🏞️ Landscapes, Elections & Control Theory
30 January 2022
Welcome back to the Week That Was series highlighting things from the interwebs which are interesting, noteworthy and/or probably worth your time.
Articles📝, Tweet(s)📱, Videos🎥, Charts 📈 all fair game with or without attendant commentary.
🎨 Nine Nights
Nine Nights, Alex Hyner, Photography & Photoshop, 2021
👴🏼📈 Old Hands
Per @RobinWigg:
Cathie Wood’s flagship fund on the cusp of being overtaken by Warren Buffett in the post-pandemic performance table, reflecting a dramatic shift in fortunes between the two prominent investors and a violent rotation between growth and value stocks.
This convergence is much to the glee of many value investors and traders interested in fundamentals-driven valuations who’ve watched bemused as the r/WSB army and innovation-focused tickers like ARK’s, seem happy to throw money at growth stocks on almost any valuation - driving massive upswings in the likes of Tesla and many stocks which ARK is indexing.
Yet even with the extraordinary 50% drawdown since Jerome Powell and the FED started indicating an increasingly hawkish 2022 outlook, ARK’s flagship ETF has actually outperformed Berkshire since inception. The FED will presumably have a big say on these curves in the short/medium term.
🌍🗳️ African Elections
The 📚ISS PSC Insights report highlights the elections to watch on the continent as 17 African countries plan for presidential and parliamentary elections in 2022.
Continentally these occur against a backdrop of some long-standing conflicts as well as more recent flareups. 📚ISS also noted ongoing political strife and open conflict - particularly where urgent action is needed to avoid disaster in the worst affected regions.
⚔️🏢 War Racket
In light of yet another round of public escalation and hardline calls for credible threats of hot-war, an 💬excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933, by “The Maverick Marine”, Major General Smedley Butler, USMC on the dangers of interventionism.
War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.
I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we’ll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.
I wouldn’t go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.
There isn’t a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its “finger men” to point out enemies, its “muscle men” to destroy enemies, its “brain men” to plan war preparations, and a “Big Boss” Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.
It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.
I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?).
I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.
🌍💰 Africa Fundraising
Rain always falls where it’s wet - Max Cuveillier
Many African ecosystems have shown strong growth patterns since 2019, despite the ongoing pandemic - culminating in record fundraising in 2021
And apparently size still does matter
Of the top 10 markets in terms of start-up funding raised in 2021, 7 and 8 are also in the top 10 in terms of population and GDP respectively
🌡️🌏 Hottest Years
How long ago were the hottest and coldest years on record around the world.
🔮🤖 Future 100
Wunderman Thompson’s extremely thorough 223 page report on 100 Trends and change to watch in 2022. It spans several categories with topics of interest in each.
📝🥽🛠 Control Theory
🏞️ Landscapes
From Nerdwriter1
Caspar David Friedrich’s famous “Wanderer Above The Sea Of Fog” is actually unrepresentative of his style: “for the most part, Friedrich’s human figures are tiny compared to the landscape they’re contemplating, and that augmented the vastness of the terrain.” These ominous winter landscapes are an attempt to evoke the Kantian sublime
🖋️📜 On Writing: An Abecedarian
A longread (4,423 words) highlighted by The Browser:
Alphabetically arranged essay on the history of writing. At “Y” for “Yesternight” comes this musing on why some words survive while others are forgotten or relegated as archaic. “Language is always in flux, always changing, morphing, moving. Words are added; words drop away. Words shift in meaning to mirror the world: digitise used to mean to manipulate with the fingers
🎨 Somewhere
“She’s In There Somewhere”, Eric Pause, Digital, 2022
💬 Deep Cuts
“To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often” ― John Henry Newman
🦅 One More Thing
Focus
Stil en gefokus. pic.twitter.com/YxsrHIKBs3
— Mads (@MissusMads) January 28, 2022
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fa17eab @ 2023-09-18