Finding the Future: The Practitioner Preacher
Another day, another new mind-bending event in technology, geopolitics, or straight up grift. I really believe we are in the Polycrisis of the West. The steady anchor of a trust filled society quickly degrades, beset by enemies outside taking advantage of the chaos inside our society. Everything we believed in before, whether companies, institutions or our elites have turned out to be false. As our grifter in chief Trump coined, everything is “Fake news” and no one has a shared narrative or belief anymore. There is no national consensus and America right now feels like one giant smash and grab.
Man, I really miss the America of the 1990s and even 2000s. 9/11 was horrendous but boy did it bring this country together. Considering how fractured America is today, not sure this unity would happen if we faced another attack or crisis like this again.
But as I learned the hard way, insanity is focusing on things you can’t control. To get through this polycrisis, you focus on what you can control. You rethink, you reframe and you adapt to the new situation. Us humans are made for chaos. We are built for it. All it requires is the right mindset and the ability to take pain. Pain tolerance is your moat. But most importantly, it's also who you follow, who you choose as your teacher and guide.
I read something that Radigan Carter wrote which really made sense to me, when discussing his mission.
“To be a trusted narrator who takes his own risks first and is always for individuals as we all navigate these times of geopolitical power shifts and institutions pursuing their own power. Like Thucydides, my purpose is to do, seek understanding, and tell the truth with clarity.
This letter is a revolt against abstraction, a return to the grounded, the tested, as titan states once again face off against each other and we all feel the weight of uncertainty.”
What Radigan talks about is being the Practitioner Preacher. In a trustless world of useless academics, grifters and social media influencers, we all need honest guides. As they say on Wall Street, “don’t tell me what you think, show me your book”.....ie. your investments and how you are positioned for this. Did you put money where your mouth is? Basically do you have skin in the game?
I’ve realized no man is an island and you can’t do everything yourself.Trust me, I’ve really tried. You can always use a guide in these tumultuous times. Use your own best judgement of course.
But it is a great idea to follow the practitioner-preacher.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads March 22nd, 2026
“An optimist is the human personification of spring." – Susan J. Bissonette
Peter Zeihan's recent takes on world events.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg1hSqAohHw
2. AI and Physical AI: Discussion of the future with the head of Mckinsey & General Catalyst VC.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8cXD5hTt3c
3. The basics of investing in deep-tech.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntGJhKKtZns
4. "Operation Absolute Resolve serves as a very loose proof-of-concept for this, showing how it is possible to employ large numbers of drones in close coordination with a few helicopters embedded in a much larger air campaign, with all the deconfliction headaches that entails. Employing hard-kill systems so close to rotary-wing platforms introduces yet another degree of technical complexity amidst even more congested airspace. Yet all the elements are there, and it may show a way forward."
https://dispatch.bazaarofwar.com/p/looking-for-lessons-in-venezuela
5. "Future great-power conflict victory will more likely resemble World War I than World War II. It is entirely conceivable that within the first weeks of fighting, inventories on all sides are rapidly depleted, followed by a prolonged “phony war” while stocks are replenished. In such a scenario, victory does not hinge on battlefield brilliance alone, but on which side can replenish its inventory fastest and achieve sustainable cost dominance.
The war in Ukraine has already exposed a critical weakness: the U.S. defense industrial base cannot scale production quickly, even when operating in peacetime conditions. To future-proof American military dominance, the United States must focus not only on system performance, but on how those systems are manufactured. Systems need to be manufactured using mass manufacturing techniques vs methods economical for low/medium volume. Just as importantly, the Department of War must begin running manufacturing-scale military exercises to ensure industrial responsiveness in wartime.
We need to prepare for a war of inventory."
https://marlinspike.substack.com/p/war-of-inventory
6. Such a great discussion on what is happening in AI and Silicon Valley and the nuances of Venture capital. A must watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXLJk-SyGfA
7. Educational episode to what is up in Silicon Valley. It helps me keep up and learn the zeitgeist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q99bDO-a1E
8. Man, an American gem. I always learn new stuff and get inspired by listening to Palmer Luckey.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dejWbn_-gUQ
9. Trying to understand the Donroe Doctrine and implications for Latin America.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08w8SeNwkNA
10. "The world wants you to be “transparent” so it can sell to you more easily. Resist. True power is found in the shadows. Build a life so good that you don’t feel the need to prove it to a single soul on the internet. Silence is not just golden; it is a fortress."
https://substack.com/inbox/post/184748132
11. "Since February 24, 2022, Russia has been fighting on two fronts.
One is kinetic und disastrous: tanks, missiles, drones, trenches, and attrition.
The other is non-kinetic—and aimed squarely at the European security architecture.
Energy blackmail. Food and fertilizer pressure. Migration instrumentalization. Hybrid warfare, including sabotage operations across European territory. Persistent nuclear coercion, designed not to be used but to paralyze.
This is not escalation by accident.
It is escalation by design.
And yet, Europe has largely refused to act as a continent under attack.
Why?
Because denial is more comfortable than mobilization.
Because moral rhetoric has replaced realpolitik analysis.
Because institutions built for crisis management during peace time were never designed for systemic confrontation.
Europe mistook restraint for virtue, and inertia for stability."
https://substack.com/inbox/post/184785433
12. "That’s why many performance metrics are leading indicators. They don’t correlate to DPI perfectly, and sometimes conflate success with noise. For example:
Fast mark-ups, which show genuine fundraising momentum, which is often associated with underlying revenue traction. But more rounds also means more dilution, and thus return compression.
Winning access or allocation into rounds is a proxy for competitive position in the moment. But if funds are winning access to hot rounds, the upside is often at least partially baked in with higher prices, which lowers the potential for multiples (just look at your favorite 100x revenue AI deal!)
Reputation and brand, which shape future access and founder perception. But if the reputation is relevant to the wrong audience, then it won’t drive returns, and worse divert fund resources and attention.
Return proxies matter, but they are not the same thing as performance. Many venture debates are really arguments about such proxies, not outcomes."
https://99tech.alexlazarow.com/p/the-future-of-venture-capital-strategies
13. "Young men themselves are part of the solution. Women aren’t to blame for their relationship woes, just as immigrants aren’t responsible for America’s economic problems. Men need to seize the opportunity to become better, and we need to provide an off-ramp for red-pilled men who believe the mating market is rigged against them, helping to prevent their descent into bitterness and potential extremism.
Many young men struggle with mental health — understandable given the challenges they face. But here’s a truth the manosphere won’t tell you: In the end, meaningful relationships are the only things that matter. If you’re alone and resigned to being nutrition for Big Tech, you need to reset and commit to becoming voluntarily incelibate. If you sequester from other mammals, the anxiety and depression you’ll ultimately feel will dwarf any terror about disappointment that exists in the outside world — isolation is the only danger that compounds."
https://www.profgalloway.com/the-vcel-movement/
14. This event looks awesome. Anti-Fund Summit. Where was my invite??
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIH2C-dLLUc
15. "Entrepreneurs would do well to think intentionally about the journey from 10/90 to 90/10 and to develop the discipline and prioritization needed to spend the majority of their time on the areas where they are most uniquely skilled and suited. The path from 10/90 to 90/10 is often bumpy, but the entrepreneurs who grow and develop faster than their startups ultimately achieve the greatest success."
https://davidcummings.org/2026/01/17/90-10-or-10-90-entrepreneur/
16. "The world is getting louder and faster. The only way to win is to get quieter and slower. Your “Buffer” is your moat. If you can stay calm while everyone else is losing their minds, you don’t just win the game you own the board.
Takeaway:
The next time you feel the “urge” to respond to a stressful input, wait 4 hours. Observe the impulse, then let it die."
https://substack.com/inbox/post/184802092
17. "Now more than ever, I believe we could all use a little beauty each day. Goethe understood something we often forget. What we regularly take in or view becomes part of us. We are shaped not only by what we do, but by what we contemplate. Sadly, beauty is no longer treated as a necessity in today’s world. In many places, it is dismissed as trivial, or worse, replaced with what is coarse or seems to be intentionally ugly. We do not have to accept that. We still have agency over what we allow to form us and what we take in each day."
https://thewaysofagentleman.substack.com/p/beauty-refreshes-the-soul-art-poetry
18. A Drone battle Super Bowl. This was a fun discussion with Olaf from Neros.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHelpDoyF40
19. How to scale a Venture capital firm. A16Z. A platform with many focussed funds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kdql4I-NJ0M
20. NIA: the nature of work in the age of AI + Central Bank Stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I24Yfhm8tm4
21. "Dan Robinson calls this the “nocturnal phase.” Ship features during the day, agents clean up overnight. But night is just the obvious gap. Everything CAN run in parallel while you’re somewhere else.
Managing agents feels exactly like managing a team. Set direction, spin up work streams, check outputs, adjust course. A decade of product management trained me for this without knowing it. Constantly thinking of new ideas. Building articulate plans. Rapid context switching. Good sense of outcomes. Talking to customers.
Great builders were always hamstrung by the pace of development. Not anymore.
The difference is I couldn’t run six projects simultaneously when I managed people. Now I can.
We work ~eight hours. Sleep eight. Sixteen hours every day where we don’t exist professionally. AI works those sixteen. Handles parallel tasks while you focus. Learns overnight while you rest."
https://writing.nikunjk.com/p/time-expansion-348
22. "The final distinction between big swings and fast swings, and king-making is permissionless vs. permissioned entrepreneurship. Big swings and fast swings are both permissionless paths to conviction. One through vision, one through learning. King making is permission-based; it only works on the basis of elite buy-in/consensus.
So “calling capital” and becoming a hypercapitalized club deal isn’t wrong per se. It’s just that it needs to come after you (the founder) already developed internal conviction and the vision to go put beaucoup bucks to use uniquely and productively. Once you’ve developed that on your own/without permission, getting into the club can transform you into a substantive, obvious winner. This is fundamentally the process of producing legibility and narrative momentum."
https://99d.substack.com/p/call-your-customer-call-your-shot
23. "It’s possible to spin all sorts of ad hoc hypotheses about why consumer sentiment has diverged from its traditional determinants. Perhaps Americans are upset about social issues and politics, and expressing this as dissatisfaction about the economy. Perhaps they’re mad that Trump seems to be trying to hurt the economy. Perhaps they’re scared that AI will take their jobs. And so on.
Here’s another hypothesis: Maybe Americans are down in the dumps because their perception of the “good life” is being warped by TikTok and Instagram.
I’ve been reading for many years about how social media would make Americans unhappier by prompting them to engage in more frequent social comparisons. In the 2010s, as happiness plummeted among young people, the standard story was that Facebook and Instagram were shoving our friends’ happiest moments in our faces — their smiling babies, their beautiful weddings, their exciting vacations — and instilling a sense of envy and inadequacy.
In fact, plenty of careful research found that using Facebook and Instagram made people at least temporarily unhappier, and there’s some evidence that social comparisons were the reason."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/trapped-in-the-hell-of-social-comparison
24. The case for why De-treasurization & De-Dollarization is happening.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYnFjWCZcV8
25. This is a must watch: Geo-economics. Helps you understand what is going on in the world right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=re5Ys6NYQKo
26. "Most people confuse “Expensive” with “High Value.” They buy what is trendy, loud, and recognizable. This is a low-status signal. It screams: “I want you to know I have money.” True elites use Quiet Luxury and obscure references as a coded language. If your status is easily recognizable by the masses, you aren’t exclusive; you are a target.
Good taste is the only fence that doesn’t require a security guard."
https://substack.com/inbox/post/184989545
27. "In one week we witnessed the ever further erosion of morality and human decency to score some short term gains. Carney will never talk about freedom or human rights in relation to China, but he’s got some deals in his hand to prop up his position domestically. Trump steamrolls Greenland and is willing to lose relationships and allies that were the backbone of what once was a stable western democratic alliance. And finally the consensus appears to be that the ongoing slaughter of Iran’s finest is secondary to temporary regional stability.
That is your ‘new global order’. Transactional, vacuous and creating ever more uncertainty."
https://pieterdorsman.substack.com/p/a-new-world-order
28. "A returning to an old capital serves as a psychological, historical, and cultural anchor. Erecting a new order in old capitals lets a new government get the legacy and legitimacy from the old order.
Even in the event of a regime change or a new state, it’s very likely the successor (especially if they’re weak or unstable) will build its new capital on the rubble of the old one.
A new regime lacks the weight" of centuries. They use the physical landmarks of a previous state to give legitimacy to their new one.
Legitimacy rests on the habit of obedience. Moving a capital disrupts the collective gaze of the population. People are conditioned by cultural habit to look for power in the same geographical place as old ones.
Established capitals possess a centralization of elite labor and investment that exists independently of the government. Stealing or co-opting is politically more efficient."
https://pplsartofwar.substack.com/p/why-new-orders-likes-old-capitals
29. "There’s a silent crisis brewing in semiconductor physics, and almost nobody is talking about it. While the industry celebrates the march to 2nm logic—and the AI capabilities it promises—the memory that actually feeds these processors is stuck in the past. This matters most at the edge: the phones, wearables, sensors, and embedded devices where latency, privacy, and power efficiency aren’t nice-to-haves but existential requirements.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: the stagnation of SRAM scaling is creating a “density wall” that threatens to stall the evolution of on-device AI entirely. And solving it will force a radical rethink of both hardware architecture and model optimization."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/how-to-invest-in-edge-ai-part-1-the
30. Ukrainian SOF is top tier & scary proficient.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgdR6BzP7PE
31. "There is a direct, causal relationship between the ever-increasing difficulty of achieving thermal comfort in Britain and the unpopularity of its current ruling class, currently embodied by the much-maligned and politically tone-deaf Sir Keir Starmer.
This analysis at the individual and dwelling levels also integrates up to society as a whole, where it quickly becomes clear why the pursuit of developable energy resources is a core strategic imperative for nation-states. Countries blessed with abundant energy assets and the technical capacity to both extract them and defend them from invasion tend to flourish, while those lacking either are easily conquered or gradually fade from prominence. Every war ever fought was, at its core, an energy war—whether the participants realized it or not."
https://newsletter.doomberg.com/p/cold-truths
32. "For upside to re-accelerate, the market’s constraints need to shift. ETF eligibility, funding costs and regulatory clarity are the levers that matter. When they move, capital follows.
Investors who outperform in 2026 will be the ones who understand where capital can flow and what needs to change for it to flow elsewhere. Investors waiting for the next cycle opportunity will be waiting a long time.
Crypto is more institutional, more disciplined and better capitalized than it’s ever been. The next rally will be quieter and more selective. But for those paying attention to the right signals and structure, it will be just as rewarding."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/why-the-next-crypto-rally-will-look
33. "There is great power in belief. It lends a heavy hand to the survival instinct and allows man to go beyond mere survival. It gives man the opportunity to leave his mark on the world. It allowed our ancestors to carve out an empire out of the new world from nothing. You are not going into space without it. Now, this isn’t throwing my hat in with one religion or another, but as Pindar said, “custom is the lord of everything.” There is an American metaphysics and Americans are most adapted to it and it will remain ingrained into our very cores until something superior takes its place.
The bare minimum a man must have is this belief, and despite everything, optimism over cynicism. No doubt this is the most challenging obstacle in our path because belief is being stomped out of everything with a merciless fury by the enemies of mankind. Without it, there is no hope. The great beyond is a frontier like no other. The ultimate frontier. It is damn near impossible to comprehend what it will take for man to separate himself from the earth. There is a secret fear we must consider if we want to attempt this legendary feat."
https://resavager.com/p/the-ultimate-frontier-and-the-american
34. "Today’s AI wave is riding the same mesa. The correlation remains above historical levels. The rapid pace of deal-making & explosive rates of inference growth suggest this roller coaster ride will continue."
https://tomtunguz.com/nvidia-pe-predicts-growth/
35. "You may not have children of your own, but you are no less influential. Every time you speak in public, comment online, hold a door, lose your temper, or extend kindness to someone, you are being observed by young people you may never meet. The cynic will scoff at this and insist that no one owes anyone anything, that in a free society, people are free to live however they please.
That is true, in a narrow sense. However, if we wish to live in a society marked by decency and mutual respect, then we must be willing to model those qualities ourselves. Cultures do not improve by accident; they improve by example."
https://thewaysofagentleman.substack.com/p/our-duty-to-the-next-generation
36. "Perhaps in a rich country like America, where the pie grows only slowly and there are lots of opportunities for redistribution, it’s natural for people on both the right and the left to start thinking of the world as a lump of “resources” to be divvied up. But in reality, it’s production that maintains our high standard of living, and which creates the wealth necessary for redistribution to occur. A dangerously large number of Americans seem to have forgotten that."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/zero-sum-economics-keeps-failing
37. Agree with this take. Not sure why we are trying to take Greenland this way.
The Pain of Discipline: Be Hard On Yourself
I had a very chill winter break at the end of 2025. It was good. But I fell behind on my regular work outs. Bailing out at the last minute a few days in a row. It was terrible and I felt terrible physically. But I felt extra terrible emotionally. I pride myself on my discipline, doing things that are good for me but don’t always enjoy. Going to the gym is one of these things.
I am not naturally disciplined like my daughter, who is incredible at this, especially as a teen. Perhaps it’s from her Jr ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corp) or her competitive hip hop dance team. However early the competition, however early the training (sometimes 7 am) she is up early and ready. I really need to learn from her.
So of course I spent most of that week beating on myself.I know they say don’t beat yourself up when you mess up, screw something up or don’t do something you know you should do. But you can’t help it. Especially for Type A individuals like myself, it’s like having an internal Tiger mom yelling in your ear for hours when it happens. It was bad enough having one in real life. I must have internalized much of this. If folks heard any of this internal monologue it would be deemed as “child abuse” these days.
But I think this is the only way anything gets done. Anything really hard to do. Your inner demons and traumas are actually being used positively in this case. Pain always leads to growth. My regular cycle: when you mess up, you beat on yourself internally, be brutal on yourself, learn and fix it and move forward. It’s not pleasant but it works.
I’d argue the issue with most young and old men these days is that they are NOT hard enough on themselves. It’s like they live a life full of excuses. Out of shape, unhealthy, unhappy and unfulfilled. At least try and put some effort into your life. Nothing is supposed to be easy or given to you. Definitely won’t be in the near future either.
As the great Confucius said: "When you are strict with yourself but lenient toward others, you will keep resentment far away."
Being hard on yourself, this is the only thing you can control. Don’t expect anything from anyone else. Total personal ownership. This is the way.
Staying Alive: Societal Lessons from the Late Bronze Age Collapse
It took me a while to really process the “1177” and “After 1177” books detailing the collapse of the Late Bronze Age as mentioned in a previous post. Also seemed really timely if you live in the political Western world. Basically these books talked about the brutal transition of the mediterranean world from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age and how some societies adapted and did well, while others disappeared completely.
The book listed out some key lessons and I list them here.
Have multiple contingency plans in place and redundant systems to fall back on if your primary ones fail
Be resilient enough to withstand whatever blows may come and strong enough to withstand any enemy invasion or attacks
Be as self-sufficient as possible, but do call on friends for assistance when needed
Be innovative and inventive, ready to turn nimbly and adapt or transform, rather than simply cope
Prepare for extreme weather conditions: if they come, you will be ready; if they don’t, it won’t matter
Be sure to have dependable water resources
Keep the working class happy
Damn. These seem super relevant. For countries at large and for your individuals and their families. Worth thinking about and lessons well worth heeding right now.
“The main takeaway from all of this is that clearly such a collapse is survivable, provided that we are resilient enough and able to cope, adapt, or transform as necessary. Societal collapse doesn’t always take everyone with it, and often cultures continue, even if at a simpler level or perhaps in a new iteration.”
After 1177 BC: The Survival of Civilization
One of the more fascinating archaeological and historical books I’ve read. 1177 BC, the first book by Eric Cline details the Late Bronze Age Collapse. When globalization ended for some reason due to many mass calamities, natural and man-made where a Mediterranean centered network economy and world completely collapsed.
Drought, massive invasions by migrating populations notably the “Sea People”, war, rebellion, famine, chaos, economic decline and a breakdown of supply chains. It was grim reading with many lessons for present day civilization. When things get bad, they get really bad.
I had to read his follow up “After 1177 BC” detailing what happened after. Which civilizations adapted and transformed themselves to dominate in the new world like the Phoenicians and Cypriots. Those who calcified but survived like the Egyptians and those who completely disappeared like the Minoans, Mycenaeans & Hittites. As normal, most folks don’t make it. Especially through the mass changes to the new Iron Age.
We learned that some societies thrived because of having the luck of being on the right trade routes, being situated by reliable and large river systems or having less climate disruption all leading to secure food supplies. Or having a cohesive elite or ruling class and society that pulls together during the crisis. Or having the resources to weather the storm so to speak. Fascinating if not grim stuff.
“For some, the end was sudden-invaders sacked their city or an earthquake brought down the walls of a house upon its occupants. For others, it was a catastrophe in slow motion, with drought impacting the crops and famine decimating the population. Nobody in the Aegean or Eastern Mediterranean regions escaped the effects of the Late Bronze Age Collapse.
Virtually everyone was affected in some way, shape or form: rich and poor, aristocrat and peasant, victims and survivors,those whose lives changed drastically or just a little. Life as they knew it, and as they had known it for centuries before, changed irrevocably. Those who survived the calamities of that age had to adapt, carry on, find some ways to persist–even as the drought continued, the trade routes disappeared or became prey to bandits and raiders, and basic resources became scarce.”
My lesson is that dark ages can happen. Technology and knowledge lost. Writing and records gone. Civilizations, even the more advanced, can decline and even disappear. Wiped away forever. Western civilization is a gleaming jewel and I am even more fervent that it needs us to be defended, one person and one family at a time.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads March 15th, 2026
“To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow." – Audrey Hepburn
"The year-old show, at first called the Technology Brothers Podcast, is part CNBC Squawk Box, part Joe Rogan, part Daily Show. It’s available on YouTube, Spotify, and other podcasting platforms, but its spiritual home is X. “We turned the X timeline into an audiovisual show where we provide insider commentary and analysis,” says Hays.
In March, the show was rebranded to its new name, TBPN. They refined their brand kit: mahogany (“the official wood of business”), shades of green (the color of money), racing livery jackets and hats, and a hint of sci-fi. They also moved into a barrel-vaulted studio in the heart of LA with a meticulously curated back office: Glass cases of neatly stacked merch sit next to a library of leather-bound Great Books of the Western World beneath a huge American flag and black-and-white portraits of iconic investors like Peter Lynch and Charlie Munger.
As the show climbs the charts, an appearance on TBPN has become a status marker for the tech elite. Mark Zuckerberg, Marc Andreessen, and Sam Altman stop by to gab. When OpenAI released its hotly anticipated GPT-5 model in August, executives from the company offered up the kind of exclusive interviews tech journalists have spent years begging for. (I should know—I’m one of them.) Yet their biggest guests are sometimes the most niche—like Soham Parekh, an Indian software engineer who became X’s main character for a day after he was caught working for multiple start-ups at the same time.
Their guests are capitalizing on the clout economy, where the line between influencer and entrepreneur is blurred and attention is the most valuable asset. The mix of A-listers and memes captures something essential about TBPN’s appeal: Through their approachable lens, fans can access a parasocial relationship with the tech elite."
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/the-technology-brothers-have-silicon-valley-in-their-thrall
2. A Deep dive into the tech media phenomenon of TBPN. If you want to keep up with building a high growth media company in the 2020s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIaXSQOHrmU
3. "In 2026 we will be watching the investors and companies bringing tech sector approaches to the core of defence, building missiles, shell factories, and integrating AI into defence technologies. This is the heart of a new arms race in which adversaries with no regard for the ethics of defence are racing ahead. If we cannot match the pace of innovation, we are exposed."
https://resiliencemedia.co/resilience-medias-predictions-for-2026/
4. "When I was at the Department of Energy working on industrial policy, I can tell you, for many of the manufacturing and critical mineral projects — projects with outcomes of $10 billion plus — decisions were made on the basis of the three or four people we had in the department who had real industry background. If those three or four people hadn’t come in, who knows where those billions of dollars would have flowed. I think that’s true of every kind of industrial policy program we’ve seen.
The pipeline of talent for people with actual industrial experience is very small. Frankly, it doesn’t exist. I was also inspired by a lot of the tech policy fellowships that have now sprung up and have been very successful in shaping AI policy and tech policy more broadly and bringing in technical talent, software engineers, AI practitioners into government. I was like, “Well, where is that for industrial policy?” It didn’t exist, so we made it."
https://www.riskgaming.com/p/the-long-game-of-american-reindustrialization
5. Balaji is smart and he really has some good points but I am not as pessimistic about America and West as he is.
But I give him credit, he is putting money where his mouth is. He is setting up a "Foundation" as per Asimov books series.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDHtc2R-cIo&t=17s
6. Geopolitics in the Middle East is incredibly complicated. A deep dive into UAE as the chaos agent in the region and Africa. MBZ & the Emiratis have been quite successful projecting power up until recently.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=au8rfmdUGvo
7. Developments in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. EU backing UA, China backing Russia. America is now behind on key innovations in war technology driven by the Ukrainians.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhDg-tRkxIA
8. My deep dive into the complicated geopolitics of the Middle East. UAE is a pocket power and their strategies, usually at cross purposes with the rest of GCC.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BmCF05sZs4&t=1s
9. The dark side of the UAE and the proxy wars and networks they have developed to project power regionally. + Incredible PR and influencer power. Money + Gold smuggling & Realpolitik at work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHwFNlNzUz4&t=2s
10. MBZ and his quest to build geopolitical power via proxy's like in Libya, Sudan, Yemen and other strategic places for them. Power grabs are always messy and bloody.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2m4Ot0HOe4
11. "Here’s my take: Firing juniors (or not hiring them in the first place) will cut financial costs at first, but it enables a long-term hidden cost, a kind of tacit debt that replaces the learning curve with a curve of shortsightedness, waste, and eventual demise. This is a suicide model.
When you replace kids who would eventually learn the know-how of any role with AI models that lack continual learning, embodiment, or a way to internalize those things you can’t read in a book, you’re signing your own death sentence. That’s a strong assertion, however, so let me make my case first before telling you the solution. You have the data, now hear the story."
https://www.thealgorithmicbridge.com/p/the-managers-apprentice
12. An interview with a legend in Silicon Valley and where A16Z is going. In light of their recent $15B Fund raise this year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8_2CSpcmls
13. This was immensely educational. A history and future of venture capital from an endowment manager’s eyes. How to stay relevant in the business.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ou6D9PLSBI
14. Lots of good insights on the business of venture capital. This seems to be a A16Z week.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5fTnZRsuhI&t=1s
15. "The ultimate status signal is controlling the timing of your responses.
Not wealth. Not title. Not follower count.
Temporal sovereignty."
https://substack.com/inbox/post/184415646
16. "In this regard, character is usually not destroyed, but is dissolved over time. It is worn down by tolerating what we once resisted, by lowering our standards, and putting our comforts above everything and everyone else. The temptation to take what we want for our own comfort is a dangerous thing.
Perhaps the most dangerous force of all is not temptation, but drift. Drift is what happens when no standard is consciously held. When a man stops asking himself who he is becoming. When he ceases to examine his own habits. When he allows his environment to shape him rather than choosing his environment deliberately. Because this is the truth we rarely like to admit, no man is immune to influence."
https://thewaysofagentleman.substack.com/p/the-quiet-work-of-becoming-a-better
17. "Doing your homework before arriving in the Bay Area and looking up people you want to meet from the same city, school or former employer can give you a leg up when landing in Silicon Valley."
https://chrisneumann.com/archives/how-to-build-a-silicon-valley-network
18. "I’ve written about this idea of founder authenticity before, through a founder diligence lens and one about founder opportunity cost. It’s an idea that recurs. Time and again, we’ve seen authentic founders push through seemingly overwhelming odds, and inauthentic ones give up or take shortcuts when things don’t go their way. It seems to be one of the best bright line tests for whether a company will be successful in the long run."
https://www.alsoblogposts.com/p/k-pop-startup-hunters
19. "Your goal? Get to a point where your investments/assets make more than your capability to earn. Once you are here the game is over.
The problem? Most people sell their time and buy distractions/status objects.
Trade time for money → rent, materials → repeat
No assets = no leverage = no future exit
No matter how old you are. 15 years old or 30. You know that your entire goal is to buy assets. Period. Become an owner with equity in something at all times with all disposable income. You’re throwing as much coal as possible into that flame as early as possible.
At a young age you might thing “okay worthless since i don’t have assets”. Well. Abilities are assets.
You must learn to sell. This is no longer negotiable. The doomers will say it can be replaced by AI. It won’t. No CEO is going to talk to Gemini or ChatGPT to decide if it should sell/buy a new company. Period.
You must build niche knowledge. This could be anything from peptides to toothpaste to pre-sleep formulas as we’ve seen in the jungle. Choose one niche and be ahead of AI (which just scrapes consensus garbage and spits it out)
Learn to create attention. Don’t care how you do it. While OnlyFans gets a lot of hate, there is something to learn from it. If you can gather a bunch of attention you will be rich.
Take a step back. If you can sell then you can build equity (you can sell a product for someone with a stake in the company OR you could sell your own product). Opens a boatload of doors. If you have niche knowledge that is ahead of masses, you are by definition an owner of a valuable asset.
“Is this going to increase my abilities or attract customers?” If the answer is no? Move on. You don’t have time to waste."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/if-starting-over-as-a-teenager-to
20. Some global macro and how to survive the global reset. A bit of libertarian bent but good to understand.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVROsNCUoLs
21. "Those who believe that the debt is unsustainable believe that the government will eventually be forced to choose between outright default and “debasement” that would cheapen nominal yen claims relative to assets in other currencies as well as relative to real assets. For those who have spent decades warning—or scaremongering—about Japanese public indebtedness, the persistent (nominal) weakness of the yen in the face of rising (nominal) interest rates over the past few years therefore seems like vindication that this process is finally starting.
As of now, however, there is a more benign explanation: Japan may have finally exited its post-bubble stagnation.
The return of modest inflation alongside persistently faster wage and income growth should align with higher interest rates than those that prevailed when the economy experienced essentially no growth in yen terms between 1997 and 2019. Moreover, if the recent growth in nominal incomes is sustained, Japanese government borrowing costs would still be lower, relative to expected revenue increases, than in much of the past few decades. (That helps explains why the yen has not appreciated recently despite the apparent convergence of nominal yields with the U.S. and other G10 economies.) Far from indicating trouble, Japanese bond prices are implying that Japan has converged, in at least one important way, with the rest of the rich world."
https://theovershoot.co/p/is-japan-normal-again
22. "That means you need to make a conscious decision about whether you want to participate in the ongoing metals and mining bull market. If the answer is yes, the next step is to construct a portfolio that aligns with your risk tolerance and investment time frame.
If you feel an overwhelming urge to chase stocks on a day when everything on your screen is green, I would urge you to take a cold shower and instead channel that energy into building a watch list. Follow the stocks on your list and learn as much as you can about them over the next month. By the end of that period, I suspect you’ll have learned a great deal—and you’ll likely have a much clearer sense of when, and at what price, you’d like to buy.
Who knows? You may even get a fat-pitch buying opportunity in the meantime.
For those with a high risk tolerance, junior miners may be the right fit. For investors with a much lower tolerance for volatility, it likely makes more sense to stick with large producers or gold royalty companies such as Franco-Nevada (NYSE: FNV) or Barrick (NYSE: B)."
https://robertsinn.substack.com/p/the-psychology-of-bull-markets-greed
23. "In my view, the uncomfortable reality is that there is no coherent, well-thought out logical and rational case for why the United States needs Greenland in the way Trump describes. Neither was there a similar logical reason for Trump’s Liberation Day and the global tariff war, for capturing Maduro or for many other Trump decisions. Trump doesn’t have and doesn't really need one: he just wants Greenland because he wants it.
At some point in his life, Trump just came to like the idea of the United States having Greenland. Maybe because it looks big on a map, maybe because he wants to leave a mark on history for expanding U.S. territory, maybe because it makes so many people so angry, maybe because it’s a great distraction, maybe because of something else or maybe because of all of the above.
I would bet that people in his admin have no idea what the real reason for taking Greenland is either, just like they struggled to explain the reason behind Trump’s tariff Liberation Day. And I think that Trump probably couldn’t give one either - apart from feeling like it’s a good idea.
The bottom line is that there’s no logic behind this and there’s no point in looking for it."
https://substack.com/inbox/post/184536902
24. "I recently listened to an audiobook about the Napoleonic Wars. Overall, the book wasn’t very good, but there was one interesting part where it described Napoleon’s ruling style as being mafia-like. His insistence that other European countries buy French exports, his attempts to shut Britain out of European trade, and a bunch of his other economic policies were fundamentally gangster-ish — they were ad hoc impositions of personal power, often with an eye toward taking revenge on personal enemies and entrenching his own authority.
I immediately recognized this as Donald Trump’s style of governance. Like Napoleon, Trump’s top priority isn’t creating durable institutions that will outlive him — indeed, he regards any such institutions as threats to his own personal power. Many observers have labeled this approach “personalism” or “patrimonialism”, but it’s really just gangsterism. Trump treats America like a mafia organization, and himself as the godfather.
This is the problem with running economic policy like a gangster. In the short term, bullying people into going against their economic self-interest might get you what you want. But in the long term, it just makes the economy less efficient, while the ad-hoc nature of policymaking causes instability and uncertainty. For a few years, everyone bends the knee, but eventually things start to break."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/gangster-affordability
25. Learning from our enemies.
"Rubikon’s formation marks a departure from the ad hoc, volunteer-driven drone initiatives that characterized much of the early war effort.
Instead of bottom-up improvisation, Rubikon reflects deliberate institutional design: centralized recruitment, direct state backing, and a mandate to professionalize drone warfare within Russia’s armed forces. This top-down construction distinguishes it sharply from traditional Russian military units and from the informal structures that preceded it.
Rubikon is often described as the decisive element that pushed Ukrainian Forces out of the Kursk Region in Russia, and they maintain extensive combat experience in Pokrovsk (Donbas) and Kupiansk (Kharkiv Oblast).
With over 5,000 personnel at its disposal, Rubikon can rotate units between frontlines with deliberate frequency. This rotation generates an asymmetric information advantage: Rubikon does not become locked into a single-terrain doctrine and does not face the same Ukrainian brigades long enough for systematic counter-adaptation.
Whether this consistently translates into tactical superiority remains unclear, but the mobility itself works in Rubikon’s favor."
26. A masterclass in doing M&A and building a high growth company.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yco9JP0PyLM
27. "We are drowning in “Fast Information.” We consume endless threads, bite-sized “hacks,” and reactionary op-eds under the guise of staying informed. This is a delusion. You aren’t learning; you are just renting other people’s opinions.
This constant input creates a “Mental Friction” that prevents original synthesis. If you consume the same feed as everyone else, you will inevitably think exactly like everyone else. You lose your edge because your brain has become a mirror, not a prism."
https://substack.com/inbox/post/184579968
28. "Which brings us back to that line from Three Days of the Condor. The analyst who “just reads books” isn’t a fantasy. He’s a reminder that imagination, narrative, and interpretation sit closer to the center of power than we like to admit.
The Intelligence Community and the entertainment industry are both meaning-making systems operating under scarcity—information in one case, attention in the other. One conceals reality; the other stylizes it. But both decide which stories are told, which are softened, and which never reach the public at all.
Different missions. Different aesthetics.
Same underlying logic.
And once you see it, it’s hard to unsee."
https://www.insidecyberwarfare.com/p/the-agency-and-the-industry-two-worlds
29. "This is not simply “resource imperialism.” It is not a budgetary appropriation masquerading as strategy. It is not a throwback to classical mercantilism. The evidence — from market reactions to institutional choices — points toward something more complex:
A strategy built on financial engineering and multilateral cover, designed to realign a state in the Western Hemisphere without the political costs of taxpayer-funded reconstruction.
In other words, Venezuela is a pilot — not in the old Monroe Doctrine sense of direct colonial resource control, but in a new, financially mediated model of influence where institutions, markets, and legal authority interact in place of traditional foreign aid.
If this framework succeeds, it will shape how great powers engage distressed states in the decades ahead. And if it fails, it will offer a cautionary lesson about the limits of financialized geoeconomics."
https://tanviratna.substack.com/p/us-strategy-in-venezuela-what-it
30. "President Trump is winning enough of the Monopoly board that he can confidently bring almost his entire cabinet to the upcoming WEF meeting to effectively read the Riot Act to his opponents. Opponents mean the Europeans and Canada at this point, because Russia and China are both increasingly subdued as Trump cuts off their cash and energy supply lines. Trump’s biggest opponent to the peace process now are the EU and its member states and Canada who oppose his various peace plans and actions and who continue to work with his internal opponents - The Blob as some like to call it - meaning the coalition of those who continue to try and undermine his Presidency in their effort to preserve a system that provides reliable (but often illicit) cash flows and dependable (though, bought) voter outcomes.
I’m going to argue that what we are witnessing is not WWIII. It’s also not a proxy war between the superpowers. It’s an internecine war. It’s an interstitial war. It’s something more like an American Civil War played out on the global geopolitical Monopoly Board. The divide is not over geography or even ideology. It’s more like the fight over slavery. It’s a fight over cash flows and who gets to control them. It’s not a matter of whether those cash flows are morally right or wrong. It’s just about control. I am suggesting that the situation is not a straightforward old-fashioned superpower confrontation but rather a more intricate internal power struggle."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/the-geopolitical-monopoly-board-venezuela
31. "Trump’s strategy is to limit the Blob’s influence at home and abroad, creating a showdown that manifests in voting booths across Europe, Greenland, Ukraine, Iran, and Pakistan. He hopes that voters will eject their Blob leaders, which might explain his heightened rhetoric about Greenland. The U.S. already has access to its military facilities—it’s not about taking Greenland but removing the Blob from crucial regions.
This isn’t a proxy war; it’s an interstitial and internecine conflict—not WWIII, but an American Civil War 2.0 playing out on a global stage."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/the-geopolitical-monopoly-board-venezuela-18f
32. "Failing to adapt to tectonic shifts. If ever this were true, it’s true today.
Being physically or emotionally removed. Teams who don’t use AI daily miss the pace of change. The technology moves too fast for quarterly strategy reviews. If leadership isn’t prompting Claude or GPT every day, they’re already behind.
Cognitive biases are always hard to see in ourselves. A short seller’s mirror is a useful one at this moment in AI."
https://tomtunguz.com/dead-companies-walking/
33. This was deeply insightful. The art and science of building a venture machine. Flood the zone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OHeOZiij_M
34. This was a fun and educational interview with media and VC impresario Henry Stebbings. Chips on shoulders leads to chips in pockets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lk2VN8wiTr8
35. "In the end, this isn’t really about Poland.
It’s about how we think about sovereignty and optimization in an era where geography is increasingly optional for earning income.
Portugal pioneered the “tax break for mobile talent” model with NHR. It worked brilliantly-for a decade. Then political pressure killed it. Italy tried to go ultra-premium. Greece added investment requirements.
Poland is offering what Portugal did in 2013: exceptional value for those who know where to look.
The pattern suggests this won’t last forever in its current form. Not because Poland will necessarily eliminate it, but because success breeds attention, and attention breeds political backlash.
But the question always is: what are you optimizing for?
If it’s complete tax elimination, well then you’re outside Europe entirely.
If it’s Mediterranean lifestyle with reasonable tax treatment, you’re looking at different trade-offs.
If it’s pure tax efficiency on capital gains with EU quality of life, Poland might be the best answer available in 2025.
Sovereignty in the 21st century means having options.
Poland is an option worth understanding."
https://palombo.substack.com/p/polands-flat-tax-europes-best-kept
36. "In that sense, Greenland is not the core problem but a catalyst. The real issue exposed by today’s meeting is the tension between American unilateral impulse and structural dependence on allies in an environment where power projection is hardest and cooperation matters most."
https://substack.com/inbox/post/184603356
37. "This essay will present a cornucopia of chart porn annotated with my thoughts to contextualize the co-movement of these assets. I believe Bitcoin did exactly what it was supposed to do. It rode the wave of fiat liquidity lower, specifically dollar liquidity, as Pax Americana’s credit impulse was the most important force in 2025. Gold surged as price-insensitive sovereign nations hoovered it up because they were afraid to remain in US treasuries lest Pax Americana steal their wealth like it did to Russia in 2022. The act of war committed upon Venezuela by Pax Americana most recently only intensifies the desire for nations to save in gold rather than US treasuries. Finally, the AI bubble and all the ancillary industries that benefit, are not going anywhere.
In fact, US President Trump must double down on state support for all things AI because it is the largest contributor to GDP growth in the empire. This means that even if the pace of dollar creation slows, the Nasdaq can continue to rise because Trump effectively nationalized it. For those of you who study Chinese capital markets, you know stonks do very well in the early period of nationalization, but then underperform massively as political goals take precedence over return on equity for unpatriotic capitalists.
If the 2025 price action of Bitcoin, gold, and stonks validated my market schema, then I can continue focusing on the vicissitudes of dollar liquidity. To remind readers, my prognosis is that Trump will pump credit to run the economy fucking hot. A rip-roaring economy helps the re-election chances for Team Red Republicans this November. Dollar credit will expand as the central bank balance sheet grows, commercial banks lend more to “strategic industries”, and mortgage rates decline because of printed money."
https://cryptohayes.substack.com/p/frowny-cloud
38. Depressing conversation on how the West over-financialized, screwed up our supply chains and became over-reliant on China for key metals and minerals. We will have to take some major pain to fix this.
Don’t Get Disconnected: Losing Touch with Reality
In a recent visit to Vancouver to see my folks, I learned I had a very old bank account. So I went with my dad to shut it down. Long story short, it was an administrative headache, taking an hour, although I will say they were very nice and polite. I walked out going, “what a pain but whatever” as I got to spend time with my dad and daughter so it was fine. But normally this kind of stuff is so irritating and infuriating.
I started thinking about the super wealthy and super famous people I knew. All post-economic. When you are so wealthy you don’t need to do the everyday things of getting groceries, waiting in line at post office or bank, sorting out random things at the mall. You have people do that for you. You don’t fly commercial airlines, you fly private so you don’t go through lines. You holiday away from the “poors” and regular people. I totally get it. You want security and you don’t want to waste your time. You don’t do anything you don’t want to.
Because of this, I’ve also noticed in general, how completely out of touch they were with regular folks and all the hassles regular people have to put up with. Do this for many years and you completely lose sight of the reality of most people. You literally have no idea. No sense. This shows up in the cluelessness and callousness of the things they say on stage or in the media. Or worse, the flashiness of their luxurious lifestyle on social media. Real ragebait for the down slope of the K-shaped economy.
I recall the public outcry during the pandemic when the Kardashians flew their entire family to a luxury resort island to celebrate a family member's birthday, while all of us were locked down. So many such cases and it’s no wonder people want to eat the rich. There is very little sympathy for the wealthy, even in America despite the large amount of charitable causes they support.
The point I write here is that it's good to do everyday things and experience hassles every once in a while. It’s good to not isolate yourself, unless you live in a crime ridden hellhole. Interact with everyone, of all socioeconomic stratas.
And if you do happen to be well off, don’t be flashy, don’t be an a–hole. Tip super well. Live like a normal dude. Be stealth wealth. Why? It’s good not to be a dick and there is such a thing as karma (although it takes a while). No one likes a show off. More practically, the backlash coming against the wealthy in this decade will be ferocious due the AI and finance driven layoffs coming. A backlash specifically for tech and finance bros. So stay quiet, stay smart, stay alert and stay alive. Especially in times of massive change like we are in right now.
Winners and Losers: It’s All in Your Mind
I am a fan of Andrew Huberman of the Huberman Labs podcast, where he talks about health and wellness via the lens of biohacking. It felt like he came from nowhere to being everywhere.
He is a life long learner and someone living life to his own definition. A winner for sure. I listened to an interview and he said something that really stuck with me.
"Someone I really respect said this, 'There are basically two kinds of people in life. Winners and losers.' And the definition is this—losers take things that happen to them... and the wallow and they use it for self or outward destruction."
"Winners take whatever they feel, it sucks, and they transmute it into things that are good for themselves and for the world."
Most people according to this then are losers. I was one of these people for a very long time in my life. But I worked on myself. I am still working on myself. I had to change my mindset of victimhood. I’m a conqueror. Everything is my fault and I’ll act accordingly. I don’t control the outside world but I can control how I react to it.
Mindset and action is the only thing that determines a winner from a loser. Don’t be a loser.
Go Direct: You are the Message
Everyone needs a personal brand. Whether you are a politician, business man or even individual contributor or employee. Literally everyone needs to build one. It’s the only way to stand out. I’ve heard many people talk about this like Marc Andressen, Balaji or even Tai Lopez. I got it intellectually and directionally but I did not truly grok this until entrepreneur and former YC partner Qasar Younis blogged about it. He really explained what is driving this and the context of this massive change.
He wrote:
"One of the hallmark trends of our generation is the fall of confidence in institutions. From the 1970s until now, people have lost faith in almost every major institution, from government to corporations. Post–World War II, America trusted places like General Motors or The Wall Street Journal as organizations acting in society’s interest, serving as gatekeepers. The world was different. Information was scarce and slow-moving.
The internet blew all of that up. As information got to end users faster, the narrative became a bit harder to control. But it wasn’t so much that these institutions were blatantly lying – but institutions, like a business, are just groups of people working together. And within every group there is a complex, sometimes conflicting, set of goals and actions. All this results in the average person getting mixed messages and therefore not trusting the institution. You see this in politics too as being the “establishment” candidate is basically a death sentence now.
The alternative narrative is fundamentally direct-to-consumer. Just like brands that skip traditional distribution, ideas now bypass institutions entirely.
Everyone from Alex Karp to Zohran Mamdani to President Trump operates on this wavelength:
I don’t want to hear from your corporation or your party. I want to hear directly from you.
Institutional filtering is now an anti-signal. How many corporate X accounts are you following and taking seriously?"
It’s so critically important, especially in the age of AI. In the age of infinite slop. This is the only way to stand out in the crowd and really differentiate yourself. Whether you do it on X, write a newsletter, or do a podcast. You need to be a one person media company. You need to build your personal brand. This is job one for everyone.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads March 8th, 2026
“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need." – Marcus Tullius Cicero
The impact of revolutions. Freedom is not always the outcome.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiOCJssqfDs&t=108s
2. The importance of Comms & PR: Storytelling for startup founders. Such an overlooked skill and clear differentiator in such a crowded market right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRoU1T4E9rQ
3. "In 2012, we cared that we used software. Today we care how we use it.
The difference is trajectory.
In the last decade, adopting software was the priority. Moving from on-premise to the cloud or digitizing a manual workflow promised productivity gains. Adoption was the finish line.
Today software is ubiquitous. Every salesperson uses a CRM & every engineer uses an IDE. The edge no longer comes from having the tool but from the specific path & manner in which that tool is used to achieve an outcome : a trajectory through software."
https://tomtunguz.com/ai-trajectories/
4. "It doesn’t matter if you’re a soldier, a human rights advocate, an economist, a financier, a manufacturer, or a farmer. War affects us all. This is certainly the case in wars close to our homes or in which we’re active participants. But it remains true even when a war is seemingly removed by geography or participation.
Wars interrupt supply chains and threaten global trade, increasing prices and destabilizing economies."
https://buildingourfuture.substack.com/p/defense-is-for-everyone
5. "Often when you’re stuck, a better cliche to follow than “just do something” is to double down on strengths. I didn’t use the framing of “double down on what’s working” because presumably if you’re stuck, things don’t seem to be working. If you’re at a low point, even the word “strengths” might fail to conjure up a long list.
Be that as it may, most of us have lived life. We’ve lived in certain places, done particular things, befriended particular people. That’s a good starting point."
https://www.optimaloutliers.com/p/better-than-just-do-something
6. Good episode this week. Lots of good takes and predictions for 2026.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEb2DX0TzKM
7. "Humans evolved around campfires, sharing stories for thousands of years. The power of a story is unlike anything else. My recommendation for entrepreneurs is to exercise their storytelling muscle and actively look for ways to improve their craft. Writing, speaking, and every other form of communication becomes far more powerful when driven by compelling stories."
https://davidcummings.org/2026/01/10/intentional-story-teller/
8. "In life there are many ways to make money. Some restrict you more than others.
Prioritize building income streams that don’t take away your freedom. Because money is far more useful to a free man than to an un-free man.
It is far superior to make $250k a year from an online business that lets you travel whenever and wherever you want than to make $500k a year from a job or an offline business that forces you to be at a particular location all the time.
People often regret working “too hard” and making money they have no use of while the years of their life go by. No one ever regrets enjoying their life, travelling often, and living to their fullest."
https://lifemathmoney.com/dont-waste-your-20s-how-to-maximize-your-twenties-part-2/
9. "Why the US should be expected to have any contact with a country like Kyrgyzstan is a fair query to start with. Look at a map zoomed out and the country seems to be swallowed in an embrace by China to the east and by Kazakhstan and — more distantly — Russia to the north. The country is poor, with a nominal GDP per capita of under $3,000, and has limited natural resources. It’s mountainous and largely rural, with proud nomadic traditions, a culture taking in elements from the Russian, Chinese, Arabic, and Turkic worlds, and its history couldn’t be more remote from America’s.
But spend time here and a certain US influence becomes obvious enough. I am able to teach my journalism course in English at an international university with good comprehension from my students. My students routinely make fun of me for how behind the curve I am in following P. Diddy’s trial or not quite being able to explain who Charli XCX is. Many of them fantasise about living in the US. If I’m in a cab, it’s routine for the driver to suddenly put on speakerphone a brother or cousin who’s living in the States so that we can trade pleasantries with one another. Bishkek is filled with malls that give me flashbacks to the time I spent living in Los Angeles.
And, as an American, I am treated with a respect and an interest that I don’t think I’ve quite experienced anywhere else in the world — there’s just a curiosity about Americanness that I think much of the rest of the world has moved past."
https://unherd.com/2026/01/the-land-that-westernisation-forgot/
10. "Let’s review the state of the chessboard.
The US now has a vertically integrated loop for supplying itself and the entire world the critical medium and heavy crude oil products.
It can play the hand of favorites for those states willing to supplicate. This strengthens its position within the Western Bloc as the de facto Hegemon.
While the US controls the “Perfect Machine” (Gulf Coast Coking Refineries), the Eastern Bloc relies on a clumsy, distributed “Symbiotic Chain” where Russia/Iran acts as the crude extraction colony and China acts as the dirty processing lab.
The US also gains a geographic arterial strike advantage by only having to monitor the Persian Gulf, Indian Ocean, and Yellow Sea.
By seizing Venezuelan Orinoco heavy oil, the US also effectively secures the highest-value feedstock for its specialized machine, forcing China to run its “Teapot” refineries on inferior or politically volatile alternatives. This heavy oil sludge can be more easily cracked into lower forms as needed for desired usage.
Heavy oils give US optionality in refining. It is more efficient to “chop” that it is to “glue.”
The US will very likely install governance and corporate structure that is supplicating to its national needs. It can begin to squeeze the Eastern Bloc slowly by reducing exports of Merey 16. Or it can simply increase prices. China was able to buy this sanctioned oil at discount.
Now the US controls this oil supply. It’s categorization is “Clean.” So China pays fair market prices for continuing their infrastructure construction.
The same way that China uses REE controls.
We can make an estimation that China currently relies upon Venezuelan bitumen for roughly 50% of its asphalt production needs.
Depending on the mood of the US administration, this is about to get very expensive or outright disappear from China’s procurement.
Whether by design or coincidence, the US now has a very real wartime advantage against China.
It’s likely the US does not recognize this fully. They just wanted China OUT.
You probably just read an intelligence report that governments pay millions of dollars for to use in war gaming simulations.
“Amateurs talk tactics.
Professionals talk logistics.”
https://endtropy.substack.com/p/trumps-enormous-c-length-win-over
11. "Success often brings a hidden curse: Structural Density. You build a company, then a larger home, then a staff to manage the home, then a legal team to manage the staff. Before you realize it, you are no longer a creator; you are a high-end janitor for your own life. You have built a gilded cage where the cost of maintenance both financial and mental exceeds the joy of ownership. You are “rich,” but you are no longer sovereign.
The ultimate signal of power today is the Ghost Presence. No active social media, no public-facing email, no “About” page on a website. You exist only to those who have your direct number. While the middle class is busy building “personal brands” for strangers, the sovereign elite are busy deleting themselves from the public record. Anonymity is the new private jet."
https://substack.com/inbox/post/184149503
12. "Stop trying to optimize the trivial. You cannot build a sovereign life by managing a thousand tiny leaks. Find the one variable that defines your trajectory and ignore everything else. The gallery is only beautiful because of what the curator chose to leave out."
https://substack.com/@luxlifestylelab/p-182844265
13. "As ice recedes, there’s even talk of future trans polar routes straight over the North Pole—essentially new Panama Canals made of water. You can bet that Greenland—the nearest land for thousands of miles—would be strategically valuable for supporting or monitoring such routes. Every navy with Arctic ambitions would love a friendly port or refueling point in Greenland’s sheltered fjords.
And let’s not forget about natural resources. Beneath Greenland’s icy surface lies a treasure trove of minerals and energy—a fact not lost on world powers. Geological surveys indicate that Greenland is rich in rare earth metals, uranium, iron ore, zinc, lead, gemstones, and potentially oil and gas. In 2023, a survey found that Greenland has 25 out of the 34 minerals deemed critical by the EU for modern economies.
That’s huge, because many of these “critical minerals” (like rare earth elements, cobalt, and so on) are essential for things like smartphones, electric car batteries, wind turbines, missile systems—basically the high tech gadgets and green energy gear that power modern life. Right now, China dominates global supply chains for a lot of these materials. So, the U.S. and Europe eye Greenland’s untapped reserves as a golden opportunity to diversify supply. In fact, Greenland’s rare earth deposits are among the largest outside China, which is one reason the island has popped up on Washington’s radar (pun intended).
To sum up, today’s Greenland is a weird and potent mix of “old school” strategic geography and “new school” climate tech importance. It’s still that same crucial Arctic waypoint for defense and transit, just like in the 20th century. But it’s also gaining fresh relevance due to melting ice (new sea lanes) and the tech boom (need for rare minerals). Add in its enormous size (did I mention Greenland is three times the size of Texas?), and you have an enticing piece of real estate for any global power. Which brings us back to one global power in particular that made a very public play for Greenland not so long ago…"
https://gbnt1952.substack.com/p/the-strategic-value-of-greenland
14. Understanding American strategy & doctrine under Trump 2.0.
Unrestricted competition against everyone: hard knuckle policy and action (economic and kinetic) by America. Don't like it but here we are.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2-eNucEYSg
15. K-shaped economy & living in a trustless society. Society is split between those who have everything to lose and those who have nothing to lose.
Scary time in America & UK (Canada & Europe are not in any great shape either).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnIv60_Y3jc
16. "We live in an era where building a multimillion-dollar company no longer requires massive teams, big offices, or investor funding.
The “one-person business” revolution has arrived driven by technology, automation, and global distribution.
From creators and consultants to software developers and digital product sellers, individuals are scaling businesses to millions in revenue without hiring a single full-time employee."
https://luxlifestylelab.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-one-person-businesses
17. "Let me be specific about what I think we should expect from elites. This is not a demand for sainthood. It’s a demand for something more than nothing.
Use your cognitive capacity for more than career advancement. Spend time understanding problems that matter. Don’t outsource your worldview to whatever your profession tells you. Think, actually think, about what’s broken and what might fix it.
Use your economic security to take risks. You have a safety net that most people don’t. Use it.
That might mean taking a lower-paying job with more impact. It might mean funding something uncertain. It might mean speaking up when speaking up has costs. The security is wasted if you never use it.
Use your social capital to open doors. You know people. You have access. Some of that access could be made available to people doing important work. Introductions, legitimacy, and connections are valuable and you’re hoarding them.
Use your institutional position to push for change. You’re somewhere in the system. Maybe you can’t change everything, but you can change something. The question to ask: “What’s the most important thing I can affect from where I sit?” Most people never ask this. They just do what’s expected.
Rethink the allocation of your time and energy. You probably work fifty or sixty hours a week. How much of that is genuinely necessary? How much is status maintenance, or hedonic treadmill, or just what you’ve always done? The reallocation doesn’t have to be dramatic. Even ten hours a week redirected to something that matters would, across millions of elites, transform what’s possible.
This doesn’t mean becoming an activist or a monk or a martyr.
It’s about the marginal question: given what you have and what you can do, are you doing enough?
And for most elites, the honest answer is no."
https://edankrolewicz.substack.com/p/buried-talents
18. This is excellent. A real debate on the future of America and China, India and Internet civilization. Insight dense conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_uIqjmbJg8&t=85s
19. You need to hire obsessed maniacs. Basically that is what startups require.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWFuck9NxVw
20. "The two new notable drivers of USD demand are 1) the building US mega-IPO pipeline for 2026, and 2) the LATAM investment / dollarisation boom. Both force dollar demand as much out of necessity as they do preference."
https://dollarwatchtower.substack.com/p/resurrecting-the-us-golden-age
21. I do think BTC is digital gold as a tech guy. But Giustra is pretty smart though.
"Now, I’m known as a gold guy. Guilty as charged. I started buying physical gold in 2001 when I realized the U.S. dollar was walking into an inescapable debt trap and was bound to lose value against gold. I’ve helped finance dozens of mining companies, and as I recount in my memoir *The Money Dilemma* (out later this year), my faith has paid off.
Is Bitcoin a similar store of value and hedge against failing fiat currencies? Maybe someday. Call me a cynic , but I have my own reasons to believe there is much risk in taking that chance as a store of my wealth, and I prefer to sleep at night. I would rather accumulate an asset that for the past decade has been quietly, and at times covertly, amassed by 120 of the world’s most powerful central banks and nations—an asset they mine, hold, and trade among themselves to sideline the dollar—than an asset being hyped by a cabal of billionaires and their media proxies.
Bitcoin is many things. It’s a reaction to the 2008 financial crisis. It’s a libertarian belief system wrapped in software, an ambitious attempt to create money that isn’t issued by the state. It’s an experiment to see whether code can substitute for governance. It’s a speculative asset fueled by a quasi-cultish belief.
Like gold, it’s rare, it’s mined, and it’s often hoarded. Have many investors made a fortune on Bitcoin? Absolutely. But is it digital gold? Not there yet, in my opinion."
https://frankgiustra.com/posts/is-bitcoin-really-digital-gold/
22. "Ohio’s leaders have parlayed this newfound gas bounty into cheap electricity production. According to EIA data, nearly 60% of the state’s electricity is generated from natural gas, a fuel that provides both baseload and dispatchable power. Coal and nuclear power supply about 80% of the remaining balance, while wind and solar combined contribute just under 8% of total generation. Of course, Ohio does not operate its grid in a vacuum, and local price dynamics are heavily influenced by the Pennsylvania–New Jersey–Maryland (PJM) regional transmission organization, of which it is a member.
Given this fact set, Ohio would seem an ideal place for large data centers to set up shop. Indeed, almost unique among US states, Ohio’s political leaders have created a regulatory framework that sets the stage for a massive boom in the construction of such facilities while working to protect consumers."
https://newsletter.doomberg.com/p/intelligent-design
23. "As AI models commoditize, the economics of running them (inference) matter more than the cost of building them (training). Hyperscalers like Google (TPU), Amazon (Trainium), and Microsoft (Maia) are all building internal chips to escape the “Nvidia Tax.” Groq was the only independent startup providing a “good enough” alternative for real-time workloads like voice AI, robotics, and autonomous systems. By neutralizing Groq, Nvidia has removed the escape hatch.
What This Means for the Inference Landscape.
The signal to the market is clear: Inference is where the long-term revenue lives. Training is a massive, one-time CapEx event; inference is the recurring, scaling OpEx that happens every time a user prompts a model.
By the end of 2026, everyone will be focused on inference economics. If you are going to place your investing bets, that’s the place to start."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/the-inference-land-grab-begins
24. "Unfortunately, European states currently face a substantial capability gap in deep-strike weapons, including medium- to intermediate-range ballistic missile systems comparable to the Oreshnik. While these capabilities are gradually being developed and deployed, Europe is likely still several years away from fielding the types and quantities of missile systems required.
In addition, without the United States, Europe’s nuclear capabilities are limited in both quality and quantity and are insufficient to credibly address Russia’s large and diverse nuclear arsenal, including its pronounced advantage in non-strategic nuclear weapons. In a conflict with NATO, particularly one in which the United States was not involved, Russia would therefore retain significant coercive leverage in the nuclear domain.
Overall, Oreshnik poses a distinct challenge to European security. This challenge stems less from the missile’s technical characteristics, which remain overstated, than from the way it exposes and amplifies existing European capability gaps that require urgent attention."
https://missilematters.substack.com/p/oreshnik-is-overhyped-but-poses-a
25. "TL;DR:
The US is betting on intelligence. China is betting somewhere else!The US frequently frames its competition with China as an AI race, similar to the space race it ran with the USSR. The idea of a race was triggered around a year ago with the launch of DeepSeek. Ever since, much of the US media has been fascinated with the idea of the US winning the AI race against China.
Ironically, it isn’t much of a race if the US is the only one running it.
The American ‘AI race’ is framed around who will build the smartest models, as if superior intelligence alone decides the future.
China’s strategy reveals a different understanding of the game altogether.
It is not trying to win AI at all. It is betting that intelligence will become abundant, and that power will flow instead to whoever can reliably turn intelligence into economic value."
https://platforms.substack.com/p/us-vs-china-how-to-win-the-wrong
26. "Against this background, Greenland must be considered as a denied strategic space, not an ignored one. The Arctic reality in Cold War 2.0 is therefore neither hysteria nor denial: Greenland is not encircled, but the High North remains a real exposure, with the DragonBear risk vector becoming asymmetric, primarily Russian in military terms, and Chinese in shaping the long-term geo-economic environment."
https://substack.com/inbox/post/184203912
27. 1517 is an underrated vc firm, working with founders at the earliest moments and ages. Lots of observations on how to help and work with younger founders. True belief capital.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7jIc-9N1ck
28. "When Salesforce throttles Slack’s API, they’re telegraphing where the value is. When Epic locks down patient records, they’re drawing a map. Incumbents don’t build walls around worthless assets. And they don’t build defenses unless they perceive credible & urgent challengers.
AI’s speed enables both startups & incumbents to own a stack end-to-end. That’s offense in an era of walls."
https://tomtunguz.com/defense-comes-to-software/
29. "In conclusion, there were three big geopolitical losses inflicted by Mr. Putin on Russia. Economic, political and ideological loss of relations with Europe; reduced national security due to the presence of NATO on Russia’s borders and willful disregard of national treasure; and finally, the creation of a Ukraine that, by its very construction, will remain an anti-Russia for a very long time. While the war was justified by arguing that it would improve Russia’s geopolitical situation it achieved the opposite."
https://branko2f7.substack.com/p/the-long-term-political-consequences
30. "2026 is when the AI story stops being about a fairytale of infinity and starts being about proof. Proof of economics. Proof of defensibility. Proof that scale compounds instead of hollowing out the core. Who will survive when the narrative meets reality?"
https://snailmail.slow.co/p/the-only-ai-questions-that-matter-for-2026
31. Nuff said: Palmer Luckey of Anduril! Always a fun and interesting interview with him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHLiA76hVps
32. "The use of an Oreshnik missile in Lviv makes strategic sense to Putin. Their use is the sign of a fearful, worried leader and not one that is confident and anticipating victory."
https://mickryan.substack.com/p/the-russian-oreshnik-strike-on-lviv
33. "It is easy to fall for the average trap and start designing your life according to it. Average people are everywhere around you. They are your colleagues. Your friend. and the people you pass on the street. Does that mean they are bad people? No. Does that mean you should be like them? Absolutely not.
Ask yourself whether you want to live the life they are living. The answer will tell you everything.
Most average traits are ownership issues. Once you take control of your actions, emotions, and thoughts. It will all click.
Three months is all you need to get rid of a pattern or behavior you want to change."
https://www.beautyofsaas.com/p/traits-of-the-average-people
34. "Copper has emerged as a foundational metal of the 21st century, uniquely critical to the electrified economy underpinning artificial intelligence (AI), data centers, renewable energy, electric vehicles (EVs), grid expansion, and defense systems. As global electrification accelerates, demand for copper is projected to rise sharply — yet supply is not keeping pace, creating a widening gap that could constrain economic growth, technological advancement, and global infrastructure development.
S&P Global recently published a report titled “Copper in the Age of AI: Challenges of Electrification”. The S&P Global report frames copper not just as another industrial commodity but as the “connective artery” of modern infrastructure — essential wherever electricity flows, wires are deployed, or advanced digital systems are installed. It highlights how AI’s energy and hardware needs intensify demand on an already stressed supply chain.
When you think of copper as the connective artery of all modern infrastructure, you quickly come to understand the strategic importance of the red metal and why the price has to move higher over the coming years."
https://robertsinn.substack.com/p/the-essential-role-of-copper-and
35. "We are talking about fifty people, maybe even fewer. That’s because there’s so much overlap. The CEO of Google alone is a key decision maker for search, apps, videos, music, podcasts, and much more. The same is true of Amazon, Apple, and Meta. They have their fingers in every pie, and an insatiable appetite for more.
The story gets even worse. If you look at the background of these fifty people, you find that most of them lack experience or credibility in arts and culture. They are technocrats or administrators. There’s no evidence that they love music or books or paintings—or anything except their share price and pay checks.
But they get to decide almost everything in the culture sphere. And they’re incentivized to make decisions out of financial self-interest, totally divorced from aesthetic concerns.
2026 will be a struggle. The legacy institutions and tech platforms are consolidating, and this gives them more power. It’s reassuring to see how poorly they exercise that power—churning out reboots and retreads. (If they were smarter, the culture would suffer even more.) Their mistakes offer an opportunity for the outsider.
And the next new thing always comes from the outside. The culture stagnates without fresh infusions from the fringe.
This year we need to keep that fringe alive. We need to help it on the indie platforms and the indie labels and the indie cinemas and indie galleries and indie media outlets.
But that requires action from us, both as creators and members of an informed audience—those fifty culture elites in positions of power couldn’t care less. They’re too busy looking at the share price.
This is the defining tension in the culture ecosystem. On one side, we have consolidation of power among a tiny number of elite insiders. On the other, we hear clamoring outsiders with their alternative voices and independent perspectives."
https://www.honest-broker.com/p/fifty-people-control-the-culture
36. Some Alt-Geopolitics. Lots of this stuff is wacky and conspiracy theorist. But listen to everyone to try to understand all the crazy that is going on in the world.
Warband Maxxing: Build Your Tribe Part Deux
Like many men, when times get tough, I naturally close inward and cut off contact with friends and family. I refuse to ask for help or even talk to anyone. This is a huge mistake. You have to fight your instincts.
This also seems to be more common especially in an extremely individualistic, isolated and cold society like America, where we only usually come together in times of direct threat. No surprise that the rise of prepper culture is mainly an American thing. Where you keep a stockpile of food, supplies and weapons to ride out a crisis or emergency.
But Lone wolves die quickly & quietly. And as usual there were some interesting takes on X that point to the right mode to get through these times of poly-crisis.
Homeric Futurist: “But if you look at people in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Brazil, or wherever. Nobody is living on years of stockpiled supplies. That is a bourgeois notion.
They thrive through their networks, local influence, capacity for violence, black market economies etc.”
Titus Manlius describes what happened during the brutal decades long civil war in Lebanon in the 1970s & 1980s: “Christians in Lebanon stockpile ammo and supplies. Fortify their homes (gates, barred windows, cameras, solar, generators). But yes, they thrive with family, local/international networks, influence, neighbors, associations, churches. It sh-t hits the fan, the bells ring.”
Source: https://x.com/HomericFuturist/status/1998799690020827635.
This is absolutely the way. You need to build your tribe. Maybe better said, your war band.
Like “Rogue Frontier” you have to actively work on building these communities before a crisis. And there are many old historical precedents beyond recent times. It’s almost like men are wired for this in reaction to societal breakdown and challenges.
“Modern man feels a profound sense of meaninglessness precisely because his bonds of fraternal brotherhood have been shattered.
The great lie is that civilization is "evolving", progressing toward some bright, utopian future. The reverse is clearly true — as we move further from traditional hierarchy, the more rapidly society degenerates.
We men of tradition strive to become the most exemplary members of our folk, capable of reorganizing hierarchy around our superiority. We must be of such powerful quality that men find purpose through service to our ideals.
Now is the time to revitalize traditional structures of camaraderie and manifest a new destiny for our people — this begins with the formation of your own comitatus.
Ghengis Khan, in fact, began his conquest of the world with his "four fierce wolves" or "the dogs of Chinggis" — Khubilai, Jelme, Jebe, and Sübedei. Naturally, like Ghengis, the more heroic qualities you embody, the more men who will seek to serve your greatness.
In the ancient world, benefits of a comitatus were abundant:
"The lord in turn rewarded his comitatus, especially the core group of friends, by treating them as his own family, sharing his habitation and worldly goods with them, and bestowing much wealth upon them.
Warriors belonging to a comitatus were rewarded with almost unimaginable wealth and honor in their societies, not just once but over and over throughout their lives, as long as they served their lord, and in the afterlife as well.”
Source: https://x.com/RoguesPhilo/status/1998873215020708237.
Exploring this topic led me down the path to an old fictional book “Kara’s Game” that took place during the horrific Serbian siege of Sarajevo in 1994. It’s a gripping read and a frightening reminder of the depths that people can fall to. But there was a quote that seemed apt for the times, you learn about who you can count on when things get bad. “If you cannot help those who help you and yours, who can you help? If you can’t be loyal to those who are loyal to you and yours, then who or what the hell can you be loyal to.”
History is a great educator. Mike Shelby wrote:
“History is littered with the good guys losing the war and atrocities perpetrated against their innocent family members.
Stop thinking America could be any different. Don't lose faith that we will win, but be realistic that we could lose. Then keep training and preparing to win.”
So go build your war band. Everyone needs their crew during challenging times. 2026 to 2029 is going to be wild.
Go Tribal: Build a Clan
There is something about the highlands and mountains that creates fierce people. Think about the Scottish, Gurkhas, Dagestanis, Chechens, Georgians, Houthis and the ultimate empire killers, the Afghans. Some of the toughest human beings on earth. The tough, desolate and isolated terrains create brutal clannish people. Just like how the deserts and steppes also created tough brutal people like the Moroccan Tauregs, Turks, Mongols and Arabs of the past.
Brutal environments with scarce resources where every scrap was fought for. Clans and close family ties were critical for survival. People who you could count on, people who had your back no matter what. Who would shelter you, feed you and help you when you were sick. This gave you some margin of error and increased your chances of survival. We’re all wired to be tribal to begin with.
These cultural legacies still last into modern times. I remember being told by friends not to mess with Afghanis when I was growing up because when you mess with one of them, you get the whole family. Uncles, brothers, cousins and distant cousins would all come after you. They lived by feuds and as I recall the Ten Rings Boss man of Shang Chi said something along these lines: “A blood debt has to be paid by blood”. Or as was popularized by the Sicilian mafia: the vendetta.
I used to think these things such as clans and tribes were irrelevant & outdated. And they were in the magical global world we lived in. The Pax Americana of globalization where we all prospered together. Those days are over. The cycle has turned.
America, the formerly unified and trusting society is decaying. Broken institutions, broken infrastructure abetted by grifting, corrupt elites grabbing as much loot as they can. No one cares about you or your family, definitely not your politicians. Both Democrats and Republicans are equally venal and useless. Everyone, literally almost everyone is trying to get their bag and I absolutely hate this. We are now in a trustless society where people will be fighting far more than ever for the scraps left over. Dog eat dog.
I saw a Tweet by @Ellliotttb that summed this up: “Everyone hates you and wants to rob you…..anyone associated with the administration, local politicos, a16z, unions, pension consultants, loser real estate syndicators, crypto treasuries, spac sponsors, you’re alone on an island of pick pockets.”
@buccocapital describes the mode we need to work under accordingly: “This is the default state of being alive and operating with this mindset is how you get and stay rich.”
A great economic reset that has huge social implications for everyone. To survive and thrive, we need to learn from our not too distant past. Go tribal. Build your network. A network of brains, brawn, guns and cash. Better yet, build your clan or warband. You’re gonna need it as it’s gonna get ugly for a while.
Notice, Name, Relax and Release: A Method for Emotional Control
I attended the Hololife Summit in Tokyo in October last year. Formerly known as the Biohackers Summit, it was really educational. Most of the talks were basic but good reminders on things I should be doing more. Things like drinking more water and spending more time in nature.
But the talk by author and professor Rebecca Kochenderfer was probably the most helpful for me. She said something in her talk that hit, she said: “You aren’t broken, you are just emotional.” And that most emotions last no more than 3 minutes but we act on them which can be very detrimental to us and those around us.
So she introduced a concept called Notice, Name, Relax and Release. When you feel an emotion, especially one that is overwhelming. Stop, breathe and do the process. “Notice” how you are feeling, then “Name” it, usually anger or fear for me. “Relax” by box breathing and then “release it”, just let it go. So simple. Maybe too simple. But I’ve started using this and it’s been helpful.
Hopefully you can use this too. Use it to manage your emotions and make less bad decisions. Small steps like this will help you make your life better.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads March 1st, 2026
“There are always flowers for those who want to see them” – Henri Matisse
"Myriad reasons I’ve written about countless times, but important reasons as it relates to this reflection now were the yearning to prove I had what I call independent commercial value (ICV) versus relying on a single “intermediary” or “sole client” aka an employer in a W2 environment… and also to create my own universe in a way… to ram force sovereignty… to stop asking permission… to be completely free “from the matrix” as they say… live where I wanted with my wife and kids… travel anywhere… do anything… yet simultaneously build my own business… do the work I enjoyed and am good at… and build a brand around what I was doing."
https://www.junteau.com/p/proving-it-twice
2. "What justifies this action, from a Pentagon strategic perspective, is the convergence of three existential threats from America’s three primary adversaries. China has embedded operational control into critical mineral extraction that feeds weapons manufacturing. Iran has established drone production facilities within strike range of the continental United States. Russia has deployed military advisers and integrated air defense systems in the Caribbean.
Venezuela represents the only location where all three adversaries operate simultaneously. The oil is secondary. Breaking Chinese supply chain dominance, eliminating Iranian manufacturing capability, and expelling Russian military presence are primary."
https://renegaderesources.pro/p/the-venezuelan-oil-narative-is-pure
3. "If you want to know whether this is a real transition, look for measurable changes: generals rotated out, interior security restructured, ports and customs leadership replaced, and money flows brought above ground. If those don’t happen, then what’s being marketed as “liberation” is just succession with better optics.
That’s why, instead of watching the headlines and statements, we should watch who holds the interior ministry, the security forces, and the money. If those hands don’t change, then the country didn’t change—only the face on the poster did.
Capturing Maduro is a headline. The regime is an operating system. And operating systems don’t crash when one user logs out."
https://jaymartin.substack.com/p/the-part-they-never-show-after-regime
4. "Denmark is a small nation of almost 6 million souls in a space of land about 2/3 the size of West Virginia. In the last year she finally started spending her fair share on defense, but even before then, she had been a solid ally. She already let us have bases in Greenland. If we need more we can sell the concept—along with Canada—as part of mutual defense. When it comes to keeping Russia and China at a distance, in backrooms we can work deals and twist Danish elbows. We won’t get all we want, but we should be able to get 80%. That’s good enough with friends.
I don’t get antagonizing the Danes like this. I think it is unnecessary and counterproductive. $0.02.
Yes, I would love to have American ownership of Greenland, but that isn’t a realistic option right now…especially after the last year. What we can have—if the Danes will let us—is an expanded presence on the island as needed."
https://cdrsalamander.substack.com/p/the-unfortunate-greenland-kerfuffle
5. "I especially struggle taking seriously the “modernity sucks” people who lay the blame on technology and seem to idolize the pre-industrial past. Modern technology is wonderful, and our current problems are not because of the machines, but in how we use them."
https://walkingtheworld.substack.com/p/modern-life-is-good-actually
6. The journey to AGI. A must watch documentary on Demis and Deepmind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d95J8yzvjbQ
7. "To be lethal, you need to be a modern renaissance man.
You need high standards for yourself & who you choose to have in your circle.
Non-negotiables that govern how you move through business, relationships, and life itself.
The character traits that command respect when you walk into a room; not because you’re the strongest, but because you’ve systematically engineered yourself into someone who cannot be ignored."
https://www.lethalgentleman.com/p/the-standards-of-a-lethal-gentleman
8. The rule of law to rule of code. Fascinating discussion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-S2P7dmjD0
9. Innovation happening in DoW. Important conversation here on DIU priorities.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Lfst-RXX9k
10. "Smart people in hard jobs with limited resources are doing their best to improve the odds in the place we have neglected almost as much as the Caribbean, the Pacific."
https://cdrsalamander.substack.com/p/the-pacifics-hubs-spokes-and-aces
11. "Across sleepy and remote islands in the Pacific, U.S. military engineers are working around the clock to revive strategically important airstrips that American troops first built under fire over 70 years ago during World War II.
The reconstruction effort is being led by a designated office within the U.S. Air Force, whose Agile Combat Employment, or ACE, doctrine has identified dozens of airfields that will be used to house and launch fighter jets, aerial refuelling tankers and weapons during a war with China. A trilateral force of the Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force is now converging with a single goal in mind: re-establish a presence on the airfields once used to deliver decisive combat power for the United States during the last great power war.
“I like to say we're going back to the future," Lt. Col Frank Blaz, a senior engineer and site lead for the Pacific Air Forces, said back in 2024. "As part of our Agile Combat Employment, we’ve taken a look at all of the historic airfields within the Pacific that helped us launch and execute successful campaigns. Building new is not the way to go. It’s expensive. Repairing and rehabilitating what exists is a much better economic solution.”
https://www.newsweek.com/inside-us-plans-to-reopen-wwii-air-bases-for-war-with-china-11286002
12. I always learn from his interviews. Lots of history and excellent thinking frameworks. A good state of Silicon Valley and AI right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRh2sVcNXQ8
13. "You’ll essentially confirm that you are now a man with free will. And that the job of a man is not an easy one. It doesn’t come easy. It has a ton of obstacles and preparations in place before you’re able to live life fully on your terms.
But that’s what makes it all that sweeter when you get even a taste of that freedom. And that is why you are blessed to be a man. Things don’t come easy to you. You are a hero in a movie. Starting out in the desert with little to your name, status, accomplishment, and abilities. But your dreams and the time to dream is unlimited."
https://www.rawmanifesto.com/p/how-to-live-a-fulfilled-life
14. Gzero and the top risks of 2026. If you don't pay attention to geopolitics you will get rekt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqVfnC_muaI&t=1224s
15. "The primary objective is geopolitical. It is the securitization of the U.S. backyard under Cold War 2.0 conditions.
The revived Monroe Doctrine does not represent a retreat from global confrontation or a downgrading of competition with China. On the contrary, it is a strategic consolidation phase designed to enable the United States to compete more effectively at the systemic level. America faces a two-front challenge. China functions as the trade, economic, and technological hegemonic rival. Russia operates as the military-revisionist spoiler willing to destabilize regions through force. Together, they form the DragonBear as a coordinated pressure system.
To succeed, Washington must prevent encirclement and strategic distraction in its own hemisphere. Monroe Doctrine 2.0 achieves precisely that by blocking China’s western flank and erecting an anti-China firewall.
History offers clarity. Russia did not refrain from invading Ukraine out of respect for international norms. China has not restrained itself on Taiwan due to diplomatic language. Deterrence is produced by strength and demonstrated willingness to act.
The CRINK axis has been constrained not by eloquent speeches, but by the use and demonstration of force. Middle powers such as India, Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Brazil, Japan, and South Korea must internalize this shift. So must European powers. The world is becoming increasingly binary. The space for hedging is narrowing."
https://open.substack.com/pub/velinatchakarova/p/the-revival-of-monroe-doctrine-20
16. Surprisingly frank and human discussion on success, investing, hedge funds and managing people. And serving god.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlTYj9KNNZk
17. "His message was clear and sobering: The world has an insatiable thirst for metals, from surging military budgets to AI data centers and the greening of the global economy, but it does not have a credible way to supply the metals it intends to consume over the next few decades.
The United States is totally dependent on China for almost every critical mineral."
https://robertsinn.substack.com/p/billionaire-investor-robert-friedland
18. Incredible episode. Lots of insight here: be the best or you are toast. Whether going public, building cos or investing. Invisible unemployment is a real thing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGii3mpwsNU
19. "it ain’t enough to simply want to survive, to want more for your people. it ain’t enough. your mind must focus in on what matters before nature and nature’s god: victory. victory is the only thing that matters. winning is the only rule found in nature. how far have our people fallen to the standards laid out by nietzsche in twilight of the idols? hell, let’s start with his first rule: “nobody must ‘let themselves go,’ not even when he is alone.” damn near everyone has already failed and we haven’t even gotten to the meat and potatoes of his aphorism.
unfortunately, it doesn’t get any better from there. “everything good is an inheritance.”
https://resavager.com/p/everything-good-is-an-inheritance
20. "If the US cannot continue on its current path without taking over much of the world’s largest fossil fuel reserves, and if China still needs access to those the same sources, the predictable result is that America’s energy adventurism will turn into an energy blockade on China, immediately reminiscent of the embargo on oil exports to Japan announced by the US on August 1, 1941. As a result, Japan lost access to nearly 90 percent of imported oil. Pearl Harbour followed later in the year."
https://brunomacaes.substack.com/p/the-energy-wars-are-china-and-america
21. "One of the most consequential illusions of the post-Cold War era was the belief that economic interdependence would permanently discipline geopolitical competition. This assumption underpinned decades of policy choices, particularly in Europe, and shaped the integration of China into Western-led economic systems.
Between 2021 and 2026, this illusion collapsed. Globalization did not disappear, but it underwent a fundamental transformation. Interdependence was not dissolved; it was weaponized. The global system remains interconnected, yet those connections are no longer neutral or benign. They are assessed, managed, and exploited through a security lens.
Power in Cold War 2.0 is increasingly measured by the ability to control energy flows, maritime chokepoints, digital infrastructure, rare-earth and critical-mineral supply chains, food corridors, and financial clearing mechanisms. As a result, commerce, territory, and security have fused into a single strategic battlefield. Control over networks has become more consequential than control over land."
https://substack.com/inbox/post/183905750
22. "Everything we do, everything we rely on, the entire world we’ve built all depends on trust. It depends on relying on others, working with others, taking actions that benefit others. It depends on enforcement mechanisms to accompany the trust, but the enforcement mechanisms only matter if the trust exists to initiate the process.
That’s not what I’m seeing these days from our leaders on both sides of the aisle and across multiple sectors and in countless corners of society. If the world we live in ceases to function in the way we want, it’s not going to be because of artificial intelligence. It’s not because of illegal immigrants. It’s not because of the one percent. It’s because we stopped buying into the basic notion of trust.
Will I ever go back to that specific bar? I don’t know. I don’t go to bars that often. But either way, I like knowing it’s there if I happen to be in Miami. I like knowing I had a really good time and can go back there and do it again.
I like living in a world where we can build a whole that’s far, far greater than if we each just relied solely on our individual abilities to do everything. A world that advances, a world that evolves, a world that functions. A world that’s — sometimes — even happy. All because we choose to trust."
https://bradleytusk.substack.com/p/one-night-in-miami
23. "A continuing worry for a negative surprise for Japan in 2026 comes from China. Beijing’s failure to re-engage with America forces a rise in Chinese unemployment, more China deflation, more idle capacity and surging bad debt. China has been trying to stimulate growth by easing both monetary and fiscal policy since the summer of 2024.
If the economy does not respond and does not begin to accelerate by late spring 2026, currency devaluation may become its last option. China being forced to start a currency war by the compounding forces of domestic deflation and U.S. protectionism would force a dramatic disruption not just for Japan’s cyclical competitiveness, but for Japan’s future prosperity."
https://japanoptimist.substack.com/p/japan-surprises-2026
24. "The automation story has always been about per-unit economics. Robots cost more upfront, but the marginal cost of each widget collapses. We’ve had a century to get comfortable with that trade. Now the unit is “conversation that changes someone’s mind.” Same economics, same logic. Except the thing being produced at scale is persuasion."
https://www.gettheleverage.com/p/dude-i-just-fired-half-my-sales-team
25. I always get inspired by this. Obsessive craftsman is what I always take away from his talks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVdwU711kP0
26. State of investing in Private Markets, lots of good perspective from someone who has been doing this for a very long time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hW42EjOft40
27. "Now Venezuela is causing further conflict between Trump and the New Axis powers. The U.S. has been trying to interdict ships purportedly carrying weapons from Iran or Russia to Venezuela. Trump has been vocally insulting Russia since the raid, and demanding that Venezuela’s oil industry refuse to partner with China, Russia, and Iran.
Trump’s chaotic actions are thus throwing a wrench in the idea of a global right-wing concert of powers that divides the world into three authoritarian “spheres of influence”. And by injecting chaos and uncertainty, Trump might keep China’s plans for world domination off balance, buying crucial time for its moment of economic dominance to falter.
In the new, chaotic world, our hope has to be that the chaos happens to resolve itself to our benefit. That’s a thin reed to place our hopes on, but in the new geopolitical anarchy, and with America’s leadership and society being what they are right now, it’s probably the best we’ve got."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/welcome-to-chaos-world
28. "We can express all this in summary terms as follows. Organisations do not constitute themselves naturally from separate individuals. Organisations with any degree of complexity at all require purpose, effort and energy to put together in the first place. They then require further periodic inputs if they are to remain effective, because entropy ensures that, left to themselves, organisations will become less ordered and thus less capable over time. This is a natural process and not necessarily the fault of individuals, although they may make it worse or conversely help to slow it down.
Capable organisations have always known this. Emergency services don’t just write procedures, they should practice them frequently. Governments make and rehearse plans for dealing with unexpected crises. Military units are given special training before being sent on operations. If you go to a dangerous area of the world you may have to listen to a security briefing you’ve heard several times before, just to make sure that you remember it. And so on.
And if we are to seek a single dominant, immediate cause for the decline in politics and government in the western world over the last couple of generations, it is precisely that the natural tendency towards entropy has not been taken seriously. Indeed, as I shall try to show, everything has been done to increase entropy, sometimes through incompetence, sometimes through ideology, sometimes just by accident. And in turn, the ultimate causes of that are rather disturbing.
It’s this, more than anything else, that lies behind the shambles that is now the western military, and its inability to understand, let alone to imagine how to counter, what the Russians are doing in Ukraine The military is a very high-entropy organisation, and needs to practice not only skills but also the retention of its guiding mindset, quite regularly.
This is why regiments cultivate their history, and why naval vessels bear the same name through different generations. It reminds them who they are and why they exist. Western militaries have become largely dysfunctional not just for practical reasons (and here we may reflect that the consumption of ammunition and spares is a form of entropy that has to be allowed for, and it turns out it hasn’t been) but because no effort has been made to preserve this mindset: indeed, rather the reverse."
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/the-politics-of-destruction
29. Wide ranging convo as always, prediction markets to robotics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDVKaOENI_I
30. Great episode on very topical subjects in Silicon Valley: California wealth tax and software is not where it is at anymore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMEDrOnLAGM&list=RDDMEDrOnLAGM&start_radio=1
31. "Artificial intelligence has been a big help, yet the complex economic machine seems to be responding to the holistic strategy of tariffs, deregulation, lower interest rates, a return to QE, increased control of strategic assets on the geopolitical stage, and the deportation of illegal immigrants domestically.
But nothing says the economy can’t grow even faster.
Elon Musk is predicting GDP growth can reach 10% or higher. That seems unreasonable compared to historical norms, but I would not discount his view. The rise of AI has created an exponential growth scenario that could easily thrust the US into an ever-increasing growth trajectory."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/the-great-economic-boom-why-trumps
32. "If rare earths are the new oil, China is the new OPEC. Chinese mines supply nearly 70% of the ore from which rare earth elements are extracted, and more than 90% of the refined materials. Meanwhile, the U.S. imports 70% of its rare earths from China. This asymmetry is a strategic vulnerability. According to a 2025 report from the Center on Strategic and International Studies, China has demonstrated a willingness to “weaponize” rare earths.
In 2010, for example, China cut off rare earth exports to Japan over a maritime dispute, threatening to halt its automotive production. Japan responded by importing more rare earths from Australia in the short term and ramping up domestic production long term. Since then, Japanese rare earth imports from China have fallen from 90% to 60% — still too high, but low enough that Tokyo has options if Beijing restricts access. This week, China again banned the export of rare earths to Japan over its support for Taiwan, but, notably, the ban included a far broader category of goods, suggesting China’s rare earth leverage over Japan has weakened.
It’s a different story for the U.S. In April, China retaliated against Trump’s so-called reciprocal tariffs by restricting the export of seven types of rare earths. Trump folded, naturally, but even after reaching a deal in October to resume exports, the U.S. remains at China’s mercy. According to a recent Bloomberg report, continued restrictions on deliveries of raw materials “hamstring” U.S. efforts to build domestic rare earth processing capacity."
https://www.profgalloway.com/rare-earths/
33. "Elon didn’t go for batteries, EVs, and solar power because he was a climate-obsessed liberal; he correctly understood that there was a revolution underway in the technologies that humans use to produce, store, transport, and harness energy. He knew that whoever mastered that technological revolution would attain a dominant position in a bunch of different, seemingly unrelated industries.
In other words, Elon understood — and still understands — the importance of the Electric Tech Stack.
Currently, China generates much more electricity than the U.S. does — partly because it’s willing to build out solar power, where in the U.S. solar is often blocked by local NIMBYs, “environmental” permitting laws, and a hostile Trump administration. But China also builds most of the world’s batteries, meaning that American AI is going to be dependent on Chinese batteries as well.
On top of all that, America desperately needs the Electric Tech Stack for its national defense. I pointed this out in a post back in September, and Ryan talks about it a lot as well. Drones are taking over the modern battlefield, and drones require batteries and rare-earth electric motors — the same components that go into the EVs that America is now refusing to build.
Thus, America’s weakness in EVs, batteries, and rare earths threatens to become a weakness in everything — a weakness in AI, a weakness in drones, a weakness in robots, and so on. Because we collectively decided that EVs are hippie-dippy climate bullshit, we ignored the key physical technologies that increasingly underlie all of manufacturing, including defense manufacturing."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/america-must-embrace-the-electric
34. "There is tremendous reason for optimism. America leads in product and module design, and the upstream materials and device primitives we need are, for the most part, increasingly available. We also have the world’s deepest and most demanding consumer markets, and the brands best positioned to serve them. On paper, this should put the United States in a strong position. But in practice, closing the production gap will require a significant and durable shift to support an electronics ecosystem that now spans consumer products, industrial systems, and defense applications.
We may never match Shenzhen’s sheer density of low-cost suppliers. But software can help us stitch together a distributed manufacturing network of highly automated factories — not just to reshore high-volume production, but to continuously drive down the marginal cost of new product iteration. Without this, domestic manufacturing becomes increasingly static, bespoke, and expensive, while foreign competitors’ advantages compound through faster iteration.
At the same time, we must be careful about lax subsidies that merely entrench incumbents or suppress competition; industrial policy that rewards presence rather than world-class performance will create lethargic firms vulnerable to the hyper-competitive dynamics of Asian markets. Finally, we should be intentional about inviting firms to build their production ecosystems here to learn from. American firms repatriating capabilities offshored decades ago are not the same as foreign firms just extending theirs.
America started this race with the smartphone in all of our pockets. We built the blueprint for the consumer electronics revolution; others scaled it. The billionth unit is always better and cheaper than the first. The next decade will determine whether our ecosystem remains merely architects or becomes builders. That depends on whether we can manifest the industrial layer we left behind. We will do this not through nostalgia for the factories of the past, but through mastery of the production model of the future. America invented the smartphone. Now we need to learn its lesson: the future belongs to whoever can build it."
https://www.a16z.news/p/everything-is-computer
35. "Until recently, except for a handful of services firms, defense primes, and a few international spyware companies, few private commercial companies operated in the offensive cyber domain. Traditionally, U.S. government agencies charged with offensive cyber built most capabilities internally, turning to specialized firms and vulnerability brokers only on occasion.
However, this status quo is no longer sustainable: rapid private-sector breakthroughs in AI are fundamentally reshaping offensive cyber operations, and the expertise to harness these capabilities increasingly resides outside government, in AI-native companies. If the U.S. and its allies want to remain competitive in offensive cyber operations, they will need to explore how to use commercial technologies as force multipliers. Over the past few years several startups have emerged to bring commercial AI technology to U.S. and allied governments to accelerate their offensive cyber operations, and we are just at the beginning of this shift in the market."
https://maggiegray.us/p/the-age-of-ai-for-offensive-cyber
36. "First, a16z is founded and run by engineers. Not just founders, engineer-founders. This influences how they designed the Firm (to feast on scale and network effects), and also how they pick markets and the companies within them.
Second, there is perhaps no bigger investing sin at a16z than investing in second best. If you miss a winner early, you can always invest in a later round. If you invest in second best, you lock yourself out from investing in the winner. This is true even if the eventual winner isn’t yet born.
Third, once a16z believes it has identified the category winner, the classic a16z move is to give it more money than it thought it needed. Everyone makes fun of them for that move.
These three things have been true since the Firm’s earliest days.
a16z is a cult of technology. Everything it does is to bring about better technology to make the future better. It believes that “Technology is the glory of human ambition and achievement, the spearhead of progress, and the realization of our potential.” Everything flows from that. It believes in the future and bets the firm that way.
a16z is a Firm. It is a business, a company. It is built with the goal to scale, and to improve with scale. There are many characteristics of a Firm that I believe do not apply to a traditional Fund, and we will cover them. I think this distinction solves one of the oddest things about venture capital’s self-image: that venture capital is an industry that sells the world’s most scalable product (money) to its most scalable companies (technology startups) but must not, itself, scale.
a16z is a temporal sovereign. It is the institution for the future. The Firm, in its more ambitious moments, views itself as a peer to the world’s leading financial institutions and governments. It has said that it aims to be the (original) JP Morgan for the Information Age, but I think that undershoots the true ambition. If governments work on behalf of chunks of space, a16z works on behalf of that big chunk of time that is the future. Venture capital is simply the way that it’s found it can have the biggest impact on the future, and the business model most aligned with profiting when it does.
a16z makes and sells power. It builds its own power through scale, culture, network, organizational infrastructure, and success, and then gives its power to the technology startups in its portfolio through sales, marketing, hiring, and government relations, primarily, although to hear its founders tell it, a16z will do whatever is in its power to do, which seems to be a lot.
a16z is betting that technology will eat more and more of the economy, and that when it does, the new companies will be 10x, 100x bigger than the old ones they replace. That is a foundational one, but one that is available to any venture fund with some cajones.
a16z is betting that it can help make that future bigger and better than it would otherwise be, sooner, through policy and platform and power, and help its portfolio companies win in the process. Based on my conversations with a16z’s founders, this bet seems to be paying off today, and it is an unbelievably asymmetric one. Each win can pay for a lot of capabilities. The machine compounds."
Trade Routes & Chokepoints: A Neo-Mercantilist Deglobalized World
I’ve long enjoyed More or Less and it’s usually about tech and Silicon Valley. But in an episode, they introduced a very helpful concept for the new emerging geopolitical landscape. You can check out the episode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWntiqnjXYc.
I warn you this is a long write up and I took plenty of quotations from this conversation. It was so good. Basically we should think about key countries and companies as Connectors on a trade route.
“Well, the private conference take was…..about the importance of trade routes and mercantalism 2.0. But the basic point is that if at the highest level like we kind of all grew up in a globalized world, right? And so frictionless global there are no trade routes like it's just global, right?
Like you can trade with anyone. All ports are open. We're moving into this world of trade routes that trade routes mattering. If you're the camel people who run a trade route that's super valuable. And I think the interesting thing on what these new trade routes are talking about in a world of low trust, high fakes and AI and lack of transparency and might is right power and things……you know there's going to be effectively the king of your world, you want to own a dominion right? Or the other way to be powerful is to sit on a trade route and control it, right? So, you know, famously Jerusalem was a really cool city back in the day. They didn't really make anything, but they sat on a really important trade route with some swords and could control the trade in the region, right?
And so in 2025, what are the trade routes? There's a trade route from New York finance to Silicon Valley Tech, right? That's a pretty robust one. There is a Silicon Valley tech to Tel Aviv route. Doesn't it go from Riyadh to Silicon Valley? There's absolutely, but this is a great example. Like Riyadh to Silicon Valley is an absolutely established trade route. And the people who control that deal. Where does Masa (Masa of Softbank) spend most of his time these days?”
A connector can be an individual as well too. Usually super influential people with massive personal brands. Masayoshi Son as mentioned. There is more to this and the following is a super long quote but it is worth reading to understand how to position yourself in the future.
”You've got the right narrative which is like it's not about an interconnected open world. It's about a series of trade routes and there are brokers or the key people who control those trade routes which are relationship based. You know the two counterparties to trust on either end.
And the point I was making about Sam Alman and Elon is if you really think what Elon's genius was, there's a few things he's amazing at. He's an incredible cult leader in technology. He always has been like the cult of Elon is strong. There are people who religiously believe in him for a whole bunch of reasons. That's very powerful. He's an incredible storyteller. It's just like he's incredibly good at attracting talent that will then do that. It's not like he's the engineer or all this stuff, right? But he's a great storyteller.
But one of the most important things that Elon has been able to do over the last many years across multiple companies, like his real genius, is matching enormous amounts of capital with technology companies, right? Like that's what he does. That's what the marketing genius is. And he's kind of like the exclusive brokers of “I need 10 billion dollars”, right?. And there's an exhibit A for this which is I I forget which lawsuit or leak had his text messages but there are in the public domain text messages between Elon and Michael Grimes then at Morgan Stanley, now in the US government. Elon and this one came up with Larry Ellison who's basically like “how much should I invest in X, a billion good?”
There's a lot of VCs like myself included who if you want to ship a million a few million bucks like that's fine. There's like tons of that. That's not like an exclusive trade route if you need a few million bucks from LPS, right? You know, the biggest capitalists that are pure capitalists, what we call capitalists in the world, have gotten really good at moving way more money. They're like heavy shipping containers full of money. But if you really wanted to move enormous amounts of money, right, like from the physical world and from, you know, asset managers and technology companies, you kind of had to call Elon, right?
And I think the animosity, if you think about who's been able to move money at scale from finance to tech at massive scale, it's Elon and now Sam, right? Sam is the other massive trade route person. And so I think the reality is who can move lots and lots of money from a finance zone into tech.
You know I'd argue that for instance….. Palmer Luckey is getting good at this too right? Like there's a bunch of people who are becoming really good at shipping money around to big tech. I'd argue that like for instance Josh Kushner is getting pretty good at this. But there's no one who can raise who can do it on the scale of Elon and Sam right now or at least demonstrating it.
So I think that's actually the real point of threat or the reason that there's probably so much animosity is they're just too similar in what their core skill set is which is marketing and trade route, right? Capital trade route.
I also just think it's like this is a model for how to think about lots of zones of power going forward. Like for instance, like I'm really bullish on the Tel Aviv Silicon Valley trade route, right? Think of them as trade routes versus just communities or cults or clubs or each of those things is its own community, right? Like they are their own communities. Like Tel Aviv is a community. Silicon Valley is a community. Again, in a free trade world, they all kind of intermingle. It's this globalized economy mental model, which is what we grew up with. I just think for lots of reasons, you're seeing a series of cults evolve across the world and it's just really valuable to be the translator or like the proxy between two cults that can't directly connect, right?
And so I just think that's really what's happening in the world, you know, shrunk to a pin head and was super globalized for a period. We're now kind of regionalizing, then you think about trade routes, you think about who sits on those trade routes, who brokers them. It's a very powerful position to be. The most famous example in history that I love is Squanto. Squanto had the greatest gig in history, right? Which is Squanto who happened to be the one Indian who could both talk to the pilgrims and the Indians because he had somehow ended up in London or something. I don't remember the history exactly, but he spoke English and the local languages. And the whole thing, if you read like the early pilgrim experience, is they're all like, "We have no idea if Squanto is lying to us or not. We don't know. We have to trust him, but like is that what they actually said? Is Squanto doing all these deals on the side for himself?"
But is this whole information asymmetry game connecting to disparate populations
that had to work together? Yeah, it was Squanto. So that's the most extreme version of that.”
So if you made it here, I think you get a better sense of how to operate and build power and wealth in the new multipolar world. A trade route is a good framework to see the world. Think trade routes and chokepoints. Similar to what control of Gibraltar, Singapore, Oman & Egypt were to the British Empire. Or how important advanced semiconductors, the Petrodollar and US Dollar itself is to the American Empire. All key chokepoints to control the world.
In this new world, you have to build a personal brand, network and build connections. Become a connector between regions. Become a connector between companies. Become a connector between people. Become a connector and a translator, bring legibility to opportunities. This has always been the case but probably more so now in this new world we are entering.
Life is Pain, So Choose Your Pain
During rest mode last year after another brutal year, I do what I do to relax. Go rewatch Yellowstone. Man that is one damn good tv series, except for the last season, what the heck happened there?
There is this scene when one of the cowboys leaves Yellowstone with his wife and he feels sad and guilty. His wife tells him: “It’s called life. Most of it hurts. That’s when something feels good. We have a frame of reference.”
How true this is. And I think our Western societal messaging has done us all a major disservice. We are taught to focus on being happy. That this is the ultimate goal of life. It took me a while to realize this is completely false and wrong.
The purpose of our life is to have an impact and accomplish things. Preferably in the service of others, whether family, friends, or the greater community. And like most things, this is hard. It’s painful and uncomfortable, most of the time. Perhaps this is why most people just give up in life.
They give up on themselves and their dreams and settle. Nothing worse than people who settle.
Don’t be these people. Choose your hard. Do things important and meaningful for you and your family. Expect things to be hard but have the mindset that you will do whatever it takes (legally and morally) to overcome these challenges. Pain always leads to growth. Adversity is the signal.
Glory and victory goes to those who endure.
Be a Hustler aka Be High Agency
I read Brian Morrisey of the Rebooting when I want to understand what is happening in the new media landscape. He gives some really good takes. If you want to understand where the business world is going, watch what happens in the media business world along with gaming to see the latest trends, tactics and impacts. They are literally on the bleeding edge.
Brian wrote in the Hustlers: https://www.therebooting.com/p/the-hustlers:
"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.”
Now beyond the pandemic, we have war in the Middle east, Europe and plenty of flashpoints in Latin America, Asia & Africa to boot. Massive economic challenges in the political West and geopolitical shifts everywhere. If this does not count as a polycrisis, not sure what would. It’s the time of the hustler. Why?
“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."
Crisis always leads to massive opportunities. This is an opening for the tough, smart and prepared. Be high agency and get to work.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads Feb 22nd, 2026
Spring work is going on with joyful enthusiasm." - John Muir
"Luck can be engineered.
Leverage the internet (it’s the entire reason you’re reading this article).
Get out of your house & move molecules, paint shots and have conversations.
Constantly refine your skills, become a valuable member of society & give without expectation of return.
Enjoy high leisure activities, go on that ski trip, join that martial arts gym…
It’s impossible to not get closer to where you want to be by doing these 4 things."
https://www.lethalgentleman.com/p/how-to-create-luck
2. There is so much wisdom in this conversation. What all the best founders do in times of crisis and how to build culture from one of the best VCs on the planet at one of the best firms on the planet.
I learned a lot and will listen to this again for sure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91WKEsbHUNc
3. "Contrary to the common wisdom, what you see is that during the frontier stage in the US market, it was actually the easiest time to generate excess returns over the benchmark.
It became a little harder during the emerging market stage. Once you got into the developed stage, it became very hard to generate excess returns over the benchmark because the market has become so much more efficient.
Of course, if you look at the anecdotal evidence, it points to the same conclusion.
The frontier market stage in the US lasted up until about 1950, and it was what I would call the Benjamin Graham era. This is when Benjamin Graham devised his know-nothing, purely mechanical approach to investing, where he would just buy businesses that were trading at less than two-thirds of net working capital. That worked great for generating very good excess returns over the benchmark.
During the emerging market period from about 1950 to about 1990, those net working capital ideas – those easy Benjamin Graham bargains – would all disappear.
In emerging and frontier markets, it is critical to be able to switch between the markets because at any given time, there may only be one market that offers attractive investment opportunities. If your mandate ties you to a single market, then you're not going to be able to take advantage of that."
4. "My advice to entrepreneurs is simple: start writing. It does not have to be perfect. It does not have to be groundbreaking. It just has to be done. The more you write, the sharper your thinking becomes, and the stronger your speaking becomes. Writing and speaking reinforce each other, and entrepreneurs should invest in both."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/12/27/the-power-of-writing-before-you-speak/
5. Wide ranging conversation on global macro covering lots of ground: AI, the new PMI cycle leading to possible microcaps, industrials and commodities growth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E47xXJZHHgg&t=2127s
6. A really great conversation on global macro and late-cycle investment with my friend Nicolas. All with the underlying tech trend driving almost everything.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOvgtjhxAFg
7. This is a must watch conversation on global macro. Bifurcation of the world and the end of the USD vs rise of BRICS. Fascinating.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOW-oSruO80&t=899s
8. Lightspeed VC and how they are investing in the Age of AI.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0lZ3JdZw7s
9. I hate Microsoft products but they are an impressively powerful company. This is an interview with the man responsible for keeping Microsoft on top during the cloud platform shift and into the Age of AI.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2OPYYthw4c
10. Anduril is one of the most important companies in America. A true mission oriented company solving hard problems.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GohWL9BlX3Q
11. "Our government looks functional. It has all the pageantry, pronouncements, and pomposity we’re used to, but it has none of the substance. Globalization hollowed out the nation-state after the Cold War, when the governing establishment shifted from orienting our decision-making around nationalism to one oriented by globalism.
-Instead of a nation, we became a democratic system — process without meaning.
-Instead of citizenship (its benefits and the obligations it demands in return), we became participants in the global economy, left to compete in it on our own.
-Instead of socioeconomic prosperity, we have choices (products and identities) and free online services.
Worse, as hollow states mature, they;
-Lose legitimacy because they don’t deliver meaningful services or security.
-Experience rampant looting (of society, the government, and the economy).
-This looting is dismissed as ‘just a cost of doing business,’ not a sign of failure.
-Devolve into a mechanism for forcibly extracting wealth from what remains of the country (or borrowing against it), and then transferring it to networks of connected globalized insiders (socialism for the greedy)."
https://johnrobb.substack.com/p/the-sack-of-america
12. "As a result, vintage buying has almost turned into an extreme sport—with consumers pulling out all the stops to acquire special items. Many are now accessing the vintage apparel market in Japan, where collectors have amassed classic American items no longer available in the US.
This is much more than nostalgia.
New stuff is so poorly made that I’m now increasingly buying old items for my own use, and not only as gifts. The quality coming from the large online retailers is abysmal, and my safest bet is often secondhand.
I’ve been burned too many times. In the last couple years, I’ve bought at least a dozen items online that were absolutely worthless. In some instances, the products were just scams—cheap garbage that didn’t come close to matching the online descriptions."
https://www.honest-broker.com/p/why-secondhand-is-now-better-than
13. Always good takes. Somewhat grim take on the West but he is not wrong here sadly. We aren't mark-to-market right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3B8xqsf66w&t=3s
14. "When I sent the first ‘cashtag’ ticker message to Fred Wilson from my Blackberry back in 2007 - ‘I love $RIMM’ - I had no inkling of the degenerate economy. My inkling was that the walls of institutions and markets were coming down. I was all in on the ‘real-time’ trend that I saw Twitter tipping us towards.
Twitter does not own real time anymore! Trump, The White House and the people in this orbit define true real time from Truth Social. We live now in a ‘post real time world’ of decentralized inside information and escalating greed (everyman for himself).
If I were to sum up the year 2025 and the degenerate economy- leaving out war and politics - it would be space, grift, everyman for himself, tariffs/inflation and prediction markets."
15. My recommendation is simple: send a weekly or monthly update email. Include anecdotes, metrics, projects, and the things you need help with. Make it a habit, and make sure your audience receives it at the same time every week or month.
https://davidcummings.org/2026/01/03/1-advice-for-an-entrepreneur-in-the-new-year/
16. "The level of attention and hyper focus is what allows you to do more in 1 week than most men get done in a single month.
The rules of time do not apply to you.
The formula is not complicated, in fact there competition is embarrassingly low.
If you develop an attention to detail, you will absolutely smoke your competition.
It’s time to start overdoing things. Being unnecessarily professional.
Impress people with the way you carry yourself.
Dress sharp, be meticulous with your craft.
Unreasonable hospitality. Unreasonable standards. Unreasonable precision."
https://www.lethalgentleman.com/p/why-you-shouldnt-go-the-extra-mile
17. "You are paying a “Proximity Tax” every single day, and you likely aren’t even tracking the expense. When you spend time with people who have low standards, reactive mindsets, or a thirst for cheap status, their energy functions like a subtle cognitive drain. You start to adopt their vocabulary, their anxieties, and their limitations. You cannot build a sovereign, high-leverage life while anchored to a peer group that finds comfort in the status quo."
https://substack.com/home/post/p-183452139
18. "People talk about luck in two ways: either success is all skill, or it’s all pure chance. I typically hear arguments on those two sides: the meritocratic ideal (success is the result of talent and effort) or the fatalistic view (outcomes are just chance).
I find that both perspectives miss something important. They miss the real story: what you do matters, and so does the environment you’re operating in.
I like to think there’s a little bit more to luck than pure randomness. More often, luck shows up because your habits and choices put you in its path. Many years ago, I came across this concept of “luck surface area”1 by Jason Roberts. The larger that surface, the more likely a lucky break has somewhere to land and stick."
https://www.polymathinvestor.com/p/the-luck-field-manual-rules-for-engineering
19. The godfather of global liquidity. Good global macro conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIDCDKUCtg4
20. What a fascinating conversation on building the future. Supersonic planes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwaoUyaUM6s&t=4862s
21. A16Z's takes on Consumer AI. Super interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4-7x6QiYr0
22. So much gold if you are thinking about your career. Gokul is one of the top product leaders in Silicon Valley and an incredible angel investor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPpOtwUesnk
23. "A rise in nominal GDP boosts financial asset prices, and rich folks will dutifully pay their bribes - cough cough, campaign donations to Team Red to giveth thanks. But in America, it’s one human, one vote, and the plebes can easily derail the party if a rise in inflation accompanies a rise in nominal GDP. Trump and US Treasury Secretary Buffalo Bill Bessent said they would run the economy hot, and I believe them, but how will they keep inflation in check? The inflation that torpedoes re-election odds is of the food and energy variety. The key metric for Americans is the price of gasoline, as there is scant usable, affordable public transportation available for most folks. You cannot exist as a proletariat worker in America without a set of wheels, unfortunately. And therefore, Trump and his lieutenants colonized Venezuela for its oil.
When talking about Venezuelan oil, many are quick to point out that the country has the world’s largest proven reserves. But who cares how much oil you have in the ground. The question is, can one extract the oil from the ground profitably? I don’t know the answer to this question, but Trump obviously believes that if he turns on the tap, oil will gush forth from Venezuela into the Gulf of Mexico refineries, and cheap gasoline will placate the plebes by tamping down energy inflation. I can’t opine whether Trump is correct, but the WTI and Brent crude oil markets will be the truth serum. As nominal GDP and dollar credit supply rise, do oil prices rise or fall? Team Blue Democrats will win if GDP and oil prices rise together, and Team Red Republicans will win if GDP rises but oil prices flatline or fall.
Taking Trump and his lieutenants at their word, we know credit will expand. The Team Red Republican legislators will deficit spend, Buffalo Bill Bessent’s Treasury Department will issue debt to fund it, and beta cuck towel bitch boy Jerome Powell and his successor’s Fed will print money to buy the bonds. This circle jerk started in earnest in 2008, and as Lyn Alden says, “Nothing stops this train”. As the amount of dollars expands, the price of Bitcoin and certain cryptos will sky rocket."
https://cryptohayes.substack.com/p/suavemente
24. The Network State meets the Longevity State.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJcxQQ0GzyI
25. Alt-Geopolitics. Crazy stuff but good to bend your brain sometimes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNSZBi3__h0
26. "People hate feeling personal power of other humans
No, they HATE it. They hate it, hate it, hate it, and hate it absolutely
Nothing triggers their wrath, nothing triggers their envy, and nothing makes them more depressed then being subject to the personal, arbitrary whim of someone else
That makes power something you have to hide, something you have to disguise, something you have to absolutely deny existing
Rulers of the past, kings of the past, and - last but not least - dictators of the past knew that, and worked hard to avoid any appearance of arbitrariness in their actions. No, it’s not my personal whim. It is not even my personal decision. I am merely an instrument, a tool executing the will of someone else, absolutely constrained in my actions - by this external authority.
Denying that you have any personal power at all is lindy
Loudly proclaiming that you do, is not"
https://kamilkazani.substack.com/p/might-makes-right
27. "The US went in, took out Maduro and the whole fiasco was done in under a few hours. This was despite having backing with China/Russia. The conclusion should be pretty simple: USA military/defense/technology is far and away the best.
If someone says it was an “inside job” that’s still not a good answer. It means that no one was able to figure out the CIA. If it was brute force. Then that’s also not a good answer. Both answers lead to the same conclusion = never bet against America long-term.
If you can’t make it here, you can’t make it anywhere. Still rings true today. Even more so. Your long-term investments in the US are safe!
Rare earth minerals in US control now. If you look back at the Russia Ukraine battle, the USA stepping in had nothing to do with Ukraine (cynical view). In the end, all the money we lent them just came back in a payment of rare earth minerals. For those that forgot (source). Unsurprisingly, this wasn’t paraded around the Television as much (since it was the real value)
Click fast forward and while everyone will show you the chart of the oil reserves that Venezuela has, that’s just to distract people from everything else of value.
Ignore all the noise around Oil. It’s first order thinking. If your grandparents know that Venezuela has oil then there is no real alpha there. Nothing novel. Then your parents can probably logically solve that “Caracas will be rebuilt”. Some value there but then go ask “who will build it” suddenly… you’ll get crickets.
GRID will get you a stable return on infrastructure build out both in the USA and in places like Venezuela and your job is to add a function to narrow that 100 company list down.
Hilariously, while everyone talks about oil, this is just the 1,000th reason to be long tech and US tech in particular."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/second-order-ideas-venezuela-and
28. "Attention, as important as it seems at the moment, is becoming less valuable than legibility. Legibility is, in literal terms, the ease with which a reader can decode symbols. In culture, it is a measure of the permeability of communication. It is the ability to discern meaning.
Legibility is the top cultural currency. Algorithms command attention, but they do not command legibility.
Job of brands is to make their products legible."
https://andjelicaaa.substack.com/p/the-legibility-economy
29. "So the good people who actually make the technology we use every day, the real innovators and creators and designers, are reacting to the unprecedented disconnect between the contemporary tech industry and the fundamentals that drew so many people toward it in the first place. Many of the biggest companies have abandoned the basic principle of making technology that actually works. So many new products fail to deliver on even the basic capabilities that the companies are promising that they will provide.
Many leaders at these companies have run full speed towards moral and social cowardice, abandoning their employees and customers to embrace rank hatred and discrimination in ways that they pretended to be fighting against just a few years ago. Meanwhile, unchecked consolidation has left markets wildly uncompetitive, leaving consumers suffering from the effects of categories without any competition or investment — which we know now as “enshittification”. And the full-scale shift into corruption and crony capitalism means that winners in business are decided by whoever is shameless enough to offer the biggest bribes and debase themselves with the most humiliating display of groveling. It’s a depressing shift for people who, earlier in their careers, often actually were part of inventing the future."
https://www.anildash.com/2026/01/05/a-tech-career-in-2026/
30. I'm a fan of Waltz, one of the few politicians I respect. Incredible patriot and SOF military veteran. Very topical.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbjZ9_QxLsU
31. "In the early 2020s, plots are dumbed down to be more “scrolling-friendly,” it’s no coincidence the most highly regarded film of 2025 (Frankenstein) and the most highly anticipated film of 2026 (Wuthering Heights) are both 300 page novels from the Romantic Period covering deep topics like unchecked ambition (playing God), isolation and the need for connection, and what it truly means to be human or a monster. All themes that are just as relevant today as they were over two hundred years ago.
In the era of AI-generated everything, the most memorable performances involve a more comprehensive approach to the process. The ten to eleven hour physical transformation, 42 pieces of prosthetics, unlearning how we move as humans and reconstructing a new physicality through butoh, the Japanese art form to develop a uniquely grotesque, yet beautiful movements. We are truly discovering what it means to be alive."
https://brianne.substack.com/p/why-everything-will-be-romantic-in
32. "Will Venezuela become the next failed state or the next Panama? Who’s to say, but with Imperial rhetoric and being resource rich, it is more likely to be a success story than still be some backwater hellhole in a few decades.
What it also shows us is that Russia and China may not be the adversaries the West fears. China and Russia were powerless to stop America’s reach. Whether they had advanced knowledge is another question. Because if they didn’t that is also quite telling.
But no, this isn’t some death-nail to the idea of multipolarity.
Far from it.
The Petrodollar/Eurodollar system is still teetering. Bitcoin and Crypto still lurk in the shadows. And WMDs become more prevalent and available by the day.
In a Multipolar System, Power is the only thing that matters.
And America still has alot of Power."
https://mercurial.substack.com/p/the-maduro-doctrine
33. "Regardless of how broken it may seem, you don’t need to fix the world. You need to know your neighbors. Take the time to talk with them, even when you’re tired. Offer to help when you can and listen without rushing to argue. We can respect differences without allowing them to divide us.
The health of society is not built in grand gestures or viral moments, despite what we may see on social media. Rather, it is built quietly on front porches, driveways, yards, and sidewalks.
If you want to change the world, start with the people who live next door and be a good neighbor."
https://thewaysofagentleman.substack.com/p/were-trying-to-change-the-world-while
34. "In the next year, we’re entering a different era: AI products are growing revenue at astounding rates—no-code app builder Lovable generated $100 million in annual recurring revenue in eight months. The Swedish company uses a credit-based pricing system for consumers, and some usage-based pricing for backend services like hosting. The successful AI companies will be the ones whose pricing model aligns engineering with user value.
In the next decade, we’ll look back to today—when AI forced SaaS to reckon with real marginal costs—as the moment when pricing became hard again, which made the software business honest again. The survivors will succeed because their product andpricing models worked.
Companies that embrace this complexity as a design problem, not just a finance problem, will build products that earn margins, support sustainable growth, and beat competitors in the long run—instead of becoming another example like MoviePass."
https://every.to/p/how-ai-made-pricing-hard-again
35. "The reality is nuanced. Europe is now two distinct systems operating under the same institutional umbrella.
Hard for building companies from within. Bureaucracy, regulation, friction remain. The barriers to entrepreneurship haven’t disappeared. Labor laws are restrictive. Regulatory compliance is expensive. Innovation moves slower than in the US or parts of Asia.
But great for personal life while building value globally or online. Tax frameworks specifically reward external income. EU mobility offers unprecedented geographic flexibility. Quality of life in cities like Milan, Lisbon, or Athens rivals anywhere in the world.
We look forward to Europe becoming competitive for building. The demographic crisis, the tech gap, the innovation deficit need solving. In the meantime, this two-speed setup is the way.
Live in Europe. Build globally. Optimize both."
https://palombo.substack.com/p/the-10-year-european-comeback
36. Implications of a new multipolar world. What markets are missing: Resilience and redundancy will be the focus for countries and investors.
Wicked
I kind of watched this movie series backwards but it was okay. After watching Wicked for Good (number 2), my daughter hectored me to go watch number 1. It definitely would have helped to watch this earlier as Wicked for Good would have made way more sense. Goes to show you sequencing is important.
For those who don’t know, “Wicked” & “Wicked for Good” is the backstory to the Wizard of Oz, when Glinda the good witch meets Elphaba aka the Wicked Witch of the West and their unlikely friendship. It's surprisingly well done. A twist to an old classic tale.
I enjoyed both the movies. Very entertaining. Also educational. Especially the scene with Doctor Dillamond, the talking goat at Shiz University, yes, it sounds weird hence why you should watch the movie. Dillamond is the history professor who explains why studying history is important. “Because we cannot escape the past and we ignore it at our own peril. Because the past helps explain our present circumstances.” I love history and I love studying it. I would be a professor if I had not caught the business and capitalism bug. It’s been incredibly helpful for my career and super helpful for global macro investing too. Sadly, it seems too few our leaders have studied it and we are repeating the mistake of fallen powers and empires now. Again.
Hard times are coming. We see it in the stats. We feel it around us, the tension, the desperation. Especially in America. Most people are in survival mode. I am deeply concerned as bad things happen during these times. As Dillamond explained why his people were slowly wiped out or forced away. “Food grew scarce. And when people are hungry and angry. They begin to look for someone to blame.” It's easy to blame those who look and sound different than we are. Especially easy in a heterogeneous society like America full of immigrants and people from everywhere.
All political leaders know this. And they use it. As the Wizard of Oz said: “When I first got here, there was discord, there was discontent. And back from where I come from, everybody knows, the best way to bring folks together is to give them a real good enemy.”
As we see in the movie and in real life, kids are mean. I know. I grew up as a minority in Canada. Adults are mean too. Especially to those different to them. People are cowards. Elphaba uses her rage from all the hate she gets from the community and this allows her to tap into her powers. “No one should be scorned, or laughed at. Or looked down upon…..” I get it. But if you can overcome this, as her friend Glinda tells her, and it is good advice for us all: “You can do this. You can do anything.”
Elphie sings: “I’m through with playing by the rules of someone else’s game. Too late for second guessing. Too late to go back to sleep. It’s time to trust my instincts.”
I truly hope we rise above all the anger and challenges we face. America and any country is almost unstoppable when they come together. They fail horrifically when this doesn’t happen. This is the big lesson from history we’ve seen over and over. Unity in family, unity in community, unity in country. “Once you learn to harness your emotion, the sky's the limit.”
Avoid Boring People: How to Be Interesting
The sense I get of young kids these days is that they are incredibly risk averse. They don’t travel, they do what everyone else is doing. They optimize for optionality and yet don’t do anything original. What got me thinking about this was a Tweet I saw: https://x.com/mageeclegg/status/1992957732991721888
“I got a friend in San Francisco…
She says she went on 10 dates this year… Every guy was the same: • Software engineer • Patagonia vest • Mountain-biking addiction • Talks AI, crypto, and “safe long-term index investing” • Thinks Donald Trump is ruining the world.”
This is the case in NYC with Finance bros. Los Angeles with the Hollywood bros. People who literally are exactly alike in their ecosystem. But Magee the author of the tweet has a recommendation.
“Don’t be this guy. If you’re this unoriginal and want to change that…
Here’s what you should do before your next date:
• Take the Trans-Siberian Express from Ulaanbaatar to Moscow… drink warm vodka, eat pickles straight from the jar, and arm-wrestle Russians who size you up like an enemy agent.
• Fly to Buenos Aires… eat steak, drink Malbec, dance tango, and don’t come home until you’ve learned Spanish in a woman’s bed.
• Hike the cliffs of Cinque Terre… swim at sunrise and drink rough wine with old fishermen who’ve outlived storms and stories you can’t imagine.
• Take a train from India’s southern tip to Varanasi… stand on the ghats at dawn as bodies burn on the Ganges and feel the heat of a world older than anything you’ve known.
Go live a life worth living…
There’s so much out there waiting to shape you. And one day you’ll find yourself sitting across from a beautiful woman… and you won’t be digging through your mind for something interesting to say. You’ll simply be interesting.”
I’d add, join the French or Ukrainian Foreign Legion. Take Muay Thai fight training in Thailand. Walk the Kumano Kodo trail in Japan and El Camino de Santiago Walk. Ride a motorbike across South America. Join the “Centurion Club” which is someone who visits 100 countries in the world. Have random and obscure hobbies. Collect and read old books. Lots of them.
Basically do something unique. Follow your curiosity. Be original. Be interesting. Live.