Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads July 13th, 2025
"Summer means happy times and good sunshine. It means going to the beach, going to Disneyland, having fun." - Brian Wilson
"Finance, as a religion, has mastered the alchemy of words, turning human labor into gold for the elite while leaving the masses in a state of perpetual servitude. The high priests—bankers, financiers, and economists—wield the secret spells of financial jargon, ensuring that the wealth generated by humanity’s efforts flows upward. But as I’ve revealed through my threads and articles, this system is built on a foundation of lies, from the myth of scarcity to the false promise of financial salvation.
By recognizing finance for what it is—a belief system, not an inevitability, not reality—we can begin to dismantle its power, reclaiming our labor and our humanity from the altar of Wealth. The magic of words may have built this religion, but it’s through new words—words of reality, community, and humanity—that we can tear down this religion has so enslaved us across the last four hundred years."
https://emburlingame.substack.com/p/the-religion-of-finance
2. "Security guarantees by Europe or the US, meanwhile, need to be backed up with real force to be credible, and they need to be a believably long-term commitment to make a difference.
Mujtaba Rahman, the managing director for Europe at the analysts Eurasia Group, said: “The key question for Ukraine is this: will there be a credible security guarantee which will enable private capital to flow back into the country?"
3. The most fun and educational show you watch. Two smart guys sharing health tips this episode.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eql0VFUc4Dc
4. "Like the show’s audience, the guests are attracted to “TBPN” as a safe refuge from the mainstream media, one that projects an unabashed, unapologetic enthusiasm for tech. “We genuinely love the private markets, the venture capital industry—the startup industrial complex,” Hays said.
Since “TBPN” debuted last October, Hays and Coogan have warmly welcomed investors from pretty much every major venture firm in existence, a marker of the podcast’s widening appeal. (Sequoia Capital, Khosla Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners—I could go on.)
A week or so ago, they dispatched one of their four producers to Las Vegas to set up a ministudio at Andreessen Horowitz’s annual investor day summit, where the firm’s executives could chat about tech, the news and, putatively, what they were presenting to their investors—a level of access no one in the regular media would ever get. The headliner, naturally, was billionaire Marc Andreessen, who stopped by “TBPN” for a 26-minute conversation about AI, open-source software and the parallels between the AI boom and the browser wars of the 1990s.
Together, Coogan and Hays, who met through a mutual friend, saw an opportunity for a tech-focused podcast that could analyze industry news with a light irreverance and wasn’t tied to a single company or venture firm. Last fall, they had enough free time on their hands to record a couple test episodes. When they attended Peter Thiel’s Hereticon at the Faena Hotel in Miami, they sought out feedback from David Senra, host of the popular “Founders” podcast, who had previously advised Coogan on his YouTube channel. He thought the two shared a natural chemistry and encouraged them to go all-in on the concept."
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/technology-brothers-seized-silicon-valley
5. This is all Netanyahu's fault.
"Despite growing isolation at the state level and ongoing losses across social networks, it’s unlikely that Israel will relent. Ending the war quickly would likely result in a flood of empathy triggers that *might"* generate a spontaneous swarm of outrage targeting Israel and its supporters worldwide. If they continue with the pacification effort, the push by states to sanction, ban, and isolate Israel will accelerate as horror stories leak out."
https://johnrobb.substack.com/p/meltdown
6. "Ukraine understands completely what Putin’s ambitions are with respect to Ukraine - its total capitulation. And Ukrainians understand what a Russian victory means - the end of Ukraine as a sovereign state, and likely mass genocide against Ukrainians. They hence understand that they have no choice but to fight and hold out either for a victory in the war or a peace which leaves the country standing as an independent and sovereign nation able to defend itself against the inevitable future Russian aggression.
The nightmare for Europe is that the U.S. pulls military support for Ukraine and then Russia quickly wins the war against Ukraine, capturing its now substantial military industrial complex which the leaves an enfeebled Europe facing the two largest military industrial complexes in Europe - Russia plus Ukraine. That’s an extinction style event for Europe, the EU, European values, et al.
So whatever Trump does, Europe has no choice but to still support Ukraine, and keep sanctions in place as long as possible to keep the Russian economy weak and unable to regenerate its conventional military capability which will inevitably be used in the future against Europe if it is not beaten. Europe is hence desperate to keep Ukraine in the war, as a front line defence for Europe, and if any peace is concluded it needs to ensure Ukraine is sustainable, and remains as that front line defence for Europe."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/ukraine-what-everyone-wants
7. "The difference between the guys who get results (success OR failure) and the guys who are perpetually “trying” is MINDSET.
Mindset is the most important thing. More important than any other resource or ability."
https://lifemathmoney.com/the-mindset-you-need-to-succeed/
8. "Did you see Jony Ive is teaming up with OpenAI to create new consumer hardware and go after Apple?
Those guys love the game. They’re competitive athletes.
They’re wondering if they still have the skills to win in this new AI world. And they can’t know without building things. So they’re trying.
The coolest part about this moment is that one great product idea can make you relevant again."
https://www.newinternet.tech/p/the-scoreboard-just-reset
9. "So, for this YouTube course, the creator builds it out with their own mind, model, and methods.
Then, when they turn each of the bullet points above into a prompt (like idea generation, outline, scripting, etc), something magical happens.
Not only do you have education, you have execution!
Do you realize how insane that is?
A YouTube course is no longer a course. It's a piece of the creators mind that can act on its own.
You, as an individual, can purchase this piece of their mind, study the "operating manual," give it your own context, and then it does the work for you.
It gives you ideas, you choose one, it guides you through the outline, you edit it, it spits out a script according to your own voice, and hell, at some point it AI will be able to create the entire video while sounding like you and looking like your style.
It's still you creating the video, you're just doing less work.
This isn't AI slop because it has context."
https://thedankoe.substack.com/p/how-smart-creators-will-make-money
10. "The defense sector itself has been incredibly slow to adjust to this new world. Some one-third of all defense contracts and nearly three-quarters of major weapons systems come from the five major defense contractors. This concentration has reduced innovation and entrenched inefficient cost-plus manufacturing models. There is a golden opportunity for nimble AI startups to begin making inroads.
But startups developing cutting-edge AI applications face prohibitive compliance costs and Byzantine government procurement processes. Many simply avoid defense applications entirely, focusing on commercial markets despite potential national security benefits.
The result is delayed adoption of breakthrough technologies and inflated costs. Upgrading defense requires both a simplified buying system and a mindset shift among tech firms. Companies that align with this transformation—whether startups or reinvented incumbents—will gain significant value while also making the nation safer.
Another sector that needs national resilience is healthcare. Administrators are constantly trading off speed, quality, cost and innovation. In the U.S., over a quarter of federal budget outlays go toward healthcare, and nearly 1% of tax expenditures are paid for dialysis alone. These commitments to healthcare spending are incredibly limiting to the government’s agility to respond to crises and rapidly evolving trends, as we see in each successive budget battle among Washington legislators.
In the private sector, we have witnessed unique models where health systems have begun investing in health tech companies themselves and being part of building solutions from the ground up. The health systems also should transition fees to a value-based care model, aligning incentives to be rewarded for outcomes, not procedures.
As the largest purchaser of healthcare services, the government needs to enforce stricter transparency on pricing and reimbursements. It should reward patients and healthcare providers for taking steps to catch diseases early, such as screening and preventative measures in the early stages of diabetes."
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/blueprint-strengthen-u-s-resilience-amid-new-world-order
11. The drone wars have just started. Dronesec is a super interesting DB to understand what is happening in the emerging drone world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2utl1hG9Fc
12. Trying to make sense of chaos (aka narrative collapse) we seem to be living in right now with one of the best thinkers & political economists around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcax5aGMC48
13. “Drones are now considered an important protective measure for soldiers,” Wilk said. “When combined, they allow to create complex aerial systems.”
In the fighting between Ukraine against Russian invaders, sections of the front line have almost become devoid of human soldiers, with drones patrolling large swathes of land, ready to pounce on anything that moves."
14. What will the new global order look like. Political and economic statecraft will come to the fore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLIacfhNvRA
15. A global macro masterclass. Net net: gold and bitcoin should be in everyone’s portfolio.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX08wP9c5GY&t=9s
16. This was a great deep dive in how Anduril wins deals from the DoD and scales production.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huy6il-n8KI
17. Sauna is a must for aiding your health. Some great data points on the benefits.
https://blueprint.bryanjohnson.com/blogs/news/is-sauna-worth-the-hype
18. Go GenX.
"But here we are, at the ass-end of our 40s and 50s, scars like roadmaps, livers like punching bags. The world’s on fire—our communities invaded, so the banks can get their rents, suits in boardrooms carving up what’s left. Human demons and freaks carving up kids, malevolent judges ruling against sanity, selling us all out. And somehow, it’s on us to fix it.
Us, the ones who’d rather burn the house down than clean it. Lady Liberty’s looking rough, her torch flickering, her eyes tired as ours. She’s been through too many bad dates, too many betrayals. But she’s ours. Always was. We’re her last champions, not because we want to be, but because nobody else showed up."
https://emburlingame.substack.com/p/burning-gen-x-at-the-stake-by-em
19. Tinfoil hat geopolitics. Ignore some of the numbers (like Russia-Ukraine kill ratios are exaggerated) but the direction of what he describes seems correct. Unlike what you hear from the mainstream media.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNEw3qq0Sok
20. "NATO’s best course of action is to arm Ukraine now to defeat Russia on home turf, rather than prepare for a broader Russian invasion. The EU’s €850 billion, four-year Readiness 2030 program may be too late.
Europe needs a plan – then the intestinal fortitude to execute it. In the words of Morgan Freeman’s character, Ellis Boyd ‘Red’ Redding, in “The Shawshank Redemption,” Europe needs to “Get busy living, or get busy dying.”
https://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/53283
21. Thought-provoking conversation with Alex Carp of Palantir.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvLxM6kQK7Y
22. "Contrast this to Japanese media platforms, manga in particular. The major magazines are run by giant corporations, and use survey to drive decisions… And yet still manage to discover new talents, to create new franchises. The magazines fiercely cull anything that fails to find an audience. But when one does, the manga artist — tellingly called a “sensei,” in a show of respect for those who create — is given free rein to fly their freak flag. And that freedom results in unexpected new things.
They’re data-driven, but the info comes from readers and is “crunched” by editors, who are given wide latitude to use the data or downplay it. It is an algorithm of a sort, but a human-centric one. And it creates human-centric art. (There’s a much bigger article in this — stay tuned.)
This is why Japanese creators, and manga creators in particular, putting themselves first has worked so well for Japan from a pop-cultural standpoint. Even the stuff that isn’t particularly visionary feels like it has a vision. In other words, the “economists and psychologists” aren’t driving, the creators are.
Consuming products from Japan, whether manga or games or whatever, feels more like a conversation, whereas consuming content in the States, particularly online, feels like being trapped in some psychology lab’s Skinner box. And that’s the reason why you won’t see articles with titles like “Is this the Worst-Ever Era for Japanese Pop Culture?” anytime soon."
https://blog.pureinventionbook.com/p/japan-doesnt-give-a-about-you
23. "Many say that all this is just a grift. I’d rather know where the money is coming from and who is providing it than what the Deep State did before under previous Presidents, which was to create wars on manufactured events, which allowed for huge amounts of money to be invisibly laundered back to domestic American bank accounts. Julian Assange always said that the purpose of the various wars was never to win but to provide cover for the business of laundering funds out of the government.
This is why there will be an audit of the American largess that was meant for Ukraine but might have ended up elsewhere. Notice that Assange, too was at the Pope’s funeral. That’s no accident. The President is going even further. He is giving the UAE and Saudi effective permission to develop new technologies in the region, namely AI, crypto-related, medical, and more. Elon Musk’s Neuralink is being made available for the first clinical trials at the UAE-based Cleveland Clinic. The US will let this region take the lead on innovation because it moves control over these technologies away from the Deep State.
The Middle East was the source of the world’s most advanced mathematics, philosophy, astronomy, and science from the 9th to the 15th centuries, well before the West began the Enlightenment and the Renaissance. A Jesuit priest called Athanasius Kircher translated Islamic texts and gave Westerners access to great pre-Dark Age Greek thinkers like Plato and Pythagoras. Today, something parallel is underway. The US is blessing the Middle East to restore itself as a center of innovation and innovative ideas, especially in mathematics (AI/AGI and crypto/Bitcoin/tokenization).
If the wars subside, the question will be: Can innovation be locally generated? The answer is yes. Trump said that in his speech. The region is self-made. They don’t need Deep State experts in Washington telling them what to do. This will lift not just the Middle East but also Africa, India, and Central Asia. Cheap oil helps. But now, the Middle East is transitioning into data, the new black gold, and the cornerstone of modern diplomacy. The key is understanding that Trump is swapping America’s allegiances. The old Warlords of the Middle East are now peaceniks - savvy and stability-oriented. Like the Tech Bros in Washington, they want peace enough to make money.
The disruptive and problematic Warlords are no longer in the Middle East. They are in Washington, DC. They now face a President who is surrounded by Holy figures and the Warlords of the Middle East, who are now committed to peace. The knife fight is no longer in the Middle East. It’s in the US."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/warlord-swap-and-the-peace-dividend
24. "AI-native startups are running on a new operating system for scale.
In 2020, reaching $30M ARR meant building a 250-person company. In 2025, AI-native businesses are hitting the same milestone with just 3 operators. This isn't just about doing more with less—it's about a fundamental shift in how companies scale.
This transformation isn't just possible—it's becoming necessary for survival.
As competitors leverage AI to reduce operational costs and increase speed, traditional organizational structures are turning into liabilities. The companies winning in 2025 aren't just adding AI tools to old processes. They're building entirely new operating systems that turn every team member into a force multiplier, capable of managing entire departments through strategic orchestration of AI agents.
The pattern becomes clear when you look at the companies leading this shift. Bolt and Lovable went from zero to $15M ARR in 2 months with just 15 employees. Cursor AI hit $100M ARR faster than Figma, Zoom, or Wiz—all while maintaining a team under 50 people. These aren't outliers, they're pioneers of a new operating system where scale comes from intelligence, not headcount.
We call them “autonomous businesses”.
https://www.neweconomies.co/p/the-new-operating-system
25. "Venture capital today isn't a single, neatly defined asset class—and it shouldn't be viewed through the narrow lens that's dominated for the last 50–60 years: high-risk, early-stage investing aimed at generating outlier returns. That model still exists, but it's only part of the picture. The modern venture landscape looks more like a barbell.
On one end, smaller, early-stage managers are playing the classic power-law game. Conversely, multi-billion-dollar platforms operate more like private equity firms. Both live under the "VC" moniker but are dissimilar in almost every critical way.
This isn't a bug. It's a feature of a maturing asset class. But if LPs don't recalibrate —and how they benchmark and allocate, they risk being misaligned on both ends of the barbell."
https://ventureunlocked.substack.com/p/the-time-to-is-now-to-retire-the
26. "The bad company problem likely originates in VC math. Too many founders are trained to look at market size or profit margin first. They see an opportunity that is large, or a company that could be highly profitable, and think “good enough.” This is because the early stages of any endeavor are risky. There has to be a large return to invest in something that early. It should create a 100x exit scenario. But that math isn’t the same as founder math. Founders, in my experience, tend to mistake “investing in” for “worth doing.”
Being outcome-oriented is a mental disease. A plague. A pestilence. It strips the minute, daily beauties from around us and forces us to postpone happiness for “some day.” “I’ll enjoy the company once I fix growth.” “I’ll enjoy work once I’m post-money.” Maybe, just maybe, this is deeply unhealthy. I think part of the reason so many founders burn out, go through divorce, and have health problems is that there is a soul-deep misalignment between their tasks and their desires.
The answer is so simple—the way to enjoy work is to do work you enjoy. The way to like your company is to make one you desperately want to exist. I don’t know why it has to be more complicated than that."
https://www.gettheleverage.com/p/in-defense-of-starting-a-bad-business
27. It's good to listen to folks who are knee deep and active investing and building in Silicon Valley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9jj3fyEi2w
28. The latest trend: the Methaphone to fight phone addiction.
29. A maniac on a mission. Greatness requires obsession.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ak7oLVMlhfM
30. "But here’s the catch: China can continue rolling out the BRI without the U.S. — they don’t need America’s permission or participation.
The U.S., however, cannot continue making advanced weapons without China’s rare earth processing capacity.
This is a critical and underappreciated point. More than 78 percent of the U.S. military’s weapons rely on Chinese materials. A bit of a pickle.
You may not have heard of minerals like samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium, and yttrium - but the simple math is this: each F-35 Jet requires 900 pounds of these rare earth minerals. A navy warship like the Destroyer requires 5,200 pounds, and a Virginia-class submarine requires 9,200 pounds.
No minerals, no military.
So, if America wants to compete, it needs a shortcut.
And this, is what I was watching when the American President made his trip to Saudi Arabia for the US-Saudi Investment Summit last week.
Saudi Arabia has three things the U.S. desperately needs in this race:
1. Political will (no elections, no shifting public sentiment, no “NIMBYism” to slow projects down)
2. Capital (deep pockets to fund big, ambitious projects)
3. And, increasingly, resource control — Saudi Arabia is pushing hard to develop its own mining and rare earth production industries as part of its Vision 2030 plan to diversify beyond oil.
And conveniently, Saudi Arabia wants American weapons."
https://jaymartin.substack.com/p/lend-me-a-royal-hand-americas-secret
31. "As we can see from the diagram above — the typical life cycle has four stages.
Early Stage
Growth Stage
Maturity
Decline
Each stage can be described by a general set of characteristics — let’s look at them."
https://www.philoinvestor.com/p/life-cycles-are-life
32. I don't agree with this view for the record but it's an interesting framework to understand the world
"The Financialist Kill Chain reveals a grim truth: the downfall of nations is a calculated act of plunder, not a twist of fate. Step #7, Collapse and Abandonment, is the culmination of this ruthless strategy, triggered when citizens, stripped of hope, turn to violence—allowing the orchestrators to profit from war and later claim the wreckage for next to nothing. Russia’s fate, unfolding over 80 years from the Bolshevik takeover to the 1990s collapse, stands as a haunting example.
But the Financialists were robbed of their capacity to passive-aggressively take all and abandon Russia, because strong men, testosterone laden, stood up once more and said no, and have proven willing to kill and die in great numbers to prevent just such. As we survey the world today, seeing we're next upon the Step #7 block, recognizing these patterns and the only way in which they can be defeated, is our only chance against becoming the next hollowed out victim in this predatory cycle."
https://emburlingame.substack.com/p/orchestrating-collapse-and-profiting
33. "The truth is that the world will always exist not as a finished sculpture but as perpetual work in progress, shaped by our decisions. Great artists keep working until they die, often leaving unfinished works behind. This isn't tragedy but testament to their strength. Their refusal to be "completed" becomes their power to leave a legacy others must continue. That is the example we should follow."
https://www.businessofpower.com/p/renewal-in-an-age-of-managed-decline
34. "Since the beginning of WWI , the role that the state has played in our lives has not stopped growing. This has been especially so in the case of Glasgow. The state has spent more and more, provided more and more services, more subsidy, more education, more health care, more infrastructure, more accommodation, more benefits, more regulations, more laws, more protection. The more it has provided, the worse Glasgow has fared. Is this correlation a coincidence? I don’t think so.
The story of the rise and fall of Glasgow is a distilled version of the story of the rise and fall of industrial Britain – indeed the entire industrial West. In the next chapter I’m going to show you a simple mistake that goes on being made; a dynamic by which the state, whose very aim was to help Glasgow, has actually been its ‘pathway to breakdown’ . . ."