“Ah, what a dreadful sound they make in the waning light,
The oaks being felled for Hercules' pyre!”
-Victor Hugo

Rereading Malraux’s ‘Felled Oaks’, a (n imaginary?) conversation with de Gaulle, published shortly after he passed away. I first read it in 1996 when Mitterrand died. A fantastic book! "Free man is not envious; he willingly accepts what is great and rejoices that it can exist."
—Hegel

"At the camp in Germany, I had a comrade who used the name Robert in the Resistance and was the most courageous man I've ever met; ginger-haired, sturdy, with powerful fists and steady eyes, he was one of those who never gave up hope. He was the irreducible core of our block; all the political prisoners grouped instinctively around him. Always cheerful, with the cheerfulness of a man who has gone deep down into things and come back reassured.

In the early 60s, Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychologist, conducted an experiment on obedience to authority figures, asking random people to administer electric shocks to other people.

About 2/3 complied, administering the experiment's final massive 450-volt shock Here is a video, from the movie “i comme Icare,” that describes the Milgram’s experiment.

It’s in French - I watched that movie when I was a kid and remembered that scene. Recent events made me think of it…

Very telling about human nature…

A Buffett story:

"An oil prospector dies and goes to heaven. At the pearly gates, St Peter reads the account of his life and tells him that he has qualified for heaven, but there was a problem.

"See that crowd over there? They are all oil prospectors who have arrived before you. Moreover, the way things work here, you cannot get in until after them. So I'm afraid it's going to be a long wait for you."

"Not a problem", replies the prospector. "I know how to get rid of that crowd."

"Figure out what works and do it."

Lee Kuan Yew Munger on role models. His grandfather: Why would I take money out of my pocket and put something in my mouth that would make my head work less well?"

Had dinner last night with a friend who has 3 different passports and speaks fluently 6 or 7 languages. His father was an excecutive for a large South American bank and he grew up changing schools and countries every couple of years. I told him how envious I was of his ability to speak several languages and how I wished I had travelled more when I was a kid.

I grew up in small city in France, in a monolinguistic family.

I’ve seen my dad cry once.

He had a cousin, Michel, who was the gentlest guy ever.

They had grown up together & were very close. Though my dad rarely spoke about him, they enjoyed been together a lot.

When I was 15, Michel and his wife were scheduled to join us on a vacation. The day they were supposed to arrive, they didn’t show up.

This was at a time when there was no cell phone. My parents were pretty worried.

Finally they called, told my parents that they had an issue w/ their oldest son, Pierre (not his real name), & would come the next day.

https://twitter.com/NuitSeraCalme/status/906204940812423168

“Looting is the triumph of subliminal persuasion.”

Some perspective on Covid in the US:
- 55k deaths, 92% over 55 years old,
- 459 deaths under 35 (4% of all deaths for that age range),
- 6.6% of total deaths for the period vs pneumonia 9.4%,
- 78k pneumonia deaths in same period

Source:
data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provision… I understand we might not capture everything here, some of the pneumonia deaths might be covid-triggered, there might be a second wave, there might be long-term irreversible damages for survivors, you might get it and not be immune, etc... BUT aren't we over-reacting?

Catherine Nay is a French journalist who just wrote her biography. She writes beautifully.

A couple of nuggets. On Raymond Barre, former Prime Minister and a great economist. I voted for him in 1988, the first time I voted.

“His margin of flexibility is the one of a steel bar.”

I wish we had more politicians like him. Who stand for their values.

"They’re frozen. They’ve never seen anything like it. Their playbook does not have this as a possibility.”

wsj.com/articles/charl… “Nobody in America’s ever seen anything else like this. This thing is different. Everybody talks as if they know what’s going to happen, and nobody knows what’s going to happen.”

"We all need someone to look at us. We can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under. The first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other words, for the look of the public. The second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known eyes. They are the tireless hosts of cocktail parties and dinners. They are happier than the people in the first category,

Back when I was in middle school, some 36 or 37 years ago, there was this guy in my class who was 3 years older than everybody else.

We were 12 and he was 15.

He was smart but 3 years behind in the curriculum because he didn’t do anything.

He wore ac/dc sleeveless t-shirts. I wished I had the muscles he had.

When he made the effort, he was the best in English.

But he very rarely made the effort...

He had a girl-friend!

When asked why he didn’t care about school, he always answered: “why bother, we’ll all die soon in a nuclear war.”

A pelican and his babies are trapped on an island ravaged by a terrible fire.

The only way to stay alive is to fly to the continent, but this is a long flight and the pelican has time to save only one baby. He doesn't have time to deliberate and, with his eyes full of tears, he catches the first baby within reach in his large beak.

As soon as he flies above the ocean the pelican asks his baby:

- "Why do you think I'm doing this for you?"

"We live in neofeudalism. This is not capitalism."

"The technical term is quantitative easing. The non-technical term is called bailing out the people who are guilty."

This is a fantastic interview with Steve Bannon. Must listen.

"Obama 08 and particularly the primaries in 2010 changed American politics pretty fundamentally. Because the concept got to mobilization vs persuasion. We're not in an area of persuasion anymore."

1/ I recently discovered the work of Emmanuel Todd, a French anthropologist and historian. I'm fascinated by his approach. He has a simple model that explains a lot of human history. Here is a brief attempt to articulate what I understand so far. 2/ Munger keeps advising people that they should have a variety of mental models so they can look at things and assess them from different angles.

This is one of the best models, yet little known, that I have ever seen to better understand history.

Value investing is based on 3 pillars:
1/ understand the business
2/ Mr. Market is moody, sometimes euphoric, sometimes depressive. He’s also my partner. I should use his moodiness for my benefit.
3/ margin of safety. Buy only when i can get biz at a fraction of its real price. Let's apply that framework to the S&P500
1/ Do i understand the business? A weak “yes.” It’s a conglomerate of the largest US businesses. Diversified but very indebted. Lots of flaws. I’m not so sure about its future growth after its run of last 10 years.

Back in the mid-90s I worked for the Asian headquarter of a large French insurance company in Southeast Asia.

When I joined there, a bright young local had just been appointed as the head of the local property and casualty subsidiary. He was only a few years older than I. That guy ticked all the right boxes: smart, good looking, young, articulate, local but graduate of a top french engineering school, fluent in several languages. He was the star.

He was also very aggressive & the business he led was growing super fast, gaining huge market share.

Great comparison... Finally a CEO who has a sense of perspective and what's right and wrong...

ht @RussianBear for this jewel

https://twitter.com/BNONews/status/1193698590641860608

@RussianBear FWIW at least 149 capital executions in 2018 in Saudi Arabia, usually carried out publicly by beheading with a sword...

Mass execution of 37 people in April.

Yeah, people make mistakes, but it doesn't mean they cannot be forgiven...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_p…

“We don’t interrogate kids!”

German officier to a subaltern who was about to interrogate my mom.

This was in 1943 or 1944, deep in the Ardennes forests. My mom, then 8 or 9, was about to be asked by the Germans where the resistants were hiding. Unaware of what was at stake, my mom - who knew the resistants well - - was ready to tell.

Luckily that German officier intervened (though, ultimately, the resistants ended up being found & executed).

This made a lasting impression on my mom & had an impact on her character.

"Don’t be surprised if you find out your cook didn’t show up because he was in jail.”

How working in a tough, competitive environment with strong values builds resilience and resourcefulness.

Fantastic business!

wsj.com/articles/if-yo… “It’s hard to get an inflated opinion of yourself when you’re washing dishes every day.”

"Every executive, including the CEO, visits the restaurants. They wear the same uniform as hourly employees. And if it’s busy, they bus tables and take orders."