ASB Partners Nuggets 12.13.24
This is a short weekly email that covers a few things I’ve found interesting during the week.
https://www.charidy.com/rcnPickleball/AdamBuckstein
Interesting Links/Reads
Many links are sourced from Marginal Revolution
A competent drone capability requires building a supply chain, setting up a small manufacturing/assembly operation, and training skilled operators. They need to manage frequencies and adjust to jamming. Tight integration of these functions is a necessity. That favors highly motivated groups with broad popularity (recruiting skilled talent!) even if they are nominally weak.
Conversely, it can be challenging for overly corrupt or complacent organizations to counter. They are also more likely to fracture and lose cohesion when under attack
Consider a simple example: say the average CEO gets paid $1m for every $100m in market cap. If you’re the CEO of a $200m market cap company, buying a $100m competitor with all stock will push your market cap up by ~$100m, which means you’ve got a reason to push your board for a 50% salary bump (from $2m to $3m) regardless of the underlying shareholder return on that acquisition!
3.Who owns the drones flying over New Jersey (NYT)?
4.Some astronomy photos of the year.
Behind Bitcoin’s Rally Is a Simple Fact: Supplies Are Limited
The computer code behind bitcoin imposes a hard cap of 21 million bitcoins. So far, about 19.8 million bitcoins have been created, and it will take more than a century to create the rest, a process that will become increasingly difficult over time.
Proponents of bitcoin argue that its scarcity will fuel rising prices as buyers scramble to acquire the last new coins to come online, or to buy existing coins from people fortunate enough to own bitcoin already. It is the same argument for buying Gutenberg Bibles, limited-edition baseball cards and beachfront real estate: There is a finite supply.
7.The New Jersey drone sightings
ZAKARIA: You can see it in what happened a day after the election results became clear. You got a flurry of tweets from every major C.E.O. in America — every major tech C.E.O., every bank C.E.O. — fawning over Trump, congratulating him and telling him how much they wanted to work well with him. I think that this is a very sad development that’s happened. It’s not entirely because of Trump. But we have politicized the economy in America. All this industrial policy, these tariffs, these bans. What that does is it suddenly makes Washington a very crucial arbiter to the success of business. You add to it Trump, who personally loves the idea of fining Caterpillar for doing this and Harley Davidson for doing that and Chase for doing — he views it as his job as president to literally dole out rewards and punishments to companies, depending on whether they do what he regards as the right thing or the wrong thing. It’s deeply saddening to me as somebody who grew up in India, where this is business as usual. Every business had to slavishly pander to whoever the prime minister at the time was. And you see it in Musk. Tesla stock, in the two days after Trump won, was up 20 percent or something like that, adding tens of billions of dollars to Elon Musk’s net worth. Nothing fundamental in the economics had changed for Tesla. There was just an expectation, now that he was a friend of Trump’s, that he was going to somehow be showered with federal largesse. You know, there’s a guy in India called Adani who’s Modi’s best friend, and his stocks trade at multiples 10 times that of every other Indian company. Because everyone assumes that at the end of the day, being Modi’s best friend is worth $100 billion or something like that.
DUBNER: That’s probably a pretty safe assumption.
ZAKARIA: It’s a safe assumption in India. What’s tragic is it might even be a safe assumption in America. But it’s not what the American economy was supposed to be about. And I think it’s a very sad trend.
Podcast/Videos
Alex Clare is a British singer and songwriter known for his soulful voice and a fusion of genres including soul, rock, and electronic music. He gained widespread recognition with his 2011 hit single "Too Close," which reached international success and earned him a BRIT Award nomination.
He has been friends and grew as an artist along with Adele, Amy Winehouse, Mumford & Sons, Florence and the Machine, Bastille's Dan Smith and more.
Alex is notable for a significant personal decision—he embraced Orthodox Judaism, a commitment that led him to make substantial lifestyle changes. Clare's journey into Orthodox Judaism involved substantial personal sacrifices and adjustments to align with his newfound religious beliefs.
Despite the challenges, this aspect of his life showcases a depth and complexity to his identity beyond his music career, contributing to a multifaceted understanding of Alex Clare as both an artist and an individual with a rich personal journey.
I hope you enjoyed it.
Adam