Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Nov 9th, 2025

“Great things come from hard work and perseverance. No excuses.”-- Kobe Bryant

1. Environment matters. Location and Flowmaxxing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGoylkLyy3U

2. "We’ve noticed that people are slowly cutting back on discretionary spending and reducing overhead. This is probably due to a combination of: 1) fear of AI taking their jobs and 2) general frustration with prices. If you try to go out to eat, even a lower quality place is going to be $20. A Large latte in some places is approaching $10 (with a minimum close to $7.50!). 

What Does this Mean: Adopt tech as fast as possible. The brutal thing about Tech is that is always wins. In an expanding market, people use Tech to sell more and create more profit margins. In a declining market, people use Tech to reduce overhead and improve cash flows. 

As you can see, in an up market or a down market people are using more tech. Name a situation in which you’re going to spend less time using technology? That’s right… when you retire and that’s about it."

https://bowtiedbull.io/p/fed-crypto-and-consumer-demand-updates

3. "In the most positive version of the above, I think we want to see a world where AI enables fewer people to produce more. As such, it would be wonderful if AI-native startups need far fewer employees to build. Defensibility will be achieved through killer features and technologies, not by the simple strength of distribution and monopoly. (We want more new things, not the same old big guys to rule the next generation).

We’d like for all these new technologies to make startups even cheaper to build. Ideally, the Bay Area will remain the central tech hub. Even if people can create companies anywhere, they'll still move to San Francisco to tap into the expertise and capital. And of course venture capital will evolve to figure out a way to make money out of the whole thing :) I hope that's right.

But you could also make plausible arguments in the opposite direction for each of these. The biggest AI winners might be those with massive data centers, access to tons of data, and lots of compute. This implies centralization, where the big get bigger, creating an anti-startup world. Alternatively, AI could be an amazing feature set that doesn't actually help much with marketing and distribution. Incumbents could slowly convert their pre-AI products into AI-native feature sets, eventually outcompeting startups.

As smart folks I know have said, the question is: “Will incumbents get innovation first? Or startups get distribution first?” Incumbents might win."

https://andrewchen.substack.com/p/ai-will-change-how-we-build-startups

4. "I never understood why so much time was wasted on the 2024 debt restructuring as in my mind it did not touch the sides in terms of the numbers for ensuring Ukraine’s victory - a $10 billion financing contribution over a three years period versus the $300 billion plus actual financing need over this period. The only way to ensure Ukraine’s victory, and Ukraine’s long term debt sustainability, was to ensure a financing envelop to deliver a victory - and that is only possible with use of the $330 billion in CBR assets.

So all the effort on the 2024 debt restructuring would have been better put on ensuring that immobilised CBR assets were frozen, seized and allocated to Ukraine via Victory Bonds, sovereign wealth style structure. I spoke out against this at the time, but was ignored. Actually we have now wasted three and half years doing near enough nothing on the CBR assets front from their first immobilisation in April 2022. This is scandalous.

The result has been the war has gone on far longer than should have been the case if Ukraine had been properly funded, and hundreds of thousands more deaths have resulted. Meanwhile, I think the fact that Western tax payer money, not Russian tax payer money has been used instead to fund Ukraine has been a gift to the far right, populists in Western democracies. Trump et al has used this as a rod to beat their opponents. Western leaders are indeed idiots for not already having utilised Russian tax payer money to fund Ukraine’s defence."

https://timothyash.substack.com/p/ukraine-v-for-victory-bond

5. "This story matters to everyone for three interconnected reasons. First, electricity demand is rising sharply as artificial intelligence and electrification reshape industrial systems. Second, reducing dependence on coal, oil, and gas for power generation has become both an environmental and strategic imperative. Third, today's fragmented and unstable world drives every nation towards resilience and reduced dependency, where nuclear energy offers a path to energy sovereignty.

There's also a deeper current running through contemporary debates about industrial capability and abundance. Many observers believe the West has abandoned its engineering culture to China, leaving both America and Europe unable to compete in a world where energy infrastructure and manufacturing capacity determine prosperity and security more than software and services. Nuclear power sits at the heart of this challenge—a technology that demands both engineering excellence and institutional coordination at scales that few nations have mastered.

France's programme succeeded not through technological breakthrough but through institutional design and engineering excellence. The country built a system that could execute complex, long-term projects whilst maintaining broad political support across changing governments. Understanding how France achieved this offers lessons that extend far beyond nuclear energy to any large-scale ambitious project powered by technology—from rebuilding manufacturing capacity to developing advanced infrastructure to coordinating national responses to technological change."

https://www.driftsignal.com/p/the-secret-history-of-frances-civil

6. One of the smarter guys in the Trump admin who actually understands the world and tech. His book "The Wires of War" is a must read.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIQjOCNidb0

7. "If you want to win, go faster. If in doubt and uncertain, go faster. If you want to make $1B dollars, go faster. If you want to change the world, go faster.

Whether you’re founding a startup or investing in them as venture capitalist, you’re in a ruthless competition with the rest of the world. You’re competing to create and capture $1B for yourself and your partners & employees, and that means defeating all the other teams of people who are gunning for that exact same prize.

I predict the % of people who are able to compete to be elite will be smaller and smaller, but the competition will be fiercer and fiercer. It’ll be a game of steeper and steeper power laws as each elite player has more and more leverage with AI tools empowering them."

https://www.geoffreywoo.com/go-faster/

8. Lots of interesting thoughts on investing during the AI age from an investing legend.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-yb87UDjvY

9. Geography's role in global affairs. Fascinating.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4sFWSyya4E

10. Always mind blowing. Plenty of insights from Balaji Srinivasan as usual. Wide ranging discussion on AI, Crypto, Gold and Biotech + Geopolitics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJ_S6S7-z5E

11. "The corporate role isn't dying in some dramatic collapse. It's dying like religion died for many people—slowly, through diminishing belief rather than disappearing churches.

The structures remain. The offices still gleam. The meetings still happen. The emails still flow. But the faith that this activity means something, that it's building towards something worthwhile, that it justifies the life hours it consumes—that faith is evaporating.

What replaces it isn't clear yet. Maybe it's this parallel economy of people using corporate jobs as platforms. Maybe it's something we haven't seen yet. But the transition period—where we all pretend to believe in something we know is hollow—is unsustainable.

The most honest person I've met recently was a VP at a tech company who told me: "I manage a team of twelve people who create documents for other teams who create documents for senior leadership who don't read documents. I make £150k a year. It's completely absurd, and I'm riding it as long as I can while building something real on the side."

https://thestillwandering.substack.com/p/the-death-of-the-corporate-job

12. Always interesting. Zeehan’s blindspot is technology so we will see.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucjOgpSrER0

13. This is an interesting alt-take for global macro. But this is worth watching as he has non-mainstream views which are valuable for your own investment thesis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR8ozUY5I_s

14. "Contemporary political cultures in western nations are not well informed about war and its consequences. The past thirty years, described by some as the long peace, has seen the Cold War generation of political leaders and staffers move on and be replaced by a new generation. This new generation, seduced by the economic growth and increased globalisation have largely come to believe that large-scale war in the Pacific is not possible in the 21st century, regardless of the lessons of Ukraine.

A final lesson for political leaders from the Pacific War is about will. 

The key lesson is that no one will help a nation that doesn’t demonstrate the will to defend itself. Australia stepped up to the challenge between 1941 and 1945. This is an essential lesson about will, and one that politicians everywhere today must learn. There are many dimensions to this demonstration of will. Ultimately it is about building national resilience in all its forms.

The level of complacency in modern Australia, and governments unwillingness to tackle such complacency, provides few insights into whether we possess the will to defend ourselves in the modern era. This year’s Lowy Poll found that just 52% of Australians surveyed answered with an unequivocal “yes” when asked if they would defend Australia."

https://mickryan.substack.com/p/the-pacific-war-must-inform-modern

15. "I thought Jeromin Zettelmeyer, Bruegel’s director, framed Europe’s predicament well when he asked whether a Europe of herbivores could survive in a world dominated by carnivores.

In other word, could a Europe whose own internal arrangements are deeply embedded in multilateralism, international law and the rules-based order play a role in an increasingly lawless world based around hard power?"

https://nixons.substack.com/p/europes-century-of-humiliation

16. "The adoption of AI avatars points to a long term transformation in Japan’s convenience retail industry. By offsetting limited labor supply and immigration restrictions with digital and robotic tools, companies aim to maintain service levels while improving efficiency. For Seven-Eleven and its competitors, the success of these trials could determine how convenience stores operate in the coming decade."

https://www.tokyoscope.blog/p/7-eleven-japan-bets-on-ai-avatars

17. "All of which brings us to perhaps the most interesting country on the map: Brazil. War with Venezuela, clashes with the cartels of Mexico and Colombia, and other skirmishes might well be the warm-up act for the biggest fight of them all. If the US is truly in the midst of World War III with the BRICS countries and is staking its claim in and around its backyard, is a full-blown conflict with the “B” of BRICS out of the question? After all, Brazil is the only BRICS member in the entire Western Hemisphere—a beachhead for America’s main geopolitical opponents.

Trump did not name Brazil among the countries lost to “deepest, darkest China”—perhaps because he has no intention of losing it…"

https://newsletter.doomberg.com/p/mosaic-theory

18. "You want to be liquid. Liquid investments are better since you can’t control the human variables particularly well. 

While you can buy your own property (lowers cost of living, allows you to choose the sub-community), it’s best to avoid easily confiscated assets. 

In 2025, you want to be portable. Income? Online.

Investments? Liquid crypto, stocks, etc. 

Accounts? Spread out to avoid concentration risk. So on and so forth. 

If you’ve been following us a while you should have separate accounts interacting with each investment class. One bank linked to crypto. One bank linked to your wifi/online biz. One bank linked to your W-2 (if you have one) and mortgage/tradfi system related items.

General Trend More of Same: Both parties are going to prefer printing and deferring pain. This is pretty much a lock and even more so now. If you have this much animosity between the two parties, neither is interested in creating economic turmoil. If things get ugly, be near certain that the helicopter money comes flying in.

Private Security Boom: This won’t solve everything but the wealthy will do what they can. Musk, Trump etc will have even more money spent on security. The deep irony of security personnel? That’s also a risk in and of itself. 

We’ll tell all of you the same thing. You want to be rich, you do not want to be famous or well known. Make it first, then decide if you care about the opinion of the general population. You’ll find that you have no interest in divulging anything to them in the first place."

https://bowtiedbull.io/p/economic-update-and-politics-is-the

19. "The advent of the Trump presidency, and its pulling of financial support for Ukraine, and the realisation that the war in Ukraine will go on long into the future, has allowed the realisation to dawn in Europe, that Ukraine is underfunded. The bill is around $100 billion a year just to keep Ukraine in the war, likely nearer to $150 billion for Ukraine to have a chance of winning, or drawing the war to an early end.

The US was covering near 40% of this total under Biden, but now Europe plus Japan, Canada et al is having to stump up the full nine yards, or $100 billion pa given Trump has moved from giving to taking money to/from Ukraine. Given Europe’s fiscal woes, it’s hard to see national governments stumping up much more money for Ukraine, hence the realisation that CBR assets have to be utilised."

https://timothyash.substack.com/p/cbr-assets-have-to-be-seized-for

20. Always a fun and educational AMA with polymath Tim Ferriss.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xw52eGZYd6Q

21. Lots of interesting takes from folks on the edge of the internet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQm045OOzFk

22. Monroe Doctrine 2.0? Fascinating geopolitical conversation here. The war on Cartels are about oil, not drugs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOnxH1hn3Gk

23. Lots of insights and nuggets here on B2B from folks on the frontline.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5vRmsMS3ms&t=2360s

24. "Sure, the longevity craze might look ridiculous from the outside at times. But it’s ridiculous with benefits. A Patek Philippe watch tells you the time, but an Apple Watch tells you your heart rate, sleep score, and how much stress you’re under. 

At some point in my thirties, I realized health is the best ROI. Lose it and you’re only half-present at home, at work, and everywhere in between. I’d take a Prenuvo scan over another luxury purchase any day. Health compounds; things depreciate.

But like my friend who found a middle ground, I’ve come to see that joy matters too. Sometimes longevity means the glass of wine, the night out, the moment that keeps you human."

https://www.newinternet.tech/p/the-new-status-game-longevity

25. Especially good discussion this week on the zeitgeist of Silicon Valley right now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHDm3MQlv7w

26. "That's the thing with gold rushes. The rush destroys the gold.

Thirteen years in SF taught me one thing: compound advantages only work if you stick around. Through Uber for X. Through crypto winter. Through COVID. Tourists chase cycles. Locals build through them.

You spot tourists instantly. Twenty coffee meetings their first week. Month-to-month rentals at double the price. Creating the exact bidding war they're losing. Asking if SF is "safe" again, as if crime was why they left.

Everyone claims they're missionaries, not mercenaries. But missionaries don't flee when offerings dry up."

https://writing.nikunjk.com/p/stop-being-a-tourist

27. "It seems obvious but it's worth saying. Going to parties and events is a powerful way to:

Expand your network

Find a romantic partner

Get out of a rut

Live a more interesting life"

https://www.jasonshen.com/277/

28. "It's important to note, that by themselves political assassination and terrorism don’t overthrow the established elites (at least, I can’t think of any examples). An assassination of the state ruler may serve as a triggering event for a revolution or an onset of civil war, but it still requires a well-organized and committed counter-elite party. The failure of Alexander Ulyanov and ultimate success of his younger brother illustrate this principle perfectly.

The significance in the rising frequency of such instability “micro-events” is that they signal that something is deeply broken within the social system in which they happen. I tried to draw attention to the rising frequency of shooting rampages back in 2008."

https://peterturchin.substack.com/p/an-eruption-of-assassinations

29. "There’s no right or wrong answer when it comes to raising institutional capital. The best approach for an entrepreneur is to be intentional and consider personal and team goals and aspirations.

Some want to swing for the fences and build the biggest company possible. Others want to balance lifestyle, flexibility, and control.

The next time an entrepreneur says they’re going to raise institutional capital, encourage them to carefully enumerate the pros and cons, and make sure the decision is thoughtful."

https://davidcummings.org/2025/09/13/raise-institutional-capital-or-make-do-without/

30. "Simple enough. But if one looks beyond the bounds of individual wars to historical patterns of conflict, this relationship between the political and geographic becomes more complicated. Whatever territorial concerns animate a particular war, fighting tends to spread to wherever the two sides can hit each other. Certain theaters of operations may constitute primary objectives in their own right, useful avenues toward some larger objective, or mere secondary theater to bleed out the other side."

https://dispatch.bazaarofwar.com/p/theaters-of-operation-and-the-potential

31. "In 1971, President Nixon ended the dollar's convertibility to gold. This decision launched a fifteen-year transformation of global finance. Goldman Sachs recognised the opportunity early, building a block trading business that would become the foundation of its dominance.

Today, tokenisation represents another systemic reset. It enables investors to separate steady income from volatile gains, makes financial engineering accessible beyond investment banks, and embeds complex transactions directly into programmable code. The same forces that reshaped finance in the 1970s and 1980s are converging: regulatory change, technology, and structural innovation.

Michael Green, portfolio strategist at Simplify and a noted critic of passive investing, recently declared that “tokenization is starting to actually matter.” His assessment carries weight precisely because of his scepticism towards market fads. In a recent newsletter, he demonstrated how tokenisation could split a high-yield bond portfolio into two products: one delivering steady 10% returns, another capturing the remaining upside whilst bearing all volatility. Smart contracts handle what once required armies of lawyers, trustees, custodians, and accountants."

https://www.driftsignal.com/p/the-programmable-capital-revolution

32. "Is generative AI more like the former or the latter? Will it be the basis of many future industrial fortunes, or a net loser for the investment community as a whole, with a few zero-sum winners here and there?

There are ways to make money investing in the fruits of AI, but they will depend on assuming the latter—that it is once again a less propitious time for inventors and investors, that AI model builders and application companies will eventually compete each other into an oligopoly, and that the gains from AI will accrue not to its builders but to customers. A lot of the money pouring into AI is therefore being invested in the wrong places, and aside from a couple of lucky early investors, those who make money will be the ones with the foresight to get out early.

What the history of containerization suggests is that, if you aren’t already an investor in a model company, you shouldn’t bother. Sam Altman and a few other early movers may make a fortune, as McLean and Ludwig did. But the huge costs of building and running a model, coupled with intense competition, means there will, in the end, be only a few companies, each funded and owned by the largest tech companies. If you’re already an investor, congratulations: There will be consolidation, so you might get an exit.

Domain-specific models—like Cursor or Harvey—will be part of the consolidation. These are probably the most valuable models. But fine-tuning is relatively cheap, and there are big economies of scope. On the other hand, just as Google had to buy Invite Media in 2010 to figure out how to sell to ad agencies, domain-specific model companies that have earned the trust of their customers will be prime acquisition targets. And although it seems possible that models which generate things other than language—like Midjourney or Runway—might use their somewhat different architecture to carve out a separate technological path, the LLM companies have easily entered this space as well. Whether this applies to companies like Osmo remains to be seen."

https://joincolossus.com/article/ai-will-not-make-you-rich/

33. The untold history of money. It's really fascinating.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6n5T73jfeE&t=1806s

34. "Less than a year into Trump’s second term, we’ve lost many friends and much influence. With the president praising authoritarians and casting doubt on our mutual defense commitments, our allies can no longer count on us. Demolishing USAID didn’t save much money — at 0.3% of the federal budget, the agency created substantial soft power on the cheap — but it did tell the world’s developing nations to look elsewhere for leadership.

Meanwhile, Trump’s tariffs aren’t the crude tools of protectionism, but cudgels deployed in service of his id. (See: The 50% levy on Brazil for bringing criminal charges against former president Jair Bolsonaro for plotting a coup.) Since World War II, America has provided global security and economic stability, while serving as an (imperfect) vehicle to spread democracy and the rule of law. Under Trump, we’re an amoral chaos agent. Alienating allies weakens our position relative to China.

I often say the best way to predict the future is to make it. Right now, America isn’t making the future — it’s destroying the good will, influence, and leadership it’s been building since the end of World War II. As a former Chinese diplomat explained, “The U.S. under Trump is launching revolution after revolution. The Chinese know about revolutions, and we know that you better know what the consequences will be if you launch a revolution. I don’t think Trump is fully aware of the consequences of all these tremendous forces he’s unleashing around the world.”

The American century isn’t ending with a bang, but with tweets and a trade war. We built an empire in 80 years and are torching it in 8. Our edge was never the missile; it was the handshake. Restore alliances, or hand the 21st century to those who keep theirs."

https://www.profgalloway.com/own-goal/

35. "As World War II wound down, solving the minerals problem was a postwar priority. The U.S. and other powers built stockpiles and took other steps to guarantee supply. Yet the primary strategy was to use American power to guarantee open markets for minerals and secure trade routes. Minerals were just as “critical” to the world economy in the postwar period, but American power guaranteed their supply. The German “octopus” was replaced by a Western octopus—the network commodity traders based in New York, London, and Switzerland, all of whom depended on the U.S. financial system.

Now this has partially reversed. Western commodity traders’ power, at least when it comes to certain niche metals. Germany’s near-monopoly on tungsten smelting in the 1910s has been replaced by China’s monopoly on rare earth processing today. Konkel argues that “the Pax Americana was the resolution to the interwar raw materials problem.” 

So we shouldn’t be surprised that the demise of the Pax Americana has coincided with the re-emergence of the minerals dilemma."

https://chrismillersnewsletter.substack.com/p/the-critical-minerals-crisis-of-100

36. Russian economy will get hammered even more so by Ukraine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dk0HCJvCgrI

37. "I’ve seen it too many times — boards obsess over the wrong numbers, while the real path forward is in your hands.

Most SaaS advice is backwards. Everyone chases 120%+ NRR while missing massive distribution plays. But Zoom, Slack, Notion, Canva — and now Lovable — all scaled early with mediocre retention. They went wide before they went deep.

Sometimes distribution > retention. The trick is knowing when."

https://www.the-founders-corner.com/p/part-1-when-89-nrr-and-a-churn-issue