Links - 12/7/2020
“In some businesses, you can have only two competitors and they’re still terrible businesses—they beat each other’s brains out. And sometimes they end up competing to do very stupid things. You can argue that that’s what happened with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. I mean, enormous companies that had a huge advantage over everybody else, but they still, in their battle to both report higher earnings every quarter and to beat the other guy out, drove prices for insuring loans down to the improper levels, and did a lot of other stupid things, too. So you do see certain industries where once they get down to a very few companies, do extremely well. And you see other industries where, even when they get to be two of them, they don’t do that that well.” —Warren Buffett (2013)
Custom Indexing: The Next Evolution of Index Investing - by Patrick O'Shaughnessy (LINK)
Nintendo: Infinite Games (LINK)
The Transcript 12.07.20 (LINK)
This Week in Intelligent Investing Podcast: Investing Lessons from the 1930s | “Slow Hunches” in Business and Investing (LINK)
Bill Gates and Rashida Jones Ask Big Questions (podcast): EP 4: Is it too late to stop climate change? (LINK)
You’re Only As Good As Your Worst Day (LINK)
Edge #575: A Very Bumpy Ride - A Conversation with Larry Brilliant, MD (LINK)
The Skeletons at the Lake (LINK)
Genetic analysis of human remains found in the Himalayas has raised baffling questions about who these people were and why they were there.
“To tell the truth is the same as to be a good tailor, or to be a good farmer, or to write beautifully. To be good at any activity requires practice: no matter how hard you try, you cannot do naturally what you have not done repeatedly. In order to get accustomed to speaking the truth, you should tell only the truth, even in the smallest of things.” —Leo Tolstoy