Liberty

Nice work, Norm.

Dazel will be back, he's too fond of this place to stay away for long ;)

I wouldn't say I've learned a lot of non-obvious business things so far either. But to me, that doesn't make it bad. A lot of the same simple principles are worth revisiting over and over again, as Buffett does in his writings. And I'm very interested in the culture inside Pixar and how art is created (both the creative aspect and technology), so I guess I'm the target audience.

[amazonsearch]Creativity, Inc.[/amazonsearch] This might not seem like a business book at first, but it is one of the best kind. Ed Catmull is an extremely smart and introspective manager and engineer (he invented texture-mapping!) who tells us how he very deliberately built an excellent business (Pixar, for those who don't know who Catmull is). No management consultant platitudes here. It's very interesting that he focuses mostly on his mistakes and what went wrong rather than only talk about the glory. There's also some interesting backstory on Steve Jobs' strengths and weaknesses (he was Pixar's largest shareholder, though not super involved in the day-to-day, mostly big strategic decisions). I haven't read the whole thing yet, but I've read 200 pages since last night and that's quite enough to make me recommend the book.

I'm curious why you decided to own it and feature it as one of your best ideas on your blog. Was it speculative to you?

Thanks, that was a good read.

Good read. Scary to think how many companies have cultures like that..

Quite the change in sentiment from a couple months ago... Maybe that's a contrary indicator.

Follow up on the previous post speculating about KO merging with AB: http://brooklyninvestor.blogspot.ca/2014/06/is-coke-undermanaged.html

INTP I read a Keirsey book on that kind of stuff a while ago and go INTJ.

http://stratechery.com/2014/amazons-whale-strategy/

Apple TV as HomeKit hub rather than have each smart home device try to communicate separately and be managed with separate apps? Makes a lot of sense. http://www.macworld.com/article/2364315/apples-homekit-hub-may-already-be-in-your-house.html

Good point. There does seem to be some kind of acceleration of Fads. They are born and die quicker. Not sure why.... What I meant is that even if the internet removes shelf space limitations and you can now have 10,000 cola brands, most people won't keep track of many. They just don't have the attention/mindspace. They want to find a few things they like and trust, and then will probably stick to them. Brands are mental shortcuts; you know what you're going to get. Right now, where I'm seeing most of the change is in niche things (the long tail). If you really like some obscure thing and you're the only one in your town, you used to be on your own. Nobody would open a store just for you. But now, all the people who are into that obscure thing across the country and world can band together, and as a bloc they are worth feeding and can keep the niche thriving. So lots of niches are now commercially viable that weren't. But for the big, mass-market stuff that reaches lots of people everywhere (detergent, cars, cola, diapers, common foods, smartphones, etc), I think there will always be big dominant brands at the top, and no-name/store brand type stuff for more price-sensitive people.

I don't know. He's having Sirius do huge buybacks, was doing LMCA buybacks until recently (probably keeping powder dry for cable deals), and he recently tried to swallow the whole of Sirius by issuing new shares. I don't think he thinks it's overvalued.

This really nails it. I have been following the liberty properties for about 7 years and I have honestly never been very comfortable with the individual companies. Despite that, the performance of liberty has been incredible. I am still long LMCA. If Malone was only buying things that everybody agreed were great and that everybody was looking at, I don't think he'd have the record that he has.

I think you forget another scarce resource in your theory: Mindshare/attention.

Lots of interesting discussion on the new phone here, with a wide variety of opinions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7911934

No so long ago, the US was losing access to space and had fewer capability than in the 1960s, and costs were ballooning up. The shuttle was out, the replacement might come in years if not decades, and even basic rockets had to have engines made in Russia. Musk comes around, and in a few years, he goes from nothing to potentially having fully reuseable rockets that land vertically on land with costs that are orders of magnitude lower than anything before. That's a necessary, if not sufficient, thing for anything else that follows. He puts the goal of Mars back on a real schedule (not the BS that politicians talk about), and he puts ambition back on the table too (not sending a man there to take a few selfies and come back, but he wants a base there -- which btw isn't all the terraforming stuff you keep talking about). He's likely totally changing the course of space exploration history with his company, and I don't see anyone doing what SpaceX is doing, so if they didn't exist.... It doesn't mean that he'll solve all the problems himself - and nobody but you has been saying that - but he's making a huge difference (likewise in electric cars and solar, btw). DaVinci? That makes no sense to me. In any case, this is enough for me on this topic. I encourage you to read more deeply on SpaceX than mainstream media coverage and see for yourself.

That's somewhat like saying Alexander Graham Bell didn't have a large effect on the internet. True, but someone's gotta lay the foundation or light the spark for further development. Not comparable. Bell invented a entirely new technology. Musk didnt, he just made the current tech better. But current tech is worthless if we want to travel across solar systems. We would need break throughs in physics and not just engineering.. To colonize mars we would need breakthroughs in terraforming, in building very large and sustainable spacecrafts (and the problems with oxygen etc that brings), how to protect from radiation mars and in medical knowledge how to bypass effects of much lower gravity on human body. All things Musk likely wont provide. Again I think Musk is extremely awesome, but people are overhyping this all a lot. Still curious about the things he will do though. He has suprised people before. So basically, your point applies to every single entrepreneur, inventor, and scientist ever. What value does that point have exactly? Who here is overhyping Musk? Nobody here said that he would do everything by himself or claim that he's doing things he isn't. What he did do, what he's doing now, and what he plans to do, is quite enough to be worth the hype -- in fact, he probably deserves more credit than he's getting but most people don't realize how hard the stuff he's doing is on so many levels... across 3 industries at the same time.

He's already had a huge effect on it.

Can you imagine how impossible almost all the technologies we use daily sound if you describe them like that? I dare you to look into how a GPS works, with Einsteinian physics and all, not to even mention all the other technologies on which a functional GPS system depends (CPUs, satellites, radio waves, etc) and all the fields of science you need to master to even contemplate creating those (quantum physics, complex material sciences, advanced mathematics, etc).

Sure. But in practice, it makes very little difference to the people who go through that event, and might make little difference to people who later have to try to read a SSD with rocks and sticks... Most of our technology depends on other technologies. Take the power grid down long enough and you'll see how well the rest of the edifice stands on its own on any scale.

Don't read this book: http://www.amazon.com/Global-Catastrophic-Risks-Nick-Bostrom/dp/0199606501/ I haven't read that book, but in my mind the biggest risk of a major "reset" of civilization comes, not from religion this time around, but from war. If we do major environmental damage to the planet with nukes, or kill 5 billion people with biological agents ..... game over for at least another 1000 years. All the more reason to have sustainable cities on other planets before that happens here. That was exactly my point, though they are not mutually exclusive. Nuclear war started by religious zealots (ie. pakistan, india, iran, middle-east, etc) isn't a lot more far fetched than nuclear war started by ideologues of other kinds (ie. cold war).

Amazon announcing its new phone right now: http://live.arstechnica.com/amazons-smartphone-unveil/ Product page: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EOE0WKQ

Don't read this book: http://www.amazon.com/Global-Catastrophic-Risks-Nick-Bostrom/dp/0199606501/