Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Aug 30th, 2026
“Often the best way to relax is just to go back to work.”--Steve McQueen
"Five years ago, when Ozempic and Wegovy were first approved for weight loss, GLP-1s looked like a silver bullet for obesity. Today, they’re a fully loaded magazine of silver bullets aimed at obesity, addiction, cancer, sleep apnea, and a growing list of other diseases and chronic conditions. The velocity of innovation is remarkable. “Usually when a new medicine happens, we have time to learn how to use it,” Dr. Melanie Jay, director of the NYU Langone Comprehensive Program on Obesity, told the New York Times. But with GLP-1s, “everyone is kind of iterating in real time.
GLP-1s may be the rare pharmaceutical case where capitalism is on the consumer’s side. But Ricks also told me GLP-1s are unique insofar as nearly everyone who takes them loses weight. Unlike drugs for other chronic conditions, “people like being on GLP-1s,” because they notice results in their appearance, rather than intangible health benefits and side effects. The fine print: Many people may never stop taking GLP-1s, creating an enduring subscription business. Think Netflix, but with monthly prices ranging from $149 to $499, and instead of market competition, a duopoly. GLP-1s may not be an off-ramp from the industrial food-medical-pharma complex, but the ultimate physiological lock-in.”
https://www.profgmedia.com/p/the-weight
2. "At the end of the day, raising money from VCs is a tool, not a milestone. For the right company, in the right market, at the right time, it can help accelerate growth and create something much bigger than would have been possible otherwise. But it also comes with expectations, pressure, dilution, and a different definition of success."
https://davidcummings.org/2026/06/13/non-horror-story-lessons-from-pitching-vcs/
3."That cost is the ultimate differentiator – and that broad adoption of AI technology (models etc.) will rely on their cost to serve.
In their piece, Citadel refers to Amazon stepping back from their token leaderboard – which pushed for higher token usage to no avail, and Microsoft cancelling their Claude Code arrangement. Finally, they mention the Token Bill Armageddon, i.e. firms losing control of their AI token bills and having to do something about it...
Again, cost is the ultimate differentiator. Citadel argues that AI will bifurcate between frontier and everyday models."
https://www.philoinvestor.com/the-twilight-period/
4.Re-thinking VC in the age of AI. An investing legend on his new firm and positioning for the future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-TDqn-8i-c
5.There are some pretty solid insights on building in the age of AI. Lots of good heuristics for investing and also company building.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCd9ykretlg
6."Most people are “Narrative Consumers.” They adopt the labels, the benchmarks, and the definitions of success provided by society. They compete in “Red Oceans” because they accepted someone else’s definition of a “win.” If you allow others to define what is “expensive,” “successful,” or “urgent,” you are playing their game on their board. You are a character in their script."
https://substack.com/@luxlifestylelab/p-185104164
7."Society has conditioned you to be “accountable” through explanation. You feel a pathological need to justify your prices, your schedule, your absence, and your pivots. This is a Subordinate Reflex. The moment you explain why you did something, you have handed the other person the authority to judge your reasoning. You have placed your Sovereign Variable on their scales. In the high-stakes architecture of 2026, explanation is the ultimate form of Information Leakage."
https://substack.com/@luxlifestylelab/p-188062676
8."The ultimate status symbol in 2026 is a calendar with no recurring meetings and 80% white space. It signals that you are in total control of your time and that your presence is a scarce asset, not a public utility. When an elite individual says “I’m available,” it carries the weight of a rare astronomical event." https://substack.com/@luxlifestylelab/p-185411259
9."The subtle signal of true luxury is a calm, focused vitality. It’s not the tan or the clothes; it’s the clarity in the eyes and the steadiness of the voice. It signals a nervous system that is not in a state of constant “fight or flight.” When you walk into a room and radiate calm energy, you have already won the psychological battle.
Stop treating your body like a servant and start treating it like the CEO. You cannot think clearly if your blood sugar is a rollercoaster and your nervous system is fried. Build the bedrock first. The strategy will follow." https://substack.com/@luxlifestylelab/p-183712844
10.Some great global macro about the AI Super cycle. I always learn something from Visser and Pal. Makes me optimistic about the future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGNmWFeCIWE
11."Rest is not a sign of weakness. It’s the hidden edge of high performers who know that compounding only works when you’re around long enough to let it build.
So, treat rest as a core business activity because your best strategy might actually start with doing nothing." https://substack.com/@luxlifestylelab/p-172654762
12."When you strip away the tasks that agents can handle, the remaining jobs-to-be-done at a venture fund cluster into three buckets.
The first is investing judgment. Which companies to back, at what terms, with what conviction. This is the GP and the investing team. AI makes them faster and better-informed, but the decisions are theirs.
The second is long-term relationship and trust building with LPs. This is the GP and the IR team. Similarly, AI makes them more efficient, but does not remove the human connection.
The third is everything that makes the fund visible, trusted, and funded. GTM. Brand. Content. LP relationships. Founder community. Events. Ecosystem presence. Coinvestment campaigns. Media. This is the work that determines whether the best founders choose you when they have options, whether LPs return your call, and whether your portfolio companies feel supported.
At most funds, many of these tasks are scattered across three or four people, or it is the GP’s side project. Nobody owns the system. IR reports to the GP. Marketing reports to the COO (if it exists at all). Events are ad hoc. Content happens when the GP has time, which is rarely. Founder engagement lives in the GP’s head.
As the tasks were automated, two nuanced things happened. More started shifting to Alex (our GP)’s plate. And the velocity of executing sped up."
https://99tech.alexlazarow.com/p/the-role-that-shouldnt-exist
13. "Avoiding costly attritional victories means leveraging the critical element of time: instead of trading losses until the enemy is exhausted, a combatant exploits brief windows of opportunity to secure much larger gains. Contra the commonplace dichotomy, the opposite of attrition encompasses much more than mere “maneuver”—most non-attritional strategic victories are won by rapidly exploiting a decisive operational victory in a single theater (e.g. most of Napoleon’s campaigns, or the 1940 invasion of France). But this does raise an interesting question: why do we so rarely see anything that could be called maneuver at the strategic level—actions across multiple theaters that create synergistic effects?
The explanation lies partly in the sheer scale of warfare at the highest levels. The complexity and time involved in a major offensive makes it difficult to tightly orchestrate effects, and even more difficult to quickly pivot to exploit fleeting chances. Moreover, strategic posture is inherently less sensitive to rapidly-changing circumstances—a breakthrough in one theater will not necessarily imperil others in the way a tactical or operational breakthrough would. Nevertheless, a closer examination of history reveals some examples of more sophisticated military strategy."
https://dispatch.bazaarofwar.com/p/strategic-maneuver
14."Strip away the jargon and a harness is everything around the model that governs how it sees the work, acts on it, gets feedback, and proves it’s finished. The shorthand making the rounds — “Agent = Model + Harness” — captures it well. In practice a harness is a handful of cooperating parts: instructions that tell the agent what to do and in what order, scope control that keeps it working on one thing at a time, memory that persists across sessions, verification that decides whether work is genuinely done, and a lifecycle that starts clean and hands off clean.
What a harness is not is a better prompt. A prompt can’t remember what happened in the last session, can’t run your test suite, and can’t stop an agent from declaring victory on a feature that doesn’t work. Those are systems problems, and they need systems, not cleverer wording.
The model sets your ceiling. The harness determines how much of that ceiling you actually ship. And on a model you’ve chosen to hold fixed, the harness isn’t part of the game — it’s the whole game."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/everything-a-tech-executive-should
15.This guy is a legend. What a great conversation with Biran Singerman formerly of Founders Fund, now GPx. And he also loves Hawaii, almost as much as I do :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il5dCTkIF_M
16.Trying to make sense of the AI wave. Jordi Visser is one of the best analysts of the coming future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAqXcGn3BlY
17. One of the better discussions on defensetech investing I've listened to in a while. Good primer for newbies or experienced folks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5-uxEeqRyQ
18. "Despite all the present activity, the total number of Seed stage companies is in decline. This is not surprising when you notice that every company that does get funded has something to do with AI.
What happened to all the perfectly good, non-AI opportunities? It can’t be the case that the “true” opportunity set is 100% AI related.
There must be a large set of opportunities that aren’t getting funded right now because investors are locked in on AI and still licking their wounds from all the non-AI, pre-AI companies they funded that didn’t or won’t work out.
Prior startup cohorts are flunking out, and the market is funding a narrower style of business today. This has driven the rate of startups exiting the gene pool above the rate of fresh blood entering the system." https://whoisnnamdi.substack.com/p/taking-stock-of-the-seed-stage
19. "In the end, The Trillion Dollar War Machine is a sobering reminder that empires don’t fall because they run out of enemies—they fall because they run out of money and wisdom. We’ve seen this movie dozens of times through history. The difference today is that the downside isn’t just lost investor dollars—it’s needless death and suffering and the growing risk of national insolvency."
https://frankgiustra.com/posts/the-war-machine-a-book-review/
20."But the lesson is the same for every reader, on either side of that line: the thing that fails is paper. Dollars, lira, rupees, pesos - when a government is cornered, it protects itself by printing, and whoever is holding its paper pays the bill. The thing that survives is what cannot be printed.
So I will not tell you to buy or sell anything. I will only tell you how I think about it. The most dangerous place to keep your savings is the one that feels safest - cash, and promises to be paid in cash. The safer place is what no government can conjure with a keyboard: gold, energy, and the real, physical assets the world cannot run without. The people who have already lived through this know it in their bones.
If the Strait reopens tomorrow and I am wrong, owning some of those things early costs you almost nothing. If it stays shut, they are what hold their value while the paper loses its. One side of that bet costs a little; the other protects everything you have saved.
The countries on the edge fall first. But they were never the end of this story. They are the warning that the cascade has begun - and that it is moving, one domino at a time, toward the biggest one of all: the dollar that every other currency, and every saver on Earth, ultimately leans on."
https://jaymartin.substack.com/p/when-countries-sell-their-gold
21."Reindustrialization is bred by a motley crew. Financiers. Hawks and doves. Officials from all sorts of White Houses. Palmer-maxxers.
"Some of the companies that got started during year one — at a bar, literally, founder meets a venture capitalist — are raising hundreds of millions of dollars," Austin Bishop, co-founder of the New Industrial Corporation, told Axios, referring to the conference.
"It's the most American thing ever," he said. "It's like jazz and rock and roll. You put a bunch of people together and they start jamming, and out pops something magical."
https://www.axios.com/2026/06/17/reindustrialize-weapons-production-venture-detroit
22."American Dynamism is a real movement, and the alignment of elite human capital, silicon valley, government agencies and programs, and financial capital are all taking place in real time.
This is a real, aspirational vision for America in the 21st century. We have the most abundant natural resources in the world, the most elite talent, and we oriented ourselves towards a future where we reclaim technological supremacy via industrial production. Economic growth and GDP will be found in factories, materials, energy, and mastering of the elements.
The future belongs to those that BUILD and Show Up"
https://www.broscienceclub.com/p/reindustrialize
23."Remember, it is entirely your responsibility to live an interesting life, and if your current circumstance is boring that’s entirely your fault.
You don’t need to be a millionaire to break the cycle of monotony, romanticise your life a bit, side quest & make sure you don’t look back 30 years from now and have no interesting stories to tell because all you did was work on making money and going to the gym doing a cookie cutter push, pull legs split."
https://www.lethalgentleman.com/p/no-one-can-save-you-from-living-a
24."For the romantics, it’s hard to experience these events and not feel something. Feeling something (inspiration, opportunity, potential) is what motivates people to take big risks. And people taking big risks is what creates the potential for change."
https://www.alsoblogposts.com/p/romanticism-makes-a-comeback
25.This week's top tech news and opinions. Love this show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQn3GQBZ0Cs
26."Instead of viewing your “net worth” by a bank statement, you need to come up with an asset statement: Stocks, Vesting RSUs, Options, Business ownership percent, real estate, Crypto and anything else that should go up in the future. The only way to fight off inflation + constant regulation is with assets.
You can achieve the classic American dream much faster (completely free of office commute by middle age at minimum). This is due to immense opportunity and wealth in the USA. If you can’t make it here. You can’t make it anywhere. We’re serious.
We know a lot of people who grew up in various countries and the avenues to getting rich in the USA are unmatched. Europe, Asia and little brother Canada have nothing to offer compared to the opportunities in the USA.
The only real downside is that you need to be ruthlessly self aware and laser focused on the next 10-15 years. If you choose the wrong map (going into low margin high competition restaurant businesses for example), you will be playing a much harder game.
Make your long term predictions and stick to them. Ours is on digital immersion, glued to screens, degeneracy, long-tech and talented people having multiple businesses/income streams in the 2030s."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/the-american-dream-is-granted-with
27. Teamshares is a super interesting company. Bringing business ownership to employees.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tV4wdtZBuk
28. Making tech investing and media crossover work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ht_DuxWLh8M
29. Always great geonomics takes around on where we are in Iran. Michael Every is one of the best analyst around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STHlabYnxqs&t=2600s
30."Europe needs its own Andurils. Not because it can't also continue to buy systems from the Americans, but because a good ally is self-sufficient, equally inventive, and armed to the teeth with a diverse fleet of awesome, native weapons."
https://world.hey.com/dhh/european-delusions-danish-drones-a3da0d27
31.I always appreciate these perspectives on Silicon Valley news. One of my favorite shows to understand what is up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVD3jS6Lexc
32.NIA episode was excellent this week. So many great insights on AI & Elon Empire: SpaceX/Tesla
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnSztk46fVY&t=4075s
33."Boredom used to lead somewhere. A kid staring at the ceiling would eventually get up and build something or go outside or start a conversation. Boredom was the gap where imagination and motivation lived.
Now boredom barely gets a chance to exist. The moment it shows up you reach for the phone and it’s gone within a second. That seems harmless but it removes something important. It removes the discomfort that used to push you toward something better.
Apps are specifically designed to fill that gap before you even notice it opening. That’s not a side effect. That’s the entire point. A bored user who sits with their boredom for thirty seconds might close the app and go do something else. A bored user who gets an instant hit of stimulation stays on the app. So the system is built to never let that gap open long enough for you to act on it."
https://lifemaxxers.substack.com/p/youre-not-depressed-youre-the-product
34.The historical background and intellectual framework for geopolitics. Continental versus Maritime empires and lessons for the present day. Elephants versus Whales: Fascinating.
This is important to understand for national grand strategy, global macro & personal investing too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS1NZLgKM2c
35."Narratives can grab hold of investor’s minds to create momentum that seems unstoppable… Until it stops.
Make sure, in these times of intoxicating narratives, you are exposing yourself to those who challenge the mainstream trend.
This is not a call to be contrarian for the sake of being different, but instead for the sake of safety."
https://www.codyshirk.com/p/boring-is-weird
36.This is a fun conversation. Enabling decentralized defense manufacturing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UtUagJdGGE
37. Learning how to build alpha from a top hedge fund investor.