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You guys need to shut up lol If you don't watch or haven't played football, you really shouldn't complain/critique the refereeing! Think about it - that makes no sense. Brazil had two clear penalties. It does not matter if there was a chance or not for Brazil to score had it not been a penalty. Both were fouls inside the box and thus a penalty. The second one was really clumsy and just bad defending by Norway. A really stupid penalty to give away. It was a penalty nontheless.

Just found that GLM 5.2 is now also hosted in europe, costs only half of ChatGPT, and i prefer its responses over GPT 5-5. Very interesting to see how GPT 5-6 is compared to that. GLM 5.2 oneshots some answers where i need to repeatedly have to query GPT5.5 something like "check it again looks wrong" to finally get it right. https://lumo.proton.me/

It's just funny how every American seems to think this decision is normal or fair. It's never happened before — but for the US, in the US, suddenly it does. And apparently that's not strange at all... ffs. But who cares, easy game for Belgium.

250 years ago, we decided after much debate, a life of tyranny was no life at all. The usurpations of a crown 3500 miles away became insufferable. After repeated petitions for redress went unanswered, we declared our independence from King George’s heavy hand. This declaration from the shackles of British rule birthed the American Spirit. The ideals of America were not given. We had to take them. We fought for the dignity and freedom of religion, speech, press, and assembly. We fought for equality in the eyes of our creator. We fought for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And we won! Once achieved, these freedoms have unleashed the greatest nation the world has ever known. Today is a celebration of the American Spirit. May we never give into tyranny. Happy 250th Birthday America! Home of the Brave! Fly your Red, White, & Blue with Pride!

Very enlightening. Thanks for sharing!

Ask yourself this question: if the roles were reversed, do you think Belgium would have gotten its main striker back? Or would the US actively try (and succeed) to prevent it? I think the world knows the answer to this and that is where the outrage comes from. Nobody thinks he shouldn't play, clearly wasn't a valid red card. But the way it happened stinks...

LOL Can’t help but laugh at this situation. Balogun gets a red and the whole world says FIFA is corrupt and says it should never have been a RED. FIFA reverses the call and now the whole world says FIFA is corrupt and they shouldn’t make changes. and now speculation Trump was involved….ffs… July 4th is over and now the US is the villain again

Let's make the world happy tonight!

At first sight this goal may look simple, or overshadowed by more flashy strikes. One of the best I have seen, together with the strike from Cabo Verde in the same match. I cannot stop rewatching it. This is why everyone things he is from another planet. https://youtube.com/shorts/TyifPnxiKXQ?si=0FUXdhBafCdfCuSn Also goes to show a tactical victory, this goal attacks the only space that Cabo Verde was leaving unguarded. Just a bit of space at the end that can only be profited with a long pass and milimetric precision. The Cabo verde defense of 6 players draw to Spain and Uruguay, and was undetead until this match.

What a crazy game between Mexico and England. Glad to see it ended with good sportsmanship and not ugly like France/Paraguay.

https://archive.ph/UAOuh

Yeah, its been a rough year after one tends to get used to recurring good returns. I have been fortunate enough to have averaged gains a bit over 30% yearly for the past five years. But this year there have been very few days where I have been in positive territory - fortunately some of those good days have been in the past week or so. Like Thowed, two of my biggest holdings have been FFH (Fairfax - 50% of portfolio) and TVK (Terravest - under investigation for inside trading) and both have been beaten up so far this year. Fortunately holdings like ARE (Acon), ALS (Altius Resources) and RY (Royal Bank) have pretty well offset losses on FFH and TVK. But if one has a reasonable amount of confidence in the quality of one's investments, it just takes patience. Right now I am up about 6%, but have been down as much as 8% so far this year.

And Bitcoin is A LOT easier to get a hold of than a second passport.... This has happened in every bear market. And hash rate falls as high cost miners capitulate. It hasn't marked the end of Bitcoin in the past - it marked the end of the bear market. And the secular, multi-year trend is still up even if you get these blips of has reduction. As pointed out previously, despite the 50% decrease in BTC price AND the 2024 halving AND the rush to AI compute - there remains more hashrate today than 12- or 24- months ago even if it's below the October high. They've run simulations where they'll allowed autonomous AI agents to determine how they'd beat want to store and make payments. In those studies, ~50% of autonomous AI agents landed on using BTC at a multi-year store of value without any direction, input, or suggestion. All other options made up the remaining 50% with no single one coming close to BTCs dominance. Stablecoins where the preferred rails for micro-payments by ~50% of the AI agents. The future is crypto/digital.

The second penalty was a terrible call IMO (speaking as someone who watches football on average for about 4 weeks every two years and is therefore clearly an expert.) I suspect the second penalty wouldn't have been a penalty shot except that the game was nearly over and Norway had a multi-goal lead.

Another example of this garbage. Norway scored 3 goals, one was disallowed. Brazil did nothing all game and was given two penalty kicks on plays in which neither scoring opp/penalty was anywhere near being an 80%+ chance of a goal. Justice prevailed but was just aggravating to watch the game being artificially kept close

That one-liner key sentence is actually kind of clicl-bait, @Spekulatius LoLz! - Furthermore I simply lost my focus and attention after a quarter of the interview because of Anthony Scaramuccis T- or sweat shirt and the view to his bookshelf [nosy!] I swallow the rest of the interview after some sleep. The take is very interesting for a European citizen like me.

Americans donated a record $617B in 2025! Cheers! https://philanthropy.indianapolis.iu.edu/news-events/news/_news/2026/giving-usa-report-2026.html

Great write up as usual Viking. Thank you. The minority interests seem to be structured as preferred shares masquerading as common shares. Effectively, this reduces operating earnings until the minority interest is bought back. It also ensures the capital deployed to buy in the minority interest earn very high returns. The key to compounding is high returns on incremental capital deployed.

Yup...no one can say that the big guns didn't show up. Cheers!

Congrats to Norway beating Brazil! Haaland, Messi and Mbappe have now all scored 7 goals so far, followed by Kane with 5 goals.

So the FIFA dismissed Balogun's red card after pressure from the U.S... Didn't know the US was scared of a country literally 0.3% your size and 3.5% your population. That said his red car was very light so... bring it on! I'll be up at 2 am with friends watching in silence so we don't wake up the kids.

Does NK have the resources to initiate a 51% attack even if most mining stops? From what I understand bitcoin fees represent 1% of mining income, therefore in that extreme case you'd expect there to still be some miners around so attack cost won't be zero. But do you think all miners will stop if input cost > cost to mine? And is that happening or has ever happened or likely to happen? Reminds me a bit of negative cash flowing real estate. Lots of people carry negative cost with their tenants while hoping for the capital cost of the house to eventually outstrip that loss. The funds obviously come from borrowing or some other side venture. So I guess the price of bitcoin is also critical for this and the question is if the price of bitcoin has some components independent of mining costs. Even its speculative or ideological value of people buying it would prop it up in the absence of profitable mining?

Same as it was with Brexit, and MAGA; the ruling classes have done such a poor job for the average Joe, and for so long, that Joe increasingly sees the alternative as better. The growing wealth extremes, the harder it is economically becoming for Joe, the rich flaunting their wealth and privilege, etc, etc. The rational solution is increasingly fuck 'em, let 'em all burn, and immigrate to a better life elsewhere. Visit, but don't live there. Of course, the growing nationalism isn't good, and conflicts will be largely unavoidable. While NATO's re invigoration and supply chain upgrades aren't a bad thing; the sad reality is that the rest of Europe typically does best, only after large areas of it have been economically devastated (wars, disease, etc). About once every three generations (70-100 years) on average. Add AI, and what are these people to do for a job? Rational behaviour .... we just don't want to hear it. SD

Pretty good, interview: Key sentence: Trump runs the Democratic Party. I think he is right about that.

For those who want more information, below is the full quote (lightly edited) from Fairfax's 2026 AGM that Article #6 above was based on. Question from Moderator Jeff Stacey Prem and Peter, our first question is about the current insurance environment. The question is as follows. Fairfax had record underwriting profits in 2025 of $1.8 billion and achieved its objective of $1.5 billion. You commented, however, in your shareholder letter that insurance pricing is beginning to soften. I would appreciate hearing any additional comments you might have about the current insurance underwriting environment. And specifically, do you think that Fairfax can still achieve its $1.5 billion underwriting profit target in a soft insurance market? V. Watsa - Founder, Chairman & CEO Thank you, Jeff. Peter will usually answer this. But we do have Andy Barnard, Brian Young, Lou Iglesias and Silvy Wright here. So, we'll ask them instead. As Andy makes his way up to speak, let me just say… yesterday I had people ask me: “What is the biggest -- best -- acquisition you've ever made?” The best one is Markel Insurance - the first one (1985) - because otherwise, you're not in the P/C insurance game. And the second best was a small company called Skandia America Re (1996). And why? Because I had to get someone to run Skandia. I went to New York three times to get Andy Bernard. The first time he said, "You got to be kidding me.” Over dinner he said, “I'm not going to leave Transatlantic to come and join Skandia." That's how it began. After a second and third attempt, ultimately, we were fortunate to get him 30 years ago. He's had a huge impact on Fairfax. In 2011, all of the insurance companies began reporting to him. After he started in his new role – 15 years ago (2011) – he said that he hoped that the insurance business will have the same reputation of being fantastic like the investment business that we had at the time. And the investment business did a little less well, and the insurance business has done fabulously well. Andy, over to you. Come on in. Andrew Barnard - Chairman of Fairfax Insurance Group Thank you very much, Prem, for all of that. I'm going to let Brian and the others talk about our position, the market and our prospects. As Prem mentioned, I've been in this role now for 15 years, and I thought I'd just give a little brief broad perspective on how I look back on that. I divide that 15 years, which started in 2011, into two periods. First, 2011 up to 2019. Looking back with the benefit of hindsight – this was a period of preparation. During that period, we added Allied World and Brit – two very powerful new platforms with capabilities that really build out our suite of products. We had Crum & Forrester, bolstering its capabilities. We had a few small acquisitions. Earlier on in that time Northbridge finished its integration, which really positioned it as a much stronger company. And of course, during this time, Odyssey and Zenith flourished. (Yes, Zenith had a few tough years at the beginning.) And we built out the international operation during the latter part of that first period. As Peter mentioned, it has become a significant business that we think will serve us well in the future. This was really a period of preparation that brought us to 2020. At Fairfax, across our companies, we now had in place excellent leaders, leaders that are fully aligned with Fairfax’s culture, that embody the trust, the transparency, the talent that without which our decentralized system could not function. That's all in place as we roll into 2020. Of course, the big thing at the start of the year was the pandemic. A lot of companies heading to the hills, a lot of uncertainty. Plus, we had a very attractive hard market that had already been underway – and I think the pandemic just accelerated it. So, we were at that time in just a unique position because of our structure, our capability, our leadership to thrive. And thrive, we did. Over the subsequent years, we go into the second period, 2020 up to 2025. From 2020, we virtually doubled our premium volume, and almost all of that was organic with the one exception of GIG. The vast majority of that growth was organic, driven by our companies by their leaderships, by their management teams. And more importantly than that, our underwriting profit over that period more than quadrupled. This is where we really came into our heyday. Today, to 2026, we're recognized as an underwriting powerhouse in the industry by the marketplace, by the rating agencies. We had huge increases in our ratings over the last 1.5 years. Looking back on it all over the past 15 years – with the benefit of hindsight – we just positioned ourselves so favorably to really take off when the market conditions were supportive of that strategy. I believe that what we built is built to last. It is built to withstand the pressures of the market cycle. Those who follow the industry know that we're in a softening cycle where things become more challenging. But we're very confident about our capabilities – about our management abilities – to navigate through some more challenging times and to sustain superior performance as we go into the future from here. I've been in this industry now for close to 50 years. I've been at Fairfax for 30 years. I'm not going anywhere quite yet. However, my good friend and partner of the last 36 years, Brian Young, is taking on a larger and larger share of the oversight responsibilities in Fairfax. Those of you who have followed Odyssey will know Brian took the helm in 2011. It's very clear that Brian is someone that knows how to make money in this business. And so, I think our future is very, very bright as we move forward from here. So let me turn the microphone over to my friend, Brian Young. Brian Young - President of Fairfax Insurance Group Thank you, Andy. I learned some big news a few minutes ago. Andy told me that he is going to be a grandfather for the third time. So big hand to Andy. I will cover the AI question (from earlier), the current market environment and our ability to generate an underwriting profit in the current environment. But first I want to highlight, as Peter mentioned, $1.82 billion of underwriting profit in 2025, fractionally higher than $1.79 billion in 2024. Combined ratio of 93%. Embedded in that was 4.8 points of CAT loss or the $1.2 billion, the biggest being the California wildfires in Q1. Within the 93%, we benefited from 2.9 points of favorable reserve development. And it's important to note that Fairfax has had 19 consecutive years of favorable reserve development for the last 2 decades. Our reserves have been a store of value. As you all know, all of our companies are really focused on disciplined underwriting and strong reserving. Prudent reserving is really foundational to disciplined underwriting. We have more than 30 operating companies. Nearly all of them equalled or exceeded expectations from an underwriting perspective in 2025. The small number that didn't – we weren't expecting them to make underwriting profits given the market circumstances that they faced. So, there were no negative surprises in any of our companies. I'd like to highlight a few standout performers, focused first on the big companies. Let's start with the most recent recipient of the Athappan Award, Allied World. Our largest insurance company generating record underwriting profit of $546 million – a fantastic result. Congratulations, Lou and to the team. I'm going to let Lou come up and tell us what the secret sauce is that's made Allied World so successful. The second company I'd like to highlight is last year's recipient of the Athappan Award, Northbridge. Silvy and team delivered the lowest combined ratio, at 88.3%, of all our big companies. In the last 4 out of 5 years, Northbridge has delivered a combined ratio below 90%. And Silvy will come up after Lou and give us an update on Northbridge. Turning to the international side. We generated $220 million of underwriting profit, more than double what we generated in 2024. The standout performers – Colonnade, Bryte and Singapore Re – all generated record underwriting profits. Singapore Re, headed by Philippe Mallier, had not only the lowest combined ratio on the international side, they had the lowest combined ratio of all of our companies at 77%. Well done, Philippe. Our premiums were $33.3 billion. It is slowing down. The market is getting more challenging, no doubt. And we have to exercise more discipline. We have to be more selective in the risks that we take. We have to focus on our line size deployment. But we still think there's opportunity out there in the market. The sectors of the business that are under the most pressure are the ones that have generated the most profit. So yes, the margins are shrinking, but we still think the margins are ok. When the margins are not there - when there is not that margin of safety we need to take on the volatility of insurance – then we're going to scale back. There's no pressure on any of our companies to write for top line growth. And I've experienced that at Odyssey working there for 28 years, leading it for 14 years, never did I or any of our people have any pressure to write for top line. On the question of AI, it's important in our decentralized structure, innovation comes from the ground. It can't be forced from the top down. And we've got 30-plus wonderful businesses. Everyone is focused. AI may well be very transformative. We're not at the cutting edge, and we don't really want to be at the cutting edge. We're where we think we need to be in the pack with the rest of the insurance industry. To understand and take advantage of the innovative things that we're doing at the company level, we formed an AI working group, across the Fairfax organization. We have more than 75 people participating in the working group. We have developed more than 100 use cases. We have a SharePoint site. If we develop a use case in a company in a certain part of the world, we can share that with the other companies through the forum, through the SharePoint site. In terms of the AI use cases, most of them have really been focused on improving process, doing things faster and smarter – trying to underwrite more business efficiently through the use of AI. Using AI to inform our underwriting decisions. Marc Adee (President of Crum and Forster) has used the phrase, and I think it's great, does AI bang the cash register, does it lower your loss ratio, does it lower your expense ratio? I would say right now we're not banging the cash register yet. With AI, we are able to underwrite more business using the tool than previously. Lowering the loss ratio, lowering the expense ratio in terms of the AI tools that we're using, that's really the focus. And I think lastly, it's really important to say, and Prem has emphasized it ad nauseam that AI will not cost us any jobs. We don't believe in laying off employees. Period. And that includes AI. If AI allows us to operate more efficiently then maybe the rate of growth in our employee count will slow down, which will help the expense ratio. But it won't come at the expense of people. Thank you. Now I would like to turn it over to Lou. Louis Iglesias - President of Allied World Thank you, Brian. Great to see everybody. It's good to see so many of you, I only get to see once a year and talk about our businesses here at Fairfax and at Allied. And it's also not every day that I feel like Allied World has won the Stanley Cup. So we're really proud of that as well. Brian mentioned our underwriting profit. We did have a record year last year on underwriting profit. We also had a high watermark on our net income. And I just want to recognize the investment group at Fairfax, who does a tremendous job on our portfolio. Having that type of net income really helps our cash flow and everything else. So, it's really, really good to see. We grew our company to $7.4 billion last year. And Brian talked about the market a bit. It is softening some. I would say it's getting a little bit more price competitive. But for those of you who've been with our industry for a long time, it's not a traditional soft market. We're not bottoming out. Terms and conditions are holding pretty well. Combined ratios don't have so much pressure on them, still manage the profitability. There are opportunities around the world to be able to get some growth. So we're not giving up on that because I think there are certainly some opportunities. What I wanted to talk about just for a couple of minutes is what are some of the things that we do to help us manage the cycle. We feel like we've built a company that could perform in all segments of the cycle. And in order for that to happen, we have to execute on many strategies every single day. The company has to be structured in a way to give us that ability. There are a couple of things in there. The first thing to talk about is the structure of having a very flat organization. You see that elsewhere in Fairfax. We have a very flat organization at Allied. We don't have many layers. So strategies and communication moves quickly. This gives us the opportunity to move fast in different marketplaces around the world. So as the markets change, we can change strategies. We can execute on those strategies. Our underwriters are at the desk since there's not lots of layers. They don't have to get multiple sign-offs to do their job to able to make a decision. We run with the mantra of hire really great people. And give them the authority and accountability to be able to get the job done. Additionally, we have product diversity – over 40 products. We are in 29 offices around the world – 11 countries and 4 continents. We're expanding our presence around the world geographically. So, the earnings stream is very diverse. And when we have that type of diverse earnings stream it really limits earnings volatility. So when the market starts to get a little bit tougher, it's really helpful to have different earnings streams because you may have to slow some down. If you're not getting the marketplace that you like in a certain product or a certain country, you're going to have to slow that down, but maybe there's an opportunity someplace else. So the diverse earnings stream is really very helpful. And I think you see that throughout Fairfax as well. The third thing that I would touch on is underwriting discipline. Underwriting discipline helps in every marketplace, whether it's a hard market, soft market in the middle. It's extremely important. It runs through every Fairfax company. It's part of the culture of Fairfax. Now what does that mean really? Our underwriters understand rate adequacy, they understand when they're negotiating a deal, where that rate crosses the line to not being enough for the exposure that they're taking on. When we run into that situation, we have the ability to say no. We say no a lot more than we say yes. But what we really prefer to do is to say, "No, we don't like the deal that way, but we do like it this other way. And we'll put a proposal out that works for us, and we hope works for the client. And we've been able to do business like that and sell deals like that fairly often, even in this marketplace when things are getting just a little bit softer. So that's been very helpful. Now nothing works without great people. And every year, I come up here, and I think I talk about how great the people are at Allied. We've had people with us for a very long period of time. They've seen all different cycles, so they understand how to manage in and through the different cycles. And we have a very low attrition rate at the company. So our people are really the key to making all the strategies work. And so for us, we're going to continue to do the things that we're good at. As the markets soften some, we're going to limit our mistakes so that when the market does get to a better place, we can do all the things that Andy talked about that we did a couple of years ago and not have any distractions. Thank you very much, everybody. Have a great day. Silvy Wright - President of Northbridge Financial Good morning, everyone. First, I'll start with a little confession to Lou. Northbridge employees wanted to do a Rory McIlroy (repeat as winners of the Athappan Cup), but we are happy that Allied World won this year. First a little perspective on Canada. Northbridge represents the Canadian insurance operations for Fairfax. With $3.4 billion in revenue, we're the third largest commercial insurer in Canada. We have a very good position - maybe a smaller fish at Fairfax but a bigger fish in this country. What are market conditions? What happened in '25, as Lou said, the price competition really started to ramp up. And we're starting to see competitors trying to buy business. And sorry, I apologize for being a broken record, but once again, we are not pressured to write premium at a loss. And so, in 2025, our employees did the right thing. They remained disciplined, not only in underwriting but claims and expense management. But equally important, we doubled down on really focusing on customer loyalty, customer service and customer safety. So not only be there when things go wrong, but we're trying to help our customers have safer operations. As a result, we did not grow in 2025. However, we did have a record year, as Brian noted. In 2026, it looks like the price competition continues and we will manage accordingly. Along with just being disciplined, we're also looking at building areas where we can grow when it's the right time to grow. For instance, increasing our lines on renewable energy in Canada. So just manage the market and then be ready to go when it's time. And one more comment. We talked about the culture many times and the beautiful word of being empowered not just at the president level, but throughout the company. I just wanted to share with you that our employees are like you, they're shareholders. Over 70% of our employees at Northbridge are shareholders. So not only are they empowered but they're owners in doing the right thing. Thank you. V. Watsa - Founder, Chairman & CEO Thank you very much Silvy. Peter, anything to add, final words, on the insurance industry? Peter Clarke - President & COO Sure. Just two quick things, Prem. And I mentioned in my remarks that we write $33 billion of premium across the world and that grew by 2.3% this year. It's interesting when you look at the international operations and how we benefit from diversification and scale. Bryte in South Africa grew 20% this year, Colonnade 18%, Asia was up 15% and Polish Re was up 15%. And so even though North America rates are coming down, we're maybe not growing as much, we have all these opportunities around the world. Secondly, I just have to comment that we have 2 cups in Fairfax. One is the Mr. Athappan Cup. And we also have a hockey game between the Fairfax head office and the Allied World Group, and unfortunately, now Allied owns both cups for this year and I have to say it did come into the evaluation process a bit, but we left that aside.