Xerxes

I watch all of its … twice. HBO double down on the bull market on mafia genre. I don’t remember what is season 5, but I do recall one thing that was off. Chucky losing his empire literally overnight because show writers decided so. It didn’t flow well I thought.

Yeah Sopranos and The Wire and who can forget “24”. Damn good times. fun fact about the main actor playing Sopranos (James G.)(RIP): HBO apparently paid him to not work on any project after the conclusion of Sopranos series. In order not to dilute his character brand, given how much he was associated with that face.

Seinfeld and Cheers defined the 90s for me Games of Thrones defined the 2010s for me. 2020s there is no flagship. Just one giant pile of good shows.

thanks. looks like I need to look into The Raid

Strange. On the CNBC interview, both CEOs alluded to the fact that Chevron has a dividend yield of 6%. Wirth said “twice there nearest peer” wierd. Chevron dividend yield is at +3%

But it is not just capacity and tech capability. It is needs to be part of their (I.e. PLA) military doctrine. And be sure that you will have an incumbent military industrial complex that will be protecting its “turf” and tell you that “no no. You got this all wrong. The future war will be like this … “ often times, desperation will be source of military innovation. And again I don’t mean the technology in of itself, rather how it is used. To my knowledge PLA has not fought in any wars since the mid-80s. They updated their peasant army’ military doctrine with some “Powell” update in the early 90s. That is about it. No real conflict

Cheers ! U.S.S Attu much like most of those +70 escort carriers that survived were literally un-made few years after being commissioned. Think of all that supply glut of metal hitting the market post-WW2. J. Powell would have been right if he was serving in the late 40s !! The inflation was “transitory” Interestingly, there was one escort carrier (the only one ever) that was shelled and sank by a battleship. From the history books. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Gambier_Bay —- Funny enough it was ultimately NOT the Japanese that dawned the age of aircraft carrier nor the Americans who perfected it. It was actually the British who used aircraft carriers against the Italian naval assets sitting in their port in the Mediterranean in 1940 and scored. Not many folks took notice except for Yamamoto. Fast forward to today, we see a proliferation of drones. I think if we look back while we might see Ukraine as the east European theatre that really pushed the envelope on unmanned drones and put it on our TV screen, it was I think truly discovered during the 2020 Azerbaijani-Armenian war, with the former decimating the enemy and rewriting military handbooks as it went. But there was no Yamamoto watching that conflict. Russia did not notice nor did Ukraine, at that moment. Russia was blinded by its gigantic legacy military-industrial complex and all its vested interest and all of its inertia. And Ukraine was not thinking the unthinkable yet.

pre-1941: 6 aircraft carriers (Wasp, Hornet, Enterprise, Lexington, Saratoga + Yorktown). three were based in the Pacific and three were based in the Atlantic. I know their names by heart, but slowly forget how they met their end. USS Lexington would be Coral Sea, and USS Yorktown would be Midway. The rest I remember no longer. by 1945, there ~30 Essex-class, ~25 Independence-class + 70+ escort carriers

Not to start a political thread, but I read this Obituary and I found it fascinating. How wars, partition, macro events touches random bystanders and shape their lives till the very end. This would be more of a legal case, than anything else but an interesting story.

The analyst is hedging his optimism. Just to be sure, just in case … Maybe much like his own nemesis (Watsa) he is going to end up hedging his ”book” for a decade. The 2020s will known as “Brett’ Lost Decade”

Luca i think you might enjoy this episode. Peter Keefe talks about his top three positions (decade(s) old holdings) in about 45 min into the episode. The top three (Microsoft, Markel and American Tower) are very different holdings and different history of how he got into them. There are lots of lore on American Tower. At is pertains this thread and “driving FFH to the wall comment” by @StubbleJumper, Peter’s view on Markel is interesting. Calls insurance not a very good business and that he is only there because of the management as capital allocator.

And they even pay you $10 USD per share per annum for sticking around in the bar or the lobby waiting !

“Gangs of London” had also good reviews

Bosch Season 2 is back on Prime !!

Maybe MotleyFool should call them “Seeking Beta (gross of fees)”

Is this legal ? Defaming other businesses seem like a low blow fool = Fool ? “Foolproof” you portfolio !

I thought we were stopping discussions on ME. In any case, the OSIntel Twitter guy seem to be good reference to follow. Too bad he wasn’t around in 2003. Collin Powell could have used a second set of eyes. also don’t know how dedicated he is in continuity and not selective participation on what he feels like covering (personal biases). Not sure if he did any work on gas pipeline “incident” in the Baltics … or the aftermath of “Russian” missile hitting Poland.

Agreed. They are ALL full of it. Moving on …. Putin was recently holding court in a televised 3 hr discussion (incidentally and unrelated in it he said, he likes Canadians*). In it, he made it clear how nukes are off table as the State is not threaten etc etc. however he is opening door for atomic tests. Not a direct quote. * I liked that part In parallel, there are talks (growing talks) about using Russian central bank reserve that are in the West to finance Ukraine rebuilt, such act was previously considered as sacrosanct. To me it seems to be we are in holding pattern waiting for the next “step change” in terms of which Rubicon being crossed, and how to answer.

Not only US, but Canadian citizens were kidnapped (and killed) as well by Hamas. That said we also have US and Canadian citizens (probably) that are in Gaza at the receiving end of freedom-fireworks. I don’t see anything in particular about the US aircraft carrier battle group. Right or wrong, it is in line with US historical alignment with Israel. Fareed Z. had two great podcasts one on CNN and one on Prof G. I highly recommend folks to listen to those. To me it is becoming more and more clear how Natan-yahoo and his government in their bid to split the Palestinians and expand settlement in the West Bank, have been following a policy of upholding Hamas while marginalizing the ruling PA (Palestinian Authority) in the West Bank. Hamas has been an asset of some sort (for lack of better word), showcasing PA impotence and undermining its leadership. The final piece would have been the Saudi peace treaty. In short, he has tried to tame and use a serpent as leverage, instead he got bitten. https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-prof-g-pod-with-scott-galloway/id1498802610?i=1000631061670 https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/fareed-zakaria-gps/id377785090?i=1000631380057

Yeap. FIFO it is

Ignore Dalio anybody who write a book called “Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order” is worth ignoring. I cannot stand people putting frameworks, and/or oversimplify geopolitical events into good/bad guys. there is no “nutshelling” when discussing these matters. For what it is worth

Enjoy ! just the way it is written reads like a novel. And the author brings the story full circle to the Romanov, Ming and Manchu dynasties, as heirs to the empire.

@Dinar What Arabs did or did not centuries ago is irrelevant to the situation to Gaza. If I were to follow your logic then there should be no white men left alive in South Africa. Because that is not their land. How do you square that ? I hope you don’t think Arab are also responsible for Spanish Inquisition. Hamas is a terrorist organization that feeds on chaos. But whether a Gazaian person who has been bottled up for decades in Gaza has some sympathy for Gaza, as the entity that gives the middle finger, while the rest of Arab world have “moved on” does not mean that person is a Hamas terrorist. No different than an Israeli, who has had it with Arabs and Muslims, who may feel a great sense of excitement and joy seeing the Arabs humiliated. One thing is clear, the attack was so outrageous and so over-the-top that it was meant to be like throwing a grenade in a middle of a party, aimed at getting a significant reaction. The war will not expand. Hezbollah might fire a few firecrackers in sympathy, and the American will blow their horn from their aircraft carrier in sympathy. Every player in the Middle East, whether they are state or non-state actors have a lot of levers. But each of those levers are always major “step change”. Hamas has used its one-time lever, knowing that it would be a “step change” and that it can do that only once. Hizbollah is not going to use any levers (I don’t think) because Lebanon and its base of power is not threaten.

Once you gave the “the last supper” speech of ‘less business going forward so consolidate’, right after the fall of Soviet Union. That base dissipated. That industrial base will take decades to be rebuilt. One of the reason why Bank of America and other analysts are harping on Boeing, is due to the fact that it may lose its engineering force through attrition. Sure from a short-term shareholder point of view, what Boeing is doing is great. Get that juice into FCF (for returns) and less Capex and capital investment. See what happened to McDonnell Douglas. Given the level of concentration in the defence industry, we are at the level that major programs are not just awarded based on cost, performance, specs etc but also knowing that if X wins and Y loses, the loser will just move away and will not be there to bid and keep competition for the next round.