Tuesday Night Links

• Shipment volume increased by 40.0% in cans (35.8% in pouches or pouch equivalents), fueled by ZYNnicotine pouch growth in the U.S., where shipment volume reached 131.6 million cans, representing growth of 79.7% versus prior year. Our share of the category in the U.S. increased for the fourth consecutive quarter to over 74%, up 1.3 percentage points sequentially. [Philip Morris International]
• Zyn has giant growth potential, it is profitable, and yet it is available for a value stock price. If you saw a company selling a high margin, recurring usage non-tobacco product with a hockey stick chart like the one above, the company would be selling for 18x sales right now, not earnings. [Credit Bubble Stocks]
• “But what should I build?” Whatever will get you out of bed in the morning. Whatever you dream about waking and sleeping. Whatever the future must contain, but will not, unless you build it. Your particular contribution is to pluck a worthy idea from the infinite sea of possibility, to determine how it must take form in the physical world, and to contrive a way to connect it to the engine of capitalism so it can generate self-sustaining wealth and value for its users. [Casey Handmer]
• Simon's 1981 book The Ultimate Resource is a criticism of what was then the conventional wisdom on resource scarcity, published within the context of the cultural background created by the best-selling and highly influential book The Population Bomb in 1968 by Paul R. Ehrlich and The Limits to Growth analysis published in 1972. The Ultimate Resource challenged the conventional wisdom on population growth, raw-material scarcity and resource consumption. Simon argues that our notions of increasing resource scarcity ignore the long-term declines in wage-adjusted raw material prices. [Julian Simon]
• Simon challenged Ehrlich to choose any raw material he wanted and a date more than a year away, and he would wager on the inflation-adjusted prices decreasing as opposed to increasing. Ehrlich chose copper, chromium, nickel, tin, and tungsten. The bet was formalized on September 29, 1980, with September 29, 1990, as the payoff date. Ehrlich lost the bet, as all five commodities that were bet on declined in price from 1980 through 1990, the wager period. [Simon-Ehrlich wager]
• I have therefore suggested that, assuming I could command every based person, it would be more effective to start breeding more than leftists by great numbers, ideally in our own space where there is a high concentration of based people of both sexes. This would do much more than based people being isolated in non-based institutions, writing blogs that do little in the grand scheme of things but threaten their salaries. Mutational load aside, the heritability of rightism proves the breeding strategy would be highly effective as long as the numbers are right. The blogging strategy has been tried for decades, with few results, and with no theoretical foundation. The theoretical foundation I have given life to suggests this is to be expected. [Joseph Bronski]
• It is reductive and tautological to just define everything but the NY Times out of the Cathedral. We’re not playing wordgames here — if the Cathedral is “journalism + academia”, and the above chart shows journalism, how is the Cathedral homogenous? These kinds of social analyses must absolutely be based on math, data, and evidence. It’s not acceptable to just make up claims from your armchair. How can anyone but the ignorant ever be convinced by such a method? My main problem with Moldbug’s writings has always been that he is “not a big fan of empirical evidence”. What value does your work have then? I cannot speak for his fans, but I certainly don’t need another man to do my thinking for me. I can come up with my own half-baked shower thoughts. [Joseph Bronski]
• Arkansas plays a trick on first-time visitors arriving from the East. The roads, dead flat and straight, lull newcomers into believing this lack of geological diversity will span the entire state. Then, just beyond the Arkansas Delta farmlands, the gradual ascent from the Mississippi River Valley to the peaks of the American West begins. [Freehub]
• Beyond the intraparty GOP battle, though, Congress’ passage of $60 billion in aid for Ukraine traces back to something simple but rare in modern politics: an ironclad pact of trust between leaders of opposite political parties. It’s all the more surprising given the years of animus between Schumer, the majority leader and relentless political tactician, and McConnell, the outgoing minority leader celebrating what may be his foreign policy coda as the top Senate Republican. [Politico]
• On April 16, 2024 (the "exercise date"), holders of Natural Resource Partners L.P.'s (the "Partnership's") warrants to purchase common units ("warrants") exercised 320,335 warrants with a strike price of $34.00. On April 18, 2024, the Partnership settled the warrants on a net basis with $10.0 million in cash and 89,059 common units. The 15-day VWAP ending on the business day prior to the exercise date was $90.33. Of the originally issued 4.0 million warrants, no warrants remain outstanding. [Natural Resource Partners, L.P.]
• Malek noted that it was not guaranteed that demand for oil and gas would peak in 2030, as predicted by the International Energy Agency, as the populations of developing countries begin to buy more cars and take more flights. JPMorgan forecasts that the world will need 108mn barrels of oil a day in 2030, and that building more wind, solar and electric vehicle capacity could add a further 2mn daily barrels to this total. “We are at a tipping point in terms of demand,” Malek said. “More and more of the world is getting access to energy and a greater proportion want to use that energy to upgrade their living standards. If that growth continues it puts huge pressure on energy systems and on governments.” [FT]