Friday Afternoon Links

• The anti-Israel reaction to the attacks of October 7th, 2023 reveal the rotten roots of these contradicting approaches. The Biological Left, while still committed to “anti-fascism,” sees Israel as fascist because she is, while unique, still more a part of Western Civilization than not. Since modern Jews are genetically 80% European, on average, the Left correctly perceives them as white, which means they can only ever be oppressors, and Palestinians can only ever be victims. Meanwhile, the very online young right is aware of the raw deal conservatives have gotten over the years, the hypocrisy of ethnonationalism for me but not for thee, and largely lack the religious commitments to Israel typical of the geriatric audience of Fox News. Like Google, elite supporters of Israel find themselves with few friends in a democracy. The smartest and most entrepreneurial American Jewish supporters of Israel, like Bill Ackman, now understand the short-sighted foolishness of promoting race-based communism to own the czars when a century of freedom in America has made Jewish people the world’s most successful ethnic group. Ackman is unusually prescient as a professional trader, and knows the optimal move when he changes his thesis is to unwind the position as quickly as possible. [The Tom File]
  
• Land is the most enduring and, possibly, continually productive investable asset one can own. It can develop new higher use cases over time. On a per capita basis, the supply of land has been shrinking since the dawn of civilization (according to some, that would be Mesopotamia 6,000 years ago). The primary difference between the LandBridge and TPL land—and which was a strategic choice that creates a different asset exposure and growth profile—is LandBridge created as large a set of contiguous-acreage footprints as it could. There’s a two-fold purpose. The primary one is for growth through water management services. The private equity firm that sponsored this venture, Five Point Energy, controls one of the largest water infrastructure businesses in the Permian Basin, called WaterBridge. Permian wells generate water cuts (the water-to-oil ratio) of 3:1 to 5:1, which continue through the end of well life, which could be 30 years. [Horizon Kinetics]
• The foundation for the revolution going on with increasing computing capacity and AI comes down to four things: renewable power, data centers, design and fabrication of chips, and computing capacity. Each of these forms part of the backbone of this AI revolution, and we are fortunate to be at the center of most of these. Combined, we have by far the largest development pipeline of anyone globally. The next 20 years will be an unprecedented period for electricity build-out. The electrification of industrial capacity, automobiles, heating for houses, and other uses is driving unprecedented growth in the demand for electricity. On top of that, the world is adding data centers for AI and cloud computing at a stunning pace. To put this in perspective, the global installed capacity for electricity is approximately 8,000 gigawatts. To meet expected demand, this installed capacity will need to expand to more than 20,000 gigawatts in the next 20 years. In addition, nearly half of what exists today will need to be retired, as it is very carbon-intensive. Said differently, we need to more than double the current capacity (which was largely built over the past 50 years) while also replacing approximately 50% of what we have. Nothing like this has ever been attempted, but it is essential in order to reach the world’s net-zero goals and drive the AI revolution. The increase in demand for power to run data centers used in computing capacity for AI is only starting to be understood and is largely excluded in the above calculations. [Bruce Flatt]
• It is important to remember that Genesis was never a 2024 story, but instead more a story of a company our size becoming increasingly closer to the inflection point where we stop spending growth capital and start harvesting upwards of $250 - $350 million or more of cash flow per year starting as early as next year that will allow us to simplify our capital structure, lower our overall cost of capital, optimize our leverage ratio and have the ability to opportunistically create long-term value for all stakeholders in our capital structure. [Genesis Energy, L.P.]
• All of which makes the Santa Fe pretty easy to recommend. But more than anything: a warranty—Hyundai’s 10-year/100,000-mile limited powertrain warranty, including the lithium-ion battery. My friends, I remain deeply skeptical of/terrified by the emerging class of tiny turbocharged engines that automakers are fielding in order to meet stricter consumption and emissions standards. If you are like me, and I know I am, such a warranty would make a difference. [WSJ]
• Chipotle has said it isn’t skimping on portions. But last month, the company said it had investigated more thoroughly, and it had a beef with around 10% of restaurants in their allotting beef. The company is working on training, telling workers to err on the side of generosity. [WSJ]
• Pauling argued that because humans lack a functional form of L-gulonolactone oxidase, an enzyme required to make vitamin C that is functional in most other mammals, plants, insects, and other life forms, humans have developed a number of adaptations to cope with the relative deficiency. These adaptations, he argued, ultimately shortened lifespan but could be reversed or mitigated by supplementing humans with the hypothetical amount of vitamin C that would have been produced in the body if the enzyme were working. [Vitamin C megadosage]
• Most of the traits of left-wing authoritarians more or less apply to all kinds of authoritarians. Authoritarians of every ilk tend to be intellectually apathetic, show an obsession with misinformation, trade in principles for groups, and exhibit cognitive simplicity. The specific domains attached to those traits do change, of course—for example, liberal authoritarians are especially simple about race, conservative authoritarians less so—and there are always exceptions we could make to those rules. But in general one would expect authoritarians everywhere to demonstrate traits such as resistance to change, cognitive rigidity in attitude formation, opinion certainty, sweeping biases, and racism. However, the authoritarian motivational blind spot is something that is unique to left-wing authoritarians. And this blind spot makes liberal authoritarianism uniquely dangerous. [Luke Conway] 
• The knowledge—and with luck occasional touches of wisdom—that one acquires through reading novels differs from that acquired reading history, biography, science, criticism, scholarship, and all else. For one thing, it is less exact; for another it has no use outside itself. The knowledge provided by the best novels is knowledge that cannot be enumerated nor subjected to strict testing. Wider, less confined, deeper, its subject is human existence itself, in all its dense variousness and often humbling confusion. Reading great novels comports well with the best definition of education I know, that set out by the poet and Eton master William Johnson Cory, which runs: "A certain amount of knowledge you can indeed with average faculties acquire so as to retain; nor need you regret the hours you spent on much that is forgotten, for the shadow of lost knowledge at least protects you from many illusions." [The Lamp] 
• The point, of course, is to show off how rich you are by showing off how much crystallized labor you are able to destroy. This pattern is not an uncommon one across human societies — a lot of human and animal sacrifice, while ostensibly religious in motivation, has this sort of showing off as an undertone. But what makes the potlatch especially interesting is its competitive nature. The Indians believe that as the goods are consumed by the blaze, every other wealthy man is “shamed” unless he comes back and burns objects of equal or greater value. It’s value destruction as a contest, like a dollar auction for status where the final price is set on fire rather than being paid to somebody, a negative-sum machine for destroying economic surplus. Good thing our culture is way too civilized to do anything like that. [Mr. and Mrs. Psmith’s Bookshelf]