Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Sept 7th, 2025
“Taking a break can lead to breakthroughs.”― Russell Eric Dobda
"As a solopreneur, lifestyle inflation is especially dangerous because income isn't guaranteed.
When you work for someone else, you might get a raise and upgrade your lifestyle accordingly, especially if you feel confident about your job security. But as a solopreneur or entrepreneur, your income can fluctuate wildly. So, if you've inflated your lifestyle across every category, you've created a financial floor you can't fall below without serious consequences.
I've watched people go from feeling free at $250K to feeling broke at $750K because they inflated their lifestyle across every category instead of being intentional about the categories that actually mattered.
So they become trapped by their own success. They can't take a month off. They can't turn down work they hate. And they can't experiment with new ideas that might not pay immediately.
Make a list of the things that genuinely improve your life. Try not to think about what you're supposed to want or what other people want.
Ask yourself this:
"If I can only splurge on three categories for the next 5-10 years of my life, what would they be?"
https://www.justinwelsh.me/newsletter/lifestyle-inflation-kills-freedom
2. "Goldman places the little-known conflict between Japan and the USSR as one of the key pieces in the puzzle that the two regimes had to “solve” in 1939-41. It made Stalin’s agreement with Hitler even more attractive, and it fatefully directed Japanese conquest South. Perhaps that Goldman makes, at times, too strong a case for the importune of the Nomonhan war, but the conflict surely deserves much more that the oblivion into which it seems to have been consigned by political historians.
Especially so now when the war in Europe is directly connected to geopolitics in Asia. Perhaps one should not have been surprised when several days ago, Chinese foreign minister explicitly linked the outcome of the war in Ukraine to the situation in East Asia."
https://branko2f7.substack.com/p/nomonhan-1939
3. "VC angle: Upwelling looked at U.S. buyout funds because they provided the deepest data pool, but Mark says the venture funds likely have a bit longer growth curve but the end result is the same — peak and then an extended tail-off.
The bottom line: Private equity portfolios are aging, as exits have become harder to come by. LP portfolios needn't follow suit."
https://www.axios.com/2025/07/08/private-equity-tail-risk-upwelling
4. "The lack of legal rights isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Tokenization allows investors synthetic access to the financial performance of a company that they normally wouldn’t be able to purchase a piece of. For Robinhood’s European users, who live in countries where regulations make it difficult to buy stocks in the U.S., Tenev’s announcement means easier access to U.S. stocks. And why wouldn’t they want to invest in even a synthetic version of the best-performing stock market in the world?
The American stock market, of course, comes with its specific nuances. One is that American companies are staying private for longer than ever before, meaning that regular people can’t invest in some of the highest-performing companies of our time. America’s drippiest CEO understands this. The new announcement doesn’t just open up synthetic access to public companies. It also tokenizes private company stock, starting with OpenAI and SpaceX.
There’s a part of me that likes what Robinhood is gesturing at. Regular people can now own a token that represents a stock in one of these companies. Getting everyday people access to the tools of wealth creation—in careful, thoughtful ways—means we have a world where value is more equitably distributed. And this was impossible to do heretofore."
https://www.gettheleverage.com/p/the-private-markets-are-broken
5. "If you have successfully launched a pilot, your next challenge is to overcome the budgetary valley of death and achieve sustainment funding. The Navy’s budget cycle plans 2.5 years ahead, so depending on the source of your pilot funding there may be slim years before scaling with congressionally appropriated funding through the Program Objective Memorandum (POM)."
6. "While hard tech startups, or Vertical Integrators, can require more capital than software startups, those capital needs don’t necessarily translate into more dilution for equity investors. In fact, hard tech startups that master structured finance achieve lower dilution than software companies burning equity on customer acquisition.
The capital they do spend tends to go to more productive uses; hard tech spend is more differentiating than software spend. Factories are deeper moats than increasingly expensive customer acquisition in competitive markets. And because so much capital is required, and potential winners are identifiable earlier, the leading hard tech companies actually can use capital as a moat. Not everyone can raise the mix of equity and debt required to build big things, which means less competition for those who can.
We have written at length about our belief that the future will be owned by companies that combine bits and atoms, software and hardware to build better, cheaper, and/or faster products than incumbents. To that belief, we would add money. Bits + Atoms + Dollars.
The future belongs to companies that combine the world's best engineers with the world's best financial engineers.
During the hard tech renaissance, smart technical founders have realized that they must also be smart about the way they capitalize their businesses, and have become more aware of the myriad financing options available to them."
https://www.notboring.co/p/capital-intensity-isnt-bad
7. "One of the factors in Ukraine, that was even seen as far back as World War 2, is enemy jamming. Today that is much more sophisticated than blanking out radio transmissions in the earlier war, because we are talking about the transmission (both ways and interactively) of megabytes of data and precision targeting that could be transferred by satellite. Systems such as Elon Musk's Starlink are, so far at least, resistant to jamming, but Starlink is not yet in tanks or other US-made combat gear. Sensor integration, situational awareness, target selection and maneuver information, all of which is time sensitive, is terribly important, as are ways to spot threats from drones and other anti-tank weapons.
It would be a worthwhile idea, before the Army gets going with another tank design or a modification of an existing one, to start testing how any of this might work in a real war. While the Ukraine war might not last too much longer, perhaps there is time to test out some of these ideas.
Similarly, some tests of autonomous operation and sensor integration, along with active defense systems, should also be platformed and tried out, both to see what its capabilities and limitations are, and to find means of improving operations.
The pathway to a robotic tank should be kept open, but doing so also will entail a significant doctrinal revolution on how to use armor on the modern battlefield. Sticking with the old paradigm and trying to fight off the furies won't cut it in this day and age."
https://weapons.substack.com/p/the-slow-race-toward-a-robotic-tank
8. "Now you see the real battle that the USA is facing. More and more people are making their money digitally. This means they are no longer tied to a specific geography. This is probably part of the reason for Trump’s obsession with Tariffs. Have to find a way to make sure everyone is reliant on the USA. Don’t want a million companies founded in tax havens constantly selling to the US consumer without paying a dime to the growing $37 trillion debt.
Is there anything they can really do about it long-term? In our opinion no. You’re going to be forced to earn your living digitally via e-commerce, SaaS, online ads, copy writing, crypto currencies, etc. (The most viable continues to be E-commerce assuming no high-tech expertise - if you’re high-tech you already know and don’t need to ask if a SaaS is a good idea or not).
Cream Rises to the Top: This is the major reason for our belief. When you see an ad on Instagram, Yahoo, Google etc. You have no idea who made it. Who designed the landing page, who made the copy, who did everything behind the scenes (IE. the person making the real money).
This makes it difficult/nearly impossible to create any sort of tribalism to fend off the digital future. Sure. You can support locally/regionally but when it comes to actual private commerce and digital competition… good luck.
You Should be Thrilled: The days of “who you know, not what you know” is coming to an end. It is turning into “what you know, what you can do”.
Before it was possible to just know the right people and that was it. Locked into forever job placements. Dying quickly. Now it’s just performance based
Are you able to create nice ads? You will be rich
Not able to make ads but can create incredible copy? You will be rich
Not able to do either but can make addictive videos? You will be rich
Can’t do any of those but can predict what people will spend on? You will be rich
Have no connections? Congrats, doesn’t matter anymore. Facebook/Meta/Google will do all the targeting for you anyway. Don’t even need built in traffic since they can show it to the ideal buyer for you
The only downside here is that the non-performers will be left behind. Something akin to New-Age-Feudalism.
Since we know the money being earned is slowly turning digital/internet/computer based and we know that your face/name/location doesn’t matter anymore… It leads you to pretty clear conclusions: 1) you have to create skills and talent related to a digital economy, 2) you can’t rely on tribes/groups simply handing you opportunity anymore and 3) you’re going to hear the phrase “I don’t care where you grew up or where you went, just show me the results” a lot more.
Everything is going to be tracked, no one will be able to hide behind the veil of “being a nice guy”. While it’ll work in the corporate setting while you’re collecting those paychecks. It isn’t going to last forever."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/usa-the-land-of-opportunity-and-the
9. "Nations do not collapse overnight, nor by accident. Their downfall is rarely the result of a single war, a bad ruler, or an unfortunate event. It is, more often, the slow accumulation of choices made: the lost virtues, the eroded character and the ignored foundations.
Landes warned that success is earned, not inherited; built, not assumed. Civilizations rise on the strength of discipline, honesty, merit, knowledge, and foresight. They fall when those traits are mocked, discarded, or forgotten. The pattern is not mysterious. It is historical law.
Unlike material destruction, which can often be rebuilt, moral and institutional decay follows a subtler course. It feeds on comfort, amplifies weakness, and resists correction. Once a society loses its capacity for self-restraint, once it chooses pleasure over principle, narrative over truth, and entitlement over effort, it enters a cycle from which history offers few painless exits.
In that sense, decline is not a policy error. It is not a glitch. It is the natural consequence of prior indulgences—the final stage of a long chain of moral concessions and cultural abdications. Just as financial bankruptcy begins gradually and ends suddenly, so too does civilizational collapse.
Again, Rothbard captured the heart of the matter: “The great crisis of our age is not one of knowledge, but of courage. Not what to do—but whether we will do it.” Therein lies the narrow gate to renewal. It is not reforms or technocracy or clever governance that reverse decline. It is the rediscovery of virtues once thought obsolete: thrift, truth, duty, honor.
But renewal, if it does come, exacts a price. It demands sacrifice, clarity, and the rejection of comforting illusions. Most societies, having grown accustomed to their decadence, cannot and do not pay such price.
History does not mourn their passing. It simply moves on.
So, for those of us concerned not just with capital but with civilization—whether as investors, citizens, parents, or heirs—the most important indicators may not be GDP growth or interest rates. They may instead lie deeper: in the strength of institutions, the honesty of discourse, the cohesion of culture, and the moral stamina of the people.
Fortune follows character. And when character fades, ruin is not imposed. It is invited."
https://forumgeopolitica.com/article/why-do-nations-rise-and-fall-a-survey
10. "I believe that a strong domestic VC industry — especially at the early stages — is an essential component of any tech ecosystem. Despite all of the technological and cultural shifts that are happening, the vast majority of Pre-Seed and Seed deals are led by local investors. Which means that the availability of strong local early-stage funding options is critical to the success of startups around the world.
But once you’ve got a product and/or some early traction, all bets are off. At the later stages (and, increasingly, at Pre-Seed and Seed for top founders), the competition for the privilege of investing in their companies is now global.
Today’s founders are emboldened by choice and, just as with consumers of the past, there’s no going back to mediocrity for them. As Everett Randle predicted, the most exposed and vulnerable funds are those currently stuck in the “middle” — surrounded by heavily-resourced megafunds on one side and a growing number of laser-focused emerging funds on the other. That leaves such VCs with the choice first posed by famed hedge fund manager Paul Tudor James: “adapt, evolve, compete or die.”
Thankfully, there are many paths forward for fund managers to take. They can reorient around a more focused thesis, as Canadian firm Two Small Fish and U.S. firm Susa Ventures did with deep tech (the latter via spinout fund Humba Ventures). They can develop compelling platform offerings, as many U.S. VCs did post-2008. Or they can even double down on a geographic advantage, demonstrating to local founders that they understand their needs better than anyone, as Toronto-based Golden Ventures recently did in spearheading the inaugural Toronto Tech Week."
https://chrisneumann.com/archives/whats-going-on-with-early-stage-founders
11. "It is no secret that, for years, America's economy has been running on financial parasitism rather than production. Wall Street dismantled the industrial backbone.
Labor was deskilled, jobs outsourced, and infrastructure allowed to decay while ten trillion dollars vanished in endless foreign wars and corruption. The country that once built the world's factories can no longer even manufacture the tools to win a trade war.
Mr Trump's tariffs are not a coherent policy. They are a symptom—a sign of late-stage imperial decline.
Markets seem to agree. Since February, some $10 trillion in stock market value has evaporated, and despite periodic rallies, there is no illusion that this is 2001. China is not cowering. It holds the keys to the future: rare earths, battery technology, semiconductors and a huge industrial base. The strategic high ground is not in tariffs, but in control of the supply chain.
Trump claims the tariffs are punishment for China "ripping off the USA." The Chinese are not angels, but the real question is: who truly gutted American industry? Was it China or Europe? Or was it Wall Street and Washington?
Who hollowed out the factories, looted pension funds, turned homes into speculative assets, and poured trillions into forever wars that enriched defence contractors and hedge funds?
Indeed, America has been "ripped off," but by its own elite decision-makers—who outsourced jobs, deregulated finance, and prioritized short-term profits, all while using the dollar as a powerful weapon in debt creation and government intervention in the affairs of other nations.
Beijing may have naturally pursued its own interests vigorously but did not orchestrate any theft. The theft happened in American boardrooms, think tanks, universities, and Senate committees, under the banners of "free markets", "national security" and "financial innovation."
So, who really "ripped off " whom? Is it the one who, for decades, produces goods at razor-thin margins, or the one who buys and pays for them with money conjured from thin air?
This moment is not the climax of a trade war—it is the end of an illusion. The illusion that America can sanction, tariff, and bully its way to eternal dominance. An empire that neither makes nor builds cannot win an economic war. It can only lash out, hoping its reputation will substitute for relevance."
https://forumgeopolitica.com/article/the-end-of-illusion-1065
12. A fun and insightful interview with the God king of Indie Hackers & Digital Nomads: Pieter Levels.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StkCdcZ1ovE
13. "The period from 1920 to 1928 was the height of the Warlord Era, in which China was wracked by civil conflicts between rival military factions. Some vied for control of the central government, while others sought to retain their autonomy in more far-flung provinces. It was only the Northern Expedition, which swept across the entire country and brought China under the Kuomintang’s unitary control, that the period finally ended.
From a military perspective, the civil war of 1924—called the Second Zhili-Fengtian War—was among the most interesting of the period. Although it lasted just two months, it mobilized several hundreds of thousands of men equipped with modern weaponry in two theaters separated by a thousand kilometers. Ultimately, the military outcome in both was decided more by betrayals by key figures than any battlefield developments, but the fighting gives us an interesting perspective on operational maneuver in post-World War I conflicts."
https://dispatch.bazaarofwar.com/p/successors-to-the-western-front-pt-6b3
14. "The rare-earth policy also serves as proof of concept for broader export-control frameworks. Analysts in China are already discussing how targeted regulatory enforcement swathed in national-security rhetoric might be applied to battery materials, aerospace alloys, and biotech.
In future crises or negotiations, Washington and its allies may find themselves confronting not only supply disruptions but also navigating a deeply institutionalized Chinese framework for economic coercion.
The next phase of great-power rivalry will be fought as much through spreadsheets and customs declarations as through tariffs and treaties. To respond effectively, the U.S. will need to treat critical minerals—and other strategic sectors as well—not only as supply-chain issues but also as components of a broader strategic competition. This includes investing in domestic refining capabilities, forging trusted international partnerships, and closely monitoring how Beijing deploys its growing arsenal of economic policy tools."
15. "Silicon Valley isn’t biased against Hong Kong. Or Hokkaido. Or Beijing. It just really, really loves things that look... familiar. And it’s not personal — it’s pattern recognition.
So here’s the real-world checklist founders often overlook:
Don’t expect Silicon Valley investors to value traction that happens outside their backyard.
Don’t underestimate how regulatory headwinds can kill deals before they start.
Don’t just pretend to be a U.S. company.
Don’t let your cap table become a geopolitical liability.
Don’t assume a U.S. exit is your only path to a landmark success.
As a founder and CEO, it’s your job to make things effortless for investors, partners, and customers to understand you. Remove the friction. Speak their language. Build in their backyard — or at least rent a desk in it."
https://edithyeung.substack.com/p/as-a-longtime-silicon-valley-investor
16. One of my favorite conversations on B2B investing and general Silicon Valley news. It's funny, opinionated and it's informative.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWcKAudkn3A
17. "Delusional goals rewire your brain.
Your brain is literally reshaping itself right now based on what you're learning and thinking about, this letter included. When you imagine a better future, it activates the same brain networks as if you were experiencing them. Every single moment of focused attention is a chance to rewire your brain in alignment with the person you want to become. That's one of many reasons doomscrollers and those who don't manage their inputs (mental or physical) are digging their own grave one moment at a time.
Those 3 decisions – an aspirational hourly rate, concentration of force, and giving myself no other option but to succeed – created the perfect conditions to make more money than my younger self thought was possible.
None of those decisions involved obsessing over "what skill to learn" or "what business model to choose." I didn't have time to think about that. I had to learn it all."
https://letters.thedankoe.com/p/these-3-decisions-will-determine
18. "Automation threatens millions of jobs, but beyond near-term economic pain is a deeper concern. Entry-level roles stand to be disproportionately affected—the places where, for generations, people went to accumulate experience and learn their craft. Knowledge risks becoming merely transactional, a commodity to be accessed, rather than relational or internalized. Information on tap instead of an ongoing dialogue with ourselves and the world. We should use automation to take away mundane obstacles and drudgery. I do. But we must recognize the distinction between that and what I call productive friction. This is the kind of difficulty that’s worth preserving, the kind of struggle that pushes you forward as you push against it.
The trick is in knowing what to look for.
Today, it's harder for many to find a first job, yet never easier to create your first opportunity. Human labor is shifting toward adept humans leveraging AI to accomplish vastly more. In this emerging world, proof of work replaces credentials and titles. What matters is what you've made or shipped, not what degrees you have or where you got them. A teenager building their own thriving app; a Shopify intern candidate proactively pitching themselves; a student provocatively challenging university administrators. This is friction made manifest. Knowledge gained from this kind of experience cannot be prompted into existence; it must be earned.
How do you do this work? Simple: Do it. Try lots of things, fast. Bring people along with what you are doing. Instead of trying to climb some arbitrary career ladder, consider following experiments and ideas that draw you in. Every hour spent wrestling with software, every failed print run, every brutal critique creates part of a foundation that you’ll later need to place bigger bets and call bolder shots."
https://every.to/thesis/in-the-ai-age-making-things-difficult-is-deliberate
19. "It’s never been easier to start a company and build a product. As a result, some of the “typical” defensibility strategies are too slow to compete in this era of rapid AI scaling.
The answer: you need multiple short-term and long-term defensibilities strategies. Speed to scale is your primary lever, but you have to be constantly building for the future. Network effects will play a key role in what companies survive this AI boom and become dominant, but you need to deploy them when the time is right. As part of a long-term battle strategy.
One way to think about it: Your startup should be like a motte-and-bailey castle.
In medieval warfare, a motte-and-bailey castle had two distinct defensive positions: the bailey – a large, easily accessible courtyard where daily business happened and initial battles were fought – and the motte – a heavily fortified tower on a hill where defenders could retreat when the bailey was overrun. The bailey was designed to be abandoned when necessary; the motte was built to be impregnable.
For AI startups, your “bailey” consists of the fast-deploying defensibilities that establish your market position: superior distribution, rapid scaling, and brand momentum. These get you in the game quickly, but won’t hold forever against determined competitors. Your “motte” is where you retreat as competition intensifies: true network effects, deep workflow embedding, and systematic lock-in that become nearly impossible to dislodge.
The key is knowing when to fight in the bailey and when to build the motte."
https://www.nfx.com/post/ai-defensibility
20. "As a rough estimate, we’d expect that $7.4T to come down to around $4-5T or so. Wealthier people have locked in some 5% rates for the long-term but money market is shorter duration. When the cuts happen it’ll be hard to justify matching inflation (which is probably 3.5% if they are stating that it’s 2.4%).
Of that we’d expect: 1) S&P, 2) QQQ, 3) Crypto and 4) mega tech stocks to be the beneficiaries. Every single year you’re going to see strange companies make turn arounds. However, the future is still the same. Large scaled up companies and then niche companies (the ones *you* should be building to funnel excess money into crypto and tech).
Niche companies will become more profitable high-margin and lean. This is due to high quality scale with no head count changes. The mega companies will be able to pick up whoever they like and pay a bit less as they are the only real employers due to pricing power."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/trillions-sidelined-crypto-week-and
21. The case and importance of investing in Defensetech. It's imperative.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dW1TSWB5cS0
22. Understanding supply chains from Vietnam versus Mexico.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3jRuaHNeOo
23. "History whispers lessons in the rise and fall of financial power, dark, malevolent and violent human enslaving and consuming power. From Venice’s medieval banks to Amsterdam’s trade networks, the City of London’s martial reach, and Wall Street’s post-war Financialism, each era saw a new center emerge as old ones waned.
Today, as we mark July 11, 2025, a subtle yet profoundly dangerous shift seems to be nearing completion. The United Arab Emirates (UAE), with its Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), is carving a niche that could very well redefine the global power landscape for many decades—centuries—to come."
https://emburlingame.substack.com/p/is-the-uae-and-the-islamic-world
24. Always a cold but collected conversation on energy. And remember, energy is life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO6NAwyWRK8
25. "Fast forward to today—knock-offs have become dupes, duplicates that have indistinguishable quality from the more expensive, higher margin original. In some cases, a dupe is the exact same item from the same factory with the logo tag removed.
Dupes today are far from taboo; they've become a status symbol for the modern consumer who has infinite access to information. What makes someone cool today is the ability to think smarter, spend less, and not compromise on quality. If you’re covered in logos and paying full-price, the joke is on you.
The dupe economy isn't killing premium brands—it's forcing them to justify their premiums. Companies that adapt by offering genuine value at fair prices will thrive. Those that rely solely on brand mystique and inflated pricing will struggle.
The consumers driving this trend aren't looking for cheap alternatives; they're demanding smart alternatives. The question for your business is: Are you giving them a reason to choose you beyond the logo?"
https://brianne.substack.com/p/the-dupe-economy-why-todays-consumers
26. "Any move by Saudi, China et al to move from G7 reserve currencies/bonds would be self defeating - it would crash bond prices, and the value of their own portfolios (they would suffer immediate huge mark to market losses), global interest rates would rise, expectations of global growth would drop resulting in lower oil and commodity prices (hurting Saudi Arabia, et al and risking their dollar pegs) and actually would then encourage a flight back to quality, back to the dollar, Euro, Sterling, bunds, et al, and hence actually would increase the reserve currency status of G7 assets, so would prove counterproductive.
It is not going to happen as Saudi, China et al value global market stability above all else. Talk is cheap - action will cost Saudi, China, etc al dearly, and they are not going to risk losses to themselves to help Putin."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/econ-101-for-lagarde
27. One of the best shows in tech & Silicon Valley. Coverage & opinions of the weekly news.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X52BNWZrXSk
28. "Milei’s success in bringing down Argentina’s inflation, while also restoring growth after one painful year, show that the macroleftists’ constant dark warnings about austerity are at least sometimes overblown. Fiscal conservatism isn’t always desirable, but Milei is showing that the costs often aren’t as high as many progressives believe.
Meanwhile, Milei’s microeconomic policies — the deregulation, the moves toward privatization, the anti-union policies — are the dog that didn’t bark here. With poverty now falling and consumption rising in Argentina, it doesn’t appear that those free-market policies have crushed the middle class. So far there’s no sign that inequality has increased substantially either, with the Gini coefficient looking stable.
And in a few cases, we can see Milei’s free-market policies actually getting results. The scrapping of national rent control seems to have created such a big housing supply boom that it has actually driven rents down.
Does this mean that hardcore libertarians are right, and that countries all over the world should slash government and unleash market forces? Well, no. The more complicated, nuanced truth is that which economic policies are best depends a whole lot on where you start. Argentina before Milei was a Peronist mess; China before Deng was a Maoist disaster. Plenty of government expansions throughout history have reduce poverty without wrecking economic growth; witness the New Deal, or Korea’s industrial policy push in the 1970s.
The boring truth is that the ideal economy is a mixed one; it’s built on the foundation of markets, but also contains a significant amount of redistribution, public goods provision, and industrial policy. The exact optimal balance depends on the country, and on the times; even if you happen to get it exactly right for a while, the optimal mix will change over time as countries develop, as technology changes, as trading patterns shift, and so on. Someday, if Argentina over-indexes on Milei’s early successes, they might very well become too laissez-faire.
Instead of picking one ideology and sticking to it, countries should recognize when they’ve veered too far in one direction, and take steps to change course. If some of your people are suffering in poverty while others prosper, you should establish a social safety net. If you’re choking on pollution from unregulated industry, you should establish some environmental protections. If you’ve nationalized your industries and they aren’t doing well, you should privatize them. If you’re falling behind technologically, you should try some industrial policy. If you’ve shackled your economy with inefficient subsidies and entitlements, then you should do some deregulation."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/free-market-economics-is-working
29. Conversation with the cofounder of Solana on More or Less. Good stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23aYyLi-ONw
30. This was really illuminating. Inside the mind of an endowment manager. LP insights.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0TwqZIF32s
31. "For nearly a century, aircraft carriers have dominated naval warfare theory.
It has become a nearly sacrosanct precept of naval warfare.
But should it be? Or, has advanced technologies including precision warfare and the ability to find, fix, track, target, and engage increasingly smaller craft at increasingly larger ranges obviated the advantages of the aircraft carrier?
A Gerald Ford-class aircraft carrier (of which the John F. Kennedy is one) costs somewhere around $13.3B and carries around 50x F-35Cs at a cost of $100M/aircraft. Sink one of those and down the drain goes ~$20B and more importantly up to 5,000 Sailors.
Or should the Navy scale back its acquisition of these large systems and reprogram some of that money to smaller, more agile, craft that can launch and recover autonomous systems, missiles, and other weapons while minimizing crew requirements?
The Navy needs to put in some hard thought on the future of warfare and how it will adapt. It needs to way the trajectories of technology with the various risks of its options."
https://buildingourfuture.substack.com/p/building-slow-falling-behind-the
32. This was a grim conversation on WW3. Learned some stuff despite it being terrifying.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qObdS-bhRM&t=12s
33. "But, there are two ideas that I think about a lot right now:
Mining companies are digging up metals that seem to be increasing in price everyday. At the same time, those companies energy costs (especially diesel) are remaining surprisingly low. Considering that mining company’s energy costs are up to 40% of their operating expenses, there may be some incredible earnings coming out over the next couple of quarters.
Small and mid cap tech companies in emerging markets are very interesting right now. Two examples are Nu Bank ($NU) and dLocal ($DLO). Their valuations are very reasonable, they have tremendous demographic tailwinds, and their TAM is barely penetrated."