Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
Most of the new Star Wars series movies are total garbage beyond the first 3 masterpiece movies. But I will make an exception for Rogue One which came out in 2016. It’s a highly underrated war movie of sacrifice and heroism that really set up Star Wars the original movie & the destruction of the Death Star. It’s like Mission Impossible meets the Dirty Dozen but it takes place in the Star Wars universe. Few against many with insane odds against them.
How did the Rebels get their hands on the plans for the Death Star? Well this movie (along with Andor series 2) explains it. They got it via incredible violence, sacrifice and many lives on both sides. Spoiler alert, literally every single rebel on the mission dies but yet this mission is the key that unlocks their future. As main character Jyn Erso says: “Rebellions are built on hope.”
Rebel intelligence agent Cassian said something very poignant in the movie:
“Some of us, well most of us, we’ve all done terrible things on behalf of the rebellion. Spies, saboteurs, assassins. Everything I did, I did for the rebellion.
Every time I walked away from something I wanted to forget I told myself it was for a cause I believed in. A cause that was worth it. Without that, we are lost. Everything we’ve done would have been for nothing. I can’t face myself if I give up now.”
It’s nice to have a cause to believe in. In this case, freedom of the galaxy from the tyranny of the Empire. Yes, this is just a movie but it seems fiction is starting to blend into reality in 2025 as the fractious West declines while the new Axis of autocracy CRINK (China, Russia, Iran & North Korea) emerges and has been actively working against us. This is an enemy much worse than our corrupt, grifting, dishonest and incompetent ruling elites, which in my view is the lesser of evils.
We need to wake up from our grand delusion of peace at all costs. Wishful thinking of a peaceful world that has long disappeared because of our own weakness & stupidity. We need to be willing to fight for our way of life, it can never be taken for granted. We need to remember nothing good comes without sacrifice.
But don’t give up hope yet abroad or at home. It’s not too late. As long as there are people willing to fight and resist to protect our way of life in the West. We need to get strong again.
“One fighter with a sharp stick and nothing left to lose can take the day. If we can make it to the ground we can take the next chance. And the next. On and on, until we win or the chances are spent…….May the force be with us.”
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Aug 24th, 2025
“Summertime is always the best of what might be” – Charles Bowden
"The key point here is that a person can now be identified remotely by their walking gait, by their unique and undisguisable heartbeat, even by their molecules. You cannot hide from this panopticon. The weapons systems needed to take you out are cheap and fast – small drones that place a “warhead on a forehead”. You can’t sleep soundly anymore, knowing that the warhead can pass through your apartment wall.
One wrong move or wrong word, and you are dead in a heartbeat. This is a new kind of warfare. It's no longer about tanks or soldiers. This is a space-based/digital AI-directed war. The rules and risks have changed for everyone. We should remember this as we think about our own country’s AI-led surveillance plans.
The geopolitics have changed too. All of the geopolitical players have been forced to recognize that Trump is now a lethal threat. TACO (Trump always Chickens out, must change to, “Trump Always Comes up with Options). Offers are negotiating tactics for him. When he withdraws an option, it is not conceding; it is because something else has changed. In my experience in geopolitics and in business, few experts in geopolitics have any understanding of how business deals happen. This is because the currency of geopolitics is power, while the currency of business is money.
The typical property deal that Trump works on is high stakes, big, and messy. It involves many players beyond the buyer and seller, including unions, organized crime, local, state, and federal officials, complex regulations, regulatory enforcement agencies, and investors. Every property deal has to be a win-win for everyone. The contest is to see who makes the most money out of the deal. However, most deals will fail if any party ends up as a loser. That means property deals require giving up power at points in the negotiation. Geopolitics experts tend to fall into Kissinger’s approach to power – you must never give up any power, no matter what.
Concessions are a loss of power. Everything in geopolitics is usually win-lose. Hence, when Trump removes a threat, it equates to a loss of power, at least to the geopolitical cognoscenti. His new allies in the Middle East – Saudi, Qatar, the UAE and Israel – are all very good at dealmaking in business. They get the idea that everyone must win, and anyone who refuses to play ball gets eliminated. It’s a win-win for the survivors and elimination for those who refuse to cooperate.
So, does the strike on the nuclear facilities necessarily mean this is the start of a ground war? No. In fact, quite the opposite is unfolding. Why? Because Trump is offering win-win incentives. Russia and China can both see that a deal over Ukraine and Taiwan is tantalizingly close. Will either trade away their prize - Ukraine for Russia and Taiwan for China - for the sake of Iran? No."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/irans-panopticon-prison-ai-gaz-a
2. This actually makes a lot of sense on what is happening in US weapon sales to rest of West & NATO.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue7-_byY7FU
3. "In stark contrast to the VC model, SBIR’s current model was carefully designed to fund large portfolios of projects that serve DoD’s research and innovation needs, not a limited portfolio of companies. SBIR invests at a very early stage in a vast range of technologies and companies, focusing on innovation rather than profit, ROI, or exits. SBIR takes no equity, acquires no board seats, and exerts little influence on the companies it funds. And SBIR funds heartland inventors and tech center innovators alike.
All this underscores a key point: commercialization is only one metric for judging the success of the SBIR program at DoD, and it is not the most important. What matters is delivering technology for DoD and warfighter.
The program’s primary goal is to extend DoD’s lead in R&D, solve problems, and to equip our warfighters with the best technology available to support our national defense. Here multiple award winners have played a key role, generating a higher rate of DoD sales (according to GAO), offering long-term support, and providing massively important technologies like Progeny Systems’ MK 54 close-in torpedo, now the standard for the U.S. Navy and many of our close allies. They win new contracts because they offer DoD the best available deal for what it needs, in an open marketplace of ideas."
4. "The amazing effectiveness of intelligence over brute force, of precise autonomous strike systems operating from behind enemy lines with tightly integrated intelligence should give us pause as we begin massive investments to put up our own ballistic missile defense system: the golden dome. While eliminating the threats from ballistic missiles is wonderful, we must also be vigilant about strikes from unmanned systems within our borders as well.
The Israelis took Operation Spiderweb and put it on Steroids. In addition to the drone and loitering munition operations, the also used insider intelligence gathered by double agents that gave them precise information about the Iranian command echelon’s movements to round up their targets. The irony was of course that many of these assets were kept around by the Iranians because they thought they had actually flipped them when they hadn’t."
https://bowoftheseus.substack.com/p/a-golden-dome-cant-protect-against
5. One of the best weekly shows and discussion on the B2B world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m60kE-VSOdw
6. Future of Military Affairs: Europe will be relying on the Ukrainian military industrial power.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbCPjbUqL1Y
7. "Many nations manufacture their own weapons and ammunition. But China suddenly became one of the foremost defence technology innovators. How?
The reason is doctrinal: the CCP has pioneered a principle called civil-military fusion. Everything, from AI research at Baidu to quantum computing labs at Tsinghua, is potentially dual-use. The boundary between civilian and military R&D is deliberately porous. Xi Jinping even created a commission to ensure its correct implementation.
That would feel very unusual in the West, where we instinctively separate defence and civilian innovation. But for China it’s a guiding principle. One which has transformed its entire tech ecosystem into a military supply chain."
https://www.resiliencemedia.co/p/how-did-china-come-to-lead-the-world
8. Always a great conversation on the latest tech and Silicon Valley news.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WdW8Qgn-iU
9. Lots of cultural context and learnings on Japan, China and the West at large and how this will affect future geopolitics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hBd8w-Hlm4
10. This was quite good. Discussion with the head of the Army Futures Unit. The future of war from the perspective of the US Army.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw-k8xcELmE
11. One of the best business model tear downs ever, this one mainly on the Booking.com business.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=573f5xX-bd8
12. "Since 1957 the share of Americans who are 65 and older has nearly doubled from 9% to 17%. At $1.5 trillion dollars, Social Security is the largest expenditure in the federal budget. U.S. seniors are the wealthiest cohort in history and the recipients of the largest redistribution in history. The program, which currently serves 69m Americans, is due to run out of money in eight years. Three trends are driving insolvency: more people reaching retirement age (good), people living longer into retirement (also good), and a decline in workforce participation (not good).
If/when Social Security becomes insolvent, America’s grandparents will likely put their retirement on their grandkids’ credit cards. The fix is straightforward, but politically fraught: Means-test benefits and raise the retirement age (exempting people in physically demanding professions). According to a CBO analysis, increasing the full retirement age by two months per birth year until it reaches age 70 for Americans born in 1978 or later would decrease total federal outlays by $122b through 2032.
Phasing out benefits for those with more than $150,000 of non-Social Security income would save an estimated $600b to $700b over a decade. We now spend $5 on seniors for every $1 on children. Enough already. Seniors who need Social Security should get it, but it shouldn’t mean an upgrade from Carnival to Crystal Cruises for NaNa and PopPop. At current rates, within a decade, we’ll spend half our federal budget on programs for seniors. (See above: The wealthiest generation in history.)"
https://www.profgalloway.com/the-grown-up-tax-bill/
13. "Unless you happen to be one of those sickos who gets their jollies from building B2B SaaS companies, this may seem like a snoozefest of a quote. Data data data blah blah blah.
However, this is incredibly important—it means that Slack owner Salesforce is trying to own all of your data. You can’t do anything with it. No company and no customer is allowed to touch it outside of the ways they see fit.
As with everything else these days, this is about AI. All of your applications will be doing this soon, whether it’s your favorite social media site or Microsoft Word. Slack is just the first one to act. Everyone should care about this story, whether you’re concerned about never being able to download your Slack data and use it for an internal tool or you’re more worried that you’re missing the boat on the next AI millions. Beyond that, this sort of business strategy will dictate how all of society functions tomorrow.
The next five years will be a furious storm of acquisitions, investments, and consolidation up and down the stack, where companies will be rapidly trying to corner key sources of data and workflows before an AI provider gets to it first."
https://www.gettheleverage.com/p/slack-declares-war
14. "This brings us back to my criticism of Israel in last week’s article. They did not set up the proper political environment before initiating their attack. For Israel, politics and international public support seem to be an afterthought. They seem to think they can overcome anything with might and wit alone. How naive.
Historically, even the mighty U.S. makes sure to gather a coalition and launch a proper propaganda campaign before engaging in any large military conflict. Israel is a small country with roughly the same population as New York City. They don’t have the size to operate the way they’re choosing to.
There are tons of reports that Iran still has enriched uranium stockpiles that were not hit by U.S. and Israeli airstrikes. So far, the regime in Iran seems to be intact. Unless the Israelis have something new up their sleeves, this was a failure.
Why?
It’s a failure because in war, you don’t take half-measures against a determined adversary. Half-measures like this give Iran the chance to learn and get better. You don’t send your enemy back to the drawing board, you kill them. If you can’t do that, don’t start a war unless you have direct provocation.
Assuming the status quo holds, the Iranians have now experienced the full extent of Israel’s capabilities, and they’ll spend the next few years building back better.
Iran didn’t win this war, but Israel didn’t either."
https://www.globalhitman.com/p/israels-brilliance-and-failure
15. "The other vector in startups was geography.
Today, like it or not, capital is re-concentrating in the old capitals partially because of AI: San Francisco, London, Tel Aviv. Startups in non-central ecosystems are finding it that much harder to raise capital. From side conversations, there’s a growing sense that global GPs need to “earn the right” to go abroad again.
The irony (and certainly central to my day job at Fluent Ventures) some of the best startups are being built in emerging ecosystems—with less burn, less competition, and lower valuations."
https://99tech.alexlazarow.com/p/a-tale-of-two-cities-in-tech-rebranding
16. "For entrepreneurs, the recommendation is to search for shared prompts online in the context of the work being done. If you’re analyzing term sheets, go online and find example prompts that do a much more detailed analysis than just a basic prompt. If you’re analyzing a partnership agreement, use the shared prompt that will give you more valuable insights. The AI results are great, and with a more advanced prompt, they’ll be even better."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/06/28/use-advanced-prompts-for-more-ai-value/
17. The most original thinker in Silicon Valley, whether you like him or not, Peter Thiel is worth listening to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV7YgnPUxcU
18. This stood out to me.
“Japan cannot trust its two biggest partners...the People's Republic of China on the one hand...And then of course, the United States of America...And what has happened over the last five, six years is that basically both those partners...have become untrustworthy.”
“Everybody who's cool wants to move to Tokyo...there's growing evidence that you have a little bit of a brain drain to Japan, where the best and the brightest from around Asia and the United States of America actually are happy to take a pay cut...the quality of life and your purchasing power makes Tokyo, Kyoto, Fukuoka, very, very good places to live and work.”
https://japanoptimist.substack.com/p/unbelievably-rich-yet-dirt-cheap
19. One of the world's most interesting men in history. Aristotle Onassis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R1iG3LrT2I
20. I enjoyed and learned more than I thought I would from this conversation with the Chainsmokers on DJ-ing, art, music and venture capital.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-aE0mkUWYM&t=1762s
21. "We’re still in the horseless carriage era of AI applications.
The breakthrough will come when software adapts to us instead of forcing us to adapt to it."
https://tomtunguz.com/my-own-ai-email-generator/
22. Not for me but an interesting investment idea.
"If you want to buy into the world's cheapest real estate, you have to look at Cuba.
Based on a statistic drawn up by NetCredit, in 2023 the median house in Cuba cost USD 40,000. This compares to prices in the Dominican Republic being 5x higher, and more expensive Caribbean locations costing 5-20x more.
How to get in on the act?
There is one forgotten stock listed on the London stock exchange that allows you to do that.
Introducing CEIBA Investments
CEIBA Investments (ISIN GG00BFMDJH11, UK:CBA) has a real estate portfolio in Cuba that is valued at USD 130m even during current market conditions. With 100% of its portfolio invested in Cuba, it's a pure play."
23. "Two key trends will drive the development of this next generation consumer device: 1) Hardware (chips, cameras, sensors, screens, optics, batteries, etc) will continue to get better, cheaper, and smaller, driven by Big Tech investment. 2) GenAI will simplify how users interact with these devices and unlock more powerful features.
A next generation AI-native hardware device (whether equipped with BCI or not) will certainly make its way to the national security community. I expect that DoD adoption of this new technology will follow a similar path as the smartphone. First, the smartphone proliferated throughout the consumer industry, then, several years later, DoD rolled out a hardened version of the device equipped with DoD-specific software like ATAK.4 Hopefully DoD will be able to adopt this next generation system more quickly than they adopted smartphones, which took several years to integrate throughout the Department.
A next-generation, AI-native consumer device holds significant potential for national security customers, offering hands-free operation via natural language or BCI, deep user context through integrated sensor data, and AI agents capable of executing tasks autonomously, enabling users to stay mission-focused and amplifying their operational effectiveness as a true force multiplier."
https://maggiegray.us/p/ai-native-hardware-the-next-strategic
24. "Ending old-age benefits for the childless would be a pretty dystopian policy. But in the long run, extreme population aging, coupled with slower productivity growth, will make it economically impossible for young people to support old people no matter what policies government enact.
And if desperate, last-ditch draconian measures fail, we will shrink and dwindle as a species.
The vitality and energy of young people will slowly vanish from the physical world, as the youth become tiny islands within a sea of the graying and old. Already I can feel this when I go to Japan; neighborhoods like Shibuya in Tokyo or Shinsaibashi in Osaka that felt bustling and alive with young people in the 2000s are now dominated by middle-aged and elderly people and tourists.
And as population itself shrinks, the built environment will become more and more empty; whole towns will vanish from the map, as humanity huddles together in a dwindling number of graying megacities. Our impact on the planet’s environment will finally be reduced — we will still send out legions of robots to cultivate food and mine minerals, but as our numbers decrease, our desire to cannibalize the planet will hit its limits.
But even as humanity shrinks in physical space, we will bind ourselves more tightly together in digital space."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-dawn-of-the-posthuman-age
25. "What makes drone warfare in the Russo-Ukraine War different is that this is a fight between two regular armies. It has been going on long enough to have encouraged innovation in technology and tactics. After the full-scale invasion of February 2022, large drones, essentially unmanned aircraft, such as the Turkish Bayraktar, made a mark until the Russians learned how to deal with them. They were full of expensive equipment yet vulnerable to enemy defences. As they faded away from the front-line there was a shift to smaller and ever more versatile drones that could be mass produced and were sufficiently cheap to be expendable.
Some drones can be used a number of times, often more for surveillance than attack, but most now are used only once. They can be configured for a variety of ranges, so that some can attack targets well to the rear. Support of front-line operations is now dominated by FPV (First Person View) Drones. These have a distinctive square shape, with a propeller at each corner, flying directly into targets, where they can detonate an explosive charge of up to 1.5 kg. Last year both sides produced about a million of these. This year both expect to produce three to four million."
https://samf.substack.com/p/are-drones-the-future-of-war
26. "Thesis drift is entirely psychological in nature. It is natural to want to avoid admitting to yourself that you were wrong or that you didn’t know what you were doing, as it conflicts with your self-image as someone who is smart or has good instincts. If you have made public pronouncements about your position, changing your mind threatens your external image as well.
If you don’t recognize thesis drift, you can get stuck in hell. Hell, in this context, is when you get stuck doing the same thing over and over and expect a different result. All you have to do to stay out of hell is to respond to the clear, unambiguous feedback you got when your initial thesis was falsified. That feedback is your lifeline! Once you sever that feedback loop, it’s easy to enter a tailspin, because there is nothing left that can pull you out of it. You just keep losing money on the same failed position with no end in sight. And what’s worse, when you are stuck in hell, you look like an insane person, doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results.
People expect investing to be a game of intellect, where you produce clever theories that you can turn into money. In reality, it is more of a psychological battle to keep your brain from sabotaging your portfolio."
https://www.md-a.co/p/thesis-drift
27. "Somewhere along the way, we got lost. We’ve turned what should have been the problem statement into an invitation to a pity party. The correct response to differentiation challenges isn’t “woe is me,” but “that’s why we get paid the big bucks.”
That’s our job. That’s what we do here: differentiate similar products in the minds of customers. See Positioning. No, it’s not easy. But the day you think differentiation is impossible is the day you should turn in your marketing gun and badge. Differentiation is always possible. If consumer packaged goods (CPG) marketers can differentiate rice or yogurt, then we can darn well differentiate enterprise software."
https://kellblog.com/2025/06/29/navigating-the-mythical-sea-of-sameness/
28. "Today I want to give the opposite perspective - that the app layer is a difficult place to make money and that infrastructure is the best place to invest right now.
The reason I’m so interested in AI infrastructure is because the underlying technology of AI is shifting rapidly. Use cases are changing. And I still expect a few technological discontinuities to come into play - like the rise of a non-transformer based model class. Some of these previous shifts in AI infrastructure leadership happened because the tools were optimized for technology like RNNs or CNNs and then LLMs became the driver of application development and new entrants were better positioned for that world.
I believe that is happening now, and will continue to happen for the next decade as AI development settles into a market equilibrium. There will be massive opportunities for AI infrastructure startups."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/why-i-disagree-with-sequoias-thesis
29. "While most people know him as the sardonic superhero Deadpool, Reynolds is also a wildly successful businessperson. Plenty of celebrities attach themselves to products. But Reynolds’ production company and marketing firm Maximum Effort is a viral content machine. He takes hefty stakes in seemingly disparate small companies, promotes them—and has them promote each other—with playful quick-turn ads he calls “fastvertising,” and then sells the businesses for millions.
He has invested in Aviation Gin, the discount telecommunications company Mint Mobile, Welsh soccer team Wrexham AFC, and the cybersecurity app 1Password—to name a few. The companies he co-owns or has sold are valued at over $14 billion, according to Forbes.
Reynolds has carried over his Hollywood playbook to the world of advertising: respect the audience’s intelligence and have a little fun. “Consumers know they’re being marketed to, so acknowledge it,” he says. Levy, who has made three movies with Reynolds, believes that Reynolds’ ability to create narratives for his businesses is his friend’s superpower. “He’s really identified a core component to entrepreneurial success,” Levy says. “And it connects back to our day jobs, which is storytelling.”
https://time.com/collections/time100-companies-2025/7289571/maximum-effort/
30. Old one but good one.
"This last week McGregor won his contest in a record 13 seconds. His opponent, Jose Aldo, had been the champion and unbeaten for 10 years. He was the empireand McGregor was the startup on his periphery. The startup won.
These were Conor McGregor quotes after the fight.
Precision beats power. Timing beats speed
When you see it, and you have the courage enough to speak it, it will happen
To the naked eye it was 13 seconds, but to my team and my family it has been a lifetime of work to get to that 13 seconds."
https://www.adamtownsend.me/startup-conor/
31. Controlling the straits of Hormuz. Chokepoints and geography matter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UZbuY9pPkw
32. If you are interested in defensetech & the future of warfare, this is an incredible interview with Ethan Thornton of Mach Industries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTfSIRg_kp0&t=6323s
33. "So if Japan pioneered reality TV, and still watches it today, why is it that modern Japanese reality TV is so inoffensive, while the American strain is so virulent? It’s tempting to argue that Japan’s more sedate broadcast entertainment is a reflection of a healthier society and America’s adversarial entertainment a reflection of a sicker one. That American entertainment is the product of an outrage economy, while Japan’s a product of what might be called a soothing economy. Which makes sense, because some of Japan’s top exports are designed to comfort, empower, and heal.
It’s particularly evident in publishing: the popularity of escapist isekai manga; the current boom for female authors like Yoko Ogawa and Mieko Kawakami; self-help hits likeThe Courage to be Disliked and Marie Kondo’s cleaning magic.
Those sweeping generalizations might have some basis in reality. But the current state of broadcast affairs in Japan isn’t due to some nationwide epiphany, or because the country is maturing, or because producers stopped making provocative shows out of the goodness of their hearts. It’s because of regulations."
https://blog.pureinventionbook.com/p/japanese-tv-vs-american-reality
34. Revolution in Military Affairs: Naval Advances.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Dy2Wd_ZNSA
35. "Private equity remains popular among allocators, but the fundamentals tell a sobering story. Portfolio companies are smaller, less profitable, slower growing, and more leveraged than their public peers. And that’s before considering that public comparables have far more flexibility in capital markets.
The bull case for PE used to hinge on financial engineering and multiple expansion. Today, with debt expensive and exit multiples compressing, the tools that fueled outperformance are turning into liabilities. As always, we return to the data—and the data continues to suggest that the private equity model is under increasing strain."
https://mailchi.mp/verdadcap/2024-private-equity-fundamentals
36. "Path Three is not about getting better. It’s about seeing more clearly.
Path Three doesn’t upgrade you. It exposes the illusion of there being a “you” to upgrade.
It’s not about achieving anything at all. It’s about recognizing what’s already here, already true, already whole.
The problem is, Path Three has terrible PR.
Nobody gets rich on Path Three. There are no before-and-after photos. You don’t get abs. You don’t get closure. You don’t become a legend in your niche.
You don’t become anyone, really.
You notice, instead, that you were never the person you thought you were to begin with. That your life story was a story. That your inner voice was an improv narrator trying to explain the movie while it played.
You don’t transcend the human experience. You just stop taking it personally.
So why do it?
Because once you get even a glimpse of this third path, everything else gets lighter. The drama of Path One, the striving of Path Two — they keep their charm, but lose their weight. You can still play the game, but you stop looking at the scoreboard. You still feel pain, but suffering becomes optional."
https://sanjaysays.co/p/the-third-path
37. Probably one of the most savvy geopolitical guys around, he has made some pretty accurate predictions in the last few years. His take on recent Israeli and Iranian conflict & implications.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAeiNCGRSzk
38. "You already intuitively know all this. Again, because we all use social media these days. As a result, we’ve all developed the ability to discern what people vibe well (and what doesn’t) in this new order. We have the taste, but may not have the ability to actually create the content we want.
By default, marketing professionals create corpospeak. It jumps out particularly in email marketing, or on the about page of a website, or with a lot of conference content. Ironically, the more effort and the more people are involved in something, the worse it is. How do we get rid of corpospeak in our companies? How do we talk to people the way they want to be talked to? And why is this so hard?"
https://andrewchen.substack.com/p/corpospeak-why-you-still-sound-like
X aka Twitter & Geopolitical Takes
X aka Twitter can be a cesspool of hate and anger. I may even contribute to that a little bit. The incredible amount of hate & vitriol I got as a “VC tech bro” commenting on geopolitical stuff was insane back in July. But that’s the game. Bunch of anonymous incels or troll bots urged on by the engagement algorithm that X has become.
Having said that, I’ve gotten so much insight and inspiration from X despite the crazy on the site. You have to mine it and filter well. Folks like @vtchakarova, @SariArhoHavren, @ektrit, @MartinSkold2 & @TheMichaelEvery have been particularly insightful and helpful for developing my mindmap of the future and for understanding the present, geopolitically speaking.
So speaking about geopolitical takes, I found two really good ones recently that I think will withstand the test of time. This is bearing in mind that we are barely past the middle of 2025 and several months into the 2nd Trump Administration where Narrative seems to have overtaken reality. And it’s been chaotic to say the least.
Just Another Pod God has had some incredible economic and geopolitical takes. Been right more often than not. This is one he put out on July 31st. https://x.com/TMTLongShort/status/1950722758674972754:
“People are not ready for the gasoline that is being poured on the American economy over the next 6 - 12 months.
In part this seems to be a function of investors having been conditioned to observe insane levels of fiscal deficits and assume this is just more of the same. It is not.
There is a lot of pent up demand among CEOs who have been mired in red tape and are jonesing to take advantage of a loose regulatory regime. There is a marked difference in productivity between growing GDP via cheap migrants vs growing real-wages and disincentivizing welfare usage.
They are generating a step-up in unmet demand via tariff walls and on-shoring that suddenly needs to be met via domestic production. There are a bunch of export markets that are suddenly accessible for the first time. Will some countries still be protectionist via non-tariff barriers? Sure. Is the admin manically focused on this? Seems that way. Greer reportedly started every meeting with a thick binder of non-tariff barriers to address. Let’s see how well they did their homework.
Regardless you only need a fraction of untapped markets to open. And this is all before you see any productivity gains from AI. Now do I think investors aren’t properly pricing in China trade escalation?
Yes. Absolutely. But does that mean you should be shorting US equities as a way to express this? Probably not. (Not financial advice, just a tech pod guy ruminating)”
I think people are underestimating the boom that could happen post summer. I can tell you from a Silicon Valley perspective I am expecting a massive level of economic activity whether investments or acquisitions on the tech side. Post Reindustrialize Summit I sense the same thing will happen in the so-called Rust Belt of America despite the chaos caused by the Liberation Day tariffs.
Object Zero gives even more tactical advice.
https://x.com/Object_Zero_/status/1950537084332028052:
“This is not financial advice, but… Anyone who really believes in the AI future over a 10-15 year horizon should put their money where their mouth is and make the following macro trade. Bet against human labour…
Short consumer durables, consumer services, short retail, short healthcare and pharma, short media, short housebuilding, short food and bev, All this stuff is going to be slowly strangled by their customer base’s dying purchasing power, and will be replaced by UBI and/or public sector services. Bet on machine labour…
Long industrials, long commodities, long energy, long commercial services, long capital goods, long commercial banks, long big tech, long heavy infrastructure. All this stuff forms a virtuous capital cycle and it’s going to bootstrap itself to unimaginable new heights. In summary short consumers and retail, long industrials and commercials.
This will look really obvious by 2040, but it’s very difficult to see it when you’re standing in the middle of the fog and people are focused on who will win the foundational model arms race, all those theories are priced in but the macro human v machine trade isn’t.”
This completely fits my thesis for the next decade and I have positioned myself and my business for this. We will see if this plays out. Exciting times.
Great Gatsby: An American Story of Aspiration
I absolutely love the Great Gatsby novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It’s a classic American novel that takes place in the 1920s, the Jazz Age. It’s a story about love, ambition and how a man can recreate himself. To incredible ranging heights. The things a man will do to win the love of a woman. In this case, building a massive fortune, building a massive palace, owning all the adult toys one can have like expensive cars, a hydroplane and throwing crazy parties in the hope that his true love eventually shows up.
“Young men don’t just drift coolly out of nowhere and buy a palace on Long Island.”
I also have enjoyed all the movie remakes, especially the Robert Redford version. But I really did like the one in 2013 by Baz Luhrmann starring Leonardo DiCaprio. I am happy to watch it on all my flights. It’s grand and glamorous, especially the big party scenes. New York is evocative, with the grand skyscrapers, of the alcohol soaked speakeasy parties. It’s indicative of the times.
“The tempo of the city approached hysteria. Stocks reached record peaks & Wall Street boomed in steady golden roar. The parties were bigger, the shows were broader and the buildings were higher. The morals were looser and the ban on alcohol backfired, making the liquor cheaper. Wall Street was luring the young and the ambitious.” Doesn’t seem like much has changed here has it?
But the drama and dialogue. And the lessons. It’s a tragedy at the end of the day.
Too much too fast ruins you as it did rich cousin Daisy. She says: “Well, I just think everything’s terrible anyhow. I’ve been everywhere and seen everything and done everything. I’ve had a very bad time. I’m pretty cynical about everything. All the bright precious things fade so fast and they don’t come back.”
But at the same time, I love the optimism, the ambition that Gatsby exemplifies. He was: “The single most hopeful person I have ever met and will ever meet.” You can be whoever you want to be. Only in America. True Rizz also known as charisma for you older folks. Using his magnificent imagination and manifesting it into real life.
I need to be more like this, like when I was younger. More open to the possibilities. It’s so easy to be angry and cynical, considering everything I’ve seen and learned. All the roads I’ve literally traveled and all the terrible people I’ve encountered.
But this is the trap. This is what ages you. You have to reframe everything. You have to also remember all the wonderful people and things you’ve seen. The happy moments and experiences. You have to believe anything is possible, even now. And then put in the work to improve yourself and the situation. Otherwise what’s the point?
So the point: be more like Gatsby. Chase the grand dream. “Anything can happen now that we’ve slid over this bridge, I thought. Anything at all.”
On a Trigger Fuse: The Age of Rage, The Golden Age of Grifters and the Age of Incompetence
I remember my therapist telling me earlier in the year that she felt like I had regressed and she is probably right. Despite the 8 hours of sleep, meditation, working out, Church, fight training, I find myself so angry all the time. I’ve had many intense road rages even during work out, church and training days. I come so close to losing it at times. Thank goodness I am not armed. I see this underlying anger and desperation in many of us around me all around America whether in California, New York, Texas or Michigan.
I’m literally seething. Seething rage is what I felt for most of 2024 and 2025. Everywhere I look I only see corruption or incompetence. Idiocy, laziness and weakness. I am dismayed at the mishandling and lack of support for Ukraine, Israel & burning the bridges with many of our close allies in Asia, Canada and Europe.
Big incompetent bureaucracies run amok whether it’s FTC, FDA, SEC, FBI or the DOJ. Aided by grossly corrupt politicians at all levels of government “trying to get their bag.” We see the breakdown of law and order on many of our city streets, the open import of many millions of unskilled 3rd world immigrants, with a small portion of them criminals or terrorists, while we make it hellishly hard for those talented and skilled to come to America.
I see brainwashed leftist woke students (usually pretty well off Trustafarians too) protesting for our enemies, enemies who would not think twice of extinguishing their lives aka (Gays for Gaza for example where ironically in Gaza homosexuality is banned). Brain worms infect their broken minds. I see insane right wing MAGA openly supporting Russia in their own quest for traditional values, not realizing they are just tools aka “useful idiots.”
We see a broken industrial base in America, a shrinking middle class that is trying to survive, Americans tearing each other down while our enemies circle us. Our enemy is CRINK=China, Russia, Iran & North Korea, I’d throw Venezuela in there too. Clear and present danger around us. Literally barbarians at our gates while most of the populace sinks into apathy, degeneration, denial and even nihilism in some cases.
Will Manidis x-ed this incredible tweet describing the zeitgeist right now in the West, particularly in America: “underrated how severe the vibe shift was from the lockdown era. The spiritual environment of the world has meaningfully changed— violence is closer now, the light inside of everyone is buried deeper, everyone is grifting or scamming. It wasn’t like this four years back.”
On a personal micro level, I continue to struggle in my personal life, still dealing with the issues stemming from the 2020 pandemic lockdowns.
I’m angry at myself and my weakness. I am angry at our government for doing this to us. I am also angry at the injustice I see around me. I am angry at the complacency of the Western populace who just bitch and moan about how their lives suck and how things are getting worse. All while doing nothing about it. Not even working on their own self improvement.
But this is not me. I believe in taking my destiny into my own hands. I have agency and I take action to make things better. Through therapy I’ve learned my rage is the tip of the iceberg, and below the waterline it comes from my fear of losing control, fear of loss, fear of the crazy around me, fear of decline. So I go back to my own tools of the trade coming up in the world. I channel this rage.
I follow the Sith code, I’ve made it my mantra: “Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hatred leads to suffering…..but what the Jedi failed to teach you, what I have learned, is how to persevere, to pass through the suffering, and achieve ultimate power.”
It’s not pretty and I am clearly using “dirty” not clean fuel for motivation but it bloody works.
This is pretty much the only thing motivating me these days to carry on through the pain and suffering. My mission which focuses me. I’ve never been a quitter. And I absolutely plan on doing a lot of good for my family, my community and Western society along this new journey. God help anyone who gets in the way.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Aug 17th, 2025
"Live in the sunshine, swim in the sea, drink in the wild air."--Ralph Waldo Emerson
"From that point on, I knew that no matter what happened — good, bad or otherwise — the sun would rise, tomorrow would happen, and life would go on. There was no use in being bitter about the past. Instead, I was encouraged to use each and every life experience to get better. To improve."
https://chrisneumann.com/archives/will-you-be-the-better-man-or-the-bitter-man
2. Revolution in Military Affairs. Good overview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcDy_oy0RGo
3. Very fun weekly discussion on crypto and digital businesses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDgYwo1EDhI
4. The best show in town on B2B Software investing. Lots of great topical & opinionated discussion from top investors in the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AguI4JLQSA
5. Coatue's Laffont Brothers on BG2 discussing all things tech macro trends. Helpful to understand where big tech and the venture world is going.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JA7n0wTChw
6. "Explanations as to why markets struggle with geopolitics are varied but I think it is partly the fact that geopolitics is a multidisciplinary subject, often involving foreign affairs, but understanding domestic factors influencing decision making in a range of countries, defence and security, even environmental issues, geography, economics, trade, markets, and now cyber and AI looking forward.
There are many moving parts and few people have all the tools to accurately call events. I think also in markets, and analysis, there is often a desire to see the glass half full, hope for the best, and not want to think about the uncomfortable and difficult to fathom results of out of the box or black swan events. A bias to mean reversion when actually politics globally appear to be going the other way, with more extremism, and likely more extreme, even systemic risks looming. All that coming as multilateral institutions created mostly to solve globally systemic problems, are weakening - the IMF, the G20, G7 (this week the divisions laid bare in Canada), and the UN.
Often I also think there is a bias to think that we all share the same information set, have the same objectives and apply the same kind of logic."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/geopolitics-when-opportunity-knocks
7. "The increasing number of foreign faces is the product of a powerful resonance between pop culture and tourism. The government knows this, too. It helps explain why the LDP, after many attempts to restrict anime and manga over the years, is now embracing content as a pillar of of the economy for the 2030s.
You don’t have to be a genius of strategic planning to see to that tourism is locked in orbit with pop culture, making the pair a money-making dynamo for the country. The equation is simple: so long as Japanese content continues to grow in popularity, so will interest in Japan as a destination. It’s easy to understand why the government is invested in stoking the trends, even as citizens grow increasingly ambivalent about the increase in inbounds. Given the nation’s demographics, lawmakers do not have many other options.
Regardless of how one personally feels about it, the tourism boom is also an interesting experiment. It gives concrete form to the ethereal concept of soft power. It lets us explore questions: How far can cultural charisma really take a nation? Can a country sustain its image as a leader in youth culture even as its population grows old?
And more to the point, can Japan keep packing in visitors in without sacrificing its cultural sites and angering its citizens? The answer to all of these questions is, nobody knows. And so an ageing Japan, long written off as irrelevant, finds itself at the cutting edge once again. All we can do is watch and see what happens. If there’s any consolation, there’s plenty of people around to watch with."
https://blog.pureinventionbook.com/p/hell-is-other-people
8. "I completely agree with Nic. Bitcoin is going to win, but US dollars in stablecoin form are going to aggressively win as well. This means the weakest fiat currencies are going to fall at the feet of bitcoin and dollars.
It is crazy to watch this play out. Technologists built better payment rails for all currencies, so now the legacy players are having to bend the knee to adopt dollar stablecoins. Don’t expect this trend to slow down any time soon."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/stablecoins-are-eating-the-world-97e
9. "A portfolio career is what happens when your work life stops being defined by a single job title, or even industry, and instead becomes a collection of overlapping roles, skills, and income streams."
https://shindy.substack.com/p/portfolio-career
10. "Nor is China likely to rush clumsily into war the way Putin did. In the 20th century, China did get involved in some reckless, stupid wars — in Korea in 1950 and Vietnam in 1979, neither of which it won. But since then, China has shown extreme caution. Its leaders definitely seem determined to build up overwhelming power before taking Taiwan or other territories in Asia. If the U.S. has to fight China, it will be at a time and place of their choosing, not ours — and they will likely have most of their people unified behind the effort.
This doesn’t mean the democracies would have no advantage against China. The structural problems of autocracies — poor information flow, over-centralization of power, paranoid infighting — all seem present, as Xi Jinping completes his transformation of Deng Xiaoping’s bureaucratic, technocratic system into something closer to a traditional dictatorship.
Xi has already made a ton of mistakes, many of them related to micromanagement — Zero Covid, Belt and Road, the crackdown on IT in 2021, the real estate bust, “wolf warrior” diplomacy, and so on. It’s likely he would micromanage a war as well. Meanwhile, Xi has been purging his top military officers, many of whom he himself appointed, at a stupendous rate, for reasons unknown.
So if China does fight America, it will have some of the same sorts of disadvantages that Russia has with Putin. But it’s far from clear whether these would be enough to overcome China’s massive manufacturing advantage. Democracy is a lot tougher than people give it credit for, but it’s not magic."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/western-democracies-are-actually
11. "Crypto specifically requires liquidity. Money gets printed, people throw a chunk in since it is their “lotto ticket”. Right now money supply is stagnant but will increase as the Fed loosens and something will need to fund the war + Big Beautiful Bill ($5,000,000,000,000). Stick with buying BTC/ETH since they are the only two assets with institutional flows.
For those looking at their Careers, pivot fast to anything revenue generating/front office. At this point even door to door sales is closer to safety than going into something like entry level Law. To improve ROI/margins for a business, the easiest item to cut is non-revenue generating seats. Just the reality of 2025 and beyond.
Shouldn’t be a new concept to most but this is a fire burning in the house type scenario. AI proof your future because it’s coming and will be much quicker than most anticipate (few short years)"
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/fed-getting-around-the-genius-act
12. "But—and this is crucial—we shouldn't expect the distribution shift to have happened yet. If history is our guide, we're right on schedule. The AI technology shift started gaining mainstream adoption in late 2022 with ChatGPT. If it follows the mobile timeline, we wouldn't expect to see the distribution shift until about 2026 or 2027.
Except I think it's going to happen faster this time. The platforms have learned from history. They know the playbook. And the early signals suggest they're already moving.
The question isn't whether a new distribution channel will emerge. It's who will control it, how open it will be, and whether you'll be ready when it arrives."
https://blog.brianbalfour.com/p/the-next-great-distribution-shift
13. Educational and inspiring interview/discussion. "We all need moonshots"-Tony Robbins.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvHcuyYc718
14. Topical discussion on what's up in Silicon Valley. AI job destruction, AI talent wars & how this changes building and investing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s8UNyDv3Co
15. Lots of global macro insights here. Gave me a good perspective on the potential impact of AI on the US economy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS4Q0iAWmKM
16. "My recommendation for entrepreneurs when talking to potential investors is to ask how they like to work with the entrepreneurs they invest in. Entrepreneurs would do well to have a go-to person they look forward to talking with, who has relevant experience and, crucially, is super responsive."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/06/21/investor-responsiveness-as-1-value/
17. Overall, this was a great episode. Very little politics and just investing and tech industry POV that we all used to watch this show for.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86t6YNf_B7Q&t=3447s
18. "End CENTCOM’s grip on the American foreign policy and give INDOPACOM the money, resources, and priority it actually needs to deter the PLA and keep Americans safe. Regardless of what happens next with Iran, every military history of a US-China conflict will open with how much time and energy we wasted on a middling regime in the Middle East and how much blood and treasure it cost us in the Pacific."
https://www.breakingbeijing.com/p/give-indopacom-its-money
19. "As AI continues to flood our world with increasingly sophisticated but ultimately soulless outreach, the companies willing to double down on creating genuine human connections have a chance to stand out even more.
The technology isn't the problem. It's how we're using it. Instead of automating the human out of human connection, we should be using these tools to do better research, personalize more thoughtfully, and be more useful to the people we’re trying to sell to.
Your prospects don't want to feel like they're talking to a workflow. They want to feel understood, helped, and respected.
So here's my challenge: Pick one prospect interaction this week and approach it like your only goal is creating a great first impression. Turn down the conversion pressure. Just focus on being genuinely useful to this human being. Get curious. Ask some questions to honestly figure out if you can help, tell them clearly how, and share a little about the other options for solving their problem that might be worth looking at.
Do the work ahead of time this requires, and take a minute before you start talking to set a simple intention:
“I’m here to help this person.”
See what happens."
https://hellooperator.substack.com/p/building-trust-in-the-age-of-ai-slop
20. "These are the base effects witnessed in countries that move from cash-only to the next level of development. Once a country's day-to-day commerce runs more smoothly thanks to the availability of cheap, reliable, and convenient payment options, other industries start to catch up.
It's a flywheel effect that should unfold for years to come. After all, Iraq's predominately young population has a lot of catching up to do, and almost all economic activity will require payments, financing, or other forms of financial services.
Needless to say, Iraq won't become a developed nation overnight and will continue to face challenges. While oil exports to the US are exempt from reciprocal tariffs, the lower oil price weighs on the country's income. However, Iraq plans to significantly increase its production.
I have a strong feeling that we'll be hearing a lot more about investing in Iraq throughout the rest of the 2020s.
I had planned travel there this year and report from the ground, but it wasn't concerns about safety that stopped me. Iraq remains on the US ESTA blacklist. I could visit Iraq but would have to forfeit my ESTA visa, which is too much hassle.
However, work is underway to resolve this issue. Tourism is already picking up, mostly with domestic visitors, but international interest is growing. As the Financial Times noted in a March 2023 travel feature: "On the 20th anniversary of the US-led invasion, tour operators are returning to the country and – despite official warnings – their trips are selling out."
If the visa issue became easier, Iraq could see many more visitors, boosting its profile as an exciting place to visit or even invest in.
To help folks like myself, the Iraqi tourism authorities have recently engaged with the US government about the visa problem."
https://www.undervalued-shares.com/weekly-dispatches/investing-in-iraq-yet-more-gains-to-come/
21. "Why is inference time compute so interesting? Because as we build AI agents, and these agents have an array of different inputs, each input may require a different inference time compute algorithm to get the best output.
Inference time compute also allows you to trade time for cost to generate the same performance. As this post shows, a small language model with more inference time compute power behind it can match or beat a much much larger LLM in terms of performance."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/the-next-phase-of-ai-innovation-inference
22. Important interview: can America still build things? It's a conversation both critical and hopeful at the same time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD-RJNQvpVY
23. The path to financial repression, lots of global macro but this is a good conversation on what you can do yourself to get through it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXWr7Pw-eBQ
24. Lessons from America's Defense Innovation Unit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sa6CyXNg-Ag
25. The controversial but interesting Peter Zeihan. Some good geopolitical perspectives to help position for the future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ktF9iU_cvQ
26. The company helping to drive the nuclear renaissance in America. Energy is life. Energy is civilization. It's all about electrons. This is worth watching.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP2zcESIpOo
27. "If you are young, starting out and wondering what to do, I would urge you to get involved with the Bitcoin movement. There are so many different ways to do so, depending on where your talents, skills or interests lie. You can be artist, scientist or journalist, engineer, entrepreneur, traveller or surfer-dude. It really doesn’t matter. You’ll find a path that suits you. It all feels so dynamic and full of opportunity. It’s brim full of doers. Everyone is so supportive. There is plenty of capital to invest. You can make quick progress.
Another thing to note: there are a lot of extremely clever people in this movement. Average IQ levels in Bitcoin are, I’ve little doubt, much higher than you typically find elsewhere."
https://www.theflyingfrisby.com/p/portable-wealth-in-a-wobbly-world
28. "The solution is clear: divest unnecessary real estate and redeploy capital into opportunities that deliver higher returns for shareholders. Whether reinvesting in core businesses with higher operating yield than property leasing, repurchasing shares, reducing debt, or distributing cash to shareholders, any alternative is more productive than leaving capital tied up in low-yielding properties.
Companies can easily sell these real estate assets, as demand from global investment funds eager to acquire properties held by Japanese firms continues to grow. Bloomberg reported that Bain Capital has acquired more than $5 billion in Japanese real estate and is currently negotiating multiple additional transactions, explicitly targeting undervalued, non-core corporate properties.
Similarly, BentallGreenOak (BGO) plans to deploy approximately $11 billion in equity investments into Japanese real estate over the next two and a half years, focusing specifically on corporate-owned properties pressured onto the market by shareholder activism and governance reforms. These well-funded buyers indicate a clear opportunity and viability for divesting non-core real estate assets for corporate Japan.
Crucially, rental real estate represents just one category of non-core assets. The same rationale extends to idle factories, peripheral commercial spaces, and oversized or unnecessarily expensive headquarters."
https://mailchi.mp/verdadcap/the-real-estate-drag-on-corporate-japan
29. "For Takahashi (no first name given), a 31-year-old Gundam enthusiast, living alone gave him the freedom to build his perfect space. In a quiet Saitama neighborhood, he transformed a 65-square-meter apartment into a Gundam lover’s paradise. Carefully arranged shelves, matching color schemes, and row upon row of Gunpla greet visitors at the door. This was the childhood dream he turned into reality. His YouTube channel, Takahashi Laboratory (or Taka-Labo), now reaches over 165,000 subscribers.
The release of Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX in spring 2025, along with its Amazon streaming success and theatrical version, has reignited Gundam’s popularity. For Takahashi, the appeal never faded. “There’s always something new,” he says. “Gundam never stops. That makes us fans really lucky.” More than just a hobby, it has been a constant in his life for over twenty years."
https://www.tokyoscope.blog/p/gundam-is-his-whole-life-how-one
30. "In fact, there’s even an outside chance that the war could end up lowering oil prices in the long run. If the Iranian regime is toppled and replaced with a more neutral one, or if Iran agrees to stop pursuing nuclear weapons, it could lead to the end of sanctions on its oil industry. Iran would then increase oil production, both because it would be getting a better price on its oil, and because it could get international investment to develop more fields. This would cause a glut on the world market, leading to falling prices and giving a boost to industrialized economies.
So to sum up, I just don’t think the economic consequences of Trump’s attack on Iran are worth worrying about very much, especially if you live in the United States. I know a lot of people are a bit freaked out right now, but economic devastation is one less thing you should be worried about."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-economic-consequences-of-a-war
31. This guy is smart. Important conversation on AI Drone wars and the future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sc75ItaNsso
32. "Defense tech is hot right now. And we think the hype is warranted.
We believe that the growing Department of Defense budget ($863B in FY24) can support multiple venture-scale outcomes; that key modernization initiatives have laid the foundation for tech transformation; and that the growing number and influence of innovation units inside the DoD, along with startup-friendly policy precedents, will propel startups to fill the vacuum of modern technology in the DoD.
More recently, the DoD has shown strong initiative to drive efficiency through technology which will require the Department to work hand-in-hand with Silicon Valley. In fact, the DoD has proactively called out areas it is looking to prioritize—which therefore maps closely to our key investment themes—including in modern infrastructure, operationalizing data and AI and autonomous systems."
https://www.battery.com/blog/investing-in-strength-the-case-for-modern-defense-tech/
33. A truly inspiring and educational interview. I totally get why this guy was able to raise $1B usd to build Saronic in less than 3 years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJsbSC20Gv0
34. "When investing in companies it is always smarter to be more optimistic and long vs. short. (many learned this in the past 48 hours - either they print money or the world ends due to nuclear, easy to see which one you should choose)
Shorts really only work if the *industry* is dying due to structural forever shift in the way business is done. Internet killing off large section of music industry, Computers eating into typewriters and fax machines, smartphones eating into other hardware from watches to cameras/video etc.
If you want to short, don’t short a genius.
You can short stuff in forever long-term decline, examples in our opinion include:
Mid level retail/restaurants
Traditional banking companies
Chunk of legacy energy (being displaced by solar/other)
Choose one of those instead. Or. Just go long the new product (hence why we own Tesla, Crypto and build E-com businesses… seems to line up!)
Ever wonder *why* your net worth will go up in a non-linear fashion. Well you have your answer here, just in massive massive scale. In order to step function your life you have to build something up for at least 12 months or so. Majority is about 3 years. You see limited results but if you’re doing things right you’re creating momentum (rolling a ball up a hill). Eventually you get to the top and no longer need to keep pressing hard to move it over. This is the same for all public companies, people and even small businesses."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/never-bet-against-geniuses-new-industry
Wisdom from Kung Fu Panda 4
I always learn from everything. The animated Kung Fu Panda movie series is damn funny and surprisingly wise at times. “Sometimes the greatest dishes come from the unlikeliest ingredients.” Wisdom and heroes come from places you least expect.
In the recent movie he takes on a new apprentice who comes from the streets. He learns the hard way about the rules of the street which seem to be quite apt for our new more ruthless and competitive world. One we all live in now.
“First rule of the Streets: Trust no one
2nd rule of the Streets: Someone always gets hurt
3rd rule of the Streets: No one’s interested in your feelings”
Some food for thought.
Sidonie in Japan: Traveling to a Far Off Land
The rather strange French movie is about an older and lovely best selling book author, Sidonie who goes to Japan on the invitation of her Japanese publisher Kenzo. Both of them share tragic histories of loss and feel that people like them “share a secret land.” The scenes of Japanese landscapes are gorgeous.
She is living in the past and cannot move on. She literally sees ghosts of her husband, which understandably makes her a little bit crazy. But she slowly lets go and accepts things as she tours the island nation. The land of ghosts. She learns to move on with her life. “But there is a time to let the dead leave and die, if we want to live again. I am me again, like finding a long lost old friend.” She starts to heal and write again after a long hiatus after her husband's death.
“I don’t know what’s happening to me. Maybe it’s because I haven’t been as far for a long time. And because I recognize everything here. The lifts, the lights, the roads. And yet, nothing works the way it does in Europe. Everything is strange, even the consistency of the food is different. I feel modified. All this newness is overwhelming me……these are tears of joy, not sadness.”
It was nice to see her slowly come alive from barely awake sad existence as the movie progressed.
I think this is what traveling to new places does for you. You get disoriented and uncomfortable. But ultimately this newness is invigorating and you start to enjoy it. Even hunger for it.
Maybe for someone so set in my ways, travel is the only way to jog me out of my comfort and routines. So I can get new ideas and gain new perspectives. Travel literally wakes you up. When you are feeling down or uninspired, it’s probably a good time to hit the road again.
Agnelli: THE Italian Industrialist
I’ve been exploring Europe and America’s industrial roots and history as we reindustrialize in America. We all know about Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford. But the guy who stands out to me was the Agnelli family of FIAT fame. Fortunately there is a documentary on him that just came out.
About the man and grandson of the founder, Gianni Agnelli who rebuilt Fiat after World War 2. War veteran, playboy renowned around the world, dating and sleeping with the most beautiful and glamorous women, partying while high on drugs in his “long white nights.” He was the unofficial prince of Italy.
He was also renowned for his amazing cars and insane driving. He jumped out of a helicopter into the sea every week. He sailed and skied. He was the owner of Juventus football team of Turin. Vital, energetic, charming, handsome and fun. A guy who exemplified La Dolce Vita aka the Good Life. Maybe too much of the good life as he was a pretty awful & distant parent that directly led to his son’s suicide. Very sad circumstances. Something we can learn from too.
Yet while a terrible father, a flawed but talented man, he saved & modernized Fiat. He bought Ferrari, helped keep Italy into the West and ended the Communist threat in the country. He was brave and walked the streets of Turin during the years of Lead to show he was staying and confident of the future. “Who says life is not dangerous?”
What I appreciated about him was his taste. “The Agnelli’s were paragons of style. Vanity, he invented it. He was the most stylish man in Italy.” That says something. “Ease, grace and not trying to hard.” Sprezzatura: the art of being nonchalant yet looking good.
He had amazing taste in architecture, art, fashion, food, his car collection and this was reflected in the beautiful cars he made.
“He was Aristotlerian: for him the good and the beautiful overlapped.” He did everything with intelligence and style.
It’s so inspiring. Gianni seemed to be one of the few who knew how to have fun despite his wealth and responsibility. He lived with zest. “He had an enormous appetite for life. As soon as he got an idea, he’d do it. Go go go go!”
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Aug 10th, 2025
"To travel is to live." - Hans Christian Andersen
"But drones are different: representing are a step towards detaching humanity from the kinetic fight. War is no longer only about mobilising soldiers, but rather about sending autonomous machines to survey, target and even strike the enemy. This transforms war for would-be attackers: even if Spider Web’s drones had all been discovered or destroyed, the pilots operating them remotely from inside Ukraine would still have been safe.
There are broader implications here, especially given the way organised violence shapes society. Whoever deploys violence most effectively is best positioned to secure territories and resources, the foundation of political authority. The Gunpowder Revolution helped drag the West into civic modernity: by increasing the scale and scope of war, it increased the money needed to fund it. That, in turn, sparked the need for more sophisticated revenue-gathering systems, requiring greater centralisation, a trend that persisted until the end of the last century.
Drones, then, have reversed this dynamic, decentralising power and putting it into the hands of groups and individuals — or indeed war weary states facing a continent-sized enemy. Only governments have access to fighter jets and similar: an F-16 costs around $30 million and requires years of training to fly. Spider Web used drones that cost just thousands dollars, and which you can learn to pilot in days, even as they eliminated $7 billion of sophisticated military hardware in mere minutes. How’s that for power dispersal?
The result is inevitable: greater independence for smaller, poorer, or less militarily capable states. The Ukrainians remain reliant on US hardware, especially for air defence systems. As Russia daily pounds Ukrainian cities, they represent a lifeline for Kyiv. But the Americans are refusing to supply any more.
So Ukraine flipped the script: rather than beg for more systems to ward off Russian attacks at the last moment, Zelensky’s generals used drones to disable them at source. This sends a clear message to Washington: while we need your support, we can execute high-level operations on our own."
https://unherd.com/2025/06/the-kings-of-the-drone-age/
2. "Here along the Sumy border, Ukrainian forces lured Russian units into counterattacks and then traced their movements back to hidden staging grounds across Kursk. With their positions exposed, HIMARS batteries struck hard, delivering devastating blows to troop concentrations, command posts, and infrastructure critical to Russia’s planned offensive."
3. Sober conversations, things are bad in the USA but they are just as bad in China too. Rest of the world too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2S1TR6-F8U
4. "The last streaming war was Netflix vs. Hollywood. Spoiler alert: Netflix won. It reduced production costs by globalizing production, leveraging broadband and cheap capital to make Amazon-like investments that nobody could compete with. The result was a transfer of value from Hollywood studios and talent to Netflix shareholders and subscribers.
The next streaming war? A: YouTube takes on the world. This year, more people in the U.S. watched YouTube on TVs than on mobile devices — a first. YouTube is now the No. 1 distributor of TV content, according to Nielsen. And for the past three months, YouTube registered the largest share of TV viewing (12%) among media companies; Netflix accounted for 7.5%. As one anonymous streaming executive told Vulture, “[YouTube] already has the crown. Most networks have essentially thrown up their hands in response.”
Last month, I asked the Prof G research team to calculate YouTube’s valuation independent of Google. They estimated YouTube’s market cap would be approximately $550 billion. Netflix, the most valuable streamer, currently has a market cap of $520 billion.
When I look at YouTube, I see public access television (Google it) at internet scale with exponentially better production values. According to my Markets co-host Ed Elson, Gen Z views YouTube as an algorithm-driven “pendulum swinging power away from brands and toward individuals.” The individual who’s levied the greatest damage on Hollywood is not Reed Hastings, but YouTuber MrBeast, who mastered the art of the parasocial relationships. In 2023 he racked up 1 billion-plus hours of viewing time, more than any of the top shows on Netflix.
But just as individual content creators disrupted Hollywood, AI may disrupt content creators. Netflix will spend an estimated $18 billion on content this year. YouTube’s content budget is effectively zero, and it therefore splits revenue with creators. According to MrBeast, a typical video costs him $2.5 million to produce. This month, an AI muzak channel overtook him, becoming the fastest-growing channel on YouTube."
https://www.profgalloway.com/stream-on-25/
5. Good weekly discussion of Silicon Valley news. ROI on talent is so high now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApUUsUYRUTY
6. "Thus, the first Software Technology Park of India opened in Bangalore in 1991. For an entire year, it would be the only such facility in the country, with the second one coming in Pune in 1992.
But that one-year head start was enough to change everything.
The STPI became a gravity well for software talent. Entrepreneurs, engineers, and service firms from all over the country flocked to Bangalore to stake their claim in the Information Age gold rush.
And the growth never stopped.
Today, India’s software industry employs over 5 million people, generates more than $250 billion in annual revenue, and contributes ~25% of India’s total exports. The heart of this industry is still very much in Bangalore, not far from where that initial software park was built back in 1991.
So when the first big wave of Indian tech startup founders emerged in the early 2000s and started looking for engineers, there was only one logical place to go. Things just kept snowballing after that.
And that, dear reader, is how a boob-calculator-making company helped kickstart the chain of events that turned Bangalore into the tech and startup capital of India."
https://www.tigerfeathers.in/p/how-bangalore-came-to-be-indias-tech
7. "Having lived in Japan for 20+ years, I can tell you that nobody scores points for popping off in public here. When Japanese get angry, they tend to get quiet. Sometimes they even disappear. In the 1996 book Hikikomori: Adolescence Without End, psychologist Tamaki Saito goes to great pains to explain that the phenomenon is by no means limited to Japanese.
(In fact, the word hikikomori is nothing more than Saito’s translation of the English word “withdrawal.”) In England or America, he theorizes, these same sorts might run away, go homeless. It’s the Japanese socio-cultural system, Saito says, that makes it easier to channel anger inward, retreating from society, rather than casting it outward, and attacking it.
Will Japan’s aversion to disruption isolate it from the revolutions that have eroded democracies in the West? Or is it simply a matter of time? Looking out the window at a society that is far more placid than what I’m reading about in American headlines, I’d like to believe the former.
But only time will tell. For the moment, I’m glad that Japan’s biggest problems center on the price of rice and the attitudes of anime voice actors."
https://blog.pureinventionbook.com/p/america-is-burning-why-isnt-japan
8. "Nominal stages (seed, A, B etc.) don’t really matter. Instead, the only important distinction is between risk and scale. Everything else is nomenclature and posturing along a gradient. So the typical distinctions of a seed fund are basically meaningless.
What you really need to do is commit to being a risk-on early stage fund finding good risk/supralinear bets (where if you’re right, you’re right) no matter the named stage. Use your money to flipillegible bets into undeniable stories."
https://99d.substack.com/p/six-themes-for-2025
9. "Today, the most interesting operators at the fastest growing software companies are not writing code or selling to customers. They’re heads-down conducting research, publishing industry-leading white papers, and using their own methodologies and AI tools to conduct the equivalent of a decade or more of research in a matter of weeks.
For many repeat founders and even the most highly regarded venture capitalists, you’ll notice a shift where going deep and taking a more research-intensive approach is leading to more robust product building and thinking. There’s a reason why some of the most highly respected voices in the Valley have hit pause on any short-term ideas or opportunities to thoroughly understand what’s being built today and how AI will change every aspect of our lives in the future."
https://brianne.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-industry-academics-in
10. Trying to understand what's going on in China under the CCP.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1TeeIG6Uaw
11. This is a neat format for discussions. Enjoyed this show on founders and venture capital.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbY-Pszis0M
12. "Acquihires, acquisitions typically under $20m for talent, may become de rigeur as incumbents seek to bolster their teams with AI talent & update existing products with new capabilities."
https://tomtunguz.com/the-coming-wave-of-acquihires/
13. How to get customers in the DoD. It's a different beast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoNJEx9MGGY
14. This was interesting. If you care about increasing your healthspan and living well, this is a great conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4vmeo_tfOs
15. "SaaS isn’t software. It’s just an interface charging you rent.
And if you stop paying? They lock you out. Your own data, held hostage behind a monthly subscription. SaaS isn’t software. It’s just an interface charging you rent.
And here’s the part SaaS doesn’t want you to know: this isn’t magic.
Execution-First AI works because all software is just data. Every SaaS tool — whether it’s Notion, Trello, Airtable, or Asana — is just a UI that lets you Create, Read, Update, and Delete (CRUD) data.
That’s it. That’s all.
SaaS convinced you that managing a UI was necessary. But if AI can directly interact with data, why do you need the UI at all? You don’t.
For decades, businesses assumed they needed software to track projects, document ideas, and manage workflows. But SaaS never solved those problems — it just created new interfaces for them.
Execution-First AI removes the interface. It eliminates the friction. It executes."
16. Always learning from these conversations. Rabois is at the top of the investing and building game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbtuPP1f_Go
17. "Sometimes there are very good reasons to avoid certain places. There really are some dangerous places in the world, where you can get in a lot of trouble.
Fortunately, most of the world is perfectly safe to explore. Of course, that’s if you keep your head on a swivel, don’t look for trouble, and practice basic street smarts. I’ve personally been to dozens of “dangerous” countries and have never had a serious problem. (Well maybe a couple times I’ve had some sketchy situations, like this one.)
Despite the fact that most places are safe to travel to, there is a basic human instinct that tells you to avoid unknown lands. And that’s what keeps crowds away from some of the greatest places to explore right now."
https://codyshirk.com/going-where-others-wont/
18. "My recommendation to aspiring entrepreneurs interested in B2B software is to work with various companies, assisting them with AI-related change management. This approach mirrors my efforts decades ago, helping organizations derive value from the Internet. While the future is uncertain, I firmly believe AI is the next major technological wave.
A tremendous amount of technology implementation and change management will be required, particularly in helping businesses unlock AI’s potential. This work will uncover countless opportunities for new software products, paving the way for thousands of new startups."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/06/14/starting-over-as-an-entrepreneur/
19. "What changed is AI. The underlying anima of LLMs is jagged and rugged. These systems are probabilistic and the output is different every time. Missionaries, while committed, often chase inelastic goals—space or bust. This works in some industries. It doesn’t work when AI becomes the core technology of everything.
Now is the time to hire the misfit: the polar opposite of the mission-driven persona. Their career is weird and illegible. Their personality may be prickly. But if you can figure out how to work with them, they’ll accelerate your growth past anything you can imagine.
They take a first-principles look at the world and question the structure of it. Why can’t they just sell it all and start over? Why shouldn’t they major in English? Books are awesome. Their life is oriented around figuring out what is right (for them) regardless of what school counselors will say.
Misfits are exactly right for AI because they don’t try and get a degree before they do a task—they just figure out how to do it with what they have. Similarly, LLMs allow people to tackle anything. A person can write code, create marketing copy, and design graphics without needing a professional degree."
https://www.gettheleverage.com/p/hire-misfits-not-missionaries
20. "In practice, however, counter-leadership targeting has rarely delivered decisive results. Political and military leaders often prove too elusive, avoiding elimination, while command-and-control structures remain resilient and adaptable. Even when leadership is neutralized, disruption tends to be limited, with replacements stepping in quickly and effects failing to cascade rapidly enough to produce meaningful tactical or operational-level effects.
While the full impact of Israel’s counter-leadership strikes remains to be seen, early reporting indicates that the removal of key figures across military, political, and scientific sectors may have left the Iranian leadership unprepared to respond decisively, and effectively disrupted its immediate military reaction.
If this reporting is confirmed, Israel may have executed one of the most effective state-to-state counter-leadership campaigns in history, and, in fact, one of the rare cases where such targeting may have delivered strategically decisive results."
https://missilematters.substack.com/p/operation-rising-lion-initial-assessment
21. This was a surprisingly deep conversation on the art of venture capital.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opUf3bS9tuM
22. Learning the new concept of antimemetics: why some ideas don't spread.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkRJfqus2aw
23. An invigorating and inspiring conversation with Jocko Willink. One of the toughest men in America.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gz6aEjSxZM
24. This was a fun and solid discussion on how to be your best self. Especially if you are a young man.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_QDanOH67c
25. "In response, British leaders took action. Saltpeter exports to France were cut off.
Supplies from India—once traded openly across Europe—were redirected exclusively for British use. This wasn’t just a matter of economics or diplomatic friction. It was a deliberate act of war by other means. Britain understood that saltpeter wasn’t simply a commodity—it was a dependency. And when your enemy depends on a resource you control, you don’t need to storm the gates.
You just shut the valve. By tightening its grip on the Indian supply lines, Britain weaponized trade itself—proving that the hand on the supply chain often holds more power than the hand on the trigger.
What followed wasn’t an immediate collapse—but a slow throttling of France’s war machine.
French chemists scrambled to produce saltpeter domestically using animal waste, manure pits, and nitrification beds. The results were inconsistent and slow. Where British cannons fired clean and hot, French weapons often misfired or underperformed.
Napoleon’s armies still marched—but with powder that was weaker, less reliable, and in short supply.
This material disadvantage compounded over time. By the time Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812, his army was stretched thin—logistically and chemically. When his Grand Armée began to collapse during the brutal retreat, the problem wasn’t just cold and distance. It was also the absence of the critical materials that had once fueled his conquests.
Britain didn’t beat Napoleon in a single battle. It bled his empire over years—by weaponizing trade and closing the spigot on the raw material he couldn’t replace."
https://jaymartin.substack.com/p/the-supply-chain-that-crushed-an
26. "As venture investors, we often talk about exporting U.S. models globally. But geo-arbitrage works in reverse too. Sometimes the best way to understand an opportunity at home is to see what’s already been proven abroad.
Chime looked like a bold bet. But to anyone watching the neobank revolution unfold from São Paulo to Seoul, it felt inevitable.
Critically, geo arbitrage is not copy-paste. But it provides mental scaffolding to believe Chime could work—uniquely adapted to the U.S. market. It is also what led my investment in other neobanks globally, including Neon (a unicorn in Brazil)."
https://99tech.alexlazarow.com/p/what-the-world-taught-me-about-chime
27. "The Noucentists understood that a people's capacity to take the reins of its own destiny must be demonstrated through their ability to create lasting beauty.
All of this comes down to the fundamental question: if your politics cannot create beauty, then why should we follow you?
However, not all of those who today claim to oppose the managed decay of the West truly understand the political importance of aesthetics, even if they do realize the importance of defending beauty.
Without an aesthetic dimension, human communities lose their capacity to inspire loyalty, to transmit values across generations, and to justify the sacrifices that meaningful collective projects require.
In the present moment, to reclaim beauty is not to frivolously escape from political reality, but to reclaim the foundation of politics itself."
https://www.businessofpower.com/p/aesthetics-as-the-politics-of-vitality
28. "Moreover, being the top earner in your peer group in your 20s is, in absolute terms, insignificant. The difference between $110k and $80k might mean a bigger TV. The difference between millions in disposable income and a typical professional salary is the ability to completely redesign your life. The hedonic treadmill is no match for high agency.
I know wealthy people who used excess money to construct fundamentally lower-stress, higher-joy lives. They spend time on meaningful projects rather than projects that pay bills. The utility jump from "comfortable" to "wealthy" is probably enormous. If you see my writing a post every day and spending more time on Substack, you won’t have to wonder why.
What does all this point to?
1. Money is good. It’s utility doesn’t diminish nearly as fast as pop psychology will have you believe. And it probably gets better with age. It’s worth thinking really hard before making career decisions that will foreclose on the possibility of higher incomes or picking career paths that have a hard ceiling.
2.Compounding is real. It’s spending that needs justification, not saving."
https://www.optimaloutliers.com/p/money-gets-better-with-age
29. This is a super impressive young human being. Ethan Thornton of Mach Industries: The Future of Warfare.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INXw8QVnQwc
30. "Two successful operations in two weeks demonstrated the validity of this concept to the world. Here’s what we can expect;
This type of warfare scales, particularly if these drones are used to disrupt critical infrastructure. For example, a dozen drone containers in the US, located near major metropolitan areas or critical infrastructure, would be sufficient to take out the entire US electrical grid and shut down US commercial aviation for months. The collapse of the US border during the last administration was the perfect opportunity to do this.
We don’t have any defenses against this type of attack. Our entire defense industry is focused on the wrong threats. For example, the recent attempt to fund Golden Dome (Star Wars redux) is focused on strategic missiles, not drones. If this is supported, 90% of the funding should be focused on detecting and protecting against drones and associated threats.
This threat, or as a method of warfare against a foe, becomes decisive once (air/sea/land) drones become fully autonomous using AI. With sufficient intelligence and the ability to tap into the Internet for updates (targets, triggers, or revisions to its neural network), these drones could remain in place for years, undetected until activation."
https://johnrobb.substack.com/p/brief-1-zero-day-warfare-is-here
31. "There are three business models responsible for creating crypto wealth outside of just hodling Bitcoin and other shitcoins. They are mining, operating an exchange, and issuing a stablecoin. Taking myself as an example, my wealth comes from my ownership of BitMEX (a derivatives exchange), and Maelstrom’s (my family office) biggest position and largest generator of absolute return is Ethena, the stablecoin issuer of USDE. Ethena went from nothing to the third largest stablecoin in under a year during 2024.
The stablecoin narrative is unique in that it has the largest most obvious TAM for a TradFi muppet. Tether has already proven that an onchain bank that just holds people’s money and allows them to transfer it to and fro can become the most profitable financial institution per employee ever. Tether succeeded in the face of lawfare perpetrated by all levels of the American government. What would happen if the US authorities were at a minimum just not antagonistic towards stablecoins and allowed them some modicum of operational freedom to compete for deposits against legacy banks? The profit potential is insane.
Now let’s consider the current setup where the US Treasury staff believes stablecoin AUC could grow to $2 trillion. They also believe that USD stablecoins could be the tip of the spear to both advance/maintain USD hegemony and act as price insensitive buyers of treasury debt. Whoa, this is a serious macro tailwind. As a delicious bonus, remember that Trump has a simmering hatred of the large banks because they de-platformed him and his family after his first presidential term. He is in no mood to hold back the free market from offering a better, faster, and safer way to hold and transfer digital dollars. Even his sons jumped into the stablecoin game."
https://cryptohayes.substack.com/p/assume-the-position
32. A very eye opening and frightening conversation on the extreme threat that the CCP is to America and the West. It's not a comforting discussion here but facts are facts, we are very behind here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oghBVS0QvOM
33. How AI will help America bring back manufacturing. Makes me optimistic. Reindustrialize.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIzRsLgxfQc
34. Learning from a VC legend. Jay Hoag of TCV.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15dCw7lxqRk
35. This is a must watch. What is GDP for? The new mercantilism and end of globalization.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yycgQGx2peg
36. Garry is a G, even OG. What a fun conversation. I would hate to be competing against YC now.
18x2 Beyond Youthful Days: First Love
A Taiwanese & Japanese movie (2 places that I LOVE deeply), it’s a beautiful, touching yet ultimately very sad love story but one that everyone should watch. A Taiwanese man, Jimmy, has just been fired by the gaming company he started 18 years ago. His cofounder asked him to go on a business trip to Japan one last time.
On a whim, he takes this opportunity and many detours around Japan like Kamakura, Matsumoto, Nagaoka & Niigata to finally visit his old girlfriend there in Tadami in Fukushima. He tells his friend: “Traveling is fun because you never know what will happen.”
He reflects on his youth 18 years ago in Tainan city where he meets a Japanese girl named Ami backpacking around Taiwan. He is asked to show her around by his Japanese boss of the karaoke place he works at.
“My life, If I had told her how I felt about her back then, would the future have been different? Could I have spent more time with her.” Ami is a kind, carefree, spirited and talented artist and brings new spirit to the place. Jimmy shows her around Tainan that summer. They grow close of course. They experience first love, which is always the most powerful & affecting. Growing up. Dealing with the loss.
Now in his adulthood, during his travels through Japan he reflects on the wonderful times he had that summer. Small things remind him of those moments, a smell of the perfume “Flow of Time”, pictures, a song from Taiwanese rock band “Mayday” that was so popular back then. The Japanese movie “Love Letter.” The beautiful mural Ami paints. Going to the lantern festival.
“Tell me your dream when you find it” she says. “Let’s meet again after we have fulfilled our dreams.” But maybe being together was the ultimate dream.
It made me think back to all the fun times, especially during my summers in Vancouver, goofing around with my friends, summer studies in Cambridge University, backpacking around through Europe, eager to get to the next place or the next milestone. Living in Taiwan during my early twenties, making mistakes and growing up. Meeting a young beautiful Taiwanese girl, (who became my wife), exploring the island and making new friends. Seeing the world and experiencing the kindness of strangers. To be that young again.
It felt like it would never end. I wish I was more present then. I still wish I was more present even now. My head is always still stuck in the future, focused on pursuing what I think are my dreams, missing important things along the way.
But you never completely forget. As Jimmy writes: “Friends we never see again. Scenery we’ll never revisit. But I will never forget the time we spent together. The people we meet on our travels leave something in our heart.”
It’s also really true what his dad tells him after he loses his business. “Rest paves the long road ahead.” Especially when you are questioning your life choices. Go on a trip far away. You will meet interesting people. You will see beautiful sights. “Taking a breather gives us a chance to see what is important in your life.”
So what do I take from all this, besides going to spend more time in Japan and Taiwan? Go travel & rest after bad moments in life, be more present the rest of the time, and tell people how you feel. You never know when you will see them again.
As Jimmy’s father wisely advised him: “These encounters do not often happen in life. You only live once, don’t leave with any regrets.”
You Need Courage to Truly Live
I always get pulled back to watch the classic movie “You’ve got Mail”, a dedication and homage to New York as well as an internet world long gone by. “Enchanting” is the word. I love that movie.
There is a scene where one of the main characters played by Meg Ryan, said something I didn’t catch before:
“Sometimes I wonder about my life, I live a small life—well, valuable but small. Sometimes I wonder, do I do it because I like it or because I am not brave. So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when, shouldn’t it be the other way around?”
So many of us should be pondering this question. So many of us do. So many of us aren’t living our lives. Not meeting our true potential. All because we can’t imagine something different. Because we are trying to meet others' expectations of us. Or worse, due to lack of courage on our own part.
Something worth thinking about: Are we living the life we truly want? If not, figure out what it looks like and then take action. Go do something about it. “I know you worry about being brave. Don’t. Fight. Fight to the death.” This is literally your life.
Going to the Mattresses: Sometimes You Have to Go to War
I think many people notice a theme in my writing. Self improvement and preparing for conflict and war. Whether it’s with an external enemy or usually an internal one. Yourself.
Now don’t get me wrong, I dread war and conflict but sometimes you have no choice. People pleasing ends badly for yourself. Peace at all costs on geopolitical issues only leads to surrender and terror as many people are learning the hard way. You have to fight back against bullies.
The Godfather is a classic movie and I wrote about it earlier on how it seeps into popular culture. The deca-billionaire character Bobby Axelrod ends up confronting and going to war with a fellow powerful deca-billionaire. His description is brilliant:
“You know why they called it going to the mattresses when mob families went to war? It’s mentioned once but never explained. It’s because you had to move out of your home and hole up some place where no one could find you, with all your men.
But you had to do it quick, so you get the jump on the rival family before they got the jump on you. So you had places stashed around the city with the mattresses on the floor.
And that is where you would make your stand until you nailed the boss of the rival family. And once you got him, and all his soldiers fell into line, that is when you go home to your comfy bed and your wife and kids.”
This is another way of going to monk mode. This is what I did for most of 2024. A complete rethink and rebuild of myself, my budget/finances, and cutting back on some of my investing. I worked out and trained physically. I read many books and listened to lots of podcasts. I worked on my home life and family relationships. I went to a different kind of war mode. War with my own bad habits, painful family history and outdated mindsets for this emerging new world order.
A new reset. It’s good to do this every few years if you care about being relevant for the next decade.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Aug 3rd, 2025
"In summer, the song sings itself." –William Carlos Williams
We are in the AI world: adopt AI or die. The velocity of business is only increasing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53ADYulqo8w
2. Always worth listening to Zeihan, his blindspot is tech but otherwise really interesting takes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UltVl2Qlf6A
3. Great episode this week, BG2 covered some important topics like China, AI & talent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qG_f2DY_3M
4. The case for China's rise to becoming a weapons exporting giant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycgNBGdRa3Q
5. One of the best conversations about Silicon Valley news. Lots of good topics covered on Snap spectacles, media & Build-a-bear.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIyppACODqg
6. Fascinating discussion on AI for the defense industry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPwWOIdam10&t=34s
7. "What’s exciting now is that we can accurately forecast heart disease as well as the other major diseases of aging in high-risk individuals many decades earlier and achieve primary prevention, or, at the very least, a marked delay in their appearance. Doctors can’t promise to reverse or halt aging itself, but we can promise that the second half of our lives can be much healthier than that of our forebears.
This is the type of health span extension that we will be seeing far more commonly in the future owing to the phenomenal advances in lifestyle, cells, genomics, artificial intelligence, drugs, and vaccines. These dimensions all interact with one another: Our lifestyle factors influence our microbiome and cells. Our response to drugs and vaccines is modulated by our genomics and cells, and discovery of new drugs has been enhanced by gene variants and by AI.
There are still formidable obstacles—including profound health inequity across the U.S.—but as we move forward, we will inevitably see suppression of age-related diseases that for many is unimaginable right now. It will take years to accomplish the far bolder objective of slowing the aging process itself."
https://time.com/7283740/health-aging-eric-topol/
8. Lots of good topics: Dyson, PSG & Mary Meeker trends.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSb2wvO_it4&t=10s
9. Lots of implications from the Ukrainian surprise drone attacks on Russian airfields.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKdLYuOorE0
10. Tinfoil hat alt-geopolitics. Really alt & don't totally agree. I hesitate to post these but it's an interesting frame to look at the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85k5Jjna0EA
11. "More importantly, in a world facing broad disruption of incumbent systems, this focus on building solid, independent networks and institutions will allow us to survive the shocks of system-level disruption and to position ourselves for digital age leadership. Rather than fighting to sway decaying institutions largely stacked against us, we can invest that energy into building the types of institutions that will survive the transition period and ultimately replace legacy incumbents.
We have particular advantages here. Legacy models of trust are collapsing, and people will look for alternatives upon which they can rebuild. The smaller, trusted communities and networks (e.g., local churches, fraternal organizations, and even group chats) that exist in many conservative spaces will be strong contenders. If we embrace a more independent and inward-focused strategy today, we can position these institutions to offer something scarce and widely valued in the future.
Our inward focus is not a retreat but a strategic focus on efforts that will offer outsized long-term success. This reflects the “exit to disrupt” strategy that is popular in Silicon Valley. We are exiting legacy institutions with the clear intent not just to build small parallel alternatives, but to create disruptive alternatives that can challenge legacy institutions for supremacy."
https://www.newfounding.com/post/strategy
12. Neo-mercantilism or National Capitalism is coming back. This was a worthwhile and interesting conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPfTINePB5E
13. "This mix—speed of iteration, cost discipline, and increasing in-house manufacturing—has allowed Ukraine to quietly take the lead in key domains like electronic warfare, radio communication, and autonomous navigation. Most of the companies I met remain under-capitalized, often bootstrapped, but they’re on the radar now. U.S. and European defense primes are watching closely. Some are already working with local players via partnerships and joint ventures. Others are positioning themselves for future acquisitions—founders told me they get inbound regularly.
I expect this integration of Ukrainian companies into the global defense market will get even stronger this year. Governments and companies from the West have realized that being battlefield tested beats everything."
https://louiseboucher.substack.com/p/notes-from-kyiv-inside-the-worlds
14. Eye opening discussion on China's rise in important industries and how we are able to compete. Is it too late?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRS0q0zGg0k
15. "The reason that upper middle class areas have a vibe of pins and needles is for this exact reason. Everyone is one slip up from disaster. A layoff, divorce or job loss could crumble the empire.
One year of not earning money is equivalent to losing multiple years of savings. It mathematically makes sense as most save around 20-25% of their income (if lucky). If spending is flat but income is zero or near zero (unemployment is meaningless), that would be at least a 3 year burn (75/25 = 3)
Guess what that means? If someone gets cut for a year or two, they will lose all of their savings from the high-earning years.
Put that into excel and now you know why practically no one is wealthy after a long career (even on Wall Street)
If you want to break free from this W-2 treadmill, the playbook is simple (but not easy):
--Cap your lifestyle. The fastest way to do this is eliminating housing cost. Buy the smallest asset you can reasonably live in. If you have no mortgage and no rent, the numbers get much better.
--Build cash flow. Use your income to build other assets. That $10K a year boring business selling stuffed animals online? Keep it. Get another one. If you have five of those, you’ve got enough money to cover practically all your living costs.
--Buy time, not stuff: Anything you put your money into? Think about how much time you will get from it. Measure your savings in terms of time not percentages. --If you save $$$ calculate how much *run-way* that gets you. This explains why tech investors obsesses so much about the topic. Cash runway.
--Own equity or build it. A job is just something they give you to fund your exit. It’s the rockhammer in your book at shawshank. If you don’t use it to build equity you don’t have a plan. You have hopes and dreams."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/high-income-w-2-trap-how-to-go-broke
16. A masterclass on the state of venture capital and implications for GPs, LPs and founders.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3rrGzTDH4k
17. The most important proxy war in Africa that no one talks about: Sudan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHhc-48JT3U
18. "It’s kinda similar to the enriched uranium problem. There Russia was the low-cost source but they got sanctioned. Industry knows exactly what to do, the source material of yellowcake uranium is cheap and abundant, but nobody wants to invest! This is because they know all that low-cost Russian capacity for uranium enrichment is still waiting in the wings. There’s zero guarantee that their investment won’t be instantly rendered worthless if geopolitical situation changes.
Same with rare earths. The problem is it’s a high capex low margin business the way the Chinese do it. As Blas pointed out, the US buys $160 million a year of this processed rock dust. It’s not enough profit there to get your nose out of joint about as a producer. And while you can command a pretty penny now the Chinese can literally kill your business at any time by flooding the market again.
(It’s instrumental to recall that the Japanese, who were initially menaced with the REE ban in 2010, did some exploration of potential rare earth deposits and then completely forgot about the threat. It’s not finding the rock that’s hard, it’s grinding and refining the rocks.)"
https://taipology.substack.com/p/is-rare-earth-chinas-trump-card
19. "Think about this - NVIDIA built one of the most valuable companies in the world by ignoring all the things we tell people to do in business.
CUDA did not “solve a hair on fire problem.”
CUDA didn’t help customers with a “job to be done.”
Customer development on CUDA would have told you there was no market, and no need.
NVIDIA invested in it despite knowing there was currently no demand and it was a zero dollar market.
I point this out because I think investors in most market stages have moved away from backing big visions, in favor of efficient iteration. But I remember meeting a very senior CEO at one of First Round Capital’s entrepreneur days in 2010, when lean startup thinking was getting really hot. He told me “great companies are built on bold vision, not iterating your way to product market fit.”
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/the-cuda-backstory-lessons-for-investors
20. "Why? Because the forces that started that generational up-cycle several years ago have not changed—and won’t in the foreseeable future. Japan has evolved from high-growth powerhouse in the 1960s to 1980s to deflationary stagnation and restructuring in the 1990s and early 2000s towards a new phase now firmly entrenched since at least 2020: competitive resilience. For today’s Japan, global uncertainty is a feature, domestic resilience is the operating system.
To be sure, the net result of these certain Japan trends is poised to result in significant industrial restructuring. The gap between winners and losers will grow. In five to 10 years, Japan is bound to have true national champions, more de facto oligopolies, and far fewer zombie companies. If so, the net result should be higher pricing power for the winners, which in turn means inflation will become much more entrenched than perhaps currently anticipated.
For US companies, the high likelihood of “macro pragmatism” and “micro optimism” should offer steadfast growth in Japan opportunities. The metabolism and liquidity of both human and corporate capital is rising, so actual access to the Japanese market will keep getting better.
Focus on what will stay the same: global uncertainty is a feature, domestic resilience is the operating system. Japan is open for business."
https://japanoptimist.substack.com/p/macro-pragmatism-micro-optimism
21. "Right now, we are entering a period of monumental technological change. Virtually every industry is going to be impacted by AI. At the same time, consequential technologies are on the verge of disrupting countless industries from energy to transportation to manufacturing to defense. Founders building in those spaces or who are able to convincingly argue why their company will benefit from the changing landscape are having more success fundraising than ever before.
But for founders of nice, incremental businesses. The type that solve a real problem and that very likely would have been able to raise VC funding 2 years ago, it’s a different story.
Not because they aren’t good businesses. But because they no longer capture the imagination. Which in the mind of an investor translates to a lower potential return (and always remember, the job of a VC is first and foremost to generate a return for their LPs). Moreover, in many cases, it’s not clear if the problem they’re solving will even be around in 5 years.
That e-commerce company you’re building? Is it relevant if AI changes how we shop?
That vertical B2B SaaS company you’re building? What happens if someone can vibe code a competitor next year?
These may sound like facetious questions, but I promise they’re not. We really don’t have any precedent for the adoption of AI. Which is why investors are piling into the relatively small number of companies whose founders can clearly articulate why they will be relevant in a post-AI world. And saying no to virtually everyone else.
It might not seem fair, but I think this is going to be the fundraising reality for the immediate future — at least until we have some more clarity around the rate at which AI and AI-driven technologies will permeate the broader market.
So if your company started out before the AI wave, you’re not building in deep tech, and/or you don’t have a convincing answer to the question, “why will this be relevant in 5 years?” then I’m afraid that VC (probably) isn’t right for you."
https://chrisneumann.com/archives/whats-going-on-with-early-stage-investing
22. "Why? Because Western producers can’t compete.
Indonesia—backed by Chinese capital and tech—has lower labor costs, looser regulations, and lightning-fast permitting. While a Western smelter can take five yearsto build, in Indonesia, it takes less than one.
Indonesia didn’t just grow its share. It crushed the competition, cornered the market, and created a near-monopoly—not by pricing nickel high, but by pricing everyone else out.
Once the competition is gone, what do you expect they will do to the price? My guess would be precisely what OPEC did in 1973 - halt supply and charge whatever it wants.
And to be clear, although the product comes from Indonesia, 74% of the infrastructure was built with Chinese money. So the leverage is shared.
So if Trump wants to reshore American steel production, I think he should.
But he might need to call President Xi first."
https://jaymartin.substack.com/p/pittsburgh-meets-beijing-the-real
23. "Hokkaido however is different, at least initially in appearance, and that shouldn't be too surprising, given it’s a far northern island with a distinct history, having only been colonized and settled and built late (1900s), with inspiration and assistance from Americans.
It also has more space, and consequently feels far more American than the rest of Japan, almost as if you are in a warped Wisconsin. That's especially true outside of the larger cities, where you find yourself in windy flat fields of potatoes and corn, as well as smaller towns with neighborhoods of sloped roof homes with garages, constructed to deal with the heaps of snow each gets.
While Hokkaido might look slightly different from the rest of Japan, it is still very much Japanese. There is still a shared building code, and a respected notion of the public good, and that means it is safe, clean, and efficient, and each night, no matter where you are, there are plenty of options on where to eat that are not simply franchises of national chains.
These small businesses, which are often run out of someone's home, owned by a family who are also the only employees, are what distinguishes Japan from all other developed nations, making life in it a notch above the rest. While the most obvious of these are restaurants (izakayas, monjayaki-yas, soba-yas, etc.), others are focused on specialized crafts, or small services."
https://walkingtheworld.substack.com/p/in-praise-of-japanese-small-hokkaido
24. "This atomization of combat power is not quite the same as attrition, with which it often gets conflated. It is instead incrementalism. By biting off one trench, one treeline at a time, a series of small-scale attacks can eventually accomplish more than the sum of their individual effects: cut lines of communication, dislocate defensive positions, and force costly withdrawals. Even at the speed of molasses, maneuver is maneuver."
https://dispatch.bazaarofwar.com/p/organizing-for-victory-force-structure
25. Fascinating conversation on Apollo's wide ranging finance and investing businesses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17bGyLB00s0
26. A billionaire I didn't know much about but what an interesting guy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YdOjoaQTOQ
27. A fun and enlightening episode this week of NIA.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25VPUq2UM7k
28. Arguably the most important company in America right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztvCmler6no
29. "Spider’s Web offers a window into how AGI could supercharge similar attacks in the future.
AGI could analyse transportation routes to find the safest, fastest, and least conspicuous way to move cargo. It could plan truck routes that avoid busy checkpoints, choose transit times when border guards are understaffed, and even account for satellite overpasses or drone surveillance.
Such a system could coordinate multimodal logistics (think planes, trains and automobiles) with timing that no human team could match. Not to mention it could crunch traffic patterns, rail schedules, and weather data to find the perfect moment for an attack.
This hypothetical warfighting AGI could automatically generate corporate entities complete with registration documents, tax records, and websites to serve as cover. It could forge driver’s licenses, passports, and employee IDs that pass automated verification—much faster than humans today could.
Aside from paperwork, an AGI could manage a whole suite of deception technologies. For example, AGI could emit fake GPS signals to confuse satellite tracking or hacking into a facility’s CCTV feed to loop old footage while operatives move equipment. When it’s time to strike, AGI could guide each drone to its target as part of a single unified swarm, optimised to prevent collisions and spaced to maximize coverage.
As soon as the destination is in range, AGI could help drones autonomously recognise target types and aim for the most damaging impact points (say by guiding a drone to the exact location of an aircraft’s fuel tank)."
https://time.com/7291455/ukraine-demonstrated-agi-war/
30. "Here's my tell for founders: term sheet too fast plus close dragging equals trouble brewing. That gap between eager signing and delayed execution is where trust dies and gets replaced by leverage games.
The venture business is built on trust borrowed against future performance. Break that covenant once, and you're marked. The ecosystem has a long memory.
Founders remember."
https://www.airsugar.com/p/the-paper-tigers-of-venture-capital
31. "Maduro’s hybrid warfare strategy mimics many of the techniques used by Russia and China in low-intensity conflict. However, his main objective is clear – to distract his own population from his own illegitimacy by provoking conflict with his neighbor.
He is not only walking a dangerous line between war and peace and testing the patience of U.S. officials, but he is collaborating with U.S. adversaries a short distance from American shores. Meanwhile, the U.S. Government reward for the capture of Maduro stands at $25M. Florida Senator Rick Scott has proposed an increase to $100M."
https://robertburrell.substack.com/p/venezuela-launches-hybrid-warfare
32. "Our current definition of air dominance does not translate into control over the air littoral. Yet, if the ultimate goal of air power is to enable and empower ground forces to defeat the enemy, then we must also dominate the air littoral. This is how we must re-conceptualize air power in the unmanned age.
And let’s be clear, manned fighters and stealth bombers still matter — probably more so than ever when you imagine what a war against China would look like. Yet, we must also accept that these advanced aircraft are designed to win a different kind of air war than the one being waged at treetop levels in Ukraine.
Air superiority, supremacy, dominance — these terms mean something different today than in 1992, when air power theorists were after-actioning the Persian Gulf War to theorize how American air power would shape wars in the post-Cold War era.
Fighter jets and stealth bombers still matter but they aren’t enough to achieve our air power objectives in this new era of low-altitude, unmanned combat. We must pair our traditional air power assets with a dominant air littoral force established through the massed use of small, unmanned platforms. That’s how we enable and empower our ground forces to win, and that’s how we save American lives when the next war comes."
https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/06/09/toward-a-new-understanding-of-air-dominance/
33. One of the best conversations on B2B Venture investing right now. It's such an insight rich discussion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peVPH8gBWts
34. Lots to process here. A great discussion on venture capital, building startups and the new environment in Silicon Valley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53FImKtf2i0&t=5s
35. "Changing your mind is one of the most difficult things to do. It can also be a career risk.
My good friend, who is a former US Congressman, used to tell me how angry his constituents would get when he’d flip-flop on a controversial topic. Ordinarily, when you’re presented with new information it’s very rational to change your opinion. But the outside perception can make you look indecisive or even unprincipled.
Similar to sailing, investing is a discipline where you should change your mind constantly."
Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
Based on the best selling military history book of the same title by Damien Lewis, the movie is a stylish, fun, violent romp in typical Guy Ritchie fashion. Based on a true WW2 mission called Operation Postmaster, where one of the first British special forces operations took place. One that is to disrupt German U-boat attacks in the North Atlantic at a critical moment in the war.
The individuals on the team are wild, eccentric, disobedient, borderline psychotic but skilled and well trained. Unconventional and absolutely “mad.” When the hero asked why he was chosen as “we both know I am not very popular with the administration.”
The officer responds: “the reason they find you unattractive is why I find you attractive.”
An even better description of this team is stated by Churchill himself:
“You were not chosen for your conspicuous honor, or your high ideals. You were chosen because you’re the last resort. The mission you have been given has never been undertaken before.
It demands …..ruthless men who will not hesitate to stoop beneath the conventions of war. Men who do not keep clean hands. Men like you. And yet who still conspire in their dischordant harmony who do not care they may not return.
And who press onwards not for glory or for duty, or for me but because you are men who will not stop until it is done.”
Sometimes you need crazy nutters to do the impossible. Kind of reminds me of startup entrepreneurs. Unconventional people who never give up.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
Planet of the apes is an old movie. But I actually really like the new remake and canon of this sci-fi series. Not the one in the 90s but the series done over the last few years that shows the rise of the first elder ape Caesar. It’s a bit darker but does a good job of explaining how humanity devolves and how the Apes began their rise to be the dominant species. A human-made virus. Scary relevant in the post Covid world.
The recent movies are spectacular visual epics and long abandoned landscapes and human made structures like malls, apartment buildings, massive ships, airplanes and skyscrapers abandoned and reclaimed by nature. But what is also great are the character-driven plots.
We see much of ourselves in these characters, these apes are almost human and reflect the wide range of emotions: love, hate, anger, ambition and curiosity. And how a society is built to survive. How new kingdoms, hierarchy and ideology are rebuilt under the apes.
How they came up with rules like “Ape together strong” or “Ape shall not kill ape”. All started by the brilliant Caesar. And I love how Caesar the term is used as a universal term for leader just like in Roman Empire times.
Ape scholar Rama said: “Caesar was the first elder. He led with decency, morality, strength and compassion.” He is brave and everything he does is for the betterment of his people, his apes. He is brave, clever and due to his kind upbringing by humans when he grew up, he gained a healthy respect and even love for humans.
Humans in this new world cannot speak and have devolved substantially to pre-technology tribes. Treated like scavengers and seen as lower than the low. Some apes kill them on sight or hunt them for sport. Others tolerate them, others treat them with kindness.
This series is an incredibly good mirror to reflect our wide range of human civilization. It’s also a deeper criticism when you look deeper. What do you do when you have all the power? Do you try to make things better or do you conquer and dominate your lessers? How do you continue living when things change or are going bad?
“You gotta stop thinking about the way things were and start thinking about the way they are. You must accept.”
Ultimately it’s a hopeful movie to me. That we can evolve and rise up. And do it in harmony with other species but only with courage, strength and tolerance. As the Bible says “the meek shall inherit the earth.” The Meek are those who are strong and able to do tremendous harm but choose not to, who choose restraint in all except in the most extreme moments. That is the lesson I take from this series. “Ape together strong.” After all, us humans at the end of the day are barely evolved apes.
Moral Injury: When the Mind & Soul Suffers, The Body Cries Out
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about this video put out on YouTube by this young brilliant MIT trained Neurosurgeon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25LUF8GmbFU
He is walking in the mountains and just talking about his life and learnings. I had to watch it twice. There is incredible advice about the power of good habits in health and recovery. About what the commonality is in patients of his who recover or even those who recover right before the planned surgery. Things like:
Sleep at least 8 hours a day, have a good diet of low salt and mainly plant-based foods, don’t smoke or drink much, have a good social network, exercise regularly & sweat regularly by going to sauna, and manage stress well.
But what really stuck in my mind was the idea of moral injury. Despite the prestige, the money and status, when his work started to feel meaningless, he was literally dying inside.
I’ve felt like this many times in my life, especially during my career. The time in Vancouver right before I moved to San Francisco in 1998. Even though everything was fine, and I was fed and got to just chill out at home, I felt stuck. I felt like I was rotting mentally and physically.
The next most significant time was the final year of my time at 500 Startups. I felt like I wasn’t learning anything new, working with folks I either didn’t like or stopped respecting and just going through the motions. I felt like I was a trapped animal. Every work day was a hell of continual indignity. Living with dread every Sunday and looking forward to the weekend. This is, sadly, the life of most working people.
We see the results of this everywhere around us. When you are unhappy, your body acts out. You get sick more frequently. And when this happens, we tend to mis-adapt, instead of facing the core issue, we end up doing self destructive things: drugs, alcohol, over-eating, gambling and for me, over traveling and over-shopping books. This is the way we distract ourselves from dealing with the problem. A form of cowardice, a form of hiding but you can’t hide forever.
Good morale is important in countries, in armies, in companies and in each individual. You can feel the morale and mood the minute you walk into any office.
How do you get good morale and fight off moral injury? Work on things that have meaning to you. Do interesting work and work with awesome people. Have a bigger mission. Do things that we feel matters in our lives and those of my families and our greater communities. If you don’t, well your body will tell you. You will suffer in both mind and body.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads July 27th, 2025
"Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time."--John Lubbock
"Abe's journey teaches us that political defeat—even when compounded by personal health challenges—need not be definitive. His strategic use of time away from power allowed for genuine renewal: physically, intellectually, and politically.
Rather than rushing back prematurely, he ensured his return was supported by a renewed power base, with strengthened policy ideas, political alliances, and improved personal and physical capacity.
Abe's comeback shows that how we respond to setbacks often determines our legacy more than our initial success. By treating his defeat as an opportunity for personal transformation rather than dragging himself down, Abe transformed what could have been a footnote in Japanese political history into a launching pad for one of its most important administrations in decades.
Abe's story reminds us that true resilience is not merely about mere survival, but about strategically extracting lessons from our failures and having the patience to prepare thoroughly for a historic second act."
https://www.businessofpower.com/p/the-art-of-losing-well-shinzo-abes
2. Panel on Alt-Geopolitics. Non Mainstream views here. (Don't agree with these but interesting takes).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldliw4G_vM0
3. A masterclass on what to look for in GPs for early stage VC funds. Cendana has an incredible dataset. This is worth watching a few times.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AqIrMSvya4
4. "Ukraine has long-struggled to target the Russian bombers used to launch mass missile targets against Ukrainian cities, as Moscow has kept them out of range of weapons Kyiv has developed itself as well as those supplied by its Western allies.
The use of FPV drones in such a way would mark just the latest stage in the ever-evolving and still relatively fledgling world on drone warfare.
The attack was also likely highly cost effective — FPV drones can be bought for a just a few hundred dollars each but the cost of 41 heavy bombers runs into the billions."
5. "Venture ≠ Asset Management – The game has drifted from backing outlier founders to chasing AUM. A painful reset might be needed before things get healthy again.
Build a firm you enjoy – Not one optimized for market cycles. Sovereign wealth and busted endowments will keep distorting VC until liquidity dries up. Best to play your own game."
https://feld.com/archives/2025/05/beware-the-grinfuckers/
6. "Mechanization really did take jobs from farm workers. Automation took jobs from manual laborers. The PC took jobs from clerical and communication workers. But, all of these resulted in greater productivity, employment, and more optionality for workers. It’s both anti-historic and anti-evidence that AI will somehow prove to be the exception.
Could AI, along with thousands of other impactful technological, political, social, demographic, and black-swan-event changes permanently alter the employment landscape in our lifetimes? Absolutely. In fact, one of my favorite stats from this overly-ambitious weekend of research was MIT’s estimation that 60% of employment in 2018 was in types of jobs that didn’t exist before 1940.
By the time I’m in my 80s, y’all better have destroyed more than half of all the existing jobs, and that’s just to keep up with the 20th Century’s pace of change. But, don’t expect AI to do it for you in the next decade; that’s just marketing."
https://sparktoro.com/blog/ai-will-replace-all-the-jobs-is-just-tech-execs-doing-marketing/
7. This was a long podcast but this was pretty interesting and helpful to understand why America has lost pretty much every single war in the last three decades. Big military bureaucracy and weak leadership. America is run by unserious people. (most of West is actually)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8o5tlrYEmpQ
8. Some good takes here on the brilliant Ukrainian drone attack on the Russian strategic air fleet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SGSx-PBHEY
9. A must listen to on why the US is behind industrially (bad outdated free market ideology), China's industrial model and what we can learn from them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFVYeocZiSk
10. "UK’s unveiling of its new 20-40-40 Military Doctrine. This is one of the first times a Western military has so explicitly embraced a future where humans step back and autonomy steps forward: 80% unmanned. The message is clear.
It marks a shift away from conventional mass toward autonomy.
20%: Tanks and armoured platforms—held back, used precisely, not prolifically
40%: Expendable strike drones—cheap, fast, effective
40%: Reusable ISR and loitering munitions"
https://louiseboucher.substack.com/p/the-defense-brief-may-2025
11. "It also demonstrates real wartime defence innovation. Innovation in defence is not just about engineering, it is about innovating how you do things. A former British officer recently observed to me that in World War Two, the great British innovations like Operation Mincemeat and Operation Chastise (the DamBuster raid) were all the work of ‘civilians in uniform.’ These were what Churchill called his ‘corkscrew thinkers’ – people who could think in loops around an enemy that thought mainly in straight lines.
Reports indicate that Ukraine deployed 150 drones, of which 116 struck their targets. Some of the video circulating shows Russians examining a damaged shipping container, which then explodes when one of them walks in through the door, suggesting either that the containers were booby trapped, or that drones continued to explode after they failed to deploy. The drones that did deploy flew straight into the fuel tanks of the planes - another example of a very cheap bit of tech taking out a very expensive bit of hardware. They used a mixture of satellite imagery and automated targeting to cause catastrophic damage to the Russian airforce.
Artem Moroz, Head of Partnerships, Brave1 wrote over the weekend, “if you think drones are just tactical tools, think again. Ukraine is rewriting military doctrine in real time. This is next-gen asymmetric warfare in action. Cheap, smart, unstoppable.”
https://www.resiliencemedia.co/p/ukraines-attack-on-russian-airfields
12. "Even if the export of Ukrainian defence industries remains under discussion, the import of European talent is very real. For Sebastian, it was a life-changing experience. “In these three days I have accomplished more than throughout my professional career,” he said, noting that his current employment has nothing to do with defence innovation. Originally he was worried about going to Ukraine, but he did not panic during the air raid alerts and now wants to come back for more engagement with the Ukrainian ecosystem."
https://www.resiliencemedia.co/p/dispatches-from-kyiv-and-lviv-ukraines
13. It comes across as tinfoil hat at first but this is pretty important to understand our financialist system. It's a helpful framework on how the world works. Economic Hitmen 2.0.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRRPYYfiz_o
14. Critically important for Europe, the emerging defense-tech generation. Long overdue awakening.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6en9RziOH0I
15. One of the most interesting individuals in America: Palmer Luckey. Defending America.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVXPERyRjOA
16. "Rapid equipping may be one of the Pentagon’s stated goals, but “I think the reality is we see zero evidence of that happening,” Emeneker said. Even so-called “rushed efforts often take years to make it through the requirements writing process. ““Then they’ll need to get budgetary approval. That'll be another two to three years,” he said. “And that's the definition of fast within DoD today: five years to even start prototyping—not delivery, but prototype.”
Adversaries large and small—and increasingly aligned with one another—don’t face the same hurdles. Ukraine shows how modern warfare has become a contest to deploy attack drones adapted to fast-evolving enemy countermeasures."
17. "The goal of working with LLMs isn't to automate thinking; it's to clear space for deeper thinking. When I match my workflow to the shape of the problem, I move faster—in increments of hours rather than days—get unstuck more easily, and ship better work. The only real blockers now are fatigue, distraction, or lack of inspiration—all human factors we can address.
These workflows let me leverage my years of engineering experience while offloading the mechanical aspects of development. I bring the wisdom to know what needs researching, and the AI brings the capacity to explore options simultaneously and implement solutions efficiently.
We're only at the beginning. These three workflows represent my current best practices, but I expect to discover new patterns next week. The landscape is evolving rapidly, and the best approach is to keep experimenting, adapting, and refining how we collaborate with these powerful tools."
https://every.to/source-code/the-three-ways-i-work-with-llms
18. New super cycle of defense and space.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P5qJmax0ic
19. How to think about N of 1 companies in this day and age.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44iztpsfbFg
20. Micro-Saas & Vibe coding. A fun conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghYihdvkwrE&t=462s
21. What an inspiring interview. The energy and attitude: you can just do things. Ended up building NGP Energy Capital Management. Godfather of Energy PE.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8g_Cb2wUn3M
22. Lots of very useful nuggets of insight in hiring, building and investing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbVZDp6s9xU&t=14s
23. "Yerba mate has more caffeine than most other teas (roughly the same amount that’s in coffee) and it won’t lead to a crash when it wears off, the way coffee can. “Yerba mate is notorious for having a smoother downtick of a caffeine ‘high,’ which is likely because of the slower release of caffeine or the other bioactive components, like theobromine,” says registered dietitian Paul Jaeckel, RD."
https://www.gq.com/story/yerba-mate-tea-benefits
24. "Overall, the Ukrainians achieved the impossible, carrying out the war’s first air assault operation in over three years, allowing them to strike deep into Russian-held territory, inflict serious losses, and gather critical intelligence.
Notably, it is highly likely that not all Ukrainian operators exfiltrated from behind Russian lines.
According to special forces doctrine, these operators will be able to gather intelligence, set up and train further resistance networks, and conduct a deadly guerrilla warfare with sabotage and liquidations of top Russian commanders."
25. "Third, we need to understand that everything is now about information dominance, the counterbalance of which is psychological defense. We must be comfortable operating in both of these spaces as modern democracies.
Finally, we need to break free from this 30 year old box of smoke and mirrors. We must end the idea of Russian sanctuary — the idea that we cannot touch Russia — which absolutely poisons our analytical abilities. We need to define strategies for 21st century war termination that also confront hybrid wars.
And this also, of course, begins with how we end Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine.
Our only chance comes from Ukraine — from how we win in Ukraine, and what can be born from the revitalization of order that comes after Ukraine.
Otherwise, it’s just gonna be chaos monkeys all the way down."
https://www.greatpower.us/p/why-do-democracies-pretend-to-be
26. "But now, America has signaled it’s done. It’s still trying to meddle in a set of negotiations that also are not real in order to try to get a slice of Ukraine when it survives, but there’s been no talk about additional military support for Ukraine or working with the coalition to drum up more support. Thankfully the non-American parts of this coalition, including our NATO allies and other American treaty allies in Asia, have continued to put out new support packages. But America stamping around Europe asking “can’t someone else do it?” has had this outcome.
Ukraine has different choices, harder choices, freer choices maybe — and it will take them. Because it has no other choice but continuing to make its tactical possibilities achieve strategic success.
Russia has been a bogeyman for such a long time. But once the bogeyman is in the house, you can hide under the bed and imagine how much worse it might be, or you can smash a vase into its head and see if it bleeds like the rest of us.
Turns out Russia bleeds.
Young Ukrainians seek inspiration in this fantasy of a lone manga warrior fighting armies and the “godhand” for survival against the odds — but the inverse of this is grit in the gears of strategic thinking for big military powers like Russia and China and the United States. You start to think your out-sized capabilities are determinative in any conflict, and then some kids on dirt-bikes or a handful of Ukrainians with toy drones show you up.
Ukrainians are amazing in every definition of that word — and every damn day we should consider ourselves lucky that this brave, innovative, persistent, dedicated nation is fighting this war to cripple one of the world’s nominal great military powers to be a free, democratic nation that’s on our team (well, if America decides to stay on the team).
A nation absolutely outmatched on every spreadsheet can design a theory of victory that defies every big army conception of how this stuff works. Ukraine used 117 drones — which themselves cost about $58,500 — to blow up or at least damage billions of dollars of irreplaceable strategic assets across a swath of territory that spans almost 4000 miles"
https://www.greatpower.us/p/operational-art-and-the-salvation
27. People around the world overlook the amazing feat that Saudi Arabia does every single year as they host ~3 million pilgrims from all around the world the week of June 4th. It's really crazy impressive.
28. "The Ukrainian attack on Russia’s nuclear bombers shows how insane and self-defeating the GOP’s attack on the battery industry is. Batteries were what powered the Ukrainian drones that destroyed the pride of Russia’s air fleet; if the U.S. refuses to make batteries, it will be unable to make similar drones in case of a war against China. Bereft of battery-powered FPV drones, America would be at a severe disadvantage in the new kind of war that Ukraine and Russia have pioneered.
Unfortunately, Trump and the GOP have decided to think of batteries as a culture-war issue instead of one of national security. They think they’re attacking hippie-dippy green energy, sticking it to the socialist environmentalist kids and standing up for good old red-blooded American oil and gas. Instead, what they’re actually doing is unilaterally disarming America’s future drone force and ceding the key weapon of the modern battlefield to China.
In any case, unless America’s leaders wake up very quickly to the military importance of batteries, magnets, injection molding, and drones themselves, the U.S. may end up looking like the British Navy in 1941 — or the Italian Navy in 1940. A revolution in military affairs is in process, and America is willfully missing the boat."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/how-chinese-drones-could-defeat-america
29. More on Turkey, the real power in the Middle East and Europe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfKoTHwE72E
30. "The idea is to identify opportunities to buy mature, people-intensive outfits like law firms and other professional services firms, help them scale through AI, then use the improved margins to acquire other such enterprises and repeat the process. He has been at it for three years.
“It just seems so obvious,” said Gil over a Zoom call earlier this week. “This type of generative AI is very good at understanding language, manipulating language, manipulating text, producing text. And that’s audio, that’s video, that includes coding, sales outreach, and different back-office processes.”
If you can “effectively transform some of those repetitive tasks into software,” he said, “you can increase the margins dramatically and create very different types of businesses.” The math is particularly compelling if one owns the business outright, he added.
“If you own the asset, you can [transform it] much more rapidly than if you’re just selling software as a vendor,” Gil said. “And because you take the gross margin of a company from, say, 10% to 40%, that’s a huge lift. Suddenly you can buy other companies at a higher price than anyone else because you have that increased cash flow per business; you have enormous leverage on the business on a relative basis, so you can do roll-ups in ways that others can’t.”
31. "The thought process is: “If I’m busy, it means that my time is valuable because I have so little of it, therefore I’ll seem important.”
Yet if you pay attention you’ll see that the guy who is actually The Man isn’t the one who’s working the hardest. It’s the one who pays everyone to work hard on his behalf so he doesn’t have to.
That’s literally what a business is. Employees sell their time/labor to an employer so he can use them as a collective resource that can do more work than any one person could on his own (and make a ton of money for himself in the process).
Your value-add as a business owner doesn’t come from your labor. You’re just one person. The amount of hours you can work in a day isn’t enough to move the needle (no matter how talented you are). That’s why solopreneurship is nothing more than a wannabe sigma male LARPing fantasy.
Your higher-level thinking and ability to effectively manage the people who work under you is what really makes the difference."
https://www.tetramarketing.io/p/real-signs-of-low-social-status
32. One of the best & educational conversations on the business of venture capital.
Mountain Ranges Versus Pyramids
I’ve long been a fan of Star Wars. Not the woke-garbage movies and shows that have been put out in the last couple years by Disney but the classics and the actual comic books that have followed the traditional lore. In a somewhat obscure series called Crimson Dawn, crime lord Qi’ra of Solo movie fame plots to bring down the evil Sith Lords at the top of the Galactic Empire.
In a speech to her followers, she says:
“This should be the structure of power in the galaxy. An endless mountain range—many peaks, none dramatically higher than the others. The people who live on them, free to climb as high as they can, and all those centers of power contending with and compromising with the others.”
On the other hand there “is a pyramid. Everyone is climbing to the same place, pushing others down so they can ascend. And at its peak someone awaits, ready to destroy anyone who would dare approach. The only truly free person in the entire galaxy.”
While most of us don’t have ambitions to rule the galaxy, these are pretty good analogies of entrepreneurial life, self employment versus working for someone else. Entrepreneurial life is a mountain range, you go as high as you can and compete with others but the upside is almost unlimited as is the downside.
Working at a corporate or anyone else’s company you are working in a pyramid where your upside is capped and your only way to advance is up the hierarchy where there will always be someone in your way. Literally. A red ocean.
With this in mind, it makes me wish I started my entrepreneurial journey earlier in my life. Engaging my time and energy where the upside was not bounded. But alas due to my own risk aversion (aka cowardice), my ignorance and lack of consciousness I might have reached my personal goals faster.
So for anyone paying attention, the earlier you take action on your dreams, the sooner you will reach them. And the best way is to focus on mountain peaks aka entrepreneurial life.
A Love Letter to New York: The City for Inspiration & Rejuvenation
I visited New York City after an almost 6 year hiatus. I had a chance to attend the OOO (Owner Operator Outlier) Summit in August of 2024. And as expected it was incredibly enlightening and inspiring. I learned so much from speakers like Sam Parr, Ankur Nagpal, Andrew Yeung, Steph Smith, Shahed Khan, Guillermo Rauch & Kyla Scanlon. It was an interesting mix of creators and techies. A very different scene than the one in Silicon Valley where it’s literally just tech folks.
It reminded me of when I left Yahoo! back in 2012. I spent the year going to various conferences and taking lots of classes. One of the best conferences I went to was the PSFK Conference in NYC which was a creative and innovation conference run by that agency. I learned so much. The speakers gave me unique insights into where the business world was going. It made me look at the world in a different way and set me on my path.
I loved NYC growing up and spent quite a lot of time there during my Yahoo! Days. And it was where I made so many friends and is just an incredibly fun city. For a big city guy like me this place is unbelievable. But I saw the place had started gentrifying and homogenizing in the 2010s. It became less fun and I just wrote the place off. Incorrectly, I should add.
This city, especially after so many folks left during the 2020 Pandemic disaster, still attracts the best and brightest young people from around the world. On a regular basis too I might add. The people watching on the street is truly incredible. So many different walks of life, ages and socioeconomic stratas.
And due to this regular influx of people, it is one the few places in the world that has an amazing ability to regenerate itself. It is definitely back in 2024, having experienced it first hand. So many new restaurants, cafes, bars, shops, sporting events, theaters, art and entertainment. It’s so dynamic.
I would also add for me it seems to have an ability to regenerate your energy and life. There is no other city that is as big, as diverse demographic and industry-wise. There is no place on the planet that has the culture cachet and soft power as New York City. San Francisco is my home but I will be spending more time in New York for sure. It’s the place for inspiration and aspiration.