Charlie Munger: Never Quit Reading -- July 4, 2024

Locator: 48046ARCHIVES.

After going down this rabbit hole with a member of my focus group, an individual asked, "what is the point of this exercise?"

LOL. If I have to explain the point of this exercise, I've missed the target.

Oh, by the way -- there's an "Easter egg" in this post. LOL. Actually there are several if you enjoy connecting the dots. Highly recommend: read the Eric Schmidt wiki entry.

TMDWB: simply the best subscription-free, ad-free Bakken-focused blog in the universe. And apparently the longest one in continuous "operation." The others having fallen by the wayside. 

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Whatever

I'm not going to do anything more than post the links in the order I "processed" them this morning. I have no plans to go down this rabbit in any extended fashion. At least not yet.

• TSMC's debacle in Arizona, April 19, 2024, Rest of World. I really dislike the "fake" diacritical marks. These marks yell out to me: don't take me seriously. But I suppose it underpins the media outlet's Arabic heritage.

• Sophie Schmidt, founder and CEO of Rest of World. Note the domain: solve.mit.edu. Which begs the question.

• The Great Reset, openDemocracy, August 16, 2021, one year into Covid lockdown.
• wiki: The Great Reset. 
• in response to the Covid outbreak, Davos, June 2020 -- wow, that was fast....
  
• Prince Charles, 2020, ESG
  

• World Economic Forum, wiki. Davos. Founded 1971 by German engineer Klaus Schwab. Funded by its 1,000 member companies. Annual meeting in one of the few places where golf is not likely a high priority.

• Solve.mit. One may find the list of advisors somewhat interesting. Currently includes:
• the founder of Moderna
• the founder of iRobot
• the managing director of The Boston Globe (perhaps one of the best newspapers -- regional or national)
• this may be my Christmas gift to my wife this Christmas -- a subscription to The Boston Globe
• Eric Schmidt, Alphabet, Google
• executive chairman, RedSeal, cybersecurity
• Laureen Powell Jobs, founder, Emerson Collective; $15 billion net worth; wife of Steve Jobs; Forbes.
  
• Powell Jobs is the founder and president of the Emerson Collective, an impact investing, philanthropy and advocacy firm focused on environmental justice, health, immigration and education.
• Powell Jobs purchased The Atlantic in 2017 and has invested in other media outlets and nonprofit newsrooms, including Axios, ProPublica, The Athletic and the Committee to Protect Journalists.
• She owns a minority stake in Monumental Sports, parent of the Wizards (NBA), Capitals (NHL), and Mystics (WNBA) and in 2022 invested in the WNBA's first-ever capital raise.
• CIO, Government of Sierra Leone
• the founder, shift7; Megan Smith; history with Google, Alphabet
  
• founder Esquel Group: Hong-Kong based; world's largest woven shirt maker
• the family owned business was founded in 1978 by family patriarch Yang Yuan-loong.The opening of China that year had according to one of Yang's daughters led to the decision to establish the company.
• CEO, Orveon: most interesting. Connecting these dots may take you places you never dreamed.
• Orveon: beauty products; Forbes, article more than two years old;
• The Orveon collective was spun out of Japanese giant Shiseido to champion bold progress for beauty, for the planet, and to serve the demands of a new breed of more conscious consumers. From its base in New York City, the $700 million collective plans for nothing less than making the world – not just a customer’s face – “a more beautiful place.”

• Advent International, wiki. lululemon, Maxar Technologies, wiki.  

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Shiseido

My mother-in-law, Japanese, was one of the most beautiful women I had met in my first 30 years of life. She was an 18-year-old living in Yokohama when the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan. 

She always dressed elegantly and her attention to her face is legendary in her American family.

She refused to use any cosmetic other than Shiseido. It was incredibly expensive and her income was solely from working as a Japanese waitress in an upscale Japanese restaurant in an area of southern California where Japanese patrons expected the best and tipped accordingly.

My wife used Shiseido for years and I always bought her gifts for birthdays and Christmases, but over time, Shiseido simply became too expensive, and difficult to find in some of the overseas locations we were sent. And then over time my wife moved on to other cosmetics. 

But I've always wondered whatever happened to Shideido. Now I know. 

Update: my wife tells me she still gets Shiseido lipstick. Okay, there's that.