Links - 12/28/2021
“Everything we do comes back to opportunity cost. But it, to some extent — in fact, to some considerable extent — we are guessing at our future opportunity cost. Warren is basically saying that he’s guessing that he’ll have opportunities in due course to put out money at pretty attractive rates of return, and therefore, he’s not going to waste a lot of firepower now at lower returns. But that’s an opportunity cost calculation. And if interest rates were to more or less permanently settle at 1 percent or something like that, and Warren were to reappraise his notions of future opportunity cost, he would change the numbers. It’s like Keynes said, ‘What do you do when you change your view of the facts? Well, you change your conduct.’ But so far at least, we have hurdles in our mind which are basically — well, they involve, implicitly, future opportunity cost.” —Charlie Munger (2003)
The Hidden Risks of Passive Investing | Steven Bregman (Video, Podcast)
The $900 Billion Cash Pile Inflating Startup Valuations (LINK)
SPACs and venture capitalists are plowing money into startups at record rates, looking past worries about lofty valuations
A Ukraine War and the End of Russia - by Peter Zeihan (LINK)
5 Last Minute Tax and Retirement Tips (video) (LINK)
Investing by the Books Podcast: #12 Bethany McLean: The Smartest Guys in the Room (LINK)
Invest Like the Best Podcast: Orlando Bravo - The Art of Software Buyouts (LINK)
Compounders Podcast: Executing a Construction Services Roll-Up with Bruce Young, CEO of Concrete Pumping Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: BBCP) (LINK)
Odd Lots Podcast: Mike Demarais on Design in Crypto and What Web 3.0 Will Look Like (LINK)
The Skift Podcast: Online Travel Agency Factboook: The Top 11 Global Booking Sites (LINK)
30 Animals That Made Us Smarter Podcast: Dragonfly and sky spy (LINK)
StarTalk Radio (podcast): Cosmic Queries – James Webb Space Telescope (LINK)
E.O. Wilson, a Pioneer of Evolutionary Biology, Dies at 92 (LINK)
E.O. Wilson on How We Give Meaning to Life (LINK)
“Humanity’s troubles are due substantially to the fact that we are a dysfunctional species. Dysfunctional. And why? Because we have Paleolithic emotions. We have medieval institutions. And on top of all that we’ve developed God-like technology. And that’s a dangerous mix.” —E.O. Wilson (“E.O. Wilson – Of Ants and Men,” PBS documentary)
“History makes no sense without prehistory. Prehistory makes no sense without biology. Human existence is a result of long series of evolutionary and cultural events, the cultural starting primarily when agriculture was discovered that led up to what we are today. And the meaning then is the actual history, the epic. It goes all the way back to the origin of our biological imperatives. And then I would say let us consider that human beings are above all a biological species in a biological world. If we live in a razor thin layer of the atmosphere within which life can exist and to which we as a species are exquisitely well adapted. So it's when we get this understanding of where we are and what we are and where we came from that we'll be better prepared to decide where we're going.” —E.O. Wilson (2014 interview on “Charlie Rose”)