Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads March 29th, 2026
“Nostalgia in reverse, the longing for yet another strange land, grew especially strong in spring." – Vladimir Nabokov
I enjoy learning from Ryan McBeth and his takes on geopolitics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcUvd8dEZko
2. Luke Gromen is probably one of the best analysts of global macro and his takes are very sober. A world of financialized USD vs hard assets/commodities driven BRICS.
Net net: stack cash and get hard assets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=re5CqaZXfCI
3. "No one else will truly care. So why do you choose to live like anyone’s opinion actually matters? If they won’t care about you struggling to make ends meet, to feed your family, to take care of medical bills, to bury your mother, to deal with health disasters of your own, then why the fuck do you care about what they have to say?
They are no one. You are everything. And everything you want should belong to you. Or at least, you should be able to go after anything and everything you want without fearing what a nobody will have to say.
That is your superpower. Wield it fiercely."
https://www.rawmanifesto.com/p/no-one-gives-a-fuck-about-you-and
4. "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/inbox/post/185104164
5. These folks are tops in pre-seed. So some good insights in what is happening in venture capital investing right now in Silicon Valley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nD2MlxhH2qw
6. Inside TBPN, the tech media phenomenon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVLRuIuLBe8
7. "Money doesn’t change you. It amplifies you.
If your mind is chaotic, more money just makes the chaos louder.
If your mind is structured, more money makes you unstoppable."
https://substack.com/@luxlifestylelab/p-178626294
8. Some good perspective on investing in AI startups from A16Z. Data moats are real.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XVDtPU8xKE
9. Investing in the age of conflict.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-AH0UD_xsk
10. "The more gold trades in yuan, the more the yuan starts looking like a reserve asset. Meanwhile, the dollar—once as good as gold—now looks more like the Turkish Lira. With U.S. debt racing toward $40 trillion, it’s backed mostly by history, faith, and reassuring briefings.
The Shanghai Gold Exchange won’t replace COMEX or LBMA overnight, and the dollar won’t vanish tomorrow. But history moves in powerful tides, and you can see them if you pay attention. Empires rise and fall. The accelerating decline of the dollar against gold signals that America’s long run as the unchallenged hegemon is nearing its end.
Every trade settled in yuan instead of dollars, every bar stored in Shanghai instead of London, every central bank swapping Treasuries for bullion—these are all tremors in the tectonic plates underlying global finance. The old unipolar system is slowly giving way to a multipolar world where value isn’t just promised—it’s measured in something real.
The Shanghai Gold Exchange has played a quiet but pivotal role in this shift. It’s where finance reconnects with physics, where the abstraction of money meets the unprintable reality of atomic number 79. While central banks can print paper until the forests run out, gold remains gloriously finite.
The twentieth century belonged to the dollar. The twenty-first probably won’t belong to any single currency. It’s more likely to be a network of regional systems, each anchored by something that doesn’t need cheerleaders to prove its worth."
https://frankgiustra.com/posts/paper-promises-meet-physical-truth-how-shanghai-stole-the-gold-crown/
11. UAE's setbacks in their chaos agent strategy geopolitically. Also interesting possible development of a Muslim NATO with Saudi, Turkey & Pakistan, maybe even Egypt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFAuZg1w_Gk
12. "What struck me then, and still does today, is how Mark has never lost his craft of operating as a forward deployed engineer—deeply close to the problem, clear-eyed about the people building the solutions, and relentlessly iterating on his own craft.
When Mark told me he was raising Fund II, I knew we needed to capture more than just the headline. This is the story of what it took—the real story—to go from a first-time $10M fund to a $45M Fund II in a tough market."
https://embracingemergence.beehiiv.com/p/how-mark-scianna-raised-his-fund-ii-in-a-matter-of-weeks
13. Learning about the MrBeast attention economy empire. Leveraging audience into new businesses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9gSO66oC6U
14. "We have been sold the lie of “Productivity.” We are obsessed with doing things faster, better, and cheaper. But if you are moving at 200 mph in the wrong direction, your efficiency is just accelerating your failure. Most people spend their lives optimizing tasks that shouldn’t exist in the first place. This is “Busy-Work” dressed in high-end software.
The Thesis in One Line.
It is better to do the right thing slowly than the wrong thing at the speed of light."
https://substack.com/inbox/post/185210328
15. "The decline of the middle class began with the end of the Cold War. During the Cold War, a thriving middle class was seen as essential to US survival, leading to policies designed to grow and strengthen it.
It provided the industrial and technological capacity needed to fight a total war. People capable of wielding the complex machines of war and making them.
It stabilized US politics by forming a prosperous majority under a unifying identity: American. This shared identity simplified decision-making at the national level (people didn’t see each other as enemies) and provided a vast pool of loyal people willing to defend the nation if needed.
A prosperous and loyal middle-class majority was impervious to the ideological pressure of Communism.
When the Cold War ended, the need for a prosperous, protected, and loyal middle class evaporated. There weren’t any threats left to fight. This led to;
A reorientation of decision-making from a focus on nationalism (tied to the middle class) to globalism (GDP growth, corporate profits, financial market size/growth, the cost of labor/imports, etc.).
This shift began with deregulation and changes to tax/monetary policy that financialized the economy and eliminated rules, roles (jobs), and economic factors (cost suppression, pensions, etc.) that enabled the middle-class to produce and accumulate wealth.
Next, spurred by new levels of global connectivity (the Internet), the US focused on global expansion by eliminating barriers that protected the middle class, from trade barriers to immigration. US middle-class citizens went from being able to produce and accumulate wealth to becoming economically stressed competitors in a vast global market.
With the shift to globalization, a new group arose to replace the middle class. A small (10%), thriving group of people capable of competing on the world stage and/or exploiting weaknesses in domestic systems. A Cosmopolitan elite that has absolute faith in globalization. A faith proven by their success at producing and accumulating wealth."
https://johnrobb.substack.com/p/the-cosmopolitan-elite
16. “When you have conflicts, international geopolitical conflicts, even allies prefer not holding each other’s debt. They’d prefer to go to a hard currency. It’s logical, it’s factual, and it’s repeated throughout history.”
And the coup de grace:
“But let’s be cleareyed about where this leads. A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile, and less sustainable. And there’s another truth. If great powers abandon even the pretense of rules and values for the unhindered pursuit of their power and interests, the gains from transactionalism will become harder to replicate. Hegemons cannot continually monetize their relationships.”
It is an understatement to say there is a lot to think about these days.
Gold received the message from Davos loud and clear."
https://robertsinn.substack.com/p/ray-dalio-the-monetary-order-is-breaking
17. 10 non obvious things about Silicon Valley fundraising
https://chrisneumann.com/archives/10-nonobvious-things-about-silicon-valley-fundraising
18. "It means re-engaging in our communities from volunteering to serving in government to religious services to being involved at your kid’s school. It means deciding that the path we’re on is unsustainable for all but a lucky few and choosing to use your resources, your voice, your time differently. It means making sacrifices for the greater good. It means rejecting a zero sum view of the world that may feel good in the short term, but, unless you’re a sociopath, you always regret deep down in the long term.
This is still the greatest country in the history of the world. But not by accident and not by divine intervention. Because we’ve sacrificed and worked together and taken risks to make it so. That can continue. But only if we make it so."
https://bradleytusk.substack.com/p/the-manchurian-economy
19. This was incredibly timely. Every Type A individual should watch this. Learn how to live a better life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz-ymFOhBAE
20. "After the grand experiment in egalitarianism failed to go as the reformers had planned, we still have all of the old problems in full. Instead of equality we have laundered oligarchy—the rule of billionaires, tycoons, experts, and managers who embody the exact opposite of noblesse oblige (and who actually aren’t impressive in any way except for their ability to game the system). These new oligarchs experience no such pressure to do right for those beneath them; instead they dedicate themselves to extracting from them.
Almost every aspect of modern American life is defined by the oligarchic mode of demeaning, demoralizing, and extracting from normal people—from the mass immigration which drives wages down and housing prices up, to the ugly architecture, sports-betting apps, weed dispensaries, homo entertainment, and more. Big Medicine now has little to do with promoting health and everything to do with managing and medicating sickness. Big Food, seemingly in cahoots with Big Medicine, has poisoned just about everything on the shelves of our grocery stores.
Meanwhile fake experts make the matter still worse by confusing you with bad advice about what’s healthy and what’s good. “A patient cured is a customer lost,” they say—and this pattern applies almost uniformly across American life. The point is that our “elites” don’t give a damn about you and have turned our country into a “sheep-shearing operation,” as one poet put it."
https://thechivalryguild.substack.com/p/the-death-of-noblesse-oblige-the
21. "About 375 nautical miles to the east of Ramstein, you will find Wrocław (roughly the distance from Washington, DC to Portsmouth, NH). That is 375 nm closer to—yes, say it with me—NATO’s eastern front.
If you are a logistics geek—which you should be—there is a lot of important and serious work being done in Poland. This will help her security, and that of the NATO alliance.
While some of the—mostly—Western European allies are more interested in drama or reliving their anti-American tendencies from their youth—Poland is a serious nation and a serious leader in Central Europe. They are not playing around."
https://cdrsalamander.substack.com/p/plan-salamander-operationalized-at
22. "The geography is identical. The logic applied to it is not. One side approaches the Arctic as a field in which control and leverage are built incrementally. The other continues to treat it as a domain in which order can be maintained through management.
These different frameworks produce different conclusions across the board. When the United States looks at Russia, China, or Iran, it sees adversaries probing for advantage and testing enforcement over time. When many European governments look at the same actors, they see risks to be managed, delayed, or compartmentalized in order to preserve domestic stability and political cohesion. Agreement on who the adversaries are fails to translate into agreement on what confrontation requires.
Political constraints reinforce this divergence. In Europe, aging populations, coalition politics, and deeply embedded welfare commitments push leaders toward minimizing visible cost and escalation. In the United States, global commitments, industrial competition, and expectations of primacy force prioritization, trade-offs, and explicit burden calculations. These pressures shape not only policy outcomes but the way threats are conceptualized."
https://www.zinebriboua.com/p/babel-at-davos-why-the-transatlantic
23. This was a great episode this week and lots of good takes on OpenAI ads & D-RAM chips and learning from Matt Damon & Ben Affleck.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVANS_4McfM
24. So instructive: learning the art and science of venture investing from two masters of the game. Not the nicest people but super smart.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBf1LZbk2Pk
25. "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/inbox/post/185411259
26. "With Greenland suddenly back in the headlines, it feels like the perfect moment to revisit one of the most extraordinary men ever to set foot on its frozen terrain: Peter Freuchen. Towering at 6’7” in stature and even larger in spirit, Freuchen was not merely an explorer, he was a force of nature. He lived among the Inuit, crossed vast ice fields by dog sled, fought fascism, survived conditions that should have killed him many times over, and once famously saved his own life by carving a dagger from frozen feces.
Freuchen’s story reads less like a biography and more like an epic novel. It is equal parts survival tale, political thriller, and travelogue of a lost age of exploration. Yet every astonishing detail is true. This is the story of the man who helped map Greenland, defied death, and lived with a courage that few could imagine."
https://thewaysofagentleman.substack.com/p/forged-in-ice-the-man-who-became
27. Some of the best takes on Silicon Valley news and topics. I appreciate all the insights that come out from their conversations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_ZpvRjB9JI
28. "I anticipate that we will see the rapid development of defensive swarms in the not-too-distant future. Just as naval ships no longer protect themselves with heavy armor and point defenses, but instead distribute air, missile, and subsurface defenses among several escort vessels, it is easier for air and ground platforms to disaggregate their own defenses.
Drone swarms can be used to protect armored vehicles, radar sites, and any number of other high-value targets. The rate at which this is done may well determine how soon mobility is restored to the battlefield."
https://dispatch.bazaarofwar.com/p/swarms-packs-and-stigmergy-animal
29. "In the Mid-2020s, we have some of the same trends: 1) tech taking up more and more value, 2) people becoming more location independent - making it easier for tax havens to compete for citizens, 3) larger K-shape division of the haves and have nots, 4) massive need for more infrastructure and 5) encryption/privacy.
Tech Taking More Value: Simplistically, all the low end paper pushing or “if then” statement jobs will be replaced by AI. An example of “If Then” is booking a flight. Just put in the parameters and have it find the best flight at the lowest cost.
Similarly, this hits low-end white collar positions. Having a lawyer find and replace the same document and just change the name? Going to have even more wage compression. In the 1990s it was cool to be a rich lawyer in Chicago, in the mid 2020s, unless you’re at a top firm… pain
All that value gets transferred. Similar to energy. It has to go somewhere and that somewhere is tech as it replaces them.
Mega companies have the best information, this means betting against the monopolies is a bit foolish. How do you expect to create a high quality Artificial General Intelligence with bad info? Exactly."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/investing-in-technology-2026-version
30. "A lot of people have become familiar with Venezuela over the past few weeks, since Operation Absolute Resolve, in which the United States captured Maduro and shipped him to Brooklyn. Many are trying to understand the implications for Venezuela, the region, and the United States. I’ve seen emotions from my friends and online bubbles that range from full blown catharsis to a cynicism that nothing substantive has actually changed.
I’m excited about it. Operation Absolute Resolve has created more open and exciting possible outcomes for Venezuela than any other event in my eight years in the region.
That said, in order to reap the country’s full benefits, people need to get excited about the right thing.
Oil is the obvious prize. But it’s a complicated one. President Trump asserts that selling oil from Venezuela is “gonna make a lot of money,” and it is true that Venezuela’s 304B barrels of reserves are the world’s largest. Until recently, more than 80% of its oil exports went to China. Redirecting the flow of Venezuelan oil would hamper Chinese road building and cut off 50% of Cuba’s oil supply, while giving America cleaner access to (very heavy, harder to refine) oil. Realignment could be as big a geopolitical win as a financial windfall.
But oil isn’t the only prize in Venezuela. It’s not even the biggest.
We must rebuild and reopen Venezuela because it’s the most underpriced opportunity on Earth."
https://www.notboring.co/p/the-venezuela-opportunity
31. Trying to understand the complicated geopolitics of the Middle East. Saudi Arabia & MBS asserting themselves in alliance with Turkey & Pakistan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnhgnVm-peE
32. A good role model for young men and old men. From the military, intelligence services, private security, businessman and now tailor. Good conversation here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFCJzbUdrwo
33. "What proves far harder to replicate, and far more consequential, is the invisible layer: China’s manufacturing base. This is the part of the ecosystem that actually reshapes global supply chains, yet it remains the part most visitors never see and, in many cases, never think to see.
The concept of involution — roughly, competitive intensity that becomes self-destructive — captures something real but incomplete about Chinese manufacturing. Foreign visitors ask when margins will improve, assuming profitability is the primary goal. In the environment we saw, it isn’t. Endurance comes first. Margin expansion is earned later, once scale and position are secure and paired with groundbreaking innovation at irrefutable scale. CATL has achieved this combination. Huawei has as well. But these are rare winners.
China’s manufacturing system is optimized for survival under pressure, not comfort. That pressure shapes how companies think about success, risk, and reward.
The concern is legitimate. But it’s worth considering whether this perception is precisely what the sector intends to project. Manufacturing here is not a business where you sit back and collect profits. It is a relentless grind unless you are among the very top players, and the warning embedded in that reality may serve as its own barrier to entry."
https://ruima.substack.com/p/inside-chinas-real-advantage-manufacturing
34. "The tragedy of American power isn’t that it’s declining; it’s that it’s increasingly unserious. We still have the muscle, the money, and the moral case. What we lack is patience, humility, and the stamina for the boring part — asking “What happens next?” Until we relearn how to write second acts, every intervention will look the same: dazzling, destructive, and destined for a sequel no one asked for."
https://www.profgalloway.com/license-to-intervene/
35. "Do something UNIQUE. You want to be the only person who does what you do. Build a personal monopoly."
"Fewer emails. I send six emails every month (four free and two paid). Daily emails are not required, especially in professional services. People would much rather read something great once a week, than something mediocre every day."
The advice I would change from 2021 is on distribution. Back then I wrote:
"Use Twitter. Almost all successful newsletter authors use Twitter to promote their newsletter. It is a great way to get momentum and build true fans. Twitter, word of mouth, and earned media are best growth strategies IMO."
Twitter, now X, was a great platform to promote newsletters in 2021. That diminished after Elon Musk bought the platform and heavily demoted any links to Substack. Today, a Twitter presence helps growing a newsletter but is not as important.
Three points:
Niches have tremendous value.
It's much easier to monetise if you directly help people do their job better.
Having an extra distribution channel (e.g., LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube) helps when getting started."
36. "From New York to Beijing, London to Dubai, the world’s major cities display remarkable aesthetic convergence: glass towers, disciplined geometries, restrained interiors, and consumer products that speak the same visual language. This global unity of form is often dismissed as the bland residue of modernism, but it was not an accident. It was constructed by a previous generation of elites, people closer in spirit to today’s founders and industrialists than to their cultural critics. The visual language of the modern world did not assemble itself. It was designed.
The architecture and design we inhabit descend from a deliberate cultural project born in Germany in the early twentieth century. A group of artists, architects, industrialists, and educators realized that the machine age would not produce a coherent society on its own.
Industrial life would require a cultural elite capable of shaping the conditions of everyday life rather than merely adapting to them. The aesthetics of the world we now inhabit, whether or not they match the spirit of our century, are the distant aftershock of this German project."
https://letter.palladiummag.com/p/the-triumph-of-german-industrial-051
37. An excellent glimpse into what's up in Silicon Valley. And it is silly and fun and exciting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgwMFLjxQa0
38. "You should strive to be interesting because once your time is up you will not think back to the money left in your bank account or the litigation of your business underway, rather all the marvelous stories you’ve created, the friendships you’ve formed, the life you’ve lived that only 1 in a million get to live, and even then, you did it better than them. To be interesting is to have the world as you see fit.
There are zero rules to this man, he truly has it all. Any desire gets acted upon because he has the skills, network, and resources to do so. The women, the dopamine-sources, the culture, the history, the knowledge, the skills, the people, the food. You have had a slice of every thing the pie of life had to offer. You beat the game and did it with a smile on your face. That is why you should strive to be the interesting man."
https://www.rawmanifesto.com/p/how-to-be-an-interesting-man
39. Really good explanation of the battle for dominance in the Middle East. Incredibly complicated. Qatar was the original chaos agent, now it's the UAE.