Monday Morning Links

• A cyclical business that produces average returns over a full cycle will give investors worse total returns, because at the peak it won't return quite enough capital, and because the equity slice of the capital structure can't always survive the worst part of the cycle. The equity in some high-cost miner might 100x during a good cycle, but that 100x return may be enjoyed mostly by former bondholders who got most or all of the equity when it reorganized: shareholders in Warrior Met Coal have seen their holdings compound at 33% since it went public in 2017. But "Warrior Met" was a new holding company formed by the first lien debtholders of Walter Energy, whose shareholders were zeroed in 2016. Another issue, related to the cycle, is Engineering Ego: people who go into the business of solving complex technical challenges around getting ore out of the ground are going to be excited if there's a uniquely extreme way to do it. [The Diff] 
• Recent leaked US intelligence assessments, as reported by Western media, estimate that Iran has regained access to 90 percent of its underground missile storage and launch facilities, many of which remain at least partially operational, that were buried due to US-Israeli airstrikes. Iranian forces have likely also reestablished communications between units and commanders and begun restoring force morale—both of which were disrupted during the war due to US-Israeli airstrikes and had significantly degraded Iran’s ability to conduct operations to achieve its objectives. Recent US intelligence assessments also estimate that Iran still has about 70 percent of its mobile launchers and 70 percent of its prewar missile stockpile, including both ballistic and cruise missiles. US forces buried some of these assets during combat operations, which rendered the buried assets combat ineffective. Any military force, including the Iranians, would use the time and space granted by the ceasefire to reconstitute itself. The restoration of underground missile storage and launch facilities means that Iran was degraded operationally and then prepared itself for a new round of fighting. US forces have surely also prepared for a new round of fighting. [Institute for the Study of War]
• Sodium ion batteriess could ease supply constraints and price volatility linked to lithium-based batteries by expanding the range of viable chemistries and reducing dependence on lithium mining and processing. Sodium is far more abundant than lithium – around 1,000 times more abundant in the Earth’s crust and roughly 60,000 times more abundant in the oceans. SIB manufacturing primarily relies on soda ash (sodium carbonate) as the main sodium precursor. Soda ash is widely used across several industries, and is far more abundant than lithium, making it less susceptible to resource availability concerns and price volatility. Natural soda ash resources globally are estimated at 47 billion tonnes, while reserves are estimated at 25 billion tonnes. Soda ash can also be, and already is, produced synthetically from salt and limestone, both virtually unlimited resources. Cost could still be one of the competitive advantages of SIBs over LIBs due to a number of factors. The first of these is the abundance and accessibility of sodium, a material that is considerably cheaper than lithium. [International Renewable Energy Agency]
• Well into his seventies, Wilson would march into the Princeton Club and order a half dozen martinis, to be prepared not sequentially but simultaneously—six shining glasses in a bright row, down which Wilson would work, all the while talking and thinking at a rapid pace. To the end of a long life, he kept on making the only thing he thought worth making: sense, a quality almost entirely lacking in American literature where stupidity—if sufficiently sincere and authentic—is deeply revered, and easily achieved. Although this was a rather unhealthy life in the long run, Wilson had a very long run indeed. But then he was perfect proof of the proposition that the more the mind is used and fed the less apt it is to devour itself. When he died, at seventy-seven, he was busy stuffing his head with irregular Hungarian verbs. Plainly, he had a brain to match his liver. [Gore Vidal] 
• American Catholicism is in steep decline. In 2000, 2.6 million American children attended Catholic schools. In 2025, only 1.6 million did. In 2001, more than a quarter-million Catholic weddings took place; in 2024, around 107,000 did. In 2001, more than a million infants were baptized in the Church. In 2024, fewer than half a million were. These numbers presage a future in which the Catholic Church will be much smaller and poorer than it currently is. Given these facts, talk of a Catholic revival—spurred this spring by a surge in adult conversions, many in urban and university churches—is misplaced. [First Things]