A 2024 Recap & Retrospective: Still in the Middle of the Storm
What a rough year. But we made it. And as always I try to take stock of the year and squeeze whatever learnings I can. So like last year, doing my 2024 recap.
Business and Personal Finance: Give it a B-. On the business side, only did a few investments as LP and few defense-tech/ manufacturing tech related deals. Spent most of the year rethinking/reformating my entire investment strategy and thesis. Did not help that much of our Holding Co cash and attention has been on getting regulatory approval. Thankfully we have some strong foundations in place for the next few years.
On the personal side, far too many accounts receivables. Cash flow was a mess and my cost structure literally was out of control. Again. Had some big projects fall through due to numerous reasons but this is still on me. I need to be way more conservative on my cash flow projections. But as a wise man once told me, if you aren’t close to bankruptcy every 5 years you aren’t pushing hard enough. Thankfully, I have reserves and some accounts payables finally came through the last 2-3 weeks of December.
Travel: No real grade. Did not make it to Japan, Albania, Ukraine or Taiwan this year, which is a shame and part of my longer term vision. So will rectify this in 2025.
Spent more time with my parents in Canada which was good. Lesson from Codie Sanchez is to think not in years but in times. How many times will you see them? I will be going back to Vancouver often in 2025.
But this year was still busy.
Saudi Arabia: 2X
Thailand: 1X
Canada: 4X
Poland: 1X
Georgia: 4X
United Arab Emirates: 2X
Hungary: 1X
Azerbaijan: 2X
Australia: 1X
Germany: 1X
Czech Republic: 2X
Bosnia Herzegovina: 1X
I went to New York City a few times this year which was great. Also visited Detroit and Chicago for the first time and I will be back there. I really need to explore more of the USA & Canada.
Health: It’s an A-. Did Muay Thai training in Phuket at this really nice resort training center that had all the fixings, amazing gym, personal coaches, Muay Thai ring, sauna & Onsen center and sports clinic. It was incredible.
I now have my in person personal trainer and virtual personal trainer that I’ve been using for this last year. The accountability has been amazing and I feel fitter and stronger than I have been in decades. I’ve also not traveled as much as I did in 2023. That helps with some routine at home. I tend to take short afternoon naps and sleep better at night overall. Thank you ZMA supplements.
Family & Relationships: Still pretty bad, but better. So give it C-. Yet as Charlie Munger says: “Self pity has no utility.” I’m a grinder and never quit on stuff that is important.
So still lots of therapy happening for all of us. But at least we are talking now. Home life is still a bit uncomfortable at times but it’s civil now at least. We all have some Modus Operandi around the house.
I can tolerate more pain, handle my rage issues better due to my regular fitness training and just being better rested ie. good sleep. I keep reminding myself of Ernest Shackleton’s motto: “Through endurance we conquer!”
Personal Development: Give myself a B+. Tied into my business and investing especially as I’ve focused more on geopolitics, global macro, military stuff for my new investing thesis.
I’ve been much more disciplined & systematic about learning, doing at least 1-2 hours of listening to podcasting, writing and reading online. I read twice as many books this year than in 2023. My focus for 2025 is reading a lot more books. Physical books. Consistently too is the plan. I bought so many books this year (like hundreds). Now I need to start reading them.
I have spent too much time in Europe. However, the world has changed so starting in 2025, I will be focusing more time in Japan (and probably Taiwan), my so-called pivot to Asia.
But also more focus in America, whether in Texas, New York or the industrial heartlands of the midwest.
I will make exceptions for defense-tech or manufacturing conferences as I am still in learning mode. These wherever they are or in places like Ukraine, Baltics or Albania, but otherwise will limit my time now in Europe as much as I love that region.
But again, I am grateful for surviving mentally and making it through the year. Grateful for the learning. Grateful for my health. And feeling the major positive vibe shift that came in the USA mid-November. A confidence that seems to have grown in Silicon Valley and the rest of America.
I have a clear plan for next year. Now, it’s just plain discipline and hard execution. Leveraging the principle of Kaizen, making small but regular incremental improvements over time. As the philosopher Khalil Gibran wrote: “Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing towards what will be.” Happy new year everyone. Let’s make 2025 amazing.
Preparing for War: It’s Gonna Be Nutty Out There (Your Regular Reminder)
Many folks know I’ve been a prepper for a while. I was even written as part of that 2016 New Yorker profile on Preppers of Silicon Valley. Unfortunately I think my views have been proven right. The world has only gotten disordered.
A Unipolar world of an American led West shifting fast to a multipolar one, with the Global South asserting themselves and the China-Russia-Iran-North Korea are engaging in hybrid war against us. Complex global supply chains breaking down.
The gap between wealthy & poor is only increasing. In the meantime we are seeing a breakdown of law and order due to desperation of some people. Aided and abetted by stupid progressive left pro-crime policies as they gut police forces mainly in most blue states (thank you Alexander Soros and Dustin Moskowitz, billionaires who push damaging policies in cities they don’t live in). Driven by insane ultra leftwing ideology. Our institutions are rotted from within as DEI initiatives have driven out competence.
We can sit and take it. Or we can do something about it. You have to prepare for the hybrid war happening against us.
That means you have to be independent of thought. And the only way you can do so is controlling your media diet and education.
You also have to be able to speak up when you see stupidity and evil. To do this you have to be financially independent. It’s hard to speak up when you are dependent on a job.
You have to have multiple streams of income, cash and cold and lots of invested assets you can draw from in different geographic locations. Able to fight back against “cancel culture” or fight back against Law-fare. This is one of the scariest things I see. Lawfare is the use of the legal system to shut someone down through fake accusations like Amber Heard did to Johnny Depp or Bryan Johnson’s fiancé did to him. War is not cheap.
You have to have a personal brand, strong relationships and a good reputation to draw from. Credibility and influence is power. You also need anti-censorship platforms to leverage like X or Rumble. The mainstream medias like Television, Newspapers, YouTube, FB & Instagram are all risk adverse and actively censors people and messages that go against mainstream narratives.
Going back to my prepper interests, probably also a good idea to have a small garden or even better agricultural land. And like the Mormons, at minimum, have a stockpile of canned goods, barrels of drinkable water and other useful supplies in case there are more supply chain issues. Unlike Mormons, you should also stockpile some weapons and bullets for protecting yourself and your supplies.
Last and equally as important, you need to be in good health and physically strong. I invested in a personal trainer that is getting me very fit. I actually did trips to MMA fight camp in Thailand. I will do more of them in 2025.
You should also get some training in martial arts and learn how to properly use a gun, whether pistol, shotgun or rifle. I’ve signed up for training in tactical shooting and CQB (Close Quarter Battle) from Sheepdog Response in 2025.
Remember, that many of the ancient Greek and Roman learned men like Socrates or Pliny the Elder were soldiers and more than competent fighters. Sometimes You have to be able to back up your words with physical strength and skill.
All these initiatives are confidence building and have enriched my overall life well. More importantly, it helps prepare me to ride out the ongoing craziness in the world. And better able to help those around me. Like it or not, War is here so it’s time to get FIT.
Happy NEW YEAR!!
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads December 29th, 2024
“Your most important work is always ahead of you, never behind you.” – Stephen Covey
"Recognizing the importance of timeliness, thoughtfulness, enthusiasm, effort, and consistent communication can significantly strengthen these relationships. Entrepreneurs would do well to evaluate their current level of interaction and look for opportunities to enhance or improve it."
https://davidcummings.org/2024/11/23/the-quality-of-entrepreneur-interactions/
2. "By the early 12th century, Georgia stood at a crossroads. For nearly a century, the Caucasus had been a battleground in the Seljuk Wars, a protracted and brutal conflict between the Christian kingdoms of Byzantium, Georgia, Armenia, and Outremer and the expansive Seljuk Empire. The Seljuks, masters of a vast domain stretching from Bukhara to Baghdad, sought to tighten their grip on the strategically critical Caucasus region.
The Georgians, despite enduring years of devastation, retained an unbroken spirit. Under the leadership of King David IV, known to history as David the Builder, Georgia mounted a resistance that would culminate in one of the most stunning military triumphs of the medieval era: the Battle of Didgori.
This clash, fought on August 12, 1121, has been immortalized in Georgian memory as a miraculous victory against overwhelming odds. For David, the battle was not merely about survival but about reclaiming Georgia’s sovereignty and ensuring its place as a bastion of Christian power and culture in a tumultuous region."
https://varangianchronicler.substack.com/p/wolves-of-kartli
3. "F1 has long had large and rabid fan bases in Europe and South America, but that enthusiasm didn’t land on U.S. shores until 2017, when Liberty Media bought a controlling interest in the league. Under new boss Greg Maffei, F1 took a big swing at America. Targeting young people, Maffei and the F1 Team built an iconic brand, in the most competitive market, in less than a decade. There were races with celebrities in attendance — Tom Cruise, LeBron James, Rihanna — new sponsorships, and an aggressive social media presence.
However, Liberty’s gangster move was the Netflix docuseries Drive to Survive. Now in its sixth season, the show is rewriting the playbook re how sports leagues market themselves. It’s a behind-the-scenes look at “a lot of young, good-looking guys,” as Maffei once told CNBC, hard-charging billionaire team owners, and high-tech pit crews competing in a series of überluxe international locations. (F1 wasn’t the first to try this; the NFL’s Hard Knockspremiered on HBO back in 2001.)
By focusing on individuals and harnessing the power of storytelling, Drive to Survive used streaming to introduce U.S. viewers to drivers who were superstars overseas, among them Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen. It gave newbie (read: American) fans a compelling point of entry and became a fount of bingeable video that was easily shared, particularly on Instagram. There are accounts devoted to what Hamilton wears as he walks on red carpets.
Tribal rivalries, betrayal, greed, revenge — all the stuff humans are hardwired to love in a lustrous package every week. Champions muse about “having a target on my back.” Young guns talk about “being hungry.” Everybody obsesses about forces beyond their control. Shakespeare knew this turf pretty well — Marcus Aurelius would have felt at home. The song remains the same; the actual game being played is unimportant.
The results: Liberty paid $4.6 billion for F1; it now has a market cap of about $22 billion. In 2023, F1 generated about $3.2 billion in revenue, up from $2.6 the year before, most of it from promotional deals with host cities, media rights, and team sponsorships."
https://www.profgalloway.com/f1-is-at-an-inflection-point/
4. "That same feeling of inquisitive frustration was peaked by something I tweeted this week. An exceptional question that Tyler Hogge asked Marc Andreessen. A similar complicated multi-variate problem is "which part of the startup value chain is the constraint preventing us from 10x'ing the number of exceptional startups?"
First, what is an exceptional startup? At one point, Theranos, WeWork, Hopin, and FTX would have been considered exceptional startups. Do we want more of those? I think there is a mix of outcomes we want. We want more small business, even if they're lifestyle businesses. But we especially want more large outcomes that push human progress forward.
Second, what are we trying to unlock? Why do we want 10x the number of great startups? There is so much animosity against ambition, progress, technology as an industry. But the reality is that the protests of people who hate Elon Musk or hate technology is a privilege that, in large part, is enabled by (1) democratic freedoms that America affords, and (2) privilege engendered by the progress of the same technology those people now hate. But despite those protests, progress is good. And I desperately want more of it.
Finally, third, what is the bottleneck? What is the constraint that, if addressed, could unlock 10x more of what we're trying to unlock from question 2?"
https://investing1012dot0.substack.com/p/the-levers-of-innovation
5. Important discussion on the rise of massive VC funds. This is critical for founders to understand.
Are you working with a 2% fund or 20% fund: incentives matter. Worth watching.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqT014gNssU
6. "The distortions to credit, money, asset prices, and the economy that arose under the non-system cannot be unwound quickly. A rapid reversal could probably only be accomplished via deflation and depression or, alternatively, a hyperinflation—events that would bring huge socioeconomic disruption and likely political dislocations. To prevent such an outcome, governments will increasingly see their role as managing the wealth of the nation to ensure that the imbalances of the non-system are unwound gradually.
This greater government action will make it very difficult for savers to preserve the purchasing power of their wealth. For those who wish to attempt to do so, it is time to take the radical step of preparing to benefit from a fixed-asset investment boom in the United States and across the “friend-shoring” world, which is the antithesis of what has come before.
Few investors can correctly anticipate future returns. In a time of structural change, many investors, however, do not even begin by asking the right questions to assess likely future returns. Today, the key question is whether China is already moving away from its managed exchange rate regime and thus destroying the current international monetary system. Those who ask that question have a radically different outlook for the future of credit, money, asset prices, and the economy."
7. This is a great look into a top investor’s mind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLIFDNlWGCU
8. "Things may have changed considerably since the time of Xanthippus. Still, one thing has remained the same: even in our modern world of digital transactions, strict reporting, and ‘Know Your Customer’ laws, paying very little or no tax is not only possible, but easier to achieve than you might think.
And it won’t require dedicating all your assets to a Greek god, either.
The only main caveat? You can’t be an employee in order to achieve zero tax.
If you’re employed by someone else, the avenues to reduce what you have to pay to the state are almost non-existent. This is because, by default, your taxes will usually be taken from your paycheck and sent to the government before it ever hits your bank account."
https://anticitizen.com/p/death-and-taxes
9. "Gold is a small part of my portfolio, but that’s all I need. The bet is asymmetric. I’ve acquired gold passively over time, dollar-cost averaging into my position without ever putting a disruptively large portion of my net worth at stake. It’s a long game, not a sprint.
In a way, it’s like how I approach combat sports. Fighting has never been a primary focus of mine, but I’ve consistently invested a small amount of energy into it over the years. The results have compounded. The skill has become part of me, though it’s rarely useful. And yet, possessing it carries no downside.
Much like gold, fighting is an asset of low utility most of the time. It’s done very little for me compared to other skills like reading or writing. Over the years, there have been almost no occasions where I’ve needed to defend myself physically. Almost.
But in that rare, Black Swan event—the one-in-a-decade moment where you need it—the value of the skill skyrockets. That’s asymmetry: a small investment, low carrying cost, and an outsized return when you least expect it."
https://jaymartin.substack.com/p/id-rather-be-caught-with-it-than
10. Off season travel can be fun and more bang for your buck. Good list of European cities in Winter.
https://www.thrillist.com/travel/nation/best-european-cities-to-visit-in-winter
11. Expect this hidden covert war in Africa to continue over the next few decades. China, Russia, USA, France and UAE all have major interests there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4U0mRt64c4
12. This is a geopolitical conversation that goes very tinfoil hat. So bizarre if not entertaining.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8cBPbszHto
13. "These are the rules of the game, and they’re non-negotiable. In the Startup Hunger Games, it’s not luck that gets you out alive—it’s these principles in action. So ask yourself: Is my team strong enough? Am I agile enough? Do I have control of the numbers?
Most of you are showing up with a slingshot while someone else built a flamethrower.
In this arena, the odds are against you.
By default, you won’t survive."
https://2lr.substack.com/p/startup-hunger-games
14. Some more tin foil hat conspiracies and global macro.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJ1ajvAWAC4
15. "That is why I would say that a reputation is more aligned with the goal of building a firm. A firm is a long-term goal, not a short-term goal. A reputation is built over years. A personal brand is built through virality and can be built within days or weeks - that might not always be the case, but a reputation is never built over days."
https://embracingemergence.beehiiv.com/p/building-a-reputation-not-a-brand
16. Super valuable for founders.
https://kellblog.com/2024/11/24/five-success-principles-for-startup-founders/
17. "What we are looking at, in other words, is a complete shift of the balance of power in Eastern Europe. In the short term, Poland and the Baltics will have no choice but to pick up slack and assume a stronger position in Europe than they have in memory, as they stare down the barrel of a Russia that will only be further emboldened by a de facto triumph in Ukraine and the weakening of the American security blanket in Europe.
Meanwhile, Ukraine is facing its worst-case scenario, with the spigot of U.S. support likely to turn itself off—forcing Europe to take the reins of Ukraine’s, and its own, defense for the first time in generations."
https://www.persuasion.community/p/eastern-europe-is-in-the-crosshairs
18. Europe is not well set up for the new world of war (hybrid or kinetic).
“NATO is a defensive military alliance that thinks in terms of peacetime and wartime,” General Thierry Burkhard, France’s chief of the defense staff, told the French newspaper Le Figaro earlier this month. NATO’s tools simply aren’t designed for the gray zone in “the world of competition and contestation.”
19. "There's another reason these liquid paths are in high demand. Sure, competing for a McKinsey job isn't easy, but everything from recruiting to promotions is structured and streamlined. Job seekers and employers are cushioned from uncertainty and ambiguity in a way that only becomes obvious when you consider the counterfactual. Moreover, one can also more reliably predict future income and gain psychological security (or at least perceived security) around one’s career trajectory.
Given these hidden benefits, you'd expect these paths to be crowded. That’s one argument in favor of pursuing non linear, illiquid paths instead. You should expect “alpha” in these paths precisely because lots of smart, conscientious people are terrified of uncertainty. Maybe you can afford to be less of those things if you're willing to be brave?
In financial markets, illiquid assets often command a premium - investors accept lower liquidity for the prospect of higher returns. I can't prove empirically that this is replicated in human capital markets but that's a reasonable prior."
https://www.optimaloutliers.com/p/liquid-vs-illiquid-careers
20. "This and similar adventures by Moscow in the post-Soviet space do not bode well, from a Ukrainian standpoint, for negotiations with the Kremlin. Ukrainians, as well as other nations and ethnicities of the former Tsarist and Soviet empires, have, over the centuries, accumulated many bitter experiences with Russian imperialism, which is—once again—Moscow’s barely disguised ideology.
These historical lessons advise not only Kyiv but also Helsinki, Tallinn, Riga, Vilnius, Warsaw, or Prague that Ukraine must reach, at least, partial victory before entering meaningful negotiations with Russia. Only when facing military disaster will Moscow engage in a genuine search for a diplomatic solution that may be acceptable to Kyiv and have the potential to hold."
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-diplomacy-can%E2%80%99t-end-ukraine-war-209268
21. Such a great convo if you want to understand the Defense-tech drone space. These guys know what they are talking about.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nelwxvDCUks
22. "Finally, remember that while covenants are black-and-white tests, what to do when they’re breached is not. The debt provider has a lot of different cards to play, and the vast majority of debt providers are not in the “loan to own” business, so they have no desire to take control of your company. The cards they choose to play will be not only a function of the business situation, but of existing relationships and people.
Which is why I always say that your CFO should be the customer testimonial on your debt provider’s homepage. Who wants to call that loan?"
23. A very fascinating conversation with Marc Andreessen of A16Z. So many interesting takes on American culture, government and regulations & the incoming Trump admin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye8MOfxD5nU
24. "Between them, Sony and Kadokawa already control ten anime studios that together produce roughly a third of Japan’s annual anime output, but they currently work with many other companies. A merger could shut out these rivals, resulting in even longer wait times to bring non-Sony-Kadokawa series to screens. Anime News Network, itself a Kadokawa subsidiary, is cheerily predicting this will result in “less anime in the future, but of better quality,” but the reality is that it would take several multi-year production cycles to really assess the impact on Japan’s content machine.
One thing is for certain: if the merger happens, it might mean a more corporate approach to anime-making going forward. Both Sony and Kadokawa are publicly traded firms, but many of Japan’s content megahouses – Shueisha, Kodansha, and Shogakukan, among them -- are family owned. This is a unique feature of the Japanese entertainment landscape. In his recent (Japanese language) book All About the Manga Business, industry veteran Takeshi Kikuchi argues that privately-held companies are key to the growth of manga (and by extension anime), for they are not beholden to shareholders to deliver immediate growth, and can take a longer-term view towards nurturing talent."
https://blog.pureinventionbook.com/p/clash-of-the-titans
25. This is not good for the UK. British ag stuck between rock and hard place.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZLC8LcCaB8
26. "Ghosting refers to a sudden ending of active communication without any apparent warning or explanation. If you had an ongoing back-and-forth email thread with someone and they suddenly stop replying, that’s ghosting. And it’s unequivocally not culturally acceptable. Anywhere.
But what if you reach out to someone with a brand new request?
In Silicon Valley, it is culturally acceptable to not respond to such an email as a form of “no” (even if you know the person)."
https://chrisneumann.com/archives/in-silicon-valley-no-answer-is-an-answer
27. Another excellent episode on what’s up in tech. BG2, the best show online right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7bJtS7koQM
28. Incredible breakdown of Microstrategy's brilliant BTC strategy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFUIhJ9ntlI
29. "When hegemony is broken, conflict returns. At worst, the strong take what they can and the weak suffer what they must. At best, innovation returns. When there is no dominant power to ensure peace, there is also no bureaucracy to ensure stagnation. No global hall monitor. The same environment that produced Sparta and Athens––one of iteration and competition––is allowed to flourish.
Hegemony brings peace, competition brings innovation.
If America slips from total hegemon to standard first power, we’ll see a much more dynamic global environment. Ideally, the US will rise to the challenge and become more competitive as well. Decentralized currency means small network states can operate with a globally valid currency––no confederate dollars. Startup founders are now using LLMs to run companies with 2 people instead of 20. The same may be true of countries."
https://americanreformer.org/2024/06/rise-of-the-dutch-republics/
30. Incredible track record but now focusing on defense-tech here.
Europe has a steep curve to overcome to get themselves technology and defense industry sovereign.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtcCqAr6Z7o
31. Really sharp kid here. Mach Industries is on the forefront of this wave of defense-related startups.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5l-VLzpT1M&t=1411s
32. Good stuff to know!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqR_fDGTAUw&t=229s
33. A deep conversation with one of the most unique, curious and original thinkers & investors in Silicon Valley. So many great insights here. "Embrace random."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SQ_myzmV_Q
34. "Smaller engineering teams can build more comprehensive software products faster and cheaper. Companies like Linear get to tens of millions in ARR with only tens of employees.
The positive consequence is that specific opportunities requiring considerable software development investments before getting to market will be easier to seize. The negative is that other markets will become increasingly competitive.
Beyond “pure software” opportunity and, as we wrote in this blog published earlier this year, we (and many others) now believe that specific repetitive tasks humans perform will be partially or fully automated through LLMs.
People are attacking this opportunity by building AI-first service businesses from the ground up or buying, merging, and automating existing businesses.
I heard of multiple roll-ups in accounting, healthcare, and customer service on both coasts of the US (none in Europe). Another exciting thing I encountered was a prominent film production company raising money to train a foundation model on their film archives."
https://medium.com/point-nine-news/some-thoughts-on-software-1c43db57c40f
35. The best conversation on the "innards of Silicon Valley"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2E-V6Boguo
36. Love this conversation. Making competence & results in government important again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GIjx0_8yXk
37. Good insights into Poland and its growing geopolitical & military heft. Makes sense as they are the next target of Russia after Ukraine.
Russia has partitioned Poland many times in the past history.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5kMsKWSIf4
38. "In the early days, throwaway comments might not seem like a big deal. But as the company scales, founders need to be deliberate in communicating their ideas and recommendations, ensuring their intentions are understood. A clear distinction between casual brainstorming and actionable directives helps the team prioritize effectively and avoid wasted effort."
https://davidcummings.org/2024/11/30/beware-of-throwaway-comments-as-a-founder/
Surviving the Storm: A Rough Couple of Years
It’s winter break and I have had some time for reflection. Which brings me to this passage from Murakami’s “Kafka on the Shore” that caught my attention (h/t to Dylan O’Sullivan for surfacing this):
“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”
My god, what a rough couple of years. Lots of ups and downs. Personal, family, national and geopolitically. But here we stand. Shifting to the wind and water that bash us around. I don’t think we are out of the storm yet but remember the Charles Darwin quote: “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change”
This storm will end sometime and most of us will be better off having gone through it, as painful as it has been. And I think for most of us, while we are banged up physically and emotionally, we are definitely stronger, smarter and hopefully wiser.
Coming Home: Men and Emotions
I recall this hilarious but insightful comedic series called Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy:
“It takes a big man to cry, it takes an even bigger man to laugh at that man.” I still laugh about this when I read it. It’s also a signal that at that time, men weren’t supposed to show emotion. It’s definitely outdated now.
Being a tough guy meant you kept a stiff upper lip and kept all your emotions bottled up inside. Well, most emotions except anger. Or maybe that was my take growing up. Unfortunately Asian immigrant families reflect this. They are pretty cold culturally. The rage is real though.
What I’ve learned is that bottling up your emotions, especially negative ones, only causes them to come out in very unexpected and disruptive ways later. I would even say explosively. You can never hide from it, you just postpone it. Sometimes for years or decades in my case.
I’ve been able to transmute much of this into my career, business and fitness. These activities take the edge off it. But learning to let it out is pretty critical.
I remember when I was moving to Taiwan in January of 1997. It was after a lovely Christmas at home with my parents. I was 23 years old. My father took me to the airport and while at the airport I literally cried my eyes out. Very publicly. Also very uncharacteristically I would say.
But looking back at that moment, I think I sensed that I would never be the same. Things would never be the same and there was no coming home. I was moving away and saying goodbye to my childhood, my friends and most importantly my family.
I would gain new eyes and experiences and I wasn’t sure where it would lead me. It was part fear of the unknown and excitement for a new future. It was also grief. I needed to grieve for my old self and old life to open up space for the new one.
What an adventure it has been since then. I transited through Tokyo Narita where I spent a whole night at the bar hanging out with my dear friend Michiko. Catching up and talking about life. It was such a fun night. And then my flight and the entry into my amazing life in Taiwan that next day. I vividly remember these moments in my life. Sadness and pain usually and eventually leads to personal growth & joy.
So my point is don’t be afraid of your emotions. Don’t suppress them. They are signals. Examine them. Embrace them and don’t be afraid of expressing them. Emotions are a tool and guide to a better life and decisions. Learn to use it.
Random Stories From Backpacking in Prague: The Kindness of Strangers
I’ve always been wary of people. Especially as an immigrant kid in Vancouver who never quite fit in. Remember that Canada during the 70-80s was not overrun with Asians like it is now. I grew up being called “Mr Kung Fu man”.
Sure I was friendly and social and hung out with everyone. But I had so many interests that were seen as weird or uncool. Collecting and reading lots of books, especially history/sci-fi & westerns, loving Japanime and comic books. I was kind of a geek and hated most sports except for the martial arts I took. So I think many people were surprised that I ended up doing a long backpack trip after graduating from University.
I spent half a year traveling through Europe and used Prague as a base for 2 months while I explored the region. I took this wariness on people with me on the trip. Especially after I got attacked by some neo-Nazi skinhead locals. That knocked the Canadian naivety out of me.
But in reflection, overall I had great experiences with people during that trip. Especially on that first leg in Prague. Many of them were super random.
There was an European expat guy I met on flight, who kindly drove me from the airport to the subway station because he knew I had no money.
There was the Chinese mother and daughter living in Prague who saw me by myself in the park and invited me over for a home cooked dinner and showed me around the city. This became a very regular occurrence during my entire time there.
There was a group of 5 older and much bigger Australian guys who took me under their wing after they heard of the skinhead attack on me. They were protective of me for the 2 weeks we hung out and it was especially meaningful to me as I was feeling quite unsafe at that time. We had a great time hanging out, drinking, partying and camping in the forests of the Czech Republic. Maybe this is why I like Aussies so much to this day.
Or the night me and a few other residents ended up consoling a fellow backpacker, a young Indian American girl who had her family heirloom and stuff stolen by a fellow backpacker. We took her for drinks and food and stayed up late talking with her and trying to make her feel better.
I’ve experienced countless little and not so little kindnesses by people during my time there and since then too.
It’s interesting how quickly bonds and tribes form, even in a nebulous community of foreign backpackers in a youth hostel. People are social creatures. We are hardwired for this.
And what I found is that most people are good and want to do good. I’ve traveled all over the world in the 28+ years since then and this experience seems to hold true in most places, situations, organizations and countries I’ve been in. This gives me hope in our world and future.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads December 22nd, 2024
“Alone we can do so little. Together we can do so much.” – Helen Keller
Interesting take on Ukraine and geopolitics under Trump. I guess we will see.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQDCRLJHRTc
2. This is very educational, disturbing but an educational take on geopolitics right now. It's gonna be hairy for the next 2-3 years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEFuY-2YRqE
3. Good way to categorize where to live in your life (cities and countries). This is pretty useful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uAdMll70sc
4. "Are you necessary?
To establish necessity means that you fill a very specific need in completing or enhancing the customer’s current plan. That you address a very clear gap in their technology or strategy, a gap that is costing them time, money, competitive advantage or all three. That by paying $2 to add your services to the mix they will see a return of $20 – and that you’ll be able to show the math on how you plan to deliver on that promise."
https://upstreamgroup.com/the-drift/are-you-necessary
5. "To conclude, America doesn’t need some hastily stitched-together new ‘mythos’ or ideal, some pastiche of foregone antiquities or factitious symbolisms akin to Kwanzaa or Festivus. After all, it was the ‘left’ which went down that troubled route, attempting to confect some new national mythos with a host of artificial celebrations like Pride Month, which slowly grew into a kind of ecumenical monster. No, what America needs is to be shorn of its managerialist throttling to let society breathe naturally, and expand its own stifled vision forward, in an organic way.
It’s the only real way to do culture: seed the ground, keep off the locusts, then let grow what may—otherwise, you’re just playing god, and a fall awaits all those of such hubris."
https://darkfutura.substack.com/p/staring-ahead-from-the-crossroads
6. This is a fun take on geopolitics, global macro and crypto from one of the most interesting individuals around. (he is a great writer too).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iz0tazs3Uqc
7. Important conversation with the CEO of Anduril Industry on the defense industry and why we need to reform the Defense department and Reindustrialize.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKUmvIVTyz8
8. One of the most important conversations if you want to understand how the CCP took advantage of globalization, the World Bank and why they are a malevolent competitor via IP theft, incredible leverage on our business people & Hollywood & the active support of many of our enemies.
All because of our blindness and naivety. This is highly disturbing. Thank goodness people are slowly waking up to this. Time to get serious.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqZNy5fSDxU
9. Startup confessional, words of truth from founders. Get out of the Tech VC bubble.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TFqODW7rIk
10. "This is a hot Cold War II. The West has empirically lost deterrence. We must respond to this emergency to regain it.
We have a peer adversary: China. “Near-Peer” is a shibboleth, a euphemism to avoid the embarrassment of acknowledging we have peers when we were once peerless. In World War II, America was the best at mass production. Today that distinction belongs to our adversary. America’s national security requires a robust industrial base, or it will lose the next war and plunge the world into darkness under authoritarian regimes.
In the current environment, American industries can’t produce a minimum line of ships, subs, munitions, aircraft, and more. It takes a decade or two to deliver new major weapon systems at scale. If we’re in a hot war, we would only have days worth of ammunition and weapons on hand. Even more alarming is our lack of capacity and capability to rapidly repair and regenerate our weapon systems.
Given the vast sums we have spent on defense in these decades of Pax Americana, it would be reasonable to wonder: what went wrong?"
11. Master class in thinking about the future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Zg--ouGl7c
12. Luke Belmar dropping knowledge and wisdom. A look into the future of money.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHYyEhjKtmg&t=1s
13. "When discussing the dynamics surrounding Taiwan today, Beijing is already waging what it would call the “three warfares”: legal warfare, psychological warfare and public discourse warfare, which is information warfare that’s designed to create a sense of futility, a sense of cynicism about democracy, a sense that resistance is futile.
So the war, from Beijing’s perspective, has already started. They’re not yet using kinetic warfare. There are several more steps they could take short of that, including a quarantine of the island. They are building up to doing what I would call a “flash quarantine”, which would be a short-term quarantine to prove or demonstrate that they can exert jurisdiction over Taiwan’s near shore waters. Then they could, over time, decide to impose a much broader quarantine or even a blockade, which is technically an act of war. That said, I don’t think a full-blown blockade is likely until Beijing is ready to wage a full-blown war.
My views are designed to prevent war, not to invite miscalculation by Beijing. I want Beijing to be crystal clear on where the US stands. I want them to be crystal clear that we have the capacity to win a war over Taiwan and that we have, well within our grasp, the means to improve our capacity relative to Beijing in terms of the military balance."
https://mekongreview.com/the-hardliner/
14. An important discussion to understand what’s happening with supply chains, logistics and Globalization 2.0.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKsq258SkQQ
15. "The NATO Innovation Fund (NIF), a €1bn vehicle backed by 24 NATO allies to invest in defence and deeptech startups, is already seeing a shakeup in its upper ranks: founding partner Thorsten Claus and managing partner Andrea Traversone have both left the fund just over a year after it launched."
https://sifted.eu/articles/nato-innovation-fund-partner-exit-news
16. Didn't know Dave Frankel was a successful founder in South Africa before he started top VC fund Founder Collective.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHhLOgEiLnw
17. "Having the most advanced intelligence capabilities—I think, maybe like our Navy, we’re second best now—is useless if our most senior leaders cannot understand a threat that has been fighting us for over a year. I’m not sure what is worse, the failure to push information to senior leaders, or the senior leaders not pulling it to them.
Either way, another example of systemic institutional malfunction."
https://cdrsalamander.substack.com/p/behold-the-red-sea-clown-show
18. "If you want to grow faster, first you need to understand why you aren’t growing faster already.
To do so, I like to use the simplest possible growth framework which considers four factors:
Prospects. How many potential customers do we reach every day/week/month?
Conversion. What percentage of potential customers do we convert into customers?
Value. How much do we make from each customer?
Retention. How many customers do we lose every day/week/month?
Each one of these factors is critical to growth. Often, when you think about growth you see the need to improve all of these factors. That might be true, but you can’t fix everything at once!"
https://www.breakingpoint.tech/p/a-simple-growth-framework
19. "Red tribe politics comprises many superempowered individuals with highly evolved digital ledgers capable of overwriting the digital ledgers of their followers. In most cases, they overwrite intuition (often experienced as a feeling) for how to perceive reality or truth. This transferrence/overwrite allows superempowered individuals to mobilize their networked followers into action (Larmarkian evolution).
Blue tribe politics: a massively co-curated ledger that all networked participants must adopt (encouraged, trained, and coerced). Blue tribe members are mobilized through empathy triggers, another process of overwriting (empathy is a rapid and holistic mental modeling of the victim; it’s not sympathy) that spurs them into action."
https://johnrobb.substack.com/p/red-tribe-dynamics
20. "The question is: are the tradeoffs you are making today appropriate for you? Is your attention focused on the right things? Are you maximizing your wealth at the expense of your health, your family, or your time?
With Bitcoin, U.S. stocks, and many other asset classes hitting new all-time
highs, it’s easy to get caught up with what’s happening in financial markets. There is an overwhelming sense of FOMO that can make you feel like you need to make a change. Trust me, I’ve been there before.
But, what you may have failed to notice is how little these events will actually impact your life in the long run. How much will the price of Bitcoin today affect your life in 20 years? What about Nvidia? How about gold? The answer is practically nothing. A rounding error at best.
But do you know what will impact your life in 20 years? How you spend your time, how you treat your body, and who you spend your time with."
https://ofdollarsanddata.com/the-things-you-cant-buy/
21. "AI will change the world. It just won't happen as fast and as suddenly as many people fear.
Think of this essay as playing out over many decades, not next year or next week.
While people are predicting AGI is just around the corner, anyone who works with AI agents like my team does knows just how stupid these models really are and how limited they are in the real world. We live in a weird world where AI is smarter than many PhDs and yet dumber than your cat. They can tell you about nuclear physics and speak 100 languages fluently and yet they lack any and all common sense and they can't seem to get tasks done without going completely off the rails.
This confuses a lot of people. If it can speak a 100 languages it must be smart. But it's just dead wrong. It's only part of the story. These models are smart and getting smarter but they're still dumb too.
Change is coming and it’s coming relatively fast and it will only accelerate.
For first time in history we have a technology that can do just about anything. Just like us.
We're about to see a Cambrian explosion of intelligence.
And life will never be the same."
https://danieljeffries.substack.com/p/the-middle-path-for-ai
22. "Perhaps this is the right framework to think about the future of education and software development (as well as all the other functions impacted by AI). Will AI lead to millions of new students sitting in virtual classrooms scribbling notes as professors opine on a chalkboard (as was imagined with MOOCs)? Probably not. Will AI lead to millions of new software developers as they exist today? No, I don’t think so.
(That doesn’t mean the coding copilot companies are uninteresting, by the way. There will still be millions of software developers out there.) But it seems undeniable that there will be a platform that leverages the ease of code generation as a first-order primitive (just like Instagram did with the smartphone camera) to make software creation truly ubiquitous."
https://newsletter.angularventures.com/p/cameras-code-and-creation
23. "Attitudes about San Francisco have reversed since the pandemic, when remote work and doom-loop fears drove white-collar workers out of the region. As excitement over AI crescendoed last year, many observers rolled back prognostications that the tech capital of the world was dead. Entrepreneurs boomeranged back, giving up lower taxes and spacious quarters in Oregon and Montana for a jam-packed schedule of nightly hackathons, demos, and networking events in San Francisco.
Now, a new cohort of techies is arriving: founders from outside the U.S. Like their predecessors in previous tech booms, they say San Francisco is second to none as a location for building their companies. These founders are themselves a bellwether that the AI boom is well underway, with San Francisco as the epicenter."
https://sfstandard.com/2024/11/19/ai-startup-founders-international-donald-trump/
24. Lots of good insights here on global macro, personal finance, crypto investing and how to thrive in the next 5 years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyhhwVJB9Z4
25. "AI is ushering us into a brave new world of Outcome-Based Pricing. This whole concept of “units of work completed” is way different from charging for access to software, which is what we’ve traditionally done. It moves the burden from the customer having to extract value from a tool to the vendor delivering measurable results.
Let’s consider some analogies using the gym world.
Planet Fitness: A subscription model. You’re charged the same amount each month for access to the gym. They don’t care if you actually use the treadmill or not. In fact, they hope you don’t show up because it allows them to sign up even more deadbeat members based on expected capacity. The success of the business is based on people paying for something they don’t fully use—CFOs know this all too well from seat-based pricing in software.
Barry’s Bootcamp: A usage-based model. You’re charged (an extraordinary amount) per class. The pro here is that you don’t pay if you don’t use the services. The con? You could theoretically show up, pay an arm and a leg, and just roll around on the mats for 45 minutes without breaking a sweat (guilty as charged). It’s aligned with usage, but it’s still not connected to actual success.
If AI Were a Gym: This would be an outcome-based model. You’d be charged based on actual improvements in fitness. For example, this could be measured using a proxy like muscle-to-fat ratio or an increase in how much you can lift. It’s not about whether you attended the gym or how many classes you took, but whether you achieved your fitness goals."
https://www.mostlymetrics.com/p/the-age-of-outcome-based-pricing
26. A very sober view on Trump, geopolitics & energy. I don't think his isolationist views are correct but Doomberg looks at the world & facts coldly which is helpful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXSEa4kTl64
27. A very topical discussion on what’s up at the edge of the internet. Educational and entertaining. All vibes, no facts! :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DldBuNHF_70
28. Lots of great advice here for startup founders. "Every startup is a sh-tshow"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViQ3Espcm3U
29. "How is the USA doing?
All you have to do is look at the mismanagement of this century—from Iraq to Afghanistan to China’s rise—to see that this generation of national leadership has failed the nation. They were given the gift of victory in the Cold War and squandered it.
In the last week we have two events that are not-too-subtle warnings that whatever reserve of respect we may have remaining on the international stage, it is thinning to depleted.
You can dismiss these two events if you wish, but if you open your mind and think it through, you can only come to the opinion that our nation is not in a very good place.
Even 10 years ago, these events would not have happened."
https://cdrsalamander.substack.com/p/in-case-youve-missed-it-the-usa-is
30. "The first step to becoming a warrior happens in the mind. It’s willing yourself to suffer. To become hard. To maintain iron discipline in a world that goes out of its way to make you harmless and soft."
https://resavager.com/p/becoming-a-warrior-in-the-kingdom
31. "But we are also confronted here with a security crisis, and our political classes and their parasites are completely ignorant of how to deal with such crises, or even how to understand them. During the Cold War, governments were forced to confront security issues regularly: often, they were also domestic political issues. Security issues were also objectively important, as East and West glared at each other across a militarised border, with the possibility of nuclear annihilation never very far away.
None of that is true now. NATO summits still happen of course, but until recently they have been concerned with peacekeeping deployments, counter-insurgency operations in Afghanistan and the endless succession of new members and partnership initiatives. No fundamental security decisions of any kind have been needed in the political lifetime of any current head of a NATO (or EU) country, until now.
This is the more unfortunate because a security crisis is a highly complex thing, and involves a whole series of levels from the political down to the military/tactical. And a security crisis is just about impossible to manage multilaterally: the only remotely comparable example I can think off is the 1999 Kosovo crisis, when a much smaller NATO effectively stopped working after the first week, and came quite close to breaking down completely.
I’ve pointed out before that NATO has no strategy for Ukraine, and no real operational plan. It just has a series of ad hoc initiatives, glued together by vague aspirations unrelated to real life, and by the hope that something will turn up. In turn, this is because no individual NATO nation is in a better state: our current western political leadership has never had to develop these skills.
But it’s actually worse than that: not having developed these skills, not having advisers who have developed these skills, they cannot actually understand what the Russians are doing and how and why they are doing it. Western leaders are like spectators who do not know the rules of Chess or Go trying to work out who is winning."
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/a-strange-defeat
32. "This shift is reshaping our cities in unexpected ways. When the internet first emerged, experts predicted the "death of distance" and the decline of cities. Instead, the opposite occurred – cities became more vital than ever as centers of innovation and creativity. But now we're seeing another twist: even as the AI boom makes San Francisco's tech companies more valuable than ever, its offices sit half-empty. The relationship between economic activity and physical space is breaking down.
The new economy, Poleg argues, looks less like a factory production line and more like Hollywood. Success is unpredictable and often binary – massive hits coexist with total failures, with little middle ground. Just as no one can reliably predict which movies will succeed, no one anticipated that ChatGPT would reach 100 million users faster than any product in history. Value appears suddenly and compounds dramatically, while traditional metrics of input and output become less relevant.
This has profound implications for how we think about real estate and urban development. Our cities were built for an industrial economy – one where masses of people worked similar jobs on similar schedules in predictable patterns. Our zoning laws, tax systems, and infrastructure all assume this kind of stability and uniformity. But that world is disappearing.
Instead, we're seeing the emergence of what Poleg calls a "nonlinear economy." Work is becoming more specialized and unpredictable. Success increasingly depends on matching exactly the right talent with the right opportunity at the right moment. Companies are discovering they can collaborate effectively across multiple locations, accessing global talent pools rather than requiring everyone to be in the same building."
https://www.drorpoleg.com/nobody-knows-anything/
33. "But the new world isn’t without its challenges. There is so much about the old world of tech investing that needs to be unlearned. The old world is dominated by legacy tech networks that lack the relationships and industry insights to serve the new world’s customers. Legacy best practices for SaaS aren’t the same in a world where services are being sold – for better or worse, the operating models are going to be incredibly different, requiring a nuanced understanding of the customers needs and how they buy.
This equally impacts the nuance that investors will require to successfully invest and support these companies. With new margin structures, investors will have to properly understand the difference between value creation and revenue growth (hint: revenue multiples never mattered much, but mean even less now), comping a business to its category and its comparative unit economic performance.
This looks very different from the traditional “growth at all costs” methods of venture and likely needs to borrow from other methods of investing to better align with how these companies would be valued in the public markets."
https://newsletter.equal.vc/p/the-new-world-for-entrepreneurs
34. Another great episode here. Best convo on tech investing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SewIKjE1Lec&t=228s
35. This is a good overview on semiconductors.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkuxNg-j6uI&t=17s
36. Must listen to. Taking a big swing and not making it, getting back up again. But this is what makes Silicon Valley work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvoaEuSmKM0&t=1186s
37. This is an interview I will rewatch many times. How to live a dope life. So many great nuggets of entrepreneurial insight. Shaan has crushed it and it's been fun watching his rise.
He shares all his learnings of his career: "Do cool nerdy stuff with smart people"
Elemental: Family, Duty and Sacrifice
I was assigned to watch Disney Pixar’s “Elemental” animated movie by our family therapist as I was trying to salvage the trainwreck of my marriage and family life. I honestly was wondering why the heck?
But I am glad I did watch it. Like all Pixar movies, it’s beautifully written and based on Director Peter Sohn’s experience growing up as a son of immigrants in New York City. In a city where fire, water, land, and air residents live together, a fiery young woman and a go-with-the-flow guy discover something elemental: how much they actually have in common. It deals with ethnic xenophobia and the immigrant experience, cross generational conflict as well as cross ethnic relationships. It’s a wonderful story with some dark undertones.
Ember the fire resident is set to inherit her fathers store but cannot control her temper (kind of like me). But she must, if she wants to take over the store, as this is her fathers dream. Like many immigrant parents, they sacrificed everything to start over and give their children better lives. And this weight of responsibility falls very heavily on the next generation.
Ember says in a moment of weakness: “I don’t think I do want to run the shop. Okay? That’s what my temper has been trying to tell me. I’m trapped. Do you know what’s crazy? Even when I was a kid, I would pray to the blue flame to be good enough to fill my father’s shoes one day.
But I never asked what I wanted to do. Deep down I knew it didn’t matter. Because the only way to repay a sacrifice so big is by sacrificing your life too.”
But in the end, she admits her true feelings to her dad, who responds rather surprisingly: “The shop was never the dream. You were the dream.”
At the end of the day, that’s what most parents want is just the best for their kids. But they don’t really do a good job sharing warm or positive feelings with their kids. Unfortunately Asian immigrant parents use shame as their main tool. And any love or praise tends to be conditional on performance at school or for good behavior. It certainly works well to drive performance for most Asian immigrant kids. I should note my parents were fairly open minded compared to other Asian/ Taiwanese Immigrant parents, they told me I could do whatever I wanted, versus being pushed into medicine or engineering or the sciences. The only thing they demanded was that I had to be the best at it.
I guess this is what my therapist wanted me to view through another lens and animated kids movies work well here. Gave me a lot to think about.
I write a lot about intergenerational trauma and my issues with parents. Well, really more my mom, who pushed me as hard (harsh) as her mom pushed her. But i will say, now being a father myself, this Sh-t is damn hard and my parents did their best. I get that now.
Like the character Ember’s parents, mine sacrificed everything to come to North America and have a better life for us here in Canada/USA. If I had grown up in the strict and conformist culture of Taiwan, I would probably have ended up as a school drop out and become a gangster (seriously).
My petty rebellions in a much more tolerant and forgiving Canada led to a pretty damn interesting international business career so far. And for that, I will forever be grateful to my parents, to Canada as well as to my present home America.
Dying Slowly in America: The Heart Always Wins
Another flight and of course, another movie. I flipped in and out of the excellent Spielberg Movie called “the Fabelmans” and it definitely seemed like an autobiography. It’s a story about a young Jewish boy’s coming of age as he aspires to be a filmmaker. “But he soon discovers a shattering family secret and explores how the power of films can help him see the truth.”
There is this scene where his mom is about to leave the family and she tells him:
“You do what your heart says you have to, you don’t owe anyone your life. Not even me.”
So many of us take the career or life paths that our parents, our families or society says we have to. Or should. We give up our dreams to do what we think is expected of us. And this just leads us to a lifetime of wondering what could have been.
How many people do we know that are dying inside? Married to someone they don’t love, working at jobs they hate with people they dislike. All for a paycheck to survive. Barely getting by. Dreading Monday mornings, feeling sick on Sunday night, and eager for Friday and the weekend.
Yet that is most people’s lives in our modern day. Living without purpose. Living without a mission. Living without passion. Losing time which is the most precious and perishable asset on the Earth.
Benjamin Franklin reportedly said “Some people die at 25 and aren’t buried until 75”. It’s not too late. Don’t become one of these people!
It’s incredibly sad especially in a time of great change, uncertainty and opportunities. It’s a time to be “risk on” in life. Better a 50% chance of success trying than no chance by not attempting anything. DO SOMETHING! Do anything! Anything to get you closer to your dream life.
Technology Without Culture Does Not Work: The Future is Better
I’ve recently discovered a new sci-fi series called “Moonhaven”. I had a hard time getting into it at first as it started slow but it grew on me. It takes place in the future when the earth is an ecological mess plagued by resource wars and where the strong take from the weak.
The only hope is the terraformed Moon Haven colony on the Moon which has the special IO technology and well-trained people & society whose sole purpose was to prepare it for mass colonization from Earth. The mooners think and act with an abundance mindset and are thus better able to leverage and build new technology. It’s why the Earthers turned the tech and all their best people over to the mooners, their scarcity mindset coming from a crowded and war-torn land.
But trouble ensues as after several generations the gap between the civilized Mooners and now frustrated war scarred Earthers is so wide that the planned colonization fleets from Earth are being denied. Extremists from both sides bring violence to this paradise.
It’s interesting as it covers so many relevant topics for a technology driven society like ours. The role of technology and how it tends to outstrip human ability to process and understand let alone adopt. How technology is dual use, it can be used for both good and evil.
And that even in paradise, devils exist. That the quest for power will never leave us humans and some will take any measure to get it and keep it. Humans haven’t really changed over the last thousands of years and doubt this will be the case in the next future thousands.
But at the same time, we all have hope. Hope for a better world and life for our children and future generations. Better to think of technology and view technology through the lens of utopia, versus the dystopian perspective we find ourselves in the USA, Europe & the West at large. This is not the perspective of technology in Asia or India and that is why they are catching up to us. If you think life will be better through technology, then you usually will develop more of it. And probably be more optimistic about the outcomes from tech as well.
Hope is a great driver for progress and cooperation, which is why I love the main mantra of the MoonHaven society: “The Future is Better.” I am happy to write that the vibe shift happening in America now seems to be in this more positive direction after the last 8-10 years of malaise.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads December 15th, 2024
“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old but on building the new” – Socrates
Incredible business story. Basically an angel round to massive exit many, many years later. Big lesson: be humble and be of service.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8RjsF1ygNg
2. "At the end of the day, if you’ve backed great companies, ‘hold and wait’ is certainly a reasonable strategy but it’s not clear it’s still the optimal one."
3. "The smaller players in the defense-tech ecosystem have been rooting for a Trump victory, seeing him as the kind of disruptor who could give them a bigger share of the Pentagon’s budget. For years, defense officials have said they have a strong appetite for cheaper, more nimble defense technologies — but new players have found it challenging to carve out a space under the Pentagon’s rules.
Many venture capitalists and defense tech entrepreneurs bet early on Trump’s campaign, convinced he could reform the Pentagon’s arcane budgeting system in ways that will push it to adopt their cutting-edge innovations faster.
“The single biggest thing that will make the difference is the amount of investment that the next administration puts into these advanced capabilities, and when I say investment, I mean procurement dollars to buy them at scale,” Chris Brose, Andruil’s chief strategy officer, told DFD.
Defense tech startups have long struggled to persuade the DOD to buy from them.
Venture-backed defense tech companies took less than 1 percent of the $411 billion in federal defense contracts awarded last fiscal year. That’s even as the department increasingly seeks out AI-enabled systems, defense venture funding continues to pour in and new global conflicts have stoked calls to modernize military arsenals."
4. "The vibe shift this time is a story about progressive Millennials realizing that when they declared total victory for their politics in 2020—it was a Pyrrhic victory. They aren’t out of the running, yet.
But they are going to have to think much more pragmatically about the trade-offs involved in their policy preferences, walk back activist overreach, and give up on the idea The New York Times or FBI or any other institution has a monopoly on truth. They have to get into the trenches and convince people that their interpretations of reality are correct."
https://www.8ball.report/p/vibe-shift-america
5. "Scott Bassett, the man most believe will be Trump’s pick to replace Bad Gurl Yellen as the US Treasury secretary, has given many speeches about how he would “fix” America. His speeches and op-eds provide details on how to execute Trump’s America First Plan, which bears a considerable resemblance to China’s development plan (which started with Deng in the 1980s and continues to this day).
The plan is to run nominal GDP hot by providing government tax credits and subsidies to re-shore critical industries (shipbuilding, semiconductor fabs, auto manufacturing, etc.). Companies that qualify will then receive cheap bank financing. The banks will again fall over themselves to lend to real companies because their profitability is ensured by the American government. As companies expand inside of America, they must hire American workers. Better paying jobs for ordinary Americans means more consumer spending.
The effects are amplified if Trump limits the number of Sombrero-wearing, cat and dog-eating, dark and dirty immigrants crossing the borders from “shithole countries”. These things juice economic activity, and the government takes its cut through corporate profit and wage income taxes. The government deficit must remain large to fund these programs, and the Treasury Department funds the government by selling bonds to banks. The banks can now re-lever their balance sheets because either the Fed or lawmakers suspended the supplemental leverage ratio. The winners are ordinary workers, companies that produced “approved” products and services, and the US government, which sees its debt-to-nominal GDP ratio fall. This is QE for poor people on steroids.
Wow, that sounds great. Who would be opposed to such a magical era of American prosperity?
The losers are those who hold long-term bonds or savings deposits. That is because the yield on such instruments will be intentionally kept below the nominal growth rate of the American economy. Folks also lose if their wages cannot keep up with the higher inflation levels. If you haven’t noticed, being in a union is cool again. 4 and 40 is the new mantra. That is, pay workers 40% more over the next 4 years, i.e. 10% per year wage hikes, to continue working.
For those readers who believe themselves to be rich, don’t worry. Here is a cheat sheet on what to buy. This is not financial advice; I’m simply sharing what I’m doing with my portfolio. Every time a bill passes and hands out money to approved industries, read it, and buy stocks in those verticals. Instead of saving in fiat bonds or bank deposits, purchase gold (the boomer financial repression hedge) or Bitcoin (the millennial financial repression hedge)."
https://cryptohayes.substack.com/p/black-or-white
6. "You’re exiting the protocol application investing time period and will be entering into the application investing time period.
Will you make it? Who knows. Only time will tell. By 2025 the winners in applications will likely be clear. Just don’t miss it and ruin your bloodline."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/2025-last-chance-for-easy-gains-in
7. Excellent and timely discussion on Anduril and the defense industry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUV4s71apbA
8. "Sphere is part of a bigger story about the city: about how a place that was once a playground out on the fringe of the country feels as though it has moved, for better and for worse, to the very center of American life and America’s future.
Just ask Las Vegans, who are feeling it, let me tell you. Not for these guys the usual boomtown lament that things used to be better. In the desert—where the population of the Las Vegas metro area has nearly doubled since the start of the 21st century—things are only heading upward! At every turn, I seemed to run into an unofficial member of the Chamber of Commerce, all but finishing one another’s sentences in their enthusiasm to make the case: The dining scene is booming. Chinatown is blowing up.
The Vegas residency beckons the biggest stars in the world, an irresistible alternative to the ordeal and economics of touring. The outdoors scene has become recognized as world-class. A high-speed train to Los Angeles is on its way, supposedly in time for the 2028 Olympics. Warner Bros. Discovery and Sony have each floated the idea of building major studios, the latter in partnership with Mark Wahlberg.
Above all, the argument for Las Vegas’s new status is spoken in the language of sports. Professional leagues’ fear of the taint of gambling once made it all but unthinkable that the city would ever have a home team to root for beyond the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) Runnin’ Rebels. Now, in a cultural loop de loop, that school’s Confederate mascot has been canceled, while sports betting has become the all-but-official national pastime.
Vegas got its first big-league franchise in 2017, when the Golden Knights arrived as an NHL expansion team. Today, it’s eyeing the Royal Flush, including the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces, the NFL’s Raiders (most recently of Oakland), soon enough baseball’s Athletics (also ripped from poor Oakland), and an all but assured NBA expansion franchise. The city hosted its first Super Bowl earlier this year, and will welcome the second Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix this month. Nothing soothes an urban identity crisis like the sweet Xanax of professional sports. They are the fairy dust America sprinkles over a city to let it know that it is really real."
9. An especially excellent episode of NIA today. Worth listening to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vgb9x0Pt_pM
10. Valuable and sober conversation. Not a fan of Tucker but Colby is sharp. This is important to understand the future of geopolitical strategy for America in the future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtsGqGc-Iuw
11. A thoughtful discussion on the state and evolution of venture capital. Chris Paik is one of the smartest guys in the business.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjTKo1kz3KI
12. "The creator/celebrity brands that endure do three things right: 1) They’re authentic to the creator, 2) They have a genuinely unique insight, and 3) They move beyond the figurehead. The two most successful examples, in my mind, are Rihanna’s Fenty and Kim Kardashian’s SKIMS.
I expect we’ll have a few large venture outcomes that also touch on all three—creation, distribution, and monetization. I’m particularly interested in a next-gen Roblox (it boggles my mind that you have to know Luau to build in Roblox) that uses AI to crowd in a longer tail of creators, and I’m also spending a lot of time in the fan-fiction world, looking at how AI allows fans to spin up their own stories and build with each other’s IP Lego blocks.
The creator phenomenon—the concept of people having parasocial relationships online, making stuff and sharing it and earning income—isn’t going anywhere. It’s one of the biggest phenomena of the online age, and it will underpin another generation of large technology companies."
https://www.digitalnative.tech/p/the-evolution-of-the-creator
13. "Ownership percentage matters to VCs because of the explicit target return we discussed earlier. This is the most fundamental difference between VCs and angel investors.
Most angel investors aren’t too worried about ownership percentage because, unlike VCs, most angel investors don’t have specific return objectives. Whenever I’ve made angel investments, I wasn’t overly concerned about whether my investment had the potential to return 4x, 40x or 400x. My motivation was quite simply to invest in amazing founders who I thought were doing amazing things. At the end of the day, any positive return would generally be good for me (as part of a healthy, balanced portfolio 😉).
But VC funds are financial products that aim for a very specific target return (3x over 10 years). When you combine this objective with the power law nature of tech startups (that is, the notion that the majority will fail and a small percentage will drive most of a fund’s returns), the need to be explicit about ownership percentage starts to make sense."
https://chrisneumann.com/archives/why-do-vcs-care-about-ownership
14. "All these misunderstandings are a result of taking the Washington Myth at face value, and the US at its own evaluation; Things become much clearer if we recognise that the US is a powerful nation, but not an all-powerful one, that (without going full Andrei Martyanov) its military has quite serious structural and doctrinal problems that limit its effectiveness, and that its vast and conflictual government system makes it very hard to apply any kind of long-term strategy that takes account of reality on the ground. It’s also true that there is a tendency to confuse vague aspirations with actual plans.
This is what I call the Rain-Dance Fallacy: I want it to rain, I do a dance, it rains, therefore I have caused the rain. All over Washington there are stones where, if you turn them over, someone will crawl out with a long-lasting obsession about something or other which they will write and speak about incessantly, and for which they try to get support. Occasionally these correspond roughly to real things that happen in the world later, but there is seldom any kind of causal relationship.
And it’s becoming increasingly clear that the Washington Myth is just that: a myth.
The domination of the elite European mind by US examples and ways of thinking over the last few generations was not obvious or automatic at the beginning, and was the product of some of the cultural, political and economic factors described above. But it was also the product of chance: no other well-articulated and large-scale system of thought was available to challenge it, especially after the fall of the Soviet Union, still less in a language that everyone more-or-less spoke. It’s probably these contingent factors that have done the most to keep US intellectual dominance intact, in the absence of any obvious alternative. The problem is, it’s not clear what the alternative actually is now, or where it might come from."
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/a-wasting-asset
15. "This new off-price environment shows no signs of slowing down. At Equal Ventures, we believe the future of retail lies in these next-generation off-price platforms to create value for consumers and brands alike and we’re incredibly excited about companies that are seeking to redefine what off-price retail can be. Off-price is no longer taboo — it’s the future of premium retail."
https://newsletter.equal.vc/p/inflation-sparks-the-off-price-boom
16. "Glasnost unleashed a gang fight of epic proportions. As a result, Russia ended up in Perestroika, meaning restructuring. That will happen in the US too. The difference is that America is not the Soviet Union. Americans understand capitalism. They know how to create businesses or policies, restructure them, and adapt to change. Nobody does that better than the USA. But, any time you throw out the old to make way for the new, it’s more than painful. It’s a fight.
The fight is increasingly visible. The raid on the CEO of Polymarket is a telling sign. This was probably not only because Polymarket visibly signaled to voters that Trump would win by a landslide, which obviously would not have been welcome by Democrats. He was not arrested or charged. There is speculation that the issue is about insider trading.
Either way, Polymarket’s algorithms were stronger than anybody else’s, and now they may be accessible and visible to the current enforcement authorities. But, it is perhaps not totally coincidental that Polymarket is a Peter Thiel-backed firm, and Thiel is certainly the invisible power behind Trump and Vance. The raid signals that more will come. The French are investigating polymarket, too. All the Tech Bros that have backed Trump will be vulnerable to such raids."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/american-glasnost
17. One of the more original and interesting folks in Hollywood. I like Mr Matthew McConaughey. This is a good interview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eu1kHIztT24&t=2s
18. This is a great discussion on the latest in Silicon Valley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsJMJK97EyM
19. We have not understood the huge positive effects that the Shale Revolution has been for America.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-qI-dFcKGA&t=1s
20. “Imperfect progress is progress. Perfect progress is unrealistic.” It’s simple, but it’s a truth worth repeating. It reminded me of a quote from a character called Jake the Dog on Adventure Time: “Dude, sucking at something is the first step towards sorta being good at something.”
It’s funny, but it’s spot on. Whether you’re a founder, an investor or a new podcaster like me, the early days can be rough. But it’s all part of the process."
21. "For any military strategist, geography is both the first and most unforgiving adversary and in the case of Taiwan, the island's natural defences present a labyrinth of complexities for China. The Taiwan Strait, a mere 90 miles of restless, churning waters, serves as more than just a separation between two lands; it is a formidable moat where, as conflict watchers put it, "distance is measured not in miles, but in minutes of vulnerability." What appears to be a narrow gap in geopolitical terms expands into a sea of operational headaches, with each wave and current posing a threat to the cohesion of an invading force.
The seasonal monsoons and tempestuous typhoons that regularly sweep across the strait are not mere inconveniences—they narrow the invasion window to brief moments of calm amidst nature's fury. An amphibious assault of this scale would require impeccable synchronisation of air, sea, and land forces, moving hundreds of thousands of troops and countless tons of equipment, all while exposed to Taiwan's formidable missile defence and the unblinking eye of US-backed satellite surveillance.
'In war, amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics', and nowhere is this more evident than in the daunting task of launching an invasion across this hostile strait. China's amphibious fleet, though growing, still falls short of the capacity needed for such a monumental undertaking. In a desperate bid to close the gap, civilian vessels, slower and more vulnerable, would likely be pressed into service. These roll-on/roll-off ships, often described as lumbering giants of the seas, would be prime targets for Taiwan's anti-ship missile systems. Military experts often note that a fleet of that size is a gift-wrapped target waiting for a strike. Thus, the perilous voyage across the strait could quickly turn into a nightmare of logistical unravelling before the first boots even touched Taiwan's shores."
https://english.cw.com.tw/article/article.action?id=3825
22. Incredible connections & insights when you listen to this. Derek Sivers, Philosopher-entrepreneur.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGnDhd--BiM
23. "Entrepreneurs would do well to answer these questions not only before starting a business but to revisit them on a regular basis in the context of their current direction and initiatives. Products and business models are dynamic, just like most things, and it’s easy to get in a rut without zooming out and asking the big questions consistently. Every business must answer these seven questions both for today and tomorrow."
https://davidcummings.org/2024/11/16/thiels-seven-questions-every-business-must-answer/
24. "In other words, the USSR tried to build the edifice of industrial economy starting from foundation, and got stuck there. If you start from foundations, you will never ever get to the roof.
China, on the other hand, started from the roof, skipping the foundation part altogether. Unlike the Soviet way, Chinese way does work. The flip side, however, is that leaping to the front end, you leave many, and many, and many back end-related critical points behind. And that is because you never even bothered with developing them.
Still, it is important to remember that it doesn’t just materialise on the supermarket shelf out of nowhere. There is a long and complex manufacturing chain behind the shelf. And the production of a ready consumer good, such as a towel, a bicycle or a quadcopter is but the final, ultimate step of the chain."
https://kamilkazani.substack.com/p/why-the-ussr-failed
25. "Smaller models represent a significant innovation for enterprises where they can take advantage of similar performance at two orders of magnitude, less expense and half of the latency.
No wonder builders view them as small but mighty."
https://tomtunguz.com/small-but-mighty-ai/
26. "Whatever rules you pick, use common sense in picking them, and be respectful in applying them. The best time to discuss rules is while you’re still negotiating the terms sheet. Once a board gets in the habit of treating observers like directors, it can be hard to break. So from the outset, you should be ready to set norms for observers. Talk to new observers in advance so you know they understand the rules. And then respectfully enforce them if they get violated in the meeting."
https://kellblog.com/2024/11/14/the-proper-role-of-the-board-observer/
27. "Despite a 51-48 split in the popular vote, three-quarters of Americans agree on one thing: We’re on the wrong track. That’s been the political reality for most of this century — high levels of dissatisfaction, resulting in a series of “change” elections. The reason? Voters recognize that millennials and Zoomers aren’t as prosperous as their boomer and Gen X parents. One example: In 1981 the median age of a homebuyer was 38, today it’s 54.
The epicenter of the 2024 political earthquake wasn’t immigration, bodily autonomy, or democracy. It was the social contract between America and its citizens. The contract is straightforward: Work hard and play by the rules, and your children will have a better life than you did. For the first time in 250 years, that contract has not held."
https://www.profgalloway.com/the-testosterone-election/
28. "If you believe in liberalism, this is what you’re now fighting against — a combination of the petty Lenins of social media, the panopticon of smartphones, and the long arm of the world’s most domineering governments.
You are the rebellion, and technology has stacked the deck against you. Your only hope, essentially, is to either A) innovate new technologies that take power out of the hands of the petty Lenins and domineering governments,3 or B) somehow use the cultural and media spaces not dominated by those illiberal forces to spread liberal ideas strong enough to overcome the innate disadvantages of modern technology.
It would still be an exaggeration to say that you now live under the thumb of a global authoritarian regime ruled from Beijing. China’s military might hasn’t been used yet, and other countries’ nuclear deterrents still give it pause. Its control over your speech is far from complete — there are still many outlets for bashing the CCP without suffering dire consequences. And its influence over Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and various European elites, while considerable, is not total.
But the idea that the U.S. could engineer an industrial revival, take action against CCP domination of social media, and lead a coalition of liberal powers to balance China’s rise, now looks fanciful. With the election of Trump, China is now simply first-among-equals of a loose concert of illiberal great powers.
Which leaves us, the people who still believe in liberalism, as the rebellion. If you believe in the primacy of individual human freedom and dignity, you are now fighting a desperate underground guerilla struggle to carve out any kind of a liberal space in a world that only 25 years ago upheld your values as paramount.
History has returned — indeed, it never ended — and there is no destiny or fate guaranteeing that you will end up on the favored side of it.
But that is no reason to give up."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/liberalism-is-the-rebellion-now-38b
29. "And thus, the Unholy Trinity of Venture Capital was born.
Agglomerators who could run further and faster with bigger funds, more fees, and bigger platforms.
Allocators who were looking to take massive chunky checks and have a shot at a good yield.
Absorbers who have an endless supply of places they can shove their cash, from training and inference to marketing or lobbying. It's expensive to rule the world.
A match made in heaven. Maybe not the heaven, but certainly a heaven.
And this all comes back to the point about the loudest people with the most capital shaping the future of a thing. Today, the loudest people are agglomerators like a16z and GC, allocators like UAE and CPP, and absorbers like OpenAI and Anthropic. And whether you like it or not, they are intent on shaping the game in their image.
I've said this before and I'll say it again. I am, by no means, saying that a16z or CPP or OpenAI are bad. But they are different. They are very different from the venture capital of yore. Granted, they may, literally, unlock artificial general intelligence in a way that will transform the world in ways unimaginable even in comparison to the renaissance, industrial revolution, or digital age.
So maybe that's worth letting them dramatically reshape the face of how innovation gets funded.
But remember what a stupider game is—a stupider game is thinking you're playing the same game when your opponent is, in fact, playing a very different game."
https://investing1012dot0.substack.com/p/the-unholy-trinity-of-venture-capital
30. This clip is important for anyone who thinks we can still work with the CCP or China. It syncs with my experience there, you will always get cheated or ripped off.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCnMz0Kx2f8
31. Important conversation on politics and tech. 2025 will be critical. American regulations under Biden have been disastrous for our future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4jWb-0nj44
32. Quite an educational and interesting conversation with the ultimate biohacker and man who won't die: Bryan Johnson.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAPaW5S_RbI
33. "The NIF, based in Amsterdam, is one vision of how the region might do that. The fund plans to jumpstart ailing European deeptech innovation in a way that may also benefit its members and their militaries—independent of US support.
The US, which already spends more on defense than any othernation, is among eight NATO members that have so far decided not to contribute to the fund.
“They obviously weighed up the pros and cons and just felt that this doesn’t make sense for the US, given their strong heritage in venture capital,” says Rob Murray, the former British army officer who was an early proponent of the NIF in Trump’s first term.
In theory, the NIF will become a funding model that’s self-sustaining for NATO innovation priorities, says Michael C. Horowitz, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who worked on emerging capabilities in the US Department of Defense until earlier this year. He sees what the NIF is trying to do as part of a worldwide trend. “Governments around the world, including in the United States, have understood they need to change the way they’re interacting with the private sector if they want to be able to more effectively both harness and nurture technology development to achieve their national security goals.”
https://www.wired.com/story/natos-tech-scouts-are-fortifying-europe-for-a-world-after-donald-trump/
34. "It’s extraordinary how inculcated this weasel-speak has become in the business world (similar copy is on many large brand and agency websites) with the ad and media industry particularly guilty. To me this is striking as they should be the ones who know better. There’s an old saying that the people who make propaganda are frequently the most susceptible to it, perhaps they’re also susceptible to other things such as going along with rot.
I would be extremely skeptical of working for organizations that suffer from this. It’s emblematic of how life under them will be (political, subversive, bureaucratic) vs a place focused on merit that champions creativity and rewards results. Note that a company being ‘inclusive’ as an independently chosen value could be great, but say it directly and in your own words, not mindlessly repeating rebranded Marxist slogans which in practice are illiberal and divisive.
It’s clear the ads and media sector needs its own ‘founder mode’ movement, or something like it, to cast off the decay and do great work once again. It’s past due, as everyone is fed up with our dystopian management consultant manufactured reality. We really need to do better here, because remember, these teams are the ones advising the rest of the world how to communicate."
https://www.hottakes.space/p/the-media-industry-badly-needs-to
35. "It initially all seems academic—numbers too big to make a difference to small startups. However, these dynamics change the incentives for companies making decisions even at the earliest stages. Where to locate, where to hire, which partnerships to accumulate, which customers to target and more are up for grabs.
The dollar reserve disparity has set up US markets to gear towards uber-productive technology-driven companies. The monetary premium boosts those home assets by funneling trillions of future cash flow towards capital markets. And the result is that the M&A activity in the US, especially in the tech sector, greatly outpaces Europe.
This is also why most European venture investors encourage their companies to target US markets. Even in the worst of times, it remains the land of liquidity."
https://www.eu.vc/p/the-land-of-liquidity-europe-and
36. Good geopolitical discussion with Ryan McBeth, found a new analyst and interesting influencer too.
The Time Capsule: Lessons of Staying Young While Getting Old
I watch the most random movies on flights. But there was this movie called “The Time Capsule” that was intriguing.
The story is that in the near future, a politician named Jack escapes to his family’s summer lake house. His vacation and life is disrupted by the appearance of his first love Elise who has returned from a 20 year space journey and hasn’t aged a day having been in hibernation. What a premise.
They end up at this lake party one night and they have a very deep conversation as they catch up after so long. 20 years actually. A strange situation, reliving his past again.
Jack: “I mean if you want to get the job, you got to do the bull sh-t. And that goes for everything, not just politics.”
Elise: “You sound like a bitter old man.”
Jack: “There is a reason people get that way. I mean if I knew then what I know now.”
I remember a conversation:
Jack: “What do you want to do? What do you want to do? Driving, talking, nothing to do. Sigh. Now there is always something to do.”
Elise: “I remember you said to me “try to be what other people want you to be but if you lie about who you are it won’t matter.
It’s weird as I’ve only been back for a little while but I’ve managed to meet some of my old friends. And they all say the same things: ‘you’ll see.’ ‘You’ll learn’. It’s sad. Everyone looks tired, distracted like they had a dream and lost it. Even if they never had one to lose.”
Jack responds: “but people have children and responsibilities.”
Elise: “It’s not that. They just seem content to be disappointed.”
Jack: “well as you get older, disappointments add up, you start to expect more of it.”
Elise: “Don’t you wish you could have kept your excitement for life when you were younger?”
Jack: “It’s easier to be excited about life when it’s all in front of you.”
Elise: “you should be even more passionate about life cause there is less of it left. You are just like the rest of them, used to be cool but now you’re boring and jaded.”
It’s an excellent reminder.
Sometimes you need a break in your life. Nostalgia attached to people and places is powerful. Old friendships are important. The past can also sometimes help you figure out your future. Help you rediscover your old zest for life that we all used to have as young kids.
But you just have to be yourself. You can’t lie to yourself. You can never hide. Hiding from your dreams is what makes you old. It’s what causes you deep regret. “Somewhere along the way it became about playing a part and getting to the next level.”
By being yourself, having passion, taking risks and being willing to put yourself out there. That is how you get the most out of life. Have expectations and don’t settle. “So go out and live. Travel. Meet people. Discover yourself. You may think you already know who you are but sometimes it takes getting a little lost to know for sure.”
Beckham: The Documentary
I’m not a football or sports fan in general. Definitely not a huge pop fan or fashionista either. But I am impressed by people who thrive in these environments. David Beckham is one of these people who seems to be one of these people, thriving in all of these realms.
The 4 part Netflix documentary shows his rise to football stardom, model, businessman/one man company, personal brand and then just general stardom overall. He is a major face of pop culture now.
I learned a lot about him and really like him more than I did before as the documentary tracked his entire rise to the top. Joining Manchester United at age 15 and growing up with the team. Playing for team England for the World Cup, especially the Argentina-England 1998 game controversy (fans are stupid and flakey to say the least). Recovering from having all of the UK hate him due to the red card during that game. His romance and marriage with Posh Spice. Surviving the fame and the media frenzy since he was young.
His perfectionism and his discipline. One of his team mates:
“If you lose discipline, you don’t play at 100%.You play at 80% or 90% and then you go down very quickly. You Know? Very fast. In a few months….you’ve disappeared completely. And then you wake up in the morning and you say “Oh Sh-t”’
I don’t know how he did it. He’d just performed despite the madness of his life. Watching his goals throughout his career. Wow. Pure artistry.
But the way he got very good was because his football fanatic father pushed him extremely hard. At a level many people in this present weak-minded age would call abusive. Or as I call it Tiger mom or Asian immigrant parenting. Nothing was ever good enough. Doing corner kick after corner kick after corner kick to put it in the same spot that his dad wanted. “And if I didn’t he’d kill me.” I know how this feels. This seems to be the spur that leads to excellence though. And his dad told him: “It’s moments like corners at the end of the game that can create history.” His father was right and this was how Beckham helped his team win the treble that year.
Yet the higher you are, the harder the fall or better said: “The wind blows hardest at the top of the mountain.” It’s so extreme these kinds of pop star fandom. One minute everyone loves you, the next minute it turns to extreme hate. Unfairness and extreme inhumane behavior of the crowds he had to deal with at age 23 when the controversy happened. Madness of the crowds, especially brutish English ones. Beckham handled it well. I honestly probably would have lost it, probably fought or maybe even shot people in his position. But thankfully he had his soon to be wife, his family, his friends.
And Alex Ferguson of Man United who helped him through it & told him “Go on your holiday. Come back here. We’ll look after you. Don’t read the papers. There is no point to it. What you can do is ignore it.” Goes to show you the importance of people in the key tough periods of your life who help you and who create an island and inner sanctum for you to recover in.
He just kept grinding and kept everything inside, like a “working class, old school mentality, to like, roll your sleeves up, you get through this.”
He sucked in the negative attention and all the abuse he and his family got from fans and used it as fuel for his performance. He started playing incredibly well and scoring goals. All the way to Man United winning the FA Cup, Champions league & European Cup Final. A historic treble. A victorious turnaround through stubbornness, hard work and determination that he kept up throughout his entire football career. He even became Captain of the Team England for the 2002 World Cup.
Being surprise-traded from Man U. Joining the legendary Real Madrid football club playing with other football legends like Carlos, Figo, Ronaldo and Zidane. Beckham grew tremendously during these moments and the years after despite the turmoil in Spain. He helped turn things around in his last season in Madrid, even as he was injured the last game, but they won the championship. He took a big risk and eventually moved to LA to play for the Galaxy team for a $250M USD contract. Regardless of the crap first year, overall it paid off well and he helped put MLS on the map, winning the MLS Cup. He is now co-owner of MLS football team Inter Miami CF with one of the most lucrative business deals ever signed in the league. And he signed the best football player in the world Leo Messi to Miami. Legend.
He’s transcended football at this point. The man who has everything it seems. At the top of his game, good looking, married to a gorgeous pop star. He has good taste & style + all the toys and fixings of his wealth and fame. Yet he has a loving family and is a humble, good and normal guy with lower middle class upbringing. He did not seem to let the fame and wealth get to his head like it has for so many others. I find that incredibly impressive. An overall good dude and a documentary worth watching.
All Your Problems Lie Within: Heal Thyself
I detest Tucker Carlson but you have to admire his skill as an interviewer and media personality. He is clearly a very smart and well educated person at the top of his game. Too bad his game is spreading hate and division in America.
But he said something that was deeply insightful during his “All in Podcast” interview. He identified a deep seated self-loathing that we seem to have in America and especially among the elites and the well off.
I can’t believe I’m quoting him but here is what he said: “I think the problem is prosperity and I’ve noticed this as a middle aged man, as I’ve gotten to know people who have become successful. In some cases very successful. I’ve noticed that when they succeed and they get everything they want, they destroy themselves. I’ve noticed this again and again and again.
You are the dog that caught the car. I think it’s more than idle time, there is a metaphysical quality, there are factors that I don’t understand that are deeper actually. But I just noticed it. There is something about affluence that over time convinces people to kill themselves.”
Something self destructive comes out when we are doing well. It’s like we are purposely shooting ourselves in our foot. Like we feel we don’t deserve our success as a country or even as individuals. This certainly describes many of the rich kids I have met. Or successful entrepreneurs, celebrities and business people. They completely self-destruct. Sometimes in their business life but almost always in their personal lives. A “self own" we would call it.
It’s so strange, yet when I think back on my life either as a child or even adult, I’ve done this to myself. Every time I’m getting ahead, I seem to do something stupid. Any financial windfall I had I would squander.
And when I didn’t mess things up financially, I did so on the personal side. Closing up, or worse, lashing out at family (not physically, but emotionally). No wonder my family life is such a disastrous mess. I’d been doing this unconsciously for decades.
I wonder sometimes if this goes back to my upbringing of never feeling enough, being the disappointment in the family & community. Not feeling worthy. Something I’ve overcompensated by focusing so much energy and time in my career and financial success. Only to self sabotage when I start to really get somewhere.
People are strange. The minute you start to think you know yourself, there are stranger depths you stumble upon. However, like all problems you need to attack it head on. Directly, which is the only way I know how to. You have to face these dark urges if you want to overcome them. Therapy helps. So does meditation and lots of reading & thinking.
Ultimately, to paraphrase an old Cherokee tribe saying: “we all have two wolves inside us. One is good aka positive. One is evil aka negative. The one that wins is the one we feed.” I think about this often.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads December 8th, 202
It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.–Confucius
This was an insightful conversation on the podcast election in 2024 and Vercel: personalized software enabler.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zTjlcr1wdw
2. "All the moons have lined up, and podcasting is on an upward spiral. But as with most everything digital, podcasting is a winner-take-most/all proposition, because everyone has access to … everyone. A scant handful of pods, those with the biggest listenerships, capture nearly all the ad revenue. By some estimates, of the 600k podcasts that produce content each week, the top 10 get half the revenue. Put another way, to build a business in podcasting that pays people well and keeps the attention of a host with high opportunity cost(s), you likely need to be in the top 0.1% by listenership.
The political power of podcasting is only beginning to be felt. This election was supposed to be a referendum on bodily autonomy: It wasn’t. Historically, the candidate who raises the most money wins: She didn’t. In each election the victor is likely to be whoever best weaponizes an emerging medium: He did. By far the most potent media weapon this time was podcasting."
https://www.profgalloway.com/the-podcast-election/
3. "Assuming that we have the mania and one last hurrah in 2025 like every 4 year cycle, it means a trigger is needed to end the mania. The pop is going to be one of two things: 1) enormous rise in interest rates similar to what happened in the 1970s - inflationary bust or 2) a massive wealth redistribution and deleveraging event that causes large deflation - deflationary bust.
This means you can safely de-risk by going into: 1) real estate, 2) utilities and 3) other consumer staples.
Real Estate: In either situation, buying up a bunch of low-end or high-end real estate will set you up for decades. If rates are cut to zero and we’re in a deflationary scenario, you can simply rent it out and borrow money at low interest rates. Waiting out the storm. If it’s a 1970s type inflation, you’ll keep pace with inflation. Don’t lever up here because they would raise rates to a point that it’s well above inflation.
Utilities: Really doubt we do this but in a SHTF scenario we’d buy some time by holding them. In either situation (inflation/deflation), it’s just going to putter around and hold pace. It’s essentially the same as owning every commodity (excluding natural disaster risk). Not even the doomers who somehow didn’t get rich in the easiest 15 year period in history believe electricity and water will be shut off.
Consumer Staples: Boring stuff like Costco and Walmart. All the scaled up wholesale/grocery brands would work. Even Amazon probably falls in this basket considering their insane scale. Similar concept here, people won’t be skipping on food and essentials in any scenario."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/post-election-playbook-12-months
4. "To conclude, we are amist a massive redrawing of the map. Public facing wars can be seen on the ground in Ukraine and Gaza, and when Chinese ships surround Taiwan. They may be subsiding. The markets and the world economy will rejoice in the peace dividend. But a new, domestic war amongst various factions is replacing it. There won’t be front-page photos of this new warzone.
Instead, we’ll get glimpses of the battle through prosecutions, unexpected resignations, and announcements that government jobs will require moving remote locations far from Washington, DC. We are shifting from tanks as the primary weapon of global wars to transparency (or targetting if you are on the receiving end) as the main weapon of domestic uncivil wars. We don’t have a map that reliably shows us where anything really is right now.
How is America handling the election? For some, the prisoners from the asylum have broken into the government, and an apocalypse is underway. For others, the people in power have turned the government into a madhouse and will now be carted off to asylum/prison, thus ending the apocalypse. Here’s what we can all agree on: The political information complex needs to sort itself out. We need new, more accurate maps of reality."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/mapping-reality-trump-reigns-but
5. "And long before Trump, Beijing had been trying to convince the US and everyone else that the US and China were entering into “a new type of great power relations” where the two nations stood as comparable geopolitical forces if not outright peers.
Yet the reality is quite different. The US dominates nearly every lever of real power: the world’s largest market, the world’s financial hub, the world’s reserve currency, the world’s most powerful military, and control over many of the most technologically advanced sectors of the global economy, to name just a few. In facing off with the US, China ironically finds itself in the position that many other countries have occupied in dealing with a much more powerful and obstinate China.
The actual experience of US-China competition since the start of the trade war has made this fundamental power imbalance strikingly apparent. In trying to retaliate against each new round of Trump tariffs, China could only muster a fraction of the economic response due its far greater dependency on the US market versus the other way around."
https://www.high-capacity.com/p/beijing-braces-for-impact-what-trump
6. "If you’re bearish on today, but bullish on tomorrow, you might want to shift some of your capital out into this future set of opportunities or outcomes. You might also want to consider the cost of holding onto your capital today, and the purchasing power erosion you might experience if your money is not growing with the economy. In other words, you might want to allocate into venture capital, because this is a bet on the future, and a time shift of smaller returns today for bigger returns tomorrow.
What’s not an exaggeration is the blunting of the term venture capital to be far too inclusive of non-risk taking activities. In Spanish venture capital is synonymous with “risk capital,” and is known as “capital de riesgo.” In English somehow we’ve lost that notion, with a parade of sheep all claiming to do venture capital, but only seeking software as a service businesses, typically with “$1-2 million in ARR.” Venture capital is by definition the few percentage points of frontier capital that finances opportunities that cannot be supported elsewhere in the economy. Venture capital as mainstream is, I believe, an oxymoron."
https://ideas.scotthartley.com/p/time-dislocations-in-venture-capital
7. "Trump boasted on the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast that the U.S. government used to be fully funded by tariffs. This is true, before income taxes, the government was largely funded through tariffs. But that was in the 19th century, when the U.S. government was still very small. Unfortunately, in 2024, the U.S. government is large and in charge. The U.S. is a global empire, plus there's healthcare, Social Security, and other social services.
A tariff is a tax that a government charges on goods coming into their country from other countries. In 2023, U.S. goods imports from around the world totaled $3.8 trillion. Let's say, theoretically, Trump puts a 10% tariff on all imports and we ignore all consequences; that's only $380 billion in revenue. When annual government spending is almost $7 trillion and the national debt is nearly $36 trillion, that's not even a dent. The U.S. government collected $4.92 trillion in taxes in 2024, meaning you could put 100% tariffs on imports, and it still wouldn't replace regular tax revenue.
Another thing about across-the-board tariffs: they don't make sense for the U.S. or Trump. If you want to bring all levels of manufacturing back to the U.S., you're going to need more people to work in those factories. Trump supports mass deportation, closed borders, and his base is anti-immigrant. Unemployment in the U.S. is currently at 4.1% there aren't enough workers. You can't be for all-around tariffs and against mass immigration; it doesn't make sense."
https://www.globalhitman.com/p/how-to-survive-the-trump-presidency
8. Another really good discussion between two key individuals at the center of the renaissance at Silicon Valley. We are entering an age of abundance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXCBz_8hM9w
9. Incredible amount of insights here for the entrepreneur. So much to learn here from Luke Belmar. Distribution and attention.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XN4upb7AnZE&t=4058s
10. "We could keep iterating through the list. But if a founder wanted a list of jobs to automate, the BLS’ white collar jobs boards is a wonderful place to start. AI will change these workflows & capture a meaningful fraction of the labor spend.
It’s a roadmap for the White Collar Revolution."
https://tomtunguz.com/the-white-collar-revolution/
11. "But the chips are now valuable for longer than they were (again from AWS). “We made the change in 2024 to extend the useful life of our servers. This added about 200 basis points of margin year-over-year.”
The most important metric for these businesses will be profit dollars per GPU dollar cost."
https://tomtunguz.com/cloud-earnings-q3-24/
12. "Nature and nature’s God select for those who take to the frontier. Who choose not to remain stagnate. Those who want to win, to find a way against all odds. It’s why man has gone from being a simple caveman to deploying nuclear warheads. The frontier is energy, vitalism, and the man who can harness more energy than his enemies will win.
The frontier is the dividing line between what you are and what you can become. It’s where you enter the contest to prove what you are before God. Men are the R&D arm of mankind and the frontier is where they test their unique idea against God’s law, nature.
When our ancestors gained a foothold in the New World, they were changed by the land. Made distinct from their European cousins. The land always leaves its mark upon man. And the moment they gained a foothold and understood the lesson taught to them by God, they spread like an unquenchable fire across the country. Nothing could stop them but the Pacific Ocean."
https://resavager.com/p/take-to-the-frontier
13. "The media landscape is post-scarcity, and we need to retire the Big Bang Launch as the strategy. Always Be Launching, and launch a little each week. Go directly to your customers, your investors, and your supporters. Build over time, not in one go. And learn to tell the truth."
https://andrewchen.substack.com/p/always-be-launching
14. Guide for all young and old men.
"You need brains & brawn.
The sad reality is, a majority of fighters live pay check to pay check. Conor McGregor’s stardom is 1 of 1, the rest struggle to make ends meet. If you are objectively broke, this by definition does not make your capable. If you can’t feed your family, if you’re couch surfing & if you don’t have skills to make money in modern society, throwing a nasty 1-2 means very little.
On the other hand, being a multimillionaire who is balding, overweight & works 100 hours a week & does not have time for their family or experiences, is also not a flex.
The ideal sits somewhere in between these two extremes.
But it’s the rarest breed of man. The one that can do it all.
Imagine having the communication skills to disarm a potentially violent situation, but simultaneously know you could maul anyone in the same room as you if necessary?
It’s the ultimate juxtaposition. The definition of a Lethal Gentleman. It’s the reason Bruce Wayne & James Bond are such revered & idiolised figures by young men.
It’s incredibly rare, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible."
https://www.krucial.co/p/the-lethal-gentleman-manifesto
15. A Silicon Valley legend, OG investor and operator: Elad Gil. Well worth a listen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XYqFu0fKn0
16. This man is a hero. I'm a big fan & supporter of Stronghold: which provides humanitarian help in war zones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=audzAD0f3JI
17. "The 20th century was one of careful symmetry. The 21st century is fundamentally asymmetric. And we have failed to see it.
I teach a lot of courses about whatever we want to call Russian hybrid warfare, and in it I use these 8 words to try to get my students to understand how Russians understand power. Asymmetry. Chaos. Informality. Deniability. Risk. Cynicism. Capture. Guerrilla (the use of irregular forces).
These are Russian strengths because of Russian weakness. They have to do these things. And these are areas where democracies are extremely uncomfortable operating.
For 30 years we’ve gotten Russia wrong. And during this time, they have sculpted our threat perception of them. They have sculpted how we viewed this region and how we viewed its possibilities — and thankfully the Baltic states ignored all the advice to wait and be patient and instead to push for first NATO and then EU membership, otherwise they too would still be waiting in a line. Russia has sculpted Ukraine’s perception of itself, and how we see Ukraine, too.
We are still trapped in this narrative box. And now it affects how we see ourselves."
https://www.greatpower.us/p/why-do-democracies-pretend-to-be
18. "A couple of decades later, technology has made this task—and many others—not only fully automated but also simpler and more insightful. My first introduction to spreadsheets was through printouts at an oil change business, and now, I sit here appreciating the power we have at our fingertips. I’m a techno-optimist and believe we have an exciting future ahead. Sometimes, it’s worthwhile to pause and reflect on what has been, what is, and what will be."
https://davidcummings.org/2024/11/09/in-appreciation-of-technological-progress/
19. So much wisdom from Tai Lopez. Lots of good stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=VMNdWHoJcVk
20. Overview of Luke Belmar's Capital Club, looks like a top tier event.
Masterminds and expensive conferences are really important to level up your game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e21jdQZuoHU
21. "Looking back at the returns of solid investing, everyone feels like they want to replicate them. But only a small percentage of those willing replicators actually do the required work.
Formulas for success seldom exist but if I had to provide one it would be this:
GOOD INVESTOR = good business analyst + independent thinker + high pain tolerance + discipline + patience."
https://www.philoinvestor.com/p/so-you-wanna-be-an-investor
22. "The nuanced messy middle is that you can like Hillbilly Elegy and Demon Copperhead. You can believe that hard work can get people out of even the most hopeless situations. But you can also believe that it won't always work. You can believe in individual accountability AND the need for institution support of those whose individual capabilities won't be enough.
All of us could get more comfortable in that messy middle of nuance because, in my opinion, that's where the majority of truth resides."
https://investing1012dot0.substack.com/p/embrace-the-nuance
23. "No matter your views on the outcome of this election, I hope you can appreciate some of the messaging lessons that can be learned from it."
https://kellblog.com/2024/11/09/messaging-lessons-from-the-2024-election/
24. "A network effect is the effect by which the value a user receives from said good or service is dependent on the number of users in the network at the time. The more the users, the higher the value and vice versa. But what happens when critical mass has not yet been achieved?
Many projects get stuck in the early stage and fail, it’s a catch 22. In the early stages, network utility is at its lowest so there is not much incentive for a user to migrate to the network."
https://www.philoinvestor.com/p/jumpstarting-network-effects
25. Disagree with much of what this guy says on geopolitics, this guy teaches neutrality studies which is not realistic.
But good to listen to other folks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGGcr87oU8k&t=943s
26. A masterclass on making money online by a master: Luke Belmar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL2G3fEs-g0&t=166s
27. I dislike Cyrus Janssen as he is a CCP paid shill but he raises lots of good points.
America through arrogance has squandered our lead, alienated potential allies and screwed up by overusing sanctions.
Worth listening to and hopefully we wake up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPH-3-8Zf08
28. Audio quality is not so good but this was an instructive discussion on building massive businesses. Hiring great talent and what Product market fit looks like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIr95huOdrE
29. "The irony is that if we abandon the journey too soon, we’ll never know what could have awaited us. In life, staying on the train—staying disciplined—holds the promise of unseen rewards, richer than the fleeting temptations of the early stops. Only by staying the course do we get to experience everything the journey truly has to offer.
Get back on the train."
https://jaymartin.substack.com/p/be-careful-when-you-look-out-the
30. "The book, which is called Genesis, starts by talking at some length about polymaths. Many of the people who we study when we're in high school were the polymaths of the time, such as Leonardo da Vinci. They are unique and very rare, and they move science, art, culture, society, forward. There are polymaths in every society, in every religion. What happens when you have a polymath of that level in your pocket, available to you as an individual? This is a major change in human experience. It really changes the definition of what it is to be human.
It's good in the sense that it enables humans to operate at their highest level. If you use Google, you get more information, and you're smarter than if you didn't have Google. But then let's assume that you and I are negotiating against each other, and you're very good and I'm very good, but each of us has our own data sources.
Now imagine that there are AI systems that know how to do optimal game theory, and they have infinite information. Is there a scenario in which the system, recognizing that you are a powerful opponent with a similar system, will decide that the only solution to the problem is to attack you? How then do you do your strategy when every single person, in theory, can have that agent with them?"
https://samf.substack.com/p/war-in-the-ai-age
31. "BONUS: Tribes that pass the marshmallow test will wipe out tribes that don't."
https://oldbooksguy.substack.com/p/10-laws-of-social-behavior
32. "So although Biden did beat inflation, crime did go down, and Biden did eventually crack down on the border, I can understand why the traumas that working-class Americans had to suffer in 2020-2022 couldn’t be expunged just by some encouraging charts. And the fact that educated professionals were much more insulated from the disruptions of the pandemic and from Biden’s missteps in 2021 mean that they didn’t necessarily even see the need to acknowledge how hard these had been on everyone else.
This disconnect probably ended up alienating people without college degrees. Not only did it cause many progressives to support deeply unpopular things like “defund the police” on social media, but Democratic politicians who became used to talking to their educated progressive base probably got a distorted idea of what was troubling the rest of America.
America, fundamentally, is an incredibly rich country with a sick society. We have higher consumption by far than people in any other country on the planet, and yet by and large, except for the few people who were lucky enough to receive the blessings of community and health from our one remaining functional institution, we’re a bunch of unhealthy socially isolated drug addicts."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-educated-professional-class-is
33. "As universities roll out AI programs for associate, undergraduate, and graduate degrees, including the first Ivy League AI degree this fall, none of them are attacking the supply-demand gap for AI workers like the University of Texas.
Its AI master’s degree is completely online, open to as many students as the university believes are qualified, and costs $10k, a fraction of the price for in-person master’s computer science degrees at comparable universities. Adam Klivans, a computer science and AI professor who helped develop the AI master’s program, calls it “the best deal in higher ed.”
https://thehustle.co/originals/the-university-trying-to-bring-ai-to-every-industry
34. "Skip the Vacation Home: This keeps coming up in the comments but please don’t bother. If you were planning on buying a second vacation home we would say *please for the love of everything do not do it*. The only “exception to the rule” is if you can buy in a low tax state and claim 183 days to move your tax rate down. Then the math works. Reasoning…
Second homes require: 1) insurance, 2) tax, 3) maintenance and 4) management fees to rent it out for break even purposes
Second headache with this, maybe you and your family don’t want to go to the same location for a decade. A lot can change in a decade. Perhaps going to France, Japan, New Zealand will be more appealing for next winter/summer season
You’ll have the overhead costs locked in and once you pay all the fees to sell it, breaking even will be significantly harder
Instead? We’d do the following: 1) upgrade your cars if you need one kicking off the deferred maintenance, 2) add an ADU to your house, 3) buy a small wifi biz - you did build skills the past 4 years didn’t you anon? and 4) hire a good divorce attorney."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/the-golden-bull-of-2025-and-other
35. This is a good discussion ranging from politics, media and business.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7r3zt2HY2vk
36. Good discussion to decipher the political system and what it might look like under Trump 2.
The Line I thought I’d Never Write: What I learned From Tai Lopez
I try to learn from everyone! Tai Lopez has a reputation of being a big online scammer and his scammy ads. But I don’t know if that’s actually the case anymore. I’ve listened to several podcasts recently and he is really smart.
This show is worth listening to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Qn07rX79pU. He is clearly well read and full of interesting facts. And he has clearly done well in business.
I’ve learned a bunch of concepts from him.There are 5 big Habits to get health, wealth and happiness: Reading, Building, Networking, Breathing, Fasting.
Reading: Have 5 mentors: 2-3 from reading & virtual and 2-3 live.
Invest in yourself: take some seminars or conferences on online marketing. As Tai said: “You are one person away from a million bucks!”
Buy books and courses. Learn how you learn: by audio, by reading or by doing and apprenticeships through mentors. Educate yourself. Learn how to sell. “Sales will make you money. Sales will make you rich.”
2. Building Wealth. Be willing to trade time for money in the beginning and once you have money, put it into the 5 Assets.
The 5 Assets are: Software (Tech), Land (Real estate which could be farmland, commercial or residential), Brand (Personal brand or even branded companies like LVMH or other luxury brand businesses), Cash (Cash is King & liquid) & Crypto (Basically weird stuff: crypto, gold, bullets & guns).
Most of this is self explanatory. You need to have rural farmland that is a minimum of a solid hour away from the city. And you need guns and ammo to protect your family and gold.
3. Networking: Understand people and human psychology. Figure out how you can be helpful to people and build win-win friendships. True friends make money together.
4. Breathing: which i liken to exercise and physical fitness
5. Fasting: eating clean and well and also equates to having discipline in your life. I fast 13 hours every day and a long
24-48 hour one every other month. It cleans out your system which is good for your body.
I also learned the concept of “Thick” and “Thin” Markets from him. Let’s use dating as an example. If you like Latina’s then the American midwest and Europe probably are not so great for you as there are probably not very many Latina’s living or working there. And hence hard to meet anyone you find attractive. It’s a “thin” market. You are probably better off in Southern California or Florida or any place in Latin America which are “thick” markets full of Latina’s.
From a startup perspective, if you are looking for tech angels and VCs, Silicon Valley is hard to beat and would be considered a “thick” market. Kansas City would probably not be so great, so it’s a “thin” market. I think you get the point. If you are looking for tech companies as customers either go to Silicon Valley or go to tech specific conferences. This is where they congregate. If you are targeting doctors, go to a doctor’s convention. Go fish where the fish are.
The most interesting framework he shared when looking at the world is that of Princes, Kings and Warlords. Princes are young up and comers on the rise, rich but not wealthy. Maybe $5M in net worth. Every type A individual aims to be Kings, rich, powerful and top of the game. But he wisely notes that you want to be a king who people think are princes. If you are a king, everyone wants to take you down. Other kings and those below. Then there is another level of wealth and power which are Warlords. Almost always billionaires who play another game: one that is tough and even more brutal. There are always levels to levels.
Tai is an interesting character and has lots of insight on people and how to thrive in a capitalistic society. I recommend watching some of his interviews.
Passport Bro Wisdom: Traveling for a Better Lifestyle
New York is an amazing city. What a grand city, full of life, beautiful people, entertainment, shopping and energy. I love it. Always enjoy coming to the city for business and pleasure. But boy does that place drain your wallet. It is the epitome of America, you can have whatever you want but you gotta pay for it. Even for a guy who lives in San Francisco, New York feels damn expensive. For the well heeled individual it’s very easy to feel poor here.
It reminds me of something Tai Lopez said in an interview. That happiness in your life is determined by where you live. You don’t always need to have billions. If you are a billionaire, even a place like New York can make you feel poor, because you are surrounded by deca-billionaires and everything is excessively expensive. In fact, you might be better off being a multimillionaire in a small town. It’s all personal preference and knowing yourself.
But location really does drive lifestyle. In fact, someone making $30,000 a month could live like a kind in Thailand, Taiwan, Albania, Georgia, Brazil, Bali or the Philippines for example. The lower cost structure allows you to live a way better lifestyle than you would back home in a place like SF or New York. Geo-arbitrage.
Which leads me to “Passport bros” which are a derogatory term for the young males who end up going to live in other, usually poorer countries to meet women. Not my favorite type of people but I think the passport bros might be onto something in their search for a better and more cost effective lifestyle.
Every time I come to New York, I get a reminder of this. I think why not both? Be able to afford to live in the expensive & awesome cities of San Francisco & New York but offset this with time in my favorite places that happen to also have lower costs like Italy, Taiwan, Japan, Albania, Georgia & Ukraine. That sounds like a great life plan to me.
Media as A Signal Two: Reflections on America in the 2020s
It’s always interesting watching films, I think a movie or movies reflect the sentiment of a country. Reflect and sometimes lead too. I wrote before about the aggressive and more bellicose nature of Chinese movies in the last decade. The depressing and grim nature of Japanese movies during the early 2000s.
There was a recent insight raised by the brilliant crypto entrepreneur and investor Balaji Srinavasan about popular blockbuster American movies in recent years, Oppenheimer, Barbie, Top Gun 2. They reflect nostalgia. A time when America was great, powerful and when the future was bright. When America was the bright shining city on the hill, prosperity was wide and we had immense economic and military power.
The disillusionment that started in 2000s with the Iraq War 2, the GFC aka Global Financial Crisis of 2008, the quagmire of Iraq & Afghanistan, the hollowing out of our industrial base and middle class, the 2020 pandemic and brutal lockdowns, the chaotic retreat from Afghanistan, inflation and the Russian Invasion of Ukraine showed how ineffective our elites have turned out to be. Disgusting, corrupt, grifting, incompetent elites who have led us to this. No wonder most Americans pine for a perceived better time.
But I think we are on the cusp of a big turnaround. Manufacturing is slowly but steadily coming back to America, thanks to the CHIPs Act and IRA under Biden. I expect this to accelerate under Trump.. We still have the US Dollar as the reservoir currency, we have tremendous amounts of natural resources, energy and food. America continues to suck in young smart talent from around the world.
More importantly, morale among many of the top young people is back. The AI boom is real and this will transform the economy. People are Inspired by Elon Musk and SpaceX’s recent accomplishments of reusable rockets. Anduril’s success in challenging the defense primes and beating them. We see an outgrowth of young smart entrepreneurs turning their back on SaaS and focusing on deeptech and hardtech all over America. But particularly in Southern California mainly El Segundo, Costa Mesa, Torrance, San Diego, Los Angeles, Long Beach, Hawthorne, among other places.
I love watching this new breed of founder. Mission driven workaholics. Patriotic, athletic, many religious, representing a more muscular Christian, outspoken and Based. Working on startups ranging from Nuclear power, space satellites, robots, weather control, drones, hydrogen airships.
And with a new Worlds Fair coming on America’s 250th anniversary I expect many of these breakthrough technologies will be shown here. It’s hard not to be optimistic about the future. What was science fiction is now becoming science fact as Lux Capital founder Josh Wolfe often says.
What an amazing time to be alive. America is back!!
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads December 1st, 2024
"I never dreamt of success. I worked for it." —Estée Lauder
Good overview on global geopolitics and economics from Zeihan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksbEkjAXgNc&t=2753s
2. A must listen conversation on geopolitics, America and the rotting of American primacy due to our own stupidity & lack of courage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHoxK2CPzDs
3. Climate change, Zeihan does a great job talking about its implications for various countries and cities.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOLqXxe8Cfs
4. "Eva Longoria stepped in at the last minute with a $6 million investment that saved "John Wick."
Since then, she's invested in two soccer clubs, a tequila, and a food brand, and she has her own production company.
"I want to be making money while I'm sleeping," Longoria said of her investment philosophy.
But something that I've learned, looking back, I love investing in people. You can tell me you're opening a chicken farm, but if you're fucking passionate about it and you've done the work and know the market, I mean, Chad and David did their work. They put in their 10,000 hours as stunt guys and second-unit directors; they had seen all the bad movies and knew how to make a good one. It was that. They were undeniably passionate, and I knew they were going to make an undeniable product.
They have that hunger and scrappiness that I have. I'm very scrappy in my life. I'm like, "Why can't we just do this like this?"
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/funding-john-wick-kick-started-120801144.html
5. "The phrase “temporary hardship” has quickly become notorious. It bears similarity to Xi Jinping’s admonishment to the Chinese people to “eat bitterness”. Americans are not used to their leaders promising economic pain.
But is Musk’s austerity proposal a good one? And would it in fact cause the kind of pain he’s forecasting? Here there’s quite a bit of uncertainty.
But the general contours are probably right — big cuts in corporate and personal income tax, tariff hikes, and deep cuts in government spending on health care would absolutely have this general effect. And unlike the macroeconomic pain, this distributional impact would likely be long-term, rather than temporary.
So on one hand, I think it’s refreshing that Musk is talking about fiscal austerity, and about the hardships that will be necessary to get the government’s finances back on a sustainable footing. On the other hand, I don’t like the way he plans to go about it — giving massive awards to himself and his own lofty social stratum, while inflicting pain on the masses. There are better ways to do austerity."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/thinking-about-temporary-hardship
6. "Throughout the second half of the 20th century, higher education was the key that allowed remarkably unremarkable kids (e.g., me) to unlock America’s promise of upward mobility. Today higher ed is a bouncer at the entrance to an exclusive club, where wealthy kids and a cadre of freakishly remarkable 18-year-olds build lasting relationships and lucrative networks with elite peers, while obtaining certification that gives them access to the greatest wealth-generating vehicles in history: S&P 500 companies."
https://www.profgalloway.com/high-anxiety
7. "From a supply chain point of view, commanders will have to consider the number of UAVs they have on hand and how long it will take to be resupplied. The more advanced the weapon, the fewer are stockpiled—the era of precision-guided munitions raises the real possibility of running out of ammo in the opening phases of a conflict. This will force commanders to reserve drones for deliberate offensives, where they can achieve combined effects in conjunction with other forces. The old rules of warfare will still prevail, in other words.
Finally, there are major tactical vulnerabilities in the current crop of drones. Most of their recent success has come from their ability to loiter as they seek out targets or wait to be fed targeting data. The skies will not always be uncontested, however, and the longer that drones loiter the more easily they can be targeted by ground fires or counter-drone swarms.
In 1513, awed by the cannons which had recently brought down castle walls across Italy, Machiavelli argued that fortresses were obsolete. Just seven years later, in The Art of War, he detailed the kind of fortifications a prince should build—fortress design had caught up to the offensive power of cannons. So it always is in war: new weapons do indeed alter the battlefield, but the change is far more gradual than early encounters suggest.
Drone maximalists tend to imagine buzzing drones filling the sky and vaporizing any ground forces, but don’t think through what that would entail. Just as artillery in the First World War and bombers in the Second failed to simply wipe out the enemy from afar, UAVs will take their place in modern armies as one piece of a complex, slowly-evolving system."
https://dispatch.bazaarofwar.com/p/a-look-back-at-the-nagorno-karabakh
8. This was a fun conversation on the business of venture capital and the unconventional path.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRvFnYBP7_I
9. The writer really hates the West but this is an important perspective to understand.
"It has been an extraordinary experience to follow throughout the year how Russian diplomacy managed to successfully bring together delegations from 36 nations – 22 of them represented by heads of state – plus six international organizations, including the United Nations, for the summit in Kazan.
These delegations came from nations representing nearly half of the global GDP. The implication is that a tsunami of thousands of sanctions imposed since 2022, plus relentless yelling about Russia’s “isolation,” simply disappeared in the vortex of irrelevance. That contributed to the immense irritation displayed by the collective west over this remarkable gathering. Key subtext: there was not a single official presence of the Five Eyes set-up in Kazan.
The various devils, of course, remain in the various details: how BRICS – and the BRICS Outreach mechanism, housing 13 new partners – will move from the extremely polite and quite detailed Kazan Declaration – with more than 130 operational paragraphs – and several other white papers to implement a Global Majority-oriented platform ranging from collective security to widespread connectivity, non-weaponized trade settlements, and geopolitical primacy. It will be a long, winding, and thorny road.
The collective west’s incomprehension of what transpired in three historic days in Kazan only highlighted their astonishing arrogance, stupidity, and brutality. That’s precisely the reason why the BRICS matrix is working so hard to come up with the lineaments of a new, fair international order, and despite an array of challenges, will continue to flourish."
https://thecradle.co/articles/brics-post-kazan-a-laboratory-of-the-future
10. "BRICS is not seeking to overturn the world financial order, nor replace it with another one. Their objectives are more modest: to provide alternatives for those who wish to escape, in whole or in part, from the current US and western-dominated financial system, and to progressively modify the way the system works from within, by organised cooperation. The Partner Country system is likely to mean less the formation of a new BRICS-based “bloc” in the Cold War sense, and more an increasing ability for countries in and around the BRICS area to play the West and BRICS off against each other.
To this extent, BRICS is not an alternative to the current international system, but rather the creation of a powerful bloc of countries who have a common interest in substantially changing the way it works. This is hard for westerners to understand and accept, since we are brought up to think in Manichaean terms, and of unbridgeable differences between groups and ideologies. But BRICS and its partner system represent a different model: it is hardly “new” since it is how most of the world has always worked. It relies on “sufficient” commonality of interest for nations to cooperate with each other in particular areas.
It recognises that on other issues the countries may have different views, or even be totally at odds with each other. It acknowledges that international politics is a massive series of Venn diagrams, not an assembly of strictly regulated geometric shapes separate from each other. BRICS is an example of an institution that flows naturally from such an recognition, and may well inspire others. For that reason, together with the suppleness of the concept itself, BRICS is likely to survive and develop, and to continue to be a puzzle to western pundits."
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/unlike-for-like
11. "From population growth to college students to recent developments and a major airport, Atlanta has everything needed for startups to thrive. Startup investors should invest both their time and money in Atlanta."
https://davidcummings.org/2024/11/02/why-atlanta-for-startup-investing/
12. "The elite and expert class comprises a uniquely integral caste system within the Western hegemonic model of civilization. This protected upper echelon is molded then harbored by an intricate network of institutions whose sole purpose is to maintain the unassailable cachet of honors they manufacture: various awards, certificates, degrees, scholarships, fellowships, chairs, residencies, et cetera. These institutions act as a credibility shield to perpetually encase the ‘system’ in a tempered glass dome of unquestionability.
But due to how intrinsically oppressive the system has had to become in order to root out free-thinking opposition, it has dealt itself a mortal wound by perpetuating a positive feedback loop which only drives it into further and further ideological isolation, such that the system begins to appear as a corrupt tower of Babel ready to topple to anyone watching from the outside.
The uselessness of our leaders plays into it because the system requires good, public-facing PR people to act merely as the shepherds or crowd-control maestros in keeping the public woozy, and from asking too many inconvenient questions. In our globalized, increasingly centralized world the CEO is now hired less for his innate leadership or talent to inspire, and more for the connections to foreign governments, banks, regulators, or other beneficial special interests they bring along.
It all comes back down to basic human nature and systems theory. We are programmed by these structures to believe that we rely on them for survival; that the structures are essential to our civilization and progression.
The blob grows and grows, and it knows only how to feed, like a runaway malignant cell.
The feedback loop requires the state to continue increasing in size in order to constantly expand the fat tissue buffer between the ruled citizenry and the elite caste."
https://darkfutura.substack.com/p/belfries
13. "Here’s what to watch for;
If the election is close and Trump is ahead in a drawn-out and contested counting effort, the potential for a swarm developing is high.
As we have seen in previous swarms, there aren’t any protections against a swarm rapidly mobilizing. Once it is mobilized, it will quickly seek to shut down all dissent at every level (including extrajudicial means to suppress X).
Additionally, decentralized elements of the swarm (devoid of any worry over long-term damage to the country’s stability, the rule of law, or cohesion) will simultaneously seek to overwhelm the opposition to overturn the election.
If this does happen, networked totalitarianism and a long night of AI-fueled controlled speech and behavior won’t be far behind. Let’s hope it doesn’t."
https://johnrobb.substack.com/p/an-american-swarm
14. History is fascinating.
"But who were the Zanj and how did they manage to resist the powerful Abbasids for over a decade?
After the Arab conquest of Mesopotamia, a military camp was established in the marshlands of southern Iraq. This camp soon grew into the wealthy port city of Basra, the link between Baghdad & the rich lands that lay on the Arabian Sea & beyond.
Southern Iraq was once a fertile region, the cradle of the first cities & Sumerian civilization, but flooding & poor upkeep reverted the land to marshes. The wealthy residents of Basra were given ownership of these marshlands on the condition they brought them under cultivation.
For this task, many thousands of Bantu-speaking slaves were imported from the Swahili Coast, the Zanj. Clearing the marshes & working the salt flats was a miserable existence, compounded by the cruelty of the overseers. These unimaginable conditions made the slaves restive."
https://varangianchronicler.substack.com/p/revenge-of-the-zanj
15. “The way that liberal Western democracies prevail over a centrally commanded nation is by doubling down on what made our countries strong, which is the free flow of talent and capital,” he said. “And so we don’t win by the civil-military fusion, by forcing companies to do things, but rather by investing, supporting and allowing free enterprise to succeed.”
It sounds good in theory, but in practice the idea has hit hurdles in both the U.S. and in Europe — in part because the private sector moves quickly and takes big risks, while the military is a lumbering bureaucracy that makes it challenging for all but the biggest defense contractors to break through.
“You have this great pipeline and most of it falls on the floor,” said Steve Blank, co-founder of the Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation at Stanford University. “While we have all these legacy acquisition processes, our adversaries don’t.”
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/digital-future-daily/2024/10/31/tk-daniella-top-00186582
16. Fearsome and impressive weapon system from Anduril. Barracuda-M series of Cruise missiles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw7kF4vomA4
17. An educational discussion with one of the best operators and investors in Silicon Valley: Elad Gil.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzjIfkNAp8U
18. This is always a fun conversation. Not sure I agree with everything here but it's a good centrist view.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSyxm_AQfeE
19. "Victory in modern war is about winning the peace as well as winning the war. The initial American military successes in Iraq in 1991 and 2003, and in Afghanistan in 2001, followed by subsequent long-term instability, testify that military successes do not always ensure a favourable and enduring political solution. Russian interventions in Afghanistan and its first war in Chechnya are further examples.
The concept of victory, or the word itself, is one Western politicians and academics like to avoid. In 2009, US President Barack Obama said he was “always worried about using the word ‘victory,’ because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur.” As Heuser has written: “for most Western liberals in the early 21st century, victory seems of little value as a thing in itself, as the price at which it might come seems disproportionate to the gains.”
https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/victory-21st-century-conflict-0
20. Always lots of nuggets of insights for what's happening in SaaS. Must listen for founders.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0L_l4pc4rU&t=1081s
21. The man at the center of Silicon Valley and AI. Plenty to take in here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peg-aX1oii4
22. Well a somewhat grim assessment. Well, America, run by empty suits which leads to brainless foreign policy. Check.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdGXMaYKRik
23. Interesting new future alliance: Saudi, Turkey and Israel?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiBWgUdGaIo
24. The Podcast election and Betting markets. Fascinating time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOOvOQbzw1M
25. Global norms eroding and we are entering a more anarchic world order, where the strong act with impunity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyS_euuncKk
26. Masterclass on building a long lasting venture firm. The guys responsible for the turnaround of the legendary Kleiner Perkins.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BekWZv3CCA
27. "We should pay Trump the compliment of believing what he says when he speaks about NATO and Ukraine—and indeed what those who worked closely with him say about that. There is a very good chance that the North Atlantic Alliance, which has dominated much of the globe since 1949, will become dysfunctional in fewer than 3 months.
Trump doesn’t have to withdraw from the alliance to do that—all he has to do is remove the US from the military command (which is what De Gaulle did with French forces in 1966). As commander in chief, US forces will only fight if Trump orders them to do so—NATO cannot order US forces into action if the President doesnt want that. So, no US forces will fight to protect Europe if Trump doesnt want them to.
Btw—this also needs to be faced by the USA’s allies in the Indo-Pacific, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and even Australia, who can no longer look for the USA to be a reliable partner in defense."
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/the-usa-is-trumps-now-europe-must
28. "All of this inevitably produces bad faith and terminal embarrassment. It is an unchallengeable article of belief in Liberalism that the world is advancing steadily and ineluctably towards a morally better future. Never, it appears, have we known such tolerance, diversity and inclusion. Unfortunately, though, nothing works, and the political, media, business and intellectual elites of our society are more incapable, and more morally dubious, than they have ever been. At some deep level, everybody knows this, no matter how firmly they are convinced that we live in a shining present and are moving to a shininger future.
0ur elites are thus conscious that they cannot match their predecessors, either practically or morally, and that makes them embarrassed, which in turn makes them angry. So the result is logical enough: if the past offends us, let us destroy it. If we cannot measure up to great figures of the past, let us undermine them and bring them down to our level, so we never need to feel inferior again. Having no heroes today, we must destroy the heroes our predecessors had.
But, surrounded by sleaze, incompetence and corruption, it’s increasing hard for us to look back on the past with an attitude of moral superiority.
Except, of course, that we do actually need heroes. All societies do. And so the most fervent anti-militarists seek out, as they have always done, surrogates from abroad to admire and respect: what George Orwell famously called the “patriotism of the deracinated.” From the Viet Cong to the Afghan Mujahideen, to today’s examples of Hezbollah and the Houthis, we admire and find heroism in people outside our own societies, because we are too embarrassed to seek it within them."
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/no-more-heroes
29. "The reality is on much of foreign policy the U.S. has been leaderless - and the West because of the US under Biden was AWOL."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/history-will-likely-judge-biden-poorly
30. Geography as destiny and how it affects geopolitics. Fascinating.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgEopGPkL_M&t=567s
31. "All this may be part of an even larger story: the fight in the US Presidential race is not between the left and the right. It is between the Establishment and the Anti-Establishment. Or, more accurately, between the Old Establishment and the New Anti-Establishment. This helps explain the Cheney-Harris alignment. This is the Old Establishment, which likes the way things have been done. They like a world where the government knows best and external commentary is not welcome. Putting it bluntly, they believe in the old adage, “after the war begins, to reason is to treason”. This side says any commentary that opposes the government’s position is misinformation, disinformation and its ok to use the state apparatus and the media to maintain the government as it exists.
The Old Establishment is not opposed to reform, but the basic apparatus and core narratives must be kept intact. They might hire Tech Bros to make government more efficient but have not grasped that the Tech Bros can already anticipate their every move because they already have a clear picture of everyone in the Old Establishment because their digital twin gives away their actual position. The Old Estabishment group wants to know everybody else digital twin secrets but does not want the government’s digital twin available to external parties, including voters. But, its too late.
The New Establishment is comprised of Tech Bros who have more insight than any existing government apparatus. They increasingly align with each other because they see that the government (whether left or right) is failing to meet the needs of the public. The nation’s finances are blowing out.
The bigger possibility is that this becomes the moment that the New Anti-Establishment reveals that it already controls public opinion more than the Old Establishment. While the two parties argue and fight, the New Establishment may commence what might be called a “reverse coup” in the future. I’m watching for Thiel, Zuckerberg, Elon, and various others who are usually fighting amongst themselves for turf to start to align and offer public stability. They will also turn on their Tech Bro opponents."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/and-the-winner-is-kennedy
32. "While we know what candidate Trump and those around him have said about Ukraine, it remains to be seen exactly what President Trump 2.0 will do about the conflict. In his victory speech, Trump states that “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars but this is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom.”
https://mickryan.substack.com/p/president-trump-20-and-ukraine
33. Incredible discussion on global macro investing with one of the best in the business. Stan Druckenmiller.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5Weeox0Xus
34. An instructive discussion on vertical Saas investing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEsuJPMDFok
35. "This follows a campaign of arson and sabotage across Europe that intelligence officials say demonstrates an increasing recklessness on the part of the Kremlin. As the head of Britain’s foreign intelligence service MI6 put it, “Russian intelligence services have gone a bit feral, frankly.”
In recent months, Russian agents have been accused of plotting sabotage attacks against US and German military targets, arson attacks in the UK and Lithuania, and the attempted assassination of a major German defense contractor, among other plots."
https://www.vox.com/world-politics/383330/russia-georgia-bomb-threats-gray-zone
36. A varied discussion on our geopolitical & deglobalizing future. Lots of work to do as we reindustrialize America.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBtPd9a5TwE
37. This is a great conversation re: going down the PE exit track versus the VC one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQv1-ZFv-5s
38. I always learn from Tai Lopez. Always be Networking and Masterminds are awesome.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlzbbW4hrSw
39. "But either way, don’t get lazy and say “business outcomes” because you don’t want to enumerate them or, worse yet, because you don’t know them. Check yourself each time you write the words. Ask yourself: Can I climb the stack higher? Can I enumerate actual benefits? Am I truly in a situation where “business outcomes” is the best I can do?
If yes, say it. And then start thinking about the next piece you need to write so you can change the rules."
https://kellblog.com/2024/11/07/should-marketers-say-business-outcomes/
40. New guy to learn from. Interesting story and rise to the top.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mh33mpINrxc
41. "So the more you think about it, it was the First, not the Second, World War that is at the origin of most of the world’s problems today. By destroying high-level supranational and multi-ethnic structures overnight, it created massive problems.
By selecting “self-determination” as the solution, without really thinking through what it meant, it ensured that those problems would be insoluble without brute force, and perhaps not even then. In fact, if you consider where crises and political instability have arisen in the last thirty years, from the Balkans through the Levant to Libya, Algeria and Tunisia, these are all territories of Arab/Ottoman conquest: even Yemen was added to the Empire in 1517.
This is not because the Empire of the Ottomans was especially bad—though there is a tendency to romanticise it— but because of its organisation of the population into religious groups, and the speed and nature of its collapse and the vacuum left behind.
In a very real sense, we are still dealing with the consequences of the fall of three Empires in 1918."
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/people-states-and-borders
42. "Trump might not realise it but he goes into potential talks with Putin from a position of overwhelming strength. Trump needs a Ukraine peace deal much less than Putin. If Trump fails to agree any such deal, so what? What are the consequences for the US? Not much. Ukraine has shown it is willing to fight, and even if the US pulls financing Europe has to continue writing the cheques as the best way of defending itself against inevitable future Russian aggression.
And if the cash is short Europe can dip into the $330 billion in immobilised Russian assets to continue to fund Ukraine. Ukraine and Europe will inevitably continue to put big orders for US defence equipement - in almost any scenario, and which US President is going to say no to defence orders for literally hundreds of billions of dollars from Europe. That represents millions of US jobs for Trump to secure. Putin literally has no leverage now over Trump, and Trump should play very hardball.
I would argue that Trump is being presented with the mother of all opportunities for the greatest peace deal ever. Why he would not use all his leverage to extract maximum concessions from Putin.
Does Trump really have the Art of the Deal or is he just Putin’s tool and full of crap? We will now soon find out. Putin is weak, Trump has all the cards. Let’s see if he can actually play a great hand to clean up the table. If not - what a loser Trump would be in that he was gifted a scenario of a deal of the century in Ukraine and bottled it. That would be sad for Ukraine as selling them out now would see the likely collapse of Ukraine and devastating consequences then for Europe as an emboldened Russia would be better armed with the addition of Ukraine’s huge and tech impressive military industrial complex, and seeing a green light from Trump for further conquest in Europe by Russia."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/putin-no-longer-has-the-trump-card
43. "I actually suspect that there are other reasons why inflation bothers voters even more than unemployment. Inflation is something that’s obviously beyond an individual’s control — if the price of eggs goes up, you can choose not to buy eggs, but otherwise there’s not much you can do. But unemployment is something that individuals do exercise some degree of control over — if you work a bunch of extra hours during a recession and establish a good relationship with your boss, maybe you can avoid getting laid off.
In general, I think people are less worried about risks they have some control over, even if the overall level of danger is higher. Look at how people are more afraid to fly than to take long road trips, despite road trips being much deadlier per mile. The leading theory is that in a car you have some control over your safety, while in a plane you have basically zero control. Similarly, I suspect that inflation makes people feel powerless, like being stuck in a crashing airplane."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/americans-hate-inflation-more-than
‘Past Lives’: What Could Have Been
There was a recent movie that came out about how two close childhood friends Hae Sung & Na Young aka Nora in Seoul, are reunited after 20+ years in North America. Nora’s family emigrated to Canada when she was young and ended up in New York City as a young adult, while the boy Hae Sung grew up in Korea.
They end up reconnecting on Facebook 8 years later as adults, corresponding virtually for years. They end up fighting and get disconnected. But after another 12 years they finally reconnect and then arrange a meeting in New York. Now as true adults.
The wrinkle this time is Nora is now married to a nice American man, yet she still has deep feelings for Hae Sung. And the conundrum she faces as Hae represents her first love and past. But the joy and tenderness when they meet again at that park is remarkable. It’s a really beautiful scene.
It’s a reminder of the weird twists and turns in our lives. The random meetings with people that turn into lifelong friendships or romantic relationships. Or the ones that you missed.
I still remember this beautiful Australian girl I met on the train to Krakow in 1996. We were supposed to meet up at the end of the train ride after I got upgraded to first class. Little did we know that 2nd class train cabins would be disconnected and arrive hours later. Never did meet her again.
Or the gorgeous Ukrainian American girl I met in New York, who gave me her number. But I ended up losing it because my phone ran out of power. What could have been.
But then I would not have moved to Taiwan, met a girl there and ended up with a beloved and beautiful little daughter Amber. Fate.
The movie is also a reminder to me of all that is sacrificed by people who immigrate and leave everything they know in their home. Some people are running away from something. Some are running towards something. Just like my parents did when they left Taiwan. For me, I realize now clearly that I was running away. First to Asia and then to America.
Maybe this is the curse of us immigrants and immigrant kids. We belong nowhere and multiple places at the same time. Torn between two cultures or more. We get confused. We’re all still hurt or scared little children inside even as adults.
But it reminds me of a scene in the movie.
When Nora’s mom is asked by Hae Sung’s mom, why leave all this behind when immigrating. She responds: “If you leave something behind, you gain something too.”
I’ve lost a lot. But for that price I’ve gained a lot too. I’ve crafted a life for myself through it all. One that I’ve dreamed about when I was a child. And as Sinatra said “I did it my way”, since the story does take place in New York.
There is a scene during his visit when Hae Sung tells Nora: “it’s a good thing that you emigrated. Korea is too small of a country for you. It’s not enough to satisfy your ambition.” I feel the same way about Canada.
But as in the end of the movie as the two childhood friends say goodbye, there is a feeling of acceptance of who they are now. The lives they have now. And they finally have some closure of the past & what could have been. I feel like after many decades I finally have that now too.