Xerxes

Here is the one of the last chapter that wraps everything up. This one last chapter is great read. I think Mongol history is required reading for anyone talking/opining about China and Russia.

A fantastic read. Or even re-read. So well written.

thanks the post. good to hear from him. Kind of funny that his kids own the very same stock that the grand dad would be shorting

indeed. looks like we didn’t get to see the good Admiral yet but we got Gandalf the White and imagery from the siege of mandalore.

On SAFRAN, I think they own the “cold section” vs. GE owning the high pressure “hot section” of the CFM/LEAP. So I am thinking perhaps SAFRAN owns the less complicated part compared to their partner. Relatively speaking.

respectfully disagree. What undid Rolls-Royce was a business decision nothing to do with their technological roadmap. In early 2010s, Rolls-Royce sold its equity ownership of the IAE to P&W, their joint venture for the V2500 engines. And soon after completely bowed out of the narrow body segment. Never to see it again. They self-selected to remove themselves from the most lucrative part of aviation propulsion, leaving the field to GE/SAFRAN and P&W. And forgo further investment. Rolls-Royce today has a dominant position on wide-bodies. But that won’t do them much good either sense the “centre of gravity” of what the market wants has been steadily moving toward larger narrow bodies and away from wide-bodies. Think going from A.380/B747/777 to A.350/B787 and now to A.321. Lastly Rolls-Royce did not have any scale. You need a conglomerate to be able to maintain the massive financial firepower. Sure, the technology and the maintenance requirement behind these engines can undo most companies. That is what makes them unique and hard to replicate and provide their moat. it is not hard to build an aircraft, but building engines, maintaining that MRO network is another matter. but it is not that technology that undid Rolls-Royce. It was its lack of scale and their business decision to abdicate further investment in the narrow body.

definitely not a high confidence buy but rather a I-need-to-plug-my-RRSP end of the year. the business is very straightforward (three businesses) vs (the pre-break up GE) but it is the product that is highly complex. And the scale of it is humbling. What makes you think that you won’t see similar blackswan on the LEAPs from SAFRAN/GE at some point. at the end of the day, the engines will be around just like the venerable V2500 that were introduced several decades ago. They need to bite the bullet and invest into h/w upgrades and get it right. No way around it. No half measures. ps: in 2020 the aerospace sector had a demand concern at large. Today the demand is there.

full disclosure i add this morning at $73 or so and increase my ownership by 35%. Probably dead money for a few years but I need to do a portion of my RRSP for the year. portfolio allocation is still around ~3% or so i considered this as critical infrastructure asset. The narrative upended by GTF (and for good reason) but there is more to it than that. The company will have a chance to show in late 2024, that I can generate cash in Collins and Raytheon and hopefully put in place an accelerated share repurchase once they got a good handle on the current concern issue.

i lol out loud hahahha

the 2016 one, which starts in midst of Arab spring in Cairo

Listening to webcast now for RTX. Don’t think share price is going to “run away” from here … I ll post anything I see interesting on AW

Amazon Prime has a spy show called “night manager”. It is fantastic. Based John Lecarre spy novels.

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/buffett-spurs-japan-activist-pioneer-to-seek-2-billion-for-fund-1.1969537.amp.html

I have never read a book written by Walter. Never got around it. Looks like he has written some heavy hitters, Including Steve Jobs, Einstein (I have a copy), and a book of Genetic coding “code breaker” (I have a copy) This is new podcast with Walter, Elon and Lex. I have not listen (yet) to it but thought some would be interested.

That is interesting. Ashoka Ep 5 specifically is being shown also in theatre. As well as Disney+. Too bad no Canadian location. Non SW fans and it-is-cool-to-complain-about-Disney will of course find a way to complain about this. https://www.sportskeeda.com/amp/pop-culture/complete-list-u-s-theaters-showing-ahsoka-episode-5-full-roster Boston, MA - AMC Assembly Row 12, September 12 at 8:00 pm Chicago, IL - AMC Showplace Village Crossing 18, September 12 at 7:00 pm Dallas, TX - AMC NorthPark 15 IMAX, September 12 at 7:00 pm Los Angeles, CA - AMC The Grove 14, September 12 at 5:00 pm New York, NY - AMC Empire 25 IMAX, September 12 at 8:00 pm Orlando, FL - AMC Disney Spth ings 24 with Dine-in Theaters, September 12 at 8:00 pm Philadelphia, PA - AMC Neshaminy 24, September 12 at 8:00 pm San Francisco, CA - AMC Bay Street 16, September 12 at 5:00pm Seattle, WA - AMC Loews Alderwood Mall 16, September 12 at 5:00 pm Washington, DC - AMC Tysons Corner 16, September 12 at 8:00 pm

SW at its best !!! Ep 4 was truly thrilling. I had no idea what was unfolding as it was unfolding. R. Stevensen (RIP) .. what a champ !

I for one had a good laugh. And yes, you live by the sword, you die by the sword. Fair game. That said, a sitting prime minister should not be making these types of jokes.

I am very happy about this. if IIRC this will allow current RBC Direct Investing to be able to buy global securities (in foreign denominated currencies) and vis versa allow HSBC Canada clientele to benefit from RBC distribution and network.

Thanks. @Castanza for the write up. I just didn’t have the energy to argue … And also thanks for showing me an interesting podcast to add in to my repertoire. Hopefully is subscription free That said i feel when it comes to history it is best digested through reading +500 pages books. That is how context and depths seeps in. For me anyways. But podcast have come a long way too in terms of quality and but usually it is a function of how good is the host in seeping that depth to the listeners in a way that sticks.

nope. The Mongols razed cities to the ground only when a choice was given and the enemy refused to surrender. It is not consolation to the victims but it is factual. There is no record of any city that razed and pillaged when they surrendered. Religious freedom was the norm under the Mongol yoke. Your information on European resistance is incorrect. European were saved by the death of the Great Khan. European were in any position to defend had Subotai had not turned back. Also later on future European campaigns by the mongols were put on hold, because Mongke Khan (fourth in line on the imperial throne) owed his sceptre to the help of ruling Khan of the Golden Horde. So an understanding developed whereby the Golden Horde would be semi autonomous from the imperial throne so when decree from Mongke came to wage war and expand the empire, those campaign were waged by his two brothers against Middle East and Sung China —- and not Europe as that was seen to be “Golden Horde” jurisdiction. His two brother being Hologu Khan, founder of Ilkhan, and Kublai Khan, the future Great Khan. in fact the only Westerner that ever got close to get the Wrath of Khan is William Shatner.

@Parsad for the uninitiated, who is Kyle ?

it is like my backyard, I have trees and weeds slowly creeping over the past 10 years since I bought it. last month, I compared a picture from 10 years ago. I was like holy shit. It is of course unplanned by the mother nature. The forest is not conspiring against me. Just taking its natural course of creeping toward my house. but I finally drew a red line and clear everything out. The forest may not know the boundary of my backyard, but I do.

BTW. Pax Roman was centuries before Pax Tartar. Italians today may fancy themselves as descendants of Roman but not to me. Roman history was not inherited by a single modern nation. Rather by the West & Eastern Europe at large. German emperors crown themselves with the Imperial crown, to put themselves ahead of Kings. Moscow saw itself as the Third Rome. Mehumd the Conqueror was styled as Kaiser-of-Rum Etc etc. Mongols were different. Today’ Mongolia is the cultural/historical heir to Genghiz Khan and his legacy. Even though there is not much about modern Mongolia. Same for the British or the Persians.

Pax Tartar indeed unified euroasian mass continent for a short while boosted trade between regions Unfortunately Western and middle eastern history taught at school focuses on one thing about mongols : the ferocity of their wrath and the path destruction they left behind to those who oppose them. from a military point of view, the Mongols were waging Napoleonic wars at gargantuan scale 500 years before European learned maneuver large mass armies. Pre-Napoleon (and Frederick the Great), European ran army levies aimed at taking towns and cities. Napoleon changed all that. He destroyed armies in the field and got the cities through peace treaties and negotiation. I highly recommend for folks to read up on the Mongols. It is an incredible history. Even the Chinese pay homage to Kublai Khan as the Chinese Emperor who unified China. Pre-Mongols, China was made several different nations. On Russia, the Golden Horde was the longest lasting Khanate, and its prints are all over Russia. Crimea was the last stronghold of the descendants of the ruling Khans of Golden Horde. The IlKhans in the Middle East changed the course of history. But eventually like the Mongols in China they were back-assimilated by Persians. Europe got lucky. Was saved by the untimely death of Otagi Kakhan, which required the armies of Subtai and Batu to close their European campaign and head back to Mongolia to elect a new Great Khan. That allowed Europe to leap ahead for the next several centuries. A fact unknown to most Westerners.

I am about to finish my reading on the Mongol Empire. It is a book that I read more than 15 years ago and re-reading again as I thought it was such a fantastic book. So well written and a must read as part of Chinese, Russian and middle eastern history. The book among many different themes cover the rise and fall of the Golden Horde of the royal line of Juji. He was Gengiz’ eldest son who established his dynasty in what is today Russia. Over centuries that semiautonomous fiefdom held sway in Western Asia but eventually succumbed to death by a thousand cuts as the world changed and a new power (Muscovy) rose. First as subjects of the Khans, than eating at the edges than swallowing their former master whole. Sure NATO expansion to East, there was no grand conspiracy behind it. It was done slowly mostly at the behest of countries that wanted to have a new start. There was no grand directional desire to mess things up. But the upshot of that gradual unplanned attrition was that the now incumbent power in the East was getting killed by a thousand cuts. A thousand unplanned cuts from a Western point of view, (and I believe that to be the case) but a thousand planned cuts from Moscow point of view, when the same person is viewing the changing landscape from the Kremlin over the decades, and the gradual relative decline.