Mic Drop

Here is a short paragraph from Berkshire’s 1993 letter:
“In many industries, of course, Charlie and I can't determine whether we are dealing with a "pet rock" or a "Barbie." We couldn't solve this problem, moreover, even if we were to spend years intensely studying those industries. Sometimes our own intellectual shortcomings would stand in the way of understanding, and in other cases the nature of the industry would be the roadblock. For example, a business that must deal with fast-moving technology is not going to lend itself to reliable evaluations of its long-term economics. Did we foresee thirty years ago what would transpire in the television-manufacturing or computer industries? Of course not. (Nor did most of the investors and corporate managers who enthusiastically entered those industries.) Why, then, should Charlie and I now think we can predict the future of other rapidly-evolving businesses? We'll stick instead with the easy cases. Why search for a needle buried in a haystack when one is sitting in plain sight?”
---------------------------------------------
“Severe change and exceptional returns usually don't mix. Most investors, of course, behave as if just the opposite were true. That is, they usually confer the highest price-earnings ratios on exotic-sounding businesses that hold out the promise of feverish change. That prospect lets investors fantasize about future profitability rather than face today's business realities. For such investor-dreamers, any blind date is preferable to one with the girl next door, no matter how desirable she may be.
Experience, however, indicates that the best business returns are usually achieved by companies that are doing something quite similar today to what they were doing five or ten years ago. That is no argument for managerial complacency. Businesses always have opportunities to improve service, product lines, manufacturing techniques, and the like, and obviously these opportunities should be seized. But a business that constantly encounters major change also encounters many chances for major error. Furthermore, economic terrain that is forever shifting violently is ground on which it is difficult to build a fortress-like business franchise. Such a franchise is usually the key to sustained high returns. “
 
1987 letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders
Warren Buffet understands value investments and is exceptional at it. Also, value investments deal with hundreds of millions of dollars, and return hundreds of millions as well. These amounts make a difference to Buffet. 

For a big investor like Buffet, a seed investment of $1 Mn which returns $5 Mn is nothing more than pocket change.
Berkshire generates $20-25bi per year in cash. Hard to invest this amount of money in startups.
   

Is Point “A” REALLY point “A”? 
 
Let’s say it’s a really slow day in heaven. 

No  hordes of demons to rustle into submission, or things to tidy up, like the remnants of an exploding star, or whatever else they do up there, presuming up there is really up there, not out there or over there or under there, etc.
So Jehovah God might decide to send an Angel, let’s call him Bob, on a mission to Earth, specifically to Colony Park, New York, where the Society’s Lawyers do whatever it is they do …..
Let’s call Angel Bob’s starting point, “Point A”, and his ending point “Point B”.
Where exactly is “Point A”?
Is it inside this physical universe somewhere within this expanding sphere of space time of approximately 30 billion light year diameter?, or ……
is it outside the space time continuum of OUR experience, perhaps that unknowable mystery that Jehovah and Jesus inhabited BEFORE the “Big Bang”, about 14 billion years ago?, or
is it in a parallel universe such as Quantum Physicists say they have the math for?, or
is “Point A” somewhere on a vibrating string, on a “brane”, down, down into the sub-atomic universe as far down as there is to go? …….
Where is Angel Bob, when he is on “Point A”?
 

It's next to the third tesseract on the left.

Good points, but it was a slow day at the Archive, and I was in a frivolous mood for some topic we all had not beaten to death.
And who knows?
Somebody through reason and logic might have been able to shed some insight on the idea, that I strongly suspect the Apostle Paul already had the answer to when he spoke about the various “levels” of Heaven.
I see this “Archive” as light entertainment, something to explore new ideas, or confirm old ones by actual test by real adversaries, either inductively, or deductively.
And perhaps have some fun along the way.
I am too old to surf or skydive.
 

Let’s say I invested $1,000 in Bitcoin 12 years ago, and I wanted to “cash out” now in Charlotte, NC, or Austin, TX.
How would I do it?
 

Bitcoin is too important to fail

An attack by a man who is sensitive. For if he truly felt the need to do so, he would not have been laughing at the joke itself prior. Namely towards a comedian of whom joked about the person in question in the past; in his presence.
That being said, Hollywood is Hollywood. Often times, a distraction to serious things taking place.

citing Wassman's "KL," a brutal and utterly detailed qccount of the Holocaust.
These famous photos are of KL staff enjoying a vacation they received as part of a bonus for being "good employees" at the camp they were stationed in. The SS prized brutality above all else inside the camps, and while it is difficult to k ow what exactly earned these specific guards this retreat, it was almost certainly some public display of inhumanity against a KL inmate.
These images are among the most important of KL history, as they show us that the guards were not threatened or coerced into brutality. Instead, they reveled in it. They enjoyed, and we're rewarded for, the cruelty they visited on others.

The initial killing in the Holocaust was just soldiers machine gunning down rows of people. The “problem” with that was that many soldiers were committing suicide. So the Nazi higher ups designed the gas chambers because it was more sanitized. They also had to manipulate people working at the camps in order to get them do do heir jobs.
This does not excuse this at all. We're all accountable for our actions. But these pictures don't capture the whole story. Don't forget that Stanley Milgram's research showed that many—but not all—regular people can be manipulated into committing atrocities.

*Goldman Sachs vs Bitcoin*
 
2020: Bitcoin is not an asset class
2021: Files for a Bitcoin ETF

Good point. These points have crossed my mind as I have been to places recently that asked me if I wanted to add a donation to the Nazi-backed regime in Ukraine. Of course, they don't put it exactly like that, and I don't think of recent Russian war crimes as any less troublesome. 
By coincidence, just yesterday, I read a few stories in a book I was about to toss out, called "The Complete Stories of Erskine Caldwell." I noticed that he often touched on the topic of race relations between Whites and Blacks in Georgia, while writing during the peak years of Nazi atrocities. It might seem unlrelated, but there were a couple sentences in the following linked story "Saturday Afternoon" that reminded me of Stanley Milgram's research. [Caution: It's about a lynching!]
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~DRBR/caldwell.html

Something a lot of people don't know. Jada has hair loss, this is why she shaved her head. She's been open about it and it's a hurtful topic for her. Chris Rock just literally made fun of her having a medical issue. Look at Jada's face after the joke. You could tell she was hurt. While the cameras weren't pointed at Will Smith, I'm sure he looked at his wife, could see the hurt and then reacted.
Denzel Washington was seen later kneeling beside Jada with his arm around her and talking to her. I think he was just making sure she was okay. Will Smith smiles and let's a lot roll off his back, but I think seeing his wife hurt, just pissed him off. I take it as Will Smith was defending her, and I stand with Will Smith. You got a lot of guts getting up in the middle of a live show and smacking him for that. Chris Rock deserved it IMO. Don't make a joke about peoples struggles and you won't get slapped.

Oh great…!!!
🤨

TechCrunch   UK study quantifies Twitter's misogyny problem
TechCrunch
Online abuse remains the big hairy monster in the room for platforms powered by user-generated content. Twitter especially has had some very sizable and public problems with problem users, taking flak in recent years for being the go-to social media ...
Half Of “Misogynistic Abuse” On Twitter Comes From Women, Study ArguesBuzzFeed News
Women use misogynistic insults as often as men, study findsCharlotte Observer
What that study about female misogyny on Twitter gets wrongFusion
BetaNews
all 93 news articles »  

Short term panic for those without historical perspective.
We are still coming out of an ice age.
What is “normal” to us is silly short-sightedness.
10,000 years ago glaciers came down to Ohio, and Pennsylvania, and since then it has been warming up.
10,000 years ago the Oceans of Earth were ALL at least 400 feet LOWER than they are now.
Adapt.
….. the folks in Hiroshima and Nagasaki did.

"Trinity and Beyond" is an unsettling yet visually fascinating documentary presenting the history, development and testing of nuclear weapons between 1945 and 1963. Narrated by William Shatner (Star Trek's Captain Kirk) and featuring an original score performed by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, this award-winning documentary reveals previously unreleased and classified government footage depicting in graphic detail these powerful and awesome weapons. Many scenes were repaired with an Academy Award® winning process created to restore the color.

Director/producer Peter Kuran, traveled throughout the U.S. to uncover footage that includes bombs being suspended by balloon, exploding under the ocean, being shot from a cannon and detonated in outer space. 

"Trinity and Beyond" features extremely rare film segments from top secret government archives and startling footage of nuclear bomb tests conducted by the United States, Russia and China, including the largest atomic explosion ever detonated.

"Trinity and Beyond" features an interview with Dr. Edward Teller a developer of nuclear weapons and one of the most controversial figures of the 20th century. "Trinity & Beyond" is an extraordinary production that provides an important understanding of events and the creations of technologies that have changed the world forever.