Monday Morning Links

• Dorchester Minerals, L.P. announced today the Partnership’s third quarter 2023 cash distribution. The distribution of $0.845120 per common unit represents activity for the three-month period ended September 30, 2023 and is payable on November 9, 2023 to common unitholders of record as of October 30, 2023. [Dorchester Minerals, L.P.]
  
• A big iced coffee with a bagel & cream cheese used to be my Friday breakfast treat. I'd genuinely look forward to all week. The coffee was so creamy and smooth. The bagel a perfectly tangy and chewy complement... It all came crashing down my first Friday after starting semaglutide. The coffee smelled like slightly rotting fruit (quit drinking it after two sips) and the bagel was just a mushy, gluey, underwhelming mess. The taste, texture, smell... everything was wrong. Eating didn't feel like taking drugs anymore. It felt like filling out paperwork at the DMV. I thought it was a fluke, so I tried again the next week. Same thing. Just totally put off. I've been off and on SG for about four months at this point, but I've kept my dose at 0.25mg and have no intention to move up. My hunger is still dramatically reduced, but now I can eat the things I used to love again in smaller portions. It just doesn't hit my brain like heroin anymore. Happy medium, I guess. [r/Ozempic]
• The US authorities are struggling to restrain the inflow of unauthorized e-cigarettes, mainly through major shipping hubs like Los Angeles and Houston. Chinese disposable e-cigarette, Elf Bar, is defying the US import ban by deploying a simple tactic: name change. In May, US FDA directed customs officials to seize incoming shipments of Elf Bar and EBDesign: Elf Bar quickly re-branded itself as EBCreate and changed the product owner from Shenzhen-based, iMiracle Technology, to Hong Kong-based, Nevera HK Limited. The AP reported in June that the number of unique e-cigarettes in the US has tripled to over 9,000 since 2020, a surge driven almost entirely by Chinese-manufactured disposables. [Tobacco Insider]
• It is evident to any sighted person that there are an infinitude of superficial anatomical variations in human faces and physiques, and surgeons are well aware that such external anatomical diversity has its counterparts in internal anatomy. Even medical science, however, is just beginning to appreciate human biochemical individuality and its manifestation as idiosyncrasy in pharmacological responses. Investigations of human idiosyncrasies with regard to nutritional requirements for eight essential amino acids show a 2-7-fold range, from minimal to maximal needs for any particular amino acid, when examining merely two to five dozen individuals. In a study involving only 19 human subjects, nearly a 5-fold range in calcium requirements was found! Animal experiments show similar broad variability in the requirements of individual animals for various vitamins. It is well-known that some people have 'lactase deficiency,' or some diminished ability to digest lactose or milk sugar, and the 'normal' human range of lactase, as well as of sucrase and maltase enzymes in intestinal mucosa, varied over a 10-20-fold range. In studies involving the pepsin [digestive enzyme] and hydrochloric acid levels in the stomachs of thousands of 'normal' individuals, a 100-200-fold range of variance was found! [Jonathan Ott]
• One cannot be sad as they watch the blackbirds gather above the sorrowful Utica marsh or inspect the rusted machinery through the chink in the factory glass. For after death is absolution and a rise of the spirit — all things take on the glowing hue of memory, and here, one can dream. Like a general in his war-room puffing his pipe above ancient maps, a man can stroke his whiskers high in the old hotel downtown, overlooking the neon “UTICA” sign and remember that Utica was named for an ancient Tunisian city that no longer exists. The wheels of history turn madly in some quadrants of time, but here they have slowed, and the mind can taste poetry as he lingers by the crypt. “Utica,” a man can say, “somber and forgotten old Utica — memento of feverish and long-gone times… Utica….” [County Line Notes]
• Founded in 2013, North American Helium (NAH) is the leading company focused on exploration and production of helium from underground fields of inert nitrogen. The Company's mission is to grow its reliable and geopolitically secure non-hydrocarbon-based helium supply to replace declining supplies of helium in North America that currently come from legacy hydrocarbon projects and diminishing sales from a Cold War-era stockpile (the Bureau of Land Management facility in the United States). NAH currently produces over 5% of helium supply in North America and is actively advancing new projects during the current global helium shortage. [North American Helium]
• Today, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Petroleum Reserve announced that that it will post monthly solicitations to purchase oil for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) through at least May 2024, beginning with a solicitation for up to 6 million barrels of oil for delivery in December 2023 and January 2024. DOE will purchase oil in those months where it can do so at a good deal for taxpayers: a price of $79 dollars per barrel or below, far less than the average $95 per barrel DOE received for 2022 emergency SPR sales. [Department of Energy]
• In the December Issue of Schiff’s Insurance Observer we commented on the relative valuations of Internet stocks and insurance stocks. Although AIG earns seven times as much as AOL, its market cap was then 15% lower than AOL’s. Time (or, more specifically, Time Warner) has lowered AOL’s market cap 30% since we went to press last month. That decline notwithstanding, Internet stocks are still priced at levels that bear no known relationship to sales, earnings, and assets, or to book value. “Somewhere in the world of high finance there’s an arbitrage waiting to happen,” we wrote. “Companies with rich valuations will realize it makes sense to use their stock as currency to buy insurance companies.” We noted that AOL could take over Progressive for three times what Progressive was then trading for, and that doing so would be a drop in the bucket for AOL. [Schiff’s Insurance Observer]
• Looking for the proper forward-thinking macro analog from history is critical today because a stagflationary recession playbook is much different than the deflationary one where commodities get slaughtered and Treasury bonds are among the few securities that go up. The problem is that the 2008 Global Financial Crisis is still ingrained in the muscle memory of so many investors and money managers today. This explains why owning long-duration Treasuries has been such a crowded trade for so long and remains so today. The truth is, on a risk-adjusted basis, long-term government bonds have been one of the worst-performing trades possible in the last two years. Now, we believe there is a chain reaction of problems from this wrong-way positioning that is only just beginning to surface. [Crescat] 
• Had disaffected New York conservatives not fled in torrents from their home states, Lee Zeldin would be governor today. While I am no Republican, it should be noted that the margin by which Zeldin lost to Hochul — about 7% — is more or less congruent with the number of republican voters the state has hemmorhaged in the last twenty years. Congregating in the likes of Florida, New Hampshire, and Carolina may improve your own lot in terms of your tax bills and what you can and can’t do — but our deciding to do this both sells out our neighbors who wouldn’t leave and gives as a war bounty the vast resources and living histories of fantastic American states. [County Line Notes]
• Having $3 trillion of assets under management puts you in the top handful of asset management firms. Owning $1 trillion of treasury debt (like China or Japan) makes you one of the largest holders. Who, then, is going to be buying the $3 trillion a year that federal, state, and municipal governments are planning to borrow to cover their operational and pension shortfalls? [CBS]
• Many organists own at least one volume of “the Widor-Schweitzer edition” of Bach. It does not yet come as a surprise to the current generation to learn that Widor – a composer more closely associated with the Romantic aesthetic – actually co-edited the organ works of Bach as a scholarly project in his day. Bach was a constant companion in Widor’s playing and – upon closer inspection – in his compositional output. Therefore, it seems fitting that Widor paid yet more homage by recasting/paraphrasing/transcribing for the organ six of his favorite Bach movements from other genres. It is from this perspective of homage that an appreciation of these pieces can best be grounded today. There was lukewarm reception at their premiere, with most people (probably expecting another symphony) wondering why Widor needed to do this and just how he could re-write Bach to such a personal (gauche) degree. Today, history can afford to be kinder, and the listener and scholar may now approach these pieces as a treasured glimpse into Widor’s favorite Bach and resulting tribute. [link]