Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads May 4th, 2025
“Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare.”― Angela Duckworth
"Everyone intends to do what they say they’ll do. But as you progress towards your goals, you hit friction — you get tired, you get distracted, you re-prioritize — and then the whole thing unravels. The key to success is what you do after you realize it might not happen.
And here’s the rule I’ve learned:
There are two ways to do what you say you’re going to do:
1. Do it, or
2. Don’t say it."
https://newsletter.sanjaysays.co/p/you-dont-have-to-be-amazing
2. "As in private equity, we should start to expect secondaries to become a permanent and significant part of venture capital liquidity for both employees of companies and also investors.
With the target ARR required to achieve an IPO growing from $80m in 2008 to approximately $250m today, secondaries will become a permanent fixture in venture capital markets.
It’s not just a temporary anomaly, but a structural evolution in how venture capital will function and ultimately evolve to look a bit more like private equity."
https://tomtunguz.com/the-exit-path-of-2024/
3. "Today, the stakes are also critical. The global security environment is undergoing seismic shifts, with threats evolving at a speed and scale unseen since the Cold War. Yet, unlike the industrial mobilization of the past, the modern battlefield is defined not only by hardware but also by the ability to leverage software–systems capable of adapting at speed and precision, processing vast amounts of data and enabling real-time decision-making."
4. "The future of Haiti is bleak. The Haitian police and the roughly 1,000 Kenyan policemen assisting them don’t seem to have the numbers or equipment to make a huge difference. For anything to change, Haiti and the international community are going to have to start looking at this as a military problem, not a police problem.
Nowhere in Haiti is safe; the citizens live in perpetual terror. The police and Kenyans have not established any sort of fortified perimeter in the capital where citizens can feel safe. They seem to be interested only in conducting limited operations with varying levels of success and acting mostly as a reactive force. This conflict is not going to end anytime soon if something major doesn’t change."
https://www.globalhitman.com/p/haitis-cartel-and-american-fueled
5. "With billionaires biohacking themselves amid an insurgent wellness boom, growing interest around exercises for longevity proves more and more of us are paying attention to our health than ever before.
You may not be motivated entirely by a desire to improve your lifespan, but there’s no denying that exercise is the key to remaining mobile, disease free, and independent for longer."
https://www.gq.com/story/exercises-for-longevity
6. "One of the biggest unlocks in my life has been recognizing that being a man means adding surplus value: creating more tax revenue than I absorb, listening to more complaints than I make, noticing people’s lives, providing more (net) care and love. I have run firms my whole life, and I’ve always aimed to provide the minimum compensation required such that employees won’t leave. No more.
BTW, this is how nearly all companies work, optimizing for profits. This is a result of the incentive system in a capitalist society, as it increases the enterprise value (profits) of the firm — and the likelihood the business survives. Our entire society now prays at the altar of shareholder value, prioritizing them over every other stakeholder … dramatically. If you are blessed with a company that’s doing well, why wouldn’t you pay more than you need to? Do you love your kids, community, and country just enough that they don’t abandon you?
One of the most rewarding things about running a firm is it mimics some of the m/paternal feelings of reward you get from protecting and providing for your offspring. I’ve worked hard, I’m talented, and I made the genius decision to be born in America. The result is I’ve got a firm that’s exceptionally profitable. One of the (many) rewards of that is I get to pay people more than I need to. It feels great."
https://www.profgalloway.com/project-2028-wages/
7. "Affleck first became widely known with 1997’s Good Will Hunting, which he wrote and starred in alongside his friend Matt Damon. He is nearing his 30th uninterrupted year in the spotlight, which has given him a career and two Academy Awards, and also a level of tabloid scrutiny that in its consistency and vehemence is almost unmatched. “Some people like to follow the soap opera,” Affleck says. “And that soap opera is actually independent of a movie you might make or be in. They’re interested in just the general soap opera and you became a character in that soap opera. You don’t write it, you don’t direct it, you don’t even know you’re in it, but you are.”
To this day, he still meets people who assume he is his dim, rock-breaking character from Good Will Hunting, a movie that cast Damon in the genius role (“Matt’s math skills, I am pretty sure, are very far from genius level”), or the attention-plagued playboy that was his public role in the first decade of this century.
In reality, Affleck is 52, a twice-divorced father of three who commutes to an office most days. “I’m a middle-aged guy,” he says, not unhappily. Despite the comeback narrative that journalists still reference, week to week and year to year, he has long been ensconced in the very top levels of Hollywood as a leading man (in the lobby of Artists Equity there is, among other things, Affleck’s old Batman suit) and, more recently, an executive. Affleck founded Artists Equity, which he runs with Damon and Gerry Cardinale, a little over two years ago, with the idea of wresting some control back from the notoriously opaque and complex studio financing system."
https://www.gq.com/story/inside-ben-afflecks-plan-to-remake-hollywood
8. Inspiring and fun interview with Palmer Luckey.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-iUvZ-8Q3k
9. Fun discussion on sales. Lots of interesting thoughts on sales.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNfbomeXVtU&t=101s
10. Ian Bremmer is always direct & clear when discussing geopolitics. Important conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjquBYqYbcc
11. "Clausewitz’ exhortation to focus on the enemy’s destruction is therefore only half the formula for victory; the other is to exploit that destruction to prevent force regeneration. This cannot usually be done in a single battle as at Austerlitz, and there are rarely any shortcuts—more often, it entails the capture of political centers, occupation of territory, destruction of armaments, etc.
In Saladin’s case, it would have entailed reducing every port through which reinforcements arrived. The difference between attrition and other forms of warfare does not lie in total quantity of destruction, after all, but in the exploitation of those brief windows of opportunity."
https://dispatch.bazaarofwar.com/p/notes-on-annihilation
12. "The lesson of the Bellum Sociale is that successful peoples, companies, or individuals can reach a point where they transcend their original condition and become larger than themselves—at which point they must reinvent themselves to reach greater horizons or risk fading into irrelevance or persihing.
Since president Trump won his second term and talk of tariffs and the need for U.S. allies to take more responsibility for their own security began to get serious, the themes of the Bellum Sociale resonate with the present.
America now plays the role of Rome, exuding a sense of superiority, while its allies, while its vassals respond with contempt. Europeans and Canadians gesture and beat their chests, threatening to assert their sovereignty, while at the same time lamenting any barrier to access to the American market or any downgrading of protection under the American security umbrella.
In the end, the only durable solution was an unequal yet organic and mutually recognized hierarchy. Perhaps, someday, something similar will emerge between America and the rest of the West."
https://www.businessofpower.com/p/the-war-of-the-allies
13. Important life lessons for men. So very obvious. The world is cruel to poor, emotional and weak men + Location of where you live in your life matters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0WhCAK-y90
14. Some snapshots of business insight from billionaires. Curiosity and Philosophy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQ-MuaD4txA
15. "Herein lies the crux of my argument.
It’s difficult to sell the idea to your people that they should become poorer and give up more of their autonomy and freedoms to create an army that has no purpose.
However, it’s much easier to get them to accept the creation of said army, if you make them live in fear of a threat you know will never come.
Frightened subjects are compliant subjects."
https://anticitizen.com/p/threats-lies-disinformation
16. Very clearly the USA does NOT have a strategy. The CCP definitely does and that is why they have an edge.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4COv3rcvJg
17. “Taiwan’s proximity to China gives the PRC the ability to apply serious mass in terms of firepower from both ballistic and cruise missiles, in addition to the cheaper drone systems that [can] be used to strike or saturate air defenses,” he wrote to Tectonic.
“Some war games the Marines ran showed beach defenders taking 30% casualties if swarming munitions were used against them,” he added.
To Phillips-Levine, this makes it pretty clear where the US should invest its budget in the next few years: in cheap, attritable drones and c-UAS systems that can take out their Chinese counterparts. It’s expensive—and also silly—to shoot down a drone with a multi-million dollar cruise missile, he said."
https://www.tectonicdefense.com/how-scary-is-chinas-military-really/
18. Lots of tips on building a personal brand and doing sales.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wllHVnBSG8M&t=1463s
19. "We cannot take for granted that America has the biggest economy, the strongest currency, the most robust alliances, and the best military in the world and will always be that way. It would be unwise to believe these achievements are now permanent or owed to us in perpetuity because we are the United States of America, and because of that, we deserve the best circumstances.
Our leaders cannot become complacent or reckless in the face of our many challenges in 2025.
Our alliances across continents are getting more complicated due to various factors. And yet, they must be maintained, because an America that goes at it alone cannot win in this world. After all, it’s better to have difficult friends than to have no friends at all. Our adversaries are relentlessly challenging our commitment to our allies, and they are constantly trying to position themselves as welcoming arms in the face of a scenario in which America employs retreat and isolationism.
Our country maintains itself as a unique economic power, one where innovation continues to thrive, but that competitive advantage can slip away if our leaders pursue destructive, hubris-fueled policies. Europe is witnessing a devastating brain drain because its leaders have pursued overregulation, restrictive economic policies, and plenty of additional catastrophic social policies. America needs to remain the country where anyone and everyone can carve out a successful life and business without the government making it impossible for citizens to thrive."
https://www.dossier.today/p/american-hegemony-if-you-can-keep
20. "Trump believes that by bringing these manufacturing jobs back to America, he can give good jobs to the roughly 65% of the population who have no University degree, become militarily stronger because weapons and such will be produced in the quantities needed to face off against a peer or near-peer rival, and grow the economy above trend, e.g. at 3% real GDP growth.
There are some apparent issues with this plan. Prices will fall if China and others do not have dollars to prop up the treasury and stock market. Scott Bessent, US Treasury Secretary, needs buyers for the gargantuan amount of debt that must be rolled over and for the persistent federal deficits out into the future. His plan is to lower the deficit to 3% from roughly 7% by 2028. The second issue is that capital gains taxes from a rising stock market are the marginal revenue driver for the government. When rich folks aren’t making money slinging stonks, the deficit grows.
Trump didn’t campaign on a platform to cease military spending or cut entitlement benefits like healthcare and social security. He campaigned on a platform of growth and elimination of fraudulent spending. Therefore, he needs capital gains tax revenue, even though it's rich people who own all the stocks, and on average, they didn’t vote for him in 2024.
Even if US stocks continue falling in reaction to tariffs, a collapse in earnings expectations, and or foreigner demand waning, I am confident that the odds favor Bitcoin continuing to climb higher.
Cognizant of the good and bad, Maelstrom is deploying capital cautiously. We use no leverage, and we buy in small clips relative to the size of our total portfolio. When the market goes up, I want to wish my size was bigger, but I'm thankful it's not when the market trades lower. We have been buying Bitcoin and shitcoins at all levels between $90,000 to $76,500. The pace of capital deployment will quicken or slacken depending on the accuracy of my predictions.
I still believe Bitcoin can hit $250,000 by year-end because now that the BBC has put Powell in his place, the Fed will flood the market with dollars. That allows Xi Jinping to instruct the PBOC to stop tightening monetary conditions onshore to defend the dollar-yuan exchange rate, which increases the net quantity of yuan. And finally, Germany decided to build an army again paid for with printed euros and every other European nation must respond by building their own army with printed euros because they are afraid of a 1939 Remix to Ignition."
https://cryptohayes.substack.com/p/the-bbc
21. "Job = exchange time for money with $/hour pay out. Career = performance based. Business = makes money in your sleep.
Now the majority here probably enter into a career. Based on the above you can see clearly that the best role is now Sales. Second best is Tech. Distant third is Wall St.
The only reason to choose Tech over Sales or Wall St over Sales is *if* you are certain you will be 100x better at that task. In that case you have to go to your talent/skillset.
Sales is Best: Sales is measurable. You will not have Robo calls for buying $100,000 items. No sales team in India is going to call up the CEO of F500 companies. Not happening. Not today, not any time soon in the future.
Also. Sales requires *less* hours. If you’re a handsome man or beautiful woman, sales will come easier and you’ll work 1/2 the hours of a banker. For the same pay and more time to build your own business (hilariously, you will need to learn online sales anyway so your job already partially prepares you for escaping the cube)"
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/ai-proofing-your-present-and-future
22. Fascinating conversation on China and its technological and economic rise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnjnXPnbmkE&t=1423s
23. Live like a King in Ubud. Ubud was a magical experience for me back in 2019, look forward to going back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsac3eaUXhc&t=3s
24. "America can no longer afford to fake resilience. Infrastructure not designed to operate during conflict is ultimately a threat to our national security. The hour is late—but it’s not too late to transform America's vulnerabilities into genuine resilience, safeguarding our prosperity, security, and freedom."
https://steinman.substack.com/p/americas-industrial-systems-are-sitting
25. "We are living through a dangerous return of the asshole strongman.
Across the globe, disenfranchised people—failed by democratic systems that didn’t deliver care or opportunity—are handing power to egomaniacs and fakers.
And it’s not just governments.
We’re doing it in the private sector too.
Too many investors are back to chasing the high-ego, low-empathy founder.
We’re throwing around phrases like founder-mode.
I keep hearing leaders wrestle with this false choice:
“Lead with heart” or “be in founder mode.”
Some in Silicon Valley are once gain glamorizing high-ego micromanagement as if it’s real founder work.
It’s not."
https://www.mattmunson.me/founder-mode/
26. The Philosopher king of Silicon Valley. Lots of thought provoking ideas and thoughts here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyfUysrNaco&t=5547s
27. The business of defense. This was an insight dense conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_NMYEvR6jI
28. BG2: Best show in tech. This week was great: Liberation Day, Tariffs, US v China Open Source, OpenAI, $CRWV, TikTok
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0DO0tP06eQ&t=1385s
29. "While new tariffs primarily threaten startup revenue through market uncertainty rather than direct costs, the drive for efficiency in response may accelerate AI adoption, aligning with optimistic long-term growth forecasts for the tech sector."
https://tomtunguz.com/tariffs-startups/
30. "Like it or not, Americans largely hold the current administration responsible for current economic conditions, and the economy is often the single most important item on the priorities list for Americans. This carries its own set of less-than-ideal incentives, given that it limits the demand to fix long-term problems. Nonetheless, it’s the political reality we face.
Given that Congress seems determined to have a limited impact on policy, the midterms will reflect almost solely on the Trump Administration."
https://www.dossier.today/p/the-tariff-debate-will-be-decided
31. The latest on what's up in Silicon Valley. Tesla, AI & the Deel spy games.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmuRI7Uhtmk
32. "My recommendation for entrepreneurs is to sign at least 10—if not more—unaffiliated customers and spend a tremendous amount of time with them, either in person or over a Zoom call. Talk to the customers and learn every minute detail possible about why they bought the product, how they use it, and what value they derive from it. Choosing a market, a vertical, or even criteria for the ideal customer is a critical step in an entrepreneur’s journey and should not be taken lightly."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/04/05/market-a-or-b-for-a-startup/
33. I detest Tucker Carlson but this is a great interview with Treasury Secretary Bessent.
Bessent is pretty smart & diplomatic. Good to understand his perspective & plans for the future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLnX1SQfgJI&t=1897s
34. This is good fun and informative: David Senra. Great founders are in it forever and in the details. Hardcore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ypkGwQbTho
35. "Drones have made the air littorals too lethal to ignore and the mission to gain and maintain air littoral superiority demands localized command and decentralized control that is intrinsically linked to the ground commander and their fielded forces.
The Army has work to do because the adversary gets a vote, and technology nor time stands still—especially below that coordination altitude."