Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads May 23rd, 2021
“Most people have no idea of the giant capacity we can immediately command when we focus all our resources on mastering a single area of our lives.” – Tony Robbins
This is one of the best new newsletters out there. My Friend Dmitri started this and I wish I had thought of it. Weekly Actions that will make your life better. Check it out.
https://newsletter.weeklyaction.club/p/weeklyactions-database
2. WOW....this is bit too close to home for many of us I think. Most of us, if we admit it are "looking good not feeling good."
"Maybe you are also fed up with your current way of life, the hiding, the lying, the sense of not being really present with what’s there inside of you. Well, if you work on it, then don’t get your hopes up too much. The reward you get from doing it isn’t particularly great. After many years of this process, the reward is that occasionally you’ll feel good, meaning more connected to yourself and others than you’ve ever felt before in your life, in a warm, cuddly, open, and spacious way. And in plenty, honestly most of the other moments of your life you will feel shit, hateful, angry, sad, lonely, tight, shivery, shaky, and so forth.
And however bleak that is, it’s still a million times better than the perfect story that looks good from the outside."
https://leowid.com/looking-good-vs-feeling-good-a-true-story-about-success/
3. Can't say I was a big fan of social media influencers. Even less so now. F--ing douchebags.
"Social media influencers – who are drawn to the island’s photo-perfect, emerald-green paddy fields, its scenic temples and beaches – have proved a particular problem. “The key for Bali recovery (from the pandemic) is the low number of (Covid-19) cases. But the foreigner who has (online) followers creates content about violating the health protocol, leaving an impression that Bali is not safe,” Niluh said.
Over the past few months, reports of disrespectful, brash stunts, careless partying and even insulting behaviour by social media influencers have angered the public."
4. Glad to see this: Fellow introverts unite!
https://thehustle.co/why-introverts-make-great-leaders/
5. What a wonderful story. This makes me hopeful for humankind.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2021/05/14/college-graduation-uber-passenger/
6. Good health and longevity tips from an expert.
7. "Now that you get the big picture:
1) money printer has gone mad,
2) inflation will likely increase,
3) asset inflation causes problems between rich and poor,
4) Bitcoin solves this by acting as a store of value with a fixed supply and
5) Ethereum – or a competitor similar to Ethereum – will dismantle all businesses with middlemen… It is time to take action! This means you need to get involved."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/beginners-guide-to-the-future-decentralization
8. "If you can’t hold the dollar, what else can you hold? Real estate? Stocks? Bonds? Commodities? They are all underperforming bitcoin. Bitcoin remains the apex predator of financial markets. It is continuing to gain adoption, which can be seen by wallet addresses, trading volumes, on-chain transactions, hash rate, and registered users at various platforms. Bitcoin is winning. It is winning despite the billionaires and Wall Street bankers."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/there-are-no-gods-among-us
9. Not saying the stupid Woke movement in western world is anything like the awful Chinese Cultural Revolution (its no where close....yet), but directionally its not good.
"If you disagree with a company’s woke politics, stop buying their products. Honestly. If you hate the fact that Disney is ultra-woke, but you’re not willing to give up your Disney+ membership, then you may need to rethink your priorities.
Same goes for Woka Cola, or any other major brand.
There’s also the vote you can make with your feet.
If your state or local government has totally lost its mind, consider moving. You can’t fix your neighbors’ way of thinking, but you can might be able to find greener pastures elsewhere."
https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/two-ways-to-push-back-against-the-cultural-revolution-32245/
10. "Every great artist and writer in history has been an outlier. Every great entrepreneur, scientist, and technologist has been an outlier. Without robust experimentation, and a culture that protects our weirdest handful, we will absolutely stagnate and decline into oblivion. Among people who feel out of control of their own lives there tends to be an impulse towards aggressively policing the perceived weirdness of others out of existence. Increasingly, such efforts are succeeding. But what’s America without a little chaos every now and then?
High-level, I think it’s always worth asking if you’re on the side that’s burning books, and try to be honest if you are: do you really think you’re the hammer-wielding heroine of this saga, or are you the aging Orwellian villain, terrified of change?"
https://www.piratewires.com/p/making-space-for-monkeys
11. "The data showed that the most significant trait among billion-dollar startup founders is a history of entrepreneurship, whether that's building a company, a side hustle, or a smaller project.
Those who had created something that generated value--even on a small scale that would be considered a failure in the venture capital world--were more likely to go on to found billion-dollar companies than those with shiny resumes filled with brand-name employers and universities."
12. Coming out of the pandemic we have an opportunity for a restart of our lives. Let's not waste it, I know I won't.
"In one recent survey, the specific things people said they yearned for most were traveling (24 percent), visiting family (19 percent), and hanging out with friends (16 percent).
I haven’t been able to find any surveys of what we most don’t miss from pre-pandemic times. But there is research that gives us clues. Studies have shown that spending time on people or activities that bring us down depresses our sense of meaning in life; unpleasant exchanges with bosses, customers, and co-workers lower our sense of well-being."
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/05/happiness-end-pandemic-start-over/618870/
13. I'm a fan personally.
"This kind of financial virtuosity has made Palihapitiya a billionaire, not to mention a hit on social media. He has 1.5 million Twitter followers, a popular weekly podcast, and an audience of day-trading millennials and zoomers who hang on his every word. He’s 44, cocky, blunt, and seems like the kind of guy who’d take pleasure in calling BS on current stock market hype."
14. Sucks to be a tech tycoon in China.
"Today, new rules are fast emerging for China’s wealthiest tycoons: don’t publicly criticize the Party; keep a low profile; give workers a fairer shake; and make state priorities your priorities. “It’s really significant and could have a major impact,” says Rebecca Fannin, author of Tech Titans of China. “These companies had been allowed to flourish without a lot of scrutiny. This crackdown could just be the beginning.”
https://time.com/6048539/china-tech-giants-regulations/
15. "The world may yet explode into another WW2-style conflagration, or the kind of nuclear holocaust we feared during the Cold War. If so, then my bet is that drones will dominate that battlefield. But most of the modern military technologies led themselves to a very different kind of great-power war — a war of constant sniping and harassment.
Assassin drones, cyberattacks, info ops, and bioweapons raise the possibility of never-ending low-grade attacks that are below the threshold of massive retaliation."
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-future-of-war-is-bizarre-and
16. "r/WallStreetBets, Crypto, Tinder, NFT’s, wagering — adrenaline! Financial platforms are now trading at a fraction of a second — co-locating at the exchanges and limited only by computing processing speeds. At the May 1 Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting, Warren Buffett lamented the rise of Robinhood, dubbing it “a very significant part of the casino aspect” of investing today. Guess what? The casino aspect is the point.
The games business is built on adrenaline. According to Grin Gaming founder Nick Bucheleres, the future of entertainment revolves around it. Free to play. Virtual goods. Creator Economy. Mobile. Global. Last year, people spent over a trillion hours watching and interacting with other people playing games! Valve’s Steam platform (including CS:GO and Dota 2) regularly exceeds 25M concurrent users.
And just wait until 5G hits."
https://johnkosner.medium.com/the-adrenaline-economy-9175829ba03b
17. Like many folks watching the Fed's moves, it’s very concerning.
https://www.kevinrooke.blog/investor-letter-004/
18. This is such a great podcast. This show particularly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRZJ_ObyRE4
19. "Sinclair says there are a host of science-backed lifestyle changes people can make in order to live longer. If you want 14 extra years right off the bat, simply do what many doctors recommend: eat less, exercise regularly, stay away from cigarettes, and get enough sleep.
Finally, aim for a mostly plant-based diet: On average, meat is eaten only five times a month in the Blue Zone hot spots, the regions where people live the longest, like Nicoya, Costa Rica; Sardinia, Italy; and Okinawa, Japan."
https://www.instyle.com/beauty/health-fitness/reverse-aging-longevity-research
20. "In this bulliest of markets, with prices popping on everything from stocks to bitcoin to corn futures, Litquidity has emerged as a giddy and astute observer of finance high and low, followed by Reddit day traders and private-equity sharks alike."
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/litquidity-capital-wall-street-memes.html
21. "Over the past decade, digital nomads leveraged their global mobility to pursue distributed work and borderless living. Many newly remote workers will follow this path in the years ahead. Visas are legitimizing the lifestyle, and startups are emerging to support and simplify globalized hiring. More people will now choose between being a nomad and a settler, as early adopters like me already do.
Nomads already exist as an online and more occasionally offline community, never restricted to just one territory. This puts us in an ideal position to begin organizing and building on the foundations we've laid. Old nation-states and new internet countries will soon come to exist in an ongoing battle to attract and retain the most desirable people as citizens."
https://lraz.io/minimum-viable-state/
22. Pretty interesting. For some odd reason, really in portfolio management these days.
https://www.radigancarter.com/dispatches/the-florentine-portfolio
23. Pomp is crushing it. Setting the roadmap for the Multi-SKU Solopreneur.
https://mobile.twitter.com/anneleeskates/status/1395105774817267712
24. "The US does not have to physically cut off global trade routes like the Ottomans in the 15th century. In the electronic age, the ability to cut off access to the world reserve currency and banking system has just as drastic and immediate consequences to regimes around the world.
The old world powers in Europe and Asia are very much aware of this strategic disadvantage and are constantly looking for ways to lessen the US’s dominance on world trade.....
This is why China started to build the One Belt One Road Initiative and why China is moving full speed ahead with the Digital Currency Electronic Payment (DCEP) program. China dreams of a day when they have a digital centralized currency which any company that does business in China must use as an end run around the US dollar.
The One Belt One Road Initiative is being built for the same reason Europe launched ships off the map in the Age of Discovery.
China needs to find a way to circumvent and neutralize the maritime power of the US Navy and the soft power of a weaponized US Dollar which threatens to cut it off from global trade."
https://www.radigancarter.com/dispatches/why-i-invest-overseas
25. "China has certainly been willing to incur widespread diplomatic opprobrium in the defense of its declared national interests; witness its mass internment of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang and its suppression of pro-democracy activism in Hong Kong. An attack on Taiwan would risk vastly more, including massive military damage and punishing economic sanctions – not to mention significant technological setbacks, as a U.S.-China armed conflict would imperil TSMC’s operations."
https://thediplomat.com/2021/05/taiwan-at-the-nexus-of-technology-and-geopolitics/
26. "More important than cash for Hamas, though, is Iranian military know-how and tech. The Iranians have a Manichean view of the world. It is Haq versus Batel, (truth and righteousness against falsehood) and Dar al-Islam (realm of peace and belief) versus Dar al-Harb (realm of war and disbelief). They perceive themselves to be underdogs in a just battle against overwhelming odds — and they fight accordingly."
https://unherd.com/2021/05/how-hamas-became-so-deadly/
27. "It seems that Facebook's private groups have created a kind of dealer economy, where the barriers to entry are just a bit of extra time (which the pandemic has given many of us in spades), a certain level of geekery in whatever you'll be dealing, and the willingness to hold some inventory and take a bit of risk.
Apart from the fact that these dealers operate informally on Facebook, the other main thing that makes them different from old-school dealers is the side-hustle factor. If any of the dealers I've encountered are doing this as a living, I'd be surprised. Mostly it seems they do it in order to participate in their hobby in a way that's subsidized."
https://doxa.substack.com/p/the-dealer-economy
28. "Accurately identifying which new habits — WFH, working out at home rather than gyms, remote meetings rather than business travel, car ownership, the great migration out of cities, food delivery — that formed during Covid are durable vs. ephemeral is going to be essential.
Accurately identifying which cheap consumer cyclicals permanently improved their business models such that they can sustainably grow off 2021 numbers vs. those which did not invest and improve their business models is going to be critical."
29. Super interesting. Good summary of leading gaming trends.
https://explodingtopics.com/blog/gaming-trends
30. "Right now there's a lot of noise from people who believe monetization is the single most important problem for the Creator Economy to solve. I tend to disagree. The real battle in front of us is not monetization, it's ownership. How can you realistically hope to monetize something you don't own? As it stands, creators are giving away ownership at the moment of publication and consumers are renting this content from platforms."
https://uncutfm.substack.com/p/the-battle-of-ownership
31. "If you’re going to take financial advice from an athlete, make sure that athlete’s Shaq.
Did you know 60% of the pro athletes end up broke within 5 years of retiring? They’re not joking when they say professional athletes die two deaths in their lifetime.
Meanwhile, basketball’s friendliest giant is making more money as a retiree than he did during his legendary 19-year NBA career."
https://contrarianthinking.substack.com/p/shaq-400m-from-carwashes-and-franchises
32. Hmmm......
"Instead of only subsidizing us, investors will pay us directly to consume. Instead of protecting our money by keeping it in cash and bonds, we’ll gamble it on bets that, at least, promise to generate a return. And instead of getting paid for productive work, we’ll pay to contribute to projects that give our lives meaning."
https://www.drorpoleg.com/explicit-economics/
33. Useful data on state of VC for investors and founders.
https://www.wing.vc/content/the-sharpest-of-recoveries-the-2021-v21-analysis
34. "Once the purview of heiresses like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian, it seems that influencing has become fully democratized, making a Jay Gatsby out of every intrepid Jimmy Gatz. Or as one collab-house press liaison puts it to me:
“It’s the new A-list celebrity except it’s attainable for anybody. You can be in Cleveland, Ohio, alone in your bedroom, and you can get a million followers overnight. That’s fucking crazy. That’s never been possible. Wealth, fame, status has never been more attainable for anyone in the history of the world the way it is right now.”
https://harpers.org/archive/2021/06/tiktok-house-collab-house-the-anxiety-of-influencers/
35. "People are scrambling for leaders who can give them a sense of what reality is or should be, and we call these community builders. We call these content creators. But really, I think these are reality entrepreneurs.
Fans are not just followers or consumers, but they’re investors in that leader’s model of reality. My friend calls this kaleidoscope theory, where culture fragments into thousands of shards. Each culture plays out its fantasies alongside all the other cultures, and the result is skyrocketing cultural innovation at the cost of shared alignment on anything."
https://www.nfx.com/post/rise-of-reality-entrepreneurs/
36. This is absolutely spot on. Substitute China for Spain, USA for England and this story rings true.
"Problem is the more I thought about this, bitcoin is exactly the right asset at exactly the right time for the CCP, too.
Lets take a step back in time for a moment to show why the CCP is so dangerous. It is not based on strength, but on desperation as you can see from the demographic chart above."
https://www.radigancarter.com/dispatches/bitcoin-weighing-risks-and-life
37. Massive trend in making.
"Play-to-earn games have been life-changing for members of the community. One 75-year-old man plays from 4am to 10pm and says, “This is my only entertainment.” His wife adds, “We’re praying to the Lord that Axie doesn’t go away. It’s how we pay for our medicine.” During the pandemic, playing Axie became a viable source of income in many developing countries: players in the Philippines comprise about 30% of global Axie players; Indonesia comes in second with 15% global share.
What’s fascinating about play-to-earn games is how they foreshadow future labor structures—structures that will become more common in an increasingly-digital, borderless economy.
With new technologies—first, the internet and now, blockchain—there’s no reason that economic classes should be stratified into the investing class and the salaried class. Everyone is an investor. Anyone can trade stocks on Robinhood, buy and sell Axies on OpenSea, or claim an economic stake in someone’s work on Mirror."
https://digitalnative.substack.com/p/how-people-in-the-philippines-are
38. Title says it all. Although it might just be because I am old and don't understand.
39. I personally think if you can, always better to be more generous than not. Ie. Tip over and above expectations.
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22446361/pandemic-gratuity-covid-service-work
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