Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads December 8th, 202
It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.–Confucius
This was an insightful conversation on the podcast election in 2024 and Vercel: personalized software enabler.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zTjlcr1wdw
2. "All the moons have lined up, and podcasting is on an upward spiral. But as with most everything digital, podcasting is a winner-take-most/all proposition, because everyone has access to … everyone. A scant handful of pods, those with the biggest listenerships, capture nearly all the ad revenue. By some estimates, of the 600k podcasts that produce content each week, the top 10 get half the revenue. Put another way, to build a business in podcasting that pays people well and keeps the attention of a host with high opportunity cost(s), you likely need to be in the top 0.1% by listenership.
The political power of podcasting is only beginning to be felt. This election was supposed to be a referendum on bodily autonomy: It wasn’t. Historically, the candidate who raises the most money wins: She didn’t. In each election the victor is likely to be whoever best weaponizes an emerging medium: He did. By far the most potent media weapon this time was podcasting."
https://www.profgalloway.com/the-podcast-election/
3. "Assuming that we have the mania and one last hurrah in 2025 like every 4 year cycle, it means a trigger is needed to end the mania. The pop is going to be one of two things: 1) enormous rise in interest rates similar to what happened in the 1970s - inflationary bust or 2) a massive wealth redistribution and deleveraging event that causes large deflation - deflationary bust.
This means you can safely de-risk by going into: 1) real estate, 2) utilities and 3) other consumer staples.
Real Estate: In either situation, buying up a bunch of low-end or high-end real estate will set you up for decades. If rates are cut to zero and we’re in a deflationary scenario, you can simply rent it out and borrow money at low interest rates. Waiting out the storm. If it’s a 1970s type inflation, you’ll keep pace with inflation. Don’t lever up here because they would raise rates to a point that it’s well above inflation.
Utilities: Really doubt we do this but in a SHTF scenario we’d buy some time by holding them. In either situation (inflation/deflation), it’s just going to putter around and hold pace. It’s essentially the same as owning every commodity (excluding natural disaster risk). Not even the doomers who somehow didn’t get rich in the easiest 15 year period in history believe electricity and water will be shut off.
Consumer Staples: Boring stuff like Costco and Walmart. All the scaled up wholesale/grocery brands would work. Even Amazon probably falls in this basket considering their insane scale. Similar concept here, people won’t be skipping on food and essentials in any scenario."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/post-election-playbook-12-months
4. "To conclude, we are amist a massive redrawing of the map. Public facing wars can be seen on the ground in Ukraine and Gaza, and when Chinese ships surround Taiwan. They may be subsiding. The markets and the world economy will rejoice in the peace dividend. But a new, domestic war amongst various factions is replacing it. There won’t be front-page photos of this new warzone.
Instead, we’ll get glimpses of the battle through prosecutions, unexpected resignations, and announcements that government jobs will require moving remote locations far from Washington, DC. We are shifting from tanks as the primary weapon of global wars to transparency (or targetting if you are on the receiving end) as the main weapon of domestic uncivil wars. We don’t have a map that reliably shows us where anything really is right now.
How is America handling the election? For some, the prisoners from the asylum have broken into the government, and an apocalypse is underway. For others, the people in power have turned the government into a madhouse and will now be carted off to asylum/prison, thus ending the apocalypse. Here’s what we can all agree on: The political information complex needs to sort itself out. We need new, more accurate maps of reality."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/mapping-reality-trump-reigns-but
5. "And long before Trump, Beijing had been trying to convince the US and everyone else that the US and China were entering into “a new type of great power relations” where the two nations stood as comparable geopolitical forces if not outright peers.
Yet the reality is quite different. The US dominates nearly every lever of real power: the world’s largest market, the world’s financial hub, the world’s reserve currency, the world’s most powerful military, and control over many of the most technologically advanced sectors of the global economy, to name just a few. In facing off with the US, China ironically finds itself in the position that many other countries have occupied in dealing with a much more powerful and obstinate China.
The actual experience of US-China competition since the start of the trade war has made this fundamental power imbalance strikingly apparent. In trying to retaliate against each new round of Trump tariffs, China could only muster a fraction of the economic response due its far greater dependency on the US market versus the other way around."
https://www.high-capacity.com/p/beijing-braces-for-impact-what-trump
6. "If you’re bearish on today, but bullish on tomorrow, you might want to shift some of your capital out into this future set of opportunities or outcomes. You might also want to consider the cost of holding onto your capital today, and the purchasing power erosion you might experience if your money is not growing with the economy. In other words, you might want to allocate into venture capital, because this is a bet on the future, and a time shift of smaller returns today for bigger returns tomorrow.
What’s not an exaggeration is the blunting of the term venture capital to be far too inclusive of non-risk taking activities. In Spanish venture capital is synonymous with “risk capital,” and is known as “capital de riesgo.” In English somehow we’ve lost that notion, with a parade of sheep all claiming to do venture capital, but only seeking software as a service businesses, typically with “$1-2 million in ARR.” Venture capital is by definition the few percentage points of frontier capital that finances opportunities that cannot be supported elsewhere in the economy. Venture capital as mainstream is, I believe, an oxymoron."
https://ideas.scotthartley.com/p/time-dislocations-in-venture-capital
7. "Trump boasted on the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast that the U.S. government used to be fully funded by tariffs. This is true, before income taxes, the government was largely funded through tariffs. But that was in the 19th century, when the U.S. government was still very small. Unfortunately, in 2024, the U.S. government is large and in charge. The U.S. is a global empire, plus there's healthcare, Social Security, and other social services.
A tariff is a tax that a government charges on goods coming into their country from other countries. In 2023, U.S. goods imports from around the world totaled $3.8 trillion. Let's say, theoretically, Trump puts a 10% tariff on all imports and we ignore all consequences; that's only $380 billion in revenue. When annual government spending is almost $7 trillion and the national debt is nearly $36 trillion, that's not even a dent. The U.S. government collected $4.92 trillion in taxes in 2024, meaning you could put 100% tariffs on imports, and it still wouldn't replace regular tax revenue.
Another thing about across-the-board tariffs: they don't make sense for the U.S. or Trump. If you want to bring all levels of manufacturing back to the U.S., you're going to need more people to work in those factories. Trump supports mass deportation, closed borders, and his base is anti-immigrant. Unemployment in the U.S. is currently at 4.1% there aren't enough workers. You can't be for all-around tariffs and against mass immigration; it doesn't make sense."
https://www.globalhitman.com/p/how-to-survive-the-trump-presidency
8. Another really good discussion between two key individuals at the center of the renaissance at Silicon Valley. We are entering an age of abundance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXCBz_8hM9w
9. Incredible amount of insights here for the entrepreneur. So much to learn here from Luke Belmar. Distribution and attention.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XN4upb7AnZE&t=4058s
10. "We could keep iterating through the list. But if a founder wanted a list of jobs to automate, the BLS’ white collar jobs boards is a wonderful place to start. AI will change these workflows & capture a meaningful fraction of the labor spend.
It’s a roadmap for the White Collar Revolution."
https://tomtunguz.com/the-white-collar-revolution/
11. "But the chips are now valuable for longer than they were (again from AWS). “We made the change in 2024 to extend the useful life of our servers. This added about 200 basis points of margin year-over-year.”
The most important metric for these businesses will be profit dollars per GPU dollar cost."
https://tomtunguz.com/cloud-earnings-q3-24/
12. "Nature and nature’s God select for those who take to the frontier. Who choose not to remain stagnate. Those who want to win, to find a way against all odds. It’s why man has gone from being a simple caveman to deploying nuclear warheads. The frontier is energy, vitalism, and the man who can harness more energy than his enemies will win.
The frontier is the dividing line between what you are and what you can become. It’s where you enter the contest to prove what you are before God. Men are the R&D arm of mankind and the frontier is where they test their unique idea against God’s law, nature.
When our ancestors gained a foothold in the New World, they were changed by the land. Made distinct from their European cousins. The land always leaves its mark upon man. And the moment they gained a foothold and understood the lesson taught to them by God, they spread like an unquenchable fire across the country. Nothing could stop them but the Pacific Ocean."
https://resavager.com/p/take-to-the-frontier
13. "The media landscape is post-scarcity, and we need to retire the Big Bang Launch as the strategy. Always Be Launching, and launch a little each week. Go directly to your customers, your investors, and your supporters. Build over time, not in one go. And learn to tell the truth."
https://andrewchen.substack.com/p/always-be-launching
14. Guide for all young and old men.
"You need brains & brawn.
The sad reality is, a majority of fighters live pay check to pay check. Conor McGregor’s stardom is 1 of 1, the rest struggle to make ends meet. If you are objectively broke, this by definition does not make your capable. If you can’t feed your family, if you’re couch surfing & if you don’t have skills to make money in modern society, throwing a nasty 1-2 means very little.
On the other hand, being a multimillionaire who is balding, overweight & works 100 hours a week & does not have time for their family or experiences, is also not a flex.
The ideal sits somewhere in between these two extremes.
But it’s the rarest breed of man. The one that can do it all.
Imagine having the communication skills to disarm a potentially violent situation, but simultaneously know you could maul anyone in the same room as you if necessary?
It’s the ultimate juxtaposition. The definition of a Lethal Gentleman. It’s the reason Bruce Wayne & James Bond are such revered & idiolised figures by young men.
It’s incredibly rare, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible."
https://www.krucial.co/p/the-lethal-gentleman-manifesto
15. A Silicon Valley legend, OG investor and operator: Elad Gil. Well worth a listen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XYqFu0fKn0
16. This man is a hero. I'm a big fan & supporter of Stronghold: which provides humanitarian help in war zones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=audzAD0f3JI
17. "The 20th century was one of careful symmetry. The 21st century is fundamentally asymmetric. And we have failed to see it.
I teach a lot of courses about whatever we want to call Russian hybrid warfare, and in it I use these 8 words to try to get my students to understand how Russians understand power. Asymmetry. Chaos. Informality. Deniability. Risk. Cynicism. Capture. Guerrilla (the use of irregular forces).
These are Russian strengths because of Russian weakness. They have to do these things. And these are areas where democracies are extremely uncomfortable operating.
For 30 years we’ve gotten Russia wrong. And during this time, they have sculpted our threat perception of them. They have sculpted how we viewed this region and how we viewed its possibilities — and thankfully the Baltic states ignored all the advice to wait and be patient and instead to push for first NATO and then EU membership, otherwise they too would still be waiting in a line. Russia has sculpted Ukraine’s perception of itself, and how we see Ukraine, too.
We are still trapped in this narrative box. And now it affects how we see ourselves."
https://www.greatpower.us/p/why-do-democracies-pretend-to-be
18. "A couple of decades later, technology has made this task—and many others—not only fully automated but also simpler and more insightful. My first introduction to spreadsheets was through printouts at an oil change business, and now, I sit here appreciating the power we have at our fingertips. I’m a techno-optimist and believe we have an exciting future ahead. Sometimes, it’s worthwhile to pause and reflect on what has been, what is, and what will be."
https://davidcummings.org/2024/11/09/in-appreciation-of-technological-progress/
19. So much wisdom from Tai Lopez. Lots of good stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=VMNdWHoJcVk
20. Overview of Luke Belmar's Capital Club, looks like a top tier event.
Masterminds and expensive conferences are really important to level up your game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e21jdQZuoHU
21. "Looking back at the returns of solid investing, everyone feels like they want to replicate them. But only a small percentage of those willing replicators actually do the required work.
Formulas for success seldom exist but if I had to provide one it would be this:
GOOD INVESTOR = good business analyst + independent thinker + high pain tolerance + discipline + patience."
https://www.philoinvestor.com/p/so-you-wanna-be-an-investor
22. "The nuanced messy middle is that you can like Hillbilly Elegy and Demon Copperhead. You can believe that hard work can get people out of even the most hopeless situations. But you can also believe that it won't always work. You can believe in individual accountability AND the need for institution support of those whose individual capabilities won't be enough.
All of us could get more comfortable in that messy middle of nuance because, in my opinion, that's where the majority of truth resides."
https://investing1012dot0.substack.com/p/embrace-the-nuance
23. "No matter your views on the outcome of this election, I hope you can appreciate some of the messaging lessons that can be learned from it."
https://kellblog.com/2024/11/09/messaging-lessons-from-the-2024-election/
24. "A network effect is the effect by which the value a user receives from said good or service is dependent on the number of users in the network at the time. The more the users, the higher the value and vice versa. But what happens when critical mass has not yet been achieved?
Many projects get stuck in the early stage and fail, it’s a catch 22. In the early stages, network utility is at its lowest so there is not much incentive for a user to migrate to the network."
https://www.philoinvestor.com/p/jumpstarting-network-effects
25. Disagree with much of what this guy says on geopolitics, this guy teaches neutrality studies which is not realistic.
But good to listen to other folks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGGcr87oU8k&t=943s
26. A masterclass on making money online by a master: Luke Belmar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL2G3fEs-g0&t=166s
27. I dislike Cyrus Janssen as he is a CCP paid shill but he raises lots of good points.
America through arrogance has squandered our lead, alienated potential allies and screwed up by overusing sanctions.
Worth listening to and hopefully we wake up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPH-3-8Zf08
28. Audio quality is not so good but this was an instructive discussion on building massive businesses. Hiring great talent and what Product market fit looks like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIr95huOdrE
29. "The irony is that if we abandon the journey too soon, we’ll never know what could have awaited us. In life, staying on the train—staying disciplined—holds the promise of unseen rewards, richer than the fleeting temptations of the early stops. Only by staying the course do we get to experience everything the journey truly has to offer.
Get back on the train."
https://jaymartin.substack.com/p/be-careful-when-you-look-out-the
30. "The book, which is called Genesis, starts by talking at some length about polymaths. Many of the people who we study when we're in high school were the polymaths of the time, such as Leonardo da Vinci. They are unique and very rare, and they move science, art, culture, society, forward. There are polymaths in every society, in every religion. What happens when you have a polymath of that level in your pocket, available to you as an individual? This is a major change in human experience. It really changes the definition of what it is to be human.
It's good in the sense that it enables humans to operate at their highest level. If you use Google, you get more information, and you're smarter than if you didn't have Google. But then let's assume that you and I are negotiating against each other, and you're very good and I'm very good, but each of us has our own data sources.
Now imagine that there are AI systems that know how to do optimal game theory, and they have infinite information. Is there a scenario in which the system, recognizing that you are a powerful opponent with a similar system, will decide that the only solution to the problem is to attack you? How then do you do your strategy when every single person, in theory, can have that agent with them?"
https://samf.substack.com/p/war-in-the-ai-age
31. "BONUS: Tribes that pass the marshmallow test will wipe out tribes that don't."
https://oldbooksguy.substack.com/p/10-laws-of-social-behavior
32. "So although Biden did beat inflation, crime did go down, and Biden did eventually crack down on the border, I can understand why the traumas that working-class Americans had to suffer in 2020-2022 couldn’t be expunged just by some encouraging charts. And the fact that educated professionals were much more insulated from the disruptions of the pandemic and from Biden’s missteps in 2021 mean that they didn’t necessarily even see the need to acknowledge how hard these had been on everyone else.
This disconnect probably ended up alienating people without college degrees. Not only did it cause many progressives to support deeply unpopular things like “defund the police” on social media, but Democratic politicians who became used to talking to their educated progressive base probably got a distorted idea of what was troubling the rest of America.
America, fundamentally, is an incredibly rich country with a sick society. We have higher consumption by far than people in any other country on the planet, and yet by and large, except for the few people who were lucky enough to receive the blessings of community and health from our one remaining functional institution, we’re a bunch of unhealthy socially isolated drug addicts."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-educated-professional-class-is
33. "As universities roll out AI programs for associate, undergraduate, and graduate degrees, including the first Ivy League AI degree this fall, none of them are attacking the supply-demand gap for AI workers like the University of Texas.
Its AI master’s degree is completely online, open to as many students as the university believes are qualified, and costs $10k, a fraction of the price for in-person master’s computer science degrees at comparable universities. Adam Klivans, a computer science and AI professor who helped develop the AI master’s program, calls it “the best deal in higher ed.”
https://thehustle.co/originals/the-university-trying-to-bring-ai-to-every-industry
34. "Skip the Vacation Home: This keeps coming up in the comments but please don’t bother. If you were planning on buying a second vacation home we would say *please for the love of everything do not do it*. The only “exception to the rule” is if you can buy in a low tax state and claim 183 days to move your tax rate down. Then the math works. Reasoning…
Second homes require: 1) insurance, 2) tax, 3) maintenance and 4) management fees to rent it out for break even purposes
Second headache with this, maybe you and your family don’t want to go to the same location for a decade. A lot can change in a decade. Perhaps going to France, Japan, New Zealand will be more appealing for next winter/summer season
You’ll have the overhead costs locked in and once you pay all the fees to sell it, breaking even will be significantly harder
Instead? We’d do the following: 1) upgrade your cars if you need one kicking off the deferred maintenance, 2) add an ADU to your house, 3) buy a small wifi biz - you did build skills the past 4 years didn’t you anon? and 4) hire a good divorce attorney."
https://bowtiedbull.io/p/the-golden-bull-of-2025-and-other
35. This is a good discussion ranging from politics, media and business.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7r3zt2HY2vk
36. Good discussion to decipher the political system and what it might look like under Trump 2.