Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads May 22nd, 2022
“The most challenging times bring us the most empowering lessons.”--Karen Salmansohn
"Estonia takes protecting its population of 1.3 million seriously. Its defense budget is proportionately the third highest among NATO countries, and while there are only 7,000 active–duty soldiers in its military, it bulks up its defense and deterrence capabilities with reservists and with the EDL, which is the region’s largest volunteer force.
At the start of 2022, it counted some 15,000 members, plus 10,700 in its youth organizations and Women’s Defense League, which provides support to the fighting units. That already added up to nearly 2% of the population, and since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, the organization has received roughly 2,000 new applications for membership."
https://time.com/6164840/estonia-baltics-russia-defense-putin
2. "A millionaire Ukrainian business titan said he asked Ukraine’s army to bomb his own newly built home after his security webcam showed Russian troops were using it as a base."
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ukraine-own-home-bombed_n_625e97b2e4b052d2bd66142b
3. "A core issue with “public goods” like water and electricity is the lack of a real-time pricing signal to optimize allocation. The Colorado River is an extreme example of what happens when price is suppressed and allocations are determined by politics. In essence, the fight over its water is a fight for a government handout, because the true value of that water is far higher than the price being paid for it by the recipients. Ironically, as shortages emerge, the value of that handout increases, causing demand for it to increase in kind – the exact opposite of how a free market would typically operate."
"Ultimately, energy is life, and the water that flows from the Rockies through the heart of the Southwest is the literal embodiment of stored, life-giving energy. How and where we exploit energy sources are choices, and all choices come with tradeoffs.
Alas, we live in a hyperpolitical world, and we are led by politicians with misaligned incentives, dubious ethics, and scant knowledge of physics. As is often the case in such circumstances, we are left with nothing but a menu of bad choices to paper over the problems of the past, and costly tradeoffs not borne by those who force them."
https://doomberg.substack.com/p/buy-me-a-river
4. Great write up on the social media phenom that is Mr Beast.
"Jimmy had no headstart, no connections in Hollywood, no money. This is not a story about luck. Yet this now-23-years-old guy built a multi billion-dollar global media brand from a small town in North Carolina. His story proves it: hyper-obsession and unequaled work ethic breed greatness.
Where does Jimmy’s rise end? Nobody knows. But upon doing research for this piece, we felt more and more confident in this prediction: within ten years, MrBeast will be the biggest celebrity on the planet."
https://alexandre.substack.com/p/-crazy-until-successful-the-mrbeast
5. "It wouldn’t be surprising if Musk were treated as a supervillain, too, especially since the media is already calling him a “supervillain.” Yet should he hit the trillion-dollar level in personal wealth, it won’t be because he extorted world leaders with a diabolical superweapon or became an autocrat who treated his country as his own personal piggy bank (or benefitted from an autocrat privatizing some national industry and then handing it over to him, Russian oligarch style).
Musk would almost certainly become a trillionaire by taking two valuable companies that he’s been running for nearly two decades and making them even more valuable over the next decade or so."
https://fasterplease.substack.com/p/-elon-musk-could-become-the-worlds
6. This is quite helpful for Vertical SaaS investors and founders.
"The typical Growth Equation of a Vertical SaaS company is Locations x ARPU. Locations is a more atomic metric than customers because it takes into account how many actual retail storefronts (hotels, restaurants, etc.) exist. Scaling locations can be challenging because small businesses have fewer resources and tend to be local. Having strong product-led growth, performance marketing, or an efficient salesforce (inside and local) is critical."
https://www.tidemarkcap.com/vskp-chapter/vertical-saas-truisms
7. This loser represents all the worst aspects of so called manosphere: Right wing, Incel & Pro Putin.
Rumor is he has been killed in Ukraine while shilling for Putin in the middle of a Russian invasion.
#DarwinAward
"In recent years, the manosphere has grown increasingly intertwined with far-right networks and influencers, soaking up this radical fringe’s resonant but distinct ideas about the evils of the West and adoration for Putin and his strongman politics as well. This escalating entanglement, Ribeiro and other researchers have shown, is turning the manosphere into an ever-more conspiratorial and radical environment—and a pipeline sending often young, disaffected men down deeper rabbit–holes of extremism."
8. "To succeed as an investor, you have to be able to deal in paradoxes. You have to find the right balance between conviction and flexibility, between arrogance and humility: The arrogance to believe you can have a differentiated view on a stock in such a competitive market, and the humility to recognize that you could be wrong. As a technology investor in particular, you have to balance imagination with reality. You have to find the right balance between enthusiasm and dispassion. You also have to be very knowledgeable.
What’s more, tech and consumer have kind of merged as a sector. For example, how can you look at Amazon and not study Walmart? How can you look at Airbnb and not be intimately familiar with Marriott and Hilton? All these businesses are merging in profound and important ways, and the lines between tech and consumer are blurring.
If Intel falls further behind and leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing becomes concentrated in Taiwan then Taiwan will become geopolitically important in a way that the Middle East never was. Modern semiconductor manufacturing is at least as important to the economy as oil was in the 1970s. Taiwan could become by far the most geopolitically important country in the history of the world."
9. This looks like so much fun.
10. We are led by unserious & corrupt people in Western Europe, Canada and America (Democrats & Republicans) and the laws of physics are actual laws that will come into effect eventually. Which will cause the most amount of pain & social disorder.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbhUxdZtS7w&t=1229s
11. "The next stage of the demographic transition, after a drop in mortality, is a subsequent drop in fertility (although the relationship isn’t straightforward). Family sizes fall from 5 to 6 down towards replacement level. But then they drop further — and never come back. Indeed across most of the world, outside of sub-Saharan Africa, family sizes are still shrinking, and populations ageing.
Globally, this is all going to have quite grim economic consequences in the coming decades, with Japan the first country to go into ‘secular stagnation’. Morland talks of the trilemma facing ageing nations, whereby you can have two of the three: ethnic continuity, a thriving economy or a comfortable lifestyle without the huge stress of mixing child-raising and a modern economy.
Israel has sacrificed the latter, Japan has chosen to take the economic hit, while Britain’s leaders have given up its ethnic continuity. But that, alas, was a short-term solution, since young immigrants don’t magically avoid the fate of Father Time any more than the rest of us do."
https://edwest.substack.com/p/children-of-men-is-really-happening
12. "For Drummond and others, the tank plays an important part in war. “Everybody says war in the future is going to be fought only with drones, aircraft, missiles, submarines, satellites, and so on,” he said. “But none of them can physically seize and hold ground.”
Armor is still one of the best ways to protect infantry as it moves into position to capture and hold ground. “Artillery is the queen of the battlefield and it’s such an omnipresent threat that the only way you can move is under armor,” Drummond said. “What role do tanks play? Well, tanks basically support infantry in the assault and they take out other tanks.”
13. "I have observed that the Ukranians are good at a number of things and are better at U.K. and U.S. troops in a number of key areas. One of those is understanding a drone and what drones can do. Not just strike drones, but how drones extend the reach of your senses. They also understand how to use precision fires, they take basic quadcopters and turn them into deadly weapons. There is some very ingenious stuff going on.
The Ukranians' morale is remarkably high. It was even when Kyiv was under threat. It's just this confidence that the Russians will not win that increases with the more atrocities that they come across. I've been through Iraq and Afghanistan and I was in Mogadishu before that. I have fought against the Islamic State. Obviously you hear bad things happening in war; I'm not any stranger to how depraved people can become.
But I was saying to someone the other day that I have a greater respect for the ethical behavior of the Islamic State than I do for the Russians. That is no exaggeration. I've never committed a war crime, I've always told my guys that we fight with the values we represent, we don't adopt those of our enemy. I don't think of myself as a vicious person, but currently, I'm filled with the deepest contempt and anger."
https://www.newsweek.com/im-former-us-marine-training-ukrainians-russians-worse-isis-1699415
14. "We need to view optimism as a deliberate strategy — a way of excising our malaise, not just so that we can live more fulfilling and happy lives, but so that we can make progress as a nation and a society. And while looking at the good news is surely part of that, there are a lot of other aspects to optimism besides simply saying “Buck up sailor, it’s not all bad!”.
"In the end, I suspect the most effective method will be to redirect America’s attention away from social conflict (where vigorous efforts often become a negative-sum game) and toward the problems that we can all solve together — strengthening the nation, creating abundance, and pushing technology forward. A judicious combination of passive and active optimism."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/how-to-stay-optimistic-in-these-dark
15. This is absolutely spot on. And the West has to focus on Ukrainian victory over the Russian army orcs.
"as the country’s response to recent Russian actions in Bucha shows, the Ukrainians are a difficult people to break. The more brutal the Kremlin’s tactics get, the more the Ukrainian people are willing to fight for their homeland. So long as they believe that they can win, they will sacrifice a tremendous amount on behalf of Europe.
Ukraine’s allies are morally obligated to support their efforts.
They are also strategically obligated to help; there is more in this war for the West than just creating a Ukraine whole and free. If Ukraine can win, the ultimate result will be a weakened Russia, without the military capabilities to launch further aggression against neighboring states. This is by itself an essential outcome.
Russia’s war in Ukraine is the greatest threat to the transatlantic alliance in decades, and defeating Moscow is critical to protecting global security. It is also important for protecting liberal values and ideals."
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ukraine/2022-04-22/ukraine-can-win
16. I'm mega bullish on Latin America and will be spending more time there after 2025. (Central/ Eastern Europe for me in next few years and beyond as its region near and dear to me)
"Sometimes, the best theses are the simplest ones – and the bull case for Latin America is a case in point. It comes down to two main variables: commodities and geopolitics. Large parts of Latin America are blessed with copious supplies of the former. And by virtue of its geographic position, all of Latin America is poised to benefit from the global trends shaping the latter."
https://www.thelykeion.com/the-investment-case-for-latin-america
17. "Entrepreneurs succeed by navigating an ecosystem of counterweights. Customers want the lowest price and the highest quality. Employees want you to compensate them at, or above, market rates. Investors want to dilute your stake in exchange for their capital, and the big hand of the government is calloused and slow. Finally there’s the most formal, obvious counterweight: your boss, the board of directors.
Building a company requires that you listen to, and balance, all of these counterweights. Each has (traditionally) held influence over the trajectory of your business, providing inputs that lead to course corrections. Early-stage entrepreneurs who ignore their counterweights fail. They lose access to key information and piss people off: Customers stop buying, employees quit, investors sell. Stories of people ignoring everyone around them and coloring outside the lines make for great scripted television, but they ignore the ropes and parachutes that guide the ascent.
Some entrepreneurs achieve enormous success within this system, balancing leadership and consensus. And with great success comes great power — the power to stop listening. Which often results in a fall from grace and loss of power."
https://www.profgalloway.com/power
18. "as both the Azeri-Armenia and the Ukraine-Russia wars seem to suggest, drones have now radically leveled the playing field in warfare; this is a profound development with a multitude of implications.
Does this undermine the long-held superiority of vastly expensive armament systems, thus tilting the balance in favor of much cheaper and much more widely available weapons? If so, does this mean yet another support pillar of the U.S. dollar’s reserve currency status is crumbling in front of our eyes?
After all, in a world where military might is no longer the monopoly of one or two superpowers, do we de-facto move into a multi-polar world? One in which there is no reason for trade between Indonesia and Malaysia to be settled in U.S. dollars, as it can now be settled in their own currencies? Similarly, shouldn’t trade between China and South Korea be settled in renminbi and Korean won?"
https://haymaker.substack.com/p/send-in-the-drones
19. "I’d like to take a few minutes today to talk about the similarities – and differences – between Ukraine and Finland’s fighting against Russian and Soviet invasion.
Both invasions were launched over Russian/Soviet concern over border security, and both with attempts at false flag attacks as justification. In both cases the Russian/Soviet forces were vastly overconfident in their ability to quickly defeat their opponents, and in both cases they expected to be met with significant Finnish.Ukrainian domestic support. In both cases, those assumptions were completely mistaken, and the invasions instead solidly unified the defenders instead of dividing them. In both cases the defending forces has significantly less air and armor strength that the invading forces.
In the end of the Winter War, Finland’s military managed to hold on just barely long enough to conclude an armistice – although they were days or weeks away from complete collapse on the Karelian Isthmus at the end. The treaty cost them about 10% of Finland’s sovereign territory, but they retained their independence. A similar outcome is a definite possibility in Ukraine, although Ukraine today has a few major advantages the Finns did not have."
20. "If you spend with Ukraine, you are supporting the economy. The companies are spending money building and supporting the army," Klen says. He points out that while armies win battles, economies win wars.
Adds Neskin: "We need to help our economy and turn it back on, because of course, all money that goes into Ukraine will help Ukraine."
https://www.inc.com/christine-lagorio-chafkin/ukraine-petcube-relief-campaign.html
21. "Today’s media is filled with claims of breakthrough technologies poised to revolutionize our relationship with energy. The reporting follows a predictable pattern: sophomoric barbs launched at oil and gas (now, aimed at Putin’s oil and gas, specifically) couched in breathless excitement over the latest promising solution. However, these features do a disservice in that they are almost always heavy on the possibilities and comically light on the constraints. How can constraints be addressed if we ignore them?"
https://doomberg.substack.com/p/20000-volts-under-the-sea
22. Utterly fascinating view on vibe shifts in website aesthetics.
"So what is the end game? What happens if we reach a “vibe singularity” in all forms of art, where anyone can create anything by typing a few phrases? How does status get signaled through aesthetic vibes when all the vibes are free?
I think the leading edge of aesthetics will probably always involve human skill, even if the methods we use to channel that skill will change dramatically. When it comes to relative-performance games, we should think of AI tools more like an instrument that can be played well or poorly, and less like a replacement for humans.
If all that mattered was absolute performance, then sure, the AI would be able to perform well enough to get the job done without human intervention. But when it comes to status games, relative performance is what matters. And human+AI is probably going to beat AI alone for a long time."
https://every.to/divinations/dall-e-2-and-the-origin-of-vibe-shifts
23. “I live a monk lifestyle. It’s amazing what you can get done if you remove distractions,” says Breslow, who is dressed like a confetti cannon: T-shirt printed with a purple cartoon Bolt superhero, rainbow-splattered running shorts, psychedelic Nikes with glitter soles.
Between Zoom meetings and virtual yoga sessions, Breslow, whose stake in Bolt gives him a fortune worth $2 billion, eats a vegan, locally sourced lunch in solitude and silence. He rarely eats in front of other people. He abstains from meat and gluten, caffeine and alcohol. No supplements or illicit substances, either. The strict routine is part of what he calls “working like a lion,” a philosophy of executing in brief bursts of hyperfocus and intensity, similar to how the big cat hunts.
“There’s too much work theater, where people go through the motions to appear busy,” says Breslow, who recently instituted a four-day workweek at Bolt. “I’d much rather have you focus on your health, well-being and family during your time off, so that when you’re here working, you’re all in.”
“Most people who get rich want to be a part of an elite circle. I want nothing to do with it—I’m probably one of the only billionaires who has that feeling,” Breslow says with a smirk. “I don’t want to be in their clubs, their groups, their parties.”
24. "All the above sounds depressing for Ukraine - well not if EU membership becomes a real perspective, and Western financing is forthcoming. Actually Ukraine then would have real recovery perspective. And this war could prove to be its defining moment, it’s State of Israel moment, when it finally defeated Russia, affirmed its independence and pushed on to EU membership with strong economic development then resulting.
Indeed, the way that Ukraine has conducted this war, with bravery, intellect, innovation, and real skill/honour/grace, it suggests that this nation can be truly successful - again drawing the comparison to the State of Israel how when faced with huge external threats and challenges, it has risen to the challenge as a nation and innovated to survive, because it had to."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/ukraine-has-bright-recovery-prospects
25. Venture capital is important for the economy.
https://fasterplease.substack.com/p/-venture-capital-is-one-of-americas
26. This makes me optimistic for the future from one of the top futurists in the business.
"A lot of smart people out there want to get involved -- to build the future, instead of just reading about it and hoping for it. What should they be doing now? What are the actions they should be taking?"
"At a technical level: Get involved. If you have professional skills, how do you deploy them? Do you work on optimizing ad clicks? On marketing consumer products? On fossil fuel production? Can you deploy those same professional skills to working on clean energy or climate, or computing advances that can accelerate progress, or helping craft business models or marketing plans for products that improve humanity?
On a civil level: Can you help cut through the hyper-polarization that exists? Can you reach out to people with differing opinions, learn how they think, and help persuade them to see the other side? Can you help elect leaders that move us forward instead of backwards? Can you criticize the worst ideas on your own political side. If you’re a conservative, can you stand up for democracy? If you’re a liberal, can you support free speech on campus and in the private sector? Can you help overcome NIMBY?
On a social level: Can you help cut through the heavy marketing of outrage and fear that media use to get clicks? Can you calm the discourse down? Can you help overcome “if it bleeds, it leads” in news media? And maybe most importantly, can you help spread this notion of dynamic optimism, showing people how the world is getting better in so many ways, and inspiring them to take action – whatever action they can – to continue to make it better?"
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/interview-ramez-naam-futurist-author
27. The Russian military sucks on so many levels. Only good for killing unarmed civilians.
"They made misjudgments, but also just institutionally they don’t have the capacity. What we can now see is that they simply do not have the institutional capacity to support offensive operations deep into enemy territory and aren’t able to give units supply and combat support of all kinds: artillery support, air support, air-defense support.
With an already weak logistics base, it was an enormous mistake for them to chop their main offensive into four major axes that were widely geographically dispersed. They don’t have enough trucks. They don’t really have expeditionary logistics. So they were going to need to resupply from logistics bases. They don’t have logistics bases in Ukraine—Ukraine’s a country that they’re invading.
So they had to rely on logistics bases that are in Russia and Belarus, and then transport everything forward—what they would do in World War One, they would hope to have railroads and railheads where you can just put everything on a train and send it to your forward operating area.
And they don’t have that.
They’re a poor-quality military with poor-quality leadership and poor logistics—and seemingly highly inclined to corruption."
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/is-the-russian-military-a-paper-tiger
28. I'm a big fan of Johnny FD, one of the OG Digital Nomads. He had moved to Ukraine before the war and he is now in Lviv. Great to see him and I also wish for Ukrainian victory over the Russian orcs. Ukrainian culture and way of life needs to be defended. #armukrainenow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSe3SHSR1UI
29. "I’m with a group of cryptocurrency enthusiasts, thousands of whom have moved to Puerto Rico in recent years, as they plot the contours of the new world they hope to build. From the YouTuber Logan Paul to the former film star Brock Pierce to some of the biggest early investors in ethereum, these settlers have been lured to the “Island of Enchantment” by low taxes and long beaches. If you thought the champions of Silicon Valley were utopian and self-assured, try hanging out with the next generation."
30. This is a must listen to interview. The new world from a geopolitical and economic perspective.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pf0nGBA6SSs
31. This is a very good view on rising inflation and food costs. Quite insightful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOx7oYtAEns
32. Must read.
"Approach Life with an Exit Number: On Wall Street the main reason most people don’t retire with $10M+ US Token is because of the following: Lifestyle Inflation. If we were to choose one item where people lack self control it is exactly that. Lifestyle inflation. Keeping up with the Jones’s.
To be clear, we don’t think you need to disclose your exit number to the public. In fact, you are better off keeping it to yourself. Take a look around you and decide what you really need to be happy and at that point you at least have a “number” where you lose the excuses. What excuses you ask? Excuses that say “if I made XYZ or was worth XYZ i’d be happy”. This is rarely the case.
Therefore, write it down clearly and store it away: $1M US Token, $5M US Token, $10M US Token it doesn’t matter to us. Just write it down, put it away and that number represents “no more excuses related to not having enough financial resources”
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/twitter-goes-to-musk-general-successgetting
33. This is a good man.
"Over the past decade, WCK has gone from the earnest sideline of a celebrity chef to a relief juggernaut, responding to some of the biggest crises of our time—the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, the pandemic—and countless smaller ones, in the process turning Andrés into a humanitarian star. Though much smaller than behemoth relief organizations like the Red Cross, WCK has established an outsize footprint, in part because of its outsize leader, and in part because of its strategy of using local resources like restaurants, kitchens, cooks, and food trucks.
“We are very much the Airbnb or Uber of relief,” Andrés had told me this past winter."
"In the end, I would come to see the two halves of Andrés’s life as an extension of the central insight that fuels WCK: that the temperament and skill set it takes to feed people in a restaurant—entrepreneurism, pragmatism, improvisation, stamina, planning, and, yes, charisma and celebrity—are uniquely suited to feeding them in an emergency. And that both spring from the same single-minded, elemental, almost too-simple impulse: to feed."
https://www.gq.com/story/the-frontline-chef-jose-andres
34. "These crazies have monopolized public discourse and relentlessly waged cultural jihad on western civilization for several years.
And when they took control of the US federal government in 2020, the crazies truly thought that they had won.
It was from this arrogance that they felt confident enough to take off the gloves and unleash their full crazy show.
This is what we’ve been watching for the past two years— a full blown circus orgy of crazy. We know crazy when we see it, and we see it every day.
These crazies were put in charge of the economy, public health, criminal justice, education, and more. And the results have clearly been disastrous.
Now they’re coming up with lame excuses for their failures, like calling inflation the “Putin price hike”, as if voters are gullible enough to believe such obvious crazy talk.
We the People may be dumb… but we’re not stupid. And we know crazy when we see it."
https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/we-know-crazy-when-we-see-it-35207
35. Seriously, now this is the way you quit your job!! What a badass here.
https://mobile.twitter.com/michaelidov/status/1519055836928118784
36. Ironic. Guess there is such a thing as karma.
"The attacks against Russia stand in sharp contrast to recent history. Many cybercriminals and ransomware groups have links to Russia and don’t target the nation. Now, it’s being opened up. “Russia is typically considered one of those countries where cyberattacks come from and not go to,” says Stefano De Blasi, a cyber-threat intelligence analyst at security firm Digital Shadows."
https://www.wired.com/story/russia-hacked-attacks
37. Great discussions here as always. Not Investing Advice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znpbBkvdnfg
38. Every seed stage founder should read this.
https://chrisneumann.com/blog/wow-did-my-pitch-deck-suck
39. @JohnnyFDK God bless you sir & be safe!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5OtosCTC9Q
40. This is a very good interview on the journey of entrepreneurship.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz-LQUQofsM
41. Heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time. Please donate to support these volunteers feeding old people in the war zone.
#supportukraine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnhc_CHHkCQ
42. "In sum, the secret to my success is … rejection. Specifically, my willingness to endure it. Everybody knows failure, everyone will experience tragedy. You will get fired, make bad investments, and fall in love with someone who doesn’t love you back. Worst of all, someone you love, and who loves you a great deal, will get sick and die. A core competence of successful people is the ability to mourn, and move on."
"In addition, age has given me the courage to be more forthcoming with my emotions. To tell people I love them, that I admire them. Looking at important decisions through the lens of your deathbed usually yields the same answers: Go for it, and tell people you love them."