Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Oct 19th, 2025
“October is the fallen leaf, but it is also a wider horizon more clearly seen. It is the distant hills once more in sight, and the enduring constellations above them once again.” —Hal Borland
Another great discussion this week. Good takes on Silicon Valley topical subjects. Peak everything.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgPKPAqTi0w&list=PLI0_clHshGZctchZkfCXmz7SPyuBSOoq1
2. "The other main problem is the fantasy world in which many American policy-makers live: a natural product many would say of the New Age Californian belief that it you want something hard enough, you can have it. A generation ago, an anonymous and possible apocryphal official in the administration of Little Bush is supposed to have said “we’re an Empire now, we make our own reality.” This was an extraordinary statement to have made at any time, but was typical of the unthinking triumphalism of those days, and if it’s not literally true, it does reflect an attitude that many of us noticed then.
And if you think about it, who’s going to object to following in the footsteps of the Assyrians, the Persians, the Romans and the Ottomans, and having half the world bow down before them in worship? After all, few countries have populations that actively hate themselves (even if contempt for one’s country tends to be an affectation of western liberal intellectuals) nor populations which actively consider their country to be of no importance. Thus, praising one’s country and its importance is always good politics.
But here, it’s taken to psychopathic extremes. The Empire Delusion, or the Empire Syndrome, becomes dangerous when it leads to a serious overestimation of the actual strength and resources of the country, and its actual ability to influence events in the world. After all, reality itself often demands a look-in as well: the last twenty-five years have seen an unbroken series of defeats, disappointments and political and economic crises for this alleged Empire, most recently the scuttle from Afghanistan, and the failure in Ukraine. But then as with all large-scale delusions, apparent defeats are rapidly assimilated into assumed even-more-subtle master-plans that one day will put everything right."
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/the-war-was-the-easy-bit
3. The case for working in defensetech.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lA_16MW6Rfw&t=2s
4. The future of drone swarms and counter UAS.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ge1rYfuvEwg&t=6s
5. "Whether that’s upskilling in business, fitness, whatever it is… One of the best ways to fast track getting into circles with world class practitioners, is paying them for their expertise.
I don’t give a fuck about a rolex or supercar, most of the money I spend is going to be learning from the best in the world to accelerate my progress and stack skills.
Skills compound & stay with you for life.
At the very least, I hope this piece gave you a different perspective to the ones where people say you need to relentlessly chase what you want.
Build an ecosystem so that what you want… Comes directly to you organically."
https://www.lethalgentleman.com/p/how-to-design-a-lifestyle-where-opportunities
6. "The winning hire today isn’t the one who has done it before but, instead, the person who can figure it out first and fast. We are seeing a dramatic shift in what the best founders are looking for when we talk through key hires. Instead of prioritizing experience, the focus is on horsepower, hunger, and speed: the tinkerers who dive into new tools before the documentation is written, the marketers who sense a cultural shift and ride it, the builders who will ship fast and furiously."
https://paragraph.com/@rebeccakaden/hire-the-experimenters
7. This conversation came at the right time for me. Tai Lopez, not just a successful entrepreneur but also life coach. Lots of wisdom here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgn-EZLE6kc
8. "Customer value financing works like this: an investment company provides capital for sales and marketing efforts to acquire new customers. In exchange, the company receives a percentage of that new revenue until they are paid back, plus an equivalent of an interest rate.
It is a form of non-dilutive financing that is not debt. Instead, it is essentially buying the right to a percentage of new revenue generated until a formula representing the desired return on investment is reached. Unlike traditional revenue financing, it is not a loan against the entire business and it does not claim existing revenue."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/08/23/customer-value-financing-part-2/
9. "Sir Geoffroi de Charny’s life, his service, his death with the Oriflamme, and his words on chivalry secured his place as one of the greatest knights of France and Medieval history as a whole."
https://medievalscholar.substack.com/p/sir-geoffroi-de-charny-frances-knight
10. "Let me restate my hypothesis: Ukraine’s long-range strike operations reinforce that Russia cannot win this war.
Russia can only be handed a victory through a political process, which is why Putin is so desperate to convince the Trump administration about land transfers, to deny the presence of foreign troops in Ukraine and to influence Ukrainian foreign policy.
Nothing demonstrates this more than the increasingly dangerous (for Russia) long-range strike campaign being executed with precision, focus and discipline by Ukraine.
It is precise because the Ukrainian long-range attack systems employ a mix of indigenous and foreign intelligence and targeting assistance that ensures drones and missiles have the best chance of reaching and hitting their targets. It is focused because the Ukrainians are keeping a tight focus on just a few strategic classes of targets. And it is disciplined because despite the Russian focus on hitting civilian targets, Ukraine continues to avoid this practice as it has done throughout the war."
https://mickryan.substack.com/p/ukraine-is-striking-russia-harder
11. "If Ukraine were to possess a large arsenal of heavy missiles, perhaps 2,000 to 4,000 cruise and ballistic missiles, which could be launched within 24 to 48 hours of a Russian reinvasion to comprehensively disrupt and destroy Russia’s economic potential from the outset, it may independently convince Moscow that any future aggression is not worth the cost.
Of course, fielding a robust conventional countervalue deterrent is no easy task. Acquiring and maintaining a missile arsenal of that size costs money. Ukraine would also have to be able to safely store these missiles in peacetime while arranging for procedures to launch them on short notice. That’s operationally and logistically challenging. Still, Ukraine appears to have made the first step toward such a capability.
Russia is, of course, well aware of this and understands that a robust Ukrainian deep strike capability could create major problems for both ongoing and future plans. It can therefore be expected that Russian officials will soon insist that any peace agreement include Ukrainian disarmament and range restrictions in the missile domain.
Ukraine, however, would be ill-advised to accept such terms and should continue on its path toward becoming the most capable missile power in Europe."
https://missilematters.substack.com/p/the-flamingos-have-arrived-what-ukraines
12. Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Always wanted to visit it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6e0KVt8Dl6w
13. An interesting non-Western view on geopolitics & the future by a Singaporean business man and establishment elite.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tP7QksbJVQ
14. Fascinating discussion on mining-tech. Learned a bunch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q1EN7GXqzI
15. A disturbing discussion around the end of Pax Americana and decline of all of the powers, even China. Basically it's gonna be a chaotic mess over the next decade.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWsDHd143FM
16. Learning from Lovable, one of the fastest growing companies ever. Growing a business on hard mode.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkAWWgrr8aI
17. "I wanted to shift into a lighter, more hopeful subject – fashion. I’ve long believed that the fashion sector is a great source of signals about where the world economy is heading. That’s because fashion designers are artists and artists are, as the great poet Ezra Pound put it, “the antennae of the (human) race.” They show us the way into the future.
Maybe that’s what’s happening now. As Pound said in his award-winning Cantos, history is a cycle of cultural flourishing followed by decay and corruption, followed by cultural flourishing. He blamed interest rates (usury) for cultural and moral decay and searched for a new ethical economic order. Pound started his ode to the future by harkening back to the ancient past, through Homer’s Odyssey. Christopher Nolan’s new film of The Odyssey is imminent. Artists like Nolan are epic at foreseeing the future. Was Pound a fascist? A Nazi? A traitor? Yes. He also told us something about the future we are now in, where everybody seems to be accusing everybody else of being a Brown Shirt and a Nazi and a traitor. Pound went mad. The world is going mad today. He wrote, “I cannot make it cohere.” Many of us cannot make it cohere today either. We are in the midst of a philosophical brownout shi*storm.
It’s time to read some poetry and remember that brown shi* is fertilizer. I wonder what will grow out of these times. I don’t think we are toast or cooked. We are renewing our ideas. Our priorities. Our true beliefs. Here are some political poems to help us navigate our way to new ideas about how the world should look. That is the job of the artist – to turn imagination into reality, to turn shi*ty circumstances into art. We are all artists now. Maybe mad artists, but artists, nonetheless. Grab a drink. Squirrel yourself away. Snuggle up to Bowie’s beats. Read The Wasteland and The Cantos. Embrace the brown. Maybe art can help us avoid ending up in a madhouse."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/brownout-signals-art-in-a-world-gone
18. Important to understand the enemy's strategy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jmlix2NZ3M
19. "But something fundamental has changed.
Many of these processes can be automated, improved, & reimagined. It’s hard for anyone who has been trained for years to work one way & then be asked to do it differently.
Carol Dweck’s research on growth mindset has never been more relevant than it is today. Growth mindset developing a mastery through effort, new strategies & collaboration."
https://tomtunguz.com/what-will-you-reinvent-today/
20. "By contrast, digital sectors, like e-commerce and media, rapidly compounded, iterating in code, scaling on cloud and mobile, and sidestepping the frictions of steel, concrete, and regulation. For physical sectors to match that trajectory, we first need a bridge that truly connects bits to atoms.
That bridge is the electro‑industrial stack — the technologies that enable machines to behave like software: minerals and metals processed into advanced components, energy stored in batteries, electrons channeled by power electronics, force delivered by motors and actuators, all orchestrated by software running on high-performance compute.
This is the shift from software that merely summons a taxi to software that takes the wheel. Software ate the world. Now it will move it.
Critically, winning will require treating the stack as a single, integrated system, not a set of disconnected parts. Siloed thinking only shifts bottlenecks. And while it’s not the focus here, powering these technologies will also demand far more generation capacity. Meeting this challenge will take world-class talent, deep operational expertise, and coordinated policy across the value chain — anchored in the United States, and aligned with trusted allies."
https://ryanomics.com/p/the-electro-industrial-stack-will
21. "The point is that, as with other wars the U.S. has fought, it must not underestimate the risks or overestimate its interests. The U.S. has an interest in weakening Russia, but an effective intervention would be massive and vulnerable in several ways. This is why I say the U.S. must calibrate its national interest with the risks it incurs. From my point of view, the Biden-Trump strategy of supplying intelligence and weapons for Ukraine to bleed the Russians and wait for a negotiated end is the only viable strategy and the best way to pursue America’s national interest."
https://geopoliticalfutures.com/calibrating-capability-and-interest-in-ukraine/
22. "In Scheinfeld’s worldview, we live in a holographic simulation that was created by our higher selves as a life story to be experienced. The whole illusion, the whole Story, is powered by the infinite energy of the Author.
The coolest part of Busting Loose is that Scheinfeld says you can manipulate and use the infinite energy that your higher self used to create the simulation.
The book teaches a process that feels like emotional judo: when something in your life triggers you: an invoice, a stomach ache, a passive-aggressive email from a business partner, you focus on the emotion it causes. Not the problem. Not the story. Just the raw emotional texture of it.
Then you amplify the emotion. Kind of like wallowing in a pure swamp of feeling. Then imagine yourself drawing energy out of the illusion around you, like sipping juice from the Matrix through a crazy straw. The emotional energy eventually fades. Your shoulders drop. You’re a metaphysical ghostbuster!"
https://sanjaysays.substack.com/p/i-didnt-want-to-break-free-but-it
23. If you want to understand how the banking and global financial system actually works. This was illuminating.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9nSmSvV0K4
24. "[Countries outside the West are] very fertile territory intellectually, culturally, and ideologically [because of their] residual anti-American, anti-Western, and anti-imperial sentiments," says Stephen Hutchings, a professor of Russian Studies at the University of Manchester.
Russian propaganda, he argues, is also spread smartly: its content is calibrated to cater to specific audiences, even if it means adopting different ideological stances in different regions.
Ultimately, Prof Hutchings believes we should all be concerned about Russian state activities - particularly in the context of the future of the global world order and democracy.
He believes the West is taking its "eye off the ball" by cutting media funding and "leaving the field open to the likes of Russia Today."
"There's a lot to play for and a lot to lose… And Russia is winning ground - but the battle is not lost."
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2vr37yd4no
25. "Ukraine has the most advanced drone operations program today, followed by Russia, with the US and China far behind. Experts believe warfare has changed irrevocably, with the drone in the forefront of tactical battlefield changes. That is why Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on June 10th called for "Unleashing America's Drone Dominance." He foresaw a three point program. These were, First, to bolster US drone manufacturing. Second, Hegseth looked for a technological leapfrog" to arm US combat units with a variety of low cost drones and, Third, to improve training for the US military "as we expect to fight in future."
Hegseth's overall proposal, however, did not reform any sector sufficiently to obtain the end result he hoped to achieve. To do that, the US would need to adopt either the Ukrainian or Russian approach to supporting drone operations from the factory to the battlefield.
Both the Ukrainian model and the Russian one share some noteworthy similarities. Both aim at an efficient logistics system to deliver weapons to the battlefield where they are needed, both set up administrative systems to provide tactical information and set up feedback loops to continually adjust both tactics and product performance; and both offer specialized training focused on different drone types, such as FPV drones, unique drones like the Russian Lancet, and methods of intercepting drones. Both experiment aggressively with new tools to move forward literally anything that works, as rapidly as possible."
https://weapons.substack.com/p/the-us-needs-to-take-ukrainian-and
26. "Perhaps the greatest mistake we make when it comes to travel is that we only think of it as fun and relaxed; that it should be an escape. Emil Cioran’s favorite leisure activity was to travel by bicycle around France, exploring the countryside—always making sure to stop by the cemeteries he came across to meditate on death and the meaning of life. Nietzsche spent long stretches traveling through the Swiss Alps and northern Italy. His stays in Sils-Maria weren’t vacation but pilgrimage: he would walk the mountains to wrestle with his thoughts, shaping Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
Theodore Roosevelt lost his wife and mother on the same day, and he went to the Dakota Badlands where the harsh frontier rebuilt his toughness; later his River of Doubt expedition in the Amazon nearly killed him but served as a test of will. Herman Melville shipped out as a sailor not to see the world but to confront it, and his voyages through the Pacific islands became existential schooling that fueled Moby-Dick.
These examples showcase how travel can be therapeutic only if it serves a clear and noble purpose; these adventures wouldn’t be the same if they weren’t founded on a mission, project, or spiritual healing process. Mircea Eliade wrote that “reflections make you great, not experiences per se.”
https://vizi.substack.com/p/on-the-decline-of-travel
27. Fascinating conversation here from one of the most original thinkers in VC. Some different views on AI, Crypto, Biotech and Robotics. It's really good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzSbG6DL8CM&t=5480s
28. "If my thesis is correct and stablecoins are part and parcel of Pax Americana’s monetary policy to expand the use of the dollar, the empire will protect US tech giants from local regulator reprisals as they provide dollar banking services to the plebes. And there is nothing any of these governments can do about it. Assuming I got this right, what is the TAM of potential stablecoin deposits from the Global South? The most advanced bloc of countries in the Global South are the BRICS nations.[4] Let’s exclude China because it banned Western social media companies.
The question is what’s the best estimate of local currency bank deposits. I asked Perplexity, and it spat out $4 trillion. I know this might be controversial, but let’s add the Euro-poor-eans to this group that use the euro. I believe the euro is a dead garcon walking as Germany-first then France-first economic policies will splinter the currency union. With the coming capital controls, by the end of the decade the only thing a euro will be useful for is paying the cover charge at Berghain and the table minimum at Shellona. When we add Euro bank deposits of $16.74 trillion, the total comes close to ~$34 trillion up for grabs."
https://cryptohayes.substack.com/p/buffalo-bill
29. The rise of Crypto from one of the biggest winners in the space the last 5 years. Fascinating conversation. Big massive global macro impact here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSToBYLSSew
30. "AI is providing a new tailwind not just to the major infrastructure players but to vendors who supply software that are components of AI. Hyperscalers’ growth rates suggest the effect on some of these adjacent businesses could be dramatic."
https://tomtunguz.com/mdb-earnings-2025-08-27/
31. "From a behavioral science perspective, treats function as classical conditioning mechanisms. Like Pavlov's dogs associating bells with food, we've learned to pair neutral stimuli (difficult tasks, stressful appointments, mundane Mondays) with conditioned responses (lattes, lipsticks, luxury goods).
This learned behavior often begins in childhood. My immigrant parents rewarded academic achievements with small luxuries rather than verbal affirmation, creating a neural pathway between accomplishment and consumption that has shaped my adult reward system. I was neurochemically designed to do hard things followed by material rewards, thus, making me an effective economic instrument and corporate athlete.
But today's Treats Economy operates differently than traditional reward structures. We're witnessing what I call "compensatory consumption"—purchasing small luxuries to offset larger systemic failures. When homeownership feels impossible, we dress our Labubu dolls in designer outfits, living out aspirational fantasies through collectibles. When vacations become unaffordable, we reach for Louis Vuitton's $160 lipstick, echoing Leonard Lauder's famous "Lipstick Index" that correlates cosmetic sales with economic downturns."
https://bosefina.substack.com/p/the-treats-economy
32. The importance of energy in the race for AI & AGI. The critical & overlooked components in industrialization and civilization.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cDHx2_QbPE&t=4s
33. "At home, by every metric, Moscow’s economy is imploding. Though buoyed up by monthly gas and oil sales to India, China and Turkey, shipped by the ‘shadow fleet’ of around 1,400 tankers, whose murky ownership and inclination to turn off their transponders are essential in evading EU sanctions, most Russians are aware their economy is in dire straits.
According to Rosstat, Russia’s own Federal State Statistics Service, GDP has been hovering at one per cent for much of the year due to the deepening wartime mobilisation of industry. In
non-defence sectors, domestic output has slumped: throughout the first half of 2025, production of televisions and washing machines fell by 30 per cent, footwear by 29 per cent and refrigerators by 12 per cent. Huge imports of white goods from China have not reached the Russian public, as the microchips that operate them have been stripped out and repurposed for drones that would be otherwise inoperable due to sanctions. Car production has plunged by 28 per cent, while truck output plummeted by 40 per cent. The building materials sector, particularly of cement, is also in freefall. Russia’s coal industry has just recorded a $3 billion loss as it struggles to cope with the effects of sanctions on exports during three years of war.
In the same period, inflation has been running at ten per cent, with interest rates at a punishing high of 20 and only recently reduced to 18 per cent. To paper over these cracks, Russia is dipping into its National Wealth Fund reserves, but since the start of the 2022 war, roughly half has been spent. Continued drawing at current rates will exhaust the fund in less than two years, when Moscow will have little choice but to raise taxes and increase state borrowing.
Fearing another 1917 moment, more of Russia’s armed service personnel are engaged in monitoring and policing internal dissent than are supporting the war against Ukraine. It has just been revealed that Russian cyber-officials are now systematically restricting access of their citizens to the world wide web, social media abroad and international phone calls. Even though he has no plans to scale back military spending, budgeted at 40 per cent of all federal expense for 2025, this is obviously a war Putin cannot continue to fight forever."
https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/russias-reckoning-is-coming/
34. "If the hundreds of companies currently selling “cheap mass” are really selling software-as-a-service, this leads to a conundrum: they cannot all win this race. The military does not need dozens of competing command-and-control systems, nor can they all efficiently be knit together, even through modular open systems. The future is not going to be five primes replaced by 100 contractors or 1000 medium-sized businesses. It will probably just be six or seven primes.
It may be true that neo-defense technology companies are selling important products, but they are also selling a narrative. It is only fair to question a narrative written by those who stand to profit from it. One question is whether the weapons used in Ukraine today are really as useful to the United States as these newer companies say. More important, however, is whether buying those weapons locks the United States into a particular way of fighting. Being skeptical does not make one a Luddite. It makes one prudent, and prudence is no less a war-winning virtue than innovation."
35. Understanding the meta, to understand the global macro and micro. Helpful to decipher what is happening in the world right now.