Weekend Reading #344
This is the three-hundredth-and-forty-fourth weekly edition of our newsletter, Weekend Reading, sent out on Saturday 26th December 2025.
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What we're thinking.
It seems that things are stable into year end now barring catastrophe. That doesn’t mean green light with no caveats. Lots of idiosyncratic moves are taking place with big daily and weekly dispersion in and amongst the major themes. But the one consistency is anything commodity related is going up.
We are getting close to the time of the year where we pack up and take a breather and next week will likely be our last newsletter of the year as we do what we usually do. Shut our book and prepare to start all over in 2026.
What we're doing.
Disney world is one helluva business. Literally thousands upon thousands of people every single day spending a fortune to stand in queues all day long. I researched which week is best to attend for optimal weather and a chance at low foot traffic but if this week was it I’d hate to think what August is like! If you are looking for that bit of packaged “magic” this is the place! A trip to Florida’s original Disney world is on every young family’s bucket list. The question is why. Is it because it just always has been that way for 2 generations? Is it because one feels guilty denying one’s kids that privilege?
Maybe I’m just grumpy (likely) but across the 4 parks, 95% of the attractions are extremely mediocre, 5% are exceptional. The cheery faced employees order you to stand in line properly to buy obscenely expensive junk food. Once again, the question is what are you getting in return? I’d say 2 or maybe 3 rides at each park are really good. But for each ride one stands in a queue for around an hour (and this is a quiet week). There is the option of “lightning passes” but these are very expensive so few get them, and they are not as practical as they sound. Other than this the parks are a cacophony of jingles and crowds. And selling. Lots of selling. And most of the IP on display is old or relatively old. Tired. A bit like the stock price. Maybe Netflix should buy Disney instead. The most impressive of the lot was the Star Wars section in Hollywood Studios park. An entire wing of the park built like a Star Wars film set incl themed restaurants and staff dressed up. This was pretty cool even if I’m not a major Star Wars guy myself.
If I’m being honest even my kids were relatively underwhelmed. That actually made me proud. Like me, they enjoyed the rides but that’s about it. I was wondering if someone could just build a theme park for high adrenaline rides only. No manufactured storylines or fluff. Short wait times and high velocity. In and out in 2 hours. I’d pay a premium for that. Apparently Six Flags is that, but I think by the end of next week (Universal Studios to come) we will have had enough theme parks for a lifetime and pleased to have ticked that off the bucket list! DC
What we're reading.
Netflix’s deal to buy Warner has hit the headlines on Friday and already the memes are flowing calling it a top of some kind. At 82 billion dollars it seems a chunky deal though by megacap standards not too big. For the near-term trajectory of the stock price, I offer no advice but in terms of the strategic deal potential it struck me that this is possibly the most transformative deal in terms of influence and effect in a very long time. Netflix has never had a problem with distribution. It is inside the homes of most of the world ex China by now. The problem in recent times has been really mundane content. Mid range content. By getting HBO in particular this puts Netflix in a different league in terms of high-quality content and means they spend less on brand new “mid” originals to keep audience happy. It’ll be fun to see what they do with Game of Thrones et al. Let’s hope they don’t stuff it up. DC
Also hot off the press is the Trump administration’s new National Security Policy, available in its full form here. Despite the document being 33 pages long, it’s actually quite an easy read, not least because the font size is large and the line spacings are generous, so it’s not a true 33-page document. Most importantly, it’s pretty much clear of political jargon, and true to typical Trump style communications goes straight to the point in simple English: the US needs to take care of itself, it will focus on sorting its affairs out, protecting its interests and where it doesn’t need to, it doesn’t interfere. More interestingly, even where it needs to, it’s not “at all costs” – China vs Taiwan, for example, is not a foregone conclusion when it comes to the US commitment to defending the island. It's a priority, but not at all costs. Equally interestingly, China isn’t labelled as an outright enemy either – as a competitor economically that needs to be managed, yes, but not “THE enemy”. Added to the disavowing of DEI and woke policies as a matter of policy, and this is probably the most sensible proclamation to have come out of the White House in years.
On a separate note, I came across this interesting blog post showing a very different view of “AI Adoption” in nowhere other than Seattle itself, home to Microsoft and Amazon. It’s a fascinating anecdotal recount of how “AI” as a theme has become outright detested and hated by engineers in Microsoft (and perhaps other US megacap tech firms too?), decried as a plague that crimps productivity, forced down the throats of employees as a tool that is sometimes worse than doing it manual (e.g. getting laid off for not using Microsoft Copilot effectively – to be honest, I’ve never tried it, so no opinion there on the effectiveness of it). In a way, replace “AI tools” with “DEI” or “creative writing” and it starts to be the same pattern of well-meaning corporate policies hijacked by corporate bureaucracy into an interest group tossing buzzwords around. Certainly not the kind of thing one expects to read about AI, given all the news around “AI productivity gains” in recent earnings reports. As I’ve put it before, your favourite LLM is no different from a first year graduate analyst who has PhDs in every single subject on the planet, infinite memory, infinite work hours, infinite confidence and no work experience. Context is everything – replacing jobs that don’t require context (e.g. spreadsheet filling) is easy, but anything that needs context needs human experience, which often doesn’t get written down for a LLM to process. The humans have yet to make their last stand, thankfully. EL