Liberty

I don't think that even requires any pathological condition. Just to be removed enough from the situation by distance (emotional and geographical). People do a lot of things indirectly that they wouldn't do directly. Drone operators blowing people up from halfway around the world, but they wouldn't knife them in the heart if the very same people were tied up on a chair in front of them. Doesn't make them psychopaths or NPDs, just human.

Yes, if they're causing harm, certainly. btw, I don't know how accurate these types of studies are and what the actual ratio is, but I wouldn't be surprised if the percentage was higher than in the general population. Not all psychopaths are antisocial. Interesting read: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-neuroscientist-who-discovered-he-was-a-psychopath-180947814/

I think on a collective level, just being aware of these things will help. We have certain expectations from "normal" people that fail with these types of personalities. Normal people can't help but show signs of shame in certain situations, and evolutionarily, it's a pretty good way to detect when someone has been caught. But the NPD might not show any and fool this "detector". Most normal people don't constantly lie without apparent motivation, so we don't constantly scrutinize everything they say, which means that the NPD's lies can be believed because "why would someone lie about this?", most people can't fake confidence that well while NPDs live in a state of perpetual over-confidence, etc. It's kind of like when you know what an abusive relationship looks like (or even the recent mainstreaming of discussing what sexual harassement is and what can be done about it), it's easier to recognize the signs and avoid it (not 100% of the time, but certainly easier than if you have no idea and can't do any pattern matching). I think maybe if knowledge about these types of personalities was more widespread, they'd have a harder time fooling people. I'm certainly surprised that there's no been more discussions of them in the media considering... Maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part, though. The internet certainly gives a wider playground and more narcissistic supply to the NPD, but hopefully it also makes it easier to spread the information that will help counter him/her over time. In other words, maybe there will be a kind of immune reaction, antigens will be created, and over time, a societal adaptation will take place.

I feels like the whole planet has been getting a crash course in NPD these past couple years. I thought I'd link a few ressources here for those who have been learning along but didn't realize that this was a known pathology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder To understand the condition, the concept of "narcissistic supply" must be understood: https://www.healthyplace.com/personality-disorders/malignant-self-love/narcissists-narcissistic-supply-and-sources-of-supply https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/narcissistic-personality-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20366662 (I know some posters here will try to make this about politics, but I have no interest in discussing that here. I think the psychology itself is interesting and, if better understood by more people, maybe we wouldn't collectively fall as easily for the tricks employed by narcissists to gather their supply.)

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/08/20/how-bill-browder-became-russias-most-wanted-man

I think it's pretty far from Instagram (one of the all-time greats), but it was a good deal.

Sure, but buying Amazon isn't really a way to get exposure to esports, right? A billion is chump change considering the market cap of Amazon. Even if Twitch is worth $50 billion now that would hardly be significant. I didn't say it was a good way to get direct exposure to it, but it certainly was a good investment for Amazon, and when in 20 years esports is multiples of what it is now, that 1 billion will probably have had a very nice IRR.

Amazon's Twitch purchase for a billion has positioned them well.

Book coming out soon about self-driving technology. There's an excerpt here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/late-to-the-driverless-revolution-1534520404 On Amazon: https://www.amazon.ca/Autonomy-Quest-Driverless-Car-Reshape/dp/0062661124/

Details are starting to come out about Michael Lewis' next book, coming in October: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1324002646/

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-14/john-malone-the-cable-cowboy-isn-t-ready-to-hang-up-his-spurs

If you're looking for a good film, I recommend this one about James Randi, an expert magician who became a debunker of charlatans of all kinds. I found it quite fascinating, and there's a lot in there that was amazing seeing with my own eyes rather than just reading about it as a quick anecdote somewhere (wait until you see Project Alpha!). https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2246565/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Honest_Liar Places where you can get it from: https://www.amazon.com/Honest-Liar-James-Amazing-Randi/dp/B00Z9QEZ5Q https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/an-honest-liar/id996270491

Finished reading it during the weekend. Good book. I gave it a B+ in my notes.

https://www.aqr.com/Insights/Perspectives/Our-Hat-into-the-Podcasting-Ring I thought this might interest some here. I haven't had a chance to listen yet, but AQR is a factor/quant shop, so this might bring a different perspective to the value investors here. Always good to broaden your horizons, even if you don't end up using the info directly. Direct link: https://www.aqr.com/Insights/Podcasts First episode: https://www.aqr.com/Insights/Podcasts/The-Curious-Investor/Season-One/Face-the-Factors The hosts are Dan Villalon and Gabe Feghali.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2018/08/06/new-details-about-wilbur-rosss-businesses-point-to-pattern-of-grifting/

You're welcome, LC!

https://blog.openai.com/openai-five-benchmark-results/ "Yesterday, OpenAI Five won a best-of-three against a team of 99.95th percentile Dota players: Blitz, Cap, Fogged, Merlini, and MoonMeander — four of whom have played Dota professionally — in front of a live audience and 100,000 concurrent livestream viewers." https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/08/elon-musks-dota-2-bots-spank-top-tier-humans-and-they-know-how-to-trash-talk/ "OpenAI is using 128,000 cores on Google's Cloud Platform. The bots learn the game from scratch: initial versions will just wander aimlessly and at random as the game plays itself out. As thousands upon thousands of games are played, it figures out which actions will improve its chance of winning."

Glad you found it interesting, John. I agree that it's not quite the same mold as some of the other Dirty Money episodes, but I think that this was more than counter-balanced by the fact that this is the president of the US. Some other guys in other episodes might have stolen maple syrup or committed fraud on small loans and that's sleazy, or cheated on diesel emission tests that hurt the health of millions, and that's really bad, but this man not being what most of his voters think he is is on another scale when it comes to world impact.

I'm about 2/3 of the way through Bad Blood, and it's pretty amazing just how much of a fraud Theranos was from the start and how much of a con woman Holmes was. Really sleazy stuff, especially considering it touched healthcare. Also less in the spotlight, but just as guilty seems to be exec Sunny Balwami, who seems to have enabled and encouraged the whole thing from the start.

I'd be interested in having a look. I've been testing various alternatives and have looked at a few that are in development.

Yeah. I think Putin is probably putting a lot of pressure behind the scenes...

Feature about Gwynne Shotwell of SpaceX: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-07-26/she-launches-spaceships-sells-rockets-and-deals-with-elon-musk

This is how real stories are pulled apart by people like Alex Jones and his conspiracy theorists. Someone's describing a complex thing as best as they can with only a few details, people try to picture that in their head (sometimes the wrong way, because maybe the car couldn't move forward very fast because of traffic/pedestrians crossing, maybe they got in from driver side or passenger side, maybe the parked cars we spaced wide apart with lots of space, maybe if you saw a photo of the street where it happened it would completely change your mental picture, maybe she's assuming things about the others in the group - ie. why they didn't see, but in fact they were just distracted and not expecting this -, or other important details that weren't included or even noticed by the person, etc) and it doesn't quite work in their mental picture built on sparse details from a witness's memory (which we know isn't like a photo or video when it comes to details, even if what they describe actually happened), so they call BS. I'm still in the "I don't know, but probably" camp. Equating my skepticism to a man who creates his own news (he simply makes stuff up) is interesting. You ask people to believe a story online from some random anonymous person, but don't believe another guy doing the exact same thing. I'll just write it how I see it: I don't believe the news story until I've read perspectives from both sides of the aisle (I read the WSJ, WaPo, NYT, National Post, G&M, etc.). We all believe stories that fit our personal narrative. As an example, you simply wrote Alex Jones' name in responding to my comment to dismiss my skepticism. I wouldn't say you're in the "I don't know, but probably" camp due to the dismissive nature of your comment. I am in the "it didn't happen, but made a good story to get a lot of Reddit followers" camp. I didn't go on and on explaining my skepticism, but it seems interesting that the narrator wrote about talking to the bouncer after the incident about cameras at the club, and the fact there were parked cars, etc., knew that the bouncer talked to the manager of the club, yet, after gathering all the facts, she both still had time to leave a scene of the crime before the police arrived and chose to, given, in literally any city in North America a large number of police officers would be due to the large gathering of inebriated people. Usually I don't believe what's written by random anonymous people online. I think it's usually best. I won't be posting on this topic further, but look forward to your insights on CSU and other investment ideas in the future, Liberty (insights which I respect and appreciate for that matter). Good day. To be clear, I didn't equate what you wrote with Alex Jones. I said it's a tactic used by conspiracy theorists, and it's the first name that comes to mind when I think about these guys. Jones does a lot more than just use that tactic. It's like when some woman accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in a plane years ago (I know, now people will get on my case for mentioning Trump again -- but it's the availability bias, a lot of the craziest stories in the past couple years have had to do with him, so it's fresh in memory, and most people have followed them, so they know what I'm talking about without having to give a thousand details). She mentioned him raising the armrest in the seat. Then the crowd dug up details of plane seats in those years and found that the seat might not have had a retractable armrest, so they said her story was obviously untrue because of it and she was making it up. I'm pointing out that knowledge of how human psychology and memory works means that these types of details - missing details, or present details that are wrong - don't make stories untrue. Everybody is trying to have a "gotcha" with some minor detail like it's some episode of CSI or whatever, but our brains (mine and yours too) remember the big things that stand out and fill in lots of other small details, or create narratives from fragmented details because "it has to have happened something like this to make sense". If you spend a lot of your life sitting in certain types of airplanes seats, you'll probably fill in the detail that the seat at the time was like that, or just get it wrong. It doesn't mean that someone grabbing your breasts and putting his hand up your skirt wasn't something you'd remember on a different level than the kind of seat you were sitting in. I think the same applies with a lot of these stories. It's fine for you not to believe it. I'm just pointing out that the way you described it not being credible (imagining it exactly as only the details that were used in the telling and seeing mechanical challenges with it) has some flaws. I know mentioning Jones probably shut down thinking because it creates an emotional response, so it probably wasn't a wise choice, but I think my points about witness accounts stand. The anonymous account was created on July 28 to post that story and only has posted three comments ever. I think it's a throwaway account that might not be used again. Not much to gain, here. Someone else mentioned the yellow license plate. Ever thought that maybe guys who were going to do a kidnapping unscrewed the real license plate, put in a fake one for their drive, and then swapped them again? Or who knows, just saying that reality is always full of unexpected things like this and finding a weird thing in a story doesn't make it untrue. That's why we often hear something along the lines of "if this had happened in a movie, it wouldn't seem credible" after a real event. Cheers.

John Malone interview in the Irish Times: https://www.irishtimes.com/business/media-and-marketing/i-love-the-place-us-billionaire-john-malone-on-his-300m-irish-portfolio-1.3578321

This is how real stories are pulled apart by people like Alex Jones and his conspiracy theorists. Someone's describing a complex thing as best as they can with only a few details, people try to picture that in their head (sometimes the wrong way, because maybe the car couldn't move forward very fast because of traffic/pedestrians crossing, maybe they got in from driver side or passenger side, maybe the parked cars we spaced wide apart with lots of space, maybe if you saw a photo of the street where it happened it would completely change your mental picture, maybe she's assuming things about the others in the group - ie. why they didn't see, but in fact they were just distracted and not expecting this -, or other important details that weren't included or even noticed by the person, etc) and it doesn't quite work in their mental picture built on sparse details from a witness's memory (which we know isn't like a photo or video when it comes to details, even if what they describe actually happened), so they call BS. I'm still in the "I don't know, but probably" camp.