The Digest #208
Biden's Withdrawal and Limits of Gaslighting, The CrowdStrike Crash, Munger and Franklin, Steve Jobs in 1983, Microsoft deep dive, Marks on risk, Luca Delanna on ergodicity, Guadalcanal, and more ...
Quote of the Week
“For the most part, false and harmful opinions are distributed and supported by influence. We are too likely to accept the views and thoughts of other people without trying to investigate them deeper and further ourselves. Unimportant people are those who accept other people’s thoughts without developing them themselves.”
— Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom
Articles
Biden’s Withdrawal and the Limits of Gaslighting, July 22, 2024. President Biden's withdrawal from the election is the culmination of months of gaslighting by the Democratic Party and their allies in the mainstream media. (The Rational Walk)
How the Bet on an 81-Year-Old Joe Biden Turned Into an Epic Miscalculation by Rebecca Ballhaus, et al., July 21, 2024. Was this really an “epic miscalculation” or a deliberate effort to disenfranchise ordinary voters in the Democratic Primary so the party bosses could install Kamala Harris as the nominee without competition? (WSJ)
Crashes and Competition by Ben Thompson, July 22, 2024. “In any massive failure there are a host of smaller errors that compound; in this case, CrowdStrike created a faulty file, failed to test it properly, and deployed it to its entire customer base in one shot, instead of rolling it out in batches. Doing something different at each one of these steps would have prevented the widespread failures that are still roiling the world.” (Stratechery)
Insurers face business interruption claims after global tech outage by Noor Zainab Hussain, July 19, 2024. Maybe it is side effect of owning Berkshire Hathaway for nearly a quarter century, but I automatically think about potential insurance losses whenever some strange event occurs. Sure enough, articles soon started appearing about potential business interruption claims after the recent worldwide outage caused by an errant CrowdStrike software update. The extent of losses for the industry in general, and for Berkshire in particular (if any) is not known at this time. (Reuters)
The Munger Series - Learning from Benjamin Franklin, July 14, 2024. “Charlie Munger never stopped learning. From a young age, his parents instilled in him the virtues of continuous education. This lifelong pursuit of knowledge mirrored that of Benjamin Franklin, who shared a deep curiosity for life and a love of books. Warren Buffett even joked that scholars might question whether Charlie was a reincarnation of Ben Franklin, reflecting the profound influence Franklin had on him.” (Investment Masters Class)
How Benjamin Graham Survived World Panic on Wall Street, July 2024. This is another installment in a series about Ben Graham’s early life. At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Ben Graham was a brilliant college graduate with multiple academic job offers, but he opted for Wall Street instead. (Beyond Ben Graham)
The Objects of Our Life, July 2024. In 1983, Steve Jobs delivered a talk at the 1983 International Design Conference, a year before the release of the first Macintosh. “On the eve of launching the first truly personal computer, Steve is not solely preoccupied with the founding technology and functionality of the product’s design. This is extraordinarily unusual, as in the early stages of dramatic innovation, it is normally the primary technology that benefits from all of the attention and focus.” (Steve Jobs Archive)
10 Updated Rules for Reading by
, July 23, 2024. This is a set of suggestions that should help anyone read more every year. (Books of Titans)Podcasts
Microsoft Volume II, July 22, 2024. 4 hours, 51 minutes. I’ve just started listening to this long episode, but I’m confident that it merits inclusion in The Digest based on the high quality of past episodes of Acquired. “In this episode we explore and analyze the browser wars and the DOJ case, Windows XP through 8, Surface, Xbox, search, Yahoo!, Bing, the iPhone, Nokia, mobile, social, Facebook… and oh yeah, a little thing called Azure and the enterprise — which ended up becoming so big that no failures mattered.” (Acquired)
The Indispensability of Risk, July 23, 2024. 32 minutes. “In this episode, Howard Marks is joined by two special guests: Oaktree cofounder Bruce Karsh and the chess Grandmaster Maurice Ashley. In a wide-ranging conversation, they discuss Howard’s recent memo ‘The Indispensability of Risk’ as well as the inspiration for that memo: Maurice’s Wall Street Journal article, ‘Chess Teaches the Power of Sacrifice.’” (The Memo by Howard Marks)
Haruki Murakami, July 21, 2024. 59 minutes. David Senra shares what he learned from Haruki Murakami, a novelist and essayist whose work has been translated into more than fifty languages. I found Murakami’s interest in long-distance running especially interesting since I enjoy running for similar reasons. (Founders Podcast)
Luca Delanna on Winning Long-Term Games and Ergodicity, July 22, 2024. 1 hour, 3 minutes. Luca Delanna discusses his recent books and explains the important concept of ergodicity in non-technical terms. (Value After Hours)
How the U.S. Marines Fought on Guadalcanal While Surrounded, July 23, 2024. 59 minutes. A discussion of the amazing account of how the Marines persisted in unbelievably harsh conditions on Guadalcanal during the Second World War. I was reminded of reading E.B. Sledge’s book, With the Old Breed, which discussed his similar experiences in the battles for Peleliu and Okinawa. (History Unplugged)
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