Link to video

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

"I have always thought that one man of tolerable abilities may work great changes, and accomplish great affairs among mankind if he first forms a good plan and, cutting off all amusements or other employments that would divert his attention, makes the execution of that same plan his sole study and business." - Ben Franklin

A Conversation with David Swensen [H/T @jasonzweigwsj] (LINK)

Related article: Yale's Swensen Sees Low Volatility as `Profoundly Troubling'

Lessons Learned from The Outsiders & How Intelligent Fanatics are Different (LINK)

Pension Actuaries: The Joke is On Us - by Rick Bookstaber (LINK)

Is the Business Cycle Dead, Or Just Hibernating? - by Frank Martin (LINK)

Why Sales Quotas Ruined Wells Fargo (LINK)

Will Amazon disrupt healthcare? (LINK)

Sebastian Junger: "Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging" | Talks at Google (LINK)

Long-lost da Vinci painting fetches $450.3 million, an auction record for art (LINK)

How the Zombie Fungus Takes Over Ants’ Bodies to Control Their Minds - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Life Without Guts - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Book of the day [H/T @jasonzweigwsj]: The Quotable Darwin

"I have steadily endeavoured to keep my mind free so to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved (and I cannot resist forming one on every subject), as soon as facts are shown to be opposed to it. Indeed, I have had no choice but to act in this manner, for with the exception of the Coral Reefs, I cannot remember a single first-formed hypothesis which had not after a time to be given up or greatly modified. This has naturally led me to distrust greatly deductive reasoning in the mixed sciences. On the other hand, I am not very sceptical,–a frame of mind which I believe to be injurious to the progress of science. A good deal of scepticism in a scientific man is advisable to avoid much loss of time, but I have met with not a few men, who, I feel sure, have often thus been deterred from experiment or observations, which would have proved directly or indirectly serviceable." - Charles Darwin

Full Interview: Mark and Jeff Bezos

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and brother Mark give a rare interview about growing up and secrets to success

Link to video

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Related previous post: Jeff Bezos on multi-tasking