Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads January 12th, 2025
"Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together"-Woodrow Wilson
I've enjoyed Mick Ryan's books, masterclass on military thinking and what wars will look like in the future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYAE2jmD-bE
2. The new world of espionage in this new more chaotic world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn6a4_OjhUM
3. Important discussion on the scary & possible scenario of Russia invading the Baltics in the future. More than possible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZWMkRWx53c
4. For anyone who is interested in buying a business (SMB or online) and building wealth. Codie Sanchez is the real deal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZraBHTmZK98&t=862s
5. "So, you are witnessing a dramatic unfolding of history much like the collapse of the Soviet controlled Eastern Europe in the 1989-90 years. Assad’s flight is reminiscent of that of Nicolae Ceaușescu, once perceived to be invincible leaders, backed up by powerful regional players, too hard for the West to topple.
The Hamas attack on Israel however initiated an unexpected chain of events that revealed an all too familiar historical pattern: tyrants eventually fall and when they fall they fall hard. For now, for this brief moment, let’s celebrate the exit of the butcher of Damascus and hope there is a better future for Syria, its people and the entire region."
https://pieterdorsman.substack.com/p/assads-end
6. "For Türkiye the success of the HTS operation brings numerous benefits aside from offering the prospect of refugee returns and boxing in the YPG. On the diplomatic front, the succesful push by the HTS, and recognition that Türkiye has leverage over HTS, has made Türkiye perhaps the dominant external power in Syria - it could be argued therein with Israel (Israel might control the skies, but Türkiye seems to have more influence at this stage on the ground)."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/turkiye-syria-and-macro
7. "Here is how FAEM works. First let’s talk about the power of human-in-the-loop. We loved the HITL business model in previous years because it gives humans some final oversight of AI outputs, and helps collect more proprietary data for model training from the human input. The problem with it though, is it limits scalability and can sometimes lose much of the benefit of automation.
FAEM is a business model that takes less and less human-in-the-loop over time. It starts with an AI tool that needs some customized inputs. Let’s say it's an image generation tool that needs a text prompt. It turns out some people are better at prompts than others, so a little over a year ago we started seeing things like prompt marketplaces. Instead of writing your own prompt, you could find prompts other people had written and put those into the tool as-is, or with your own tweaks."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/faem-my-favorite-ai-business-model
8. "I think Sheridan’s story is an extreme example of Parkinson’s Law, the famous adage that work will expand to fill whatever time is allocated to the task no matter the complexity or scope (the canonical example is handing in a college term paper: no matter what day a paper is assigned, you will magically do 95% of the work the evening before it is due).
In 2010, Sheridan left Sons of Anarchy over a contract dispute and decided that acting wasn’t his calling. But his wife was pregnant and he desperately needed work to support a new family. One of the most pressing deadlines you can have is “make money for my future child”. Sheridan credits this obligation with motivating his career change and getting those first few film scripts out the door.
Following his film work, Sheridan developed the hit TV show Yellowstone and set himself up to cruise into semi-retirement. But he’s since made six other shows and a major reason is that he created new pressures and deadlines for himself. How? By buying the $350m Four Sixes (6666) ranch in Texas. To finance the purchase, he struck a $200 million multi-show deal with Paramount. That’s a lot more deadlines (and content for our eyeballs)."
https://www.readtrung.com/p/taylor-sheridans-extreme-productivity
9. 5 months old but this is a sobering discussion on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. War of attrition and unfortunately Russia has the edge here. But UAF holding on, god bless them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8wB_5LR6d4
10. This is a fascinating conversation with a VC investor at the top of their game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3auPzwkZlak
11. Some background, If you want to understand what is going on Syria.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFu2kk8Kd0E&t=11s
12. "Turkey is now the dominant external force in Syria, perhaps with Israel acting without, and this gives Turkey leverage with other global powers, in particular with Russia, the U.S., and Iran."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/syria-winners-and-losers
13. Unbelievably educational and enlightening conversation on American politics and how government works (or does not).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xz8i90Hp2A
14. Building Holding Cos are the thing these days. Good to hear from someone who has done this well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJcrYRGRMmc
15. Understanding the situation in Georgia. Wish Russia would leave them alone. Possible EU & Turkey intervention? Geopolitics is getting complicated.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qz6_TAh4ZJs
16. Good tips for most foreign startup founders who are visiting San Francisco.
https://chrisneumann.com/archives/10-tips-for-canadian-founders-going-to-san-francisco
17. Helpful to understand the geopolitical situation in Syria. Turkey & Israel are the winners here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llCrHnW9P4o
18. "We live in an era when public confidence in political leaders and in the government structures that support them has dropped to floor level, and is still going down. There are a number of different ways of dating public recognition of the utter uselessness of the western political class in different countries. The non-reaction to the financial crisis of 2008 is one. In Britain, the tragicomic self-harming episode of the Brexit negotiations was a key moment perhaps, in France the non-Presidency of François Hollande (2012-17) following the cheaply sordid reign of Sarkozy (2007-12).
But in any event, no western political system was left standing after the catastrophic mishandling of the Covid crisis, and of the crisis in Ukraine that followed. So it seems evident that we are governed by imbeciles, doesn’t it, and that those imbeciles have hollowed out and destroyed the capacity of the states that support them in office?
A properly functioning system requires a careful balance between restraining the desires of the political class to do things that are illegal or impossible on the one hand, and preventing elected governments from carrying out their mandates on the other. Recently, the balance has shifted in the direction of the politicians, essentially through the politicisation of higher level government jobs, and the increasing influence in all countries of "advisers", whose political future depends on that of their boss.
However, especially in the more sensitive areas of government—defence, foreign policy, intelligence, law and order—this runs into a powerful sense of inertia, and often a belief that long-term professionals know what they are doing, and would like to be left alone to do it. This is inevitable: if you have been reading diplomatic telegrams and intelligence reports about a crisis for months or even years about a crisis in a country where you were once stationed, you are bound to consider yourself an expert, not least because you have access to sources that others don't.
It's a small step, though, from that certainty to a kind of arrogance where you resist attempts to reach other conclusions or do things differently. This is the essence of the problem which people who talk about "Deep Sates" are trying to describe, and it's pretty much endemic in the government of a complex society."
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/in-the-shallows-of-the-deep-state
19. Scary new world of war. Listening to this makes me concerned on whether Europe has fully woken up. But Helsing is leading the charge.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxtvQyy7gtE&t=1s
20. A valuable conversation on why Europe is lagging behind by missing waves of technology advancement. Less regulation and more confidence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eevnPUDzNQ8
21. So many great business teardowns on this week’s NIA episode.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOkXPSJ0qyg
22. This is a brave man, going to the frontlines of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ox9_V-APOGg
23. End of an era: author of the "Revolt of the Public". Describes well the social media and Information Age messiness we live in right now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wH-MsQpxo8
24. One of the most underrated Big tech CEOs around. An educational conversation on where AI is going in enterprise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NtsnzRFJ_o&t=1s
25. "The Juvenal Principle: “Give them bread and circuses and they will never revolt.” Roman poet Juvenal believed a “long peace” was as evil as a war. The modern world needs to heed Juvenal's warning against luxury. To let “bread and circuses” sedate us into inaction is to betray our very soul..."
https://oldbooksguy.substack.com/p/10-concepts-from-ancient-rome-that
26. "China both produces a majority of the world’s rare earth minerals and reigns as the undisputed leader in processing them, thanks to its deals with mining operations in resource-rich countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Last week, Beijing countered Biden’s latest round of export controls — which the White House had touted as the strongest yet on China’s access to advanced microchips — by outright banning the export of germanium, gallium and antimony to the U.S.
Those three critical minerals are used in military equipment like night-vision goggles and by American chipmakers. Some analysts pointed out that China specifically chose them as a warning because industry would feel the impact without being crippled.
William Reinsch, who oversaw export policies in the Clinton administration, described the minerals embargo as “shots across the bow,” more aimed at the incoming president than the current one.
China is showing it can “make our lives very inconvenient,” said Reinsch, now a trade expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank."
27. So much to learn from the great men of history with one of the best historians around: Andrew Roberts. Be proud of your past.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0aGN_rdnMQ&t=292s
28. Good assessment on the Syria situation by Erik Prince.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHFdBdj5luA
29. This was a great episode of All in Podcast this week. Good fun and educational. The gents at their best.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p-vCUB5AA8&t=4280s
30. Important to understand what’s happening in Syria and what a potential future will be for them (and which neighboring powers will be dominant).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBXUxCpGbCA&t=4s
31. On the ground view of what's happening in China.
Faith in the political leadership is dropping. It seems like a race to the bottom of competence of the elites both in the West and China.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImWLXaQxN5o
32. "So, as a voracious reader, I’d like to do my part and recommend a selection of books I have found without par in understanding why the 20th Century was such a disaster. Particularly, it must be understood why the West went from being a self-confident, prosperous land of relative liberty to a region divided between outright communists and the worst sort of egalitarian socialists.
That is a big question, but it mainly comes down to the abominable mindsets of our awful rulers. Because it is they and what they thought that is generally to blame, understanding what they did and why is critical. Further, learning about the sort of societies that were functional and successful but-for their civilization-destroying interventions provides clues on how we can escape the grey, decaying world of the present and return to the timeline where the spirit of the Belle Epoque takes us ever higher up the ladder of civilizational excellence."
https://www.theamericantribune.news/p/5-books-to-understand-the-disaster-ca3
33. "The internet has diminished the power of even strong brands, and it’s penetrated the shield of good branding from mediocre products (e.g., Nike, Intel, Target, etc.). A product or service that cannot fulfill its promise to make you smarter or sexier can’t reverse its fortunes by listening to Don Draper. And inventing and refining a great product, fixing its supply chain, and improving your customer service is a lot more work than turning to Midjourney and asking for a new logo.
In my view, Jaguar should not have spent a dollar on marketing before it had an inspiring, ready-to-ship product to show the public.
The companies that have added the most value in the past 10 years barely advertise at all. Netflix now has a market cap of about $400b; in 2014 it was about $21b. Alphabet’s market cap 10 years ago was roughly $390b; today it is $2.5t.
Those companies and others took dollars out of advertising and put them into making better products and getting them to customers faster and cheaper than their competitors."
https://www.profgalloway.com/killing-the-cat
34. "The globalization of VC isn’t slowing down. While 65% of all unicorns minted with a Kauffman Fellow in the cap table are from the US, nearly two-thirds of our report's top ten venture capitalists invest outside the US, consistent with the trend on the Forbes Midas List. The globalization of venture capital will continue on this path.
Further, alternative venture capital models that innovate in their approach to sourcing, investing in, and exiting startups will continue to sprout. Regions outside the US will continue to see the launch of traditional VC firms leading with high conviction and alternative models investing with a different portfolio construction approach. We will also see the nascent growth of secondary vehicles to provide early liquidity to the market. This evolving landscape is great news for entrepreneurs and investors everywhere."
https://99tech.alexlazarow.com/p/a-new-way-to-measure-vc-success