366 Days
I recently watched a Japanese drama and in typical Japanese drama it was complicated and a bit confusing at first but then ultimately heart wrenching.
‘Minato, a high school boy, meets Miu, a junior at the same high school. They click over music and start dating.’ But as always, life takes several turns. Health truly is wealth.
It was a movie about first loves. A movie of following your dreams:
“Remember what you said when you joined us. You were saved by music. You wanted to produce music so you could save people. Don’t you think she is still waiting for your music?”
It’s a movie about friendship and loyalty. A movie about fatherhood. A movie of sickness, sadness and pain: “When mom died, nothing mattered to me anymore. I didn’t want to think about school or the future. I couldn’t enjoy anything. Food had no taste.”
Ultimately it is a movie of sacrifice. When Minato discovers he has leukemia, despite all of their joy together, he dumps Miu to spare her pain. “If I stayed with her, i’d get in the way of her dreams. I couldn’t let myself do that…..Because she meant so much to me, I want her to be happy.” A very Japanese thing to do. How sad because of what their life could have been.
It is to me, mainly a movie of closure and saying goodbye.
“It’s hectic but I live without regrets. Meeting you brought me so much. The scent of flowers. Our happiness was beyond belief. The pain of losing your love. I see it all as treasure you gave me. You gave me sunshine. I’m so happy that I met you. I hope the choices you made bring you happiness forever. Thank you.”
Leaving a first deep love is lasting and it stays with you forever. Remember it with fondness as many people never experience it. “Don’t forget what you loved.”
Global Investing: The World’s Most Interesting Men
I was thinking about one of my life heroes, Jim Rogers, cofounder of the legendary Quantum Fund with George Soros. Author of “Investment Biker”, “Adventure Capitalist” & “Hot Commodities”. Probably one of the most accomplished and well travelled men around who has probably visited more countries than most people.
I realize how much of an influence he has had in my life and how I’ve subconsciously followed his path albeit in a different asset class and path. So much so that considering all the random countries I’ve ended up going to around the world, some people think I work for the CIA. I don’t work for the CIA btw.
I did not fully realize the depth of Jim Rogers influence until my friend Mike Butcher recently asked me “why I spent so much time traveling and investing around the world when I could just stay in Silicon Valley?”
It was a good question and he is right to ask. I probably would have done so much better just hanging out full time and investing in the deep networks and deal flow that happen there. But frankly I’d be just like all the other venture capitalists there. And I’d probably be bored. Or worse, boring, which is how I feel about most of the investors I met there.
The folks I tend to have affinity with are global VC investors like Sheel Mohnot of BTV, Paul Bragiel of Bragiel Brothers VC & Zach Coelius of Coelius Capital. Some of the few US VCs who also invest and travel internationally. Ironically, I meet these guys overseas in other countries more than in San Francisco.
They are all incredibly accomplished and live interesting lives with lots of fun side quests. Paul and his adventure to compete in the Olympics & now involvement with the Polish baseball league. Zach and his goal of visiting every country listed by the UN, his backcountry ski trips & his own Olympic Games ambitions. Sheel and his random visits to festivals and places around the world. He also has one of the best X accounts around. All of these guys are true global adventurers with lots of fun experiences and stories.
It’s probably also why I am also friends with global private investors like Swen Lorenz & Cody Shirk and their communities. All global minded investors where some of the most interesting conversations happen.
I’m trying to keep up with regular international travels myself. I do adventures like shooting & wilderness survivalist training. I am also glad I have taken various random classes like Russian & Japanese languages, bartending, sailing, beekeeping, cinematic sword fighting, archery, fencing and lots of martial arts.
I have plans to do pilgrimage hikes in Japan like the Shikoku Henro and Kumano Kodo as well and the Way: the traditional Catholic El Camino de Santiago.
Even as the world deglobalizes or balkanizes, I will still travel until the borders close. It’s the easiest way to stay excited about life and the possibilities of life. You will always meet new people, learn new things, have new adventures and get new stories. In other words, it’s a great way to stay interested and interesting.
The Rebound: Travel Can Change Your Life
I haven’t watched the entire old 2009 movie “The Rebound” but the last 9 minutes of the movie are spectacular. I’ve watched this countless times. It’s here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvHeM_e5bbY&list=RDSvHeM_e5bbY&start_radio=1.
Basically the movie is about a 40-something single mother Sandy who moves to New York and encounters a young listless 25 year man Aram (read boy) also recovering from a marital misadventure. Their friendship turns into a romance but it ends due to the age difference and social pressure.
But this break up leads to Aram waking up and he ends up traveling the world as you see in the video. It’s his first time traveling, he has always wanted to go to Cleveland which shows how parochial he was. He visits Paris, Istanbul, India and Bangladesh and Sub Saharan Africa. And it’s captivating as he walks around beautiful places with a sense of wonder. He grows up. At last. Travel makes you confront reality and expands your horizons. When he runs into Sandy 5 years later this is very clear and they rekindle their romance. As Aram said: “Its just timing”
It seems like so few young kids travel the world outside of Instagram-set and their travel tends to be sterile. No hard core backpacking, no hard nature, no off the beaten track. No real adventure. It’s tragic and absolutely shows how clueless and lost so many kids seem to be these days.
Yet my point is that if you are feeling lost in life, dealing with tragedy or loss, traveling can be a balm. Getting away from your normal environment and habits can be really good for you.You get smarter and you are better able to deal with the pain. It worked for me many times. Travel can be a nice short term escape. And if not done too excessively, like in my case, it will help you heal. To come back stronger. Come back stronger to truly live life.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Feb 1st, 2026
"The beginning is always today." – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.
"What makes Delian distinct is the path that led to it. Before Ukraine, before defense drew the attention it has today, Kottas left Apple’s Special Projects Group and moved back to Athens — applying many of the learnings from Silicon Valley’s culture of rapid iteration, integration, and product discipline to a four-year-old defense startup now deploying systems across Europe." https://louiseboucher.substack.com/p/from-apple-to-deterrence-the-rise
2. Zeihan has some strong views on China and geopolitics in general, still worth thinking on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiT0bF3brHw&t=909s
3. "For entrepreneurs, my recommendation is to regularly ask yourself where you are on the comfort scale and when you last got truly uncomfortable in a healthy way. It is easy to coast once things are working and push only a little, but it is worth questioning whether you are pushing hard enough and whether there is an opportunity to get uncomfortable in a smart, productive way."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/12/06/uncomfortable-as-an-entrepreneur/
4. SaaS is like Japan, it’s a great market but the population is shrinking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_P-Zf8mDsk&t=280s
5. "Whether out of preemptive preparedness or simple paranoia, China’s stockpiling of energy, food, and metal supplies is at a breadth and scale that should ring global alarm bells. As a recent study from Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy points out, “energy production and storage trends are an important signal that a country may be preparing to engage in warfare,” and “such data often hide in plain sight.”
https://newsletter.doomberg.com/p/war-rations
6. "There's this default expectation in business that once you hit a certain revenue number, the next step is obvious. You scale. You hire. You build systems. You go from $1 million to $5 million to $10 million and more!
But there’s a lot more nuance to scaling outside of your revenue going up. Everything else gets bigger too. Your team size. Your business overhead. Your stress levels. The quantity of meetings. The new problems you have to solve and the constant fires you fight suddenly have nothing to do with the work you wanted to do in the first place.
You go from being someone who does the work to someone who manages people who do the work. And if you're anything like me, you didn't start your business to spend your days in Slack and on Zoom calls about HR issues."
https://www.justinwelsh.me/newsletter/anti-scale
7. "Marcus Aurelius never considered himself a hero. He saw himself simply as a man striving to do right in a difficult world. It is precisely that humility and discipline that make him a powerful model for the modern gentleman.
His life shows that being a gentleman is not about wealth or privilege, it is about self-mastery and virtue. Even in hardship, Marcus remained steady and principled.
If a man who commanded an empire could be good, patient, just, and kind, then surely we can do the same. We must not merely admire Marcus Aurelius, we must do our best to imitate him. In doing so, we follow the path of the true gentleman, defined not by our circumstances, but by our character."
https://thewaysofagentleman.substack.com/p/lessons-we-can-learn-from-marcus
8. "If Europe manages to unify more and to build up its military power, it will increase the number of great powers in the world by one. A planet with a strong Europe, America, China, Russia, and India is a better planet than one where only the last four of those are strong. If Europe shows it can act with unity and purpose, and that it has military power to be reckoned with, America and China — both countries whose leaders tend to respect raw power — may lose their disdain for the region, and return to a more diplomatic, conciliatory posture.
Ultimately, European weakness and division are the reasons the region is getting bullied by so many other powers. Reversing that weakness and division would make the bullies go away. But Europe’s people, and especially Europe’s elites, have to want it."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/europe-is-under-siege
9. This show helps me keep up with the zeitgeist of Silicon Valley. Strongly recommend this week's episode as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11AF3xb27os&t=346s
10. "This doesn’t mean people won’t keep using frontier models. It just means they will use more different types of models as AI continues to mature. When I talk to VCs they still seem mostly hung up on the “open AI will do everything and we will all use one giant model” thesis. And it’s a highly uninformed AI thesis. It violates pretty much every experience I’ve had as a technologist and business person. But the evidence they offer is “but most companies are building on just one model.”
Yeah, that’s like saying most startups only use one server with no load balancing - it isn’t a thesis on AI architecture it’s a description of what early stage looks like. It’s an AI maturity thing. 100% of the companies I know who have had an AI product in market using real intelligence in the product for any decent amount of time have moved beyond single model usage. And I know there is at least one publicly traded company that has built NeuroMetric internally to manage their own systems of models for various tasks, way before we even thought of the idea.
Systems of smaller more efficient models help ease the power and data center crisis. They make AI respond faster. They help protect corporate IP. This will have to happen for the ecosystem to advance. The next opportunities, if you are an investor, are thinking about what systems of models look like over the next 5 years. That’s where the innovation is, and that’s where the money will come from."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/the-biggest-ai-idea-that-most-people
11. "Indeed the obvious risk is that if Japan does not agree to Trump’s tariff agenda, the US president will demand that Japan pays more for its defence.
About 53,000 US troops are still stationed in the country.
On this point, it is the case that this writer has always viewed the relationship between the US and Japan post-1945 as that of older brother and younger brother.
And older brothers tend to like to bully younger brothers."
https://research.grizzle.com/p/whats-going-on-in-japan
12. "One of the dinner guests, a veteran of multiple Silicon Valley cycles, reframed the conversation entirely. She argued for thinking of this moment as a wildfire rather than a bubble. The metaphor landed immediately. Wildfires don’t just destroy; they’re essential to ecosystem health. They clear the dense underbrush that chokes out new growth, return nutrients to the soil, and create the conditions for the next generation of forest to thrive.
As I reflected on the wildfire metaphor, a framework emerged that revealed something deeper, built on her reframing. It offered a taxonomy for understanding who survives, who burns, and why, with specific metrics that separate the fire-resistant from the flammable.
The first web cycle burned through dot-com exuberance and left behind Google, Amazon, eBay, and PayPal: the hardy survivors of Web 1.0. The next cycle, driven by social and mobile, burned again in 2008–2009, clearing the underbrush for Facebook, Airbnb, Uber, and the offspring of Y Combinator. Both fires followed the same pattern: excessive growth, sudden correction, then renaissance.
Now, with AI, we are once again surrounded by dry brush.
The coming correction will manifest as a wildfire rather than a bubble burst. Understanding that distinction changes everything about how to survive and thrive in what comes next."
https://ceodinner.substack.com/p/the-ai-wildfire-is-coming-its-going
13. "All industries have somewhere that’s the “center of the action” and then everywhere else: New York for finance, Texas for energy, Vancouver for junior mining promoters, and obviously the Bay Area for anything to do with software and startups. But there have also always been local ecosystems and scenes, which are interesting little kingdoms in their own right, and must compete as viable career options for talented builders deciding where to preferentially attach themselves.
I think one of the most under-discussed second-order consequences of AI is that AI has changed the relationship between local tech scenes and SF. Today I want to share a few of my observations as to why:
A decade ago (relative to other times in tech history), the opportunity cost of being outside Silicon Valley was at a local low: local tech scenes were comparatively attractive.
The primary purpose of local tech scenes in that time was facilitating preferential attachment between local A-player talent and local A-tier startups.
AI has changed things in two important ways:
The opportunity cost of being anywhere other than SF is back to all-time highs.
It’s now much easier for an A-player who wants to stay local to simply start a one-person business and grow it themselves.
As a result, we should expect local tech scenes to produce promising startups and select for promising talent in a very different way than they used to."
https://www.a16z.news/p/local-tech-scenes-have-changed
14. "But what’s ailing Vegas might be harder to quantify than any material factor—closer to spiritual rot than pure economic tumult. Multiple generations of Americans have been socialized to believe that a mecca of cheap, dirty pleasures awaits in the wastelands of southern Nevada. And for a long time, that was basically true. The mythology of Las Vegas is all-day buffet counters as big as football fields, of David Copperfield tickets that cost the same as a cup of coffee, of indoor cigarettes and comped drinks and the irresponsible ideas those forces can summon in tandem.
Las Vegas took your money with gracious respect for your degeneracy, gouging you sweetly and slowly. The magnitude of excess saturated time itself. Somehow, no matter how much you lost at the casino—and you will lose at the casino—it always felt as if you got your money’s worth.
These days, though, that dream is in tatters. Millions of people seem to have determined that Las Vegas has become corroded—its joys less accessible, its humiliations too dire."
https://slate.com/business/2025/11/las-vegas-travel-sphere-hotel-donald-trump.html
15. "So where does that leave the industry when it comes to feasible, sustainable models in the world we now live in?
Those able to raise mega funds should clearly keep doing so. It may not be the traditional notion of venture but it pays off.
Those who are able to raise enough money to have a diversified portfolio and real ownership and do all of the work the fund requires without needing more than $1-$1.5 million in annual fees (per fund) should do so. That can be lucrative and the job, at its core, is still about building individual great technology companies.
Those who can get equity in sought after startups without having to write a check should do so.7 It’s a better model.
But if you can’t run a fund on a shoestring and you can’t raise billions of institutional capital and if you can’t get equity in return for your expertise? Then it’s unclear to me whether the current venture model still makes sense."
https://bradleytusk.substack.com/p/does-the-current-venture-model-still
16. This show is not just fun but it's incredibly educational. Topics are random and that is what makes this fun. Business, biohacking and lots of random Xmas gifts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxBgplN5eHg&t=3111s
17. Be curious, take risks, be an owner and be an industrialist. Do your homework. Learning from one of the pioneers of Private equity. Great conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVVcyEEess0&t=180s
18. "You have the freedom to choose where you want to live and how you want to structure your life.
It means that you do not belong to any single country’s rules and regulations by moving to places that offer greater flexibility and opportunities for personal and financial freedom.
Ungovernable doesn’t mean anti-government or rebellious for the sake of rebellion. It means:
You’re not overly dependent on one system/country
You’re not exposed to a single point of failure
Your life isn’t geographically or politically locked.
Every business builds infrastructure - backups, servers, failover systems.
But people rarely do.
Ungovernability is personal global mobility infrastructure."
https://freedomceo.substack.com/p/plan-b-the-modern-life-strategy
19. "We’re seeing more tools like Signa, Harmonic, Landscape, Tracxn, and others (including internal systems many VCs have built) use public data to surface newly minted founders and potential investment opportunities. These will only get better.
In other words, there’s no edge in sourcing and picking in the near future. All that matters is winning."
https://www.ryanhoover.me/post/all-that-matters-is-winning
20. "By choosing The Pursuit of Happiness, Jefferson prioritized future potential over past accumulation. He chose the worker over the rentier. He chose the builder over the squatter.
For much of the last 40 years, the United States has drifted into a nightmare. We have built an economy optimized for Property, not Pursuit. We tax wages (pursuit) heavily, while subsidizing debt and capital gains (property). We protect incumbents with regulatory moats while starving new entrants. We have let the “Property” of the Baby Boomers cannibalize the “Pursuit” of the Millennials and Gen Z.
We have valued the preservation of asset prices above the creation of national wealth."
https://www.yesigiveafig.com/p/part-3-the-pursuit-of-happiness?r=50i4x
21. America's next crisis. George Friedman has been pretty accurate in his predictions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za8J12S4Kjw
22. "But the people who actually build things know: the mess is the point. The wrong turns teach you the terrain. The failed attempts reveal what the tutorials skip.
Every framework gets you to a local maximum. Someone else’s local maximum. The global maximum requires going off-road, getting lost, getting your hands dirty with problems no one’s mapped yet.
In a world where AI handles the predictable, agency plus curiosity is all that’s left. The willingness to tinker without a guide. To build without permission. To get dirty without knowing if it’ll work."
https://writing.nikunjk.com/p/get-your-hands-dirty
23. "Whether at a university, a company, or some new-fangled way of collectivizing and organizing human potential, to be futuristic is to see an expanse rather than a narrow path; to value exploration over rote answers; and to embrace curiosity over compliance."
https://nearfuturelaboratory.com/newsletters/2025/w50-y25/
24. "Let's be clear, I'm certainly not claiming that Sicily is about to undergo a boom. I am simply observing that real estate is very affordable, that you can squeeze some decent rental yields and enjoy a superb lifestyle.
Restaurants, food, etc are of amazing quality and among the most affordable in Europe and in the world.
Catania and Palermo international airports have hundreds of daily flights to everywhere in Europe and as far as NYC.
Sicily could be used as a main base in Europe seeing how accessible, affordable, and well-connected its airports are.
Combine this with special tax regimes for retirees and freelancers, and it's no wonder people are increasingly making Southern Italy their home."
https://mailchi.mp/fe55acbc45c6/southern-europe-is-the-new-eastern-europe
25. "Meanwhile, over the same period, the US did absolutely nothing to de-Sinify its own supply chain. While China hit the gym, the US partied. And partied hard: US budget deficits expanded, but pretty much just funded expansions in social benefits—social security, Medicare and Medicaid. Between 2018 and 2025, US government debt increased from US$21trn to US$38.4trn. However, none of the US$17trn or so increase in debt went into building new Hoover dams, new Tennessee Valley Authorities, new interstate highways or new railroads.
As a result, to stay with the fisticuffs analogy, seven years into the trade/tech war it increasingly looks like China played “rope-a-dope.” Like Muhammad Ali in the Rumble in the Jungle, China took the punches from her much bigger, much stronger opponent. This gave China’s opponent a false sense of security. A false sense of security which was reinforced by the very impressive relative performance of US equities against China (and everyone else) and by the strength of the US dollar."
https://research.gavekal.com/article/us-exceptionalism-versus-chinese-uninvestibility-part-i/
26. A must watch if you want to understand the economics of AI, growing compute and its implications. Incredibly instructive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmUo4841KQw&t=3219s
27. "The point here is that history suggests there is a balance to be had with vertical integration: too much leads to over capacity and dilutes returns, too little risks disappointing customers during supply shortages."
https://substack.com/home/post/p-176116253
28. One of the best weekly shows on B2B and Silicon Valley news.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XkOqWdiHP0
29. Alt-Geopolitics, lots of this stuff is crazy but there are some insights on what's happening in the world (20-30%). Get out of your bubble, even if you don't agree with most of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC5TxCXh4Wc
30. "Meanwhile, even if China hold to their pledge and restrain themselves from actively exporting their system or punishing others for choosing a completely different system, they are getting to be too big to be a part of the international system not to BECOME the international system in some way. Their very success will see to it that their model is copied, and if unbalanced by a third force, the China playbook could allow authoritarian regimes to construct comfortable padded cells of their nations that can be very stable.
Crypto and the Internet could be an alternative way of human organization that beats China in hyper efficiency and so provides a roadmap for progress.
That may well be so, but I think we shouldn’t be so fast to fast forward to the future. This present moment is a rich and chaotic window of potential future outcomes that deserves our full attention. We must take the next steps very carefully wherever we are in the world as we might be living with the consequences of those choices for a long time.
The future, I believe, is not yet written. We are the skier coming down a double black diamond hill of history. Yes, we will get to the bottom one way or another pretty soon. But how we manage the process is everything."
https://taipology.substack.com/p/balaji-the-network-state-and-mark
31. How to thrive in the Age of AI, the next 3 years are critical.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KK9cpiehEU&t=1784s
32. A fun and insightful conversation on Silicon Valley news this week.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiKVJD_3ziM&list=PLI0_clHshGZctchZkfCXmz7SPyuBSOoq1
33. "With the information sorted and the catalysts identified, Singh moves on to hypothesis generation. He starts asking himself: What products become possible because of these shifts? How do distribution dynamics change? What new value stacks start to form?
While doing this, Singh puts his founder hat on, using the analysis to earn credibility with the founders worth building alongside, instead of focusing on being “right” all the time. This exercise helps him turn his research into a sharper point of view—especially important in venture investing, when “everything is up and to the right.”
https://every.to/thesis/how-this-venture-capitalist-sees-into-the-post-software-future
34. "The pursuit of Warner Bros. is more than just a transaction. It’s a microcosm of a wider emergency. We can’t complain about surging costs while ignoring the factors behind them. We need to have an adult conversation, saying no to harmful deals and yes to policies that spur competition and rein in health, housing, and education costs.
It’s telling that the loudest objection to this nascent monopoly comes from a Hollywood mogul who’s never lived outside one. But we should listen to him. Consolidation is a tax on the young and the poor, levied to protect the old and the rich. Affordability begins with a simple idea: more firms, more competition, more oxygen."
https://www.profgalloway.com/the-streaming-wars-and-affordability/
35. If you understand energy, you understand geopolitics. The edge of understanding physics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0AdDGrEvrM
36. "In promotional materials, Próspera markets itself to “21st-century pioneers” craving not just laissez-faire policies but also “good times and Caribbean vibes.” Direct flights from Miami and Houston can transport these digital nomads to Roatán in less than three hours. Then, from a chaise longue on the beach, they can register a business with the tap of a button. Although only one residential building has been built so far, a forthcoming eco-condo was during my visit courting buyers seeking “more personal freedom” and less “political drama.” Próspera’s original investment plan projected that by 2030 the city would be home to 38,000 residents, and that foreign direct investment in the country would top $500 million by next year.
There are about three dozen charter cities currently operating in the world, according to an estimate from the Adrianople Group, an advisory firm that concentrates on special economic zones. Several others are under development, including the East Solano Plan, run by a real estate corporation that has spent the last seven years buying up $900 million of ranch land in the Bay Area to build a privatized alternative to San Francisco; Praxis, a forthcoming “cryptostate” on the Mediterranean; and the Free Republic of Liberland, a three-square-mile stretch of unclaimed floodplain between Serbia and Croatia. Many of the same ideologically aligned names — Balaji Srinivasan, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, Friedman — recur as financial backers; Patrik Schumacher, principal of Zaha Hadid Architects and a critic of public housing, is behind several of their urban (or metaversal) designs.
Srinivasan, the former Coinbase chief technology officer and now an adviser to Pronomos Capital, Friedman’s fund to build start-up cities, argued in his 2022 book “The Network State” that these new business-friendly hubs would soon compete with nation-states and, one day, replace them. “The Network State” was inspired, he said, by the state of Israel. “That country was started by a book,” he tweeted in 2022, referring to Theodor Herzl’s 1896 manifesto, “The Jewish State.” “You can found a tribe,” Srinivasan said on a podcast. “What I’m really calling for is something like tech Zionism — when a community forms online and then gathers in physical space to form a ‘reverse diaspora.’”
37. An explanation behind the new National Security Strategy. George Friedman is one of the best geopolitical analysts around.
The Bench: Dealing With Change
I watched a random Japanese movie called “The Bench”, a bunch of vignettes taking place on a park bench in the midst of massive renovation. It was surprisingly good.
Do you ever feel nostalgic? Do you get caught up in your life and start missing all the simple joys of life? Especially when it comes to specific places in your life. But everything is changing so quickly in the world.
Yet in our memories we hold these places in our hearts and we remember the wonderful, golden times we experienced there. Change can be great. But it’s also sad sometimes.
“Well it’s not that bad to feel sad when you experience loss. It’s rather good. Feeling sad is actually nice. It means that you loved them that much…. The more you love, the sadder you are. Sadness is something happiness left behind.”
“Tokyo’s scenery are changing so fast. Sceneries disappear before you know it. As things get more convenient, it’s not all that bad. Sceneries you are fond of, change all of a sudden. And by the time you notice they’re gone, it’s too late. You begin to regret that you should have visited more often.”
This is in reference to the places you love. But it is also relevant to people. Specifically your family and your friends. You get so caught up in your own life. It’s good to slow down once in a while.
“You get rewarded by laughter just by living long. Life is rewarding.”
So this is a reminder to visit old places that gave you fond memories. This is also a reminder to spend more time with loved ones. Before it’s too late. Life goes by fast.
Ballerina: The Female John Wick
I finally got to watch the very violent Ballerina that takes place in the incredibly intricate John Wick universe. Starring Ana de Armas, she literally is the female John Wick, an assassin trained in the traditions of the Ruska Roma. And it is like the other John Wick movie series; cool, stylish, and engaging. A revenge action tale. And who doesn’t like a revenge action tale? And really beautiful scenery, cars, swords and guns.
As always, there are plenty of amazing fighting and shooting scenes. It’s a good reminder that everything and anything around you can be used as a weapon. A pen, a bottle, a chain, a hammer, a plastic bag, a pan, a glass, dishes, ice skates, heck even a TV remote control. A small tidbit that could be useful one day.
“It is two sides of the same coin, to kill or to save. Ultimately, it is up to you to choose.”
But you also get surprisingly good wisdom and tactical advice. Her instructor Nogi tells her:
“Do you really believe that strength has anything to do with whether you win or lose? You will always be smaller and at a disadvantage. He is beating you because you are allowing him to determine the terms of the contest. You want to win? Change the terms! Improvise, adapt, cheat. Yield to YOUR strengths, not his.”
She becomes a one woman wrecking machine. It’s quite inspiring actually. I really need to up my fighting and tactical shooting skills. I don’t lack motivation here. As we all know: “Hate will make you strong.”
But what is echoed through the entire series is:
“When you deal in blood, there must be rules or nothing survives.” You have to live by a code in life. Otherwise we are no better than beasts or the beast-like humans among us. This is how civilization works. “Rules. And Consequences.”
Control the Controllables: Getting Through A Time of Chaos
I was lucky enough to get to check out Keith Blackborg’s Passive Investor Event in Dallas last October. For those who don’t know him, Keith built an amazing community of “millionaires next door” as per the famous book by Stanley. This event was one sharing learnings and best practices of investing in different asset classes and tax protection as well. I came as part of my friend Swen Lorenz’s extended global investing community.
In one of the talks, the global investor and Jim Rogers of alternative investing, Cody Shirk shared some ideas and general thoughts. It went a bit serious but he was right. It is chaotic out there. The world has gone nuts. The American economy has turned into a casino & there is literal civil war in America. Not the shooting and killing war yet but a psychological one. Who isn’t stressed or mad these days in America. “No challenges and no North stars” and that is why Americans seem lost. Life is too good. Too much comfort.
He further adds as an investor:“No one has an information edge, all you can do is manage your time & emotions.” And I'd add, manage your energy.
Entrepreneur and investor David Cummings talked about “controlling the controllables”. His article is excellent: https://davidcummings.org/2025/10/04/control-your-controllables/
He uses sales as an example & writes way better than I do: “Take sales as an example. Naturally, the sales team wants to close a certain amount of revenue each month or quarter to hit quota and move the startup forward. The challenge with measuring purely on output is that output is driven by inputs—many of which include factors outside of your control.
So let’s look at sales through the lens of control your controllables.
Can we guarantee a certain amount of revenue? No.
Can we guarantee a certain number of phone calls and prospect follow-ups? Absolutely.
Can we guarantee that every inbound lead will be followed up on within a set amount of time? Absolutely.
Can we guarantee consistent outreach to key partners so we stay top-of-mind in the market? Absolutely.
In this simple example, we know that sales has measurable inputs: the number of phone calls, follow-ups, demos, proposals sent, and deals won. The deeper you go into the funnel, the more outcomes are outside of your control. But by consistently executing the inputs, you significantly increase the likelihood of hitting the outputs.”
The point is to focus on your locus of control. Sure, understand what is happening in the world. It’s very useful. Ignorance is not bliss in global macro, geopolitics and competitive analysis. But you cannot do anything about it. It’s so easy to get unhinged or rage baited on social media or by reading the news.
David Cummings wisely writes: “Entrepreneurs would do well to remember this: control your controllables. What’s within your power? What’s outside of it? How can you keep your team focused on what they can control—and not distracted by what they can’t?”
And it’s not just entrepreneurs, its investors, it’s all of us. Ignore the noise, take action, learn, and control the controllables!
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Jan 25th, 2026
“Winter is not a season, it’s a celebration.”--Anamika Mishra
Multipolar world and new world order? Author and economist Branko Milanovic makes the case.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qAvOxGESvs
2. "PE firms gain operational leverage while AI startups access more than 14,000 motivated buyers. This new go-to-market motion redefines how AI software reaches the market, bypassing the traditional enterprise sales grind in favor of networks that can deploy at scale."
https://tomtunguz.com/the-great-reversal-private-equity-corporate-ownership/
3. "The decentralized media landscape instead advantages hustlers because, like Sergey experienced in Russia in the 1990s, the system is breaking down. Volatility and crisis are uncomfortable for most, but for hustlers, it’s the gift of opportunity. In the early pandemic, I was told a smart piece of advice: It’s during crisis that the league tables change.
Hustlers are built differently. They have the dog in them. They get to start. They have a strong bias to action. They’re enthusiastic sellers. They show up every day. They’re willing to do whatever it takes. The fashion media CEO who faked having an EA to make the status-conscious fashion people think he was more important than he was. The salesman who went top to bottom in a downtown skyscraper to sell copiers. Starting a business is hard. I used to misidentify these stories as the fripperies of the successful; I’ve come to realize they’re explanations.
Hustling is back now, only it's been rebranded as “high agency.”High agency is a way to turn a blind eye to the negative excesses that are part and parcel of hustling to focus solely on the positive. Being high agency means you are willing to take risks and to stand on your own. High agency people see problems as solvable."
https://www.therebooting.com/p/the-hustlers
4. "Just like countries, publishers have different levels of sovereignty. Countries like the United States and China have a high degree of sovereignty. A small country like, say, Belgium voluntarily gives up large chunks of sovereignty for practical reasons.
For a lot of reasons that are of varying degrees of reasonableness and rationality, publishers have since the dawn of the internet given up sovereignty. And they cannot establish resilient businesses without claiming back sovereignty. This is easier said than done. The digital media ecosystem is architected to erode publisher sovereignty."
https://www.therebooting.com/p/sovereignty
5. "Clear speak: Can Takaichi deliver a positive wealth effect for the general public from rising asset prices in Japan? If she can — and does — that would be an economic success story truly worthy of being called “Abenomics 2.0.”
One thing is clear: a prime minister who transforms Japan’s rising asset prices into a true positive wealth effect for the Japanese people would indeed be doing “God’s work” — much more so than a primarily self-serving investment banker."
https://japanoptimist.substack.com/p/how-takaichis-abenomics-20-can-work
6. Michael Every has been on top of all geopolitics trends for a while. So he is worth listening to. Basically Europe is a toothless tiger and not sovereign because they don't have any hard power.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vIr5y_LFtI&t=18s
7. "We’re living in an era where maritime infrastructure is the invisible backbone of modern economies. It’s easy to forget, but subsea communications cables now carry 99% of all internet traffic. 80% of global trade still moves by sea. Container freight volume has exploded—up 16x in the last 40 years. Offshore wind is set to be a trillion-dollar buildout over the next two decades. Oil & gas remains the largest ocean-based industry, with deepwater O&G growing 10x since 1990.
Market Signal:
But here’s the narrative break: the threat vectors are multiplying, fast. Multiple maritime frontlines have become active theaters of geopolitical conflict (think: South China Sea, Middle East, Europe). Latent risks like piracy and illegal fishing persist, but the toolkit for disruption has never been more diverse—cable-cutting drones, comms interference, narco-subs, state-backed fishing fleets operating in legal grey zones."
https://snailmail.slow.co/p/oceans-the-most-fragile-layer-of-the-global-economy
8. Painful truth. Global macro implications of geopolitics from Luke Gromen. Bullish on BTC & Gold because the world is going risk off.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RA2cvfdwy0I
9. Fascinating conversation on deal making. Live entertainment and community is the Anti-AI bet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDuqUlZZ8Vk
10. "In each and every startup, there are unsung heroes. The people who don’t often get the credit, but without whom the company simply wouldn’t operate. And if they’re customer facing, more than likely they spend a meaningful amount of their working hours as a receptacle for other people’s frustrations — whether or not there’s anything they can do about it.
So if you’re traveling this week, take an extra minute to stop and say thanks to the people helping make your travel a reality. Look them in the eyes, shake their hands, say their names and express your gratitude."
https://chrisneumann.com/archives/stop-and-say-thanks
11. Grand macro strategy (military, economic & political) from the USA which has huge implications for the rest of the world (and the investor).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raHznWlAmng
12. The next era of air superiority. This was very educational.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2yCCjPojKc
13. China looks like America in early 2010s. China leading in power generation, open source AI & key manufacturing and supply chains.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuJxZ67PwNk
14. "Unfortunately, reality begs to differ. People in leadership positions want to be available to others, so they keep their calendars open. And people in IC roles often don’t get to control their calendars as much as they’d like—those pesky managers keep scheduling meeting after meeting.
But, not all hope is lost. The González study found that for knowledge workers, almost half the interruptions are self-inflicted. While it is true very few people have control over their calendars these days, we are the masters of our destiny and captains of our ship more than we think when it comes to interruptions. Another similar study also found that people who blocked interruptions found their job satisfaction to be much higher.
Checking your inbox only a few times a day—or even just twice—pays huge dividends. In my experience, almost nothing is actually urgent, and it’s better to train people that getting your attention requires effort than to train them that you’re always available. Whatever you do, any effort you put in here will be worth it."
https://justoffbyone.com/posts/math-of-why-you-cant-focus-at-work/
15. Saudi Arabia is crushing it on the hospitality side of things. Crazy luxe hotel resorts here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ij7GZ45nBs
16. Energy is life. Latest developments and Russia & USA are well positioned here in the energy world. (unless Ukraine wrecks most of their gas and oil infrastructure...fingers crossed)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dsWimqipxc
17. What an incredible conversation, wise and blunt. Lots of really incredible insights on the nature of running a VC fund and life in general too. Surprisingly great interview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIZ2xpIDyYI
18. This show helps you understand the zeitgeist of Silicon Valley and tech. It's one of my favorite regular weekly discussions to catch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BbWHm3KODw
19. A cold hard look at the world from the eyes of the brilliant Balaji Srinavasan. Reality is brutal (especially for America & the Political West these days).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-W18Ptd03o
20. "For entrepreneurs, this is a powerful reminder: in industries where relationships or incentives are traditionally one-sided, there is often an opportunity to flip the dynamic by putting the customer first. Lead with value before trying to extract value."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/11/29/value-first-reimagining-of-a-market/
21. Very good overview of Ukraine's long range strike capabilities. They have cards to play still.
https://missilematters.substack.com/p/from-flamingo-to-neptune-ukraines
22. "This benchmarking issue is a real problem.
What I want to point out today is that it's going to get even more difficult. When an AI system starts to perform at human level on somewhat ambiguous tasks, we will struggle the same way we struggle to evaluate humans. Many books have been written about how to hire, how to identify top talent, and yet inside companies we often can’t agree on performance for some hires."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/is-there-any-hope-for-ai-benchmarks
23. "Before we had shiny magazine covers or modern advertising agencies shaping our sense of style, J.C. Leyendecker’s art stirred the imagination of Americans. His illustrations did more than fill pages, they spoke to readers and defined the era. With rich colors and a great command of details, Leyendecker created images that became cultural icons of his day and age. His works focused on elegance and American patriotism, influencing how people dressed and saw themselves. Long before Norman Rockwell became a household name, Leyendecker created the canvas upon which American life was illustrated. Let’s learn more about the man and his art."
https://thewaysofagentleman.substack.com/p/the-forgotten-artist-who-influenced
24. "The dominance of the US dollar has long relied on structural demand tied to scarce and essential commodities. In the 1970s, oil fulfilled that role. The petrodollar system—where Saudi and other OPEC oil exports were priced in dollars and recycled into US Treasuries—created a self-reinforcing global need for the US currency, underpinning American fiscal and monetary power.
Today, a new commodity is taking its place: compute. High-end GPUs and AI infrastructure are scarce, capital-intensive, and critical to the next generation of technological growth. Just as oil once drove global dollar flows, commoditised compute, priced in USD stablecoins, is emerging as a key driver of structural demand for dollars. Tokenised assets, programmable settlement rails, and stablecoins allow digital activity—from AI training to industrial supply chains—to generate continuous dollar circulation, linking AI growth directly to US fiscal capacity.
In this framework, Nvidia plays the role of Aramco, OpenAI is Exxon or Chevron, GPUs are barrels of oil, and what we would call cryptodollars are the modern equivalent of petrodollars. The combination of scarce compute, tokenised settlement, and Treasury-backed stablecoins forms a cycle in which the AI economy not only depends on dollars but actively funds American government spending, supporting the dollar’s reserve currency status and potentially preventing fiscal Armageddon in the US."
https://www.currencyofpower.co/p/barrels-to-bytes
25. Learned a lot about biotech and Pharma in this conversation. Long been fascinated by the biotech space. This lady is super smart. Ukrainian too!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSkyiCwrBtw
26. Zeihan's take on deindustrialization in America. This will be a massive area of focus and opportunity over the next 10-15 years. Blue collar, energy & defense will be key areas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtBoJotE6pY
27. The biggest investment America needs to make in the next decade.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpEEDnV1gXw
28. Probably one of the best interviews with Elon Musk, I've seen in a long while. Lots of interesting takes on technology and the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rni7Fz7208c&t=2034s
29. "The asymmetry is a big part of what’s happening here. Put yourself in the shoes of a venture capitalist looking for massive home run outcomes. Is it easier to believe that a company that appears to be growing will continue to grow or that a company that isn’t growing as quickly will begin to grow quickly when it gets access to your capital? Betting on something that’s already working and continues to work could return your whole fund. If growth slows or it never was quite what you thought it was when you invested, the amount of money you’ll lose is likely something you can absorb. It is far more costly not to be in the winners than it is to make a few false positive investments if you’re managing a large pool of capital.
By far, the greatest challenge in fundraising today is rising above the noise floor, given the level of activity in the ecosystem and the number of companies competing for investors’ attention."
https://chudson.substack.com/p/reflections-from-our-2025-agm-1t
30. "If you’re a founder the best way you can pitch a VC is by getting an introduction from someone they deeply trust as an expert, and a signal, in that zone of genius. This isn’t about an insider’s game of access, nepotism, or where you went to school; it’s about putting yourself at the center of that spikiness where every signal is telling others to listen, to lean in, and maybe to write that 1,000 check. It doesn’t matter where you live on the map, or what background you come from. We can all build our own luck.
Build yourself around your areas of passion, and surround yourself with the highest value, most respected signals in that space, and good things will start to happen."
https://ideas.scotthartley.com/p/network-effects-in-venture-capital
31. "The next phase of Southeast Asia’s startup story will not be written by blitzscalers. It will be led by builders who understand constraint—who treat capital efficiency, integrity and depth as strategic edges rather than constraints to tolerate.
In Out-Innovate, I argued that ecosystems outside Silicon Valley succeed not by copying the Valley. It will be by executing over the long-term for more enduring opportunities.
Possibility in Southeast Asia will no longer come from flashes of hype. It will emerge from the bedrock beneath."
https://99tech.alexlazarow.com/p/sea-dispatches-from-blitzscalers
32. "Russian oligarchs love Dubai. The city has sun, malls, and a runway five minutes from a five-star hotel. After 2022 they re-registered their planes in places like Aruba and kept flying south. Dubai asked only for a “home-base” letter — easy, painless, routine.
In June the airport added a quiet step: prove the money behind the jet is clean. Tick the box, upload a pdf, move on. Fail the check and you get one landing, then a 90-day lockout. No press note, no big speech — just an extra upload field.
The Trap That Didn’t Look Like a Trap
Crews still file the same papers. If the back-office robot spots a Russian owner, it paints the permit amber. Pilots think it’s a typo, try again, burn $14,000 a day waiting. After a week most give up and fly away — usually…
Dubai keeps the planes outside its border, but offers a lifeline: hand the jet to a local firm, let it charter Indian weddings, split the cash. The Russian keeps ownership; the city keeps the income; sanctions stay intact."
https://medium.com/@anandviv11/36b6ea294b44
33. Some Alt-geopolitics, don't really agree with all his takes but good to hear different sides to get closer to reality. Learned a new concept: Pax Judaica in the Levant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sutm8lOJRqw
34. The always interesting Delian of Varda and Founders Fund. A fun interview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hIwRLhUMK4
35. "The sudden arrival of AI in the workplace couldn’t have happened at a worse time. AI’s downward pressure on incomes and opportunities will occur far faster than new avenues of advancement emerge.
Americans, already economically and socially damaged by the radical expansion of corporate indentured servitude, won’t take it well (especially if the few lifeboats of economic opportunity that emerge are filled by corporate indentured servants when they show up).
If young Americans don’t believe in the American Dream anymore, a loss of faith in technological progress will soon follow.
Additionally, a combination of AI and robotics will soon make rapid progress toward eliminating the need for low-skilled domestic labor (an area where migrant indentured servants excel). This would leave millions living in migrant sanctuaries without employment, straining social safety nets.
Generations of young Americans growing up without a belief in the American Dream (a proxy for their faith in the American economic system) will become increasingly disloyal, critical, and politically volatile. These workers, deprived of the incomes and opportunities needed for marriage, home ownership, and family formation, are unlikely to see the US government or its corporate partners as legitimate. This opens the door to a radical politics, on the left or the right, that we’ve never seen before."
https://johnrobb.substack.com/p/the-american-nightmare
36. "I read the 10-K filings touting AI transformation. Then I talk to the CIOs and employees. The gap is staggering.
Press releases announce “company-wide AI adoption.” Hallway conversations tell a different story. Employees haven’t opened the tools in weeks. The data lies. Comms lies. Dashboards show logins, not usage. Activation, not integration.
This is transformation theater. The appearance of change without the pain of change."
https://writing.nikunjk.com/p/bet-the-farm
37. "I’ve been writing about Italy’s comeback for months now. The wealth migration data, the financial market performance, the stabilization of public finances – the indicators are real.
But what I find myself most excited about is simpler than macroeconomic trends.
You can replicate Singapore’s efficiency anywhere with good infrastructure and favorable regulation. You cannot replicate Florence. You cannot replicate Rome. You cannot manufacture the accumulated weight of two thousand years of continuous human achievement.
In an age where geography is increasingly optional for earning income, civilizational depth becomes the arbitrage.
Italy is art.
For certain people at certain stages – the remote professional seeking lifestyle over pure optimization, the retiree wanting Mediterranean quality of life, the successful entrepreneur looking to enjoy rather than continue accumulating, the investor seeking optionality with Bitcoin alignment – Italy might be exactly right.
Build in USD. Save in Bitcoin. Spend in euros.
Live longer."
https://palombo.substack.com/p/who-should-actually-move-to-italy
The Dark Forest Theory: Be Stealth
There is a concept called the Dark Forest theory. According to Gemini AI:
“The theory is named after an analogy used in Liu's novel ‘The 3 Body Problem’. The analogy describes the universe as a dark forest where each civilization is a hidden hunter. Making noise, like broadcasting a signal, reveals one's location and makes them a target. The Dark Forest Theory is a proposed solution to the Fermi Paradox, which asks why we have not found any evidence of extraterrestrial life despite the high probability of its existence. The theory suggests that civilizations remain silent and hidden out of fear that revealing their location would lead to their destruction by more advanced, hostile civilizations”
Silence is a measure of intelligence. Deception is life.
The internet is moving away from transparency and authenticity. In a more adversarial and desperate world, this transparency makes you a target. Think about “cancel culture” where your old tweets or posts were used against you, even if they were over a decade old. It cost people their jobs and careers.
It’s funny because I tend to be direct and blunt. I don’t do a good job of hiding my feelings or thoughts. I’m pretty transparent and open to a fault. But in this new world, not sure if this is a strength or weakness. I deeply suspect it’s a weakness now.
Even wealth is not a guaranteed shield. There is PR, reputation or brand damage. There is plain harassment online or offline by idiots. There are, of course, legions of criminals and scammers as well looking for targets.
We can learn more from spies and espionage at large. Keeping your thoughts to yourself. Pretending to be someone else. Infiltration and inception. Deception becomes an effective survival mechanism.
It’s not a good idea to share all aspects of your life with the public. Maybe only with your family and friends. And if you do share things it’s on tightly controlled platforms or groups. Path, which was a social media platform restricted to 150 people, was far ahead of its time. 150 people is what is called Dunbar's Number which is the optimal number of people that one can have close relations with. This is wired into our being. A trusted circle.
So be stealth. Even better, be stealth wealth. No one will bother or rob someone they think is poor. No social obligations either.
Be known but not famous. Or even just anonymous, while hiding in plain sight. This is the new strategy of adaptation for a new scary and increasingly hostile world.
Palmer Luckey’s Survivor Wisdom: And a Warning
Palmer Luckey, wunderkind, founder of Oculus Drift, the VR pioneer acquired by Facebook aka Meta. A man who was taken down & fired during the insane leftist witch hunts of Silicon Valley in the mid-2010s. But what a comeback. He cofounded Anduril, the leading defensetech neo Prime that is leading the massive changes in the defense industry in America. Long needed too.
I couldn’t remember where I heard this but of all the entrepreneurs who build massive empires it can be explained or embodied by these 3 following causes or traits.
Megalomania
Sociopathy
Revenge Arc
Palmer Luckey clearly embodies the Revenge arc. I mean if you look at all three of those traits, it makes sense.
No normal or sensible human being would ever do a startup unless it’s the peak of the bubble like it is now. No sensible human would keep on going even if their business is worth billions. Most humans would stop and enjoy the view.
It requires some kind of tremendous drive or frankly deep hole in their soul that needs to be filled. I get it. We innately want more as humans but to take it to such an extreme massive point requires a ridiculous amount of smarts, drive and desire.
All great empires whether business or political have relentless ambition & flexible expanding borders. It’s just the way it is. I’ve been in denial of the fact that the kinder and warmer Silicon Valley and America I have known and love is disappearing. I’m slowly adjusting and learning about this new more unforgiving & brutal world we are in. Be a lord or be a slave. There is nothing in between.
I need to be harder and more ruthless. No more wasting time with people or projects that are going nowhere. I will be saying NO much more. Focus on monetization, less pro bono stuff. Money is a shield and a tool. It enables my bigger mission.
I need to do this to thrive so I can take care of my family, friends, business partners, allies and extended community. No one else will do this. If you think the government or some outside player will come save you, you are a fool and deserve what is coming for you.
Remember that God helps those who help themselves. It’s all on you. You need to keep striving, keep learning, to be remorseless and never look back. Always moving forward.
So I will quote Palmer’s view on what he learned from Survivor the reality tv show:
“In the Survivor culture meta. I'm just doing what's best for my game. I had to do it…..I’m going to do whatever it takes to accomplish my objective. Outwit, Outplay, Outlast.”
Never Doom, Stay In the Game: Your Regular Reminder
It’s rough out there. Stock market and Crypto being super volatile. The Startup and VC investing world is getting hard. Let’s not talk about the craziness in Geopolitics and Global Macro right now.
But I want to remind folks, you just have to grind through this. Surviving is thriving. I leave you with some very wise words from the gents at BowtiedBull:
"Every major success story is a case study in pain tolerance and conviction. Compounding only works for the few who stay solvent long enough to experience it. It’s the price of admission to the 1%.
Most people can’t tolerate being underestimated or delayed. They need recognition and attention. So they cash out to scratch the ego.
They need comfort, so they give up options. They mistake motion for progress and validation for security. They exit the game voluntarily, right before it turns unfair in their favor.
The irony is that singular focus on survival/adaptability creates inevitability.
If you stay in the arena long enough, the odds eventually tilt toward you. The longer you can withstand pain, boredom and obscurity, the more tail events you’re exposed to. Life runs out of ways to stop the man who refuses to leave.
If you’re in that grinding phase where nothing seems to click, that is entirely mental., If you’re making the right choices the momentum piles up silently. You’re not supposed to feel rewarded. You’re supposed to survive.
Every month you stay solvent, every year you hold your ground, your probability of breakthrough rises. That’s the math of attrition.
People Hate Cockroaches and Yet They Teach a Valuable Lesson, Find a Way to survive"
(Source: https://bowtiedbull.io/p/getting-rich-is-a-game-of-attrition).
I leave you a BTB gem. Be patient & keep grinding.
“The more you want results today, the less you’ll get. This is how lady luck works. The real skill you want is staying power. Stay at the table long enough and Lady Luck decides “huh this guy really doesn’t care guess i’ll give him this pot of gold”
Don’t blow yourself up. Don’t cash out of asymmetry too early. Don’t sell your future for comfort. Keep your burn low, your ego smaller, and your runway long. Because life doesn’t reward the smartest player — it rewards the one who makes it to the final table.”
Never doom. There is always a light at the end of the tunnel. You will get there. And when you do, it will all be worth it.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Jan 18th, 2026
"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity." - Melody Beattie
"Bitcoin is the free-market weathervane of global fiat liquidity. It trades on the expectation of future fiat supply. Sometimes reality matches expectations, and other times it does not. Money is politics. And political rhetoric, which changes rapidly, influences the market’s expectations of future filthy fiat supply. One day our imperfect leaders call for cheaper money in larger quantities to pump the bags of their favorite constituents, other days they call for the opposite to fight inflation that destroys the plebes and their chances of re-election or a continuation of their autocratic rule. As with science, in trading it pays to have strong convictions loosely held.
For those of you with a multiyear outlook, these short-term lulls in the pace of fiat money creation don’t matter. If the Team Red Republicans cannot print enough money, the stock and bond market will crash, and that will give the holdouts from both parties’ religion to return to the satanic cult of money printing.
Trump is an astute politician and, similar to former US President Biden, who faced a similar revolt amongst the plebes over the COVID-stimulus induced inflation, will publicly change course and lambast the Fed for causing the inflation that afflicts the median voter. But don’t worry, Trump won’t forget the wealthy asset holders who fill the campaign coffers. Buffalo Bill Bessent will be under strict orders to print money in creative ways the plebes won’t understand."
https://cryptohayes.substack.com/p/snow-forecast
2. "Hard sport builds the discipline to joyfully embrace hardship and pain. The child who masters his body against sloth, gluttony, and cowardice is well disposed to later master his spirit against lust, avarice, and corruption.
Children’s inheritance should be illiquid, and should take the form of land, enterprises, and art — objects with value other than abstract financial worth and which bring duties as well as privileges. The present owner knows he is merely a steward for the generations who follow, to whom he has a duty."
https://www.theculturist.io/p/why-did-wealth-stop-building-beautiful
3. "The Western alliance stands at a critical inflection point. For decades, America and Europe have held unmatched economic, industrial, and military resources, yet these capabilities are increasingly misaligned. Allied scale—the ability to convert collective mass into coordinated, actionable power—was the foundation of Western strength after World War II. It enabled NATO and the European project to transform a continent fractured by war into a US-sponsored platform for sustained leverage.
Today, however, that capacity is under strain. Rising global competition, internal dysfunction in Europe, and strategic missteps under Trump threaten to leave the West unable to act cohesively, even as China consolidates its own industrial and technological advantages.
Finally, it’s important to look to the future. Despite the challenges, Europe possesses latent industrial capacity and strategic potential that could restore allied scale if mobilised effectively. Defence buildouts, advanced manufacturing, and digital finance offer catalysts for revitalising transatlantic coordination, while selective American engagement could transform Europe’s structural weaknesses into opportunities for partnership.
Allied scale is less a measure of size or resources than a discipline of coordination, investment, and shared, long-term strategic vision. For Europe and America, mastering that discipline once again will determine whether the West can sustain its global influence and collective security in the decades ahead."
https://www.driftsignal.com/p/allied-scale-and-the-future-of-the
4. Lots to digest. Don't always agree with Balaji but he always makes me think, especially about where the world is going.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFFXekSxe3U
5. Insights on the next era of entertainment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG_nHmHUZLw
6. Investing in AI and what is happening with the AI arms race at company and global level.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9pZmpkw5EE
7. Some good takes on what is happening on the frontlines of AI from someone who has been on the cutting edge for a long time. Andrew Ng was in AI long before it was cool.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rT74mF6_NhQ
8. Wide ranging and deeply insightful. Balaji is a very smart man with some great takes on the future, backed by lots of data.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qu8vthORgOo
9. A great discussion on the latest business news this week. NIA. Long term bullish on BTC.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnlSPjzxVQU&t=15s
10. Latest state of the AI & VC market right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWkpLLH_8jQ&t=1s
11. A masterclass on finding talent and building product in the age of AI. Gokul is a legend in SV.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8GsB65WnGE
12. How do you survive and thrive in the Age of AI. This is worthwhile.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwPNJLGWHEA
13. Global macro, US & USD is well positioned. The Office of Strategic Capital & reshoring supply chains and American reindustrialization makes one optimistic for this country.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjL3jFHRgUU
14. The American Dynamism Fund, they got a pretty damn good portfolio. This was a great interview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7SrvpieY7c
15. Latest and greatest news in Silicon Valley. Always good takes from these folks. (in many ways, way better than the All in Guys who do NOT represent the real Silicon Valley)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahZTkLfJTyk
16. "This is the Great Game of Risk in Category Creation & aggression wins.
But this era of fluidity won’t last forever. The rate of improvement in AI models will eventually attenuate. When the performance gap between the best model & the second-best model shrinks, the incentive to switch evaporates.
Switching costs will start to matter more than marginal performance gains. The custom tools I’ve built, the muscle memory I’ve developed, the integrations my company has deployed, the enterprise contracts signed, all inertia.
At that point, the fat begins to congeal.
The winners will be those who use the sizzling phase to build fat worth congealing around."
https://tomtunguz.com/the-bacon-and-the-skillet-when-ai-market-share-congeals/
17. Everyone in the roll up space should learn from Bending Spoon. Quiet giant from Europe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbwrpKbY5P0
18. "Prediction marketplaces say they aren’t on the other side of the trade — users are trading with their peers, not against the “house.” As traders buy and sell, prices fluctuate to reflect the “collective sentiment and knowledge of market participants.”
But whether you’re putting money on the Mets or Mamdani, this is gambling, and whatever you want to call it, users can develop an addiction. I am not immune. I find these markets fascinating — I tried to bet on the presidential race but couldn’t, as I’m an American citizen living in the U.K. My documented worker status saved me from myself: I was convinced Kamala Harris had a greater-than-37% likelihood of capturing the White House. And there is a solid argument we shouldn’t infantilize grown-ups — and we should let them spend their hard-earned money as they see fit.
In the U.S. we’ve monetized healthcare, the White House, and the pardon process. However, these are dwarfed by the opportunity to monetize the less developed prefrontal cortex of a young man. Once Polymarket starts expanding in the U.S., more Americans will be swept up by the wave. Not because everyone will be in Vegas, but because Vegas will be in everyone. If policymakers aren’t motivated by the threat to Americans’ finances and mental health, they should worry about the risk of foreign governments using the platforms to influence elections and public perception."
https://www.profgalloway.com/the-next-opioid-crisis/
19. "Japan is a nation steeped in ambiguity. There’s an old kotowaza proverb that goes, the clever hawk hides its talons. This is a country whose leaders were so famed for never clearly articulating what they really wanted that someone felt the need to write a book called The Japan That Can Say No.
Ambiguity is soft. It’s key to kawaii products: squishy, in-between, neither baby nor grown up, neither masculine nor feminine, an aesthetic that Japanese designers have mastered. Ambiguity in politics makes Japan seem safe and approachable. It is why so many Westerners see Japan as an oasis and want to visit. It’s also why anime fans can somehow see the same medium — and sometimes even the same series — as “woke” and “a safe haven from political correctness” at the very same time.
Ambiguity provides a blank slate upon which fans of different cultures and creeds can project their own values. You might see Japan’s traditional reluctance to take a public stand on divisive issues as deliberate or wishy-washy, but it is also the secret sauce of its soft power."
https://blog.pureinventionbook.com/p/boys-and-girls-be-ambiguous
20. Lots of learnings on startup leadership, a culture of learning and growth aka velocity. Really useful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zy2Uvm7_ky8&t=38s
21. We need more of the Harry Stebbings energy in Europe. Make Europe great again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltyWFh2cNXg
22. A cold look at geopolitics around the world right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W50lce_aOyw
23. "The anger isn’t about the goods. It’s about the breach of contract. The American Deal was that Effort ~ Security. Effort brought your Hope strike closer. But because the real poverty line is $140,000, effort no longer yields security or progress; it brings risk, exhaustion, and debt.
When you are drowning, and you see the lifeguard throw a life vest to the person treading water next to you—a person who isn’t swimming as hard as you are—you don’t feel happiness for them. You feel a homicidal rage at the lifeguard.
We have created a system where the only way to survive is to be destitute enough to qualify for aid, or rich enough to ignore the cost. Everyone in the middle is being cannibalized. The rich know this… and they are increasingly opting out of the shared spaces."
https://www.yesigiveafig.com/p/part-1-my-life-is-a-lie
24. "Bringing this to AI right now: I think we are somewhere close to the peak of inflated expectations. It’s impossible to time markets, and the ascent could go on longer than anyone expects. But sooner or later, I think we will encounter the inevitable trough of disillusionment.
The specific flaws this time, that I think will precipitate the trough, are 1) the thin margins, and 2) the minimal moats.
Regarding point 1) most are valuing AI as “software,” which is known for its high margins (usually 90%+) and because of those high margins software companies are valued at a higher multiple of revenue than most other businesses. It’s easier to generate profits from them, or recycle a large amount of that revenue to propel future growth.
But AI is low margin — at both the LLM and application layers — if not negative margin in many cases today. If you listen closely to the mainstream commentary about AI these days, there is almost zero discussion about profitability, now or in the future. People just assume it will be like other tech, where you burn a lot in the beginning and the profits will arrive later."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/what-investors-should-know-about
25. "The AI investment landscape is experiencing a fundamental shift. While large language models (LLMs) have captured headlines and billions in funding, a quieter revolution is underway—one that promises superior unit economics, deployability, and enterprise adoption. Small Language Models (SLMs) represent not just a technical evolution, but an inflection point for AI investors seeking sustainable, scalable returns.
The investment thesis is clear: SLMs represent a shift from capital-intensive infrastructure plays to capital-efficient software businesses with superior unit economics, expanding addressable markets, and defensible enterprise moats. The future of AI investing isn’t about bigger models—it’s about smarter deployment.
Building task specific SLMs is currently a challenge but those challenges are being resolved quickly by new tools and tactics (including our work at Neurometric.). SLMs can be cheaper, faster, and more accurate - a great combination if you are architecting an AI system. Investors should brush up on this new area as I suspect you will see lots of SLM opportunities in 2026."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/what-investors-should-know-about
26. "We don’t all know our lineage or our ancestors, but for those of us that do, we must honor those who came before us. We don’t have to do this for their status or wealth, but for their courage to persevere. John Howland began as an indentured servant but he rose to shape a new world.
So today, we salute this humble pilgrim, whose courage reminds us that every choice we make can carry forward through centuries. May we also live in such a way that when our descendants look back at our lives, they are inspired by our actions."
https://thewaysofagentleman.substack.com/p/the-man-who-fell-from-the-mayflower
27. Learning from the great conquerors, artists and businessmen of history.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFmYF-20jbY
28. Demographics is destiny. Watch Japan, Germany and Russia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NuH3D4SN-c
29. Important global macro conversation on the risks of the Index investing & political grift and instability in America.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIHrlAasIMk&t=1429s
30. "Saudi Arabia follows a different logic. It treats modernity not as a danger to be contained but as a strategic resource to be mastered. Scientific progress and technological adoption are viewed as national assets. This shift creates space for modern institutions to gain legitimacy and places religious identity within a broader civic framework. In Saudi history, that alone is a revolution.
I do not know MBS, I have never met him, and I cannot pretend to know what is in his mind. But it seems to me that he is betting on a specific direction. The course he sets on technology, investment, and cooperation with Western partners, combined with the kingdom’s position as guardian of Islam’s holiest sites, is meant to redefine the region’s political and religious landscape. He is positioning Saudi Arabia to determine what a modern Sunni Muslim power can be, and that choice will shape the region for decades.
MBS’ futurism, therefore, serves a real and significantly underestimated political function. The country’s wealth gives the state room to pursue large-scale transformation, the monarchical structure allows decisions to be imposed without the paralysis of coalition politics, and this very combination enables futurism to operate as a genuine strategy for reshaping institutions and national identity rather than merely as a slogan. Few leaders have stated this purpose as openly as MBS."
https://www.zinebriboua.com/p/mbs-the-saudi-revolution-and-saudi
31. "This is why I have become increasingly suspicious of the advice so often given to ambitious young professionals: “Be the smartest person in the room.”
It is not enough. In some cases, it can even be dangerous.
The more accurate and far more enduring aspiration is this: be the wisest person in the room.
Intelligence manipulates information; wisdom governs it. Intelligence can master complexity; wisdom discerns which complexity is worth mastering. Intelligence opens doors; wisdom knows which doors should not be opened at all.
And this distinction has only grown in urgency with recent technological developments. The blunt truth is this:
With the current trends in tech, knowledge by itself is a depreciating asset."
https://rondodson.substack.com/p/managerialism-wisdom-and-the-deep
32. "That wasn’t “the good old days.” That was yesterday.
The window is closing, and the systems deciding your mobility are getting stricter, not looser.
If you are an entrepreneur, a global citizen, or someone building a virtual company, you need to understand that the game has changed completely.
Same applies for anyone getting a second residency, a long-term visa, or a second passport, this is the new game: before you impress a government, you have to impress its algorithm.
You can’t outplay, out-charm, or outsmart an algorithm.
When you will be entering a new country soon, the question at the border will not be
“Do you have enough money, what is the purpose of your travel or if you have a return flight back?”
but “Is your money, your work, your travel plans and your digital footprint are good enough to let you enter the country?”
https://freedomceo.substack.com/p/why-future-of-travel-is-about-to
33. 2 Maniacs on a mission. Michael Ovitz & David Senra. Loyalty, energy and learning. Really inspiring.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhh-J0zVsik
34. The basics of personal finance but stuff most of us never learned until much later in life to our detriment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoE1GBC_u34
35. "my goal with today’s essay is to tackle how busyness isn’t merely a social condition but an intellectual and spiritual one. Busyness is a disease which joyfully and stealthily feasts upon the marrow of your vision, sipping your creative juices; then exploiting them to extinguish your inner fire, thus canceling your imagination."
https://vizi.substack.com/p/busy-people-lack-a-noble-mission
36. "None of those vignettes capture the full story of the person I believe will come to be seen as one of the most exceptional entrepreneurs of this generation, a gringo who started what has become the third largest telco in Medellín and decided, while growing that business, both within existing markets and to new ones, to start a second business building data centers attached to hydroelectric power plants (Colombia’s mountains produce incredibly cheap power; it’s transmission that’s the problem), and convinced two of America’s best venture firms to back them both, though, if it’s even possible to capture. I will certainly try my best.
And the best place to start, I think, is the first time I met Forrest Heath, III, for a thirty minute coffee that became a three-and-a-half hour whirlwind at Public Records in Brooklyn, at the end of which I agreed to commit the first slug of what I hope to be many tens of millions of American Dollars to the Cable Caballero with a master plan to build a vertically integrated infrastructure empire.
Somos is a vertically-integrated infrastructure company whose first product is internet in Medellín, Colombia.
It is not a traditional challenger Internet Service Provider (ISP). Most challenger ISPs are just wrappers on someone else’s infrastructure, basically marketing companies. They’re low CapEx, because they don’t build much, but low margin, because they have to pay to their infra providers and equipment suppliers. Crucially, they don’t make the internet fundamentally better or cheaper, because to do that, you have to rebuild the whole stack."
https://www.notboring.co/p/cable-caballero
37. A cold but realpolitik perspective on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the recent peace plan. Worth listening to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0qvJfstDNw
38. The saga of the Duttons continues. Can't wait for this series.
Real Change Only Comes from “the Fear” & Harsh Circumstances
There is a funny “Friends” sitcom episode where Joey/ Chandler talk Rachel into quitting her waitressing job to pursue her career in Fashion.
RACHEL: I'm training to be better at a job that I hate. My life officially sucks.
CHANDLER: But wasn't this supposed to be temporary? I thought you wanted to do fashion stuff.
RACHEL: Well, yeah, I'm still pursuing that.
CHANDLER: How, exactly, are you pursuing that? You know, other than sending out résumés, like, what, two years ago?
RACHEL: Well, I'm also sending out... good thoughts.
JOEY: If you ask me, as long as you got this job... you got nothing pushing you to get another one. You need The Fear.
RACHEL: The Fear?
CHANDLER: He's right. If you quit this job, you then have motivation... to go after a job you really want.
RACHEL: How come you're still at a job you hate? Why don't you quit and get The Fear?
(Chandler and Joey both laugh.)
CHANDLER: Because I'm too afraid.
RACHEL: (sighing) God. I don't know. I mean, I would give anything to work for a designer, you know, or a buyer. Ugh. I just don't wanna be 30 and still work here.
CHANDLER: Yeah, that'd be much worse than being 28 and still working here.
So what? Besides being a really funny scene. It also holds a lot of wisdom here. Too many of us are far too comfortable in our lives. Hating the circumstances you are in, yet unwilling to do anything about it. I’ve been here many times myself.
The magic happens when you are backed against the wall. When you are most uncomfortable.
We are too comfortable most of the time and thus we do things on autopilot. If you really want to get anything done, you need to feel “the fear.” And no surprise this only happens when bad and unexpected things happen. We all know about the successful entrepreneurs who were forced into doing their business because they lost their job and couldn’t find another one. You have to make a living so you are forced to do it. God has a plan sometimes.
Change only comes from “being so sick and tired of being sick and tired.” I heard this 30 years ago and only really understand it now. Sometimes you have to hit bottom or be close to bottom to finally do something about it. It’s also what happened to me several times. Magical things happened after but only after I grinded through it and took uncomfortable action. Which is a reminder for me to be more proactive in doing this.
We all overestimate the risks and underestimate our own capabilities to deal with the risk and challenges. We literally are our own worst enemies. So however you do it, “get the fear” and take some action. Get uncomfortable. Don’t fall back into your old bad habits. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
The Dormy Inn Experience: The Simplest Things are Best
I had some business in Japan recently. I rediscovered the Dormy Inn. A local hotel chain favored by Japanese salarymen who travel to various cities for business. It’s clean, affordable and usually conveniently located.
But the biggest reason was for their Onsen, which is Japanese hot baths. It was what caught my attention when I booked it. Every single property has one. That as well as a Sauna and a cold plunge tub. Almost nothing feels as good as spending time there.
And not only from a health perspective but it’s all the little details at the hotel. Comfortable slippers and Onsen-wear. The water and peach jelly treats in the fridge. The fruit popsicles and Yakult probiotic drinks for after your time at Onsen. Late night ramen made to order with their special dashi sauce. All free of charge.
It’s all in the details and small touches. Coupled with the great service the Japanese are known for, I was greatly impressed. I will stay here again next time I am back.
My point though is that I realized you don’t need very much to be happy. Which is a weird realization for someone so intensely materialistic. But maybe I’m getting wiser as I age. It’s the simple things in life that really matter. May you realize this sooner than I did.
Slowing Time Down: Tea Time in Japan
I ended up in Japan in October of 2025. Some business meetings and attending the Hololife Summit, formerly known as the Biohackers Summit. My first 3 days were a blur of meetings, dinners and talks at the conference. And plenty of delicious food. Tokyo, like life in general, can be a frenzy of activity.
But by Sunday I was pretty tired. So I ended up sleeping in and relaxing. I spent the afternoon at one of my favorite Japanese tea places in the heart of Ginza called Jugetsudo. Enjoyed some delicious Hochi tea.
What made it special was the preparation. I was instructed to pour hot water into a special cup and let it sit for 2 minutes. Then you pour the water into a small tea pot and let it sit for a minute. You open to cover for 20 seconds and then you pour the tea into your cup to drink. A slow process. Took me a few tries to get it right.
Not only was it delicious but calming. The process allows you to slow down which goes against all my instincts, training and attitude living in tech land America. I feel like I need to be doing stuff all the time, keeping busy, meeting up with people. Exploring more of the city. Doing something for the sake of doing something. Lots of FOMO.
Yet a quiet tea is exactly what I needed to relax. To calm my monkey mind. Sitting there. Enjoying the tea and with nowhere to go and nothing to do except read. What a lovely afternoon.
This is a reminder to slow down every once in a while. To rest & reset. You slow down to move faster after.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Jan 11th, 2026
"If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: If we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome." — Anne Bradstreet
Discussion on the craft of venture capital, this was incredibly instructive. Well worth listening to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs7bhb3NEFc&t=3014s
2. "When you ask the question about the ROI on AI, it depends what you are doing with it. Some tasks are about 100% replaceable, others are 100% replaceable but with some human supervision, others are 60% replaceable, others 20% replaceable, and so on. For a long time coming, AI’s path through the economy will be “jagged.”
To answer the question about a bubble - on the tasks where AI is 100% ready or, will be 100% automated in the next 2-3 years, there is no bubble. On the tasks where it will take longer, yes there is a bubble as the near term and mid-term ROI isn’t there. As you look lower down the stack, this is why many investors are so excited about the component layers like chip manufacturing and networking.
Even if the current version of AI is slowing down as LLM progress seems to stall, there are technologies coming behind it. Some of them will provide new capabilities. Some will lower the costs of the existing capabilities to expand their use cases and TAM. And edge AI is coming and will suck up much of the capacity of the chip industry if data center slows."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/why-ai-is-and-also-isnt-a-bubble
3. "Looking back on the conference, I sensed energy and big opportunities for the future in a few places in particular:
-AI is reinventing financial services, in some cases from first principles.
-Stablecoins are becoming the Internet’s native settlement layer.
-Regulation and technology are fusing into programmable trust."
https://99tech.alexlazarow.com/p/the-next-fintech-wave-ai-stablecoins
4. Lots of scary thoughts: We are not ready for war in America yet. Plenty of work to be done.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ai50lRs-5bQ
5. This was a deep and thought provoking interview. Not just about investing, although there is a lot on this. Much of it is on finding your authentic self and doing what honors your authenticity in work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acwhhgGGdX8&t=4971s
6. "The divide between asset owners and everyone else is getting wider. Here we’ll highlight new data proving this out (opinions are worthless without data), explain why betting on ourself is the only logical conclusion in 2025 and how inflation is no longer becomes a concern as a business owner.
If you feel like the life path you were sold doesn’t work anymore… you’re right. It is a relic of the past. Much like headcount being a flex during the industrial revolution. The real flex is different in 2025. It is profit/person, ownership percent of a niche business and how much of your time is in your control.
If we know that compensation is increasing slower than productivity, who is getting the spread? The answer is owners, share holders, equity, insert any word for “asset holders”. As companies become more productive and labor becomes cheaper due to AI, robots etc. It means the owners of the assets (capital allocators) are the winners. Capital is beating labor by a wide margin."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/rich-and-poor-divide-acceleration
7. "The combination of rapid technological change with heavily-entrenched tactical systems makes modern warfare more uncertain than ever before. It is impossible to tell whether an existing comparative advantage will simply disappear: 2022 showed that masses of armor could no longer simply punch through a capable defense. Although Russia has had enough of a resource advantage to keep the war going, it has been unable to restructure its forces mid-war to effect a breakthrough—pushing the conflict into the realm of strategic attrition.
In general, the more entrenched a country’s tactics are—whether because of legacy equipment, limited industrial capacity, or cultural reasons—the harder it is to adapt. The natural response, then, is to look straight to those other levels and domains from the outset."
https://dispatch.bazaarofwar.com/p/entrenched-tactics-and-comparative
8. Global Macro and crypto. I find these conversations to be helpful to understand the future for your personal finance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMqLAaNaug4
9. Are we ready? It's about how quickly our military will adopt technology to new effective doctrine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5F6LWqkr-o&t=75s
10. "So I spent 30 days on the road to see what prosperity looks like up close. DC, Berkeley, Baltimore, New Hampshire, New York, two cities in Florida, then Prague and Kilkenny, Ireland. The same theme surfaced: people don’t feel the prosperity that’s supposedly surrounding them. They feel the physical friction.
What became clear almost immediately is that the prosperity is real, it’s just not showing up in the places people actually live. It exists in balance sheets, in stock portfolios, in data centers behind chain-link fences. But in daily life like in commutes, in childcare costs, in housing, in safety, in community, people are feeling decay. I kept running into the same contradiction: a wealthy country where everything visible seems to be slowly breaking while everything invisible keeps getting richer."
https://kyla.substack.com/p/30-days-9-cities-1-question-where
11. "In the end, this transformation redefined what society meant by “growth.” The prosperity of the industrialist had once rested on his capacity to make and sell useful goods; the prosperity of the financier now depended on movement within the realm of symbols—interest rates, valuations, derivatives, and expectations. The appearance of wealth became a substitute for wealth itself.
The change also altered the time horizon of enterprise. A factory demanded years of patient investment, but a financial product could be invented and sold within weeks. The long view of the builder yielded to the short view of the trader. Markets rewarded agility, not durability. The capacity to arbitrage, restructure, or re-package assets came to be regarded as a higher skill than the slow work of design and manufacture.
In this environment, the language of production gave way to that of returns. Efficiency was redefined as the reduction of costs rather than the creation of value. Whole industries were re-engineered for balance-sheet optimization rather than technological advance. A company could shrink its workforce, outsource its factories, and still be celebrated for “unlocking shareholder value.” The metric of success was no longer what was built or improved, but what the market capitalization reflected."
https://forumgeopolitica.com/article/the-illusion-of-progress
12. A great discussion on recent news for Vertical AI, Rare earths and China's economic challenges.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1pZWfvwU08
13. Lessons from 1929 and the AI-boom or bubble.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwY6F-oU2vc
14. The American chess game against Russia, I enjoyed this :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pZ3WAT-Pxs
15. "Much like other down days, we’ll still be around and crypto is not going to go anywhere. All our haters are stuck with us for another decade at minimum. The next generation needs a new system for wealth creation and outside of Crypto and Tech there isn’t much. You’re either utilizing both or you’re saving 5-10% a year in a seat where the CEO is trying to replace you with AI/software."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/surviving-the-next-12-months-in-the
16. The case for why stablecoins will enable US dollar hegemony. Very thought provoking. A must watch for those who want to understand how the world works.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUPF2SH8bNk
17. Global macro in the age of AI, Stablecoins and energy. The digital economy is here, growing in parallel with the real material economy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gK-TQoZqfQ
18. "From YC to bulge-bracket venture firms, the pursuit of scale has made slaves to incentives out of a broad swath of participants in tech. The fear of failure has further exacerbated that slavery. We allow our incentives to shape us because of fear. Fear of being poor, being stupid, or of simply being left behind. Fear of Missing Out.
That fear leads us down the path of normativity. We assimilate. We seek alikedness. We shave off the rough edges of our individuality until we are smoothed to the grooves of the path of least resistance. But the path of least resistance has no place for contrarian conviction. In fact, it has no place for beliefs of any kind, for fear that your beliefs will take you down paths that the consensus prefers not to go.
But there is a better way. In a world of normativity-seeking systems, anchor yourself in beliefs. Find things worth believing in. Even when they’re hard. Even when they’re unpopular. Find beliefs worth dying for. Or better yet, find beliefs worth living for.
Technology is a tool. Venture capital is a tool. YC is a tool. a16z is a tool. Attention is a tool. Anger is a tool. The good news is tools abound. But only you can be the craftsman."
https://investing101.substack.com/p/build-whats-fundable
19. "It’s a different category from those newly arrived Chinese immigrants here. The Chinese don’t do part-time jobs and so on. I would say it’s different categories. A lot of these newcomers choose Japan because Tokyo offers the best cost-effective quality of life. Inflation is mild here, and there’s this effect of the weakening Japanese yen. For them, many things are quite cheap.
Another key reason Japan is attractive to Chinese immigrants is that Japan has been relaxing its long-term visa over the past decade or so. Many recent Chinese immigrants had been to Japan as tourists in the 2010s, and then the Japanese government had been relaxing even long-term, residential-type visas. That’s why they could apply for those long-term visas and they could easily get one of those. It really makes a sharp contrast with many Western countries."
https://www.chinatalk.media/p/why-chinese-elite-run-to-japan
20. What a great book list on China, especially if you want to understand why modern China is the way it is.
https://cartographer.substack.com/p/five-books-on-china
21. Very timely discussion on AI Capex Boom and how to think about investing in it. You have to tie design to manufacturing ie. vertical integration, we are learning this the hard way in America.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDeyjGfzwQ8
22. Global macro: basically the case for why money printer is going to go brrrr......BTC, ZCash and ETH.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBXNsww78PM
23. The man is controversial but he is damn smart. This interview was incredibly insightful to understanding Elon, the talent machine he built, how to measure talent and learning from investing mistakes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62X1vm3QBuE
24. American sanctions finally being somewhat serious on Russia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auGBL3hhLCw
25. These men are true heroes. Foreign legion in Ukraine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIg77WIkV8Q
26. What are you doing to increase your chances of luck every day? How do you increase your pain tolerance?
A great deep dive in the art and science of investing and building. This is a masterclass.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_FilvFylNY&t=2429s
27. Capital controls coming to Western countries (my guess is it will be in Canada and European countries first). Word to the wise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTTcu57g_vU
28. "The goal is to maximize whatever potential you have. No one reading this is Elon. No one reading this should be below the median either. You’re looking to: 1) regain control of your time, 2) get there without giving up your entire young adult experiences, frugality fails this hurdle and 3) get to each decade with minimal to no regrets. No matter what you will miss opportunities and make mistakes but the regret part is the real tell (better or worse).
The people who end up in the top 1%? They are a combination of both the smartest and the most consistent (decent but not world class talent): 1) continuing to grind as people quit, 2) sticking to the same process in the mind numbing boring or painful times and 3) recognizing which stage in life they are in.
If you do a quick inventory of the people around you, its easy to see all the common pitfalls and how they drop out. Typically lifestyle creep, physical burnout and the most common: despair/weak mentally.
Knowing this, step 1 is optimizing your life for minimal attrition. Create a system that you’re *certain* will work over the long term. Don’t veer from it. Compounding is heavily overestimated in a single year, and drastically underestimated over 10 years."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/talent-isnt-your-problem-attrition
29. Talk about a revenge arc. Pretty amazing founder comeback story with Parker Conrad. Plenty of insights in building and running a high growth business.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yztV-sR4cU
30. Good takes here on geopolitics by old hand George Friedman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2baXVUppFw
31. "New York is uniquely suited for “tech-related” companies.
This city thrives on being an industry town. While DC is politics and LA is entertainment and SF is tech, NYC is…a dozen different industries. Being at the epicenter of your industry—where the best talent and customers are—is a huge advantage when building in applied AI."
https://www.digitalnative.tech/p/new-york-is-an-industry-town
32. The backstory of A16Z's American Dynamism Fund. Very timely.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sy8c30fdBQ8
33. "Inheritance does matter in that context, Kurtz argues, as there is no debate over whether there will be an economic elite—such is a fact of life—but rather over whether the elite is virtuous and focused on stewardship and higher ideals, or working some job that supports the lifestyle they grew up with, which primarily means banking or consulting.
All that is to say: a real upper class is a hugely pro-social force. A rapacious oligarchy is not. A miserly plutocracy is not. And a “professional” elite that’s always thinking about the next scheme or round of golf, rather than the next generation and a continued sense of tradition, certainly is not."
https://www.theamericantribune.news/p/how-to-build-a-dynasty-that-last
34. A wide ranging conversation and the case for American Dynamism and innovation. Also the stupidity of the 5 year plan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqYUH7r96i4
35. "There is Never a “Right Time”
You will NEVER have a clear period of weeks and months where you have no responsibilities and obligations and nothing else going on so you can “finally” dial in to the thing you want to do.
If you ask anyone who succeeds at getting what they want, they do it despite not having the right circumstances or go out of their way to create those circumstances for themselves."
https://lifemathmoney.com/the-time-is-never-right-you-have-to-make-your-own-opportunities/
36. "I’ll close with this thought: as countries continue to shift away from globalization, there is opportunity in building deeper, more consequential relationships between tech ecosystems. Founder-to-founder. Investor-to-investor. Ecosystem-to-ecosystem. The ecosystems that capitalize on these opportunities will be the ones that embrace the idea that economic prosperity >> egos.
And that magic happens at the intersection of humility and hubris."
https://chrisneumann.com/archives/humility-vs-hubris
37. Some Alt-geopolitics. Always food for thought on what's going on, even if I don't agree with most of these takes.
Teasing Master Tagaki-san: A Lifelong Love
Life can be heavy sometimes. It’s why you don’t always want to watch dramatic or sad movies. This was one of the reasons I ended up watching this Japanese movie “Teasing Master Takagi-san”, a lighthearted drama that continues from a well rated television series of the same name.
Nishitaka and Takagi were two middle school friends on a small Japanese island. Takagi leaves for Paris and exactly ten years later returns to the island as a teacher trainee at the same school they attended. One, where the very shy Nishitaka ends up being her supervisor.
They go back to the same teasing & fun relationship they had, even as adults. The way Takagi-san looks at awkward Nishitaka is beautiful. Realizing their childhood crush, The blooming romance. It was just cute and heartwarming. What happens when you know you have met the one. The one you are supposed to spend the rest of your life with. And the scenes & views of small town coastal Japan were magical to me.
Takes one back to anyone’s childhood. Looking back to mine, it helps me remember that it wasn’t all bad. The moments of silliness. Goofing around with friends. The childhood crushes & unrequited love. I realized now how easy and wonderful I had it in many ways then. The innocence. You are only ever that age once. I just wish I was more brave then.
“So if you meet someone special, tell them how you feel. No regrets.
First crushes don’t turn into real love. But the feeling of love makes your heart feel full. So even just the act of loving someone is a wonderful thing.”
Batman Begins: Every boy and Man’s Dream
I was a fan of most of the Batman franchise movies but still think the best one was the Christopher Nolan series starring Christian Bale. It really was perfect in my eyes.
It chronicles the journey of how a billionaire becomes a crime fighting superhero after suffering a tragedy in his youth, losing his parents in a robbery gone wrong. I grew up reading the comic books of Batman. Batman was the original Jason Bourne. He pretends to be an unserious billionaire bachelor by day and a crime fighter terrorizing criminals by night.
“The training is nothing. The will is everything. The will to act.”
Bruce Wayne is a normal man with brains and resources but through tremendous discipline he travels the world and learns fighting skills to enable his mission of cleaning up Gotham City.
On his journey to gather skills he eventually joins with an assassin guild, the League of Shadows.
His mentor there tells him:
“I know the rage that drives you. Like you I was forced to learn there are those without decency, who must be fought without hesitation, without pity. That anger gives you great power, but if you let it, it will destroy you.”
What I learned in myself is that fear is a driver of anger.
“You travelled the world to learn the mind of a criminal and conquer your fears. But a criminal is not complicated. What you really fear is inside yourself. You fear your own power, fear your anger and the drive to do great & terrible things. Now you must journey inwards. Breathe. Breathe in your fears. Face them. To conquer fear, you must become fear. Embrace your worst fears.”
I’ve always been driven by fear. Fear of poverty, of not being respected, of not belonging. All of us have some fear that drives us and debilitates us subsconsciously. And most of us don’t understand this, let alone face it. “This is a world you don’t understand. And you always fear what you don’t understand.”
We have our external journeys, chasing wealth, love, health and fitness. I certainly have. Yet all of our journeys end up focusing inwards eventually. No matter how successful we become for some reason I see us do stupid things, almost like self sabotage. It’s like we have a self destructive instinct. Not exploring, not knowing ourselves and our shadows are the seeds of our eventual ruin.
“Why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves back up.”
But like Bruce Wayne, if you face it, you might have a chance. “People need dramatic examples to shake them out of their apathy….l’m using this monster inside to help others.”
“If you make yourself more than just a man, if you devote yourself to an ideal. And if they can’t stop you, you become something else entirely. A legend.”
So for all the guys out there, maybe be more courageous and take action. “It’s not what you are underneath, it’s what you do that defines you…..We can bring Gotham back!”
Sun, Sand and Grounding: It’s the Small Things
It’s Sept 2025 in Batumi, Georgia. I came for the final GITA (Georgian Innovation Technology Agency) Grants program and I’m stressed. Home is a mess, some financial payments did not show up on time and I’m in the middle of several big business initiatives besides all the IC stuff I need to do here. Jet lagged to boot. To say I was a mess was an understatement.
Yet I’m at the Paragraph Hotel which is one of the nicest places I’ve ever been. With views of the sea that are unparalleled. A pool that juts into the Black Sea & beautiful black sand beaches renowned for their healing effect.
So instead of locking myself in the room to work. I took a small break. Hit the gym and some weights. Got some sun. I walked the hot black sand beach to get some grounding and dipped in the Black Sea and the amazing pool. I breathed and everything just seemed clearer and brighter. I just felt better. Things seemed lighter.
So whenever you are feeling stressed and down. Take a small break and get into nature. Even if it’s just for an hour. Breathe a bit and things will be alright. Step back to go forward.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Jan 4th, 2026
"Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right" –Oprah Winfrey
A real American immigrant story. A Navy SEAL turned Defense-tech founder. Learned a lot here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8DjGa16PQM&t=2889s
2. "Read that again. The Netherlands seized a company. China responded by requiring RMB settlement and making European customers negotiate directly with Chinese entities while accepting they’ll get chips only after Chinese domestic demand is satisfied.
This isn’t just retaliation. This is weaponized supply chains advancing RMB internationalization while teaching Europe exactly where they sit in the global manufacturing hierarchy. The Dutch played stupid games with geopolitical theater. Europe’s automotive industry gets to win stupid prizes.
The sanctions boomerang isn’t coming back—it’s already embedded in Europe’s skull. The question isn’t whether it hits. It’s how many more times Western policymakers need to get smacked before they understand that leverage only works when you control what matters. The Dutch controlled a corporate entity. China controls the chips, controls the production, and now controls the currency those chips trade in.
That’s what leverage actually looks like."
https://no01.substack.com/p/play-stupid-games-win-stupid-prices
3. Impressive folks here. Hard tech renaissance and atoms over bits. We need to Million X the El Segundo movement in America. Mission and satisfaction.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ1kHP_TRF0
4. "Even if you are a government, there are only two ways to pay for stuff, using savings or debt. For a government, savings equates to taxes. Taxes are not very popular, but spending is. Therefore, when handing out goodies to the plebes and patricians, politicians prefer to issue debt. Politicians will always favor borrowing from the future to get re-elected in the present, because when the bill comes due, they won’t be in office.
If all governments, because of the incentives of its officers, are hard wired to prefer issuing debt rather than raising taxes to hand out goodies, then the next question is how do buyers of government debt fund these purchases? Do they spend their savings/equity or finance purchases by borrowing money?"
https://cryptohayes.substack.com/p/hallelujah
5. "What If I started late?” You get to work harder and longer. That’s how life works. You can turn around your life at any time. Expecting to magically skip steps doesn’t exist though.
“Kids?” You cannot blame them for your failures. You brought them into the world not the other way around. Also causing psychological trauma to someone decades younger than you. Weak.
“I’m Not Risk Taking.” Cool. It is more dangerous to rely just on your W-2. The days of being at one company forever are gone. Only works at 5-10 companies on the planet. If you work at those 5-10 you already know it.
“I Don’t Have Time”: Utter nonsense. Coinbase was started on off hours after work. Go look it up. You can start a e-com business from your smartphone at this point if you’re talented. What you’re really saying is you lack priorities. Or you don’t care. Neither answer is good."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/no-non-sense-age-by-age-making-it
6. Caught up with this last week's best VC conversation on Silicon Valley online now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PNd9qV5FzA&t=2058s
7. Live Like a King in Buenos Aires. One of my favorite cities in the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DfKLar4zCw
8. "We in the west used to play dirty – and during the cold war, we were good at it. Nowadays, we leave grey-zone tactics and hybrid warfare to Russia, which is winning the disinformation war. Europe’s pride in playing by the rules might just be democracy’s achilles heel."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/nov/04/west-moscow-berlin-airlift-cold-war-civilians
9. A spicy episode this week, but it's always educational and plenty of excellent takes on recent big tech news.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MftJZXDzPpw&t=1133s
10. Lots of interesting perspectives on Silicon Valley news. Etiquette is back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zv4VdtKpQQk
11. What a fascinating conversation about the new form of PE. Bending Spoons, buying digital businesses and owning them forever.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLSXhmRHpFU
12. The geopolitical view of Asia Pacific & the critical importance of Australia and Japan and Taiwan for America.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RxBUpHqnME&t=1s
13. "Why is NYC a great place to invest in and build companies? As I reflect on my own experiences with NYC companies, the through-line is their focus on the fundamentals. These companies aren’t (or weren’t, in the case of the ones that have exited) exciting because of hype driven by media or by massive fundraising rounds. They worked, or are working, because they look like great businesses. The teams are executing such that the P&L tells the story.
I do believe that San Francisco and Silicon Valley continue to have the highest concentration of the most ambitious founders, and likely always will. But NYC has plenty of founders with world class ambition, and most let their businesses speak for themselves, which feels different from a lot of what we see in SF.
Perhaps one of the keys is that NYC has many people, not just startup founders with world class ambition — arguably the highest concentration of any city anywhere. You may be a great founder, but you’re around great artists, bankers, chefs, lawyers, and more. When everyone around you is reaching for the top, it can’t help but raise the collective ceiling. Everyone honing their craft, finding their footwork in every field, in the city that never sleeps. Just as in San Francisco, I don’t believe elections affect this spirit; there’ll be ups and downs but NYC will always attract many of the best."
https://nbt.substack.com/p/nyc
14. "I was already a published author; a content manager for two companies, one for a big Series D fintech startup in New York City; I’d worked in broadcast journalism; I had a 7-year career in financial services.
I took those skills and created a profitable business doing what I knew and felt the market needed: someone to take complex financial content and turn it into stuff that everyone could understand and want to read.
Which brings me to today, where I have the absolute, luxurious privilege of picking what I do and who I work with to make money on my terms.
The de rigueur term is “portfolio career,” where you generate income by wearing different hats, similar to how a portfolio showcases an artist’s many mediums, or the components inside an investor’s portfolio (stocks, bonds, alternatives)."
https://shindy.substack.com/p/rituals-portfolio-career
15. "If your goal is a great lifestyle, there are countless opportunities to build a business that supports that. If your goal is to create something transformative with a major impact on your city or industry, the idea needs to be correspondingly more ambitious and scalable.
The best part is that none of this is fixed. Some entrepreneurs start with an idea that grows far beyond anything they could have imagined, and that’s the beauty of putting yourself in the arena."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/11/08/align-ambition-with-startup-idea/
16. "Post–high school, the social contract that binds America — work hard, play by the rules, and you’ll be better off than your parents were — has been severed. Seventy-year-old Americans today are, on average, 72% wealthier than they were forty years ago.
People under the age of forty are 24% less wealthy. The deliberate transfer of wealth from the young to the old in the United States over the past century has led to unaffordable and indefensible costs for education and housing and skyrocketing student debt, all of which directly affect young men. It’s why twenty-five-year-olds today make less than their parents and grandparents did at the same age, while carrying debt loads unimaginable to earlier generations.
Neither the minimum nor the median wage has kept pace with inflation or productivity gains, while housing costs have outpaced both. As the costs of college have soared beyond the reach of most families, many of the manufacturing jobs that didn’t require a college degree and were often a ticket to the middle class for (mostly) men have been offshored. A prohibitive real estate market is a contributing factor to why 60% of young men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four live with their parents and 1 in 5 still live with their parents at age thirty.
Stuck and unable to afford greater economic opportunities in nearby cities, they find the same crush and collision of density, stimulation, humanity, creativity, eroticism, and conversation that urban areas offer on their phones instead. In Manhattan, a four-hundred-square-foot apartment costs $3,000 a month. In its stead is a seventeen-square-inch mobile studio apartment costing roughly $42 a month, served up by AT&T, T- Mobile, or Verizon."
https://www.profgalloway.com/notes-on-being-a-man/
17. Michael Every: Geoeconomics and some important terms: what is GDP for and the rise of Neo-Mercantilism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOF59C62G9Q
18. This is a great primer to understand stablecoins and how this is becoming the money rails of the world. Important to watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FsGlsfIIkc
19. Understand your enemies. A detailed discussion on Russia and China's "complicated" historical relationship.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RH_ycZYH8-s
20. Excellent episode from NIA. Some good takes on the latest news and topics on the internet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DdJjs_WtIM
21. A strong case being made here that we are NOT in an AI bubble right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ze3ZNvOdRY
22. Doomberg living up to his name. Energy is life & there are huge implications of this for the EU, USA & the world at large. Don't always agree with all the takes but worth listening to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTBFzJDiWsc&t=3176s
23. An insight dense conversation on AI and its impact on the labor market and economy at large. Build your network, stack assets, learn tech & AI agents, build a personal brand and become your own business ie. portfolio career.
Economic singularity coming.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aonr8aJfKb8&t=5s
24. Update take on what's happening in Ukraine right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucuMc4nxlto
25. Always insightful and fun to listen to Alex Karp of Palantir.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RG9fdLzxTaw
26. I am always happy listening to this. Even though I haven't done any B2B startups investments since Q2 2024, I still learn tons from this conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Euj5TAon_Q0&t=292s
27. "Confidence can belong to everyone who chooses to build it. It grows when we are disciplined and when we keep showing up. As we do so, we will build our skills and abilities. As our confidence grows, it will be manifested in our actions. A confident person will speak clearly, stand tall, and believe in themselves.
Whether you’re a man or a woman, confidence is not found in approval from others. Rather, it is found in the personal conviction that who you are is enough, and you are working hard to be even better."
https://thewaysofagentleman.substack.com/p/the-quiet-power-of-confidence
28. “Europe speaks the language of progress but thinks in the language of comfort,” Krotevych writes.
Every buzzword—”game-changer,” “AI,” “drone revolution”—creates an opiate sense of control, replacing actual preparation for war."
https://underfirenews.substack.com/p/the-drone-wall-is-a-european-myth
29. "The secretary announced two changes that address this imperative. The first is the creation of “Portfolio Acquisition Executives,” or PAEs, who “will be the single accountable official for portfolio outcomes, and will have the authority to act without running through months or even years of approval chains.” The Pentagon is putting the pebble in the right shoe, ensuring that authority and accountability for program success flow to a single person with a face and a nameplate on the door.
The second is the creation of “four-year minimum terms with two year extensions” for key program and portfolio leaders, with “incentives to competition, capability delivery time, and mission outcomes.” No more two-years-and-out. No more musical chairs. Leaders should stay with a program long enough for their career—and yes, their reputation—to be linked to the success or failure of that program.
Secretary Hegseth’s speech was a battle cry for the heretical heroes in defense."
https://www.firstbreakfast.com/p/war-footing
30. "Being right in isolation, insofar as it ever was actually true, is a dead strategy. If you have an insight but cannot coordinate follow-on capital, you lose. If the state floods your sector with subsidies favouring different players, you lose. If megafunds deploy $500 million rounds and dilute your position to irrelevance, you lose. The era of the lone wolf VC who finds the overlooked founder and waits for the world to catch up has largely passed.
Success today is all about coordination. Sam raised $6.6 billion for OpenAI by assembling Microsoft, SoftBank, Nvidia, and a consortium of megafunds. Elon built SpaceX and Tesla by coordinating NASA contracts, state subsidies, and public market capital and crypto manipulation. Jensen turned Nvidia into a 5+ trillion-dollar company by becoming the essential supplier to every AI lab and every hyperscaler simultaneously. These are the new industrialists. Like Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Morgan before them, they understand that controlling capital flows matters as much as controlling production. They coordinate capital across institutions and align coalitions around a shared vision. Financing is the key to success.
Questions.
Can you and your founders access megafunds that write $100 million checks?
Can you coordinate with corporate strategics who bring procurement and distribution?
Can you navigate policy and plug into subsidy regimes?
Can you build relationships with sovereign funds that provide patient capital at scale?
If not, you are operating in a different game than the one being played at the frontier.
The best founder today assembles coalitions of capital across VCs, corporates, and government, then aligns them around a shared vision.
The best VC today is not the one who sees the future first. Or writes the best blog. It is the one who convenes the consortium that funds it. The future that is, not the blog."
https://stateofthefuture.substack.com/p/consensus-capital
31. "Most people are used to simpler forms of investing, such as using a Robinhood account to buy a share of Google. Angel investing is a hundred times harder to do well, and those willing to put in the effort will do much better."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/11/15/where-to-start-evaluating-an-angel-investment/
32. "Men are builders. Creators. We’re designed to impose our will on the world through action—not sit at home watching other men talk about being hard.
Watching Goggins scream about staying hard doesn’t make you hard. Reading about manifestation doesn’t manifest results. Listening to a podcast about discipline doesn’t create discipline.
Action does.
Aggressive, relentless, systematic action applied until your mind rewires itself for success."
https://www.lethalgentleman.com/p/how-to-build-a-lethal-mindset
33. "These past couple of years have taught me a lot about how to build a life outside a high tax country and I want to lay out what I think is the best way to go about it all. If you’re sitting in Australia or any Western country feeling squeezed by taxes, cost of living, and that growing sense that the harder you work and the more successful you become, the more headwind you cop.
South America is the answer to start building something freer, and, quite frankly, a lot more fun, in 2026 (although it’s certainly not for everyone)."
https://www.geologotrader.com/p/how-to-become-a-sovereign-individual
34. "These negative shocks would be brutal for any country. But for China, which has known nothing but skyrocketing living standards for over three decades, it’s especially galling to be suddenly thrust into a world where you have to run flat-out just to stay in place.
Ten years ago, Chinese people worked hard because they knew that tomorrow would be much better than today; now, they work hard because they know that if they don’t, tomorrow will be much worse than today. Their dream has suddenly flipped from aspiration to survival."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/chinas-people-are-on-a-treadmill
35. "National service benefits everyone who serves, but the benefits are likely more profound for boys — a cohort that’s fallen farther and faster than any other group in recent memory. For boys, physical development progresses more rapidly than intellectual or emotional maturity. My friend Richard Reeves has argued in favor of “red-shirting” boys, just as we hold back college athletes for a year so they can develop further on the field. A structured period of one or two years after high school would give boys the opportunity to mature without the pressures of college or a career. It would also give some a second chance.
Former IDF boss General Aviv Kochavi called national service a “societal take two” for young Israelis. “It doesn’t matter where you came from or what your background is,” he wrote. “A mediocre pupil or youth with a criminal past who dropped out of school can leave the past behind and become an outstanding leader.” We should give the same opportunity to every young person in America.
If we want our youth to feel invested in their country, then America needs to invest in its youth."
https://www.profgalloway.com/national-service/
36. "Switching between tools incurs costs. The tools, the workflow, the prompts that I’ve optimized for Claude code must all be ported (at my expense!) to other tools.
As the capabilities of these models begin to plateau, the costs to shift increase."