bob retweeted
I read Buffett & Munger Unscripted by Alex W. Morris on the way to Omaha
It's one of the best investing books I've read.
Here are the most important lessons:
bob retweeted
This is what reading actually does to you:
โThose of us who have been true readers all our life seldom fully realize the enormous extension of our being which we owe to authors. We realize it best when we talk with an unliterary friend. He may be full of goodness and good sense but he inhabits a tiny world. In it, we should be suffocated. The man who is contented to be only himself, and therefore less a self, is in prison. My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of others. Reality, even seen through the eyes of many, is not enough. I will see what others have invented. Even the eyes of all humanity are not enough. I regret that the brutes cannot write books. โฆ Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality. There are mass emotions which heal the wound; but they destroy the privilege. In them our separate selves are pooled and we sink back into sub-individuality. But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like a night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.โ
โ C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism
If you enjoy our posts, consider becoming a paid subscriber. You'll get:
- Live book club discussions (biweekly)
- Access to our incredible community chat
- Essays to guide you through the Great Books
- All past recordings, essays, and podcasts
- The ability to vote on what we read next
Join here: athenaeumbooks.com/subscribe
bob retweeted
Once again, I bestow upon yโallโฆ my late Grandpaโs Terlingua Chili Recipe.
He spent literally decades perfecting this recipe, it was his pride and joy.
Follow the instructions to the letter.
(then add beans)
bob retweeted
You cannot reason with people who do not accept objective reality. Woke Democrats have repeatedly shown they think they can redefine words based on their emotions of the day. If we canโt agree on basic definitions of words, thereโs no point in arguing.
bob retweeted
Just returned from the Annapolis Sailboat Show. Hereโs the good, the bad, and the ugly.
The good: A fantastic weekend. Iโm preparing my Tanton 43 for a serious ocean voyage, and the best part was having real experts at the booths who could answer tough technical questions.
The people, yachts, and setting were excellent. The rest was depressing.
Iโve attended this show since the โ90s, and it keeps shrinking. Itโs still substantial, with specialists in almost every field, but the depth of competition is disappearing.
Only three diesel manufacturers had dedicated booths. Major names like Volvo Penta and Westerbeke were absent. My favorite, Beta Marine, displayed four engines, but hardly its full lineup.
Mercury and Suzuki were missing, too, although new electric outboard brands showed up.
The clientele looked far wealthier than 30 years ago. The middle class has either left sailing or can no longer afford major upgrades to aging boats.
The ugly: Sailboat sales are tanking.
Of the 40,000+ new boats sold in the wealthiest country on Earth last year, fewer than 400 were sailboats.
Used prices are collapsing, too. Weeks ago I shared one of my five dream yachts, now listed for $89,000. A few years back it would have commanded hundreds of thousands.
Iโve seen gorgeous, well-maintained bluewater yachts from the โ70s through โ90s for $20,000โ$30,000, and newer yachts from the 2000s and 2010s for $60,000โ$80,000 if you know where to look.
Why? Insurance restrictions, marinas filled by the COVID buying boom, rising costs, and fewer people with time to learn to sail.
Those with spare time increasingly prefer turning a key on a powerboat and going.
Catamarans are propping up the market, but insurance and dockage for that beam are outrageous. With two big engines and tiny sails, many feel more like powerboats with masts.
But the deeper problem is design. Everything looks dated. We are LONG overdue for a revolution.
1960s: Fiberglass transforms boatbuilding.
1970s: Robert Perry and others develop capable new offshore hulls.
1980s: Taiwanese yards deliver gorgeous teak interiors and craftsmanship.
1990s: Racing innovations make cruising boats faster.
2000s: Wide sterns create generous deck space.
2010s: Lighter interiors and large windows make boats faster, brighter, roomier.
Since then? Precious little.
I remember visiting Disney in the โ90s in our Ford Taurus. Its rounded windows and digital dashboard felt futuristic, but Tomorrowland looked decades old.
My dad called it โthe future from the โ70s.โ
Thatโs exactly how this boat show felt.
Even multimillion-dollar Swans and Oysters had rounded edges, ugly oversized windows, and millennial-gray interiors. Giant screens and TVs everywhere, as if we go sailing for MORE screen time.
Those windows were exciting 15 years ago. Now LEDs can brighten a cabin without turning it into a glass box.
Who wants to spend a million dollars on a floating Hilton Home2 Suites?
I boarded a $2.5 million yacht with flimsy plastic hatches that looked ready to blow out in the first 20-foot wave. When I challenged the salesman, he lectured me about eco-friendly materials and saving diesel through weight reduction. ๐
Give us fast, computer-designed hulls, not cost-cutting eco-trash dressed up in six shades of gray.
The cure is simple: Use modern engineering to build boats that are rugged, fast, and classically beautiful.
We donโt want plastic. We want brass. Figure out how to 3D-print it.
We donโt want an iPad holder. Give us a proper place for a sextant.
We donโt want a 60-inch TV. Give us a better dodger, built with advanced clear materials, so we can sit outside, protected, and enjoy the actual ocean.
Stop designing floating hotel rooms. Start building yachts that make people dream of going to sea.
Harden the lines, engineer quality, lower the cost of luxury, use natural instead of eco materials. Make a model nornies can afford.
Call me. Iโll design the next gen yacht!
bob retweeted
There's a scene in The Dark Knight where Alfred explains to Bruce Wayne that some people simply cannot be reasoned with. They aren't interested in money, personal gain or anything you might ordinarily associate with someone's motives.
As Alfred famously puts it, "Some men just want to watch the world burn."
I've been thinking about that scene while watching what's happening in France.
People keep trying to make sense of the destruction. Why burn down buildings? Why smash up businesses? Why destroy the very places ordinary people depend on? What exactly is being achieved?
But perhaps that's where people are making a mistake. They're assuming the destruction has to make sense according to their own understanding of what constitutes a rational objective.
It doesn't...
When you're dealing with people consumed by ideological fanaticism, particularly those who have absolutely no respect for the country, its history, its culture or its institutions, destruction itself can become the objective.
And this is what concerns me about the increasingly aggressive attempts to impose ideologies completely at odds with the values upon which European civilisation was built.
You don't necessarily need to conquer a country militarily to change it beyond recognition. Undermine its institutions, intimidate its population, normalise disorder and gradually make people afraid to defend the very things their society was built upon.
Not every rioter has to share that objective. Some are ideological extremists, others are opportunistic criminals, and some are simply enjoying the chaos.
But the consequences can be much the same.
The mistake is assuming that because their actions make absolutely no sense to you, those actions cannot possibly serve a purpose.
Sometimes the destruction isn't an unfortunate consequence of the objective.
Sometimes the destruction IS the objective.
bob retweeted
Imagine a TV show like "Say Yes to the Dress" but for shotguns. You get olympian trap and skeet shooters, weather worn bird hunters, and beginners to sporting clays looking for the perfect gun. All guided by a tweedy gentleman and a coarser ex-veteran.
bob retweeted
Few could now imagine it, but when America was in its infancy this was the road west for many. Especially if they were coming out of Virginia, N Carolina, S Carolina, or points south, and going into what is now Kentucky and many places which are now considered the midwest.
The Arab slave trade trafficked over 20 million Africans into the Middle East.
But today, there are hardly any Black populations in some of those countries.
And it is not because they returned home.
No. The reason is far darker than you imagine.
The first thing Arabs did when they captured enslaved African men was castrate them.
Their testicles were crushed between rocks.
Sometimes the penis was cut as well.
Thousands died from the procedure.
This ensured that these men could never father children with enslaved women.
It also meant they could never have children with their own women.
They were stripped of their ability to reproduce, denied the chance to build families, and worked to death.
bob retweeted
One thing that immediately comes to mind is that in America, wherever this would be would be 1) very private, and 2) extremely expensive, whether as an event or a zip code
That's the only way to avoid Dewayne Geld Americans, and be in a locale in which there are married families with children
Orania has managed to recreate the old system, where the community can come together and it is a normal, functioning group of people of shared heritage and culture with kids
So sad that this is the exception rather than the rule
