Links

"Charlie Munger says that he wants to shoot fish in a barrel, but only after all the water has been let out.... When I look at the people that I would normally think of as very good investors, basically, those folks are really good investors but they aren't fishing where the fish are. And it doesn't matter how good of a fisherman you are if you're not fishing where the fish are." - Mohnish Pabrai (Source)

Poker, Speeding Tickets, and Expected Value: Making Decisions in an Uncertain World (LINK)

Greenlight Capital's Q4 Letter (LINK)

TV, retail, advertising and cascading collapses - by Benedict Evans (LINK)

Want Your Group to Learn Faster? Press Pause - by Daniel Coyle (LINK)

Related book: The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups

Collective hallucinations and inefficient markets: The British Railway Mania of the 1840s [H/T Linc] (LINK)

Abstract.  The British Railway Mania of the 1840s was by many measures the greatest technology mania in history, and its collapse was one of the greatest financial crashes. It has attracted surprisingly little scholarly interest. In particular, it has not been noted that it provides a convincing demonstration of market inefficiency. There were trustworthy quantitative measures to show investors (who included Charles Darwin, John Stuart Mill, and the Bront¨e sisters) that there would not be enough demand for railway transport to provide the expected revenues and profits. But the power of the revolutionary new technology, assisted by artful manipulation of public perception by interested parties, induced a collective hallucination that made investors ignore such considerations. They persisted in ignoring them for several years, until the lines were placed in service and the inevitable disaster struck.

Invest Like the Best Podcast: Crypto-pocalypse, with Preston Byrne (LINK)

A New Clue to the Mystery Disease That Once Killed Most of Mexico (LINK)

Blue Planet II Is the Greatest Nature Series Of All Time - by Ed Yong (LINK)

Across seven episodes of Blue Planet II, viewers are treated to a number of wondrous images. Orcas stun schools of herring by slapping them with their tails. Cuttlefish mesmerize shrimp by splaying out their arms and sending moving clouds of pigment across their skin, like a living gif. Mobula rays cavort in the deep, stirring glow plankton as they move, creating an ethereal scene that looks like a clip from Moana. Cutthroat eels slink into a lake of super-salty water at the bottom of the ocean, and some tie themselves into knots in the throes of toxic shock. Pods of bottlenose dolphins and false killer whales meet in the open ocean, greeting each other as if reuniting with old friends. 

The series first aired in the United Kingdom last year and finally premieres in the United States this Saturday. It is the latest program from the BBC’s indefatigable Natural History Unit—arguably the greatest producers of such documentaries in the world.

Mine Your Acre of Diamonds (LINK)