ASB Partners Nuggets 1.17.25

This is a short weekly email that covers a few things I’ve found interesting during the week.

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Interesting Links/Reads

Many links are sourced from Marginal Revolution

1. Biden, Trump and the Meaning of Stupidity In politics as in life, the stupid person causes others to lose and gains nothing for himself.(WSJ)

The first is by Bertrand Russell: “The trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”

2.‘The Bright Side’ Review: A Belief in Better Days An optimistic outlook can nudge us to take steps to make the world and its future—our own future included—a little less terrible.(WSJ)

It seems, for instance, that lawyers are temperamentally unhappy because they are paid to be pessimists. “Nobody wants a lawyer whose attitude towards the small print is Ah, I’m sure it’ll be fine.” Everyone wants “someone who will look for every conceivable way that things could go wrong.” The problem for lawyers and other professional pessimists is that it’s hard to turn off a negative habit of mind when you leave the office.

3.End of a Climate Delusion Amid California’s fires, voters wake up from the dream that green pork is a solution.(WSJ)

Last year, the premier journal Science put a nail in the question: 96% of policies supported worldwide as “reducing” emissions failed to do so, consisting mostly of handouts to green-energy interests.

Californians are stuck adapting in the ways left open to them. Since 2017, half a million have fled Los Angeles County.

Here’s another concept: Climate change can exist and yet be an insignificant variable. In Southern California’s Mediterranean climate, anytime 100-mile-an-hour winds start blowing embers toward densely packed housing developments, a conflagration is certain. The only answer then is to have the manpower and resources ready to put fires out as quickly as they start.

I’ve written repeatedly about climate and energy policies in the Western world being a colossal example of “sophisticated state failure,” in which attempts to address complex problems yield only a succession of boondoggles and economic crises. If California voters don’t wise up now, they never will.

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Podcast/Videos

👇Great interview with Carson Block from Muddy Waters, who is a legendary short seller, but also pitches why he is long a junior minor called Mayfair Gold Corp.(MGGCF)…he makes the point that you can get venture-like returns in junior minors and the information is much better than tech companies if you do the extra work to dig into the geology

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I hope you enjoyed it.

Adam