Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Feb 22nd, 2026
Spring work is going on with joyful enthusiasm." - John Muir
"Luck can be engineered.
Leverage the internet (it’s the entire reason you’re reading this article).
Get out of your house & move molecules, paint shots and have conversations.
Constantly refine your skills, become a valuable member of society & give without expectation of return.
Enjoy high leisure activities, go on that ski trip, join that martial arts gym…
It’s impossible to not get closer to where you want to be by doing these 4 things."
https://www.lethalgentleman.com/p/how-to-create-luck
2. There is so much wisdom in this conversation. What all the best founders do in times of crisis and how to build culture from one of the best VCs on the planet at one of the best firms on the planet.
I learned a lot and will listen to this again for sure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91WKEsbHUNc
3. "Contrary to the common wisdom, what you see is that during the frontier stage in the US market, it was actually the easiest time to generate excess returns over the benchmark.
It became a little harder during the emerging market stage. Once you got into the developed stage, it became very hard to generate excess returns over the benchmark because the market has become so much more efficient.
Of course, if you look at the anecdotal evidence, it points to the same conclusion.
The frontier market stage in the US lasted up until about 1950, and it was what I would call the Benjamin Graham era. This is when Benjamin Graham devised his know-nothing, purely mechanical approach to investing, where he would just buy businesses that were trading at less than two-thirds of net working capital. That worked great for generating very good excess returns over the benchmark.
During the emerging market period from about 1950 to about 1990, those net working capital ideas – those easy Benjamin Graham bargains – would all disappear.
In emerging and frontier markets, it is critical to be able to switch between the markets because at any given time, there may only be one market that offers attractive investment opportunities. If your mandate ties you to a single market, then you're not going to be able to take advantage of that."
4. "My advice to entrepreneurs is simple: start writing. It does not have to be perfect. It does not have to be groundbreaking. It just has to be done. The more you write, the sharper your thinking becomes, and the stronger your speaking becomes. Writing and speaking reinforce each other, and entrepreneurs should invest in both."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/12/27/the-power-of-writing-before-you-speak/
5. Wide ranging conversation on global macro covering lots of ground: AI, the new PMI cycle leading to possible microcaps, industrials and commodities growth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E47xXJZHHgg&t=2127s
6. A really great conversation on global macro and late-cycle investment with my friend Nicolas. All with the underlying tech trend driving almost everything.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOvgtjhxAFg
7. This is a must watch conversation on global macro. Bifurcation of the world and the end of the USD vs rise of BRICS. Fascinating.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOW-oSruO80&t=899s
8. Lightspeed VC and how they are investing in the Age of AI.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0lZ3JdZw7s
9. I hate Microsoft products but they are an impressively powerful company. This is an interview with the man responsible for keeping Microsoft on top during the cloud platform shift and into the Age of AI.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2OPYYthw4c
10. Anduril is one of the most important companies in America. A true mission oriented company solving hard problems.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GohWL9BlX3Q
11. "Our government looks functional. It has all the pageantry, pronouncements, and pomposity we’re used to, but it has none of the substance. Globalization hollowed out the nation-state after the Cold War, when the governing establishment shifted from orienting our decision-making around nationalism to one oriented by globalism.
-Instead of a nation, we became a democratic system — process without meaning.
-Instead of citizenship (its benefits and the obligations it demands in return), we became participants in the global economy, left to compete in it on our own.
-Instead of socioeconomic prosperity, we have choices (products and identities) and free online services.
Worse, as hollow states mature, they;
-Lose legitimacy because they don’t deliver meaningful services or security.
-Experience rampant looting (of society, the government, and the economy).
-This looting is dismissed as ‘just a cost of doing business,’ not a sign of failure.
-Devolve into a mechanism for forcibly extracting wealth from what remains of the country (or borrowing against it), and then transferring it to networks of connected globalized insiders (socialism for the greedy)."
https://johnrobb.substack.com/p/the-sack-of-america
12. "As a result, vintage buying has almost turned into an extreme sport—with consumers pulling out all the stops to acquire special items. Many are now accessing the vintage apparel market in Japan, where collectors have amassed classic American items no longer available in the US.
This is much more than nostalgia.
New stuff is so poorly made that I’m now increasingly buying old items for my own use, and not only as gifts. The quality coming from the large online retailers is abysmal, and my safest bet is often secondhand.
I’ve been burned too many times. In the last couple years, I’ve bought at least a dozen items online that were absolutely worthless. In some instances, the products were just scams—cheap garbage that didn’t come close to matching the online descriptions."
https://www.honest-broker.com/p/why-secondhand-is-now-better-than
13. Always good takes. Somewhat grim take on the West but he is not wrong here sadly. We aren't mark-to-market right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3B8xqsf66w&t=3s
14. "When I sent the first ‘cashtag’ ticker message to Fred Wilson from my Blackberry back in 2007 - ‘I love $RIMM’ - I had no inkling of the degenerate economy. My inkling was that the walls of institutions and markets were coming down. I was all in on the ‘real-time’ trend that I saw Twitter tipping us towards.
Twitter does not own real time anymore! Trump, The White House and the people in this orbit define true real time from Truth Social. We live now in a ‘post real time world’ of decentralized inside information and escalating greed (everyman for himself).
If I were to sum up the year 2025 and the degenerate economy- leaving out war and politics - it would be space, grift, everyman for himself, tariffs/inflation and prediction markets."
15. My recommendation is simple: send a weekly or monthly update email. Include anecdotes, metrics, projects, and the things you need help with. Make it a habit, and make sure your audience receives it at the same time every week or month.
https://davidcummings.org/2026/01/03/1-advice-for-an-entrepreneur-in-the-new-year/
16. "The level of attention and hyper focus is what allows you to do more in 1 week than most men get done in a single month.
The rules of time do not apply to you.
The formula is not complicated, in fact there competition is embarrassingly low.
If you develop an attention to detail, you will absolutely smoke your competition.
It’s time to start overdoing things. Being unnecessarily professional.
Impress people with the way you carry yourself.
Dress sharp, be meticulous with your craft.
Unreasonable hospitality. Unreasonable standards. Unreasonable precision."
https://www.lethalgentleman.com/p/why-you-shouldnt-go-the-extra-mile
17. "You are paying a “Proximity Tax” every single day, and you likely aren’t even tracking the expense. When you spend time with people who have low standards, reactive mindsets, or a thirst for cheap status, their energy functions like a subtle cognitive drain. You start to adopt their vocabulary, their anxieties, and their limitations. You cannot build a sovereign, high-leverage life while anchored to a peer group that finds comfort in the status quo."
https://substack.com/home/post/p-183452139
18. "People talk about luck in two ways: either success is all skill, or it’s all pure chance. I typically hear arguments on those two sides: the meritocratic ideal (success is the result of talent and effort) or the fatalistic view (outcomes are just chance).
I find that both perspectives miss something important. They miss the real story: what you do matters, and so does the environment you’re operating in.
I like to think there’s a little bit more to luck than pure randomness. More often, luck shows up because your habits and choices put you in its path. Many years ago, I came across this concept of “luck surface area”1 by Jason Roberts. The larger that surface, the more likely a lucky break has somewhere to land and stick."
https://www.polymathinvestor.com/p/the-luck-field-manual-rules-for-engineering
19. The godfather of global liquidity. Good global macro conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIDCDKUCtg4
20. What a fascinating conversation on building the future. Supersonic planes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwaoUyaUM6s&t=4862s
21. A16Z's takes on Consumer AI. Super interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4-7x6QiYr0
22. So much gold if you are thinking about your career. Gokul is one of the top product leaders in Silicon Valley and an incredible angel investor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPpOtwUesnk
23. "A rise in nominal GDP boosts financial asset prices, and rich folks will dutifully pay their bribes - cough cough, campaign donations to Team Red to giveth thanks. But in America, it’s one human, one vote, and the plebes can easily derail the party if a rise in inflation accompanies a rise in nominal GDP. Trump and US Treasury Secretary Buffalo Bill Bessent said they would run the economy hot, and I believe them, but how will they keep inflation in check? The inflation that torpedoes re-election odds is of the food and energy variety. The key metric for Americans is the price of gasoline, as there is scant usable, affordable public transportation available for most folks. You cannot exist as a proletariat worker in America without a set of wheels, unfortunately. And therefore, Trump and his lieutenants colonized Venezuela for its oil.
When talking about Venezuelan oil, many are quick to point out that the country has the world’s largest proven reserves. But who cares how much oil you have in the ground. The question is, can one extract the oil from the ground profitably? I don’t know the answer to this question, but Trump obviously believes that if he turns on the tap, oil will gush forth from Venezuela into the Gulf of Mexico refineries, and cheap gasoline will placate the plebes by tamping down energy inflation. I can’t opine whether Trump is correct, but the WTI and Brent crude oil markets will be the truth serum. As nominal GDP and dollar credit supply rise, do oil prices rise or fall? Team Blue Democrats will win if GDP and oil prices rise together, and Team Red Republicans will win if GDP rises but oil prices flatline or fall.
Taking Trump and his lieutenants at their word, we know credit will expand. The Team Red Republican legislators will deficit spend, Buffalo Bill Bessent’s Treasury Department will issue debt to fund it, and beta cuck towel bitch boy Jerome Powell and his successor’s Fed will print money to buy the bonds. This circle jerk started in earnest in 2008, and as Lyn Alden says, “Nothing stops this train”. As the amount of dollars expands, the price of Bitcoin and certain cryptos will sky rocket."
https://cryptohayes.substack.com/p/suavemente
24. The Network State meets the Longevity State.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJcxQQ0GzyI
25. Alt-Geopolitics. Crazy stuff but good to bend your brain sometimes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNSZBi3__h0
26. "People hate feeling personal power of other humans
No, they HATE it. They hate it, hate it, hate it, and hate it absolutely
Nothing triggers their wrath, nothing triggers their envy, and nothing makes them more depressed then being subject to the personal, arbitrary whim of someone else
That makes power something you have to hide, something you have to disguise, something you have to absolutely deny existing
Rulers of the past, kings of the past, and - last but not least - dictators of the past knew that, and worked hard to avoid any appearance of arbitrariness in their actions. No, it’s not my personal whim. It is not even my personal decision. I am merely an instrument, a tool executing the will of someone else, absolutely constrained in my actions - by this external authority.
Denying that you have any personal power at all is lindy
Loudly proclaiming that you do, is not"
https://kamilkazani.substack.com/p/might-makes-right
27. "The US went in, took out Maduro and the whole fiasco was done in under a few hours. This was despite having backing with China/Russia. The conclusion should be pretty simple: USA military/defense/technology is far and away the best.
If someone says it was an “inside job” that’s still not a good answer. It means that no one was able to figure out the CIA. If it was brute force. Then that’s also not a good answer. Both answers lead to the same conclusion = never bet against America long-term.
If you can’t make it here, you can’t make it anywhere. Still rings true today. Even more so. Your long-term investments in the US are safe!
Rare earth minerals in US control now. If you look back at the Russia Ukraine battle, the USA stepping in had nothing to do with Ukraine (cynical view). In the end, all the money we lent them just came back in a payment of rare earth minerals. For those that forgot (source). Unsurprisingly, this wasn’t paraded around the Television as much (since it was the real value)
Click fast forward and while everyone will show you the chart of the oil reserves that Venezuela has, that’s just to distract people from everything else of value.
Ignore all the noise around Oil. It’s first order thinking. If your grandparents know that Venezuela has oil then there is no real alpha there. Nothing novel. Then your parents can probably logically solve that “Caracas will be rebuilt”. Some value there but then go ask “who will build it” suddenly… you’ll get crickets.
GRID will get you a stable return on infrastructure build out both in the USA and in places like Venezuela and your job is to add a function to narrow that 100 company list down.
Hilariously, while everyone talks about oil, this is just the 1,000th reason to be long tech and US tech in particular."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/second-order-ideas-venezuela-and
28. "Attention, as important as it seems at the moment, is becoming less valuable than legibility. Legibility is, in literal terms, the ease with which a reader can decode symbols. In culture, it is a measure of the permeability of communication. It is the ability to discern meaning.
Legibility is the top cultural currency. Algorithms command attention, but they do not command legibility.
Job of brands is to make their products legible."
https://andjelicaaa.substack.com/p/the-legibility-economy
29. "So the good people who actually make the technology we use every day, the real innovators and creators and designers, are reacting to the unprecedented disconnect between the contemporary tech industry and the fundamentals that drew so many people toward it in the first place. Many of the biggest companies have abandoned the basic principle of making technology that actually works. So many new products fail to deliver on even the basic capabilities that the companies are promising that they will provide.
Many leaders at these companies have run full speed towards moral and social cowardice, abandoning their employees and customers to embrace rank hatred and discrimination in ways that they pretended to be fighting against just a few years ago. Meanwhile, unchecked consolidation has left markets wildly uncompetitive, leaving consumers suffering from the effects of categories without any competition or investment — which we know now as “enshittification”. And the full-scale shift into corruption and crony capitalism means that winners in business are decided by whoever is shameless enough to offer the biggest bribes and debase themselves with the most humiliating display of groveling. It’s a depressing shift for people who, earlier in their careers, often actually were part of inventing the future."
https://www.anildash.com/2026/01/05/a-tech-career-in-2026/
30. I'm a fan of Waltz, one of the few politicians I respect. Incredible patriot and SOF military veteran. Very topical.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbjZ9_QxLsU
31. "In the early 2020s, plots are dumbed down to be more “scrolling-friendly,” it’s no coincidence the most highly regarded film of 2025 (Frankenstein) and the most highly anticipated film of 2026 (Wuthering Heights) are both 300 page novels from the Romantic Period covering deep topics like unchecked ambition (playing God), isolation and the need for connection, and what it truly means to be human or a monster. All themes that are just as relevant today as they were over two hundred years ago.
In the era of AI-generated everything, the most memorable performances involve a more comprehensive approach to the process. The ten to eleven hour physical transformation, 42 pieces of prosthetics, unlearning how we move as humans and reconstructing a new physicality through butoh, the Japanese art form to develop a uniquely grotesque, yet beautiful movements. We are truly discovering what it means to be alive."
https://brianne.substack.com/p/why-everything-will-be-romantic-in
32. "Will Venezuela become the next failed state or the next Panama? Who’s to say, but with Imperial rhetoric and being resource rich, it is more likely to be a success story than still be some backwater hellhole in a few decades.
What it also shows us is that Russia and China may not be the adversaries the West fears. China and Russia were powerless to stop America’s reach. Whether they had advanced knowledge is another question. Because if they didn’t that is also quite telling.
But no, this isn’t some death-nail to the idea of multipolarity.
Far from it.
The Petrodollar/Eurodollar system is still teetering. Bitcoin and Crypto still lurk in the shadows. And WMDs become more prevalent and available by the day.
In a Multipolar System, Power is the only thing that matters.
And America still has alot of Power."
https://mercurial.substack.com/p/the-maduro-doctrine
33. "Regardless of how broken it may seem, you don’t need to fix the world. You need to know your neighbors. Take the time to talk with them, even when you’re tired. Offer to help when you can and listen without rushing to argue. We can respect differences without allowing them to divide us.
The health of society is not built in grand gestures or viral moments, despite what we may see on social media. Rather, it is built quietly on front porches, driveways, yards, and sidewalks.
If you want to change the world, start with the people who live next door and be a good neighbor."
https://thewaysofagentleman.substack.com/p/were-trying-to-change-the-world-while
34. "In the next year, we’re entering a different era: AI products are growing revenue at astounding rates—no-code app builder Lovable generated $100 million in annual recurring revenue in eight months. The Swedish company uses a credit-based pricing system for consumers, and some usage-based pricing for backend services like hosting. The successful AI companies will be the ones whose pricing model aligns engineering with user value.
In the next decade, we’ll look back to today—when AI forced SaaS to reckon with real marginal costs—as the moment when pricing became hard again, which made the software business honest again. The survivors will succeed because their product andpricing models worked.
Companies that embrace this complexity as a design problem, not just a finance problem, will build products that earn margins, support sustainable growth, and beat competitors in the long run—instead of becoming another example like MoviePass."
https://every.to/p/how-ai-made-pricing-hard-again
35. "The reality is nuanced. Europe is now two distinct systems operating under the same institutional umbrella.
Hard for building companies from within. Bureaucracy, regulation, friction remain. The barriers to entrepreneurship haven’t disappeared. Labor laws are restrictive. Regulatory compliance is expensive. Innovation moves slower than in the US or parts of Asia.
But great for personal life while building value globally or online. Tax frameworks specifically reward external income. EU mobility offers unprecedented geographic flexibility. Quality of life in cities like Milan, Lisbon, or Athens rivals anywhere in the world.
We look forward to Europe becoming competitive for building. The demographic crisis, the tech gap, the innovation deficit need solving. In the meantime, this two-speed setup is the way.
Live in Europe. Build globally. Optimize both."
https://palombo.substack.com/p/the-10-year-european-comeback
36. Implications of a new multipolar world. What markets are missing: Resilience and redundancy will be the focus for countries and investors.
Wicked
I kind of watched this movie series backwards but it was okay. After watching Wicked for Good (number 2), my daughter hectored me to go watch number 1. It definitely would have helped to watch this earlier as Wicked for Good would have made way more sense. Goes to show you sequencing is important.
For those who don’t know, “Wicked” & “Wicked for Good” is the backstory to the Wizard of Oz, when Glinda the good witch meets Elphaba aka the Wicked Witch of the West and their unlikely friendship. It's surprisingly well done. A twist to an old classic tale.
I enjoyed both the movies. Very entertaining. Also educational. Especially the scene with Doctor Dillamond, the talking goat at Shiz University, yes, it sounds weird hence why you should watch the movie. Dillamond is the history professor who explains why studying history is important. “Because we cannot escape the past and we ignore it at our own peril. Because the past helps explain our present circumstances.” I love history and I love studying it. I would be a professor if I had not caught the business and capitalism bug. It’s been incredibly helpful for my career and super helpful for global macro investing too. Sadly, it seems too few our leaders have studied it and we are repeating the mistake of fallen powers and empires now. Again.
Hard times are coming. We see it in the stats. We feel it around us, the tension, the desperation. Especially in America. Most people are in survival mode. I am deeply concerned as bad things happen during these times. As Dillamond explained why his people were slowly wiped out or forced away. “Food grew scarce. And when people are hungry and angry. They begin to look for someone to blame.” It's easy to blame those who look and sound different than we are. Especially easy in a heterogeneous society like America full of immigrants and people from everywhere.
All political leaders know this. And they use it. As the Wizard of Oz said: “When I first got here, there was discord, there was discontent. And back from where I come from, everybody knows, the best way to bring folks together is to give them a real good enemy.”
As we see in the movie and in real life, kids are mean. I know. I grew up as a minority in Canada. Adults are mean too. Especially to those different to them. People are cowards. Elphaba uses her rage from all the hate she gets from the community and this allows her to tap into her powers. “No one should be scorned, or laughed at. Or looked down upon…..” I get it. But if you can overcome this, as her friend Glinda tells her, and it is good advice for us all: “You can do this. You can do anything.”
Elphie sings: “I’m through with playing by the rules of someone else’s game. Too late for second guessing. Too late to go back to sleep. It’s time to trust my instincts.”
I truly hope we rise above all the anger and challenges we face. America and any country is almost unstoppable when they come together. They fail horrifically when this doesn’t happen. This is the big lesson from history we’ve seen over and over. Unity in family, unity in community, unity in country. “Once you learn to harness your emotion, the sky's the limit.”
Avoid Boring People: How to Be Interesting
The sense I get of young kids these days is that they are incredibly risk averse. They don’t travel, they do what everyone else is doing. They optimize for optionality and yet don’t do anything original. What got me thinking about this was a Tweet I saw: https://x.com/mageeclegg/status/1992957732991721888
“I got a friend in San Francisco…
She says she went on 10 dates this year… Every guy was the same: • Software engineer • Patagonia vest • Mountain-biking addiction • Talks AI, crypto, and “safe long-term index investing” • Thinks Donald Trump is ruining the world.”
This is the case in NYC with Finance bros. Los Angeles with the Hollywood bros. People who literally are exactly alike in their ecosystem. But Magee the author of the tweet has a recommendation.
“Don’t be this guy. If you’re this unoriginal and want to change that…
Here’s what you should do before your next date:
• Take the Trans-Siberian Express from Ulaanbaatar to Moscow… drink warm vodka, eat pickles straight from the jar, and arm-wrestle Russians who size you up like an enemy agent.
• Fly to Buenos Aires… eat steak, drink Malbec, dance tango, and don’t come home until you’ve learned Spanish in a woman’s bed.
• Hike the cliffs of Cinque Terre… swim at sunrise and drink rough wine with old fishermen who’ve outlived storms and stories you can’t imagine.
• Take a train from India’s southern tip to Varanasi… stand on the ghats at dawn as bodies burn on the Ganges and feel the heat of a world older than anything you’ve known.
Go live a life worth living…
There’s so much out there waiting to shape you. And one day you’ll find yourself sitting across from a beautiful woman… and you won’t be digging through your mind for something interesting to say. You’ll simply be interesting.”
I’d add, join the French or Ukrainian Foreign Legion. Take Muay Thai fight training in Thailand. Walk the Kumano Kodo trail in Japan and El Camino de Santiago Walk. Ride a motorbike across South America. Join the “Centurion Club” which is someone who visits 100 countries in the world. Have random and obscure hobbies. Collect and read old books. Lots of them.
Basically do something unique. Follow your curiosity. Be original. Be interesting. Live.
Giving Grace
I was going to take my daughter to her hip hop dance session one dark winter night. I thought I was locked in but as I was pulling out of the driveway, I almost ran into a father and his kid walking on the sidewalk. He was furious, visibly furious and rightfully. And I felt terrible because it was clearly on me, I wasn’t paying full attention. I mean, if it happened to me while walking my kid, I probably would have stormed over and well, at minimum got into a screaming match, at worst inflicted some extreme violence on him. I have a continuing battle with anger management.
So what do I take from this? Well one, self driving cars just can’t come quickly enough. Humans, even the most careful ones, are just too distracted & error prone these days.
The second thing, as the bible says, “Do not judge, lest you be judged.” Incredibly wise words. Fix yourself first. I tend to get enraged when I see people driving badly, not paying attention, doing weird dumb things in their car. The car is a weapon and very dangerous if you let it be. But we are human and mistakes happen. And I need to learn to be more tolerant, less judgemental to say the least.
I need to learn to give more grace to people. Everyone is literally fighting battles in their head these days. I feel the stress and tension in people around me, people are really struggling, especially in America it seems. God knows how rough the last few years have been personally. So be kinder than you need to be. We can all do with a bit more kindness and grace in our lives.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Feb 15th, 2026
"In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy" –William Blake
One of the more original thinkers in venture capital. A wide ranging discussion on investing & building frameworks with Chris Paik. Recommend.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFA_iiEtm_8
2. "My fourth lesson of the year is that gambling is America’s favorite activity. We had an explosion of examples throughout the year. Zero day options are dominating the market. Levered ETFs with 3x or 5x leverage continue to be launched on single name stocks. Sports gambling has been sweeping the nation. And prediction markets have pulled off the greatest rebrand of all time by convincing people they are predicting the future rather than gambling on the weather, the color of someone’s tie, or whether an active shooter is going to be caught in the first 48 hours.
I don’t claim some moral high ground because I believe that all financial markets are speculation, which is just a fancy way to describe gambling. If you buy stocks, you are ultimately gambling. If you buy options, you are gambling. If you buy cryptocurrency, you are gambling. It is just that these investment related activities have much better odds of success than buying a lottery ticket, sitting at a blackjack table, or letting a triple parlay fly on NFL Sunday.
Lesson: America is addicted to gambling. Choose your form of gambling wisely."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/5-lessons-i-learned-in-2025
3. "If it were just a matter of maximizing shareholder value, most people could probably still make sense of it. But something stranger happens as the revolution fully unfolds: managers mysteriously stop caring about profits. The last decade offers countless examples of studios setting money on fire as they reboot beloved franchises in the image and likeness of social justice zealots—gender-swapping, race-swapping, and generally making expensive productions that nobody wants to see.
This too is tied to managerialism. As James Burnham observed, a defining feature of this system is the separation of ownership and control, which means the people making decisions want different things than the ones who actually have skin in the game. The rift between them grows over the years. Managerials ultimately aim to serve the interests of the managerial class, to signal virtue to other managerials, to get high on the resulting fumes of status and acclaim and applause. And they cover each other’s backs so well that their fellows rarely have to suffer consequences for disastrous decisions. Always remember that the woman who lost $1.4B for Anheuser-Busch by hiring the trans-icon Dylan Mulvaney landed on her feet quite nicely with a gig at LIV Golf. Just one example."
https://thechivalryguild.substack.com/p/why-heroic-movies-arent-happening
4. "Three years ago, I praised the new boss at Barnes & Noble—a man named James Daunt who actually loves books. Back then, he was already infusing new life in the struggling company, and I predicted good things to come.
They have now arrived in full force.
Barnes & Noble opened 57 new stores in 2024 and 58 in 2025. Plans are afoot to open 60 more stores in 2026, and list the company on the stock exchange.
This is a remarkable achievement. It’s happening in the face of eroding reading skills and the replacement of leisure reading with online distractions. Reading for pleasure is down 40% but Barnes & Noble is growing steadily. James Daunt must be some kind of culture superhero to succeed in this environment."
https://www.honest-broker.com/p/the-surprising-return-of-the-bookstore
5. Lots of great predictions in tech for 2026. Very good takes here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehO3wIio7Nw&list=PLI0_clHshGZctchZkfCXmz7SPyuBSOoq1
6. "OpenAI is promising Oracle $300 billion — money it doesn’t have — for infrastructure Oracle hasn’t built. We can’t see the actual contract, but this is BS. The greatest AI hallucination yet is the assumption that in the next few years we’re going to build anywhere near the required grid and power capacity.
OpenAI needs 20% of current U.S. electric capacity — equivalent to 250 nuclear power plants — at a cost of $10 trillion. There’s a five- to eight-year wait to connect a new data center to the grid. Meanwhile, China has more than twice America’s energy capacity at half the cost. Second greatest AI hallucination? Job creation. The average number of full-time employees at a data center is equivalent to the number of people working at two Applebee’s."
https://www.profgalloway.com/2026-predictions/
7. "RMP is a new acronym that entered my Love Language dictionary on December 10th, the day of the most recent Fed meeting.[1] Immediately, I recognized it, understood its meaning, and treasured it like my long-lost love, QE. I love QE because it means money printing, and thankfully I own financial assets like gold, gold/silver mining stocks, and Bitcoin that rise faster than the pace of fiat money creation. But it’s not all about me. If money printing in all its forms drives the price and adoption of Bitcoin and decentralized public blockchains higher, then hopefully one day we can discard this filthy fiat fractional reserve system and replace it with one powered by honest money.
We aren’t there yet. But the rapture quickens with every unit of fiat created.
Unfortunately, in the here and now for most of humanity, money printing destroys their dignity as productive humans. When the government intentionally debases the currency, it destroys the link between energy inputs and economic outputs. Knowing no fancy economic theories that explain why they feel like they are running in quicksand, those wage cucking plebes understand that money printing is no bueno. In democratic systems of one human, one vote, the plebes vote out the incumbent party when inflation surges. In autocratic systems, the plebes enter the streets and topple the regime.
Therefore, politicians know that ruling in an inflationary environment is a death sentence for their careers. However, the only politically palatable way to pay for the massive amount of global debt is to inflate it away. Given that inflation destroys political careers and dynasties, the skill is hoodwinking plebes into believing that the inflation they feel isn’t inflation at all. Therefore, central bankers and finance ministers roll out a cauldron of bubbling ghoulish acronyms to obfuscate the inflation they hoist upon the public in order to forestall the inevitable systemic deflationary collapse.
If you wanted to be rich in the age of Pax Americana QE, you needed to own financial assets."
https://cryptohayes.substack.com/p/love-language
8. "Fifteen minutes from start to finish, after a couple of months of research, I had a complete, professional-looking slide deck that was consistent, visually engaging, and ready to present.
Try it yourself. You’ll be blown away. We’re entering a new era, and this simple workflow is just one example of how dramatically the way we work is changing."
9. Bitcoin Standard meets the Network States. Fascinating albeit pessimistic conversation on the West but optimistic on the future of decentralization.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ac_JRmIwnQI&t=114s
10. Choice over voice. Vote with your money and vote with your feet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CSAdQw3QHc
11. "To avoid any misunderstanding, here is what I am saying: The compute power that is being brought to market is beyond what the market currently needs.
This scenario is a textbook boom-bust example of supply and demand economics.
In this AI season, there have already been booms in multiple different tech companies… they’re still booming. Meanwhile, the busts have been everywhere as seen by the underperformance of nearly the entire market beyond the Mag 7 (or whatever they’re called now).
Companies and industries that have been historically bogged down in process and/or data minutiae are about to be completely transformed for the better. These are the same companies that have been recently underperforming."
https://codyshirk.com/ai-fantasy-season/
12. "What I see here though is a huge PR campaign against immobilisation by Russia, its friends and agents in the West, and the big business that made bad investment calls in Russia, have assets stranded and now wants a Western tax payer bailout. That’s the real rub. And where are these business interests strongest - Belgium, Austria, and Italy."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/ukraine-educating-the-ft
13. "For decades, roll-ups sat squarely in the domain of private equity and search funds. These strategies depended on predictable cash flows, margin expansion, and the disciplined application of an operating playbook—none of which fit neatly into the traditional venture toolbox. But a quiet shift is underway. AI is collapsing the cost structure of integration and making once-specialized operational capabilities accessible to lighter, faster teams.
This change opens a narrow—but meaningful—window for something new: venture-style roll-ups. The model isn’t for everyone. Most attempts will struggle under the weight of integration complexity and shifting incentives – and won’t turn out to be venture sized outcomes. Yet for the 1% that get the structure, timing, and strategy right, the return profile can be extraordinary."
https://99tech.alexlazarow.com/p/the-venture-case-for-some-ai-powered
14. "When Napoleon lost a battle, he immediately began rebuilding bridges, restoring logistics, and preparing his next move. He understood that a loss is only fatal if it compromises your ability to fight the next battle. The priority after defeat is to ensure that the vulnerability will not be exploited again.
You must be a fucking machine. You do not seek redemption. You do not seek revenge. You don’t cope or seethe. You repair and rebuild the infrastructure that prevent this mistake from happening ever again. Every defeat you survive becomes a moat in your system, one that new entrants will have to learn on their own terms.
Losses like this are what build a man. Be grateful for them. It happened for a reason. It is now your responsibility to ensure it never happens again.
These things are difficult because once you find the correct orientation, compounding to infinite wealth becomes inevitable."
https://www.scimitar.capital/p/dealing-with-loss
15. "Which brings us back to Sony’s acquisition of the Peanuts. The specific entities involved are Sony Pictures Entertainment and Sony Music Entertainment, which are sort of like products in search of stories in their own right. Peanuts gives those stories to them.
We do not know what this portends for Sanrio, who has so carefully tended the franchise in Japan all of these decades. (Personally, I think Sony would be nuts to throw all that expertise out the window, but who knows.) The irony is that most of us consume Peanuts in a very Sanrio-esque way these days, which is to say bereft of narrative. I can’t recall the last time I read a Peanuts comic, but I see the characters everywhere on clothing and all sorts of products. Perhaps that’s exactly why Americans are greeting Sony’s acquisition of Peanuts with a collective shrug: it has already been Sanrio-ized. As have all of us, in a sense.
So what better steward of America’s cutest cast of characters than the Japanese?"
https://blog.pureinventionbook.com/p/sony-goes-for-peanuts
16. "For the past year, I’ve been running a daily live talk show about technology and business called TBPN. It’s a bit of an outlier in the media world, as — it’s more like a daytime TV show than a weekly podcast. It’s three hours long, so in a single week I’m on-air for about 15 hours. It’s a lot of content, and it’s forced me to have a very consistent daily routine, which I thought I’d share with you today.
People often ask how I go live for three hours every day. The truth of it is that I just started doing it, built up the muscle memory, and got to a place where it’s become routine."
https://arenamag.com/articles/life-of-coogan
17. "These gains would be eclipsed the following year when the geopolitical fall out of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent commodity markets into another panic. European nations, fearing their people would be unable to heat their homes in winter and their economies would crater without Russian oil and gas, aggressively bought alternative supply from traders. A Financial Times analysis showed the commodity trading industry combined for $148 billion in profits in 2022.
A little over 10% of these profits went to Vitol alone, most of which was distributed to the company’s 400 partners. The boom continued into 2023, with the top five houses combining for $1.1 trillion in revenue, with the companies supplying ~24% of global oil supply and controlling 32% of global seaborne oil trade. For perspective, this figure would place the companies behind only China, the U.S., and Germany in a ranking of the world’s largest exporters.
Despite the scale of their operations, few people have heard of the trading houses. This is deliberate. The trading houses are mostly private opaque companies based in Switzerland and do not want their operations scrutinized.
The story of how a group of obscure companies came to play such an outsized role in the functioning of the global energy system dates back to the aftermath of World War II when the great powers became locked in a secret war for control of the world’s natural resources."
https://arenamag.com/articles/black-gold-and-grey-markets
18. So many lessons from the Cold War and why Russia lost. So worth watching.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdkpWrlR5zg&t=990s
19. Truebridge is on the top LPs in Venture, so this conversation was quite helpful. Brands matter in venture.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzDcZ4HYBLQ
20. Lots of good pricing frameworks here for AI and software companies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtWnMuCtZH0
21. Costs of capital going up and hence, liquidity will go down. Impact on tech?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KFs-dxdRlw
22. The fractal frontier. Decentralization is here. An important conversation to understand what is happening in America and the world right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ca7vMbFjOk&t=1969s
23. Net net: own assets. The Gov't/Elites will not let the stock market go down. Wall Street over Main Street. Don't like it but here we are. Neo-Feudalism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRlUtcpDonU
24. Doing simple things obsessively forever. This is how you get great at something. Anything.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4phnt497NQ
25. How to be a deep value investor. Bullish on energy (for the long run ie. more than a few years).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfYdVPtc5f0
26. The OG of seed investing: Jeff Clavier. This was incredibly instructive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiDVAbCMQ80
27. The best weekly show in tech right now. Lots of good predictions for 2026 and learnings from 2025 in Silicon Valley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39uduGOufNA&t=3s
28. Lots of stuff going on in Europe. Nuclear coming back to the continent, Poland is well set for this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95dQrIcdCxk
29. Anyone who cares about the US economy and global macro in general, this is a helpful conversation to get a sense of what the future holds for investors.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0GuHkUbuEY&t=9s
30. Louis Gave is based in HK so not surprised he is a China bull. But he makes a strong case for it though. Helps to get out of the America-centric cope bubble. We are really behind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRoG7wnEp4w
31. Former Army Pacific Chief. This was a very helpful and insightful conversation on what is the most critical region in the world and what the strategy is.
America's new policy will be: help those who help themselves (minus the diplomatic tone for better or worse).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VMn2GhOx1g
32. "The phrase was “sole-source.”
The Defense Logistics Agency, the Pentagon’s procurement arm responsible for ensuring American forces can fight and win wars, had just awarded a $245 million contract to supply antimony ingots for the National Defense Stockpile. The contract was not competitive. There was no bidding process. There were no alternative suppliers evaluated and rejected on merit. The contract went to United States Antimony Corporation because United States Antimony Corporation operates the only two antimony smelters in North America.
There are no others.
Read that again. The United States of America, which spends more on defense than the next ten nations combined, which maintains eleven carrier strike groups and 750 military bases across 80 countries, which projects power into every corner of the globe, cannot refine antimony without the facilities of a single company headquartered in Thompson Falls, Montana, population 1,319.
The strategic implications of this fact are so severe that they border on the classified. Antimony trisulfide is not optional for ammunition. It is not a performance enhancement that marginally improves reliability. It is the friction-sensitive compound that ignites when a firing pin strikes a primer. Without antimony, bullets do not fire. Artillery shells do not detonate. The primers in over 300 types of American munitions, from 5.56mm rifle rounds to 155mm howitzer shells, require this specific metalloid with this specific chemistry."
https://substack.com/home/post/p-182567987
33. "This year has been a "new dawn in defense stocks,” said James St. Aubin, chief investment officer at Ocean Park Asset Management. "Defense was defensive for a long time, and that’s still true to some degree, but it is taking a new turn.”
The upshot is that it’s been a good year to be an investor in military contractors and their suppliers. The S&P 1500 Aerospace and Defense group, home to 24 companies, is on its way to a 41% jump, the most since 2013, lifted also by strength in the commercial aerospace sector. That’s more than double the S&P 500’s advance, and some 16 percentage points ahead of the fabled Magnificent Seven tech behemoths."
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2025/12/21/markets/defense-stocks-growth/
34. Inflation is coming bigly. A good global macro discussion to help position for 2026. Commodities: metals, oil, uranium and energy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlLfuJc1e_Q
35. Interesting takes on AI Agents for 2026.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULszsXDyjMY&t=20s
36. From builder to investor. A fun conversation here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDCWJHzzLIc
37. Some great forecasts for AI going into 2026 from A16Z.
Mobland
A London Gangster series and damn is it good. Great story & drama, with incredible characters and actors playing them. Of course this is directed by the excellent Guy Ritchie which explains the smart & cheeky dialogue. It’s a story about a London crime family, with Pierce Brosnan as the head of the family, Conrad Harrigan. Helen Mirren as his wife. Tom Hardy as his trusted lieutenant and fixer, Harry. A story leading up to an emerging war with rival crime family the Stevensons.
Harry is calm, cool and effective. Tough as hell. The man you can rely on and send to fix hard problems. A true professional. Everything I have worked so hard to be, despite my incredible temper and rage. Harry is what every young male should aspire to be like minus the criminal career of course. He is taught to be very thorough: “dot the I’s and cross the t’s.”
Conrad is wise and his observations of the world are keen. That is why he is the big boss.
On human organizations he uses a story before he purged his own syndicate.
“It’s always the same in any orchard. You plant the trees. The trees grow tall. Then, sooner or later, they begin to get mangled, and before you know it, the apples begin to rot. And that, Harry, my son, is pruning time.”
I’ve seen this play out in far too many organizations especially in Silicon Valley, startups that grow to big companies but they hire crappy people and the companies deteriorate at least until the crap people are removed. I see far too little pruning and that is why most companies in general suck.
He gets the importance of respect:
“A man disrespects you, you take care of it. That’s the Harrigan way.”
He understands grudges: “I hate you with every bone in my body, I wish you and yours nothing but ill will. You think I am going to stand there and let Richie Stevenson mouth me off with my son standing there. I’m Conrad the Dread “100 Fu—ing Guns” Harrigan! I want peace. But if Richie Stevenson disrespects me like that, I’ll push the f—ing button.”
He makes the hard decisions and is ruthless when executing them:
“We’re at war. We’re gonna take those fuc-ers out one by one. Their friends, their families. We’re going to cut off the Stevensons empire and we will bleed Richie White.”
Conrad’s has interesting views on human nature:
“A man sees a way to f—k you over, Fair play.
It’s human nature and there’s no mercy in nature. That’s what I love about it. If I am bigger than you, stronger than you, I’ll eat you. Or I’ll f—k you and then eat you. But go behind my back? I get it. Hmmm, I get it. I’ll put a bullet in your heart and I won’t blame you.”
I really hate to admit it but he is absolutely correct. Nature is brutal. And the world is brutal, reverting back to what it used to be. It’s a dog eat dog world now. Maybe it always was.
“We’re all monsters.” We just refused to see and admit it.
It’s a series really worth watching. Highly entertaining. And you may even learn something along the way. Gangster life is one of the most extreme edges of society.
Desire: the Carl Craig Story
Detroit and techno. I bet most people don’t know that the birthplace of techno was actually in Detroit and the man most responsible for this was DJ and producer Carl Craig. A living legend in the techno music world.
I learned this on the documentary “Desire”, both a story of his career and a homage to Detroit, his hometown. Full of haunting images of large scale derelict buildings and ruins. Relics from Detroit's past prosperity and glory as the center of America’s automotive and industrial might.
“I’ve always loved melancholic music, and Detroit techno is melancholic. It is an improbable city, but that is the DNA of the music.”
But it was clear Craig was influenced by many types of music from heavy metal, to jazz, to classic Americana like Mitch Miller’s “Yellow Rose of Texas”. His sister said: “We grew up with so much music in our house that it’s almost inevitable that one of us was going to do something more creative than anybody else.” Which shows you the powerful influence your environment really is.
“Detroit is where techno came from.”
He took samples from everywhere. Mechanical machine sounds and obscure British bands. Enough so that he even went to London which was an even bigger influence on him and his music.
“It’s kind of like going to Evian and seeing “oh, this is where the water comes from. This is where a Guy called Gerald comes from, S’express, Baby Ford, you know, Frankie Goes to Hollywood. All this stuff that we were listening to, I was there. I was meeting these people. This was really what made me, like, super excited about it composing and being in the scene.” Techno was taking off in the UK at that time.
What made the Detroit scene work was being around other DJs & producers. “There was real camaraderie but it was also like kind of vicious competition as well.” Feels a lot like Silicon Valley and what I imagined Wall Street was like before it industrialized and scaled. Find your scene, this is what will propel you in life.
“I feel like that mentorship/sharing what you know with others makes the community stronger and more unique. Because we do share and because we care about the betterment of the next artist and the next guy.”
Carl also exemplified the power of imagination. “Because of the time that I grew up here, all the abandoned buildings and abandoned factories, it really gave me the freedom to fantasize what it would look like if we didn’t have buildings that were abandoned and look blown out. Detroit is very conducive for using imagination to build new pieces of art. I think the possibilities are endless to what you can dream up to fit into this lost metropolis.”
“Blade runner was the movie that was saying what the future was for us. As inspiration we would watch Blade Runner and listen to the Vangelis soundtrack…” They read graphic novels and watched Blaxploitation shows like Shack. “So we were building, or at least I was building a new world for myself musically, that would potentially, elevate my experiences, my American experiences.” You literally are what you consume media wise.
His famous track is desire. “When I talk about desire, I talk about my desire wasn’t just about girls. My desire was about doing what I was doing today. My desire was to get out of my parents basement and being to make music all the time. My life is making music.” His wife said: “The best way of all his music is Desire. This hunger, this joy, this happiness, this love, this beauty, it’s just….that's Carl Craig to me.” Desire, maybe the better term is drive. No one gets anywhere in life without, let alone to the top.
Thankfully Detroit is back on the rise as America reindustrializes. I can attest, having been there twice in the last year. You can feel they are getting their mojo back…..
This documentary is a great watch to show the incredible world wide cultural influence of the city and the music it spawned. “You can’t move any genre forward unless you understand where the genre came from.” A fellow DJ said of him: “his influence and desire to step outside of what other people on our genre are doing, nobody can compare to him. And 30 something years later, he is still pushing boundaries.”
There is a lesson here: take in everything you see, learn and experience, mix it into your work and life. As Carl said: “How I’ve been able to move musically over the years, is I take my influences and put it into music.
“I’m a specialist at what I do and if I don’t do it, what am I a specialist in? So I have to pursue my craft. And my craft is something that not only feeds my family, but it feeds my emotions and feeds me as an artist.”
Troy: Making History
What a classic Hollywood movie. Based on the old Greek legend of the war between the Greeks and Troy, they truly don’t make movies like this anymore. Starring Hollywood legends like Brad Pitt, Sean Bean, Orlando Bloom, Diana Kruger & Eric Bana, this movie is epic with incredible sword fights and large scale mass battles. An incredibly fit Brad Pitt does a great job playing super warrior Achilles.
“We don’t need to control him, we need to unleash him. That man was born to end lives.”
And there are so many, now iconic quotes & conversations from the movie. Especially from Achilles:
“The gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal. Because any moment might be our last. Everything’s more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.”
“Imagine a king who fights his own battles. Wouldn’t that be a sight?”
“There are no pacts between lions and men.”
“Before my time is done, I will look down on your corpse and smile.”
And he is inspiring, especially before a battle:
“Let no man forget who we are. We are lions! Do you know what’s there, waiting, beyond that beach? Immortality! Take it, it’s yours!”
Why are all men driven by the eternal search for glory?
Achilles: “They’ll be talking about this war for a thousand years.”
Hector: “In a thousand years, the dust from our bones will be gone.”
Achilles: “Yes, Prince. But our names will remain.”
However there are plenty of truths and lessons too.
“You don’t fear anyone, that’s your problem. Fear is useful.”
“Women have a way of complicating things.”
“War is young men dying and old men talking.”
“History remembers kings, not soldiers.”
We see first hand that war is ugly and horrible. And it is something to be avoided where possible.
“Oh, that sounds heroic to you, doesn’t it? To die fighting. Tell me, little brother, have you ever killed a man? Ever see a man die in combat? I’ve killed men, and I’ve heard them dying, I’ve watched them dying and there is nothing glorious about it. Nothing poetic. You say you want to die for love but you know nothing about dying, and you know nothing about love.”
You only fight for the right reasons and when it’s hoisted on you. The Trojan hero says: “All my life, I’ve lived by a code. And the code is simple, honor the gods, love your woman & defend your country. Troy is mother to us all, fight for her.”
King Priam said: “I’ve fought many wars in my time. Some were fought for land, some for power, some for glory. I suppose fighting for love makes more sense than all the rest.”
Yet there are the hard eternal truths that we can’t escape. Timely truths as we enter the second half of the raging 2020s. “Peace is for the women and the weak. Empires are forged by war.”
We have entered a new world now of spheres of influence. Take heed of these words: “The gods protect only the strong.”
And live a grandly interesting life. “If they ever tell my story, let them say that I walked with giants. Men rise and fall like the winter wheat but these names will never die.”
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Feb 8th, 2026
"Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths." – Arnold Schwarzenegger
"If vast parts of the market are soaked up by consensus capital - where do heretics go? Now is a good time to define what I mean by heretics in this context. I would describe them as people who prioritise first-principles over playbooks, accept delayed validation and higher variance to unlock non-obvious breakthroughs." https://svrgn.substack.com/p/heresy-and-the-venture-industrial
2. Educated intuition. A masterclass in investing. Learned about the really unique culture and start of General Atlantic. A top tier PE firm.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a34VyGpf8s4
3. "It’s likely part of the reason that almost 40% of Americans over 50 largely view the economy as “getting better” while most Americans between 18 and 49 say the economy as “getting worse”. It’s two different economies. Older people are more insulated from AI and the housing shock. Young people are staring down the barrel.
For 70 really bizarre and unusual years, America ran on a simple contract: deliver growth, and people will tolerate the rest. But on the most consistent things I hear from people across age, geography, and income from my 40 weeks on the road this year is that the basic arc of life has stopped making sense. This is anecdote, sure, but it’s what people stop to talk to me about. Their concerns. Their worries, not only about their own finances, but also about the broad future.
So what do people do? AI is taking the jobs, policies are increasingly designed around the older population, and everything seems murky. How does one move forward?
Gamble?"
https://kyla.substack.com/p/everyone-is-gambling-and-no-one-is
4. Lots of good takes on the edge of the internet and latest creative business news.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0w5NomdEGI&t=39s
5. A grim discussion, if you use the lens of energy, the geopolitical world becomes clearer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2e6N9C1ubs
6. An on the ground view of Ukraine, its tough right now but it’s nowhere close to being over for Ukrainians. They are a tough and resilient people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wq8a45JinKY
7. A masterclass in how to run a venture fund. An insight dense conversation with the new leadership of Sequoia Capital. You will understand why they are considered the best.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fq33ylz7IMc&t=902s
8. "Most importantly, although it is sometimes forgotten, the second key technology, in addition to gunpowder, was ability to build sailing ships capable of navigating to the far ends of the world. Whereas horse-riding revolution had a continental effect, the “gunboat” revolution had global consequences.
It is actually remarkable how many parallels exist between the two military revolutions. Whereas Steppe-dwellers rode horses and shot arrows, the Europeans rode ships and shot guns. Each group enjoyed huge preponderance of military power over other societies, especially initially, before those could adapt to new challenges. Finally, and most importantly, both groups had a huge effect on state-building and imperiogenesis."
https://peterturchin.substack.com/p/from-steppe-frontiers-to-gunboat
9. Wide ranging conversation on how to thrive in exponential age: AI & longevity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPp0FZ-spKk&t=5s
10. Learning about Growth stage investing. It's a pretty instructive conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZB-0TVRsO8
11. Disagree with authors conclusions but good points raised.
"In fact, the military planner must seriously consider the possibility that the US may lose access to all factories in Asia on the very first day of the conflict. China has the capabilities and faces very strong incentives for a splendid first-strike that pushes US forces as far away from its shores as possible, and to attack the military assets of its regional rivals. Factories in Taiwan, Korea and Japan can at best be considered add-ons by our military planner: their expected survival rates are too low for the planner to rely on them in any meaningful way.
The problem of the vulnerability of American regional partners is only the most serious manifestation of a far more general problem: under certain conditions, the effective war-fighting capability of a coalition may be less than the sum of its parts.
Consider the possibility of sourcing war materials from Scandinavia, say iron ore. In World War II, the Germans preempted the Allies and occupied Denmark and Norway. The Allies attempt to beat back the Germans failed, and for the duration of the war, Scandinavia’s resources were at the disposal of the Germans."
https://policytensor.substack.com/p/on-the-strategy-of-coalition-warfare
12. America's conundrum, keep the USD & bond market strong or build out an electrical grid, new raw materials supply chain & reindustrialize. We have to make a hard choice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqtalk5v4ts&t=4s
13. From one year before, a strong bear case on China. China is a cipher so it's hard to tell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL6OHMr21f8&t=8s
14. An inside look and conversation at Anduril HQ.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBXXYpjs9TE
15. The American Midwest is well positioned for the future. Especially in the AI world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NC9mrtfdXE
16. Educational conversation on the art of growth stage investing from A16Z. Will listen to this many times.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxoGRY6TXwk
17. "Because the game changed, and assumptions broke down. Foresight driven analysis starts with “What does the military assume will remain true”. Then ask “what technology makes this assumption false at scale?”. Similiar to traditional financial markets, this is your undervalued asset and subsequent market opportunity… a military addressable market before requirements exist.
And defense founders/investors can help shape the noise here with the military before turning it into a strong signal through contracts and official requirements. Those undervalued markets can help shape requirements. This can contribute to a newer defense tech company’s moat as part of it’s long term business strategy.
Military foresight is a demand-signal amplifier, with a low signal to noise threshold. It doesn’t tell you what contracts you can win next year - but it will tell you what assumptions stressed to their limit will break… and where the opportunity opens. This is typical operating procedure for deep tech investors with long time horizons. Founders that align assumption failure to build companies are seemingly ahead of their time, yet obvious in hindsight. Such is human nature as Nassim Taleb identified in The Black Swan.
Defense markets can be extremely noisy nowadays (which is fantastic and should be). Endless pitches and demos. But one important question to always consider - does this thing matter after we make first contact with the enemy? Otherwise, we’re continuing a peacetime optimization."
https://abovethenoisefloor.substack.com/p/the-military-black-swan
18. "We mistake consumption for curation. We look at the highly visible luxury the logo, the exotic travel, the latest drop and believe that acquiring these things is the path to the elevated life. But this creates a new kind of friction: the logistical weight of maintenance, the emotional burden of status defense, and the time debt of earning it all back. The aspiring curator eventually finds their life less curated and more cluttered. They are a high-end consumer, not a quiet operator."
https://luxlifestylelab.substack.com/p/the-bespoke-suit-principl
19. "Slop is a byproduct of this overall process, the detritus that accompanies greatly expanded production. Slop is at best annoying and frustrating, and at worst a tool for scams or propaganda. But the overall process will, I believe, usher in a golden age of creativity and experimentation."
https://newsletter.rootsofprogress.org/p/in-defense-of-slop
20. One of the better conversations on how to run a top tier venture capital firm. This was excellent. A deep dive into Greylock.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdk8UXqW2AE
21. "It’s perfectly fine to celebrate. This can be a party, slightly nicer vacation or one time experience (floor seats to the Knicks). However. If you’re upgrading everything, you’re actually doing the opposite of what a rich person does. People who get rich and stay rich have control of their emotions. They don’t cash them in.
If you find yourself upgrading every part of your life? This is no different than therapy sessions. Masking the insecurity with random goods that no one cares about.
The worst part? Your first upgrade actually creates the need for *more* upgrades. We’ve done it. We’re sure you’ve done it. You buy one crazy item (car, watch etc.) and suddenly you can’t eat at the same place or wear the same clothing. Activation of lifestyle creep is dangerous."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/stay-rich-by-killing-the-ego-you
22. A dangerous future coming. Understanding China's ideology and history.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CECgf6__08
23. Such a great discussion on how to build a great crossover investment firm. Lots of great nuggets of investing across different industries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plx6Foxoam4&t=2s
24. Gavekal is a China bull. In his view China is well positioned for the future due to their new electrical grid, manufacturing power & large pool of educated workers. A ferocious competitor for the political West.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuJxZ67PwNk
25. Lots of great career and life advice. Do I want to do this for the rest of my life?
This was an excellent interview and every young person and old person should watch this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjSesMsQTxk
26. "The alternative narrative is fundamentally direct-to-consumer. Just like brands that skip traditional distribution, ideas now bypass institutions entirely.
Everyone from Alex Karp to Zohran Mamdani to President Trump operates on this wavelength:
I don’t want to hear from your corporation or your party. I want to hear directly from you.
Institutional filtering is now an anti-signal. How many corporate X accounts are you following and taking seriously?"
https://qy.co/writings/newqasar/
27. "In most historical cases, governments preparing for war begin by organizing their societies, shaping expectations, and building resilience before mobilizing resources. Europe is doing something different, something I find strange since it is rebuilding armies and supply chains while leaving the public in a peacetime mindset.
This unreadiness, at least to me, seems to be structural. For thirty years, the continent lived under the assumption that peace was permanent, that security was an ambient condition rather than a responsibility. Welfare systems expanded. Defense budgets shrank. Citizens came to view protection as a function of the social contract rather than of military capacity. Entire generations were raised to believe that war was something Europe had outgrown.
That world is gone."
https://www.zinebriboua.com/p/europe-militarization-without-the
28. "Putin cannot easily end the war because peace threatens him personally. Russia cannot afford to continue the war because it threatens the state itself.
This is the Putin Paradox: the longer the war goes on, the safer Putin may be in the short term—and the weaker Russia becomes in the long term. The interests of ruler and country have diverged so sharply that policy has become a hostage to regime survival.
History suggests such gaps do not close gently. And Christmas 1989 stays on Putin’s mind."
https://xxtomcooperxx.substack.com/p/the-putin-paradox
29. This was incredibly insightful. Not the nicest human being but a brilliant operator and incredible investor. I always learn from listening to his talks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3-ziJ8V3mY
30. One of the best weekly conversations on tech, crypto and creative businesses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcYIOFNThgU&t=2s
31. Another incredible discussion this week on VC, B2B & AI this week.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ5ubHIn4fA
32. Illuminating conversation with Trae Stephens of Anduril. The Factory is the weapon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Fdq1TShG2w
33. A Global macro update from Raoul Pal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDQ1x_xitWQ
34. One of the biggest issues facing America right now: The defense industrial base is in bad shape.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1X46icwOJo&t=102s
35. Learning about General Catalyst's various business lines. Really interesting strategy for their AI-driven roll up business.
366 Days
I recently watched a Japanese drama and in typical Japanese drama it was complicated and a bit confusing at first but then ultimately heart wrenching.
‘Minato, a high school boy, meets Miu, a junior at the same high school. They click over music and start dating.’ But as always, life takes several turns. Health truly is wealth.
It was a movie about first loves. A movie of following your dreams:
“Remember what you said when you joined us. You were saved by music. You wanted to produce music so you could save people. Don’t you think she is still waiting for your music?”
It’s a movie about friendship and loyalty. A movie about fatherhood. A movie of sickness, sadness and pain: “When mom died, nothing mattered to me anymore. I didn’t want to think about school or the future. I couldn’t enjoy anything. Food had no taste.”
Ultimately it is a movie of sacrifice. When Minato discovers he has leukemia, despite all of their joy together, he dumps Miu to spare her pain. “If I stayed with her, i’d get in the way of her dreams. I couldn’t let myself do that…..Because she meant so much to me, I want her to be happy.” A very Japanese thing to do. How sad because of what their life could have been.
It is to me, mainly a movie of closure and saying goodbye.
“It’s hectic but I live without regrets. Meeting you brought me so much. The scent of flowers. Our happiness was beyond belief. The pain of losing your love. I see it all as treasure you gave me. You gave me sunshine. I’m so happy that I met you. I hope the choices you made bring you happiness forever. Thank you.”
Leaving a first deep love is lasting and it stays with you forever. Remember it with fondness as many people never experience it. “Don’t forget what you loved.”
Global Investing: The World’s Most Interesting Men
I was thinking about one of my life heroes, Jim Rogers, cofounder of the legendary Quantum Fund with George Soros. Author of “Investment Biker”, “Adventure Capitalist” & “Hot Commodities”. Probably one of the most accomplished and well travelled men around who has probably visited more countries than most people.
I realize how much of an influence he has had in my life and how I’ve subconsciously followed his path albeit in a different asset class and path. So much so that considering all the random countries I’ve ended up going to around the world, some people think I work for the CIA. I don’t work for the CIA btw.
I did not fully realize the depth of Jim Rogers influence until my friend Mike Butcher recently asked me “why I spent so much time traveling and investing around the world when I could just stay in Silicon Valley?”
It was a good question and he is right to ask. I probably would have done so much better just hanging out full time and investing in the deep networks and deal flow that happen there. But frankly I’d be just like all the other venture capitalists there. And I’d probably be bored. Or worse, boring, which is how I feel about most of the investors I met there.
The folks I tend to have affinity with are global VC investors like Sheel Mohnot of BTV, Paul Bragiel of Bragiel Brothers VC & Zach Coelius of Coelius Capital. Some of the few US VCs who also invest and travel internationally. Ironically, I meet these guys overseas in other countries more than in San Francisco.
They are all incredibly accomplished and live interesting lives with lots of fun side quests. Paul and his adventure to compete in the Olympics & now involvement with the Polish baseball league. Zach and his goal of visiting every country listed by the UN, his backcountry ski trips & his own Olympic Games ambitions. Sheel and his random visits to festivals and places around the world. He also has one of the best X accounts around. All of these guys are true global adventurers with lots of fun experiences and stories.
It’s probably also why I am also friends with global private investors like Swen Lorenz & Cody Shirk and their communities. All global minded investors where some of the most interesting conversations happen.
I’m trying to keep up with regular international travels myself. I do adventures like shooting & wilderness survivalist training. I am also glad I have taken various random classes like Russian & Japanese languages, bartending, sailing, beekeeping, cinematic sword fighting, archery, fencing and lots of martial arts.
I have plans to do pilgrimage hikes in Japan like the Shikoku Henro and Kumano Kodo as well and the Way: the traditional Catholic El Camino de Santiago.
Even as the world deglobalizes or balkanizes, I will still travel until the borders close. It’s the easiest way to stay excited about life and the possibilities of life. You will always meet new people, learn new things, have new adventures and get new stories. In other words, it’s a great way to stay interested and interesting.
The Rebound: Travel Can Change Your Life
I haven’t watched the entire old 2009 movie “The Rebound” but the last 9 minutes of the movie are spectacular. I’ve watched this countless times. It’s here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvHeM_e5bbY&list=RDSvHeM_e5bbY&start_radio=1.
Basically the movie is about a 40-something single mother Sandy who moves to New York and encounters a young listless 25 year man Aram (read boy) also recovering from a marital misadventure. Their friendship turns into a romance but it ends due to the age difference and social pressure.
But this break up leads to Aram waking up and he ends up traveling the world as you see in the video. It’s his first time traveling, he has always wanted to go to Cleveland which shows how parochial he was. He visits Paris, Istanbul, India and Bangladesh and Sub Saharan Africa. And it’s captivating as he walks around beautiful places with a sense of wonder. He grows up. At last. Travel makes you confront reality and expands your horizons. When he runs into Sandy 5 years later this is very clear and they rekindle their romance. As Aram said: “Its just timing”
It seems like so few young kids travel the world outside of Instagram-set and their travel tends to be sterile. No hard core backpacking, no hard nature, no off the beaten track. No real adventure. It’s tragic and absolutely shows how clueless and lost so many kids seem to be these days.
Yet my point is that if you are feeling lost in life, dealing with tragedy or loss, traveling can be a balm. Getting away from your normal environment and habits can be really good for you.You get smarter and you are better able to deal with the pain. It worked for me many times. Travel can be a nice short term escape. And if not done too excessively, like in my case, it will help you heal. To come back stronger. Come back stronger to truly live life.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Feb 1st, 2026
"The beginning is always today." – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.
"What makes Delian distinct is the path that led to it. Before Ukraine, before defense drew the attention it has today, Kottas left Apple’s Special Projects Group and moved back to Athens — applying many of the learnings from Silicon Valley’s culture of rapid iteration, integration, and product discipline to a four-year-old defense startup now deploying systems across Europe." https://louiseboucher.substack.com/p/from-apple-to-deterrence-the-rise
2. Zeihan has some strong views on China and geopolitics in general, still worth thinking on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiT0bF3brHw&t=909s
3. "For entrepreneurs, my recommendation is to regularly ask yourself where you are on the comfort scale and when you last got truly uncomfortable in a healthy way. It is easy to coast once things are working and push only a little, but it is worth questioning whether you are pushing hard enough and whether there is an opportunity to get uncomfortable in a smart, productive way."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/12/06/uncomfortable-as-an-entrepreneur/
4. SaaS is like Japan, it’s a great market but the population is shrinking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_P-Zf8mDsk&t=280s
5. "Whether out of preemptive preparedness or simple paranoia, China’s stockpiling of energy, food, and metal supplies is at a breadth and scale that should ring global alarm bells. As a recent study from Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy points out, “energy production and storage trends are an important signal that a country may be preparing to engage in warfare,” and “such data often hide in plain sight.”
https://newsletter.doomberg.com/p/war-rations
6. "There's this default expectation in business that once you hit a certain revenue number, the next step is obvious. You scale. You hire. You build systems. You go from $1 million to $5 million to $10 million and more!
But there’s a lot more nuance to scaling outside of your revenue going up. Everything else gets bigger too. Your team size. Your business overhead. Your stress levels. The quantity of meetings. The new problems you have to solve and the constant fires you fight suddenly have nothing to do with the work you wanted to do in the first place.
You go from being someone who does the work to someone who manages people who do the work. And if you're anything like me, you didn't start your business to spend your days in Slack and on Zoom calls about HR issues."
https://www.justinwelsh.me/newsletter/anti-scale
7. "Marcus Aurelius never considered himself a hero. He saw himself simply as a man striving to do right in a difficult world. It is precisely that humility and discipline that make him a powerful model for the modern gentleman.
His life shows that being a gentleman is not about wealth or privilege, it is about self-mastery and virtue. Even in hardship, Marcus remained steady and principled.
If a man who commanded an empire could be good, patient, just, and kind, then surely we can do the same. We must not merely admire Marcus Aurelius, we must do our best to imitate him. In doing so, we follow the path of the true gentleman, defined not by our circumstances, but by our character."
https://thewaysofagentleman.substack.com/p/lessons-we-can-learn-from-marcus
8. "If Europe manages to unify more and to build up its military power, it will increase the number of great powers in the world by one. A planet with a strong Europe, America, China, Russia, and India is a better planet than one where only the last four of those are strong. If Europe shows it can act with unity and purpose, and that it has military power to be reckoned with, America and China — both countries whose leaders tend to respect raw power — may lose their disdain for the region, and return to a more diplomatic, conciliatory posture.
Ultimately, European weakness and division are the reasons the region is getting bullied by so many other powers. Reversing that weakness and division would make the bullies go away. But Europe’s people, and especially Europe’s elites, have to want it."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/europe-is-under-siege
9. This show helps me keep up with the zeitgeist of Silicon Valley. Strongly recommend this week's episode as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11AF3xb27os&t=346s
10. "This doesn’t mean people won’t keep using frontier models. It just means they will use more different types of models as AI continues to mature. When I talk to VCs they still seem mostly hung up on the “open AI will do everything and we will all use one giant model” thesis. And it’s a highly uninformed AI thesis. It violates pretty much every experience I’ve had as a technologist and business person. But the evidence they offer is “but most companies are building on just one model.”
Yeah, that’s like saying most startups only use one server with no load balancing - it isn’t a thesis on AI architecture it’s a description of what early stage looks like. It’s an AI maturity thing. 100% of the companies I know who have had an AI product in market using real intelligence in the product for any decent amount of time have moved beyond single model usage. And I know there is at least one publicly traded company that has built NeuroMetric internally to manage their own systems of models for various tasks, way before we even thought of the idea.
Systems of smaller more efficient models help ease the power and data center crisis. They make AI respond faster. They help protect corporate IP. This will have to happen for the ecosystem to advance. The next opportunities, if you are an investor, are thinking about what systems of models look like over the next 5 years. That’s where the innovation is, and that’s where the money will come from."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/the-biggest-ai-idea-that-most-people
11. "Indeed the obvious risk is that if Japan does not agree to Trump’s tariff agenda, the US president will demand that Japan pays more for its defence.
About 53,000 US troops are still stationed in the country.
On this point, it is the case that this writer has always viewed the relationship between the US and Japan post-1945 as that of older brother and younger brother.
And older brothers tend to like to bully younger brothers."
https://research.grizzle.com/p/whats-going-on-in-japan
12. "One of the dinner guests, a veteran of multiple Silicon Valley cycles, reframed the conversation entirely. She argued for thinking of this moment as a wildfire rather than a bubble. The metaphor landed immediately. Wildfires don’t just destroy; they’re essential to ecosystem health. They clear the dense underbrush that chokes out new growth, return nutrients to the soil, and create the conditions for the next generation of forest to thrive.
As I reflected on the wildfire metaphor, a framework emerged that revealed something deeper, built on her reframing. It offered a taxonomy for understanding who survives, who burns, and why, with specific metrics that separate the fire-resistant from the flammable.
The first web cycle burned through dot-com exuberance and left behind Google, Amazon, eBay, and PayPal: the hardy survivors of Web 1.0. The next cycle, driven by social and mobile, burned again in 2008–2009, clearing the underbrush for Facebook, Airbnb, Uber, and the offspring of Y Combinator. Both fires followed the same pattern: excessive growth, sudden correction, then renaissance.
Now, with AI, we are once again surrounded by dry brush.
The coming correction will manifest as a wildfire rather than a bubble burst. Understanding that distinction changes everything about how to survive and thrive in what comes next."
https://ceodinner.substack.com/p/the-ai-wildfire-is-coming-its-going
13. "All industries have somewhere that’s the “center of the action” and then everywhere else: New York for finance, Texas for energy, Vancouver for junior mining promoters, and obviously the Bay Area for anything to do with software and startups. But there have also always been local ecosystems and scenes, which are interesting little kingdoms in their own right, and must compete as viable career options for talented builders deciding where to preferentially attach themselves.
I think one of the most under-discussed second-order consequences of AI is that AI has changed the relationship between local tech scenes and SF. Today I want to share a few of my observations as to why:
A decade ago (relative to other times in tech history), the opportunity cost of being outside Silicon Valley was at a local low: local tech scenes were comparatively attractive.
The primary purpose of local tech scenes in that time was facilitating preferential attachment between local A-player talent and local A-tier startups.
AI has changed things in two important ways:
The opportunity cost of being anywhere other than SF is back to all-time highs.
It’s now much easier for an A-player who wants to stay local to simply start a one-person business and grow it themselves.
As a result, we should expect local tech scenes to produce promising startups and select for promising talent in a very different way than they used to."
https://www.a16z.news/p/local-tech-scenes-have-changed
14. "But what’s ailing Vegas might be harder to quantify than any material factor—closer to spiritual rot than pure economic tumult. Multiple generations of Americans have been socialized to believe that a mecca of cheap, dirty pleasures awaits in the wastelands of southern Nevada. And for a long time, that was basically true. The mythology of Las Vegas is all-day buffet counters as big as football fields, of David Copperfield tickets that cost the same as a cup of coffee, of indoor cigarettes and comped drinks and the irresponsible ideas those forces can summon in tandem.
Las Vegas took your money with gracious respect for your degeneracy, gouging you sweetly and slowly. The magnitude of excess saturated time itself. Somehow, no matter how much you lost at the casino—and you will lose at the casino—it always felt as if you got your money’s worth.
These days, though, that dream is in tatters. Millions of people seem to have determined that Las Vegas has become corroded—its joys less accessible, its humiliations too dire."
https://slate.com/business/2025/11/las-vegas-travel-sphere-hotel-donald-trump.html
15. "So where does that leave the industry when it comes to feasible, sustainable models in the world we now live in?
Those able to raise mega funds should clearly keep doing so. It may not be the traditional notion of venture but it pays off.
Those who are able to raise enough money to have a diversified portfolio and real ownership and do all of the work the fund requires without needing more than $1-$1.5 million in annual fees (per fund) should do so. That can be lucrative and the job, at its core, is still about building individual great technology companies.
Those who can get equity in sought after startups without having to write a check should do so.7 It’s a better model.
But if you can’t run a fund on a shoestring and you can’t raise billions of institutional capital and if you can’t get equity in return for your expertise? Then it’s unclear to me whether the current venture model still makes sense."
https://bradleytusk.substack.com/p/does-the-current-venture-model-still
16. This show is not just fun but it's incredibly educational. Topics are random and that is what makes this fun. Business, biohacking and lots of random Xmas gifts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxBgplN5eHg&t=3111s
17. Be curious, take risks, be an owner and be an industrialist. Do your homework. Learning from one of the pioneers of Private equity. Great conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVVcyEEess0&t=180s
18. "You have the freedom to choose where you want to live and how you want to structure your life.
It means that you do not belong to any single country’s rules and regulations by moving to places that offer greater flexibility and opportunities for personal and financial freedom.
Ungovernable doesn’t mean anti-government or rebellious for the sake of rebellion. It means:
You’re not overly dependent on one system/country
You’re not exposed to a single point of failure
Your life isn’t geographically or politically locked.
Every business builds infrastructure - backups, servers, failover systems.
But people rarely do.
Ungovernability is personal global mobility infrastructure."
https://freedomceo.substack.com/p/plan-b-the-modern-life-strategy
19. "We’re seeing more tools like Signa, Harmonic, Landscape, Tracxn, and others (including internal systems many VCs have built) use public data to surface newly minted founders and potential investment opportunities. These will only get better.
In other words, there’s no edge in sourcing and picking in the near future. All that matters is winning."
https://www.ryanhoover.me/post/all-that-matters-is-winning
20. "By choosing The Pursuit of Happiness, Jefferson prioritized future potential over past accumulation. He chose the worker over the rentier. He chose the builder over the squatter.
For much of the last 40 years, the United States has drifted into a nightmare. We have built an economy optimized for Property, not Pursuit. We tax wages (pursuit) heavily, while subsidizing debt and capital gains (property). We protect incumbents with regulatory moats while starving new entrants. We have let the “Property” of the Baby Boomers cannibalize the “Pursuit” of the Millennials and Gen Z.
We have valued the preservation of asset prices above the creation of national wealth."
https://www.yesigiveafig.com/p/part-3-the-pursuit-of-happiness?r=50i4x
21. America's next crisis. George Friedman has been pretty accurate in his predictions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za8J12S4Kjw
22. "But the people who actually build things know: the mess is the point. The wrong turns teach you the terrain. The failed attempts reveal what the tutorials skip.
Every framework gets you to a local maximum. Someone else’s local maximum. The global maximum requires going off-road, getting lost, getting your hands dirty with problems no one’s mapped yet.
In a world where AI handles the predictable, agency plus curiosity is all that’s left. The willingness to tinker without a guide. To build without permission. To get dirty without knowing if it’ll work."
https://writing.nikunjk.com/p/get-your-hands-dirty
23. "Whether at a university, a company, or some new-fangled way of collectivizing and organizing human potential, to be futuristic is to see an expanse rather than a narrow path; to value exploration over rote answers; and to embrace curiosity over compliance."
https://nearfuturelaboratory.com/newsletters/2025/w50-y25/
24. "Let's be clear, I'm certainly not claiming that Sicily is about to undergo a boom. I am simply observing that real estate is very affordable, that you can squeeze some decent rental yields and enjoy a superb lifestyle.
Restaurants, food, etc are of amazing quality and among the most affordable in Europe and in the world.
Catania and Palermo international airports have hundreds of daily flights to everywhere in Europe and as far as NYC.
Sicily could be used as a main base in Europe seeing how accessible, affordable, and well-connected its airports are.
Combine this with special tax regimes for retirees and freelancers, and it's no wonder people are increasingly making Southern Italy their home."
https://mailchi.mp/fe55acbc45c6/southern-europe-is-the-new-eastern-europe
25. "Meanwhile, over the same period, the US did absolutely nothing to de-Sinify its own supply chain. While China hit the gym, the US partied. And partied hard: US budget deficits expanded, but pretty much just funded expansions in social benefits—social security, Medicare and Medicaid. Between 2018 and 2025, US government debt increased from US$21trn to US$38.4trn. However, none of the US$17trn or so increase in debt went into building new Hoover dams, new Tennessee Valley Authorities, new interstate highways or new railroads.
As a result, to stay with the fisticuffs analogy, seven years into the trade/tech war it increasingly looks like China played “rope-a-dope.” Like Muhammad Ali in the Rumble in the Jungle, China took the punches from her much bigger, much stronger opponent. This gave China’s opponent a false sense of security. A false sense of security which was reinforced by the very impressive relative performance of US equities against China (and everyone else) and by the strength of the US dollar."
https://research.gavekal.com/article/us-exceptionalism-versus-chinese-uninvestibility-part-i/
26. A must watch if you want to understand the economics of AI, growing compute and its implications. Incredibly instructive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmUo4841KQw&t=3219s
27. "The point here is that history suggests there is a balance to be had with vertical integration: too much leads to over capacity and dilutes returns, too little risks disappointing customers during supply shortages."
https://substack.com/home/post/p-176116253
28. One of the best weekly shows on B2B and Silicon Valley news.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XkOqWdiHP0
29. Alt-Geopolitics, lots of this stuff is crazy but there are some insights on what's happening in the world (20-30%). Get out of your bubble, even if you don't agree with most of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC5TxCXh4Wc
30. "Meanwhile, even if China hold to their pledge and restrain themselves from actively exporting their system or punishing others for choosing a completely different system, they are getting to be too big to be a part of the international system not to BECOME the international system in some way. Their very success will see to it that their model is copied, and if unbalanced by a third force, the China playbook could allow authoritarian regimes to construct comfortable padded cells of their nations that can be very stable.
Crypto and the Internet could be an alternative way of human organization that beats China in hyper efficiency and so provides a roadmap for progress.
That may well be so, but I think we shouldn’t be so fast to fast forward to the future. This present moment is a rich and chaotic window of potential future outcomes that deserves our full attention. We must take the next steps very carefully wherever we are in the world as we might be living with the consequences of those choices for a long time.
The future, I believe, is not yet written. We are the skier coming down a double black diamond hill of history. Yes, we will get to the bottom one way or another pretty soon. But how we manage the process is everything."
https://taipology.substack.com/p/balaji-the-network-state-and-mark
31. How to thrive in the Age of AI, the next 3 years are critical.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KK9cpiehEU&t=1784s
32. A fun and insightful conversation on Silicon Valley news this week.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiKVJD_3ziM&list=PLI0_clHshGZctchZkfCXmz7SPyuBSOoq1
33. "With the information sorted and the catalysts identified, Singh moves on to hypothesis generation. He starts asking himself: What products become possible because of these shifts? How do distribution dynamics change? What new value stacks start to form?
While doing this, Singh puts his founder hat on, using the analysis to earn credibility with the founders worth building alongside, instead of focusing on being “right” all the time. This exercise helps him turn his research into a sharper point of view—especially important in venture investing, when “everything is up and to the right.”
https://every.to/thesis/how-this-venture-capitalist-sees-into-the-post-software-future
34. "The pursuit of Warner Bros. is more than just a transaction. It’s a microcosm of a wider emergency. We can’t complain about surging costs while ignoring the factors behind them. We need to have an adult conversation, saying no to harmful deals and yes to policies that spur competition and rein in health, housing, and education costs.
It’s telling that the loudest objection to this nascent monopoly comes from a Hollywood mogul who’s never lived outside one. But we should listen to him. Consolidation is a tax on the young and the poor, levied to protect the old and the rich. Affordability begins with a simple idea: more firms, more competition, more oxygen."
https://www.profgalloway.com/the-streaming-wars-and-affordability/
35. If you understand energy, you understand geopolitics. The edge of understanding physics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0AdDGrEvrM
36. "In promotional materials, Próspera markets itself to “21st-century pioneers” craving not just laissez-faire policies but also “good times and Caribbean vibes.” Direct flights from Miami and Houston can transport these digital nomads to Roatán in less than three hours. Then, from a chaise longue on the beach, they can register a business with the tap of a button. Although only one residential building has been built so far, a forthcoming eco-condo was during my visit courting buyers seeking “more personal freedom” and less “political drama.” Próspera’s original investment plan projected that by 2030 the city would be home to 38,000 residents, and that foreign direct investment in the country would top $500 million by next year.
There are about three dozen charter cities currently operating in the world, according to an estimate from the Adrianople Group, an advisory firm that concentrates on special economic zones. Several others are under development, including the East Solano Plan, run by a real estate corporation that has spent the last seven years buying up $900 million of ranch land in the Bay Area to build a privatized alternative to San Francisco; Praxis, a forthcoming “cryptostate” on the Mediterranean; and the Free Republic of Liberland, a three-square-mile stretch of unclaimed floodplain between Serbia and Croatia. Many of the same ideologically aligned names — Balaji Srinivasan, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, Friedman — recur as financial backers; Patrik Schumacher, principal of Zaha Hadid Architects and a critic of public housing, is behind several of their urban (or metaversal) designs.
Srinivasan, the former Coinbase chief technology officer and now an adviser to Pronomos Capital, Friedman’s fund to build start-up cities, argued in his 2022 book “The Network State” that these new business-friendly hubs would soon compete with nation-states and, one day, replace them. “The Network State” was inspired, he said, by the state of Israel. “That country was started by a book,” he tweeted in 2022, referring to Theodor Herzl’s 1896 manifesto, “The Jewish State.” “You can found a tribe,” Srinivasan said on a podcast. “What I’m really calling for is something like tech Zionism — when a community forms online and then gathers in physical space to form a ‘reverse diaspora.’”
37. An explanation behind the new National Security Strategy. George Friedman is one of the best geopolitical analysts around.
The Bench: Dealing With Change
I watched a random Japanese movie called “The Bench”, a bunch of vignettes taking place on a park bench in the midst of massive renovation. It was surprisingly good.
Do you ever feel nostalgic? Do you get caught up in your life and start missing all the simple joys of life? Especially when it comes to specific places in your life. But everything is changing so quickly in the world.
Yet in our memories we hold these places in our hearts and we remember the wonderful, golden times we experienced there. Change can be great. But it’s also sad sometimes.
“Well it’s not that bad to feel sad when you experience loss. It’s rather good. Feeling sad is actually nice. It means that you loved them that much…. The more you love, the sadder you are. Sadness is something happiness left behind.”
“Tokyo’s scenery are changing so fast. Sceneries disappear before you know it. As things get more convenient, it’s not all that bad. Sceneries you are fond of, change all of a sudden. And by the time you notice they’re gone, it’s too late. You begin to regret that you should have visited more often.”
This is in reference to the places you love. But it is also relevant to people. Specifically your family and your friends. You get so caught up in your own life. It’s good to slow down once in a while.
“You get rewarded by laughter just by living long. Life is rewarding.”
So this is a reminder to visit old places that gave you fond memories. This is also a reminder to spend more time with loved ones. Before it’s too late. Life goes by fast.
Ballerina: The Female John Wick
I finally got to watch the very violent Ballerina that takes place in the incredibly intricate John Wick universe. Starring Ana de Armas, she literally is the female John Wick, an assassin trained in the traditions of the Ruska Roma. And it is like the other John Wick movie series; cool, stylish, and engaging. A revenge action tale. And who doesn’t like a revenge action tale? And really beautiful scenery, cars, swords and guns.
As always, there are plenty of amazing fighting and shooting scenes. It’s a good reminder that everything and anything around you can be used as a weapon. A pen, a bottle, a chain, a hammer, a plastic bag, a pan, a glass, dishes, ice skates, heck even a TV remote control. A small tidbit that could be useful one day.
“It is two sides of the same coin, to kill or to save. Ultimately, it is up to you to choose.”
But you also get surprisingly good wisdom and tactical advice. Her instructor Nogi tells her:
“Do you really believe that strength has anything to do with whether you win or lose? You will always be smaller and at a disadvantage. He is beating you because you are allowing him to determine the terms of the contest. You want to win? Change the terms! Improvise, adapt, cheat. Yield to YOUR strengths, not his.”
She becomes a one woman wrecking machine. It’s quite inspiring actually. I really need to up my fighting and tactical shooting skills. I don’t lack motivation here. As we all know: “Hate will make you strong.”
But what is echoed through the entire series is:
“When you deal in blood, there must be rules or nothing survives.” You have to live by a code in life. Otherwise we are no better than beasts or the beast-like humans among us. This is how civilization works. “Rules. And Consequences.”
Control the Controllables: Getting Through A Time of Chaos
I was lucky enough to get to check out Keith Blackborg’s Passive Investor Event in Dallas last October. For those who don’t know him, Keith built an amazing community of “millionaires next door” as per the famous book by Stanley. This event was one sharing learnings and best practices of investing in different asset classes and tax protection as well. I came as part of my friend Swen Lorenz’s extended global investing community.
In one of the talks, the global investor and Jim Rogers of alternative investing, Cody Shirk shared some ideas and general thoughts. It went a bit serious but he was right. It is chaotic out there. The world has gone nuts. The American economy has turned into a casino & there is literal civil war in America. Not the shooting and killing war yet but a psychological one. Who isn’t stressed or mad these days in America. “No challenges and no North stars” and that is why Americans seem lost. Life is too good. Too much comfort.
He further adds as an investor:“No one has an information edge, all you can do is manage your time & emotions.” And I'd add, manage your energy.
Entrepreneur and investor David Cummings talked about “controlling the controllables”. His article is excellent: https://davidcummings.org/2025/10/04/control-your-controllables/
He uses sales as an example & writes way better than I do: “Take sales as an example. Naturally, the sales team wants to close a certain amount of revenue each month or quarter to hit quota and move the startup forward. The challenge with measuring purely on output is that output is driven by inputs—many of which include factors outside of your control.
So let’s look at sales through the lens of control your controllables.
Can we guarantee a certain amount of revenue? No.
Can we guarantee a certain number of phone calls and prospect follow-ups? Absolutely.
Can we guarantee that every inbound lead will be followed up on within a set amount of time? Absolutely.
Can we guarantee consistent outreach to key partners so we stay top-of-mind in the market? Absolutely.
In this simple example, we know that sales has measurable inputs: the number of phone calls, follow-ups, demos, proposals sent, and deals won. The deeper you go into the funnel, the more outcomes are outside of your control. But by consistently executing the inputs, you significantly increase the likelihood of hitting the outputs.”
The point is to focus on your locus of control. Sure, understand what is happening in the world. It’s very useful. Ignorance is not bliss in global macro, geopolitics and competitive analysis. But you cannot do anything about it. It’s so easy to get unhinged or rage baited on social media or by reading the news.
David Cummings wisely writes: “Entrepreneurs would do well to remember this: control your controllables. What’s within your power? What’s outside of it? How can you keep your team focused on what they can control—and not distracted by what they can’t?”
And it’s not just entrepreneurs, its investors, it’s all of us. Ignore the noise, take action, learn, and control the controllables!
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Jan 25th, 2026
“Winter is not a season, it’s a celebration.”--Anamika Mishra
Multipolar world and new world order? Author and economist Branko Milanovic makes the case.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qAvOxGESvs
2. "PE firms gain operational leverage while AI startups access more than 14,000 motivated buyers. This new go-to-market motion redefines how AI software reaches the market, bypassing the traditional enterprise sales grind in favor of networks that can deploy at scale."
https://tomtunguz.com/the-great-reversal-private-equity-corporate-ownership/
3. "The decentralized media landscape instead advantages hustlers because, like Sergey experienced in Russia in the 1990s, the system is breaking down. Volatility and crisis are uncomfortable for most, but for hustlers, it’s the gift of opportunity. In the early pandemic, I was told a smart piece of advice: It’s during crisis that the league tables change.
Hustlers are built differently. They have the dog in them. They get to start. They have a strong bias to action. They’re enthusiastic sellers. They show up every day. They’re willing to do whatever it takes. The fashion media CEO who faked having an EA to make the status-conscious fashion people think he was more important than he was. The salesman who went top to bottom in a downtown skyscraper to sell copiers. Starting a business is hard. I used to misidentify these stories as the fripperies of the successful; I’ve come to realize they’re explanations.
Hustling is back now, only it's been rebranded as “high agency.”High agency is a way to turn a blind eye to the negative excesses that are part and parcel of hustling to focus solely on the positive. Being high agency means you are willing to take risks and to stand on your own. High agency people see problems as solvable."
https://www.therebooting.com/p/the-hustlers
4. "Just like countries, publishers have different levels of sovereignty. Countries like the United States and China have a high degree of sovereignty. A small country like, say, Belgium voluntarily gives up large chunks of sovereignty for practical reasons.
For a lot of reasons that are of varying degrees of reasonableness and rationality, publishers have since the dawn of the internet given up sovereignty. And they cannot establish resilient businesses without claiming back sovereignty. This is easier said than done. The digital media ecosystem is architected to erode publisher sovereignty."
https://www.therebooting.com/p/sovereignty
5. "Clear speak: Can Takaichi deliver a positive wealth effect for the general public from rising asset prices in Japan? If she can — and does — that would be an economic success story truly worthy of being called “Abenomics 2.0.”
One thing is clear: a prime minister who transforms Japan’s rising asset prices into a true positive wealth effect for the Japanese people would indeed be doing “God’s work” — much more so than a primarily self-serving investment banker."
https://japanoptimist.substack.com/p/how-takaichis-abenomics-20-can-work
6. Michael Every has been on top of all geopolitics trends for a while. So he is worth listening to. Basically Europe is a toothless tiger and not sovereign because they don't have any hard power.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vIr5y_LFtI&t=18s
7. "We’re living in an era where maritime infrastructure is the invisible backbone of modern economies. It’s easy to forget, but subsea communications cables now carry 99% of all internet traffic. 80% of global trade still moves by sea. Container freight volume has exploded—up 16x in the last 40 years. Offshore wind is set to be a trillion-dollar buildout over the next two decades. Oil & gas remains the largest ocean-based industry, with deepwater O&G growing 10x since 1990.
Market Signal:
But here’s the narrative break: the threat vectors are multiplying, fast. Multiple maritime frontlines have become active theaters of geopolitical conflict (think: South China Sea, Middle East, Europe). Latent risks like piracy and illegal fishing persist, but the toolkit for disruption has never been more diverse—cable-cutting drones, comms interference, narco-subs, state-backed fishing fleets operating in legal grey zones."
https://snailmail.slow.co/p/oceans-the-most-fragile-layer-of-the-global-economy
8. Painful truth. Global macro implications of geopolitics from Luke Gromen. Bullish on BTC & Gold because the world is going risk off.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RA2cvfdwy0I
9. Fascinating conversation on deal making. Live entertainment and community is the Anti-AI bet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDuqUlZZ8Vk
10. "In each and every startup, there are unsung heroes. The people who don’t often get the credit, but without whom the company simply wouldn’t operate. And if they’re customer facing, more than likely they spend a meaningful amount of their working hours as a receptacle for other people’s frustrations — whether or not there’s anything they can do about it.
So if you’re traveling this week, take an extra minute to stop and say thanks to the people helping make your travel a reality. Look them in the eyes, shake their hands, say their names and express your gratitude."
https://chrisneumann.com/archives/stop-and-say-thanks
11. Grand macro strategy (military, economic & political) from the USA which has huge implications for the rest of the world (and the investor).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raHznWlAmng
12. The next era of air superiority. This was very educational.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2yCCjPojKc
13. China looks like America in early 2010s. China leading in power generation, open source AI & key manufacturing and supply chains.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuJxZ67PwNk
14. "Unfortunately, reality begs to differ. People in leadership positions want to be available to others, so they keep their calendars open. And people in IC roles often don’t get to control their calendars as much as they’d like—those pesky managers keep scheduling meeting after meeting.
But, not all hope is lost. The González study found that for knowledge workers, almost half the interruptions are self-inflicted. While it is true very few people have control over their calendars these days, we are the masters of our destiny and captains of our ship more than we think when it comes to interruptions. Another similar study also found that people who blocked interruptions found their job satisfaction to be much higher.
Checking your inbox only a few times a day—or even just twice—pays huge dividends. In my experience, almost nothing is actually urgent, and it’s better to train people that getting your attention requires effort than to train them that you’re always available. Whatever you do, any effort you put in here will be worth it."
https://justoffbyone.com/posts/math-of-why-you-cant-focus-at-work/
15. Saudi Arabia is crushing it on the hospitality side of things. Crazy luxe hotel resorts here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ij7GZ45nBs
16. Energy is life. Latest developments and Russia & USA are well positioned here in the energy world. (unless Ukraine wrecks most of their gas and oil infrastructure...fingers crossed)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dsWimqipxc
17. What an incredible conversation, wise and blunt. Lots of really incredible insights on the nature of running a VC fund and life in general too. Surprisingly great interview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIZ2xpIDyYI
18. This show helps you understand the zeitgeist of Silicon Valley and tech. It's one of my favorite regular weekly discussions to catch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BbWHm3KODw
19. A cold hard look at the world from the eyes of the brilliant Balaji Srinavasan. Reality is brutal (especially for America & the Political West these days).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-W18Ptd03o
20. "For entrepreneurs, this is a powerful reminder: in industries where relationships or incentives are traditionally one-sided, there is often an opportunity to flip the dynamic by putting the customer first. Lead with value before trying to extract value."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/11/29/value-first-reimagining-of-a-market/
21. Very good overview of Ukraine's long range strike capabilities. They have cards to play still.
https://missilematters.substack.com/p/from-flamingo-to-neptune-ukraines
22. "This benchmarking issue is a real problem.
What I want to point out today is that it's going to get even more difficult. When an AI system starts to perform at human level on somewhat ambiguous tasks, we will struggle the same way we struggle to evaluate humans. Many books have been written about how to hire, how to identify top talent, and yet inside companies we often can’t agree on performance for some hires."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/is-there-any-hope-for-ai-benchmarks
23. "Before we had shiny magazine covers or modern advertising agencies shaping our sense of style, J.C. Leyendecker’s art stirred the imagination of Americans. His illustrations did more than fill pages, they spoke to readers and defined the era. With rich colors and a great command of details, Leyendecker created images that became cultural icons of his day and age. His works focused on elegance and American patriotism, influencing how people dressed and saw themselves. Long before Norman Rockwell became a household name, Leyendecker created the canvas upon which American life was illustrated. Let’s learn more about the man and his art."
https://thewaysofagentleman.substack.com/p/the-forgotten-artist-who-influenced
24. "The dominance of the US dollar has long relied on structural demand tied to scarce and essential commodities. In the 1970s, oil fulfilled that role. The petrodollar system—where Saudi and other OPEC oil exports were priced in dollars and recycled into US Treasuries—created a self-reinforcing global need for the US currency, underpinning American fiscal and monetary power.
Today, a new commodity is taking its place: compute. High-end GPUs and AI infrastructure are scarce, capital-intensive, and critical to the next generation of technological growth. Just as oil once drove global dollar flows, commoditised compute, priced in USD stablecoins, is emerging as a key driver of structural demand for dollars. Tokenised assets, programmable settlement rails, and stablecoins allow digital activity—from AI training to industrial supply chains—to generate continuous dollar circulation, linking AI growth directly to US fiscal capacity.
In this framework, Nvidia plays the role of Aramco, OpenAI is Exxon or Chevron, GPUs are barrels of oil, and what we would call cryptodollars are the modern equivalent of petrodollars. The combination of scarce compute, tokenised settlement, and Treasury-backed stablecoins forms a cycle in which the AI economy not only depends on dollars but actively funds American government spending, supporting the dollar’s reserve currency status and potentially preventing fiscal Armageddon in the US."
https://www.currencyofpower.co/p/barrels-to-bytes
25. Learned a lot about biotech and Pharma in this conversation. Long been fascinated by the biotech space. This lady is super smart. Ukrainian too!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSkyiCwrBtw
26. Zeihan's take on deindustrialization in America. This will be a massive area of focus and opportunity over the next 10-15 years. Blue collar, energy & defense will be key areas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtBoJotE6pY
27. The biggest investment America needs to make in the next decade.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpEEDnV1gXw
28. Probably one of the best interviews with Elon Musk, I've seen in a long while. Lots of interesting takes on technology and the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rni7Fz7208c&t=2034s
29. "The asymmetry is a big part of what’s happening here. Put yourself in the shoes of a venture capitalist looking for massive home run outcomes. Is it easier to believe that a company that appears to be growing will continue to grow or that a company that isn’t growing as quickly will begin to grow quickly when it gets access to your capital? Betting on something that’s already working and continues to work could return your whole fund. If growth slows or it never was quite what you thought it was when you invested, the amount of money you’ll lose is likely something you can absorb. It is far more costly not to be in the winners than it is to make a few false positive investments if you’re managing a large pool of capital.
By far, the greatest challenge in fundraising today is rising above the noise floor, given the level of activity in the ecosystem and the number of companies competing for investors’ attention."
https://chudson.substack.com/p/reflections-from-our-2025-agm-1t
30. "If you’re a founder the best way you can pitch a VC is by getting an introduction from someone they deeply trust as an expert, and a signal, in that zone of genius. This isn’t about an insider’s game of access, nepotism, or where you went to school; it’s about putting yourself at the center of that spikiness where every signal is telling others to listen, to lean in, and maybe to write that 1,000 check. It doesn’t matter where you live on the map, or what background you come from. We can all build our own luck.
Build yourself around your areas of passion, and surround yourself with the highest value, most respected signals in that space, and good things will start to happen."
https://ideas.scotthartley.com/p/network-effects-in-venture-capital
31. "The next phase of Southeast Asia’s startup story will not be written by blitzscalers. It will be led by builders who understand constraint—who treat capital efficiency, integrity and depth as strategic edges rather than constraints to tolerate.
In Out-Innovate, I argued that ecosystems outside Silicon Valley succeed not by copying the Valley. It will be by executing over the long-term for more enduring opportunities.
Possibility in Southeast Asia will no longer come from flashes of hype. It will emerge from the bedrock beneath."
https://99tech.alexlazarow.com/p/sea-dispatches-from-blitzscalers
32. "Russian oligarchs love Dubai. The city has sun, malls, and a runway five minutes from a five-star hotel. After 2022 they re-registered their planes in places like Aruba and kept flying south. Dubai asked only for a “home-base” letter — easy, painless, routine.
In June the airport added a quiet step: prove the money behind the jet is clean. Tick the box, upload a pdf, move on. Fail the check and you get one landing, then a 90-day lockout. No press note, no big speech — just an extra upload field.
The Trap That Didn’t Look Like a Trap
Crews still file the same papers. If the back-office robot spots a Russian owner, it paints the permit amber. Pilots think it’s a typo, try again, burn $14,000 a day waiting. After a week most give up and fly away — usually…
Dubai keeps the planes outside its border, but offers a lifeline: hand the jet to a local firm, let it charter Indian weddings, split the cash. The Russian keeps ownership; the city keeps the income; sanctions stay intact."
https://medium.com/@anandviv11/36b6ea294b44
33. Some Alt-geopolitics, don't really agree with all his takes but good to hear different sides to get closer to reality. Learned a new concept: Pax Judaica in the Levant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sutm8lOJRqw
34. The always interesting Delian of Varda and Founders Fund. A fun interview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hIwRLhUMK4
35. "The sudden arrival of AI in the workplace couldn’t have happened at a worse time. AI’s downward pressure on incomes and opportunities will occur far faster than new avenues of advancement emerge.
Americans, already economically and socially damaged by the radical expansion of corporate indentured servitude, won’t take it well (especially if the few lifeboats of economic opportunity that emerge are filled by corporate indentured servants when they show up).
If young Americans don’t believe in the American Dream anymore, a loss of faith in technological progress will soon follow.
Additionally, a combination of AI and robotics will soon make rapid progress toward eliminating the need for low-skilled domestic labor (an area where migrant indentured servants excel). This would leave millions living in migrant sanctuaries without employment, straining social safety nets.
Generations of young Americans growing up without a belief in the American Dream (a proxy for their faith in the American economic system) will become increasingly disloyal, critical, and politically volatile. These workers, deprived of the incomes and opportunities needed for marriage, home ownership, and family formation, are unlikely to see the US government or its corporate partners as legitimate. This opens the door to a radical politics, on the left or the right, that we’ve never seen before."
https://johnrobb.substack.com/p/the-american-nightmare
36. "I read the 10-K filings touting AI transformation. Then I talk to the CIOs and employees. The gap is staggering.
Press releases announce “company-wide AI adoption.” Hallway conversations tell a different story. Employees haven’t opened the tools in weeks. The data lies. Comms lies. Dashboards show logins, not usage. Activation, not integration.
This is transformation theater. The appearance of change without the pain of change."
https://writing.nikunjk.com/p/bet-the-farm
37. "I’ve been writing about Italy’s comeback for months now. The wealth migration data, the financial market performance, the stabilization of public finances – the indicators are real.
But what I find myself most excited about is simpler than macroeconomic trends.
You can replicate Singapore’s efficiency anywhere with good infrastructure and favorable regulation. You cannot replicate Florence. You cannot replicate Rome. You cannot manufacture the accumulated weight of two thousand years of continuous human achievement.
In an age where geography is increasingly optional for earning income, civilizational depth becomes the arbitrage.
Italy is art.
For certain people at certain stages – the remote professional seeking lifestyle over pure optimization, the retiree wanting Mediterranean quality of life, the successful entrepreneur looking to enjoy rather than continue accumulating, the investor seeking optionality with Bitcoin alignment – Italy might be exactly right.
Build in USD. Save in Bitcoin. Spend in euros.
Live longer."
https://palombo.substack.com/p/who-should-actually-move-to-italy
The Dark Forest Theory: Be Stealth
There is a concept called the Dark Forest theory. According to Gemini AI:
“The theory is named after an analogy used in Liu's novel ‘The 3 Body Problem’. The analogy describes the universe as a dark forest where each civilization is a hidden hunter. Making noise, like broadcasting a signal, reveals one's location and makes them a target. The Dark Forest Theory is a proposed solution to the Fermi Paradox, which asks why we have not found any evidence of extraterrestrial life despite the high probability of its existence. The theory suggests that civilizations remain silent and hidden out of fear that revealing their location would lead to their destruction by more advanced, hostile civilizations”
Silence is a measure of intelligence. Deception is life.
The internet is moving away from transparency and authenticity. In a more adversarial and desperate world, this transparency makes you a target. Think about “cancel culture” where your old tweets or posts were used against you, even if they were over a decade old. It cost people their jobs and careers.
It’s funny because I tend to be direct and blunt. I don’t do a good job of hiding my feelings or thoughts. I’m pretty transparent and open to a fault. But in this new world, not sure if this is a strength or weakness. I deeply suspect it’s a weakness now.
Even wealth is not a guaranteed shield. There is PR, reputation or brand damage. There is plain harassment online or offline by idiots. There are, of course, legions of criminals and scammers as well looking for targets.
We can learn more from spies and espionage at large. Keeping your thoughts to yourself. Pretending to be someone else. Infiltration and inception. Deception becomes an effective survival mechanism.
It’s not a good idea to share all aspects of your life with the public. Maybe only with your family and friends. And if you do share things it’s on tightly controlled platforms or groups. Path, which was a social media platform restricted to 150 people, was far ahead of its time. 150 people is what is called Dunbar's Number which is the optimal number of people that one can have close relations with. This is wired into our being. A trusted circle.
So be stealth. Even better, be stealth wealth. No one will bother or rob someone they think is poor. No social obligations either.
Be known but not famous. Or even just anonymous, while hiding in plain sight. This is the new strategy of adaptation for a new scary and increasingly hostile world.
Palmer Luckey’s Survivor Wisdom: And a Warning
Palmer Luckey, wunderkind, founder of Oculus Drift, the VR pioneer acquired by Facebook aka Meta. A man who was taken down & fired during the insane leftist witch hunts of Silicon Valley in the mid-2010s. But what a comeback. He cofounded Anduril, the leading defensetech neo Prime that is leading the massive changes in the defense industry in America. Long needed too.
I couldn’t remember where I heard this but of all the entrepreneurs who build massive empires it can be explained or embodied by these 3 following causes or traits.
Megalomania
Sociopathy
Revenge Arc
Palmer Luckey clearly embodies the Revenge arc. I mean if you look at all three of those traits, it makes sense.
No normal or sensible human being would ever do a startup unless it’s the peak of the bubble like it is now. No sensible human would keep on going even if their business is worth billions. Most humans would stop and enjoy the view.
It requires some kind of tremendous drive or frankly deep hole in their soul that needs to be filled. I get it. We innately want more as humans but to take it to such an extreme massive point requires a ridiculous amount of smarts, drive and desire.
All great empires whether business or political have relentless ambition & flexible expanding borders. It’s just the way it is. I’ve been in denial of the fact that the kinder and warmer Silicon Valley and America I have known and love is disappearing. I’m slowly adjusting and learning about this new more unforgiving & brutal world we are in. Be a lord or be a slave. There is nothing in between.
I need to be harder and more ruthless. No more wasting time with people or projects that are going nowhere. I will be saying NO much more. Focus on monetization, less pro bono stuff. Money is a shield and a tool. It enables my bigger mission.
I need to do this to thrive so I can take care of my family, friends, business partners, allies and extended community. No one else will do this. If you think the government or some outside player will come save you, you are a fool and deserve what is coming for you.
Remember that God helps those who help themselves. It’s all on you. You need to keep striving, keep learning, to be remorseless and never look back. Always moving forward.
So I will quote Palmer’s view on what he learned from Survivor the reality tv show:
“In the Survivor culture meta. I'm just doing what's best for my game. I had to do it…..I’m going to do whatever it takes to accomplish my objective. Outwit, Outplay, Outlast.”
Never Doom, Stay In the Game: Your Regular Reminder
It’s rough out there. Stock market and Crypto being super volatile. The Startup and VC investing world is getting hard. Let’s not talk about the craziness in Geopolitics and Global Macro right now.
But I want to remind folks, you just have to grind through this. Surviving is thriving. I leave you with some very wise words from the gents at BowtiedBull:
"Every major success story is a case study in pain tolerance and conviction. Compounding only works for the few who stay solvent long enough to experience it. It’s the price of admission to the 1%.
Most people can’t tolerate being underestimated or delayed. They need recognition and attention. So they cash out to scratch the ego.
They need comfort, so they give up options. They mistake motion for progress and validation for security. They exit the game voluntarily, right before it turns unfair in their favor.
The irony is that singular focus on survival/adaptability creates inevitability.
If you stay in the arena long enough, the odds eventually tilt toward you. The longer you can withstand pain, boredom and obscurity, the more tail events you’re exposed to. Life runs out of ways to stop the man who refuses to leave.
If you’re in that grinding phase where nothing seems to click, that is entirely mental., If you’re making the right choices the momentum piles up silently. You’re not supposed to feel rewarded. You’re supposed to survive.
Every month you stay solvent, every year you hold your ground, your probability of breakthrough rises. That’s the math of attrition.
People Hate Cockroaches and Yet They Teach a Valuable Lesson, Find a Way to survive"
(Source: https://bowtiedbull.io/p/getting-rich-is-a-game-of-attrition).
I leave you a BTB gem. Be patient & keep grinding.
“The more you want results today, the less you’ll get. This is how lady luck works. The real skill you want is staying power. Stay at the table long enough and Lady Luck decides “huh this guy really doesn’t care guess i’ll give him this pot of gold”
Don’t blow yourself up. Don’t cash out of asymmetry too early. Don’t sell your future for comfort. Keep your burn low, your ego smaller, and your runway long. Because life doesn’t reward the smartest player — it rewards the one who makes it to the final table.”
Never doom. There is always a light at the end of the tunnel. You will get there. And when you do, it will all be worth it.