Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Sept 14th, 2025
"The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle." — Steve Jobs
"All in all, the trading houses delivered three essential services to the manufacturers partnering with them. First, they financed long-term commodity contracts, keeping input prices stable. Second, they built distribution networks to open foreign markets. Third, they gathered and shared intelligence that helped firms adapt products to regional demand.
Yes, Japan had the Toyota system, a radical new way of making things. But that alone wouldn't have changed the game. It's one thing to invent cinema. It's another to build Hollywood. What the sōgō shōsha added was the institutional infrastructure to turn technical advantage into national economic strategy. Japan's post-war boom was about more than better manufacturing. It was about building sophisticated intermediaries that linked domestic production to global markets.
We talk endlessly about equity funding, when hardware businesses need much more. They need equipment financing, project-based capital for large-scale deployments, working capital to smooth cash flow, relationships with reliable suppliers, market intelligence on foreign competitors, and distribution into overseas markets. These capabilities lie outside venture capital's skill set. And culturally, Americans are ill-suited to it. They don't look outside their own market because they rarely need to. And inward-looking firms don't become global exporters.
That's where Erebor might come in. As the first serious attempt to build a modern American sōgō shōsha, it could be designed for the reindustrialisation of a high-tech, capital-intensive America. If my hypothesis holds, Erebor may be a sign that the real work of rebuilding national industrial capacity is underway.
More specifically, Erebor's charter application targets four specific sectors: virtual currencies, artificial intelligence, defence, and manufacturing. These sectors share common characteristics: high capital intensity, long development cycles, uncertain revenue timing, and strategic importance to American competitiveness. They're precisely the industries that need patient capital and sophisticated financial services but struggle to access them through conventional channels.
The stablecoin focus distinguishes Erebor from both traditional banks and failed predecessors."
https://www.driftsignal.com/p/digital-shosha-how-america-could
2. "What’s emerging as a result is a fragmenting monetary order: on the one side, a more top-down, state-driven system, exemplified by central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) from Frankfurt and Beijing; on the other, a more free-wheeling system built and driven by the private sector.
It is a confrontation between rival visions of the power of money and how it should be deployed: each responding to the same structural pressures and slowly moving toward a model where banks can no longer create money as freely as they have since the Renaissance.
Lagarde’s vision is of an enhanced monetary sovereignty for Europe, one in which the dollar is no longer, in the words of Richard Nixon’s Treasury Secretary John Connally, “our currency, but your problem”.
But the eurozone’s ambitions now face a formidable challenge from a newly emerging alternative: a world of private digital currencies blessed and underpinned by U.S. regulation."
https://www.politico.eu/article/genius-act-donald-trump-euro-dollar-stablecoin/
3. "“As Grayson explained, you make the best decision you can based on what you know, but the success of your decision will be heavily influenced by (a) relevant information you may lack and (b) luck or randomness. Because of these two factors, well-thought-out decisions may fail, and poor decisions may succeed. While it might seem counterintuitive, the best decision-maker isn’t necessarily the person with the most successes, but rather the one with the best process and judgment. The two can be far from the same, and especially over a small number of trials, it can be impossible to know who’s who.”
If you want a balanced and properly diversified portfolio, you want your component parts to be uncorrelated to each other. For some years now, stocks and bonds have essentially been joined at the hip, their prices increasingly driven higher as interest rates have collapsed, courtesy of our friends at the central banks. But what happens when interest rates and inflation start to rise – perhaps in a disorderly manner ?
We have written of late of our concerns about inflationary pressure. If inflation does turn out to be a higher risk factor, or if you are simply seeking portfolio insurance for your cash and other investments, then all roads lead to gold, and precious metals more generally.
Our favourites are the monetary metals, gold and silver, because we are increasingly concerned about the possibility of central banks losing the confidence of market participants in the paper money system. Gold and silver, to our thinking, are not so much commodities as alternate forms of money that, unlike conventional money, cannot be printed on demand."
https://timprice.substack.com/p/winning-the-great-game
4. Learning from history (yes, dude mentioned here was insane though)
"From Russian soldier, to God of War, to Khan of Mongolia — this was the legacy of Baron Roman Ungern Von Sternberg.
Is it possible for a Westerner to simply show up in Central Asia and conquer the steppe like Ungern today?
Yes!"
https://roguephilosophy.substack.com/p/how-to-live-like-ungern-von-sternberg
5. This was a deep but insightful conversation on the American Dynamism movement by the cofounder of the A16Z American Dynamism Fund. Well recommended.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GePNdT790gU&t=2475s
6. "For entrepreneurs in the hurricane of building their businesses, remember that this is one moment in time, and that as you keep pushing forward, it too will evolve and hopefully improve. What might be a fun team activity around a foosball table might not be the same vibe the following year. But holding onto those memories—even if there’s a little financial hiccup, like signing up for a credit card to try to keep the foosball vibe alive—makes it that much sweeter. Enjoy the journey today, right now."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/07/12/foosball-and-the-startup-journey/
7. "Do not trust those older than you, simply because they are older than you. The modern world allows many fools to reach old age - it is no longer proof of wisdom. An elder was not historically esteemed simply because they were old, but because it was implicit that to reach that age required a certain level of skill, from which could be inferred a certain degree of insight and understanding of the world.
In the modern world, these assumptions collapse because advancement into one's older years is no longer contingent upon wisdom, and because society changes at an ever greater pace for which they did not come of age in, are not adapted to, and subsequently cannot keep up with. This is not to say there are not timeless (dare I say, immutable) fundamentals inherent to human nature that can be passed on, and still remain as true today as they were 2,000 years ago - but it does mean that someone who made their money or dated say, 20, even 10 years ago cannot give you solid advice on how to replicate the successes they had, because the world they achieved those things in is so vastly different from the world you're trying to achieve them in.
Good advice today becomes obsolete tomorrow - this is the unfortunate downside of the beast that is a socially decaying but rapidly technologically advancing society, initially catapulted by the revolution that is the internet, followed by the hyperconnectivity of social media, which has at present culminated in the fever pitch that is the emergence of AI. You never really get a chance to catch up, because you're in a process of infinite adaptation. And so just as you've adapted, all of a sudden you're maladapted again. Not because you've changed, but because the environment has."
https://thesovereigncitadel.substack.com/p/a-letter-to-the-young
8. This kind of felt like the good old days of All in Podcast. Similar vibes. I enjoyed it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KypnjJSKi4o
9. "The people are angry - inflation is cutting their purchasing power; immigration is challenging proud social norms; and the post-war national consensus trust in America as Japan’s benefactor, guardian, special partner and ultimate role model is quickly turning from disbelief-at-what-is-happening to mistrust and discontent.
Make no mistake - this is about so much more than the tariffs: the ruling LDP’s foundational raison d’être was to be America’s independent but loyal agent in liberated-by-America-now-democratic Japan; and this core is exactly what is is being disrupted — the emerging realities of America’s new national priorities, economic agenda and undemocratic leadership style are, simply put, unacceptable to the Japanese people, thus undermining LDP credibility.
The elite bureaucracy will become even more empowered to run the nation.
Good thing: they actually do know what they are doing and bring not just of best-in-class technical competence, but also highest integrity to the national interest. Importantly, they are both trusted and feared by the business and finance elite. Without consistent majority-backed orders from elected leaders to do otherwise, the technocrats are poised to keep Japan a relative bastion of stability against populism, nationalist exuberance or nostalgia. Boring, perhaps….but highly competent, certainly.
As an aside, and in sharp contrast to the new US dynamics, Japan’s elite technocrats are very committed to consulting with private sector innovators, plutocrats, techBros and financial pirates; but they are also committed to keeping them as far away from dictating the policy agenda as possible. This is not a contradiction - Government is to serve the public, not private interests.
So Japan will stand out on the global stage. In a world increasingly dominated by strong leaders with strong visions, Japan’s policy decisions being directed primarily by the elite technocracy may not be such a bad thing for Japan.
Here, I do not worry that, as both America and China, but also India and Europe, get increasingly assertive in imposing their respective grand visions onto their partners and allies, Japan’s political paralysis and lack of vision makes Japan less relevant.
Quite the opposite — as the global ideological battlegrounds harden, Japan’s insistence on best-in-class administrative competence and conservative pragmatism could very well result in global trust in Japan rising. Japan become the voice of reason."
https://japanoptimist.substack.com/p/cracks-in-the-consensus
10. Honestly, from what I learned from the Woke insanity in Silicon Valley during the 20-teens through 2023, it's better not to apologize even if you said something stupid. The zealots see weakness and just go at you more.
https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/11/sequoia-bets-on-silence/
11. AI & Geopolitics. I always learn from Pippa Malmgren, her insights can be uncomfortable but she has been right more often than not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgmn5PyJzfQ
12. "In today’s age of AI where everything is moving at an incredibly fast pace, the idea of acquiring a company and going through a prolonged review process is completely unrealistic and unfathomable for both acquirers and startups. If you take Windsurf as an example, Google acquiring the company and having to wait for 12+ months to take over the IP and employees is certainly a dealbreaker. It is completely unrealistic given the intense competition in the market.
Even if Google had absolute certainty that the acquisition would clear the HSR process, the delay would render this acquisition impractical and uneconomic. A year in the world of AI is eternity. Speed is everything and speed is the driver for this new Blitzhire structure. It circumvents the HSR review process, allows the acquiror to take over the key employees and IP of the startup, and have the employees with a badge in their office the next day.
In summary, Blitzhires are another form of an acquisition and should be evaluated through that lens. Certainly, not everybody may be thrilled of the outcome. Certainly, employees left behind may feel betrayed and unappreciated. Certainly, investors may feel founders may have broken a social contract. But, for a Blitzhire to work, usually everybody needs to work together and align. The driver behind these deals is speed. Maybe concerns over regulatory scrutiny are part of it, but more importantly speed. Not going through the HSR process at all may be worth the enormous complexity and inefficiency of foregoing a traditional acquisition path.
Finally, the structure is incredibly inefficient and it just tells you how far acquirors are willing to go in order to achieve their strategic objectives. The structure results in double taxation, which is a huge leakage in value. The acquired startup pays corporate income tax and the investors pay taxes on the distribution of the proceeds, whether via a share repurchase or dividend. The structure is also grossly inefficient in that you need to create a credible case that it is in fact not an acquisition, which prevents the acquiror from acquiring all of the employees of the target."
https://medium.com/@villispeaks/the-blitzhire-acquisition-e39361ed00bb
13. Austin Gray of Blue Water Autonomy on autonomous ships. These guys are the real deal, I'm not an investor but it's a really important company.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S967znM8mR0
14. "Though most NATO allies have agreed to spend 5% of their GDP on defense, absent a major war, it’s unlikely to happen except in a very few places like perhaps Poland or one of the Baltic republics. They won’t do it because they promised the USA, they will do it because they believe it is in their interest to do so.
You see, in 2025, it is expected that the USA won’t even break 3% of GDP on defense. We will probably wind up just at 2.9%. If Uncle Sam isn’t going to break 3%, I don’t see our allies stretching for 5%. We would be lucky if they match us, and we’re drifting to 2.5%."
https://cdrsalamander.substack.com/p/the-big-defense-budgets-are-not-coming
15. This is a must listen to for all young and old business people. Lots of great insights.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxAwUb86MUE&t=1860s
16. For anyone trying to understand the chaos and GAG (Golden Age of Grift) of the present day world. A must listen if you want to thrive in this nutty moment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMpuFACusAU&t=1s
17. "We need a rebel alliance: not a single product or company, but a diverse ecosystem of technologies that work together across the stack to demonstrate the tangible value of user-owned memory.
Most important to this alliance will be entrepreneurs who know how to build practical products that make data ownership matter to real users.
This rebel alliance is creating a powerful kind of connective tissue that's structurally incapable of evil because power is distributed, not concentrated in any single entity. Whether these solutions ultimately converge at some point or thrive as an interconnected network matters less than the fundamental shift they represent."
https://blog.usv.com/the-rebel-alliance
18. “Made in China”
For those in the West and of a pre-Gen-Z generation, the label often signifies something cheap, of poor quality, or counterfeited, like “Reebok” with one “e.”
Soon, it may signify something completely different.
Together with the general pivot to quality in the global luxury (all of the sudden, there are so many craftsmanship ads and so many types of cashmere to recon with), Chinese brands are winning through quality in their local market."
https://andjelicaaa.substack.com/p/the-quality-advantage
19. "Outside of being early to a major winner in FAANG or another huge company we’re unaware of today (such as Tesla), nothing really keeps pace with inflation. You can run the numbers backward and forward into excel.
You spend practically 40 years in spreadsheets, go and calculate the one that matters. Your personal net worth growth with reasonable assumptions. Don’t assume you’ll be the star (you already know if it’s true) and just do the classic up until 33-34 followed by a flat line.
Let us know how it goes.
Oh. And do the same assuming you started a small biz that did $50K and you sold for $150K. Sure beats trying to save $5 by skipping coffee at Starbucks…"
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/is-any-industry-keeping-up-with-inflation
20. "The Fourth Law has several products already under its belt.
Its two flagship devices — the Lupynis-10-TFL-1 unmanned aircraft system (UAS) drone and the a TFL-1 autonomy module that can be used with third-party aircraft — have gained traction, it said, in the category of first-person vision (FPV) drones, “more than doubling mission success rates while increasing costs by only 10-20%.” (It doesn’t disclose costs, nor what percentage of missions are typically successful.)
The tech is capable of "overcoming EW jamming, acquiring, and striking targets in challenging conditions,” according to Colonel Ruslan Shevchuk of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
There are dozens of third-party companies already integrating TFL-1 tech into their systems, Azhnyuk added.
Urgent need meets consumer-style usability
In a fascinating interview earlier this year, Azhnyuk described how the startup was born out of the need he saw on the front line, but also his background in consumer technology.
Namely on the defence front, the company addresses one of the most important problems in unmanned warfighting – jamming. The Russian Army has been investing heavily in electronic warfare capabilities since the Cold War, and that has meant that on the front line in the war in Ukraine, Electronic Warfare is both a major challenge and the focus of serious innovation. This topic is sensitive, and is at the heart of a battle that means life or death for soldiers in the field."
https://www.resiliencemedia.co/p/ukraines-the-fourth-law-raises-funding
21. "Miners in the West have long called for a separate pricing system to help them compete in supplying the rare earths group of 17 metals needed to make super-strong magnets of strategic importance. They are used in military applications such as drone and fighter jets, as well as to power motors in EVs and wind turbines.
Under a deal made public last week, the U.S. Department of Defense will guarantee a minimum price for its sole domestic rare earth miner MP Materials, at nearly twice the current market level.
Analysts say the pricing deal, which takes effect immediately, should have global implications - positive for producers, but may increase costs for consumers, such as automakers and in turn their customers."
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/analysis-us-rare-earth-pricing-174836811.html
22. A masterclass in special situations investing. One of the most interesting alternatives investment firms around. Sixth Street.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPFor81KJx0
23. This is one of the better geopolitical & global macro conversations in recent days. This will help you make sense of where the world is going.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unc84swwVH0&t=1880s
24. "The Ukrainians have been getting smarter about Westerners just showing up to “check the box” on combat validation. “…They (Western firms) do beautiful pitch books, beautiful presentations about how they’re operating in Ukraine. But actually they’ve done just a couple of flights in Lviv [the western city more than 1,000km from the front line]…The big problem, after that, is that billions of dollars go to the companies that still don’t have any idea what they’re doing.” said Roman Knyazhenko, CEO of Ukrainian drone firm Skyeton in a particularly damning piece in the past week’s Telegraph.
This is a recurrent theme with Ukrainians we talk to: western defense co’s showing up to do the testing equivalent of seagull managementand then bugging out after fairly benign testing to “check the box” of combat validation for marketing purposes- that’s why the Ukrainians are so cynical about western UAS and CUAS systems."
https://bowoftheseus.substack.com/p/it-worked-in-ukraine-is-not-a-substitute
25. "To win at scale and unlock enduring economic gains, the United States should pair sheer production capacity with software-driven technological flexibility. A modular code stack turns swarms of small autonomous systems into “hardware-enabled, software-defined” platforms whose function changes with a simple firmware update. One week it’s a loitering munition, the next a crop-sprayer, warehouse picker, or oil rig inspector. The same low-cost microcontrollers and AI libraries that animate aerial drones can also drive factory robots, subsea monitors, and medical assistants. Opening this architecture to both public and private sector developers will spur real-time solutions across industries worth hundreds of billions of dollars and generating more growth and tax revenue on top of the initial defense investment.
Stack all these numbers atop one another, and the picture clarifies. It is possible to hit a million-drone per year pilot line in 12 months, scale to ten million in year three, and if there is a commitment to parallel capacity builds, reach 100 million units by year five. That trajectory does not close the entire gap with China, but it gives Washington a credible deterrent and a bridge to the billion-drone annual target the moment Congress decides the stakes warrant it.
Industrial policy in the United States works best when it focuses on demand signals, not central planning. The Pentagon memo frames drone supremacy as “a process race as much as a technological race,” aligning perfectly with this call for demand-signal government programming. The Franklin D. Roosevelt administration did not design the B-24 Liberator — it guaranteed Ford that if Willow Run built one an hour, the government would buy every last bomber. The same clarity is needed today."
https://warontherocks.com/2025/07/factories-first-winning-the-drone-war-before-it-starts/
26. "True lethality doesn’t come from slogans.
It comes from designing a force where every warfighter is fully supported, every piece of gear works when needed, every bit of ISR feeds into decision-making, and every logistic chain functions under fire.
It means funding the unglamorous: maintenance, repair, and overhaul agreements with Allies and partners, systems to ensure resupply when logistics are contested, C2 redundancy, EM spectrum superiority, targeting networks, and precision manufacturing.
It also means training, educating, and empowering gifted individuals to understand policy and strategy and able to design campaigns of discrete tactical actions to achieve those policies and strategies.
It means not only building warriors—but giving them the tools, teammates, and trust to fight like professionals."
https://buildingourfuture.substack.com/p/the-myth-of-declining-lethality
27. Best conversation on B2B investing and solid breakdown on the Windsurf X Google X Cognition deal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSudjTgRm7o
28. "The US and NATO allies have rolled out the “Eastern Flank Deterrence Line,” prioritizing ground-based capabilities and weapons interoperability as a bulwark against Russian aggression.
General Christopher Donahue of the US Army Command in Europe and Africa unveiled the plan at the inaugural LandEuro two-day conference in Wiesbaden, Germany."
29. "That led to Sceptre, a rocket-propelled 155mm artillery shell that Steelberg says can hit targets up to 95 miles away— nearly triple the range of standard rounds — with precision, even in GPS-denied environments.
Given its differences from standard rounds (those without rocket assist) — which have a range of about 15 miles and require add-ons for rocket propulsion and precision guidance — it's a category-defying munition more comparable to an extended-range GMLRS. But, like the original 155mm round, it's fired from a howitzer.
In artillery battles, range is critical; after all, that's part of the reason the HIMARS, a rocket artillery system, was so effective when it initially arrived in Ukraine: it gave Kyiv's forces much-needed reach in combat. Steelberg says it will "change the balance of power" on the Ukrainian battlefield and beyond, though it would need to be widely fielded first."
30. "Among those in the defense tech industry, there’s been growing chatter about the rise of these defense disruptors—what you might call the neoprimes. We—one of us a technology investor, the other a former portfolio manager at the Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Unit—are often asked: Is the rise of neoprimes real? What exactly is a neoprime? What defines one? We set out to answer those questions, using data to support our observations. We believe neoprimes are changing the culture of defense acquisitions and developing technologies that will reshape how wars are fought. Shifts in defense spending and policy are empowering neoprimes to grow and move faster.
While many of these traditional primes trace their roots back over a century, a new tribe of Silicon Valley players has entered the arena. They are accelerating deployment timelines and pioneering a different model—defined by rapid iteration, software-first architectures, and a greater appetite for risk. They're deploying operational systems in months rather than years or decades. They’re not just building prototypes for demos and exercises—they’re scaling production and securing billion-dollar contracts.
While they may not yet match the traditional primes in total contract volume, they are closing the gap year over year. A handful of key firms are leading the charge, with an expanding set of startups gaining traction. Backed by venture capital and supported by a growing network of influential advocates shaping policy and public opinion, neoprimes are starting to redefine how the government approaches the acquisition, fielding, and sustainment of new technologies. They are becoming mission-critical to the defense industrial base of America."
https://www.thecipherbrief.com/defense-neoprime-innovation
31. "Just a month after raising $2.5B at a $30.5B valuation, officially entering “neo-prime” territory, Anduril looks more than ready to take on the real primes—this time in the cruise missile game."
https://www.tectonicdefense.com/andurils-barracuda-blasts-off/
32. "If the U.S. wasn’t enshittifying the platforms that it controls, then other countries wouldn’t be considering how best to get away. It is quite amazing how rapidly the public debates in places like Europe and Canada have shifted, even while they are still looking for practical ways to protect themselves from their past protector. As the US tries to use platforms to re-engineer democracy in many of these countries, their choices are going to be increasingly difficult.
Equally, they should note that if the US was truly secure in its platform power, it wouldn’t be making increasingly deranged threats against other countries that dare to consider other options. Trade uncertainty and trade wars are painful, but the alternatives are so much worse."
https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/the-enshittification-of-american
33. "To fuel this industrial renaissance, we need innovative financing tools—new asset classes and platforms that creatively blend grants, subsidies, venture capital, private equity, debt, and infrastructure financing. Founders shouldn’t have to navigate this complex landscape alone, crafting solutions from scratch. Just as venture capital revolutionized startup funding decades ago, bold new models can unlock the capital needed to scale advanced manufacturing today.
Alternatively, the government could fast-track IPOs for industrial startups, letting them tap the stock market’s capital. Striking accredited investor rules could also help, but pitching to the masses is still a time suck when founders just want and need to build.
This capital problem is draining energy. Solving it turbocharges our American Industrial Renaissance."
https://adastracapital.substack.com/p/beyond-vc-funding-the-american-industrial
34. "For entrepreneurs thinking about their next idea, my recommendation is to research the robotics space. Talk to companies and ask how they might use robots in their business. When researching, consider both the creation of new robots and all the businesses that will be built to install, manage, service, and finance them. Robots will soon be ubiquitous, and thousands of new startups will be created in the process."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/07/19/robots-everywhere/
35. Solid conversation this week on latest Silicon Valley news: Meta vs. OpenAI.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjjCWsqem8g&t=1041s
36. "We're in the thick of peak hype on AI right now. Fantastical sums are chasing AGI along with every dumb derivative mirage along the way. The most outrageous claims are being put forth on the daily. It's easy to look at that spectacle with European eyes and roll them. Some of it is pretty cringe!
But I think that would be a mistake. You don't have to throw away your critical reasoning to accept that in the face of unknown potential, optimism beats pessimism. We all have to believe in something, and you're much better off believing that things can get better than not.
Americans fundamentally believe this. They believe the hype, so they make it come to fruition. Not every time, not all of them, but more of them, more of the time than any other country in the world.
That really is exceptional."
Giving Grace and the Locus of Personal Control: The Duality of Man
I was taking a flight to Riyadh early in the year. And not sure what it was with this flight. It was full of older South Asian ladies. It seemed like they had never been on a plane before. Invading my personal space. Blocking the aisle talking to each other as people were boarding. Two of them actually took my seat and sat in my row until the attendant checked their ticket and they realized it was on the other side.
The old me would have raged and probably started yelling at them. The new me, more Christian & more relaxed me, just breathed a few deep breaths, shook my head and smiled. Everyone is on such a trigger edge now, angry and so quick to fight especially since 2020. I’m trying not to add to this.
I’m trying to be more patient & tolerant. To give people grace even when they don’t deserve it. I’m trying to be more Christ-like. Job-like forbearance.
But don’t mistake this for weakness. To anyone who pushes too far, unreasonably and too aggressively, I will hit back. I’m not yet there at the “turn the other cheek” level yet. There are limits to tolerance and patience, something modern Western culture has taken too far. You only need to look at the deterioration of law and order across Western Europe & many Blue States in America. Weakness only emboldens bullies and criminals.
As the ever wise Richard Cooper says: “You can't call yourself 'peaceful' unless you are capable of decisive & lethal violence. If you aren't capable of violence, then you aren't peaceful, you are harmless. Very important distinction there.” (Source: https://x.com/Rich_Cooper/status/1889419414061142349)
A man should be capable of incredible violence but also a high level of compassion. The point is to have the capabilities but also have the judgement and emotional control. Something I’ve worked on my entire life doing.
Ingrates Never Win: The Power of Appreciation and Gratitude
I’m a big fan of Tony Robbins, he was just getting really popular when I was a teen and read his books and heard of his seminars. Never went though much to my detriment. Mainly because it was so looked down on my friends, family and culture in Canada. “Oh he is just a con artist”, or “It’s just stupid American motivational stuff.” Well, fast forward 3 decades and most of these folks who said this are nowhere in life. And I am behind because I foolishly listened to them.
So it’s January 2025, and I’m attending Tony’s free “Time to Rise Summit”, 4 days X 3 hours a day of Tony sharing his stories and providing frameworks to improve your mindset and life. Incredibly valuable. I got plenty of notes and recommendations for improving my life. And I mention this again, it cost me nothing. 2 days in and I saw something really interesting and enlightening happen.
We were 2 hours into day 2 and Tony started to talk about his bigger program and how he put together a special package for attendees. Then he had a colleague show up and do a small sales pitch for a follow on program. Standard stuff as part of a sales funnel. And it was a really good offer. Anchored everyone and showed value of over $2100 usd but offered for $495 usd. It even includes a charitable donation to Feeding America. Great masterful packaging.
What was interesting was the response from what I would say 1/5th of the attendees on the chat. You started to see snarky and negative messages like “of course, there is a sales pitch”, “I can’t afford that”, “this is so American”, “What a scam,” “I’m so disappointed seeing this sales pitch” and even “Bait and switch.”
But you know what this shows, it showed a bunch of go nowhere losers. It showed a bunch of people who missed the lessons Tony shared in his summit. It showed a crappy mindset. It shows a lack of gratitude. Why? Tony literally just did and would go on to do a full on 4 day show with valuable ideas and tactics to make someone or everyone’s life better. He offered massive value at no cost to the attendees and earned the right to pitch something. It wasn’t even a hard sell. He wasn’t making anyone buy it. So strange. The point of paying for the package is the show of commitment and investment to yourself. You get what you pay for.
Mindset is everything. No one owes you anything. Appreciate what other people do for you. You should be grateful for what you have and what you get. This is the path to a more satisfying and more peaceful life. I’d also say a more accomplished and successful life too.
The Urgency of Becoming an Entrepreneur: Your Only Route to Thrive in 2025 & Beyond
I’ve learned so much and gotten so much value from folks online. One of them is Bowtied Bull who wrote a detailed write up Jan 21st, 2025 that got me thinking. Net net: Safe is Unsafe.
"The mega trends don’t really change and the thesis here is still the same: The most dangerous place you can be is in the middle of the herd.
Playing it safe in a career definitely feels comfortable but the higher ups are already using AI tools/software to get rid of the middle as fast as possible. That’s the vast majority of white collar 6-figure paychecks.
It’s what society has conditioned you to do: “Stick to the plan. Follow the rules. You’ll be rewarded.”
Unfortunately, this no longer works in the 2020s. The boomers who told you to get a stable job for 40 years and retire didn’t adapt to the new economic reality: Equity Owners or nothing.
If everyone is doing it, there is no real upside. No different from investing in something that everyone already knows about. While investing in something like the S&P likely goes up long-term, it’s not going to result in exiting the middle.
People will congratulate you on the small promotions at work but it’s just another step towards being stuck. When everyone is doing the same thing, the returns shrink, the competition intensifies, and the risks multiply.
With globalization, automation, and cost-cutting, wages have stagnated while housing, healthcare, and education costs have skyrocketed. Playing it safe in this environment is like staying in a boat that’s slowly sinking."
Source: https://bowtiedbull.io/p/trump-initial-change-and-why-corporate
All this has been very apparent to anyone paying attention to the economy but the BTB guys captured it and articulated it so well.
This was further backed up an eye-opening essay by @TheRealEstateG6: (Source: https://x.com/TheRealEstateG6/status/1876433167789543926) stating the big opportunity that exists for entrepreneurs and the peril faced by employees.
“Let’s summarize this section. You have the world getting more and more financialized with sophisticated investors owning a higher and higher percentage of the businesses in this country.
You have extremely low friction for hiring new, highly skilled employees.
You have AI coming in, which is going to drastically reduce the level of menial white collar jobs.
You have the globalization of the talent pool, which makes it incredibly easy to find a harder working (I’m sure a lot of Americans will get offended by this but I’ve hired both and it’s clear to me foreign workers are simply harder workers on average) employee at roughly 1/4th the cost of an American employee.
You have (extremely likely) expanded high-skill immigration, which is going to further increase the supply side of the labor equation and bring down wages.
And you have a rapid pace of change that’s likely to make long term tenure as an employee very difficult.
Employees are going to be squeezed from all angles in the next 20 years.”
How do you get ahead of all this?
Get fit as you need health energy to do anything and do anything over a long period of time. Good things and big things take time. This could take you 3 years, could be 10 years. Either way you need to be able to sustain a hard pace and allow compounding effects.
2. Develop skills, invest in yourself. Learn sales, marketing, project management, human psychology and behavior, study technology trends and try new low code/no code/AI tools. Build relationships with good, smart people.
3. Then build equity. You do this by building a business, could be ecommerce, could be an agency, could be anything. Acquire an offline SMB. Build equity. Build cash flow via consulting.
Do something.
This is all about surviving. Survive so then you can thrive as most folks fall by the wayside. Sorry but Darwin was right. If you thought the world was competitive out there now, it’s gonna be even more so over the next decade.
I’ll let the guys at BowtiedBull close as they have been right on almost everything for the last decade: “Playing it safe is comfortable, but comfort rarely leads to escaping the middle.
The middle of the herd is the last place you want to be when the stampede begins.
Instead, seek out asymmetric bets. Find the edges of the map. That’s where the outsized rewards—financial, personal, and otherwise—are waiting. Because at the end of the day, the riskiest thing you can do is to let life pass you by while you’re stuck in neutral.
You’re not here to play it safe. You’re here to win. Good luck, the divide will accelerate for those embracing all the new tech and those hoping we return to the past.”
Nuff said. Now get to it!
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Sept 7th, 2025
“Taking a break can lead to breakthroughs.”― Russell Eric Dobda
"As a solopreneur, lifestyle inflation is especially dangerous because income isn't guaranteed.
When you work for someone else, you might get a raise and upgrade your lifestyle accordingly, especially if you feel confident about your job security. But as a solopreneur or entrepreneur, your income can fluctuate wildly. So, if you've inflated your lifestyle across every category, you've created a financial floor you can't fall below without serious consequences.
I've watched people go from feeling free at $250K to feeling broke at $750K because they inflated their lifestyle across every category instead of being intentional about the categories that actually mattered.
So they become trapped by their own success. They can't take a month off. They can't turn down work they hate. And they can't experiment with new ideas that might not pay immediately.
Make a list of the things that genuinely improve your life. Try not to think about what you're supposed to want or what other people want.
Ask yourself this:
"If I can only splurge on three categories for the next 5-10 years of my life, what would they be?"
https://www.justinwelsh.me/newsletter/lifestyle-inflation-kills-freedom
2. "Goldman places the little-known conflict between Japan and the USSR as one of the key pieces in the puzzle that the two regimes had to “solve” in 1939-41. It made Stalin’s agreement with Hitler even more attractive, and it fatefully directed Japanese conquest South. Perhaps that Goldman makes, at times, too strong a case for the importune of the Nomonhan war, but the conflict surely deserves much more that the oblivion into which it seems to have been consigned by political historians.
Especially so now when the war in Europe is directly connected to geopolitics in Asia. Perhaps one should not have been surprised when several days ago, Chinese foreign minister explicitly linked the outcome of the war in Ukraine to the situation in East Asia."
https://branko2f7.substack.com/p/nomonhan-1939
3. "VC angle: Upwelling looked at U.S. buyout funds because they provided the deepest data pool, but Mark says the venture funds likely have a bit longer growth curve but the end result is the same — peak and then an extended tail-off.
The bottom line: Private equity portfolios are aging, as exits have become harder to come by. LP portfolios needn't follow suit."
https://www.axios.com/2025/07/08/private-equity-tail-risk-upwelling
4. "The lack of legal rights isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Tokenization allows investors synthetic access to the financial performance of a company that they normally wouldn’t be able to purchase a piece of. For Robinhood’s European users, who live in countries where regulations make it difficult to buy stocks in the U.S., Tenev’s announcement means easier access to U.S. stocks. And why wouldn’t they want to invest in even a synthetic version of the best-performing stock market in the world?
The American stock market, of course, comes with its specific nuances. One is that American companies are staying private for longer than ever before, meaning that regular people can’t invest in some of the highest-performing companies of our time. America’s drippiest CEO understands this. The new announcement doesn’t just open up synthetic access to public companies. It also tokenizes private company stock, starting with OpenAI and SpaceX.
There’s a part of me that likes what Robinhood is gesturing at. Regular people can now own a token that represents a stock in one of these companies. Getting everyday people access to the tools of wealth creation—in careful, thoughtful ways—means we have a world where value is more equitably distributed. And this was impossible to do heretofore."
https://www.gettheleverage.com/p/the-private-markets-are-broken
5. "If you have successfully launched a pilot, your next challenge is to overcome the budgetary valley of death and achieve sustainment funding. The Navy’s budget cycle plans 2.5 years ahead, so depending on the source of your pilot funding there may be slim years before scaling with congressionally appropriated funding through the Program Objective Memorandum (POM)."
6. "While hard tech startups, or Vertical Integrators, can require more capital than software startups, those capital needs don’t necessarily translate into more dilution for equity investors. In fact, hard tech startups that master structured finance achieve lower dilution than software companies burning equity on customer acquisition.
The capital they do spend tends to go to more productive uses; hard tech spend is more differentiating than software spend. Factories are deeper moats than increasingly expensive customer acquisition in competitive markets. And because so much capital is required, and potential winners are identifiable earlier, the leading hard tech companies actually can use capital as a moat. Not everyone can raise the mix of equity and debt required to build big things, which means less competition for those who can.
We have written at length about our belief that the future will be owned by companies that combine bits and atoms, software and hardware to build better, cheaper, and/or faster products than incumbents. To that belief, we would add money. Bits + Atoms + Dollars.
The future belongs to companies that combine the world's best engineers with the world's best financial engineers.
During the hard tech renaissance, smart technical founders have realized that they must also be smart about the way they capitalize their businesses, and have become more aware of the myriad financing options available to them."
https://www.notboring.co/p/capital-intensity-isnt-bad
7. "One of the factors in Ukraine, that was even seen as far back as World War 2, is enemy jamming. Today that is much more sophisticated than blanking out radio transmissions in the earlier war, because we are talking about the transmission (both ways and interactively) of megabytes of data and precision targeting that could be transferred by satellite. Systems such as Elon Musk's Starlink are, so far at least, resistant to jamming, but Starlink is not yet in tanks or other US-made combat gear. Sensor integration, situational awareness, target selection and maneuver information, all of which is time sensitive, is terribly important, as are ways to spot threats from drones and other anti-tank weapons.
It would be a worthwhile idea, before the Army gets going with another tank design or a modification of an existing one, to start testing how any of this might work in a real war. While the Ukraine war might not last too much longer, perhaps there is time to test out some of these ideas.
Similarly, some tests of autonomous operation and sensor integration, along with active defense systems, should also be platformed and tried out, both to see what its capabilities and limitations are, and to find means of improving operations.
The pathway to a robotic tank should be kept open, but doing so also will entail a significant doctrinal revolution on how to use armor on the modern battlefield. Sticking with the old paradigm and trying to fight off the furies won't cut it in this day and age."
https://weapons.substack.com/p/the-slow-race-toward-a-robotic-tank
8. "Now you see the real battle that the USA is facing. More and more people are making their money digitally. This means they are no longer tied to a specific geography. This is probably part of the reason for Trump’s obsession with Tariffs. Have to find a way to make sure everyone is reliant on the USA. Don’t want a million companies founded in tax havens constantly selling to the US consumer without paying a dime to the growing $37 trillion debt.
Is there anything they can really do about it long-term? In our opinion no. You’re going to be forced to earn your living digitally via e-commerce, SaaS, online ads, copy writing, crypto currencies, etc. (The most viable continues to be E-commerce assuming no high-tech expertise - if you’re high-tech you already know and don’t need to ask if a SaaS is a good idea or not).
Cream Rises to the Top: This is the major reason for our belief. When you see an ad on Instagram, Yahoo, Google etc. You have no idea who made it. Who designed the landing page, who made the copy, who did everything behind the scenes (IE. the person making the real money).
This makes it difficult/nearly impossible to create any sort of tribalism to fend off the digital future. Sure. You can support locally/regionally but when it comes to actual private commerce and digital competition… good luck.
You Should be Thrilled: The days of “who you know, not what you know” is coming to an end. It is turning into “what you know, what you can do”.
Before it was possible to just know the right people and that was it. Locked into forever job placements. Dying quickly. Now it’s just performance based
Are you able to create nice ads? You will be rich
Not able to make ads but can create incredible copy? You will be rich
Not able to do either but can make addictive videos? You will be rich
Can’t do any of those but can predict what people will spend on? You will be rich
Have no connections? Congrats, doesn’t matter anymore. Facebook/Meta/Google will do all the targeting for you anyway. Don’t even need built in traffic since they can show it to the ideal buyer for you
The only downside here is that the non-performers will be left behind. Something akin to New-Age-Feudalism.
Since we know the money being earned is slowly turning digital/internet/computer based and we know that your face/name/location doesn’t matter anymore… It leads you to pretty clear conclusions: 1) you have to create skills and talent related to a digital economy, 2) you can’t rely on tribes/groups simply handing you opportunity anymore and 3) you’re going to hear the phrase “I don’t care where you grew up or where you went, just show me the results” a lot more.
Everything is going to be tracked, no one will be able to hide behind the veil of “being a nice guy”. While it’ll work in the corporate setting while you’re collecting those paychecks. It isn’t going to last forever."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/usa-the-land-of-opportunity-and-the
9. "Nations do not collapse overnight, nor by accident. Their downfall is rarely the result of a single war, a bad ruler, or an unfortunate event. It is, more often, the slow accumulation of choices made: the lost virtues, the eroded character and the ignored foundations.
Landes warned that success is earned, not inherited; built, not assumed. Civilizations rise on the strength of discipline, honesty, merit, knowledge, and foresight. They fall when those traits are mocked, discarded, or forgotten. The pattern is not mysterious. It is historical law.
Unlike material destruction, which can often be rebuilt, moral and institutional decay follows a subtler course. It feeds on comfort, amplifies weakness, and resists correction. Once a society loses its capacity for self-restraint, once it chooses pleasure over principle, narrative over truth, and entitlement over effort, it enters a cycle from which history offers few painless exits.
In that sense, decline is not a policy error. It is not a glitch. It is the natural consequence of prior indulgences—the final stage of a long chain of moral concessions and cultural abdications. Just as financial bankruptcy begins gradually and ends suddenly, so too does civilizational collapse.
Again, Rothbard captured the heart of the matter: “The great crisis of our age is not one of knowledge, but of courage. Not what to do—but whether we will do it.” Therein lies the narrow gate to renewal. It is not reforms or technocracy or clever governance that reverse decline. It is the rediscovery of virtues once thought obsolete: thrift, truth, duty, honor.
But renewal, if it does come, exacts a price. It demands sacrifice, clarity, and the rejection of comforting illusions. Most societies, having grown accustomed to their decadence, cannot and do not pay such price.
History does not mourn their passing. It simply moves on.
So, for those of us concerned not just with capital but with civilization—whether as investors, citizens, parents, or heirs—the most important indicators may not be GDP growth or interest rates. They may instead lie deeper: in the strength of institutions, the honesty of discourse, the cohesion of culture, and the moral stamina of the people.
Fortune follows character. And when character fades, ruin is not imposed. It is invited."
https://forumgeopolitica.com/article/why-do-nations-rise-and-fall-a-survey
10. "I believe that a strong domestic VC industry — especially at the early stages — is an essential component of any tech ecosystem. Despite all of the technological and cultural shifts that are happening, the vast majority of Pre-Seed and Seed deals are led by local investors. Which means that the availability of strong local early-stage funding options is critical to the success of startups around the world.
But once you’ve got a product and/or some early traction, all bets are off. At the later stages (and, increasingly, at Pre-Seed and Seed for top founders), the competition for the privilege of investing in their companies is now global.
Today’s founders are emboldened by choice and, just as with consumers of the past, there’s no going back to mediocrity for them. As Everett Randle predicted, the most exposed and vulnerable funds are those currently stuck in the “middle” — surrounded by heavily-resourced megafunds on one side and a growing number of laser-focused emerging funds on the other. That leaves such VCs with the choice first posed by famed hedge fund manager Paul Tudor James: “adapt, evolve, compete or die.”
Thankfully, there are many paths forward for fund managers to take. They can reorient around a more focused thesis, as Canadian firm Two Small Fish and U.S. firm Susa Ventures did with deep tech (the latter via spinout fund Humba Ventures). They can develop compelling platform offerings, as many U.S. VCs did post-2008. Or they can even double down on a geographic advantage, demonstrating to local founders that they understand their needs better than anyone, as Toronto-based Golden Ventures recently did in spearheading the inaugural Toronto Tech Week."
https://chrisneumann.com/archives/whats-going-on-with-early-stage-founders
11. "It is no secret that, for years, America's economy has been running on financial parasitism rather than production. Wall Street dismantled the industrial backbone.
Labor was deskilled, jobs outsourced, and infrastructure allowed to decay while ten trillion dollars vanished in endless foreign wars and corruption. The country that once built the world's factories can no longer even manufacture the tools to win a trade war.
Mr Trump's tariffs are not a coherent policy. They are a symptom—a sign of late-stage imperial decline.
Markets seem to agree. Since February, some $10 trillion in stock market value has evaporated, and despite periodic rallies, there is no illusion that this is 2001. China is not cowering. It holds the keys to the future: rare earths, battery technology, semiconductors and a huge industrial base. The strategic high ground is not in tariffs, but in control of the supply chain.
Trump claims the tariffs are punishment for China "ripping off the USA." The Chinese are not angels, but the real question is: who truly gutted American industry? Was it China or Europe? Or was it Wall Street and Washington?
Who hollowed out the factories, looted pension funds, turned homes into speculative assets, and poured trillions into forever wars that enriched defence contractors and hedge funds?
Indeed, America has been "ripped off," but by its own elite decision-makers—who outsourced jobs, deregulated finance, and prioritized short-term profits, all while using the dollar as a powerful weapon in debt creation and government intervention in the affairs of other nations.
Beijing may have naturally pursued its own interests vigorously but did not orchestrate any theft. The theft happened in American boardrooms, think tanks, universities, and Senate committees, under the banners of "free markets", "national security" and "financial innovation."
So, who really "ripped off " whom? Is it the one who, for decades, produces goods at razor-thin margins, or the one who buys and pays for them with money conjured from thin air?
This moment is not the climax of a trade war—it is the end of an illusion. The illusion that America can sanction, tariff, and bully its way to eternal dominance. An empire that neither makes nor builds cannot win an economic war. It can only lash out, hoping its reputation will substitute for relevance."
https://forumgeopolitica.com/article/the-end-of-illusion-1065
12. A fun and insightful interview with the God king of Indie Hackers & Digital Nomads: Pieter Levels.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StkCdcZ1ovE
13. "The period from 1920 to 1928 was the height of the Warlord Era, in which China was wracked by civil conflicts between rival military factions. Some vied for control of the central government, while others sought to retain their autonomy in more far-flung provinces. It was only the Northern Expedition, which swept across the entire country and brought China under the Kuomintang’s unitary control, that the period finally ended.
From a military perspective, the civil war of 1924—called the Second Zhili-Fengtian War—was among the most interesting of the period. Although it lasted just two months, it mobilized several hundreds of thousands of men equipped with modern weaponry in two theaters separated by a thousand kilometers. Ultimately, the military outcome in both was decided more by betrayals by key figures than any battlefield developments, but the fighting gives us an interesting perspective on operational maneuver in post-World War I conflicts."
https://dispatch.bazaarofwar.com/p/successors-to-the-western-front-pt-6b3
14. "The rare-earth policy also serves as proof of concept for broader export-control frameworks. Analysts in China are already discussing how targeted regulatory enforcement swathed in national-security rhetoric might be applied to battery materials, aerospace alloys, and biotech.
In future crises or negotiations, Washington and its allies may find themselves confronting not only supply disruptions but also navigating a deeply institutionalized Chinese framework for economic coercion.
The next phase of great-power rivalry will be fought as much through spreadsheets and customs declarations as through tariffs and treaties. To respond effectively, the U.S. will need to treat critical minerals—and other strategic sectors as well—not only as supply-chain issues but also as components of a broader strategic competition. This includes investing in domestic refining capabilities, forging trusted international partnerships, and closely monitoring how Beijing deploys its growing arsenal of economic policy tools."
15. "Silicon Valley isn’t biased against Hong Kong. Or Hokkaido. Or Beijing. It just really, really loves things that look... familiar. And it’s not personal — it’s pattern recognition.
So here’s the real-world checklist founders often overlook:
Don’t expect Silicon Valley investors to value traction that happens outside their backyard.
Don’t underestimate how regulatory headwinds can kill deals before they start.
Don’t just pretend to be a U.S. company.
Don’t let your cap table become a geopolitical liability.
Don’t assume a U.S. exit is your only path to a landmark success.
As a founder and CEO, it’s your job to make things effortless for investors, partners, and customers to understand you. Remove the friction. Speak their language. Build in their backyard — or at least rent a desk in it."
https://edithyeung.substack.com/p/as-a-longtime-silicon-valley-investor
16. One of my favorite conversations on B2B investing and general Silicon Valley news. It's funny, opinionated and it's informative.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWcKAudkn3A
17. "Delusional goals rewire your brain.
Your brain is literally reshaping itself right now based on what you're learning and thinking about, this letter included. When you imagine a better future, it activates the same brain networks as if you were experiencing them. Every single moment of focused attention is a chance to rewire your brain in alignment with the person you want to become. That's one of many reasons doomscrollers and those who don't manage their inputs (mental or physical) are digging their own grave one moment at a time.
Those 3 decisions – an aspirational hourly rate, concentration of force, and giving myself no other option but to succeed – created the perfect conditions to make more money than my younger self thought was possible.
None of those decisions involved obsessing over "what skill to learn" or "what business model to choose." I didn't have time to think about that. I had to learn it all."
https://letters.thedankoe.com/p/these-3-decisions-will-determine
18. "Automation threatens millions of jobs, but beyond near-term economic pain is a deeper concern. Entry-level roles stand to be disproportionately affected—the places where, for generations, people went to accumulate experience and learn their craft. Knowledge risks becoming merely transactional, a commodity to be accessed, rather than relational or internalized. Information on tap instead of an ongoing dialogue with ourselves and the world. We should use automation to take away mundane obstacles and drudgery. I do. But we must recognize the distinction between that and what I call productive friction. This is the kind of difficulty that’s worth preserving, the kind of struggle that pushes you forward as you push against it.
The trick is in knowing what to look for.
Today, it's harder for many to find a first job, yet never easier to create your first opportunity. Human labor is shifting toward adept humans leveraging AI to accomplish vastly more. In this emerging world, proof of work replaces credentials and titles. What matters is what you've made or shipped, not what degrees you have or where you got them. A teenager building their own thriving app; a Shopify intern candidate proactively pitching themselves; a student provocatively challenging university administrators. This is friction made manifest. Knowledge gained from this kind of experience cannot be prompted into existence; it must be earned.
How do you do this work? Simple: Do it. Try lots of things, fast. Bring people along with what you are doing. Instead of trying to climb some arbitrary career ladder, consider following experiments and ideas that draw you in. Every hour spent wrestling with software, every failed print run, every brutal critique creates part of a foundation that you’ll later need to place bigger bets and call bolder shots."
https://every.to/thesis/in-the-ai-age-making-things-difficult-is-deliberate
19. "It’s never been easier to start a company and build a product. As a result, some of the “typical” defensibility strategies are too slow to compete in this era of rapid AI scaling.
The answer: you need multiple short-term and long-term defensibilities strategies. Speed to scale is your primary lever, but you have to be constantly building for the future. Network effects will play a key role in what companies survive this AI boom and become dominant, but you need to deploy them when the time is right. As part of a long-term battle strategy.
One way to think about it: Your startup should be like a motte-and-bailey castle.
In medieval warfare, a motte-and-bailey castle had two distinct defensive positions: the bailey – a large, easily accessible courtyard where daily business happened and initial battles were fought – and the motte – a heavily fortified tower on a hill where defenders could retreat when the bailey was overrun. The bailey was designed to be abandoned when necessary; the motte was built to be impregnable.
For AI startups, your “bailey” consists of the fast-deploying defensibilities that establish your market position: superior distribution, rapid scaling, and brand momentum. These get you in the game quickly, but won’t hold forever against determined competitors. Your “motte” is where you retreat as competition intensifies: true network effects, deep workflow embedding, and systematic lock-in that become nearly impossible to dislodge.
The key is knowing when to fight in the bailey and when to build the motte."
https://www.nfx.com/post/ai-defensibility
20. "As a rough estimate, we’d expect that $7.4T to come down to around $4-5T or so. Wealthier people have locked in some 5% rates for the long-term but money market is shorter duration. When the cuts happen it’ll be hard to justify matching inflation (which is probably 3.5% if they are stating that it’s 2.4%).
Of that we’d expect: 1) S&P, 2) QQQ, 3) Crypto and 4) mega tech stocks to be the beneficiaries. Every single year you’re going to see strange companies make turn arounds. However, the future is still the same. Large scaled up companies and then niche companies (the ones *you* should be building to funnel excess money into crypto and tech).
Niche companies will become more profitable high-margin and lean. This is due to high quality scale with no head count changes. The mega companies will be able to pick up whoever they like and pay a bit less as they are the only real employers due to pricing power."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/trillions-sidelined-crypto-week-and
21. The case and importance of investing in Defensetech. It's imperative.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dW1TSWB5cS0
22. Understanding supply chains from Vietnam versus Mexico.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3jRuaHNeOo
23. "History whispers lessons in the rise and fall of financial power, dark, malevolent and violent human enslaving and consuming power. From Venice’s medieval banks to Amsterdam’s trade networks, the City of London’s martial reach, and Wall Street’s post-war Financialism, each era saw a new center emerge as old ones waned.
Today, as we mark July 11, 2025, a subtle yet profoundly dangerous shift seems to be nearing completion. The United Arab Emirates (UAE), with its Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), is carving a niche that could very well redefine the global power landscape for many decades—centuries—to come."
https://emburlingame.substack.com/p/is-the-uae-and-the-islamic-world
24. Always a cold but collected conversation on energy. And remember, energy is life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO6NAwyWRK8
25. "Fast forward to today—knock-offs have become dupes, duplicates that have indistinguishable quality from the more expensive, higher margin original. In some cases, a dupe is the exact same item from the same factory with the logo tag removed.
Dupes today are far from taboo; they've become a status symbol for the modern consumer who has infinite access to information. What makes someone cool today is the ability to think smarter, spend less, and not compromise on quality. If you’re covered in logos and paying full-price, the joke is on you.
The dupe economy isn't killing premium brands—it's forcing them to justify their premiums. Companies that adapt by offering genuine value at fair prices will thrive. Those that rely solely on brand mystique and inflated pricing will struggle.
The consumers driving this trend aren't looking for cheap alternatives; they're demanding smart alternatives. The question for your business is: Are you giving them a reason to choose you beyond the logo?"
https://brianne.substack.com/p/the-dupe-economy-why-todays-consumers
26. "Any move by Saudi, China et al to move from G7 reserve currencies/bonds would be self defeating - it would crash bond prices, and the value of their own portfolios (they would suffer immediate huge mark to market losses), global interest rates would rise, expectations of global growth would drop resulting in lower oil and commodity prices (hurting Saudi Arabia, et al and risking their dollar pegs) and actually would then encourage a flight back to quality, back to the dollar, Euro, Sterling, bunds, et al, and hence actually would increase the reserve currency status of G7 assets, so would prove counterproductive.
It is not going to happen as Saudi, China et al value global market stability above all else. Talk is cheap - action will cost Saudi, China, etc al dearly, and they are not going to risk losses to themselves to help Putin."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/econ-101-for-lagarde
27. One of the best shows in tech & Silicon Valley. Coverage & opinions of the weekly news.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X52BNWZrXSk
28. "Milei’s success in bringing down Argentina’s inflation, while also restoring growth after one painful year, show that the macroleftists’ constant dark warnings about austerity are at least sometimes overblown. Fiscal conservatism isn’t always desirable, but Milei is showing that the costs often aren’t as high as many progressives believe.
Meanwhile, Milei’s microeconomic policies — the deregulation, the moves toward privatization, the anti-union policies — are the dog that didn’t bark here. With poverty now falling and consumption rising in Argentina, it doesn’t appear that those free-market policies have crushed the middle class. So far there’s no sign that inequality has increased substantially either, with the Gini coefficient looking stable.
And in a few cases, we can see Milei’s free-market policies actually getting results. The scrapping of national rent control seems to have created such a big housing supply boom that it has actually driven rents down.
Does this mean that hardcore libertarians are right, and that countries all over the world should slash government and unleash market forces? Well, no. The more complicated, nuanced truth is that which economic policies are best depends a whole lot on where you start. Argentina before Milei was a Peronist mess; China before Deng was a Maoist disaster. Plenty of government expansions throughout history have reduce poverty without wrecking economic growth; witness the New Deal, or Korea’s industrial policy push in the 1970s.
The boring truth is that the ideal economy is a mixed one; it’s built on the foundation of markets, but also contains a significant amount of redistribution, public goods provision, and industrial policy. The exact optimal balance depends on the country, and on the times; even if you happen to get it exactly right for a while, the optimal mix will change over time as countries develop, as technology changes, as trading patterns shift, and so on. Someday, if Argentina over-indexes on Milei’s early successes, they might very well become too laissez-faire.
Instead of picking one ideology and sticking to it, countries should recognize when they’ve veered too far in one direction, and take steps to change course. If some of your people are suffering in poverty while others prosper, you should establish a social safety net. If you’re choking on pollution from unregulated industry, you should establish some environmental protections. If you’ve nationalized your industries and they aren’t doing well, you should privatize them. If you’re falling behind technologically, you should try some industrial policy. If you’ve shackled your economy with inefficient subsidies and entitlements, then you should do some deregulation."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/free-market-economics-is-working
29. Conversation with the cofounder of Solana on More or Less. Good stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23aYyLi-ONw
30. This was really illuminating. Inside the mind of an endowment manager. LP insights.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0TwqZIF32s
31. "For nearly a century, aircraft carriers have dominated naval warfare theory.
It has become a nearly sacrosanct precept of naval warfare.
But should it be? Or, has advanced technologies including precision warfare and the ability to find, fix, track, target, and engage increasingly smaller craft at increasingly larger ranges obviated the advantages of the aircraft carrier?
A Gerald Ford-class aircraft carrier (of which the John F. Kennedy is one) costs somewhere around $13.3B and carries around 50x F-35Cs at a cost of $100M/aircraft. Sink one of those and down the drain goes ~$20B and more importantly up to 5,000 Sailors.
Or should the Navy scale back its acquisition of these large systems and reprogram some of that money to smaller, more agile, craft that can launch and recover autonomous systems, missiles, and other weapons while minimizing crew requirements?
The Navy needs to put in some hard thought on the future of warfare and how it will adapt. It needs to way the trajectories of technology with the various risks of its options."
https://buildingourfuture.substack.com/p/building-slow-falling-behind-the
32. This was a grim conversation on WW3. Learned some stuff despite it being terrifying.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qObdS-bhRM&t=12s
33. "But, there are two ideas that I think about a lot right now:
Mining companies are digging up metals that seem to be increasing in price everyday. At the same time, those companies energy costs (especially diesel) are remaining surprisingly low. Considering that mining company’s energy costs are up to 40% of their operating expenses, there may be some incredible earnings coming out over the next couple of quarters.
Small and mid cap tech companies in emerging markets are very interesting right now. Two examples are Nu Bank ($NU) and dLocal ($DLO). Their valuations are very reasonable, they have tremendous demographic tailwinds, and their TAM is barely penetrated."
Understand Yourself to Manage Yourself
I get called into jury duty here every other year and I find the whole thing anxiety-inducing and annoying. Not that it is particularly hard and yes, I know it’s your civic duty and such. But for some reason it just really throws me for a loop.
The lack of control, the inability to plan anything that week while you call in every day at 430 pm to see if you have to go in. Sometimes you get through the week without being called in. Or like in January of 2024 for me where you do get called in after 3 days of waiting. Called in, waiting in a room doing nothing for hours. Having everything you do overseen by a bailiff and judge who decides your fate on their whim. Also then throwing off your entire schedule the next few weeks after, costing me time and real money. A massive monkey wrench in my schedule which drives me berserk.
Never understood why it bugged me so much. Then my therapist told me she thought I had a mild case of OCPD which is Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder. Which leads to rigidity and stubbornness, obsessiveness with order, rules and control, plus an inability to trust others. A need for perfection & predictability.
It all kind of makes sense. I think these leanings made me a good operating executive and made the trains run on time wherever I was. Having different plans, being super organized, following up intensely. Not resting until I got the task done. I was able to be a bit more tolerant at work and business. I learned to make allowances for others although it ate me up inside.
But this was not how I run my own personal schedule and life in general. And probably why I am hell to live with. The inflexibility, the lack of trust in others. I hate unreliable people.
And I especially hate it when my plans and schedule get derailed. I just loath uncertainty, even if I know intellectually this is just life. The insane levels of rage that comes out when this happens. It all makes sense now.
So what? you might say. The point I am making is that understanding yourself is critical for managing yourself and your life. Knowing your flaws and predilections, so you can have more control over yourself. To manage hard situations you find yourself in better. And whether you like it or not, there will always be hard situations that come up. It literally never stops.
Because of this, I still do have plans, and still inevitably follow them rigidly. I just make sure I don’t over book myself & give myself lots of gaps in between calls and meetings so I can be a bit more flexible and less tense aka intense. I meditate. I take short naps to clear my head.
I’ve also tried to change my mindset. Life used to happen to me, and I’d feel so angry when my plans get derailed. Now I try, stress “try” to follow Tony Robbins’ lesson of being grateful and treating “life as something that happens FOR me.” This is new for me so very far from fully embracing this. But my new religion helps as the saying goes: “Let Go, Let God”. Trust in life, and trust in God’s plan. It’s reassuring to me for some reason.
No Pain, No Gain: Do Hard Things
I love desserts, ice cream, pastries and cakes, and sweet candy. But in 2024, as I’ve focused on getting healthy, I’ve slowly cut this out of my life. I recall a day on a business trip at the end of the year in Baku, Azerbaijan. I was walking around and just had way too many desserts, 2 cakes, baklava, and chocolates from Lviv Chocolate Factory. It tasted so good but I felt terrible after. Like literally sick to my stomach.
You look forward to it, you really enjoy eating them. But boy, did my body hurt. There is something to that. The things you enjoy, usually turn out to be bad for you. Late nights out partying, alcohol, drugs, junk food, sweet foods, easy sex. It’s ironic. So easy to access. No wonder the general populace is in such bad shape physically and mentally.
On the other hand, the stuff that you dislike or is hard, turns out to be really good for you. I don’t always like going to the gym or fight training. And I certainly don't feel good while working out. But boy, do I feel really good after. As I wrote before, you never regret working out at the gym. Your head is clear, you feel like you have accomplished something and you are stronger and healthier.
These hard decisions and situations could be the job you hate or the business you feel you have to start. This could be that class you have been meaning to take. Or the new food diet you know you need to follow. This could be the crappy money losing stocks you’ve kept in your portfolio for too long that you should have sold a long time ago. The useless employee you’ve put off firing despite continual bad performance. The deal or relationship that clearly is not working and has no future.
We put the decision to take care of it off because we dread it and dread dealing with it. But boy does it feel good after you take the hard action and just do it.
So my point: do the hard painful things that you know are good for you. Get used to doing it enough so that what was once hard and painful, eventually becomes enjoyable. Just like going to the gym over time. Train your brain to embrace this hardness and not avoid it. My life started getting better after I figured this out. This is the way breakthroughs and greatness in life are found. Pain and suffering leads to true growth.
The Ultimate Test of Your Mettle: On the Frontier or on the Battlefield
I’ve watched the new Dune movies, part one and two, multiple times. An interstellar sci-fi soap opera of warring noble families. A grand drama which takes place on the planet of Dune where they harvest spice. Spice which enables intergalactic trade and empire. But it’s a harsh desert planet where only the strong survive.
The desert, the jungle, the forests, the mountains, the oceans, space. Nature at the edge are harsh and extreme environments. The new frontiers. As are the battlefields of war. Or the professional and competitive fighting rings. Civilization is soft and comfortable. But you can’t afford this on the frontier or in a fight. These are very unforgiving environments.
You have to be ready & completely switched on. Again, there is no margin of error. You pay for your mistakes with your life. Or worse, others will pay for it with theirs. It’s cruel but real. There is beauty in this simplicity. It’s very black and white. The severity and harshness is the whetstone to sharpen the edge of the blade.
But it’s the ultimate test. Massively dangerous. High risk. We should respect and admire anyone who puts themselves in these situations. Explorers, warriors/ soldiers, entrepreneurs.
Reminds me of the Pioneers Creed: “The cowards never started. The weak died along the way. Only the strong survived.” Darwinism at its finest. Real life. The harshest environments create the toughest people like the imaginary Sardaukar and Fremen of Dune.
We need more of the pioneering mindset in all of us. That is how progress happens. This is how innovation happens whether technological, social or cultural. Be more pioneer. Search for challenging and hard things to do. Push yourself to the extreme. This is the way to get strong. Strong individuals matter more than ever today. Even harder times in the world are coming fast.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Aug 31st, 2025
“Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.” —F. Scott Fitzgerald
"More forks. The red network hasn’t developed a structure yet that will prevent forks in the future. With each new fork, red network participants will depart, and opposition to its policies will form in unexpected quadrants. Given what we’ve seen so far, the red network may shatter (again) before the 2028 elections, making it possible for the blue network to take power.
The red network might evolve again. One potential evolution is the development of resonant orientation, as opposed to the reflexive opposition (no DEI, no wars, no immigration, no..) we see in both the blue and red networks (due to the way network tribalism works). An orientation in decision-making points you in the direction of solutions that will benefit you. It guides you forward, allowing you to make decisions dynamically rather than reflexively. However, we might not see an evolution like this until 2032."
https://johnrobb.substack.com/p/the-hard-fork
2. This was illuminating. One of the most thoughtful Private equity investors I've listened to and has unique People-first talent development & personal development perspectives.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2nHljZeMQ8&t=1116s
3. It's too bad, I liked Jordan Peterson & know his teachings helped many people.
"And something happened in this era to Peterson that it’s hard to solely blame him for. He was both idolized and condemned in a way so extreme that it seems impossible that anyone could go through it with their ego intact. Wherever he went, young men would be thanking him for saving their lives and interviewers would be asking why he wanted to spread hate speech, with little in between. Peterson always seemed to have a slightly forthright streak that bordered on anger, and while in his early interviews he remained composed, by 2018–19 he often seemed to become more tearful or angry in interviews, suggesting that these extremes took—unsurprisingly—an emotional toll.
Is it his fault millions of fans interpreted that feeling of insight with the belief in his status as savior? Perhaps. Peterson certainly rode the wave, and he seemed to believe his own hype as much if not more than anyone. Being vilified didn’t help, no doubt, but in reality there weren’t enough people suggesting everyone just needed to shut up and let him go be a psychology professor who did the odd public lecture series.
The trajectory of Peterson’s career may have been an inevitability of an ego that couldn’t say “that’s enough,” or it may be the fault of those who expected him to be more than he was. Either way, the failure of Jordan Peterson is a failure of culture, a failure of public intellectualism, a failure of a new media system that seemed to promise a positive replacement to the legacy media and instead produced siloed professional talkers who tour podcasts becoming steadily more unhinged and self-reinforcing."
https://www.persuasion.community/p/reflections-on-the-jordan-peterson
4. "The Great Differentiation is the race to be different. It is the salvation from slop.
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. This is Newton’s Third Law of Motion. It is also an emergent Law of the Market.
Sameness has never been cheaper.
Websites look the same. Writing reads the same. Hype videos hype the same.
Copying is free and frictionless. And because it is cheap, it is low status. What might have been 2019’s most beautiful landing page is 2025’s slop.
When sameness is cheap, differentiation is valuable. But how do you remain differentiated when copying is free and frictionless? Make copying expensive.
The funny part is that, were he alive today, Steve Jobs would not be presenting like Steve Jobs presented in 2007. Copycats killed the style; move on.
Differentiate. Always differentiate.
Everything novel and valuable gets copied, at higher or lower fidelity. This is what René Girard warned about. Mimesis.
Look at me, after all this, copying Peter Thiel’s interpretation of Girard’s insights. Mimesis comes for us all.
Copying is inevitable, and I feared that our new infinite copy machines would drag us into a pit of paltry plagiarism.
What is wonderful about The Great Differentiation, though, what gives me hope, is that people seem to be copying the desire to differentiate.
Instead of faking the form, they are emulating the essence: create something unique and true to you, something that only you have earned. Something different.
This is good advice for all of us.
Differentiate. Always differentiate."
https://www.notboring.co/p/the-great-differentiation
5. "It’s nothing short of a controlled demolition warning. This is a cleanup operation of the mess left over from the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). The Federal Reserve Bank and interest rate policy are no longer able to address the core problem. The losses from that time are still festering and slowing down the pace of growth in the US. For Trump and Bessent, now is the time to reverse the windfall gains that the bankers and asset holders made during the crisis at the expense of the little guy.
They intend to hit the pension fund companies, the insurers, and corporations that have been paying themselves all too well as a result of the GFC windfall. In addition, any companies that served as fronts or revenue-generating sources for the Deep State or the opposition will no longer have the privilege of state sponsorship, protection, or plausible deniability. They are likely to go bust. I have called this process the digital redenomination of your entire life. We must get ready for it.
This time, the American public and indeed the world are being encouraged to adopt Bitcoin and stablecoins because they will not only be fully convertible into US Dollars, they will also give the coin holders the most senior credit position, thus protecting them from loss. Bessant’s plan is to create an environment in which the zombie banks and zombie assets that are still lingering and hindering the economy's performance can be written down and written off. It’s a controlled demolition. Yes, pension funds will take a hit, but there is a new wave of entrepreneurial businesses that will now be financed through tokenization, creating a new wave of Apple’s and Tesla’s as well as making it vastly easier for small and medium-sized businesses to get funding.
This new financial system breaks the lock that Wall Street and private equity/venture capital had on the markets. The advent of tokenization and crypto is fundamentally a new way of financing start-ups and ventures. No longer will Wall Street and private equity remain the gatekeepers of who gets money and who doesn’t. They gave their money and blessings to a minuscule number of ventures and denied access to the vast majority of viable businesses, principally because those businesses looked unlikely to become unicorns (a business that achieves a billion-dollar valuation in a short period of time).
The “work horse” businesses, real going concerns (which I wrote about here in June 2022), that had real customers with real cash flows and real profits had nowhere to go. Banks stopped lending to them decades ago. These workhorses have been increasingly relying on private family office money, often at heavy interest rates or with painful equity give-aways. As the tokenized market replaces the stock market, the avenues for funding are going to widen considerably for everyone.
This is an entrepreneur’s revolution."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/controlled-demolition-warning-tokenization
6. "Keep in mind, you have to really commit to the reset: you can’t go for a run and then keep doing exactly what you were doing before, spending the whole journey fixating on what was bothering you back home. Immersing yourself in the meal or process or new environment is vital to triggering the reboot (and thus, the potential for different circumstances)."
https://colin.substack.com/p/tactical-reset
7. "This systematic pollution of the information space is not new. It is the digital acceleration of a timeless human tactic: the corruption of narrative to control perception and power. Since the advent of language, whispers have become slander; since the printing press, pamphlets have smeared rivals; governments and factions have always sought to burn unfavorable records and propagate their own version of history. What has changed is the scale, speed, and automation.
Bots and AI weaponize these age-old tactics, operating at machine speed and global reach, injecting falsehoods directly into the data streams that will form the foundation of future understanding. The parchment scroll and the printing press have been replaced by the training dataset and the API call, but the goal remains chillingly familiar: to control the story, to own the past, and thereby dictate the future."
https://emburlingame.substack.com/p/the-new-frontlines-of-truth
8. This is a must watch interview if you want to learn how innovation works and how to instigate it. A masterclass for founders and investors. VK is a legend.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZ9cYDeum4U&t=2002s
9. "After years of working with European startups, I’ve observed that companies from countries with relatively large home markets — Germany, France, Spain and the U.K. — can fall into what I call the “mid-sized country trap.” These markets are large enough to sustain initial growth, but create a comfort zone that can stifle global ambition.
This makes internationalization more difficult down the line, as neither product nor culture supports agile expansion into new markets. Startups can get locked into local optimizations, acquire technical debt and end up having to “restart” the company in each new geography. As a result, they become vulnerable to competitors who have built scalable products from the ground up and are able to move faster."
https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/europe-most-ambitious-global-startups-mignot-index/
10. "So stop getting caught up in the day-to-day noise of financial markets. Zoom out for a second. Ask yourself: what is the single most important trend for the next decade and what should I do about it?
For me, it is clearly the US dollar debasement that is going to continue happening. And bitcoin is the solution to the undisciplined monetary and fiscal policy."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/the-us-dollar-is-being-destroyed
11. "What is a “Supply Chain”?
Simply: it's the set of companies that make the goods and services that you use to ultimately make your products. There are essentially no products produced that don’t require raw material inputs, energy, or services to be built. Even mining, where the input is under your feet, requires some of the most complex machines in the world to operate, engineering and geological services to explore, and specialty chemicals to process ore. Essentially, everything produced at any level has a chain of supply behind it.
When building complex products with relatively complex inputs (like batteries, drones, etc.), the supply chain can make or break a hardware startup. Even the most vertically-integrated hardware startups (Anduril being an example close to my experience) typically have several components or subsystems that are entirely designed, manufactured, and supported by another company. Sensors like infrared cameras were typically procured as a “black box” item - i.e., it was designed and built by someone else. This fact is largely underappreciated, especially in today’s discourse about reshoring manufacturing. Yes, we desperately need to do it. No, it doesn’t happen overnight."
https://newsletter.mcj.vc/p/hard-truths-from-the-hardware-trenches-justin-lopas-base-power
12. What a fun AMA with Not Investment Advice this week. Good brain candy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQj04-sokTg
13. Quite a good conversation on Startups, AI, Energy and the future of the West.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVX-l5ERxiw
14. Artillery becoming more vulnerable and obsolete in war?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S19R4jdA930
15. "What started as a passion project has struck a nerve. Audiences are responding not only to the film’s explosive action and outrageous humor, but also to its underlying themes of hard work, friendship, and life on the margins. At recent screenings in Yokohama, fans lined up for autographs, and a toy industry expert even praised the movie saying, "This movie should be shared. It’s a film that is needed in today’s world."
https://www.tokyoscope.blog/p/japans-new-cult-hit-is-a-bonkers
16. The most weekly fun in B2B VC right now. And you will learn the nuances of doing the investing job.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONAVeuKxzl0
17. "The Army has a gap to close between long-range precision weapons and indirect fires at closer ranges, so they’re looking to attack drones to fill in the mid-range capabilities, the service’s vice chief of staff said Wednesday.
The concern is having enough rounds to feed all of these systems.
“In particular, both production rates and price points associated with some of our critical munitions that are out there for our big frames and our big platforms … and based on what has happened in Israel and Iran and the expenditures that are there, what's happened in Ukraine. Our magazine depth right now is not where it needs to be.”
18. You always get smarter when you listen to Balaji as he makes you think.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJO0AW9VV-Y
19. Weekly update on Silicon Valley news. This is a fun discussion as always.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iKEafMw6qI
20. "The decade witnessed several other wars that are much less well studied yet are of interest. Two in particular stand out: the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922 and the Chinese civil war of 1924, sometimes called the Second Zhili-Fengtian War. Both saw intense combat between vast numbers of men equipped with machine guns, artillery, and airplanes, fighting on dense fronts tied to rail corridors. Yet neither was fought on so long or continuous a front as existed in northern France. Lines of contact were much shorter, usually formed under more dynamic circumstances and in different terrain, creating many more opportunities for operational maneuver. As a result, major battles never lasted more than a few weeks and often ended decisively.
These case studies have especial resonance today. Modern firepower seems to give the defense an edge, while tightly binding operations to narrow supply corridors; yet Ukraine remains our only point of reference for large-scale near-peer conflict between 21st-century militaries. Heavily-fortified lines stretching hundreds of kilometers through open country draw inevitable comparisons to the Western Front. Yet it is precisely those conditions which are unlikely to be replicated in a future war. Studying similar-but-different examples is therefore a useful exercise in broadening our frame of understanding.
The Sakarya campaign seemed to confirm many of the lessons of the Western Front. What had worked against a widely dispersed enemy around Kütahya and Eskişehir could not succeed against a well-entrenched foe along a continuous front. It was difficult for a large, lumbering army to execute sweeping operational maneuvers so far from a railhead, even if the logistical demands of its artillery were relatively light.
By attempting a 19th-century style campaign—or at least by not adapting once their maneuver failed—the Greeks sacrificed an opportunity to use their superior firepower from a well-supplied position. By the same token, the Turks were unable to aggressively pursue. Their main force could not maintain an adequate pace to fix and destroy the Greeks, while their cavalry could only harass logistics and create diversions, but not execute an envelopment. And when they attempted a large-scale maneuver of their own at Afyon, they too suffered from mobility and logistical problems, while the Greeks could take advantage of interior rail lines."
https://dispatch.bazaarofwar.com/p/successors-to-the-western-front-pt
21. "Entrepreneurs would do well to include KPI definition slides at the end of their board decks to ensure that everyone is on the same page and the metrics are calculated in a way that is readily understood and, ideally, aligned with industry standards."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/07/05/kpi-definitions-in-board-decks/
22. "Tipping is not a common practice in Japan. In most situations, offering extra money for good service is politely declined, as exceptional hospitality is expected as part of the job. But now, a new smartphone app could begin to change that, allowing customers to express appreciation in ways that were once considered off-limits."
https://www.tokyoscope.blog/p/is-tipping-in-japan-the-future-new
23. "This time, it’s the UAE. Dubai and Abu Dhabi, arms wide open, like some desert whorehouse for the world’s elite. It’s no accident. The UAE sits there, neutral, a tightrope walker between East and West, with financial guts that make the world jealous. DIFC and ADGM—playgrounds for bankers, rules loose as a barfly’s tongue, cash flowing from sovereign wealth funds like ADIA and Mubadala, endless rivers of black gold turned green. The government’s iron fist keeps it stable, no questions asked, no whispers in the night. And the Global War on Terror? That mess tied Western spies and money men to the Gulf with chains of blood and oil, forged in fire and betrayal. Now they’re cashing in that trust, cashing in the bodies piled high.
Look around. Dubai and Abu Dhabi suck in capital fleeing Russia and China, untold trillions in offshore wealth, a black hole for dirty money. The GWOT built a web of secrets, clandestine and covert armies, illicit cashflows and cash now turned to this, a dark network pulsing beneath the surface. Proxy wars? The UAE’s hands are bloody in Yemen and beyond, across Africa and South Asia, Muslim bodies piling up for their plans, stacked like cordwood. Syria? Wasn’t that ISIS, established under Obama and Clinton, used to take down that ancient people, now leading ethnic cleansing, a slow genocide in the desert?"
https://emburlingame.substack.com/p/uae-is-the-new-city-of-london-and
24. "Entrepreneurs have complained for a long time that VCs don’t really fund innovative ideas, but prefer obvious marginal innovation kinds of things. That has worked ok because those companies get picked up at small exit multiples by big players, and, occasionally they do turn into big companies on their own.
As AI makes all the marginal innovation easy and obvious and taken by the existing players, the success distribution might shift to the weird ideas. If it does, VCs will follow. And then maybe we really get the world entrepreneurs want - the one where the weirdest and craziest stuff gets funded."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/weird-stuff-wins-the-new-ai-strategy
25. "Stop waiting for the destination to validate your journey. The validation is in the running itself. The act of building is the reward."
https://startupistanbul.substack.com/p/there-is-no-finish-line
26. "A Japanese woman who had lived in America in the 1990s told me that she found American society to be generous, kind, tolerant, and helpful. But when she goes back now, she said, she sees a lot of anger and the culture feels a lot colder.
In a nutshell, my argument was that diversity was always America’s strength, but only because we were able to use geographic diversity to temper the stresses and strains created by our ideological diversity. When Americans started arguing about politics and society over Twitter and Facebook and TikTok, it immediately stopped mattering as much who their physical neighbors were; in a short space of time, we were thrown into a small room with their countrymen who disagreed with them about everything. This created instant anger and friction throughout society.
American social media has become a playground for British and Australian fascists, Latin American communists, Pakistani Islamists, and every other kind of foreign extremist under the sun. Often, the hapless and vulnerable Americans have no idea whether the content they’re consuming on Twitter/X was made by foreigners, so they just assume it came from their countrymen; this makes them think their countrymen are far more extremist than they truly are, stirring division within American society and sowing distrust of neighbor against neighbor.
Foreigners who love America are likely to move here; those who hate America are likely to get involved in English-language social media discourse from afar. And so thanks to social media, young generations of Americans — having grown up on the internet and being more used to taking social cues from strangers online — are especially vulnerable to the tide of anti-American sentiment they encounter online. This is probably a big reason why the young generation is so much less patriotic.
America is therefore a country of normal people being ruled over by would-be revolutionaries whose information space is dominated by X and TikTok — by extremist theories, by trolls and grifters, by busybody foreigners, by viral misinformation, and by bored anonymous teenagers. If we want our country back, we need to retake the information space that is radicalizing our hyper-engaged elites."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/how-to-take-our-country-back
27. "Unsurprisingly then, the modern mentality simply cannot comprehend actual acts of widespread cruelty and violence, and above all it blanks out at the idea that one day we could experience them. Episodes of mass killing in Cambodia, Burundi or Rwanda are so far beyond what the western mentality can understand that they have become nothing more than horrors without content.
We sort of know that terrible things happened to individuals in the former Soviet Union, Greece under the Colonels, in Latin America, in apartheid South Africa and in more recently in countries such as Syria, Iraq and Libya, but we wrap them in normative cotton wool entitled “human rights violations.” Few accounts by those who survived Assad’s prisons have been widely published, for example, because our contemporary Liberal view of the world simply can't refine them into anything it can understand, given its facile understanding of human behaviour."
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/such-times
28. This is a good conversation on tech & venture from a guy at the center of things.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z94vn0pTewg
29. "In the feudal-ascendant stage, weak monarchs typically need to come crawling to the baronial class for funds and military resources, usually on poor terms, and baronial rebellion is easy. The monarch is not much more than a Schelling point for times when the baronial class needs to stop infighting to undertake a bit of cooperative activity, like crusading. When feudal lords have the upper hand, there is typically a competitive market for knightly talent, and the knightly class enjoys horizontal labor mobility across lordly courts and halls (from where we get words like courtliness and courtesy, the culture of manners and associated genre of literature that is Crouch’s focus). Entry into this class is fairly open from below, and knightly heroes share main-character energy with the commoner class (as we see in the tale of Robin Hood, who is ambiguously poised between the two classes).
But in the monarchy-ascendant stage, the reverse is true. Baronial classes lose power and control, get more tightly attached to courts, and compete with capital-city courtier classes, whose power derives from sources other than land holdings. The monarch typically has strong direct relations with an urban population that is economically powerful but lacks land-based wealth. The itinerant knightly class, meanwhile, is typically demoted in status. Much of its function is commoditized into standing imperial armies, with a shift from heavy cavalry to light cavalry and infantry. What remains of the knightly class becomes horizontally immobilized and closes itself off to entry from below, to preserve what remains of its power.
This pattern of using a mythologized historical era to reflect the nature of a contemporary society is not an accident. We’ll look at our own times in a minute.
It is worth noting that the feudal-monarchial cycle does not end with the arrival of modernity and the eclipse of horses in warfare. Suitably abstracted, I think the cycle has continued to this day, even in the military world. Knightly heavy cavalry has given way to special forces (not to the more literal descendant, tanks) and their bespoke, temperamental helicopters. The baronial class now runs armaments industries. Drones have replaced longbow archers.
It’s not hard to see why this era is appealing. Commoner men could aspire to work their way up and sideways as high and far as their talents and taste for adventure could take them. Commoner women could hope to parley beauty similarly, into wealth and status by marrying up (hypergamy). The game was learnable, and open to those with the appropriate aptitudes. But not too open! A few advantages of birth or connections could help, and were welcome, as does a sense of being a Chosen One destined for greatness. The game was open to commoners, but also loaded against them, and governed by rules that recognized specialness."
https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/be-history-or-do-history
30. "IP monetization is probably the most exploitative form of capitalism. It coasts on the past patents, inventions, ideas, and creativity, and capitalizes on the legal protections they enjoy. Rather than spurring innovation and protecting entrepreneurship, modern IP suffocates it.
It artificially keeps brand corpses alive and milks any distinguishing (and trademark protected) brand code, logo, pattern, color, monogram or, other signifier. And that is just in the domain of branding. In art, fashion, design, film, music, it protects melodies, silhouettes, designs, shapes, materials, plots …
Vetements, a fashion brand, recently lost a trademark application in the US for being too “generic.” For a brand name that means “clothes” in French, this serves them well. For a brand that made its name by ripping other brands off (Vetements launched with a copy of a DHL t-shirt), it serves them even better.
When it comes to IP, the line between creative exploration and creative exploitation is thin. IP economy goes hand-in-hand with visual culture."
https://andjelicaaa.substack.com/p/ip-economy
31. "More Debt and How This Impacts You
No surprise, this means you need to build a biz, become an asset holder. If $5 trillion is coming, this will cause prices to go up directionally.
Realistically, if your goal is to get rich for the right reasons (to be in control of your life) you’ll never deal with this level of corruption/depravity. Best to avoid all that stuff anyway.
If a 21 year old 10/10 super model girl shows interest in you when you’re 50+ staying at the Four Seasons… Run. Run far far away.
The goal on this side of the web is to buy your way into personal freedom. Sovereign Individual.
You can leave the whole ego chasing, blackmailing and constantly looking over your shoulder to the billionaire crowd. The goal is to get rich and be free. Just don’t let anyone know you achieved just that. Otherwise you might find yourself hanging out with people who were on the Epstein “disappeared” client list."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/govt-crushing-bond-holders-again
32. "As I wander through the world, giving talks to all kinds of audiences representing a wide array of sectors, I find that people have not heard of the Dark Enlightenment and businesses are not yet deploying AI. The inherent caution and ignorance within old institutions is set to be besieged by the inherent confidence and deep expertise that is embedded in the new startups.
Look at Erebor. Before it even opens its doors for business it’s already achieved a $2b valuation. Yet, the media keeps describing Erebor as a bank that aims to fill the shoes of the now defunct Silicon Valley Bank. See Bloomberg’s “Crypto, Startups and Banking Make a Scary Mix: Circle, Erebor and others look like they could run straight toward the Silicon Valley Bank trap.” No. Sweet but no. Erebor aims to demolish the biggest banks in the market and create an entirely new Kingdom. The Administration wants to restore its position on the commanding heights of the market mountain tops (whether Erebor or Erewhon) so that the world’s money keeps flowing into the US and funding the US economy. This grand strategy looks set to work.
The Europeans understand that it is going to work. In response, they have their
own vision of the new Kingdom. It involves greater centralization of decision making as Mario Draghi showed us with his grand plan for the future of Europe (here) and greater control as President Macron outlined in a speech last April in a speech called “Europe – It Can Die: A New Paradigm”. Both suggest that the new philosophy that can work is essentially a combination of communism and control. It can be achieved through government control of asset allocation and the use of CBDC as a means of nudging the population to spend on the things that government wants. It’s a kind of financial repression.
It’s why ECB President Christine Lagarde is railing against stablecoins saying it represents “the privatization of money” which is an anathema to the central bankers. They see no irony on the fact that the Federal Reserve and the BIS (which has soveriegn immunity) are also private institutions who effectively issue private money too, which is President Trump’s big gripe. In Europe CBDC will be used to tell citizens to buy certain bank bonds and that they must not buy fast food. Make no mistake, America’s approach to the commanding heights of the market mountain top also involves financial repression. Stable coins may be instruments of financial repression too as Arthur Hayes explains (thanks again to Matt Pines for bringing this to my attention)."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/erebor-erewhon-stablecoins-zizians
33. "Of course, if it wasn’t uncool to know things about war and warfare, maybe leadership could’ve seen the difference between good and bad policy and more eloquently argued for doing the right thing. Maybe we wouldn’t be at risk of losing our global advantage in scientific research or at risk of losing in the Pacific or abandoning Ukraine. The problem with American foreign policy isn’t some bullshit about masculinity or lethality, it’s about not knowing what the hell we’re doing.
There’s probably a dozen other things I could rant about here, but I think the above encapsulates the basic issues with democratic foreign policy thinking. And to be sure, there are people up and down the chain of liberal schools of thought that do know their stuff. They are just too few to fight the good fight themselves and no singular administration will fix that. The foreign policy class faces an identity crisis and it feels like some are just waiting around for a grand strategy that will justify it all like the second coming of a Messiah. But there is no one else, there is no secret backroom of geniuses waiting for their chance.
Grand strategy is bullshit. A strategy is grand when it works and misguided when it doesn’t. The only way you make a strategy work, the only way you manage the massive foreign policy arm of the United States, the only way we win…is by building a cadre of capable, critical thinkers and doers from the ground up. And if you’re just starting out and reading this, don’t give up. Victory starts with you."
https://www.breakingbeijing.com/p/there-is-no-one-else
34. "What is one tool that could blunt a successful invasion of Taiwan that some people in the Pentagon know we need, but don’t seem to be able to get the funding to move it to a critical mass?
It’s mining, of course, but for this scenario our war-hack is a special subset of mining: aerial mining.
You don’t have to mine it all, just the most likely approaches to where the PRC wants to be, or are most suitable for their special-purpose landing barges. The PRC can have uncomfortable uncertainty on where the rest of the mines are.
Fear is the defender’s ally.
Mines buy time, narrow access. That is what you need to make any invasion, should it take place, have a better likelihood to fail at best, give Taiwan and her allies the time they need to reinforce her at worst."
https://cdrsalamander.substack.com/p/how-to-blunt-a-prc-invasion-of-taiwan
35. "So stock allocations are exploding higher for American households. The stock market continues to push higher and higher as it outperforms other regions. And the US dollar, which everyone thinks will continue weakening forever, may be ready to reverse course and remind the world why dollars are the global reserve currency.
Time will tell what happens. Just make sure you keep your mind flexible. Don’t become dogmatic about any scenario or outcome. The world is more dynamic than ever before. You will need your critical thinking skills as we continue accelerating faster and faster into the future."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/is-the-us-dollar-comeback-upon-us
36. "Taiwan could adapt the Japanese model to their domestic needs by establishing a Quick Reaction Reserve quota — say, 150,000 troops.
Second, Taiwan should adopt a modern-day “vertical resilience” strategy. Taiwan should use its mountainous terrain for concealment and protection against overwhelming firepower. Underground infrastructure is vital: Taiwan should modernize and expand existing tunnel networks to protect weapons, communications, and personnel. And vertical resiliency can help establish redundancy in communication networks — from cables deep underground to space-based systems.
Third, asymmetric capabilities are critical to fighting lopsided battles. Taiwan cannot afford to invest in high-end, exquisite capabilities that will take ten years to acquire. Instead, Taiwan is now in a situation where, like WWII-era Japan, it must do everything in its power to strengthen its defenses in a compressed time. Therefore, Taiwan should focus on acquiring asymmetric military capabilities over conventional ones. Drones are an excellent example. They can be mass-produced, stored in ordinary (and concealed) cargo containers, and launched in swarms. And not all drones require expensive guidance systems: many can follow remotely controlled lead drones, while other drones can even be operated by civilians with relatively minimal training.
Fourth, just as important as having deterrence is messaging deterrence. Imperial Japan successfully telegraphed to its would-be US invaders that Taiwan’s force posture was changing rapidly, and that any battle over Taiwan would be horrific. Taiwan today can likewise clearly communicate its ability and willingness to defend. For instance, Taiwan could consider holding public competitions showcasing its military capabilities. What would China think if a world-class drone-piloting student competition were held in Taiwan, where award-winning students told media, “We would like to use our skills to support military operations in the event of a Taiwan contingency?”
And finally, if nothing else, Taiwan and allied nations should feel confident that deterrence is possible. Eighty years ago, Operation Sho-2Go worked: the United States was deterred from invading Taiwan. Deterrence can be achieved again today."
https://www.chinatalk.media/p/operation-sho-2go-how-imperial-japan
The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions: Ending A Project & Relationship
2024 was a heck of a rough year. It took me many months into 2025 to reflect on this. I’ve written about continuing family issues, personal cash flow and cost structure issues due to unexpected personal & real estate HVAC costs + unpaid account receivables from some government entities who will remain unnamed. We had some major breakthroughs in the investment holding costs that will be hugely beneficial in the future but were a massive drain on our coffers in 2024.
But on top of all this stress, was an initiative we took on in 2023. One of our small direct investments we did in 2021 was in the midst of shutting down in 2023, so we offered to take it to a new region as a sort of JV to keep it alive. We wrote up the contract and assigned people to it, even found an executive. Everyone went into this excited as it seemed tailor made for the region & the feedback we got from everyone we spoke to was incredibly good.
We ran into personnel issues as the executive we brought on board was a disaster. We couldn’t find another replacement executive and we got distracted with all the other initiatives we had going on. By mid-June of 2024 it was turning into a massive mess. We tried restarting it and then tried killing it in the middle of the year, but after some contentious calls, we agreed to kick it off again.
But it was stalled again by the end of the year. Again. And understandably frustrations & anger were very high from the other side. Every angry email or messenger ping was a stab at my heart, because I understood. My morale would drop immediately when I saw these because I bore some responsibility but could not affect what was happening on the ground in the region. I had no answers which made it even worse. Communication was awful from our side, unfortunately.
I had a gut feeling even in 2023 that this was going to be an issue as it was just not top of our priorities. But I kept overruling this feeling every time in a flight of optimism. In my heart of hearts, I just did not think it would work out. Yet I did not have the guts to just end it definitively. This turned into a complete disastrous mess and waste of money and time.
God, especially what a waste of everyone’s time. And the loss of a relationship and reputational damage to boot. Uggh……one of the biggest messes I’ve been involved with in my 25 year old business career.
But I’ve drawn some hard lessons from this. As per Derek Siver’s frame, when you look at opportunities, “If it’s not a ‘Hell yeah, it’s a hell No’”. We were way too optimistic and it was not close enough to our core business to really focus on it. Yet we said yes. While we had good intentions, we were not resourced well enough for this initiative to be successful. Whether it was a point person, or project management lead or even some larger budget to match the opportunity. Looking back, this was stillborn at the start. Hope is not a strategy.
Also as a reminder for why it’s critical to have a very clear plan and resourcing for this. And of course, have a clear walk away point. You would think at my age and some business experience, this would not happen but here we are again. Humble pie.
Being Present: More Wisdom from Fast & the Furious Tokyo Drift
“Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. You would think that watching it on almost every flight I’ve been on would make me sick of it. But for some odd reason, I keep coming back to it. I love Japan. But I also just love the story about the older cool kid Han, taking an underdog outside kid under his wing and mentoring him. One of the first ridiculously amazing Asian American characters to be shown on film in Hollywood.
And it highlights some eternal truths for every young man: the importance of having a mentor, finding your tribe, never counting anyone out, being decisive, and face your problems head on. Also don’t mess with the Yakuza aka the Japanese mafia! :) All this and the fact that Japan is just really amazing and awesome.
But putting that aside, there is one of the many excellent scenes, showing deep wisdom, when Neela and Sean are drifting in their cars in the mountains of Japan.
“Things were different back then. We just made do. No one bothered us.”
“It felt like everything else just disappears. No past. No future. No problems. Just the moment.”
I reflect on this. “Ichi-Go Ichi-E”, that one moment in your life that will never happen again.
Like many people I either tend to be trapped in the past or more usually just looking forward to the future. Just trying to rush through the present to get there.
So many moments in my life when I should have slowed down. Breathed. Taken in the moment more. Treasure it. Soak in it.
The moment when I was promoted or got a job. Or had a great conversation. Met a new interesting person. Closed a big deal. Made some money. Graduating an Accelerator batch of startups at 500 Startups. Found that lost old book. Found an amazing restaurant.
Or visited some amazingly beautiful place like the Egyptian Pyramids on Giza or the Great Wall of China. Did White Shark Cage diving. Or sometimes just hanging out with old friends over a meal. Or just being with family. Watching your kid grow up. The little small & magical things that add up to the big memories of your life.
I feel like I rushed through my life and now only have so little of it left. Which means I need to savor the time and moments even more. They say “youth is wasted on the young”, it was certainly true with me. No more.
I’m going to squeeze what I can from this life. Take in everything I can and do what I can to enjoy it. You should too.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
Most of the new Star Wars series movies are total garbage beyond the first 3 masterpiece movies. But I will make an exception for Rogue One which came out in 2016. It’s a highly underrated war movie of sacrifice and heroism that really set up Star Wars the original movie & the destruction of the Death Star. It’s like Mission Impossible meets the Dirty Dozen but it takes place in the Star Wars universe. Few against many with insane odds against them.
How did the Rebels get their hands on the plans for the Death Star? Well this movie (along with Andor series 2) explains it. They got it via incredible violence, sacrifice and many lives on both sides. Spoiler alert, literally every single rebel on the mission dies but yet this mission is the key that unlocks their future. As main character Jyn Erso says: “Rebellions are built on hope.”
Rebel intelligence agent Cassian said something very poignant in the movie:
“Some of us, well most of us, we’ve all done terrible things on behalf of the rebellion. Spies, saboteurs, assassins. Everything I did, I did for the rebellion.
Every time I walked away from something I wanted to forget I told myself it was for a cause I believed in. A cause that was worth it. Without that, we are lost. Everything we’ve done would have been for nothing. I can’t face myself if I give up now.”
It’s nice to have a cause to believe in. In this case, freedom of the galaxy from the tyranny of the Empire. Yes, this is just a movie but it seems fiction is starting to blend into reality in 2025 as the fractious West declines while the new Axis of autocracy CRINK (China, Russia, Iran & North Korea) emerges and has been actively working against us. This is an enemy much worse than our corrupt, grifting, dishonest and incompetent ruling elites, which in my view is the lesser of evils.
We need to wake up from our grand delusion of peace at all costs. Wishful thinking of a peaceful world that has long disappeared because of our own weakness & stupidity. We need to be willing to fight for our way of life, it can never be taken for granted. We need to remember nothing good comes without sacrifice.
But don’t give up hope yet abroad or at home. It’s not too late. As long as there are people willing to fight and resist to protect our way of life in the West. We need to get strong again.
“One fighter with a sharp stick and nothing left to lose can take the day. If we can make it to the ground we can take the next chance. And the next. On and on, until we win or the chances are spent…….May the force be with us.”
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Aug 24th, 2025
“Summertime is always the best of what might be” – Charles Bowden
"The key point here is that a person can now be identified remotely by their walking gait, by their unique and undisguisable heartbeat, even by their molecules. You cannot hide from this panopticon. The weapons systems needed to take you out are cheap and fast – small drones that place a “warhead on a forehead”. You can’t sleep soundly anymore, knowing that the warhead can pass through your apartment wall.
One wrong move or wrong word, and you are dead in a heartbeat. This is a new kind of warfare. It's no longer about tanks or soldiers. This is a space-based/digital AI-directed war. The rules and risks have changed for everyone. We should remember this as we think about our own country’s AI-led surveillance plans.
The geopolitics have changed too. All of the geopolitical players have been forced to recognize that Trump is now a lethal threat. TACO (Trump always Chickens out, must change to, “Trump Always Comes up with Options). Offers are negotiating tactics for him. When he withdraws an option, it is not conceding; it is because something else has changed. In my experience in geopolitics and in business, few experts in geopolitics have any understanding of how business deals happen. This is because the currency of geopolitics is power, while the currency of business is money.
The typical property deal that Trump works on is high stakes, big, and messy. It involves many players beyond the buyer and seller, including unions, organized crime, local, state, and federal officials, complex regulations, regulatory enforcement agencies, and investors. Every property deal has to be a win-win for everyone. The contest is to see who makes the most money out of the deal. However, most deals will fail if any party ends up as a loser. That means property deals require giving up power at points in the negotiation. Geopolitics experts tend to fall into Kissinger’s approach to power – you must never give up any power, no matter what.
Concessions are a loss of power. Everything in geopolitics is usually win-lose. Hence, when Trump removes a threat, it equates to a loss of power, at least to the geopolitical cognoscenti. His new allies in the Middle East – Saudi, Qatar, the UAE and Israel – are all very good at dealmaking in business. They get the idea that everyone must win, and anyone who refuses to play ball gets eliminated. It’s a win-win for the survivors and elimination for those who refuse to cooperate.
So, does the strike on the nuclear facilities necessarily mean this is the start of a ground war? No. In fact, quite the opposite is unfolding. Why? Because Trump is offering win-win incentives. Russia and China can both see that a deal over Ukraine and Taiwan is tantalizingly close. Will either trade away their prize - Ukraine for Russia and Taiwan for China - for the sake of Iran? No."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/irans-panopticon-prison-ai-gaz-a
2. This actually makes a lot of sense on what is happening in US weapon sales to rest of West & NATO.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue7-_byY7FU
3. "In stark contrast to the VC model, SBIR’s current model was carefully designed to fund large portfolios of projects that serve DoD’s research and innovation needs, not a limited portfolio of companies. SBIR invests at a very early stage in a vast range of technologies and companies, focusing on innovation rather than profit, ROI, or exits. SBIR takes no equity, acquires no board seats, and exerts little influence on the companies it funds. And SBIR funds heartland inventors and tech center innovators alike.
All this underscores a key point: commercialization is only one metric for judging the success of the SBIR program at DoD, and it is not the most important. What matters is delivering technology for DoD and warfighter.
The program’s primary goal is to extend DoD’s lead in R&D, solve problems, and to equip our warfighters with the best technology available to support our national defense. Here multiple award winners have played a key role, generating a higher rate of DoD sales (according to GAO), offering long-term support, and providing massively important technologies like Progeny Systems’ MK 54 close-in torpedo, now the standard for the U.S. Navy and many of our close allies. They win new contracts because they offer DoD the best available deal for what it needs, in an open marketplace of ideas."
4. "The amazing effectiveness of intelligence over brute force, of precise autonomous strike systems operating from behind enemy lines with tightly integrated intelligence should give us pause as we begin massive investments to put up our own ballistic missile defense system: the golden dome. While eliminating the threats from ballistic missiles is wonderful, we must also be vigilant about strikes from unmanned systems within our borders as well.
The Israelis took Operation Spiderweb and put it on Steroids. In addition to the drone and loitering munition operations, the also used insider intelligence gathered by double agents that gave them precise information about the Iranian command echelon’s movements to round up their targets. The irony was of course that many of these assets were kept around by the Iranians because they thought they had actually flipped them when they hadn’t."
https://bowoftheseus.substack.com/p/a-golden-dome-cant-protect-against
5. One of the best weekly shows and discussion on the B2B world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m60kE-VSOdw
6. Future of Military Affairs: Europe will be relying on the Ukrainian military industrial power.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbCPjbUqL1Y
7. "Many nations manufacture their own weapons and ammunition. But China suddenly became one of the foremost defence technology innovators. How?
The reason is doctrinal: the CCP has pioneered a principle called civil-military fusion. Everything, from AI research at Baidu to quantum computing labs at Tsinghua, is potentially dual-use. The boundary between civilian and military R&D is deliberately porous. Xi Jinping even created a commission to ensure its correct implementation.
That would feel very unusual in the West, where we instinctively separate defence and civilian innovation. But for China it’s a guiding principle. One which has transformed its entire tech ecosystem into a military supply chain."
https://www.resiliencemedia.co/p/how-did-china-come-to-lead-the-world
8. Always a great conversation on the latest tech and Silicon Valley news.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WdW8Qgn-iU
9. Lots of cultural context and learnings on Japan, China and the West at large and how this will affect future geopolitics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hBd8w-Hlm4
10. This was quite good. Discussion with the head of the Army Futures Unit. The future of war from the perspective of the US Army.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw-k8xcELmE
11. One of the best business model tear downs ever, this one mainly on the Booking.com business.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=573f5xX-bd8
12. "Since 1957 the share of Americans who are 65 and older has nearly doubled from 9% to 17%. At $1.5 trillion dollars, Social Security is the largest expenditure in the federal budget. U.S. seniors are the wealthiest cohort in history and the recipients of the largest redistribution in history. The program, which currently serves 69m Americans, is due to run out of money in eight years. Three trends are driving insolvency: more people reaching retirement age (good), people living longer into retirement (also good), and a decline in workforce participation (not good).
If/when Social Security becomes insolvent, America’s grandparents will likely put their retirement on their grandkids’ credit cards. The fix is straightforward, but politically fraught: Means-test benefits and raise the retirement age (exempting people in physically demanding professions). According to a CBO analysis, increasing the full retirement age by two months per birth year until it reaches age 70 for Americans born in 1978 or later would decrease total federal outlays by $122b through 2032.
Phasing out benefits for those with more than $150,000 of non-Social Security income would save an estimated $600b to $700b over a decade. We now spend $5 on seniors for every $1 on children. Enough already. Seniors who need Social Security should get it, but it shouldn’t mean an upgrade from Carnival to Crystal Cruises for NaNa and PopPop. At current rates, within a decade, we’ll spend half our federal budget on programs for seniors. (See above: The wealthiest generation in history.)"
https://www.profgalloway.com/the-grown-up-tax-bill/
13. "Unless you happen to be one of those sickos who gets their jollies from building B2B SaaS companies, this may seem like a snoozefest of a quote. Data data data blah blah blah.
However, this is incredibly important—it means that Slack owner Salesforce is trying to own all of your data. You can’t do anything with it. No company and no customer is allowed to touch it outside of the ways they see fit.
As with everything else these days, this is about AI. All of your applications will be doing this soon, whether it’s your favorite social media site or Microsoft Word. Slack is just the first one to act. Everyone should care about this story, whether you’re concerned about never being able to download your Slack data and use it for an internal tool or you’re more worried that you’re missing the boat on the next AI millions. Beyond that, this sort of business strategy will dictate how all of society functions tomorrow.
The next five years will be a furious storm of acquisitions, investments, and consolidation up and down the stack, where companies will be rapidly trying to corner key sources of data and workflows before an AI provider gets to it first."
https://www.gettheleverage.com/p/slack-declares-war
14. "This brings us back to my criticism of Israel in last week’s article. They did not set up the proper political environment before initiating their attack. For Israel, politics and international public support seem to be an afterthought. They seem to think they can overcome anything with might and wit alone. How naive.
Historically, even the mighty U.S. makes sure to gather a coalition and launch a proper propaganda campaign before engaging in any large military conflict. Israel is a small country with roughly the same population as New York City. They don’t have the size to operate the way they’re choosing to.
There are tons of reports that Iran still has enriched uranium stockpiles that were not hit by U.S. and Israeli airstrikes. So far, the regime in Iran seems to be intact. Unless the Israelis have something new up their sleeves, this was a failure.
Why?
It’s a failure because in war, you don’t take half-measures against a determined adversary. Half-measures like this give Iran the chance to learn and get better. You don’t send your enemy back to the drawing board, you kill them. If you can’t do that, don’t start a war unless you have direct provocation.
Assuming the status quo holds, the Iranians have now experienced the full extent of Israel’s capabilities, and they’ll spend the next few years building back better.
Iran didn’t win this war, but Israel didn’t either."
https://www.globalhitman.com/p/israels-brilliance-and-failure
15. "The other vector in startups was geography.
Today, like it or not, capital is re-concentrating in the old capitals partially because of AI: San Francisco, London, Tel Aviv. Startups in non-central ecosystems are finding it that much harder to raise capital. From side conversations, there’s a growing sense that global GPs need to “earn the right” to go abroad again.
The irony (and certainly central to my day job at Fluent Ventures) some of the best startups are being built in emerging ecosystems—with less burn, less competition, and lower valuations."
https://99tech.alexlazarow.com/p/a-tale-of-two-cities-in-tech-rebranding
16. "For entrepreneurs, the recommendation is to search for shared prompts online in the context of the work being done. If you’re analyzing term sheets, go online and find example prompts that do a much more detailed analysis than just a basic prompt. If you’re analyzing a partnership agreement, use the shared prompt that will give you more valuable insights. The AI results are great, and with a more advanced prompt, they’ll be even better."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/06/28/use-advanced-prompts-for-more-ai-value/
17. The most original thinker in Silicon Valley, whether you like him or not, Peter Thiel is worth listening to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV7YgnPUxcU
18. This stood out to me.
“Japan cannot trust its two biggest partners...the People's Republic of China on the one hand...And then of course, the United States of America...And what has happened over the last five, six years is that basically both those partners...have become untrustworthy.”
“Everybody who's cool wants to move to Tokyo...there's growing evidence that you have a little bit of a brain drain to Japan, where the best and the brightest from around Asia and the United States of America actually are happy to take a pay cut...the quality of life and your purchasing power makes Tokyo, Kyoto, Fukuoka, very, very good places to live and work.”
https://japanoptimist.substack.com/p/unbelievably-rich-yet-dirt-cheap
19. One of the world's most interesting men in history. Aristotle Onassis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R1iG3LrT2I
20. I enjoyed and learned more than I thought I would from this conversation with the Chainsmokers on DJ-ing, art, music and venture capital.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-aE0mkUWYM&t=1762s
21. "We’re still in the horseless carriage era of AI applications.
The breakthrough will come when software adapts to us instead of forcing us to adapt to it."
https://tomtunguz.com/my-own-ai-email-generator/
22. Not for me but an interesting investment idea.
"If you want to buy into the world's cheapest real estate, you have to look at Cuba.
Based on a statistic drawn up by NetCredit, in 2023 the median house in Cuba cost USD 40,000. This compares to prices in the Dominican Republic being 5x higher, and more expensive Caribbean locations costing 5-20x more.
How to get in on the act?
There is one forgotten stock listed on the London stock exchange that allows you to do that.
Introducing CEIBA Investments
CEIBA Investments (ISIN GG00BFMDJH11, UK:CBA) has a real estate portfolio in Cuba that is valued at USD 130m even during current market conditions. With 100% of its portfolio invested in Cuba, it's a pure play."
23. "Two key trends will drive the development of this next generation consumer device: 1) Hardware (chips, cameras, sensors, screens, optics, batteries, etc) will continue to get better, cheaper, and smaller, driven by Big Tech investment. 2) GenAI will simplify how users interact with these devices and unlock more powerful features.
A next generation AI-native hardware device (whether equipped with BCI or not) will certainly make its way to the national security community. I expect that DoD adoption of this new technology will follow a similar path as the smartphone. First, the smartphone proliferated throughout the consumer industry, then, several years later, DoD rolled out a hardened version of the device equipped with DoD-specific software like ATAK.4 Hopefully DoD will be able to adopt this next generation system more quickly than they adopted smartphones, which took several years to integrate throughout the Department.
A next-generation, AI-native consumer device holds significant potential for national security customers, offering hands-free operation via natural language or BCI, deep user context through integrated sensor data, and AI agents capable of executing tasks autonomously, enabling users to stay mission-focused and amplifying their operational effectiveness as a true force multiplier."
https://maggiegray.us/p/ai-native-hardware-the-next-strategic
24. "Ending old-age benefits for the childless would be a pretty dystopian policy. But in the long run, extreme population aging, coupled with slower productivity growth, will make it economically impossible for young people to support old people no matter what policies government enact.
And if desperate, last-ditch draconian measures fail, we will shrink and dwindle as a species.
The vitality and energy of young people will slowly vanish from the physical world, as the youth become tiny islands within a sea of the graying and old. Already I can feel this when I go to Japan; neighborhoods like Shibuya in Tokyo or Shinsaibashi in Osaka that felt bustling and alive with young people in the 2000s are now dominated by middle-aged and elderly people and tourists.
And as population itself shrinks, the built environment will become more and more empty; whole towns will vanish from the map, as humanity huddles together in a dwindling number of graying megacities. Our impact on the planet’s environment will finally be reduced — we will still send out legions of robots to cultivate food and mine minerals, but as our numbers decrease, our desire to cannibalize the planet will hit its limits.
But even as humanity shrinks in physical space, we will bind ourselves more tightly together in digital space."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-dawn-of-the-posthuman-age
25. "What makes drone warfare in the Russo-Ukraine War different is that this is a fight between two regular armies. It has been going on long enough to have encouraged innovation in technology and tactics. After the full-scale invasion of February 2022, large drones, essentially unmanned aircraft, such as the Turkish Bayraktar, made a mark until the Russians learned how to deal with them. They were full of expensive equipment yet vulnerable to enemy defences. As they faded away from the front-line there was a shift to smaller and ever more versatile drones that could be mass produced and were sufficiently cheap to be expendable.
Some drones can be used a number of times, often more for surveillance than attack, but most now are used only once. They can be configured for a variety of ranges, so that some can attack targets well to the rear. Support of front-line operations is now dominated by FPV (First Person View) Drones. These have a distinctive square shape, with a propeller at each corner, flying directly into targets, where they can detonate an explosive charge of up to 1.5 kg. Last year both sides produced about a million of these. This year both expect to produce three to four million."
https://samf.substack.com/p/are-drones-the-future-of-war
26. "Thesis drift is entirely psychological in nature. It is natural to want to avoid admitting to yourself that you were wrong or that you didn’t know what you were doing, as it conflicts with your self-image as someone who is smart or has good instincts. If you have made public pronouncements about your position, changing your mind threatens your external image as well.
If you don’t recognize thesis drift, you can get stuck in hell. Hell, in this context, is when you get stuck doing the same thing over and over and expect a different result. All you have to do to stay out of hell is to respond to the clear, unambiguous feedback you got when your initial thesis was falsified. That feedback is your lifeline! Once you sever that feedback loop, it’s easy to enter a tailspin, because there is nothing left that can pull you out of it. You just keep losing money on the same failed position with no end in sight. And what’s worse, when you are stuck in hell, you look like an insane person, doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results.
People expect investing to be a game of intellect, where you produce clever theories that you can turn into money. In reality, it is more of a psychological battle to keep your brain from sabotaging your portfolio."
https://www.md-a.co/p/thesis-drift
27. "Somewhere along the way, we got lost. We’ve turned what should have been the problem statement into an invitation to a pity party. The correct response to differentiation challenges isn’t “woe is me,” but “that’s why we get paid the big bucks.”
That’s our job. That’s what we do here: differentiate similar products in the minds of customers. See Positioning. No, it’s not easy. But the day you think differentiation is impossible is the day you should turn in your marketing gun and badge. Differentiation is always possible. If consumer packaged goods (CPG) marketers can differentiate rice or yogurt, then we can darn well differentiate enterprise software."
https://kellblog.com/2025/06/29/navigating-the-mythical-sea-of-sameness/
28. "Today I want to give the opposite perspective - that the app layer is a difficult place to make money and that infrastructure is the best place to invest right now.
The reason I’m so interested in AI infrastructure is because the underlying technology of AI is shifting rapidly. Use cases are changing. And I still expect a few technological discontinuities to come into play - like the rise of a non-transformer based model class. Some of these previous shifts in AI infrastructure leadership happened because the tools were optimized for technology like RNNs or CNNs and then LLMs became the driver of application development and new entrants were better positioned for that world.
I believe that is happening now, and will continue to happen for the next decade as AI development settles into a market equilibrium. There will be massive opportunities for AI infrastructure startups."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/why-i-disagree-with-sequoias-thesis
29. "While most people know him as the sardonic superhero Deadpool, Reynolds is also a wildly successful businessperson. Plenty of celebrities attach themselves to products. But Reynolds’ production company and marketing firm Maximum Effort is a viral content machine. He takes hefty stakes in seemingly disparate small companies, promotes them—and has them promote each other—with playful quick-turn ads he calls “fastvertising,” and then sells the businesses for millions.
He has invested in Aviation Gin, the discount telecommunications company Mint Mobile, Welsh soccer team Wrexham AFC, and the cybersecurity app 1Password—to name a few. The companies he co-owns or has sold are valued at over $14 billion, according to Forbes.
Reynolds has carried over his Hollywood playbook to the world of advertising: respect the audience’s intelligence and have a little fun. “Consumers know they’re being marketed to, so acknowledge it,” he says. Levy, who has made three movies with Reynolds, believes that Reynolds’ ability to create narratives for his businesses is his friend’s superpower. “He’s really identified a core component to entrepreneurial success,” Levy says. “And it connects back to our day jobs, which is storytelling.”
https://time.com/collections/time100-companies-2025/7289571/maximum-effort/
30. Old one but good one.
"This last week McGregor won his contest in a record 13 seconds. His opponent, Jose Aldo, had been the champion and unbeaten for 10 years. He was the empireand McGregor was the startup on his periphery. The startup won.
These were Conor McGregor quotes after the fight.
Precision beats power. Timing beats speed
When you see it, and you have the courage enough to speak it, it will happen
To the naked eye it was 13 seconds, but to my team and my family it has been a lifetime of work to get to that 13 seconds."
https://www.adamtownsend.me/startup-conor/
31. Controlling the straits of Hormuz. Chokepoints and geography matter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UZbuY9pPkw
32. If you are interested in defensetech & the future of warfare, this is an incredible interview with Ethan Thornton of Mach Industries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTfSIRg_kp0&t=6323s
33. "So if Japan pioneered reality TV, and still watches it today, why is it that modern Japanese reality TV is so inoffensive, while the American strain is so virulent? It’s tempting to argue that Japan’s more sedate broadcast entertainment is a reflection of a healthier society and America’s adversarial entertainment a reflection of a sicker one. That American entertainment is the product of an outrage economy, while Japan’s a product of what might be called a soothing economy. Which makes sense, because some of Japan’s top exports are designed to comfort, empower, and heal.
It’s particularly evident in publishing: the popularity of escapist isekai manga; the current boom for female authors like Yoko Ogawa and Mieko Kawakami; self-help hits likeThe Courage to be Disliked and Marie Kondo’s cleaning magic.
Those sweeping generalizations might have some basis in reality. But the current state of broadcast affairs in Japan isn’t due to some nationwide epiphany, or because the country is maturing, or because producers stopped making provocative shows out of the goodness of their hearts. It’s because of regulations."
https://blog.pureinventionbook.com/p/japanese-tv-vs-american-reality
34. Revolution in Military Affairs: Naval Advances.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Dy2Wd_ZNSA
35. "Private equity remains popular among allocators, but the fundamentals tell a sobering story. Portfolio companies are smaller, less profitable, slower growing, and more leveraged than their public peers. And that’s before considering that public comparables have far more flexibility in capital markets.
The bull case for PE used to hinge on financial engineering and multiple expansion. Today, with debt expensive and exit multiples compressing, the tools that fueled outperformance are turning into liabilities. As always, we return to the data—and the data continues to suggest that the private equity model is under increasing strain."
https://mailchi.mp/verdadcap/2024-private-equity-fundamentals
36. "Path Three is not about getting better. It’s about seeing more clearly.
Path Three doesn’t upgrade you. It exposes the illusion of there being a “you” to upgrade.
It’s not about achieving anything at all. It’s about recognizing what’s already here, already true, already whole.
The problem is, Path Three has terrible PR.
Nobody gets rich on Path Three. There are no before-and-after photos. You don’t get abs. You don’t get closure. You don’t become a legend in your niche.
You don’t become anyone, really.
You notice, instead, that you were never the person you thought you were to begin with. That your life story was a story. That your inner voice was an improv narrator trying to explain the movie while it played.
You don’t transcend the human experience. You just stop taking it personally.
So why do it?
Because once you get even a glimpse of this third path, everything else gets lighter. The drama of Path One, the striving of Path Two — they keep their charm, but lose their weight. You can still play the game, but you stop looking at the scoreboard. You still feel pain, but suffering becomes optional."
https://sanjaysays.co/p/the-third-path
37. Probably one of the most savvy geopolitical guys around, he has made some pretty accurate predictions in the last few years. His take on recent Israeli and Iranian conflict & implications.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAeiNCGRSzk
38. "You already intuitively know all this. Again, because we all use social media these days. As a result, we’ve all developed the ability to discern what people vibe well (and what doesn’t) in this new order. We have the taste, but may not have the ability to actually create the content we want.
By default, marketing professionals create corpospeak. It jumps out particularly in email marketing, or on the about page of a website, or with a lot of conference content. Ironically, the more effort and the more people are involved in something, the worse it is. How do we get rid of corpospeak in our companies? How do we talk to people the way they want to be talked to? And why is this so hard?"
https://andrewchen.substack.com/p/corpospeak-why-you-still-sound-like
X aka Twitter & Geopolitical Takes
X aka Twitter can be a cesspool of hate and anger. I may even contribute to that a little bit. The incredible amount of hate & vitriol I got as a “VC tech bro” commenting on geopolitical stuff was insane back in July. But that’s the game. Bunch of anonymous incels or troll bots urged on by the engagement algorithm that X has become.
Having said that, I’ve gotten so much insight and inspiration from X despite the crazy on the site. You have to mine it and filter well. Folks like @vtchakarova, @SariArhoHavren, @ektrit, @MartinSkold2 & @TheMichaelEvery have been particularly insightful and helpful for developing my mindmap of the future and for understanding the present, geopolitically speaking.
So speaking about geopolitical takes, I found two really good ones recently that I think will withstand the test of time. This is bearing in mind that we are barely past the middle of 2025 and several months into the 2nd Trump Administration where Narrative seems to have overtaken reality. And it’s been chaotic to say the least.
Just Another Pod God has had some incredible economic and geopolitical takes. Been right more often than not. This is one he put out on July 31st. https://x.com/TMTLongShort/status/1950722758674972754:
“People are not ready for the gasoline that is being poured on the American economy over the next 6 - 12 months.
In part this seems to be a function of investors having been conditioned to observe insane levels of fiscal deficits and assume this is just more of the same. It is not.
There is a lot of pent up demand among CEOs who have been mired in red tape and are jonesing to take advantage of a loose regulatory regime. There is a marked difference in productivity between growing GDP via cheap migrants vs growing real-wages and disincentivizing welfare usage.
They are generating a step-up in unmet demand via tariff walls and on-shoring that suddenly needs to be met via domestic production. There are a bunch of export markets that are suddenly accessible for the first time. Will some countries still be protectionist via non-tariff barriers? Sure. Is the admin manically focused on this? Seems that way. Greer reportedly started every meeting with a thick binder of non-tariff barriers to address. Let’s see how well they did their homework.
Regardless you only need a fraction of untapped markets to open. And this is all before you see any productivity gains from AI. Now do I think investors aren’t properly pricing in China trade escalation?
Yes. Absolutely. But does that mean you should be shorting US equities as a way to express this? Probably not. (Not financial advice, just a tech pod guy ruminating)”
I think people are underestimating the boom that could happen post summer. I can tell you from a Silicon Valley perspective I am expecting a massive level of economic activity whether investments or acquisitions on the tech side. Post Reindustrialize Summit I sense the same thing will happen in the so-called Rust Belt of America despite the chaos caused by the Liberation Day tariffs.
Object Zero gives even more tactical advice.
https://x.com/Object_Zero_/status/1950537084332028052:
“This is not financial advice, but… Anyone who really believes in the AI future over a 10-15 year horizon should put their money where their mouth is and make the following macro trade. Bet against human labour…
Short consumer durables, consumer services, short retail, short healthcare and pharma, short media, short housebuilding, short food and bev, All this stuff is going to be slowly strangled by their customer base’s dying purchasing power, and will be replaced by UBI and/or public sector services. Bet on machine labour…
Long industrials, long commodities, long energy, long commercial services, long capital goods, long commercial banks, long big tech, long heavy infrastructure. All this stuff forms a virtuous capital cycle and it’s going to bootstrap itself to unimaginable new heights. In summary short consumers and retail, long industrials and commercials.
This will look really obvious by 2040, but it’s very difficult to see it when you’re standing in the middle of the fog and people are focused on who will win the foundational model arms race, all those theories are priced in but the macro human v machine trade isn’t.”
This completely fits my thesis for the next decade and I have positioned myself and my business for this. We will see if this plays out. Exciting times.
Great Gatsby: An American Story of Aspiration
I absolutely love the Great Gatsby novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It’s a classic American novel that takes place in the 1920s, the Jazz Age. It’s a story about love, ambition and how a man can recreate himself. To incredible ranging heights. The things a man will do to win the love of a woman. In this case, building a massive fortune, building a massive palace, owning all the adult toys one can have like expensive cars, a hydroplane and throwing crazy parties in the hope that his true love eventually shows up.
“Young men don’t just drift coolly out of nowhere and buy a palace on Long Island.”
I also have enjoyed all the movie remakes, especially the Robert Redford version. But I really did like the one in 2013 by Baz Luhrmann starring Leonardo DiCaprio. I am happy to watch it on all my flights. It’s grand and glamorous, especially the big party scenes. New York is evocative, with the grand skyscrapers, of the alcohol soaked speakeasy parties. It’s indicative of the times.
“The tempo of the city approached hysteria. Stocks reached record peaks & Wall Street boomed in steady golden roar. The parties were bigger, the shows were broader and the buildings were higher. The morals were looser and the ban on alcohol backfired, making the liquor cheaper. Wall Street was luring the young and the ambitious.” Doesn’t seem like much has changed here has it?
But the drama and dialogue. And the lessons. It’s a tragedy at the end of the day.
Too much too fast ruins you as it did rich cousin Daisy. She says: “Well, I just think everything’s terrible anyhow. I’ve been everywhere and seen everything and done everything. I’ve had a very bad time. I’m pretty cynical about everything. All the bright precious things fade so fast and they don’t come back.”
But at the same time, I love the optimism, the ambition that Gatsby exemplifies. He was: “The single most hopeful person I have ever met and will ever meet.” You can be whoever you want to be. Only in America. True Rizz also known as charisma for you older folks. Using his magnificent imagination and manifesting it into real life.
I need to be more like this, like when I was younger. More open to the possibilities. It’s so easy to be angry and cynical, considering everything I’ve seen and learned. All the roads I’ve literally traveled and all the terrible people I’ve encountered.
But this is the trap. This is what ages you. You have to reframe everything. You have to also remember all the wonderful people and things you’ve seen. The happy moments and experiences. You have to believe anything is possible, even now. And then put in the work to improve yourself and the situation. Otherwise what’s the point?
So the point: be more like Gatsby. Chase the grand dream. “Anything can happen now that we’ve slid over this bridge, I thought. Anything at all.”
On a Trigger Fuse: The Age of Rage, The Golden Age of Grifters and the Age of Incompetence
I remember my therapist telling me earlier in the year that she felt like I had regressed and she is probably right. Despite the 8 hours of sleep, meditation, working out, Church, fight training, I find myself so angry all the time. I’ve had many intense road rages even during work out, church and training days. I come so close to losing it at times. Thank goodness I am not armed. I see this underlying anger and desperation in many of us around me all around America whether in California, New York, Texas or Michigan.
I’m literally seething. Seething rage is what I felt for most of 2024 and 2025. Everywhere I look I only see corruption or incompetence. Idiocy, laziness and weakness. I am dismayed at the mishandling and lack of support for Ukraine, Israel & burning the bridges with many of our close allies in Asia, Canada and Europe.
Big incompetent bureaucracies run amok whether it’s FTC, FDA, SEC, FBI or the DOJ. Aided by grossly corrupt politicians at all levels of government “trying to get their bag.” We see the breakdown of law and order on many of our city streets, the open import of many millions of unskilled 3rd world immigrants, with a small portion of them criminals or terrorists, while we make it hellishly hard for those talented and skilled to come to America.
I see brainwashed leftist woke students (usually pretty well off Trustafarians too) protesting for our enemies, enemies who would not think twice of extinguishing their lives aka (Gays for Gaza for example where ironically in Gaza homosexuality is banned). Brain worms infect their broken minds. I see insane right wing MAGA openly supporting Russia in their own quest for traditional values, not realizing they are just tools aka “useful idiots.”
We see a broken industrial base in America, a shrinking middle class that is trying to survive, Americans tearing each other down while our enemies circle us. Our enemy is CRINK=China, Russia, Iran & North Korea, I’d throw Venezuela in there too. Clear and present danger around us. Literally barbarians at our gates while most of the populace sinks into apathy, degeneration, denial and even nihilism in some cases.
Will Manidis x-ed this incredible tweet describing the zeitgeist right now in the West, particularly in America: “underrated how severe the vibe shift was from the lockdown era. The spiritual environment of the world has meaningfully changed— violence is closer now, the light inside of everyone is buried deeper, everyone is grifting or scamming. It wasn’t like this four years back.”
On a personal micro level, I continue to struggle in my personal life, still dealing with the issues stemming from the 2020 pandemic lockdowns.
I’m angry at myself and my weakness. I am angry at our government for doing this to us. I am also angry at the injustice I see around me. I am angry at the complacency of the Western populace who just bitch and moan about how their lives suck and how things are getting worse. All while doing nothing about it. Not even working on their own self improvement.
But this is not me. I believe in taking my destiny into my own hands. I have agency and I take action to make things better. Through therapy I’ve learned my rage is the tip of the iceberg, and below the waterline it comes from my fear of losing control, fear of loss, fear of the crazy around me, fear of decline. So I go back to my own tools of the trade coming up in the world. I channel this rage.
I follow the Sith code, I’ve made it my mantra: “Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hatred leads to suffering…..but what the Jedi failed to teach you, what I have learned, is how to persevere, to pass through the suffering, and achieve ultimate power.”
It’s not pretty and I am clearly using “dirty” not clean fuel for motivation but it bloody works.
This is pretty much the only thing motivating me these days to carry on through the pain and suffering. My mission which focuses me. I’ve never been a quitter. And I absolutely plan on doing a lot of good for my family, my community and Western society along this new journey. God help anyone who gets in the way.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Aug 17th, 2025
"Live in the sunshine, swim in the sea, drink in the wild air."--Ralph Waldo Emerson
"From that point on, I knew that no matter what happened — good, bad or otherwise — the sun would rise, tomorrow would happen, and life would go on. There was no use in being bitter about the past. Instead, I was encouraged to use each and every life experience to get better. To improve."
https://chrisneumann.com/archives/will-you-be-the-better-man-or-the-bitter-man
2. Revolution in Military Affairs. Good overview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcDy_oy0RGo
3. Very fun weekly discussion on crypto and digital businesses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDgYwo1EDhI
4. The best show in town on B2B Software investing. Lots of great topical & opinionated discussion from top investors in the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AguI4JLQSA
5. Coatue's Laffont Brothers on BG2 discussing all things tech macro trends. Helpful to understand where big tech and the venture world is going.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JA7n0wTChw
6. "Explanations as to why markets struggle with geopolitics are varied but I think it is partly the fact that geopolitics is a multidisciplinary subject, often involving foreign affairs, but understanding domestic factors influencing decision making in a range of countries, defence and security, even environmental issues, geography, economics, trade, markets, and now cyber and AI looking forward.
There are many moving parts and few people have all the tools to accurately call events. I think also in markets, and analysis, there is often a desire to see the glass half full, hope for the best, and not want to think about the uncomfortable and difficult to fathom results of out of the box or black swan events. A bias to mean reversion when actually politics globally appear to be going the other way, with more extremism, and likely more extreme, even systemic risks looming. All that coming as multilateral institutions created mostly to solve globally systemic problems, are weakening - the IMF, the G20, G7 (this week the divisions laid bare in Canada), and the UN.
Often I also think there is a bias to think that we all share the same information set, have the same objectives and apply the same kind of logic."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/geopolitics-when-opportunity-knocks
7. "The increasing number of foreign faces is the product of a powerful resonance between pop culture and tourism. The government knows this, too. It helps explain why the LDP, after many attempts to restrict anime and manga over the years, is now embracing content as a pillar of of the economy for the 2030s.
You don’t have to be a genius of strategic planning to see to that tourism is locked in orbit with pop culture, making the pair a money-making dynamo for the country. The equation is simple: so long as Japanese content continues to grow in popularity, so will interest in Japan as a destination. It’s easy to understand why the government is invested in stoking the trends, even as citizens grow increasingly ambivalent about the increase in inbounds. Given the nation’s demographics, lawmakers do not have many other options.
Regardless of how one personally feels about it, the tourism boom is also an interesting experiment. It gives concrete form to the ethereal concept of soft power. It lets us explore questions: How far can cultural charisma really take a nation? Can a country sustain its image as a leader in youth culture even as its population grows old?
And more to the point, can Japan keep packing in visitors in without sacrificing its cultural sites and angering its citizens? The answer to all of these questions is, nobody knows. And so an ageing Japan, long written off as irrelevant, finds itself at the cutting edge once again. All we can do is watch and see what happens. If there’s any consolation, there’s plenty of people around to watch with."
https://blog.pureinventionbook.com/p/hell-is-other-people
8. "I completely agree with Nic. Bitcoin is going to win, but US dollars in stablecoin form are going to aggressively win as well. This means the weakest fiat currencies are going to fall at the feet of bitcoin and dollars.
It is crazy to watch this play out. Technologists built better payment rails for all currencies, so now the legacy players are having to bend the knee to adopt dollar stablecoins. Don’t expect this trend to slow down any time soon."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/stablecoins-are-eating-the-world-97e
9. "A portfolio career is what happens when your work life stops being defined by a single job title, or even industry, and instead becomes a collection of overlapping roles, skills, and income streams."
https://shindy.substack.com/p/portfolio-career
10. "Nor is China likely to rush clumsily into war the way Putin did. In the 20th century, China did get involved in some reckless, stupid wars — in Korea in 1950 and Vietnam in 1979, neither of which it won. But since then, China has shown extreme caution. Its leaders definitely seem determined to build up overwhelming power before taking Taiwan or other territories in Asia. If the U.S. has to fight China, it will be at a time and place of their choosing, not ours — and they will likely have most of their people unified behind the effort.
This doesn’t mean the democracies would have no advantage against China. The structural problems of autocracies — poor information flow, over-centralization of power, paranoid infighting — all seem present, as Xi Jinping completes his transformation of Deng Xiaoping’s bureaucratic, technocratic system into something closer to a traditional dictatorship.
Xi has already made a ton of mistakes, many of them related to micromanagement — Zero Covid, Belt and Road, the crackdown on IT in 2021, the real estate bust, “wolf warrior” diplomacy, and so on. It’s likely he would micromanage a war as well. Meanwhile, Xi has been purging his top military officers, many of whom he himself appointed, at a stupendous rate, for reasons unknown.
So if China does fight America, it will have some of the same sorts of disadvantages that Russia has with Putin. But it’s far from clear whether these would be enough to overcome China’s massive manufacturing advantage. Democracy is a lot tougher than people give it credit for, but it’s not magic."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/western-democracies-are-actually
11. "Crypto specifically requires liquidity. Money gets printed, people throw a chunk in since it is their “lotto ticket”. Right now money supply is stagnant but will increase as the Fed loosens and something will need to fund the war + Big Beautiful Bill ($5,000,000,000,000). Stick with buying BTC/ETH since they are the only two assets with institutional flows.
For those looking at their Careers, pivot fast to anything revenue generating/front office. At this point even door to door sales is closer to safety than going into something like entry level Law. To improve ROI/margins for a business, the easiest item to cut is non-revenue generating seats. Just the reality of 2025 and beyond.
Shouldn’t be a new concept to most but this is a fire burning in the house type scenario. AI proof your future because it’s coming and will be much quicker than most anticipate (few short years)"
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/fed-getting-around-the-genius-act
12. "But—and this is crucial—we shouldn't expect the distribution shift to have happened yet. If history is our guide, we're right on schedule. The AI technology shift started gaining mainstream adoption in late 2022 with ChatGPT. If it follows the mobile timeline, we wouldn't expect to see the distribution shift until about 2026 or 2027.
Except I think it's going to happen faster this time. The platforms have learned from history. They know the playbook. And the early signals suggest they're already moving.
The question isn't whether a new distribution channel will emerge. It's who will control it, how open it will be, and whether you'll be ready when it arrives."
https://blog.brianbalfour.com/p/the-next-great-distribution-shift
13. Educational and inspiring interview/discussion. "We all need moonshots"-Tony Robbins.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvHcuyYc718
14. Topical discussion on what's up in Silicon Valley. AI job destruction, AI talent wars & how this changes building and investing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s8UNyDv3Co
15. Lots of global macro insights here. Gave me a good perspective on the potential impact of AI on the US economy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS4Q0iAWmKM
16. "My recommendation for entrepreneurs when talking to potential investors is to ask how they like to work with the entrepreneurs they invest in. Entrepreneurs would do well to have a go-to person they look forward to talking with, who has relevant experience and, crucially, is super responsive."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/06/21/investor-responsiveness-as-1-value/
17. Overall, this was a great episode. Very little politics and just investing and tech industry POV that we all used to watch this show for.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86t6YNf_B7Q&t=3447s
18. "End CENTCOM’s grip on the American foreign policy and give INDOPACOM the money, resources, and priority it actually needs to deter the PLA and keep Americans safe. Regardless of what happens next with Iran, every military history of a US-China conflict will open with how much time and energy we wasted on a middling regime in the Middle East and how much blood and treasure it cost us in the Pacific."
https://www.breakingbeijing.com/p/give-indopacom-its-money
19. "As AI continues to flood our world with increasingly sophisticated but ultimately soulless outreach, the companies willing to double down on creating genuine human connections have a chance to stand out even more.
The technology isn't the problem. It's how we're using it. Instead of automating the human out of human connection, we should be using these tools to do better research, personalize more thoughtfully, and be more useful to the people we’re trying to sell to.
Your prospects don't want to feel like they're talking to a workflow. They want to feel understood, helped, and respected.
So here's my challenge: Pick one prospect interaction this week and approach it like your only goal is creating a great first impression. Turn down the conversion pressure. Just focus on being genuinely useful to this human being. Get curious. Ask some questions to honestly figure out if you can help, tell them clearly how, and share a little about the other options for solving their problem that might be worth looking at.
Do the work ahead of time this requires, and take a minute before you start talking to set a simple intention:
“I’m here to help this person.”
See what happens."
https://hellooperator.substack.com/p/building-trust-in-the-age-of-ai-slop
20. "These are the base effects witnessed in countries that move from cash-only to the next level of development. Once a country's day-to-day commerce runs more smoothly thanks to the availability of cheap, reliable, and convenient payment options, other industries start to catch up.
It's a flywheel effect that should unfold for years to come. After all, Iraq's predominately young population has a lot of catching up to do, and almost all economic activity will require payments, financing, or other forms of financial services.
Needless to say, Iraq won't become a developed nation overnight and will continue to face challenges. While oil exports to the US are exempt from reciprocal tariffs, the lower oil price weighs on the country's income. However, Iraq plans to significantly increase its production.
I have a strong feeling that we'll be hearing a lot more about investing in Iraq throughout the rest of the 2020s.
I had planned travel there this year and report from the ground, but it wasn't concerns about safety that stopped me. Iraq remains on the US ESTA blacklist. I could visit Iraq but would have to forfeit my ESTA visa, which is too much hassle.
However, work is underway to resolve this issue. Tourism is already picking up, mostly with domestic visitors, but international interest is growing. As the Financial Times noted in a March 2023 travel feature: "On the 20th anniversary of the US-led invasion, tour operators are returning to the country and – despite official warnings – their trips are selling out."
If the visa issue became easier, Iraq could see many more visitors, boosting its profile as an exciting place to visit or even invest in.
To help folks like myself, the Iraqi tourism authorities have recently engaged with the US government about the visa problem."
https://www.undervalued-shares.com/weekly-dispatches/investing-in-iraq-yet-more-gains-to-come/
21. "Why is inference time compute so interesting? Because as we build AI agents, and these agents have an array of different inputs, each input may require a different inference time compute algorithm to get the best output.
Inference time compute also allows you to trade time for cost to generate the same performance. As this post shows, a small language model with more inference time compute power behind it can match or beat a much much larger LLM in terms of performance."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/the-next-phase-of-ai-innovation-inference
22. Important interview: can America still build things? It's a conversation both critical and hopeful at the same time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD-RJNQvpVY
23. The path to financial repression, lots of global macro but this is a good conversation on what you can do yourself to get through it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXWr7Pw-eBQ
24. Lessons from America's Defense Innovation Unit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sa6CyXNg-Ag
25. The controversial but interesting Peter Zeihan. Some good geopolitical perspectives to help position for the future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ktF9iU_cvQ
26. The company helping to drive the nuclear renaissance in America. Energy is life. Energy is civilization. It's all about electrons. This is worth watching.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP2zcESIpOo
27. "If you are young, starting out and wondering what to do, I would urge you to get involved with the Bitcoin movement. There are so many different ways to do so, depending on where your talents, skills or interests lie. You can be artist, scientist or journalist, engineer, entrepreneur, traveller or surfer-dude. It really doesn’t matter. You’ll find a path that suits you. It all feels so dynamic and full of opportunity. It’s brim full of doers. Everyone is so supportive. There is plenty of capital to invest. You can make quick progress.
Another thing to note: there are a lot of extremely clever people in this movement. Average IQ levels in Bitcoin are, I’ve little doubt, much higher than you typically find elsewhere."
https://www.theflyingfrisby.com/p/portable-wealth-in-a-wobbly-world
28. "The solution is clear: divest unnecessary real estate and redeploy capital into opportunities that deliver higher returns for shareholders. Whether reinvesting in core businesses with higher operating yield than property leasing, repurchasing shares, reducing debt, or distributing cash to shareholders, any alternative is more productive than leaving capital tied up in low-yielding properties.
Companies can easily sell these real estate assets, as demand from global investment funds eager to acquire properties held by Japanese firms continues to grow. Bloomberg reported that Bain Capital has acquired more than $5 billion in Japanese real estate and is currently negotiating multiple additional transactions, explicitly targeting undervalued, non-core corporate properties.
Similarly, BentallGreenOak (BGO) plans to deploy approximately $11 billion in equity investments into Japanese real estate over the next two and a half years, focusing specifically on corporate-owned properties pressured onto the market by shareholder activism and governance reforms. These well-funded buyers indicate a clear opportunity and viability for divesting non-core real estate assets for corporate Japan.
Crucially, rental real estate represents just one category of non-core assets. The same rationale extends to idle factories, peripheral commercial spaces, and oversized or unnecessarily expensive headquarters."
https://mailchi.mp/verdadcap/the-real-estate-drag-on-corporate-japan
29. "For Takahashi (no first name given), a 31-year-old Gundam enthusiast, living alone gave him the freedom to build his perfect space. In a quiet Saitama neighborhood, he transformed a 65-square-meter apartment into a Gundam lover’s paradise. Carefully arranged shelves, matching color schemes, and row upon row of Gunpla greet visitors at the door. This was the childhood dream he turned into reality. His YouTube channel, Takahashi Laboratory (or Taka-Labo), now reaches over 165,000 subscribers.
The release of Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX in spring 2025, along with its Amazon streaming success and theatrical version, has reignited Gundam’s popularity. For Takahashi, the appeal never faded. “There’s always something new,” he says. “Gundam never stops. That makes us fans really lucky.” More than just a hobby, it has been a constant in his life for over twenty years."
https://www.tokyoscope.blog/p/gundam-is-his-whole-life-how-one
30. "In fact, there’s even an outside chance that the war could end up lowering oil prices in the long run. If the Iranian regime is toppled and replaced with a more neutral one, or if Iran agrees to stop pursuing nuclear weapons, it could lead to the end of sanctions on its oil industry. Iran would then increase oil production, both because it would be getting a better price on its oil, and because it could get international investment to develop more fields. This would cause a glut on the world market, leading to falling prices and giving a boost to industrialized economies.
So to sum up, I just don’t think the economic consequences of Trump’s attack on Iran are worth worrying about very much, especially if you live in the United States. I know a lot of people are a bit freaked out right now, but economic devastation is one less thing you should be worried about."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-economic-consequences-of-a-war
31. This guy is smart. Important conversation on AI Drone wars and the future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sc75ItaNsso
32. "Defense tech is hot right now. And we think the hype is warranted.
We believe that the growing Department of Defense budget ($863B in FY24) can support multiple venture-scale outcomes; that key modernization initiatives have laid the foundation for tech transformation; and that the growing number and influence of innovation units inside the DoD, along with startup-friendly policy precedents, will propel startups to fill the vacuum of modern technology in the DoD.
More recently, the DoD has shown strong initiative to drive efficiency through technology which will require the Department to work hand-in-hand with Silicon Valley. In fact, the DoD has proactively called out areas it is looking to prioritize—which therefore maps closely to our key investment themes—including in modern infrastructure, operationalizing data and AI and autonomous systems."
https://www.battery.com/blog/investing-in-strength-the-case-for-modern-defense-tech/
33. A truly inspiring and educational interview. I totally get why this guy was able to raise $1B usd to build Saronic in less than 3 years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJsbSC20Gv0
34. "When investing in companies it is always smarter to be more optimistic and long vs. short. (many learned this in the past 48 hours - either they print money or the world ends due to nuclear, easy to see which one you should choose)
Shorts really only work if the *industry* is dying due to structural forever shift in the way business is done. Internet killing off large section of music industry, Computers eating into typewriters and fax machines, smartphones eating into other hardware from watches to cameras/video etc.
If you want to short, don’t short a genius.
You can short stuff in forever long-term decline, examples in our opinion include:
Mid level retail/restaurants
Traditional banking companies
Chunk of legacy energy (being displaced by solar/other)
Choose one of those instead. Or. Just go long the new product (hence why we own Tesla, Crypto and build E-com businesses… seems to line up!)
Ever wonder *why* your net worth will go up in a non-linear fashion. Well you have your answer here, just in massive massive scale. In order to step function your life you have to build something up for at least 12 months or so. Majority is about 3 years. You see limited results but if you’re doing things right you’re creating momentum (rolling a ball up a hill). Eventually you get to the top and no longer need to keep pressing hard to move it over. This is the same for all public companies, people and even small businesses."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/never-bet-against-geniuses-new-industry
Wisdom from Kung Fu Panda 4
I always learn from everything. The animated Kung Fu Panda movie series is damn funny and surprisingly wise at times. “Sometimes the greatest dishes come from the unlikeliest ingredients.” Wisdom and heroes come from places you least expect.
In the recent movie he takes on a new apprentice who comes from the streets. He learns the hard way about the rules of the street which seem to be quite apt for our new more ruthless and competitive world. One we all live in now.
“First rule of the Streets: Trust no one
2nd rule of the Streets: Someone always gets hurt
3rd rule of the Streets: No one’s interested in your feelings”
Some food for thought.
Sidonie in Japan: Traveling to a Far Off Land
The rather strange French movie is about an older and lovely best selling book author, Sidonie who goes to Japan on the invitation of her Japanese publisher Kenzo. Both of them share tragic histories of loss and feel that people like them “share a secret land.” The scenes of Japanese landscapes are gorgeous.
She is living in the past and cannot move on. She literally sees ghosts of her husband, which understandably makes her a little bit crazy. But she slowly lets go and accepts things as she tours the island nation. The land of ghosts. She learns to move on with her life. “But there is a time to let the dead leave and die, if we want to live again. I am me again, like finding a long lost old friend.” She starts to heal and write again after a long hiatus after her husband's death.
“I don’t know what’s happening to me. Maybe it’s because I haven’t been as far for a long time. And because I recognize everything here. The lifts, the lights, the roads. And yet, nothing works the way it does in Europe. Everything is strange, even the consistency of the food is different. I feel modified. All this newness is overwhelming me……these are tears of joy, not sadness.”
It was nice to see her slowly come alive from barely awake sad existence as the movie progressed.
I think this is what traveling to new places does for you. You get disoriented and uncomfortable. But ultimately this newness is invigorating and you start to enjoy it. Even hunger for it.
Maybe for someone so set in my ways, travel is the only way to jog me out of my comfort and routines. So I can get new ideas and gain new perspectives. Travel literally wakes you up. When you are feeling down or uninspired, it’s probably a good time to hit the road again.
Agnelli: THE Italian Industrialist
I’ve been exploring Europe and America’s industrial roots and history as we reindustrialize in America. We all know about Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford. But the guy who stands out to me was the Agnelli family of FIAT fame. Fortunately there is a documentary on him that just came out.
About the man and grandson of the founder, Gianni Agnelli who rebuilt Fiat after World War 2. War veteran, playboy renowned around the world, dating and sleeping with the most beautiful and glamorous women, partying while high on drugs in his “long white nights.” He was the unofficial prince of Italy.
He was also renowned for his amazing cars and insane driving. He jumped out of a helicopter into the sea every week. He sailed and skied. He was the owner of Juventus football team of Turin. Vital, energetic, charming, handsome and fun. A guy who exemplified La Dolce Vita aka the Good Life. Maybe too much of the good life as he was a pretty awful & distant parent that directly led to his son’s suicide. Very sad circumstances. Something we can learn from too.
Yet while a terrible father, a flawed but talented man, he saved & modernized Fiat. He bought Ferrari, helped keep Italy into the West and ended the Communist threat in the country. He was brave and walked the streets of Turin during the years of Lead to show he was staying and confident of the future. “Who says life is not dangerous?”
What I appreciated about him was his taste. “The Agnelli’s were paragons of style. Vanity, he invented it. He was the most stylish man in Italy.” That says something. “Ease, grace and not trying to hard.” Sprezzatura: the art of being nonchalant yet looking good.
He had amazing taste in architecture, art, fashion, food, his car collection and this was reflected in the beautiful cars he made.
“He was Aristotlerian: for him the good and the beautiful overlapped.” He did everything with intelligence and style.
It’s so inspiring. Gianni seemed to be one of the few who knew how to have fun despite his wealth and responsibility. He lived with zest. “He had an enormous appetite for life. As soon as he got an idea, he’d do it. Go go go go!”