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See's Candies is Warren Buffett’s ‘dream’ investment

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201–210 of 211 posts

Re: See's Candies is Warren Buffett’s ‘dream’ investment

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oops, that's bilingual predictive auto-correct failing, and me not re-reading my comment... I wanted to say "the problem is retail capture", but somehow it filled in a Romanian word instead... Phone keyboards... Just for completeness, "prelegeri" would be best translated as "lectures" - it made no sense at all in context, it only happened to match a few letters of what I fat-fingered.

I didn't realize bilingual auto correct existed until now. How did you set that up?

It's a standard feature of many mobile keyboards. I personally use MS SwitfKey, but GBoard has it as well, and I'm sure others have it too. You get to select multiple languages for which they'll do auto-correct, predictive suggestions, and swipe-typing.

It works surprisingly well, but it does sometimes fail pretty spectacularly when you're sloppy and mis-type too many letters. It also can't help much when words are ambiguous (is that an English "in" or a mistyped Romanian "în"?). Still, it's generally a godsend for typing in mixed languages (say, like in Spanglish, where you'll write unas palabras en Ingles, y altras in Spanish). They even include things like names of local politicians or cities or brands.

Windows does seem to have this as well as an option ("Multilingual text suggestions"), but individual apps might not (e.g. I haven't seen it in Outlook).

Re: See's Candies is Warren Buffett’s ‘dream’ investment

#202
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stick to brands that have a reputation for quality worth defending. It's no guarantee, but you want a brand that perhaps charges a bit more because of their long track record of quality. The longer and more solid their track record of quality, the more motivation they will have to make sure that reputation stays intact. That's about the best you can do.

I stick to stores that I can trust. Costco very much can. Walmart maybe. Amazon nope who knows what your actually getting.

I would focus on finding brands to trust vs stores. Stores do absolutely zero diligence on ingredients of supplements.

https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2015/02/major-retailers-order...

> Three to four samples of each supplement purchased in different parts of the state were tested. Each sample was tested five times, for a total of 390 tests on 78 samples. Schneiderman said that only 4 percent of Walmart’s supplements (“Spring Valley” brand) actually contained the ingredients listed on the label, while 18 percent did at Walgreens (“Finest Nutrition” brand), 22 percent at GNC (“Herbal Plus” brand), and 41 percent at Target stores (“Up & Up” brand).

Re: See's Candies is Warren Buffett’s ‘dream’ investment

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is it is because that is the era when BK really leaned into the McDonalds sized chip on their shoulder. So, kinda like the petty thrills that the "console wars" had.

It's still probably better than McDonald's, but the bar is pretty low there. Full disclosure, I sold the QSR stock I'd had for a few years when everything went to shit in 2020 and bought MCD on the same day... I like that McDonald's goes out of the way to supply locally, it seems like a better model for surviving black swan events. Both garbage, but that's the cafeteria choice you get in late stage capitalism. Still,…

> Both garbage, but that's the cafeteria choice you get in late stage capitalism.

If you're in Paris and you're willing to pay 15€ for your burger menu, King Marcel is ridiculously good.

Re: See's Candies is Warren Buffett’s ‘dream’ investment

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A key quote from the article supports what you're saying: "Warren and I raised the prices of See’s Candies a little faster than others might have. There are actually people out there who don’t price everything as high as the market will easily stand. And once you figure that out, it’s like finding money in the street.” Whether that's a reason to admire Buffet, or dislike him, I'll leave to the reader. The impression…

I’m still trying to understand this quote so pardon me for being thick. Is he saying they raised the price as high as the market would allow or that they waited for a while to do that?

They raised the price as high as the market would allow, but did it gradually over time (about 10% per year).

Re: See's Candies is Warren Buffett’s ‘dream’ investment

#206
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's good; means the good things they don't understand will be priced lower for those who do.

In the long run, like way after they're dead. I don't know. I'm in business for the dividends and raising tax funds for the State. You do both together generally, and because every businessman wants to do the total opposite, he hates paying dividends, hates giving the money he earned to investors, always saying reinvest. Or buybacks, which are strictly dividends. Buybacks are dividends. They just say they're differen…

I agree with you regarding dividends, returning money to investors, of course.

I was thinking more of things like how e.g. Tesla was not even a decade ago priced at $2 billion dollars when it was pretty frickin' obvious they had a very reasonable chance of growing to a globally dominant manufacturer. Lots of smart people missed that, but quite a few saw it as well.

Re: See's Candies is Warren Buffett’s ‘dream’ investment

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember the kangaroo meat scandal from that time, forget who it was, maybe Jack in the Box?

Kangaroo meat is great and way more sustainable than beef. I'd eat a kangaroo burger any day.

Agreed, tastes like a mix between beef & chicken. Sadly barely any restaurants serve kangaroo.

I would much prefer a variety of meats that are more sustainably farmed with choices varying by season and availability limited by ecological factors with open-market pricing (with a fairly heavy tax) to naturally introduce a premium on delicacies.

Re: See's Candies is Warren Buffett’s ‘dream’ investment

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't realize bilingual auto correct existed until now. How did you set that up?

It's a standard feature of many mobile keyboards. I personally use MS SwitfKey, but GBoard has it as well, and I'm sure others have it too. You get to select multiple languages for which they'll do auto-correct, predictive suggestions, and swipe-typing. It works surprisingly well, but it does sometimes fail pretty spectacularly when you're sloppy and mis-type too many letters. It also can't help much when words are a…

That seems pretty cool. Maybe one day in the future, after trilingual, quadrilingual, etc., autocorrect, something like Esperanto will be reinvented from the ground up.

Re: See's Candies is Warren Buffett’s ‘dream’ investment

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still probably better than McDonald's, but the bar is pretty low there. Full disclosure, I sold the QSR stock I'd had for a few years when everything went to shit in 2020 and bought MCD on the same day... I like that McDonald's goes out of the way to supply locally, it seems like a better model for surviving black swan events. Both garbage, but that's the cafeteria choice you get in late stage capitalism. Still,…

> Both garbage, but that's the cafeteria choice you get in late stage capitalism. If you're in Paris and you're willing to pay 15€ for your burger menu, King Marcel is ridiculously good.

ohhhh... wow. ok. This got my juices going. Next time. Saint-Nectaire is perhaps my favorite cheese... their "Michelin" sounds a lot like the home burger I developed living in Auvergne. Which was: 50% steak hache / 50% ground pork, smashed thin with two patties, rocket, grilled onion, Charroux mustard, mayonnaise, St Nectaire on one patty and Blue d'Auverne on the other, on a hollowed out flattened wide baguette. Monster. Most of the necessary things aren't available in the States... but it's very cool that the King Marcel burger seems to match this flavor profile.

It's been my experience that most "American" foods - and Chinese food too - are much better in France. Like, this is embarrassing, but compared to any roadside chain in America, the Buffalo Grill is incredible. It would be the best restaurant in most cities under 50,000 people in the US. It looks like an Applebee's and then they have freakin steak tartare which would be inconceivable in the US. And it's actually edible.

Re: See's Candies is Warren Buffett’s ‘dream’ investment

#210
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You can buy a 200-300 dollar phone with more than decent specs Two weeks ago I got a "9.5" (looks brand new, battery too) used Pixel 3a for 100$ on eBay. It's a perfectly fine phone with picture/video quality undersold by it's camera pixel count.

...that's out of android updates as of this month. The specs are fine, the security isn't, and that's the problem.

Very fair.
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