JAK

Getting my quota of whiskey in while back in the home country (Ireland).

Merry Christmas to one and all !! Hope Santa was good !

Rest in Peace Charlie. You'll be sorely missed. So many learned so much from you! Was hoping he would make it to 100, my grandmother passed away a few months short of her 100th as well. Kind of strange, but considered Warren and Charlie as wise old grandparents in a way. Dispensing wisdom from their armchairs. Grew up listening to them, and learned as much about life from them as I did about investing. Never made it to Omaha, but sent him a thank you letter last year. Didn't get a response, but very happy that I sent it now that he's gone. "The best armour of old age is a well-spent life preceding it." "The best thing a human being can do is to help another human being know more."

Yeah, I’m big on audio also .. found Skunk Works on Audible.fr ! Agree on Acquired, well worth a listen.

On the back of the Acquired podcast on LMT, I recently started reading Skunk Works by Ben Rich. Oldie, but very interesting read. Noting here in case anyone’s interested.

I stocked up on a bunch of that last year fearing it would be impossible to get. Then, last week I walk into my local wine store in a suburb of Paris, and randomly, they suddenly have Beluga, when they didn't have it previously... owner said no issue with supply either, which kind of puzzles me. Thought imports would've been blocked, and the store doesn't strike me as the back channel kind of place.

Circuits / HIIT are pretty efficient if you are stuck for time. Though not sure if they work if you are also stuck for energy. Got these two from my trainer once (they take longer than 10 minutes, but sharing the concept, as you could adjust if you like the idea). Deck of Cards: Assign a bodyweight exercise to each suit in a pack of cards (e.g. lunges, squats, mountain climbers, crunches). Pick cards from the deck. Do the number of reps of the matching exercise. Face cards count as 10. Aces are 1 or 11 depending on fitness. Jokers are a 30 second break. 50 Club: Pick a weight that you can lift 12 times in a set, no more. Try to hit 50 reps for that exercise in as few sets as possible. If you go over 12 in a set, the extra don't count, and you need to increase the weight next time. Rest no more than about 30 seconds in-between sets. Don't decrease the weights, even if you drop to 4-5 reps per set. Start with one exercise, do the cycle of 50, then move onto the next. Adjust number of exercises depending on time requirement. Example full session shown below. Db thruster Bodyweight skull crusher Db bent over row Dumbbell curl + press Db overhead tricep extension Db calf raise

I remember reading about this before I visited Beijing. The history buff in me wanted to cry... Until the 1950s/1960s, Beijing had one of the World's largest and best preserved examples of fortified city walls. This was a series of walls outside the Forbidden City. The British etc. had made a few holes to make way for railroads, and some were damaged in relatively recent rebellions. However, the walls and towers were still standing for the most part. Unfortunately, the powers that be wanted to modernise asap, and also build an underground metro to double as a bunker, and the quickest way to do that was to just knock down the walls and build the ring roads, metros, sewers etc. where they stood. So only a tiny segment of what the walls remain. By contrast, places like Xian or Pingyao, where there was less paranoia / urgency still have their (amazing!) walls.

In Shanghai at the moment. Been a bunch of times, but this is the first time since 2018, and the change in cars on the road astounded me. Firstly, the iconic VW Santana taxis seem to have been completely replaced by Roewe EVs. Secondly, EVs seems to be a double digit percentage of the cars on the road now. Impressive, although potentially biased in Shanghai as local license plates are costly and restricted unless EV. Puzzled by affordability of car ownership here though.. Walked around the car park of a midrange apartment building and counted 5 Teslas, bunch of Chinese EVs, BMW, Porsche, Lexus… cars seem more high-end than an equivalent neighbourhood in Paris. Is it all debt-funded status symboling? Or is it a sort of survivorship bias i.e. you don’t see the bangers, because the people who would drive a banger in the West, drive a scooter here?

Nice, this might have solved a problem for me actually. Needed a copy of something from a site that’s down for work, and Google cache doesn’t store images. On the FT issue.. a way around lots of paywall sites is to Google the title of the article in Cognito mode. No cookies and the native search hit is accessible… Sometimes you might need to delete cookies on Chrome anyway, but I’d say 90% of the time, you don’t. Doesn’t work on all paywalls, but it works on enough!

I would add that it is almost as important to think about, and remember what you read, as it is to read. So quantity while impressive, is a bit of a waste if you don't retain it. Maybe its age, but I find there's lots of things that strike you as interesting, and you think you will later remember so you don't note them down, but you don't actually remember... During Covid, I read 52 books in one year (fiction and non-fiction). The next year, I settled for 26. Lots were audiobooks, so I guess 2X speed and doing housework didn't help. However, going through my list on Goodreads, there are some, where if you offered me $1 million to write a 1 pager on them, I would probably struggle to get out more than a few lines... So I would definitely recommend active notetaking, I use Notion as its on phone and pc, so accessible and with me all the time, and searchable (as opposed to scribbles in the margin of hardback). However, it does slow down the reading process a lot... hard to take notes on audible, while also doing the dishes.. On the upside, you can reread your personalised notes (more meaningful to you than sparknotes), instead of rereading an entire book if you need a refresher.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!

This is exactly what happened my Dad. He got Covid, recovered, then a few weeks later went down with a serious illness. Liver function tests off the charts, no energy, could barely walk a hundred meters without needing a rest (when he is fit as a fiddle usually). Negative for Covid. Doctors flummoxed for weeks, and no change in symptoms. They finally did some edge case screening tests, and determined it was a couple of viruses, can't remember the name, which most of us have, and which don't cause trouble 99.999% of the time, unless you have severe immune problems or are on immunosuppressant pills because of a transplant, neither of which were applicable in his case. Seems Covid caused his immunity to drop so low that these viruses were able to kick in somehow. Thankfully he recovered. However, had he not, I guess that would not count as a Covid case.

Based on this suggestion, I searched Amazon France for "How We Decide". Picked up a pristine used hardback for $10, compared with $30 on the US site. Not sure about import taxes, but thought I'd mention it in case anyone is looking for one. Only two chapters in, but I like it so far. Good call! Thanks!

HSW down about 25% since August. Did the summer not live up to market expectations?