Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads July 9th, 2023
“It’s precisely those who are busiest who most need to give themselves a break.” — Pico Iyer
"We are seeing the initial stages for the groundwork of a cross-border CBDC rails, the one that the IMF is so eagerly working on.
With the increased adoption of digital payment systems, and the reluctancy to print higher denomination bills, it will be easier to force Argentines on a CBDC once Argentina defaults.
And believe me, that will be sooner than later. The leverage there is completely on the side of the IMF, no matter how many currency swaps Argentina decides to accept from China.
So unless Argentina decides to default on the IMF loan completely and exit capital markets (like the country has done in the past), this is the more likely scenario from this Mara’s point of view:
-Default (technically Argentina is already defaulting on IMF interest payments this month);
-Debt restructuring at 50 cents on the dollar (this is the bond play covered in my previous article) - this will likely happen under the new government;
-Austerity measures + increased fiscal control over the economy - CBDC introduction and plan to eliminate cash in x years.
Now even if this is forced upon the population, I have no doubt about the ingenuity of the people to come up with circular economies.
Some absolute currency mayhem that ensued during the 2001 crisis is a good example of that, together with the omnipresent black market for US token swapping that is currently active in the country."
https://bowtiedmara.substack.com/p/individual-sovereignty-cashless-societies
2. "Today, Venture funding has become even more scarce and appears as scarce as it was during the “Dot Com Bust”. By our estimates, we are about 1/3 of the way into the fundraising desert, where maximum restructuring will be prevalent in global VC ecosystems over the next 12-18 months."
https://tribecap.co/crossing-the-desert/
3. Fascinating watching the Football (aka Soccer) leagues now from business perspective. The power is in the hands of the top players who are cutting some interesting biz deals that we can all learn from.
"If the Saudi push is to come up short, it won’t be because of any moralizing. The European clubs will be hoping many decades of sporting heritage will protect their product, though the Londoners of West Ham celebrated their victory in a two-year-old tournament a few weeks back like it was the World Cup. And why not? You’ve got to take your thrills as they come, and fans will accept anybody who supplies them.
Whether it’s an American billionaire or an oil-state emir or a president the fans elect, there’s little sign it matters to folks so long as it means a few more great days out with family and friends. Besides, they rarely get much of a choice. Messi did, and he got the best deal of all because he recognized an opportunity to go from employee to partner—to become an owner himself. More American—and even European—teams might have to offer that kind of deal to survive the Saudi flood of cash."
4. "And there are also several large VC portfolios up for sale: SVB Capital, FTX Ventures, and now Tiger Global are all in the process of unloading a number of investments in VC funds and companies. That’s a hell of a lot of inventory for the market to absorb in such a short time, and sellers who want short-term liquidity will be at a significant disadvantage.
Many companies (and funds) are going to be available at much lower prices than at any time in the past decade. Already several companies on secondary marketplaces like Forge and Equityzen are priced at significant discounts to their last round valuations, with far more sellers than buyers.
For investors and acquirers with ready capital available, Silicon Valley is about to witness its biggest half-off sale in over a decade. Smart buyers should do their homework and be prepared to grab a bunch of tech startup bargains."
https://davemcclure.substack.com/p/repricing-exuberance-part-i
5. I think this discussion is pretty important.
I clearly disagree with Sack's view on Ukraine counteroffensive so far, it's too early & he has his own narrative bias (like all of us I might add). But most of this episode is good.
Key lesson: do your homework, find different sources/views and think for yourself ie. don't trust what you read or hear especially the establishment anywhere
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJQmCFTYCh8
6. What an unexpected turn of events to say the least.
"This coup is being led by the boss of the Wagner mercenaries, Yevgeny Prigozhin. At first the smart money was on his failure because the full weight of the Russian state is against him.
Before he made his moves, he was declared a traitor, his offices were raided, and his bases shelled. But the Russian state is inept and decrepit. If the aim was to catch Prigozhin unawares and shut him up it failed, because he appears to have had some notice of what was being prepared for him and so took his own initiatives. If you are going to move against your opponents you need to be decisive. Prigozhin got away.
Even if Wagner is defeated quickly, which I would not take for granted, then this is still a big shock to the regime and it will have been weakened. If the confrontation goes in the other direction then all bets are off and panic may start to grip the Kremlin. The problem for autocrats like Putin is that they don’t really know what is going on among their people, and that tends to add to the panic."
https://samf.substack.com/p/prigozhins-mutiny
7. "It’s far too early to tell what’s really going on. All eyes are on Russia now. But rather than thinking of this as a simple internal argument, it may be useful to think of this as a way the superpowers solve the larger problems Putin was creating for everybody well outside of Ukraine. Ukraine will be a beneficiary of all this, no doubt, but the invisible war beyond Ukraine may now subside too.
As I finish writing this, I see a great line in a news story. It reads, “Prigozhin said that his call to action against the Russian military was not a mutiny but a “march for justice.” It seems a long way from his previous “we will destroy everything” remarks. That should hold up well in the FSB court process that is already charging him for “calling for an armed mutiny.” The key question remains, where is Mr Putin? It could be that Gerasimov loses this fight. Stories are circulating that the military refused his orders to attack Wagner by air. But, if he wins, I am betting on a serious peace dividend and a Russia that is brought back into the family of nations at least until Gerasimov gets comfortable.
Don’t forget that the Gerasimov Doctrine holds that anything goes. He is not to be underestimated. If Putin emerges still standing, we’ll have a problem Houston. Prigozhin is in trouble either way. China will figure out how to align with the winner, whoever that is. There’s going to be a run on popcorn, that’s for sure."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/coup-detat-putin-prigozhin-gerasimov
8. "Now’s a great time to assess every functional area of the business and spend internal cycles leveling up people, processes, and technology. Cruft builds over time and needs to be revisited on a regular basis. Now is an exceptionally good time to upgrade functional areas."
https://davidcummings.org/2023/06/24/time-to-upgrade-the-startups-functional-areas/
9. "Venture capital is one of those dependencies. If you pick up one end of the stick (raising venture) you automatically HAVE to pick up the other end of the stick (needing a large outcome for anyone to make money.)
The music stopped when the market corrected. Whether it’s smaller, commoditized companies that can’t persist and need to get acquired, or it’s fake hyped-up consumer companies. Some of those outcomes hurt way more than my temporary face slam in the suped-up game of musical chairs."
https://investing1012dot0.substack.com/p/the-scramble-landscape
10. "There are a few figures in the tech world who staunchly insist that Russia is winning the war. But after the events of the past couple of days, how reasonable is it to keep believing that? As international relations scholar Paul Poast points out, you don’t tend to see infighting behind the lines in countries that are winning wars.
(Also, note the double standard here; the same people declaring Russia is “winning” in Ukraine tend to say America “lost” in Iraq despite pacifying the entire country with only a small fraction of the casualties Russia has sustained so far. Such is the power of motivated reasoning.)
Russia’s poor performance in this war has starkly illustrated the weakness of the right-wing romantic notion that traditional masculinity and the trappings of traditional religiosity will lead a society to triumph over decadent, effeminate democracies. Despite its manly recruitment ads and its military culture of machismo, aggression, and sexual violence, and despite its professed support for the Orthodox Christian church, Russia has repeatedly shown battlefield incompetence. Were it to face an actual NATO country in battle, Russia would be in even greater trouble.
Liberalism doesn’t act tough, but it is tough when it needs to be."
“Right now, China spends less on its military than the U.S. does. In wartime, though, it will ramp up defense production by enormous orders of magnitude, just as it has ramped up production of cars, of trains, of solar power, etc. China will do exactly what the U.S. did in WW2, and unless we make big big changes, it will overwhelm us exactly the way we overwhelmed Germany and Japan.
Ultimately it is China, not Russia, that presents the real challenge to America and our allies. Russia is a chaotic, militaristic, economically incompetent, declining medium-sized country that just happens to have a lot of old Soviet equipment. China is the world’s factory, ten times Russia’s size, at the peak of its power, national unity, and state capacity.
If the U.S. is going to meet that challenge, we’re going to have to do better than a robust economy and a strong currency. We’re going to have to remember how to build things again. So ignore the doomers and declinists on Twitter, but don’t ignore this."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/hey-tech-folks-the-west-is-not-failing
11. "Earlier in life, my eyes were fixed on finding new summits. Peaks offered peak experiences with rare and wonderful views. Yet with age and wisdom, I learned that life couldn't be sustained in the uninhabitable lands of hard-to-reach peaks. The peaks defined my past, but they wouldn't define my future.
I also learned to admire the river and to seek its guidance. By surrendering to its flow, I could find my way toward a more peaceful and hospitable place where life flourishes. And from that lower valley flush with abundance, I could look back and admire the peak from a distance, thanking it for the rare experience it offered me, yet vowing to never return to the place that nearly drained me to the point of non-existence.
Peaks are for the young, unwise, and hungry. Rivers are for the mature, wise, and absolved. Both can be navigated so long as you learn to surrender to their unbeatable resistance. One offers momentary peaks. The other offers lasting calm and solace. Together, they make up the landscape of a life."
12. "Putin’s Position - this was a direct and open attempt to undermine Putin and he blinked. He avoided a military confrontation knowing full well that he could have lost it. Any dictator worth this salt, including the ruthless Vlad himself, would have ended this in the bloodiest way possible and purged anyone who could even remotely be associated with the mutineers. A page from Stalin’s handbook would have sufficed. But he couldn’t this time and he had to let his rival off the hook. Bad mistake.
Of course you could argue Prigozhin blinked too and maybe he caved under pressure, but appearances matter and it was the Russian president who looks to be the weaker one here. So, not only has Putin delivered his nation a disastrous war, he has now also signalled that he lacks the resolve to decisively crush domestic pushback. The next group to use the war to rearrange power in the Kremlin can get to work, their target has far less political and military clout now."
https://pieterdorsman.substack.com/p/what-happened-in-russia-just-now
13. “Don’t take your eye off Ukraine,” Polymeropoulos advises. “I mean, this is a massive opportunity for the Ukrainians…In Russian military units, morale is gonna be in the toilet… They're gonna be focused on what's happening back home” instead of what’s in front of them, he thinks.
As for Washington, “there's nothing really we can do other than Ukraine,” Polymeropoulos added. “Now's the time to help the Ukrainians kill more Russians. You gotta have the Ukrainian boot on Russia's neck and fucking press it down.”
Where Putin’s boot lands—that’s the next plot twist in this very unpredictable story."
https://www.spytalk.co/p/russia-coup-pop-goes-the-weasel
14. "Mediocre man is one who learns to trust the journey because he is fully aware that one cannot quite know what will result from any specific effort. Society tells him he is lazy and that he is a fool and that he should have goals, big goals! But he has stumbled upon a secret: mediocre effort beats extreme effort for most people, most of the time."
This is the secret of mediocre man: liking what you do. For years, I have had a mantra, write most days. I probably write four or five days a week on average but sometimes zero days per week. To the person living in the world of grind, this would be terrifying. How do you measure, track, and keep yourself accountable? Don’t you have goals? But my method has worked. How? By liking what you do, you will inevitably form a positive relationship with your work and want to do more of it. Then the only challenge is creating space in your life to let it happen."
https://boundless.substack.com/p/the-way-of-mediocre-man-228
15. Don't agree with their political views but do like their life values in general. These are good role models for young men.
Great case for Dubai as a major center for business as well. Marbella sounds interesting too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwmJhDpwHSE
16. "First, I think events this weekend have just underscored how bad the war in Ukraine is going for Russia.
It's been a disaster on all counts: military, human, economic, diplomatic/prestige and political.
As I have long argued, Russia has no path to victory in Ukraine, the longer it goes on the worse it gets for Russia. Indeed, the longer it goes on, with all the negative consequences, the more the risk of backdraft to Russia itself and risks of political upheaval at home in Russia. This is what we saw this weekend.
Second, Putin might have survived - just about. But he is now fatally weakened. His credibility is at a low point."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/putin-is-vulnerable
17. "Prigozhin stopped at the Rubicon and then slithered away—Julius Caesar as rendered by Monty Python. No telling where this is going now.
Whatever, Russia’s disarray is Ukraine’s gain. I’d be surprised if Western intelligence agencies aren’t already reaping an espionage windfall from the chaos, with Kremlin rats pelting Western spies with offers of secrets in exchange for safe passage out of the madness. It’s no time for either side to be timid."
https://www.spytalk.co/p/a-spy-windfall-looms-from-russian
18. "People feel like if they go to broad, rather than niche, they will dilute themselves to the point of not making any money.
I called bullshit on this early.
Every single big YouTuber, podcaster, or other pseudo-celebrity is broad. Go look at Iman Ghadzi or Hamza.
They focus on beginner-level education on top-of-funnel social media.
They focus on intermediate to advanced in their low-ticket to high-ticket products and services.
They are somewhat holistic in the things they talk about. They understand that business or self-improvement demands that health and lifestyle be talked about.
They are far ahead of the curve because they understand human nature.
Think of it like this:
Most brands are a building within a community in the world of social media.
I want my brand to be a community in the world of social media. My newsletters, lead magnets, and products are the buildings, or digital real estate.
But, you clearly have to establish a building first, then expand."
https://thedankoe.com/letters/niche-down-is-terrible-advice-for-smart-people/
19. Good rundown of Dalio's Changing Global World Order in cartoon form. It’s really good for those who want to understand geopolitics and cycles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xguam0TKMw8
20. Soft landing in the USA? Good case for it here for all fellow global macro investors.
https://twitter.com/chamath/status/1673223002966708225
21. Very well thought thru thread on the present US dollar dominated monetary system.
https://twitter.com/peruvian_bull/status/1673418225672163329
22. I learned this later in my career.
"Main Issues: The main problems with a W-2:
1) you do not work for yourself, you are being watched by layers of management causing limited autonomy,
2) you *don’t* get paid what you are worth since everyone above you needs to generate a profit. The Company goes out of business if they hire a bunch of unprofitable employees and
3) if you ever get moved into a non-revenue generating part of the firm you’re crushed in terms of upward mobility. Income barely keeps up with inflation in a huge number of industries.
Now before moving on, remember that a W-2 is not safer. You can be cut at any time. Taking zero risk just ensures you live a boring life of coffee, avoiding HR and laughing at awful jokes that are not funny made by upper management."
"Anyone smart knows that distribution is a billion times harder than making the perfect product.
The perfect product doesn’t sell anything if no one hears about it. It would be similar to having a $10M diamond buried 100 feet below your house. Just because it exists doesn’t mean it has value. You have to find it to monetize value.
Benefits of Online Income: 1) you work alone for the most part, 2) you have limited operating expenses - limited overhead, 3) you can move the income anywhere and 4) no face to face human interaction - alright that last one is just a benefit for anti-social autists like us.
Main Issues: 1) it requires actual work. If you are in a non-revenue generating role like investment banking analyst/associate this will be a massive wake up call. No sales = no money. Period, 2) you see no results at the beginning - some rockstars pop in the first year but generally speaking when you get to year 3 you have line of sight to winning."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/when-5000-isnt-the-same-as-5000-and
23. This is an important discussion on Defense-tech and one of the most important founders and companies around: Palmer and Anduril.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6kxxtoxeGc
24. Always learning new things in our business.
This was a good interview re: the state of venture capital at the moment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZVeRQkxCdc
25. Sober assessment of the Ukrainian counter offensive so far. Still early days is the point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pt3sQ_CN69s
26. SO many nuggets of wisdom here on self improvement.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6XGoSsFxJg
27. "In his analysis, the combination of India’s deep-rooted caste system that was an enemy of meritocracy, its massive bureaucracy, and its elites’ unwillingness to address the competing claims of its multiple ethnic and religious groups led him to conclude that it would never be more than “the country of the future”—with that future never arriving. Thus, when I asked him a decade ago specifically whether India could become the next China, he answered directly: “Do not talk about India and China in the same breath.”
Since Lee offered this judgment, India has embarked on an ambitious infrastructure and development agenda under a new leader and demonstrated that it can achieve considerable economic growth. Yet while we can remain hopeful that this time could be different, I, for one, suspect Lee wouldn’t bet on it."
28. A balanced view & assessment of Ukraine's counter offensive from a former US soldier.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWhgcOYsMLw
29. "The basic argument that the FTC is making is that Microsoft is buying Activision so it can take popular games, most notably Call of Duty, away from its rivals. In doing so, it will be able to monopolize a series of gaming markets by forcing users to play on Microsoft platforms. Most gamers think this means that Microsoft wants to privilege its own Xbox consoe over Sony’s Playstation, and make it so that you have to buy an Xbox to play Xbox-exclusive games.
This move, to deny a key input to a rival, is known as foreclosure. And it’s part of the claim from the FTC. But this case isn’t just about Sony and console markets, it’s about the future, and in particular what video gaming will look like in a few years, when the technology for gaming is radically different. To understand that requires looking at a different industry that went through a similar transition: Hollywood.
The transition to streaming is not a technology story, it’s a political and legal one. Everyone knew movies and TV would be delivered over the internet, the question was always what the market structure would look like. Streaming is just another way to distribute content, similar to TV networks and movie theaters.
Traditionally the distributors in Hollywood have been powerful, but stayed mostly out of the content game, buying their content from content makers. With streaming, would Hollywood remain an industry with lots of independent producers who sold to distributors? Or would the distributors demand to own everything themselves?
The answer, as it turns out, was the latter. Hollywood vertically integrated, with streamers both making and distributing their own content. For a time it looks competitive, because there are a multiple streamers, but it’s a group of giants fighting with each other, instead of a vibrant set of content creators selling into an open market."
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/will-the-biggest-tech-merger-of-all
30. This was a fun episode of NIA.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqxhqy-NAUg
31. "We talk a lot about product-market fit, but founder-market fit is arguably more important to investors in the early stages of a company.
As a VC, I want to understand why you chose this particular problem. Of all the things that you could devote your life to, what started you down a path that will potentially lead to you spending the next 7-10 years (or more) on this?
Ultimately, VCs are looking for a passion that goes beyond just numbers. Far too many founders I meet have thoughtful business plans and product roadmaps, but can’t articulate in a convincing way why they’re doing this instead of any number of other things (beyond money). As a former founder, I know how hard things get and how lonely and exhausting the CEO journey is.
I need to have conviction that 5 years down the road, when things get tough, early employees (and potentially cofounders) move on and the level of competition has you feeling like you’re like a back alley knife fight, you’re still going to push ahead because this problem matters so much to you."
https://chrisneumann.com/blog/its-not-just-what-you-say-its-how-you-say-it
32. "This stunning revelation of Russian weakness calls into question not just Moscow’s status as a great power but also the very concept of a great power. Even realists who frequently use the term have never provided a clear and convincing definition of what makes a power great. Rather, they tend to use the term to describe everything from true superpowers such as the United States and China, which wield the full spectrum of economic, technological, and military might, to better-than-average military powers such as Russia, which have nuclear weapons but little else that would be considered indicators of great power.
Such imprecision not only distorts analysis of state power and its use in war but can also make countries seem more militarily threatening than they really are. For these reasons, analysts should stop asking what makes a country a great power and start asking what makes it a “full spectrum” power. Doing so would have helped avoid overestimating Russia’s might before February 2022—and will help avoid exaggerating the threat posed by China, going forward.
More useful than the concept of a great power is that of a full-spectrum power, which takes into account the diverse factors that create military might, not just its outward manifestation in weapons. Few countries have ever achieved all the fundamentals on which superior military power is built and sustained; most that have been described as great powers were in fact midranking Potemkin states whose militaries served as façades for otherwise weak power bases. This was true of Benito Mussolini’s Italy, and it is true of Putin’s Russia.
In the last 150 years, there have been only a handful full-spectrum powers. One is obviously the United States, which became the largest economy in the world sometime in the 1890s and had few security concerns compared with most countries. The United Kingdom was certainly a full-spectrum power from the late nineteenth century until 1943, when it had to subordinate its preferred grand strategy to accommodate U.S. interests.
What made them full-spectrum powers, however, was not only their military might but also the economic and technological prowess that enabled their armed forces. Military power is to a large degree based on the ability to make the best, most advanced military equipment, from small arms to highly complex aircraft and naval vessels. This ability cannot be faked, and it must have the capacity to scale up quickly when the need arises. A military is only powerful if it can be equipped—and then re-equipped."
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/theres-no-such-thing-great-power
33. Loved this conversation. Maniacs on a mission. This is the future. Only the most committed people will win. David Senra is intense and I love it!
Be Like Water (Again & Always): The Power of Consistency and Acceptance
I was very affected by “Limitless” episode 6 when Chris Hemsworth spends time in an imaginary old folks home and gets to experience what aging is like. He talks to many older people and learns from them. He learns about the process of aging and also loss of health and loved ones. It was a tough episode to get through for me. Very heavy but invaluable.
Imposing your will on reality and the world. It’s what I’ve trained myself to do. Sometimes it’s a good first try for everything. It’s a good attitude to have as you have control or the sense of control. But eventually you have to accept the fragility of your life and world. You will age & you will lose things. So you need to also learn how to accept things.
As the palliative care doctor BJ Miller explains: “Even as our body is maybe weakening, it’s opening up something else. And this maybe is part of us getting smaller, There is this room for us to get bigger in some other way. That’s when humans really shine when we come up against the limit. It’s a gift in a way.”
Chris’s friend Gary goes on to say: “It’s a kind of revelation that once you learn to accept things for what it is, you actually find something even deeper and more valuable.”
Acceptance is revelation. It’s about giving yourself time and space to have and face difficult feelings. The analogy is of water. We should be more like water in our life. Consistent, flexible and persistent.
“Water:
Can cut through hard rocks because of its patience and persistence
Creates a new path over time to get where it needs to go
Is soft but one of the most powerful and destructive forces
Now, when life throws obstacles in your way, be like water and either cut through them or form a new path that will lead you to your goals and dreams.” (Source: https://everydaypower.com/water-quotes)
Wise men from olden times have known this and spoke of this. Lucretius of ancient Rome spoke that “The fall of dropping water wears away the stone.” Lao Tzu of ancient China said “Nothing is softer or more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist it.”
Yet it works the other way too. Against you. These wise men knew that reality, time, and death is inevitable; you can’t resist and just have to face it. Dealing with aging and death. It’s hard to think about. Maybe that is why it’s important to be present in our day to day life. It’s important to have a code and philosophy of life. Living well and appreciating the life you have now.
The death doulla in the show said it so beautifully “In that life really does hang on a single breath. It’s there one minute and then it’s gone the next. And when its gone, it reminds me that I still have the capacity to breathe, and to live, and to be engaged, and to love, and to laugh, and to be joyful, and to wear color, and to hug, and you know, dance, and to live. To Live.”
Something for us to ponder. Your time alive on this earth is so very precious, so do use it well. It is a well worn cliche but “Life is a gift so live everyday to the fullest.”
Lessons from “Limitless”: Biohacking for Longevity
For those who have known me for a while, I’ve been a dedicated biohacker since 2013. I travel a lot for work so I need to keep on top of my health. Plus I really, really enjoy my life and lifestyle, so one should find ways to extend it any way you can, right? Health is the ultimate wealth as I’ve written before.
So I spend a lot of time and money trying to find the health and cognitive edge from the latest scientific research or tips or tricks shared by Tim Ferriss, Kevin Rose, Andrew Huberman or David Asprey among others. I’ve gone to various biohacking conferences. I’ve read all the books like ones from David Sinclair, Valter Longo, Dan Buettner, Sergey Young, Dr. Peter Attia, Aubrey de Grey and Nir Barzilai, among others. I take lots of various cognitive enhancers like cordyceps and Reveratol and NAD+.
So of course, I was eager to watch the new Limitless series on Disney+ starring Chris Hemsworth, as he travels the world consulting experts in his journey on how to live longer, happier and healthier. He is on the pursuit of extending both lifespan (ie. how long you live) and healthspan (the health and quality of how you live).
I figured I’d share some of the learnings here and thankfully many of these are fairly well known in the biohacking community:
Regular Physical Exercise:
–You need to get your blood flowing which helps your brain and thinking too. Something I rely on a lot as an investor and aspiring creator.
–Muscles and muscle mass are important but they start to deteriorate as you get older. And being somewhat vain, I want to look good and be in good shape so I can fight decently if needed. There are over 600 muscles in the human body and you have to use as many of them as possible for longevity purposes.
–Some endurance exercises like cycling, rowing and running will help with mitochondrial growth, which are key to longevity and health. Research studies show that just 2 hours of this endurance exercise a week can add years to your life. One of the reasons is that it also boosts your immune system to work better for longer.
A regular gym regime is important & i do some basic exercises every single day. You need to stress your body to force it to adapt and evolve. That is why our present sedentary lifestyle is so dangerous to our health. Peter Attia said: “We don’t stop moving because we get old. We get old because we stop moving.”
2. Mental Exercises:
–You need to do novel and challenging mental exercises to stimulate the hippocampus part of our brain. The more we stimulate this area, the more we can resist the cognitive losses that come with age. In the show, Chris is given the very challenging & complex exercise of navigating himself out of the wilderness without GPS or phone.
3. Spending more Time in Nature:
–Humans have long existed in Nature. And unlike in urban settings where the noise and light really cause distraction and massive cognitive load on our brains, we are far more attuned to sights and sounds of nature. Thus it is more relaxing for us. The Japanese even have a term called “Forest Bathing”: “It is proven to reduce stress hormone production, improve feelings of happiness and free up creativity, as well as lower heart rate and blood pressure, boost the immune system and accelerate recovery from illness.”
(Source: https://www.forestholidays.co.uk/things-to-do/forest-bathing/benefits)
Just 20 minutes of strolling in a park without checking your phone has been shown to significantly reduce levels of stress hormone cortisol.
4. Sleeping:
–Getting good sleep is key to human health. Sleep cleans your brain through the glymphatic process. There are some steps you can take to help improve the quality of your sleep like: Sleeping at regular time, relaxing and not looking at blue screen ie. no devices or phones. Taking ZMA (Zinc Magnesium compound). Taking a hot shower and keeping your room temperature around 66 degrees. These are some of the things I do that help. Thankfully I’ve always had pretty good sleep. In fact, I always loved sleeping so it was not a big problem for me. :)
5. Extreme temperatures as Humans thrive in adversity (well some do): Both extreme Cold and Heat.
–Cold helps reset your immune system, fights inflammation. This is why I do cold showers and why others go further and do ice baths. Cold scrambles the pain receptors before it hits the brain and just makes you tougher & stronger. It also has been shown to improve your immune system so you get sick less. I hate cold showers but I have noticed it does help me definitely wake up when I need to ie. mental clarity. There is also a reason that cold water treatments were used in asylums to help those who were depressed. You just feel so much better after coming out of extreme cold water.
–On the extreme heat side, Sauna, Banya or Onsen is also very good for you. Heat shock proteins clean up your body, reducing your odds of cardiovascular and Alzheimer's disease. It’s harder for me to do regularly when I am here in SF but it was something I did a lot when I traveled to other parts of the world and especially when I was spending lots of time in Japan, Kyiv, Finland, the Baltics, Turkey or Georgia. I love Sauna.
6. Diet:
–You are what you eat as they say. Sugar is poison and sadly I love candy, desserts and pastries. But I try to eat these in moderation. Life should be somewhat enjoyable, I’m not a monk :) I think meat and fish is a great source of protein and is important for building and keeping muscle mass. I love eating meat and fish. But I try to counterbalance that with plenty of vegetables and fruits. Thankfully I love green vegetables and fruits. I’m also very lucky that I have resources that allow me to afford organic and better quality foods and ingredients.
7. Supplements:
–Unfortunately much of the modern food today is not as nutritious as it was in the past. So many of us tend to lack important things in our body like vitamin D or magnesium or zinc. So this is where supplements come into play. I also take things like creatine, L-theanine, or drink green tea or yerba Mate for focus. Red ginseng for energy. I also take Lithium Orotate 5 for mood management.
8. Fasting:
–Your body needs time to rest, recover and reset. They recommend doing a 4 day fast with water only and no food which helps reboot your body. For us mere mortals, doing intermittent fasting can be just as good. I tend to do a minimum 13 hour to 16 hour fast every day. Eating only in an 8 hour period. It makes sense, our present time of being around unlimited food and abundant food is a very recent thing and with very unhealthy results like widespread obesity and diabetes. I also do a 24-48 hour fast once a month.
Fasting cuts off glucose to destructive zombie cells that lead to aging among other negative effects. So this is key to life longevity as your healthy cells get healthier. Also an added benefit of fasting as it generates ketones which gives you energy as well as mental acuity and sharpness. Everything seems so much clearer to me during fasting.
9. Meditation, Breathing & Mental Health:
–Learning to breathe helps to calm you down. The technique emergency responders use is “Box breathing”: Inhale for 4 seconds, hold for 4 seconds, exhale for 4 seconds, hold for 4 seconds. Do it a few times and it does calm you, it’s a way for your body to signal to the brain to chill out and short circuit fight or flight. I need it when I run into situations that drive me to rage.
–I also started mindful meditation almost 7 years ago, now doing 20 minutes in the morning, 20 minutes before I go to bed. It’s been a critical tool for me personally. The research shows it reduces stress and increases focus, memory and concentration.
–I’m also really glad I invested in a therapist (thanks to https://www.joinreflect.com) who has helped me identify & face some of my demons. She has also given me tools to cope with life’s inevitable challenges over the last few years. Many of these are self- inflicted I might add. Mental health has been overlooked for too long in our society but glad this is changing.
10. Having great family and friend relationships:
–We are social animals so being with other people, especially our loved ones, is so critical. The people around us give us new ideas, see new things and they encourage us. The feeling of family and community, like you are part of something, having a sense of belonging, helps. It is that knowing you aren’t alone out there. In the show they say: when we are isolated, the risk of dementia increases 50%. Yes, 50%!
11. Have an Optimistic Attitude & do Positive Self Talk:
–How do you reframe bad situations? Growing up in Canada & in an Taiwanese-immigrant household to boot, every interpretation is negative. It is incredibly harmful and I’ve spent a lifetime trying to reprogram myself. It’s not about ignoring reality and thinking everything is rainbows and unicorns. But positive self talk helps us control our fight or flight circuits. You have to truly believe. Thinking positively helps you open up flows of blood to your muscles so you can power through the stress and challenge. You have to make stress your friend & manage it like a tool.
Repeating personal mantras also helps. I tell myself that “Whatever happens, I will handle it.” It’s about reprogramming your scripts. Chris Hemsworh says it best: “The story you tell yourself becomes your reality. It really is mind over matter.”
12. Having a Big and Clear Mission in Life:
–As Nietzche wrote:“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” For me, it’s this bigger picture that allows you to push through the painful moments and challenges in life. It’s motivating to have something bigger than yourself to think of. My family, my friends, my startup founders and my business partners who depend on me. I’m not going to let them down if I can avoid it.
These are just some of the main lessons from the show. Biohacking and some of the tactics/ techniques learned from “Limitless” are very powerful tools for improving your health, your performance and your life. So why not try some of these? You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads July 2nd, 2023
“There is virtue in work and there is virtue in rest. Use both and overlook neither.” — Alan Cohen
Love this.
"Minchilli first moved to Italy from the States after meeting her Italian-born husband, Domenico, and has been writing about her life there for 30 years now. She joins a TikTok community of older expats who are turning the trope of “travel influencer” on its head—that is, the image of a 20-something globetrotter checking off a bucket list in pristinely manicured style.
Instead of showcasing sweeping views of Positano, for example, Minchilli might be more inclined to show us how she makes an afternoon espresso in her tiny Moka pot.
Through her platform, the charming expat prefers to inspire travelers to seek out smaller towns and become acquainted with their neighborhoods."
https://www.thrillist.com/travel/nation/slow-travel-tiktok-expats
2. "My plan is to do what feels right and aligned with my own values and continue to build high-trust teams with a strong people focus. If at some point the tech industry spits me out, I’ll at least know I did what I felt was right.
To end on slightly more optimistic note, the other thing about pendulums is that they become less extreme the more they swing. Despite many shifts that feel like progress has been lost, I know that remote work is here to stay in a way that was unfathomable 5 years ago, and the many remote-only candidates have far more companies to choose from. People have moved away from city centers or into nearby suburbs and have gotten a taste of WFH flexibility and productivity.
This new generation of remote-savvy people-centric leaders will rise, displace others, and influence the norms. The industry can feel like it takes on a life of its own, but we are all part of it and can influence it too."
https://jeanhsu.substack.com/p/saddened-by-the-tech-industry
3. "Well, after signing up for it 6+ months ago, my weekly usage of it is for brainstorming.
Need a new product name? ChatGPT.
Need some ideas for a new blog post? ChatGPT.
Need insight for a new market? ChatGPT.
Need a starting point for a new initiative? ChatGPT.
Lack of effort to start brainstorming no longer exists. Let ChatGPT do it for you."
https://davidcummings.org/2023/06/17/chatgpt-for-brainstorming/
4. So fascinating. The 22nd Century will be the age of Biotech. Quick overview of anti-aging science.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLZEEOZlTzo
5. "For Ukrainians, the task ahead will be arduous. Beyond the inherent difficulties of offensive warfare, as Russia discovered when it marched toward Kyiv last year, is Ukraine’s lack of airpower. “What is a major concern is that this the first major international military operation of this scale that has been done without much air support,” says Vald Mykhnenko, a professor of geography and political economy at Oxford University, who is also from Ukraine. “We are stepping into unknown territory as far as military strategy is concerned.”
Still, analysts tell TIME that even in the best case scenario for Ukraine, the country would be unlikely to recapture all of its territories in this counteroffensive attack.
“The pressure and the expectation levels on the Ukrainian troops is so high,” Mykhnenko says. “I just hope we slightly ease up on those expectations and not demand that they retake Mariupol one week and then Crimea the next. People should understand that this is going to take months and months, not a week or two.”
https://time.com/6287830/ukraine-counteroffensive-slow-progress/
6. "For the reasons outlined above, the US economy will probably keep doing what it has done since becoming the world's largest economy in 1890s. Case in point, in 2021, 5.4m new businesses were started in the US, an increase of 53% compared to the pre-pandemic year 2019. Whatever political divisiveness there may be, it certainly doesn't stop Americans from doing what made America great in the first place – setting up businesses, and working hard to make them a success. Thanks to its unique set of circumstances and features, the US should continue to outperform most other major economies of the world.
The Internet has recently been flooded with content of a de-dollarisation of the world economy. Combined with the subject comes the usual plethora of reporting about the end of the US as a superpower, its coming bankruptcy on the back of spiralling debt, and similar predictions.
It reached a point where I asked myself: "Is being short the US dollar such a widely held view that it's worth heading the other way?"
If you have been around for a bit, you'll understand why despite all the well-deserved criticism and the need to be vigilant about a potential change to long-term trends, it's also worth spending a bit more time looking at the counter-arguments.
"A Brief History of Dollar Hatred" is an article worth reading in this regard. Its author Jens Nordvig, one of the world's leading currency experts and a friend of mine whose writings I have long recommended, gives his perspective on the waves of dollar hatred he experienced over the past 20 years, and how he sees things continuing right now. A native Dane, Jens now lives in the US where he has built an amazingly successful business – so he has quite a broad perspective on things.
Ceteris paribus, there are MANY good reasons why the US stock market should continue to trade at a premium to every other stock market in the world.
In fact, if I was in my 20s, I'd probably try to pack up and move to the US. Ignore the noise, and focus on the large set of opportunities there. Given the US is a collection of 50 states that compete with each other, rather than a unitary state, you have many different places to pick from. Don't like woke policies? Florida is waiting for you! Millions have been moving there of late – literally, millions.
Mobility is part of the American culture and enabled by a unified market that EU citizens can only dream about."
https://www.undervalued-shares.com/weekly-dispatches/usa-the-unstoppable-juggernaut/
7. Actually, I'm cautiously optimistic on Turkey in the short run. Definitely bullish on them in the long run as they are well positioned for the future assuming they get a less crazy economic policy in place.
8. Looks like a cool place to visit in the summer. Austrian Tirol mountain retreats.
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2023/jun/18/cool-retreats-in-the-austrian-tirol
9. "America must be understood as a system of interwoven systems; the healthcare system sends a bill to a patient using the postal system, and that patient uses the mobile phone system to pay the bill with a credit card issued by the banking system. All these systems must be assumed to work for anyone to make even simple decisions. But the failure of one system has cascading consequences for all of the adjacent systems. As a consequence of escalating rates of failure, America’s complex systems are slowly collapsing.
The core issue is that changing political mores have established the systematic promotion of the unqualified and sidelining of the competent. This has continually weakened our society’s ability to manage modern systems. At its inception, it represented a break from the trend of the 1920s to the 1960s, when the direct meritocratic evaluation of competence became the norm across vast swaths of American society.
In the first decades of the twentieth century, the idea that individuals should be systematically evaluated and selected based on their ability rather than wealth, class, or political connections, led to significant changes in selection techniques at all levels of American society.
Spurred on by the demands of two world wars, this system of institutional management electrified the Tennessee Valley, created the first atom bomb, invented the transistor, and put a man on the moon.
By the 1960s, the systematic selection for competence came into direct conflict with the political imperatives of the civil rights movement. During the period from 1961 to 1972, a series of Supreme Court rulings, executive orders, and laws—most critically, the Civil Rights Act of 1964—put meritocracy and the new political imperative of protected-group diversity on a collision course.
Administrative law judges have accepted statistically observable disparities in outcomes between groups as prima facie evidence of illegal discrimination. The result has been clear: any time meritocracy and diversity come into direct conflict, diversity must take priority.
The resulting norms have steadily eroded institutional competency, causing America’s complex systems to fail with increasing regularity. In the language of a systems theorist, by decreasing the competency of the actors within the system, formerly stable systems have begun to experience normal accidents at a rate that is faster than the system can adapt. The prognosis is harsh but clear: either selection for competence will return or America will experience devolution to more primitive forms of civilization and loss of geopolitical power."
https://www.palladiummag.com/2023/06/01/complex-systems-wont-survive-the-competence-crisis/
10. This is an alternate view on SF, guess it is like a testing ground for living in the dystopian future.
"The city manifests the kind of breakdown and bursts of insanity that justify its reputation. What took me several years of living in different places across California and the broader U.S. to realize is that the same crisis is slowly engulfing the whole country. San Francisco is not different from the rest of America—it is merely upstream of it. Its contradictions and tensions are matured and therefore amplified.
What San Francisco offers to those who live here is not an escape from America’s dysfunction, but rather an opportunity to master it. For years, this city has been a testing ground for those who go on to govern America. Those who figure out a path forward for America overall will not come from the hinterlands or the suburbs. These are trapped in their own various social crises. They will come from here in San Francisco."
https://www.palladiummag.com/2023/06/13/why-i-live-in-san-francisco/
11. Little bit grim but shades of truth.
The reality is there are still lots of incredible opportunities for wealth but it’s in building & owning businesses, not being an employee. The middle class is dead.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJJBnmDkEwI&t=606s
12. Well an interesting macro trade here in Argentina. This time it's different?
"Let’s start with the obligatory note that we love Argentina; friendly people, beautiful countryside, great wine. We’ve been there a few times and are fans. More importantly, it’s always been stunningly cheap to visit. Doug Casey famously says that “Argentina is the cheapest civilized place on earth,” and we agree. Given the current (persistent) currency crisis, we assume that it’s even cheaper to visit today.
However, this isn’t a tourist guide. The listed securities are also cheap, unusually cheap, stunningly cheap. Why are they so cheap?? Well, that should be obvious, the country is bankrupt, the currency is effectively worthless, they owe money to every global acronym, and the economy is in shambles.
Fortunately, most of this is fixable. There’s Western infrastructure everywhere, the roads are paved, things actually (sorta) work. The problem is simple; for the past century, the Argentines have chosen insane people to run their country. That’s it. That’s the whole issue. The government is the problem. Fix the government and you fix the country.
So, the trade is easy to understand, Argentina lurches to the right economically, tries to fix the economy, and assets moon. Is it really that simple?? We think so. The only difference this time is that we’re starting from roughly half of the price level in terms of valuations."
13. "The other way to ensure Russia fails in its "don't lose" strategy is rapid, and continuous, military assistance.
Historical experience from the 20th century indicates that operations of the magnitude now being conducted by Ukraine take weeks to generate momentum. The scale of fighting now underway in Ukraine is beyond the experience, or even imagination, of most of our citizens. Casualties will be heavy, the consumption of ammunition massive and loss of equipment will be ongoing.
But the Ukrainians, as they have throughout this war, trudge on. Their army is grimly working its way through Russian defences and defending the skies from a Russian missile and drone onslaught.
The West should consider sending Ukraine everything needed to defeat the Russians as quickly as possible."
14. "While raising more capital might seem like the smart thing to do if you can do it, it can heavily reduce the optionality for your business going forward. It also can promote the wrong behavior internally.
Companies are now shutting down each day that have raised Series As, Bs, and beyond as the amount of capital they have raised and their valuation is not aligned with the traction of the business."
https://trailruncapital.substack.com/p/why-your-valuation-matters
15. Always controversial but I always learn alot from Chamath and I will rewatch this a few times. Some great insights on investing well in life and business.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPWfOc1gIro
16. "Stop letting strangers on the internet dictate your entire personality and belief systems.
The systematic outsourcing of our beliefs to the “influencer” class is one of a growing number of major reasons why so many people are mentally ill and unhappy these days.
Attempting to emulate the lives of others instead of finding your own path and beliefs is the quickest way to unhappiness. It’s also the quickest way to living a life without freedom."
https://www.thesovereignindividualweekly.com/p/dont-outsource-beliefs-influencers
17. "The first thing to understand is that demand for large commercial real estate buildings, such as office towers in big cities, has been rapidly declining as work from home trends turn into the market standard. According to a recent National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper, attendance in the 10 largest business districts in the US is still below 50% of its pre-COVID level, as white-collar employees spend an estimated 28% of their workdays at home."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/the-impending-collapse-of-commercial
18. "Digital nomadism isn't solely a post-pandemic way of life, but over the past few years, people based in existing digital nomad hotspots are reporting a boom in the number of newcomers pouring in. Some are taking advantage of more flexible remote working policies introduced due to COVID. Others are indulging in "revenge travel," in which they compensate for several years of no vacations.
Almost universally, a major motivating factor among US nomads seems to be geoarbitrage – earning money in a strong currency and then living in a country where the local currency is weaker and the cost of living lower.
For Americans, especially those working high-income jobs in tech, this can make nomadism a highly profitable life choice. But with the cost of living and housing crises impacting more and more people, digital nomadism can seem like a financially responsible and freeing option even for Americans not earning vast tech salaries.
"When people ask if digital nomadism is good or bad, it's both," says Busittil. "It gives stuff and it takes stuff away, like any social phenomenon."
So if you dream of more than just labor, if you pine to make hay while the sun shines in a tropical co-working space with an iced matcha latte, know that you can do it ethically if you choose. Just follow the advice of those who are already living it, and avoid dragging those around you into your happy hour Zoom."
19. "For the sake of simplicity, I will analyze likely developments in zones around the three main currency areas: the US dollar and its satellites; the euro and its satellites; the Chinese renminbi and its satellites.
I will deploy my trusty Wicksellian tools to express these views, even though the findings will be more intuitively logical than deeply researched.
1) In the renminbi zone, the market rate of interest is going to fall and the natural rate is going to rise.
2) In the US zone, the market rate is going to rise, while the natural rate could go one of two ways: (i) stay stable if the US remains the chief repository of “Schumpeterian” growth, or (ii) fall, if this is not the case.
3) In the European zone, the market rate will rise and the natural rate will fall. It will become impossible to finance the usual social transfers.
As this vendor financing is withdrawn by foreign producers, US consumption will fall to a level dictated by domestically-earned funds. The natural rate will rise in those sectors that now face less foreign competition (reindustrialization in the US should begin, as firms start to raise their prices), but the natural rate will decline in the protected sectors, as demand for these items craters.
A special case should be made for “Schumpeterian sectors” in the US, which earn a very high natural rate of interest. If the US succeeds in dominating artificial intelligence and nuclear fusion as it has dominated the technology sectors for the last 50 years, then a decline in the US standard of living could perhaps be avoided.
In a world comprising three currency zones, each area will likely have free trade arrangements, with heavy protection between zones. The collapse of the unipolar US dollar implies the end of free capital flows between zones, with capital made unavailable to investors outside of the zones."
https://haymaker.substack.com/p/making-hay-monday-guest-article
20. "Becoming dependent on China for any crucial piece of the civilian or military supply chain not only allows the CCP to massively increase its leverage over Western governments, but also puts Western militaries directly at risk in the case of a war. For example, U.S. defense manufacturer Raytheon recently revealed that it’s dependent on China for a number of critical components. If a war breaks out, the CCP can starve the U.S. military of its production capacity, much as the U.S. and Europe have been attempting to do to Russia.
Many of these risks were fully present back in 2015, but Western governments and companies either didn’t realize the extent of the risk, or chose to ignore it. Those days are now done; everyone is being forced to wake up and acknowledge that any type of economic entanglement with China necessarily involves giving the CCP party-state some degree of leverage over you. Whether or not “de-risking” is the same as “decoupling”, the former is certainly a big driver of the latter.
A little over a century ago, Norman Angell famously predicted that economic ties would make great-power war a thing of the past. And he was famously wrong about that. But perhaps not entirely wrong; economic relationships do seem to reduce the likelihood of conflict to some degree, even if they don’t always prevent it. This may be the key to the world of 2015 — everyone knew China was spying on them and taking their technology and subverting their institutions, but China’s huge and fast-growing market opportunity and productive capacity stopped them from doing anything to upset the apple cart.
Now that the opportunity China represents has grown much smaller and the risks larger and more apparent, that fundamental countervailing force against international conflict has largely evaporated.
In other words, no matter what Biden and his officials are saying about a “thaw” in relations with China, the conditions now exist for tensions to flare up again and again. The world of 2015 isn’t coming back."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/four-reasons-china-cant-reset-the
21. "Remarkably, both countries lack what they most need and want. Unlike America and parts of Europe, China and Russia do not inspire people. With a few exceptions (like TikTok), the developed world neither imitates nor worships contemporary Chinese or Russian culture, celebrities, social and other media, music, cinema, universities or politics, and rarely adopts their products, brands, and forms of entertainment and leisure.
The East still copies the Western standard, not vice versa. China makes Western products, and Russia supplies the West with energy to produce and consume them, not the other way around. And their citizens, especially the wealthy and the educated, vote with their feet by emigrating to the West. Very few move in the opposite direction.
As American economist and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers cynically surmised when asked whether another currency might soon threaten the U.S. dollar’s global dominance: how could that happen when Europe is a museum, Japan is a nursing home, and China is a jail? In this sense, Russia is economically far too weak to even be considered a serious contender by that observer.
Yet it is the West, with its tendency for self-flagellation and culture wars, that has become insecure in its role and ceased to appreciate the values that made its historic dominance possible."
https://www.gisreportsonline.com/r/west-globalization-china/
22. "The new twist on this concept is the emergence of networked tribes. With networked tribes, the threat is both largely invisible (most people won’t recognize it is happening) and far more aggressive;
-Quickly mobilize a new primary loyalty to a national/global scale or take action.
-Fight asymmetrically (the target has no natural defenses against attacks)
-Take over status quo competitors (governments, corporations, etc.) by forcing them into alignment and block competitive networked tribes from doing the same."
https://johnrobb.substack.com/p/alignment
23. "Economic life today would be a completely different reality… if the US economy had only grown more quickly.
It’s not like an additional 1.3% growth isn’t achievable; again, the US consistently hit this number for decades.
You’d think that politicians would understand something so obvious, and that they’d do everything in their power to maximize growth. They’d embrace capitalism, cut red tape, create incentives for production, support small businesses, make taxes more efficient, etc.
Or at a minimum, they’d simply stay out of the way.
But instead, they do the opposite. They paid people to stay home and not work.
They single out critical sectors (like energy companies) and punish them. They constantly threaten businesses, invent new regulatory burdens, stifle innovation, and attempt to systematically destroy capitalism, brick-by-brick.
So, no, based on current trajectory, it looks like the debt problem will keep getting worse… until the catastrophes of default are unavoidable.
The federal government has already acknowledged that Social Security’s trust funds will run out of money in about 10 years. This means that, at best, America has less than a decade to turn itself around."
https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/america-has-less-than-a-decade-to-turn-itself-around-147721/
24. "We are now living in a world in which it is relatively easy to create new viruses. There will be another pandemic. It could easily be worse than Covid, and right now, for our “expert” class’s total refusal to own their mistakes, or entertain the thoughts and concerns of the public, half the country is primed to believe all vaccines are dangerous, while the other half is primed to believe skeptics should be jabbed, silenced, and jailed.
There was a brief moment at the beginning of the Covid pandemic where we all took a breath and tried to understand, together, what was going on. That kind of cooperation is presently impossible. Another pandemic will destroy this country.
Debates are stupid, and no scientist should be expected to defend himself on Rogan. But the canonization of our experts is existentially dangerous. Assuming public health is earnestly our priority, it’s worth noting humility is the only thing capable of easing back the public’s rage.
My suggestion for the “experts” is they attempt it, which is not a moral expectation, but a piece of good, tactical advice. You’re welcome. Now please be less evil."
https://www.piratewires.com/p/pirate-wires-rogans-debatable-tactics
25. "Fortunately, another Plan C is available: the West should make it possible for Ukraine to use frozen Russian assets which are now held in Western jurisdictions – $330 billion in Russian central bank assets and perhaps (who knows?) $70-100 billion more in yachts, villas and the bank accounts of oligarchs and sanctioned Russian companies. The CER has previously writtenabout the ways in which this could be done, and some of the obstacles.
From a moral perspective, Russia should clearly be held accountable for its own actions: why should Ukraine or Western taxpayers pay for the human and physical damage caused by Putin’s genocidal war? Russia is not a poor country.
Before the war its per capita GDP was more than two and a half times that of Ukraine, it has $600 billion in sovereign assets (including those frozen in the West), a low debt ratio (less than 20 per cent of GDP, so it could easily borrow to fund reparations to Ukraine if it were forced to do so as part of a peace deal – at which point it would probably be allowed back onto international capital markets) and $250 billion in annual energy export earnings.
But even if Ukraine succeeds in stopping Russia’s advance and pushes its troops back into Russia, the threat to Ukraine and the West will remain. Ukraine will need help to be economically strong enough to sustain its own defence – protecting its Western neighbours in the process. The project of enabling Ukraine to win the war and the peace is a strategic priority and a public good for the West.
Failure to fund Ukraine’s reconstruction would mean economic, social and political instability in a country with Europe’s largest army; the prospect of millions more Ukrainian migrants in Europe; and the need for Western governments to increase defence spending massively in the face of a newly confident and even more aggressive Russia. The West has no choice but to rebuild Ukraine, however it funds the work. But if Putin has to pay for it, so much the better."
https://www.cer.eu/insights/why-russia-must-pay-damage-ukraine
26. "Fast forward to now, and things are looking a bit different. We've shifted gears into an era of multi-entrepreneurship - a space where moonshots and single-mission startups are making way for more diverse portfolios.
We've become "multipreneurs," juggling several ventures, but it seems like no one's really broken down what that really means. So let's do it:
Mul·ti·pre·neur (noun)
A multipreneur is someone who creates multiple products per year, with the aim of creating a company that creates companies.
So let's not confuse these terms. Being a multipreneur is about building small, capable teams for each venture, fine-tuning your game as you progress. It's not about going it alone, it's about leading a pack.
Most importantly, AI, no-code and global talent allow you to be a multipreneur from anywhere in the world — giving you the freedom to work wherever you want, whenever you want, with whoever you want, faster than you ever thought possible."
https://latecheckout.substack.com/p/the-multipreneur-manifesto
27. This explains a lot of India's geo-political leanings in the world. Short sighted but smart. Self interested and no real allies. But is a big present and future power to be watching.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VnNtUd1MX4
28. One of the best cultural and social critics around.
"The solo climb, the Everest trek, the remote expedition — these are deadly, unnecessary risks. Why would anyone take them? Tabling the more obviously gruesome question of why we shouldn’t celebrate their deaths, why should we celebrate their accomplishments? Here, I think we often miss the point. When it comes to the recreational adventurer, it’s true, few of these narrow victories matter. But that doesn’t make them meaningless for all the risk that they demand. The risk, itself, is the point.
We celebrate the risk taken for glory, for wealth, for curiosity, because watching YouTube videos of the Titanic from the safety of our covers is not the thing that makes us great. The quality that drives so small a subset of the global population to extreme risk is the quality responsible for many, if not most of the most important things we have ever built or discovered. That’s what makes us great. We are nothing without risk."
https://www.piratewires.com/p/pirate-wires-subhuman
29. "There is no sanctuary in modern warfare: the proliferation of multi-domain sensors and long-range precision strike weapons make everyone and everything vulnerable. In Ukraine, both sides have learned to use dispersion and fortification to mitigate this risk by changing the cost versus gain calculus for the targeteer. But an attacker still has to leave his prepared positions to mass combat power if he is to stand a chance of exploiting through the enemy’s defensive positions.
The ability to locate an adversary across multiple domains and to remove him from play by multiple means, places primacy of combat operations back in the hands of the defense, in the same way that it did over a century ago at the beginning of the first world war.
The Ukrainians will have planned to use deception and ambiguity to mitigate the defender’s inherent advantage on this transparent battlefield. It is, perhaps, testament to their success that, three weeks into the offensive, military analysts around the world continue to speculate about it’s objectives."
https://amilburn.substack.com/p/the-offensive-is-still-in-its-early
30. "A Former U.S. Green Beret Fought In Iraq, Afghanistan, And Ukraine. He Says Ukraine Is His Generation's 'Most Righteous War.'
I'm sitting in Kyiv right now, and it's like being in New York City or Washington, D.C., or just a regular American city, you know. It's righteous because when Russia invaded, it felt like, August, September 1939, like if we don't stop this thing here, it could get way worse.
Because if you look at it in hindsight, if you look at the trajectory of what Russia has done since the fall of the Soviet Union, I mean, you have Transdniester (Moldovan pro-Moscow breakaway region), you have Chechnya, you have Georgia, you have 2014's Crimea and Donbas, the dawning of MH17 (the 2014 shooting down of a Malaysia Airlines flight over eastern Ukraine). You have all the polonium and Novichok poisonings, you have Czech ammo depots blowing up like they're out of control. I compare them to a rabid dog. If we don't -- if you look at that trajectory -- if we don't stop them here, the next stop on that trajectory is a NATO country."
31. "But the blatant contradiction between disarray at home and increased power abroad has a simple explanation: the greater part of American power does not derive from what the US itself, let alone individual presidents, are able to do, but from the cooperation and support it receives from friendly countries around the world. US power depends on the magnitude and the cohesion of its alliances — and the latter can change very quickly.
But the war in Ukraine is far from the only boost. In fact, now that Russia is declining in several ways, what has added to global American power is the emergence of a vast, if informal, Indo-Pacific de facto alliance to contain China.
Neither Biden’s gaffes nor Trump’s tantrums can change the realities created by Putin and Xi’s bellicosity; America’s European and Asian alliances have rarely been so empowered. Indeed, the only consequence of America’s disarray at home is that the US cannot start wars to pursue fanciful aims, such as bringing democracy to Iraq or progress to Afghanistan. And that is just as well."
https://unherd.com/2023/06/how-putin-and-xi-resurrected-america/
32. "The cards you’re dealt matter … a lot. Your income is the clearest indicator of how much money your kid will make when they’re 30. Churn is increasingly a rare-earth element in the U.S. Per a Georgetown analysis, “It’s better to be born rich than smart … The most talented disadvantaged children have a lower chance of academic and early career success than the least talented affluent children.”
However, the people dealt the best cards can’t see their hands. The myth of the “self-made man” is rife among U.S. citizens who’ve never faced a draft or registered a devaluation in their currency — people who are remora fish on investments made by the U.S. government.
Tech has raised a cohort of people who simultaneously credit their character for their success and blame a rigged market for their failures. The real cage match in tech is entitlement vs. empathy. The former is winning, and that results in a staggering accumulation of power that’s amoral, focused only on the aggregation of more power regardless of what happens to people with less. (Side note: I hope they beat the shit out of each other. Is that wrong?)"
https://www.profgalloway.com/origin-story/
33. "Notice that another feature (or bug) in the venture capital business model is the belief that new ventures and their teams must be young. In 2018, Ocean Gate fired the Director of Maine Operations, David Lochridge. He was a middle-aged man in his fifties with immense experience. He expressed safety concerns about the carbon fiber and about the lack of even a safety beacon in case the crew got into any distress. He was fired, apparently because because he was not as “inspirational” as younger people. Inspirational means fun and fast. The media and investors alike are drawn to the idea that young people should be running start-ups.
Yet, we know that older entrepreneurs outperform younger ones. Forbes reported on a study that laid out the reality. “Researchers from MIT, Northwestern, Wharton and the U.S. Census Bureau” “found that the mean age of startup founders across the U.S. was 42 years. The mean age of high-tech startup founders (where one might presume that the founders are younger) was 43. And the average age of founders of the rare ultra-fast growth unicorns (the 1 in 1,000 fastest growing ventures) was 45.” Here’s the kicker: “The study shows that the likelihood of success as a founder increases with age until the age of 60. The older you get, the more likely your chances of success are. A 50-year-old founder is twice as likely to build a thriving enterprise that has either an IPO or a successful acquisition as a 30-year-old founder.”
So why does the media keep propagating the idea that startups are about the young and why do investors keep pursuing younger founders, especially in sectors that require a lifetime of experience to get right? This all smells of fundraising requirements. You have to offer to do something really sexy that investors can talk about at dinner parties, like tourism to the Titanic.
My question is this: Can we make great hardware with a software business model? No. Is it possible to make great shardware (hardware + software) if the business model is built on assumptions that only apply to software? No. If we want to make real things we need to get real with the business model. Only then can we take advantage of the miraculous new materials that we now increasingly have access to."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/distress-signals-from-ocean-gates
Money is Energy And Energy Needs Big Goals to Channel It: Learning This Natural Law
Money is an important and critical factor in our world and day to day life. It’s like the old wall street joke, “happiness can’t buy money.” It’s a very powerful and animating factor in life.
I’ve learned its closest equivalent is energy. If it’s energy, it does not do well sitting still. It has to flow and has to move. And if you take the Doomberg quote: “Energy is Life”, I’d extend and say “Money is Energy and thus Energy is Life.” And this energy needs to be directed.
In our modern world, we get so tied up and confused about money. Many of the most ambitious around us chase it unendingly as if this is the end goal. Yet, it’s not everything. I’d argue health, family, reputation and time are more important. But It’s an abstraction that drives all of human civilization and the economy and one you have to understand.
What I’ve learned is that the purpose of life is that it is a tool and a score card. There is a great scene in “Moneyball” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVDAPTabZNQ), where the two key protagonists are talking about a big offer of money to move another team. The assistant coach tells Billy Beane: “You’re not doing it for the money. You’re doing it for what the money says. And it says what it says to any player that makes big money. That they are worth it.”
I agree with this view. It’s a metric to know how well you are doing in life, to know how much value you are creating in the world at that moment. It is no different than the points you get when you play a video game. The more points you accrue, the more tools and options and lives you get. All for the end goal of winning the game.
Now this is the hard part. What does “winning” actually mean and this will be different for everyone. But to really win you have to have goals that allow you to channel this energy properly. What is the end goal? What is the end state?
For me, it’s freedom and options. Freedom to work on things that energize me, things that challenge me but have impact like investing in early stage startups and mentoring and helping founders. Freedom to work with people I love and respect. No more A–holes and no more incompetent morons in my business life telling me what to do. It’s freedom to travel, work and live wherever I feel like and to go whenever I want, to places I enjoy. It’s having the resources to buy whatever books I want. It’s having resources to take care of and help family and friends.
It’s about having resources to help the various charities whose missions I believe in such as Room to Read, Nova Ukraine, World Central Kitchen, International Rescue Committee, Mercy Corp among many other groups. It’s about impact and impacting as many people around me in a positive way. Once I realized this a few years ago, I really think my life got much better.
And just like playing a game, this is supposed to be fun. You should be learning new skills, meeting new friends and getting better all the time. Money is energy and money wants to flow. It needs goals and a purpose that acts like a bucket to harness that energy. So figure out your own goals. And even better if you have really big ones too.
Hip Hop & Venture Capital: So Many Different Permutations That Work
I’m a proud Hip hop dad, as my kid competes in Hip hop competitions. So I get to watch a lot of these shows. It’s so invigorating watching young talented kids compete on stage. So much energy, so much enthusiasm and so many different styles. It reminds me a lot of the business, practice and craft of venture capital and investing in early stage startups.
Venture capital is very simple, you invest and support startups and help them grow. Pretty simple and basic but there are so many different ways to execute it. Do you do the spray and pray model and invest small checks into as many startups as you can and build an index of startups? Or are you more selective and have a smaller portfolio and concentrate and get as much ownership as you can in a few companies. Do you do super early stage companies or later growth stages or do multistage or even crossover funds like Altimeter which does both private and public. Are you a generalist investor, or industry focused. Global or geographic specific?
Just like in hip hop dance, with different executions of basic dance steps and dance moves, there are literally infinite twists and permutations to these basic elements of venture capital. Thus, there are infinite ways to express yourself and make money. And the best dancers, like investors, are able to synchronize with what is authentic to themselves. To truly express their own circle of competition and discover their edge. But this is with the constraint of the long feedback loops that it takes a while to figure this out. You also have to do a minimum number of deals and you need time as well.
And this is why venture capital does benefit more experienced folks, who hopefully have a better understanding of themselves. Deep self-knowledge helps alot. Older folks can also bring more work experience & pattern recognition to the table to help startups. Although I should add age is a double edged sword when it comes to investing in consumer tech, you get further and further away where the edge happens: ie. Young tweens and teens. You have to work harder and harder to keep on top of consumer trends. This is why so many of us end up leaning towards B2B/enterprise software, deeptech or other sectors that allow you to compound knowledge and don’t change as much or as fast.
Anyways, the point is to get really good at venture capital you have to figure out the right game to play that fits you which becomes your edge. As Naval said: “You can escape competition through authenticity, when you realize that no one can compete with you on being you. That would have been useless advice pre-internet. Post-internet, you can turn that into a career.”
This becomes your alpha as they say in the business. Some examples, Harry Stebbings of 20 Minute VC using his amazing podcast empire to build deal flow, connections and brand to build a VC fund. Or Robin Haak or Phillipp Moehring who have built incredible deal flow through their relationships in Berlin, dominating the early stage startup investing scene there. Or Eli Broverman & Jeff Cruttenden at Treasury VC and Sheel Mohnot & Jake Gibson of Better Tomorrow Ventures and their focus on seed stage Fintech. Or Andreas Klinger of Remote First Capital, focusing on technology driven by remote work and digital nomads (I’m a very tiny LP here but his funds are crushing it). For me, I focus on my international networks and have a willingness to travel and invest in places & sectors no one else does, and tie them back to Silicon Valley.
This alpha becomes a differentiator in a crowded VC marketplace. And just like in hip hop the best folks in VC are ones that love the game, learn how to bring their own edge and mix of classic forms to come up with something unique that stands out.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads June 25th, 2023
“Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.” – Oscar Wilde
I love Sauna.
"Their results: Men who took saunas four to seven times a week had about a 65 percent lower risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease or other dementia over the next 20 years than men who did it once a week (after adjusting for other factors, like drinking and exercise)"
https://www.menshealth.com/health/a44079133/saunas-benefit-brain/
2. "Taiwan is best known for making cutting-edge semiconductors. But its companies also turn out other crucial components from printed circuit boards to advanced camera lenses, and they run huge device assembly operations in China.
This has created a triangle of critical interdependence between Taiwan, China and the U.S. that has deepened even as tensions between Beijing, Washington and Taipei have risen.
“People underestimate Taiwan’s position in the supply chain. It’s much more than just about semiconductors. We have a very complete supply chain from chips, components, PCBs [printed circuit boards], casings, lenses to assembly … anything you can think of,” a senior executive at Compal Electronics, a vital product assembler to Dell, HP and Apple said. “If there’s military friction happening to Taiwan, the entire global supply chain will collapse for sure.”
https://asia.nikkei.com/static/vdata/infographics/taiwan-economy/
3. I loved Marrakech and can't wait to go back. Here is a good list of places to check out.
4. "While the Western world has been at the forefront of supporting Ukraine, Russia is likewise receiving aid from antagonist countries that support the vision, which Russia exports. That vision is one of autocracy, where might-makes-right.
It’s a vision wherein the strong take what they want, and the weak must suffer and endure. It’s a return to a system and society-of-states that existed centuries ago, wherein wars were fought simply because a belligerent wanted more space.
These reactionary geopolitical actors are pumping money to Russia (often discounted buying oil from the sanctioned country), giving advanced weapons systems, and providing schematics and blueprints, like for the Iranian Shahed UAV.
China, Iran, and North Korea are all leading the effort to keep Russia equipped and supplied. It is likely that their intentions are similar to our own: to force the other side to spend blood and treasure for a war that it will ultimately lose and to gain insights into the technological innovations and developing practices of employment."
https://andrewglenn.substack.com/p/update-on-the-ukraine-russia-conflict
5. "There is a big difference between starting an offensive, and the main attack or main effort of the operation. The offensive has clearly started, but not I think the main attack.
When we see large, armored formations join the assault, then I think we’ll know the main attack has really begun. To date, I don’t think we’ve witnessed this concentration of several hundred tanks and infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) in the attack."
https://cepa.org/article/think-ukraines-offensive-has-started-wait-for-the-heavy-brigades/
6. "Adventures today are not always grand journeys or great challenges. Often, they are intellectual adventures. And increasingly, many people are content to sit as NPCsletting the challenges pass them by, instead choosing to take the easy way out. Whether you're investing in startups, building companies, working on someone else's something, or seeking to change the world—there are plenty of people who would rather take the easy way out.
The debate of ideas has been largely displaced by the debate of identities. Whether you're conservative or liberal, religious or atheist, capitalist or socialist. We are, in most instances, arguing more about the identity of the person leading the argument, rather than the merits of the idea.
The path to progress more often is built on the value of the ideas themselves, and the execution of those ideas. I think that's why I experience so much cognitive dissonance when it comes to characters like Elon Musk. I can simultaneously think a lot of what he does is gross, while having immense respect for his ideas and execution. But a lot of people can't seem to divorce his character from his contributions."
https://investing1012dot0.substack.com/p/the-cowards-conviction
7. "After decades of disappointment, we’re dreaming about space once again. A more robust presence in space will have many implications for the rest of us back home, from the emergence of new industries (like manufacturing in microgravity) to the destruction of old terrestrial ones (like cable monopolies). Of course, the further out we go, the more problems we’ll need to contend with, from clearing up space debris to figuring out how to service existing spacecraft better.
With technology, problems often become the source of opportunity, and space is teeming with both."
https://every.to/p/the-satellite-renaissance
8. "Don’t want to build your new fab in America, where construction costs are sky-high, skilled labor is scarce, and the lawsuit-driven permitting system takes years to navigate? Just build it in low-cost Japan, with its efficient bureaucratically-administered regulation and low-ish salaries! This logic is obviously compelling for companies like Taiwan’s TSMC and America’s Micron, both of which are now building fabs in the Land of the Rising Sun.
Japan’s GDP growth in the first quarter was very robust, driven in part by high levels of private investment.
The weak yen should be a tailwind for these efforts. Despite the word “weak”, a cheap currency makes it very easy for foreign companies to invest in factories in your country, and to buy the products those factories produce."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/at-least-five-interesting-things-5f5
9. "Therefore, in the short term, Gerasimov is most likely to ‘hang tough’. That doesn’t mean there won’t be bitter fighting on the ground. Nor does it mean the pace of the vicious drone and missile assaults on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure is likely to slacken.
The track record of Gerasimov in this war makes for unimpressive reading. He was strategically impatient in launching the 2023 Russian offensive and has not yet delivered any results to Putin other than holding on to Russia’s currently occupied territory. This might be enough in the medium term, but it assumes he still possesses large tracts of Ukraine after their offensive. This will probably not be the case.
There is an old saying that “when your enemy is making mistakes, don’t get in their way”. For some time, Gerasimov has shown an aptitude for making strategic mistakes. The Ukrainians will be hoping he keeps this form in his command of the Russians defending occupied Ukraine in the months ahead."
https://mickryan.substack.com/p/what-now-gerasimov
10. Every American and their allies need to watch this (and read his books).
China is our biggest near and present threat and we need to act accordingly ie. no more half measures on the US side.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nlyLsw1qi0
11. "The best players of the game, by definition, survive. They prioritize playing another day over the chance to do a little better today. To do so, they study failure.
What would someone prevent from being a great investor with longevity? I can think of a few ways:
Classic ingredients for bad decisions: Ego, biases, and emotions.
Also, mistakes meeting overconfidence and concentration.
A failure to correct mistakes or adapt to change.
A lack of resilience in bear markets and drawdowns due to leverage or fragile capital structure.
Style drift into a game in which the investor has no edge.
Lastly, burnout.
A combination of these can derail even the most experienced operators."
https://neckar.substack.com/p/surviving-markets-why-great-investors
12. "Distressed countries are a different ball game. The legal framework for sovereign debt distress is complex, with no formal international bankruptcy process for nations.
The scale, complexity, power dynamics, and the very act of going up against the people who write the laws to receive what you are owed at the expense of the millions of people in that nation might rightfully scare some people away from getting involved at all.
Fear to some is opportunity for others. Despite getting burned along the way, hedge funds have continued to dive headfirst into sovereign distressed situations not knowing which end of the pool they’re on. Those that swim back up to the surface may have gone through months or years of legal battles, political maneuvering, and incurred significant expenses.
Investing in sovereign distressed debt requires a deep understanding of economics, politics, finance, law, and of course, distress. It can also require developing localized knowledge (have any friends in Zambia?), managing language barriers, and perhaps needing to get your hands dirty as you leave the protections of the U.S. legal system and wage fights in emerging markets.
If by chance you are located in a country facing financial distress, you have the lucrative opportunity of becoming a trusted advisor for hedge funds, private equity funds, and other investors looking for boots on the ground in your country.
Beyond investing, sovereign distress is a topic that affects the lives of millions of people all over the world. The financial and economic situations of a country have a deep impact on the lives of its citizens and their future prospects. Well-managed countries are able to invest in infrastructure, education, healthcare, and overall development of the basic things those of us in functional societies take for granted.
Countries where political leaders exploit the finances of a nation for their own gain should not be surprised to find themselves at the negotiating table once traditional lenders tap out. They will tap out, eventually."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/high-stakes-finance-sovereign-distress
13. Still a believer in the long run on the Creator Economy but it’s ugly at the moment & probably the near future.
“At this time, and for the foreseeable future, the middle class of the creator economy is not going to be able to flourish,” Shapiro said in an interview, who added that his company has enough money to last for nearly three years.
That’s bad news for the hundreds of startups that have formed over the past three years to supply creators with bespoke technology products, from accounting software to video-editing apps. Many of them are trying to find buyers, including Popshop Live, a live-shopping startup for businesses and creators that raised about $25 million from investors including Benchmark.
Some, like the parent company of Koji, are pivoting to products in entirely new markets outside the creator economy, while others are shutting down entirely.
Consolidation is a story as old as the tech industry, one that has played out in nearly every category that has caught fire with entrepreneurs and investors, from personal computers to security software—and now the startups selling services to individuals that have made careers from their online followings.
“There are three periods in any technology market: The first is havoc, where hundreds of little companies are all vying for market share, and then there is a period of consolidation because they can’t all survive,” said Sucharita Kodali, a principal analyst at research firm Forrester. “The weakest ones die and go away, and then there’s a reset at the end of it.”
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/a-reckoning-arrives-for-creator-economy-startups
14. "Nothing in either of these reports necessarily means a faster growing and higher productivity economy will also mean one with higher unemployment, although there may be more job changing, more dynamism. If so, as MGI notes, “workers will need support in learning new skills.”
But history suggests that general purpose technologies — and AI/machine learning/GenAI sure look like one — have a history of broadly improving human welfare even as they also unpredictably change what humans spend their days doing. Both of the recent periods of rapid productivity and economic growth, the 1960s and 1990s, were also ones of rapid job growth. There’s no reason yet to think another tech-driven boom will be any different."
https://fasterplease.substack.com/p/brace-yourself-the-ai-jobs-panic
15. Such a great discussion on what’s happening in cultural businesses. The overview of Messi going to Miami deal is excellent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJknCqdRIpE
16. "China is a manufacturing country, manufacturing is around 30% of their Economy. They took the position of being the world’s assembly line but it came at a cost. What happens when people don’t want to do business with you?"
https://bowtiedhitman.substack.com/p/the-state-of-the-chinese-economy
17. "Sol was a poster child for the American dream. His immigrant parents were born in a small Russian village. Sol was the first in his family to graduate college. He earned a law degree. He became an exceptionally successful businessman and philanthropist, celebrated 70 years of marriage, was a good father who instilled high values in his sons, and he never walked away from responsibility. It doesn’t get much better than that."
18. "Rather, potential astronomical revenue growth fuels valuations by bringing software to new categories & by serving new unmet interest & voracious demand.
The businesses capturing that demand will command massive valuation premiums.
Even with an AI moniker adorning the pitch deck, a software company is a software company."
https://tomtunguz.com/the-ai-premium/
19. "In Harmon’s view, patience was often wishful thinking: the hope of future proficiency preventing you from really working today at what you want to improve."
https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2023/06/13/too-patient/
20. "The unfortunate reality is that, despite craving closure, many people don’t react well to critical feedback. I’ve seen everything from profanity-laden emails to lengthy twitter threads to outright screaming sessions in response to well-meaning, thoughtful feedback. While it might be easy to dismiss these as extreme outliers, they happen more often than you might think."
https://chrisneumann.com/blog/why-dont-vcs-give-feedback
21. "If they see banks continuing to lend and prices remaining elevated, they will hike rates harder and faster until the small distressed banks go to zero. They
have no other objective beyond getting inflation below 2%.
#2 Yellen is telling us 0% rates are likely over for a long time.
This is what she is really trying to say. If there is no workaround to using the US dollar, the message for lower reserves suggests higher interest rates.
If you think people will try to use less dollars, then your goal is to increase the demand for those dollars. The only way to do that is by keeping interest rates at a competitive level."
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/inflation-and-interest-rate-messaging
22. "Our greatest scarcity in the broader startup ecosystem is capable and motivated founders. In failing to normalize failure, care for those going through it, and train our best folks in new ways of working in greater connection and support, we set up our best people for failure.
There is another way."
https://www.mattmunson.me/the-values-we-ought-to-leave-behind/
23. "But the most successful people I know internalize the “based” way of viewing the world — that is they are pragmatic, realistic, and in some ways blunt — they aren’t “politically correct”. They don’t let external noise and the opinions of the masses dictate the way they analyze key issues and events or their opinions.
They understand human nature and that higher powers are always at work to consolidate more money and more control. They live positively with this in mind guiding their actions and decisions.
Keep it simple when it comes to finances and markets:
-Bitcoin? Based. It’s limited in supply, immutable, and non cancelable
-Working for yourself? Based. You are self reliant and independant
-Working a white collar job AND having a business? Super based.
-Gold/Silver in reserve for SHTF situations? Based.
-Owning real estate so you don’t rent endlessly? Based.
-Rejecting CBDCs and controlled money? Based.
-Investing regularly in quality stocks, bonds, and assets? Based.
-Not burning money on superficial items and excessive dopamine? Based.
-Paying for only fans? Not based."
https://arbitrageandy.substack.com/p/how-based-are-you
24. "Technology changes our lives, but typically not in the ways we anticipate. The future isn’t going to look like Terminator or The Jetsons. Real outcomes are never the extremes of the futurists. They are messy, multifaceted, and, by the time they work their way through the digestive tract of society, more boring than anticipated. And our efforts to get the best from technology and reduce its harms are not clean or simple.
We aren’t going to wish a regulatory body into existence, nor should we trust seemingly earnest tech leaders to get this one right. I believe that the threat of AI does not come from the AI itself, but that amoral tech executives and befuddled elected leaders are unable to create incentives and deterrents that further the well-being of society. We don’t need an AI pause, we need better business models … and more perp walks."
https://www.profgalloway.com/techno-narcissism/
25. "During the pandemic-fueled rush into private tech, VC funds grew extremely large. Firms like Coatue Management, which raised $16 billion for private investments between 2018 and 2021, sucked all the air out of the room. These funds made winning deals far more challenging for traditional, smaller venture firms, whose ability to generate consistent returns is better proven, according to investors.
For months, venture capitalists have been telling startup founders they shouldn’t be ashamed to raise down rounds at valuations that more accurately reflect their businesses. They should take their own medicine: Venture firms shouldn’t be ashamed to raise funds that more accurately represent the opportunities in front of them."
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/the-end-of-megafunds
26. "Ukraine is trying to do something that has not been successfully accomplished (perhaps ever) before. They are trying to execute a wide-scale offensive with the use of armored vehicles without air supremacy against an entrenched enemy which possesses a large supply of defensive weaponry. Many of the advantages Ukraine was able to use effectively in slowing any Russian advances to slower-than-snail pace over the last 6 months are now with the Russians.
The Ukrainians are having to contend with the fact that now they need to send forces forward, including tanks, APCs, and other vehicles, and they must operate in an environment in which they are threatened by a large number of different systems—such as the almost ubiquitous hand-held anti-vehicle missile."
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/counteroffensive-update-one-week
27. I really like his books which have helped me personally.
"Holiday first made his name more than a decade ago as a marketing wunderkind and then mined that experience to produce the best-selling exposé Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator. But he soon trained his focus on Stoicism, the ancient school of philosophy that has informed his other massively successful books, including 2014’s The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials Into Triumph and 2016’s The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living. (He did not fully decamp from his perch as an observer and critic of the media. In 2018 he published Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue.)
Holiday is now the locus of a constellation of franchises that churns out books, podcasts, and newsletters and has attracted a large, devout audience, one that has ballooned further since the pandemic: in 2020 one of his four Instagram accounts, @dailystoic, doubled its followers to more than two million. The judgmental alabaster faces of the early Stoics peer out at us from every social media platform.
Holiday’s Stoicism revolves, in part, around the idea that we have tremendous agency in sculpting our reactions to the world around us. In The Obstacle Is the Way, which was famously popular among the New England Patriots ahead of their 2015 Super Bowl victory, he directs us to focus on the “poorly wrapped and initially repulsive present you’ve been handed in every seemingly disadvantageous situation.”
Reading his books, one feels that one has a greater capacity for rational action than when one’s index finger is quivering with the urge to press “send” on an ill-advised, passive-aggressive email.
(From The Daily Stoic: “Today, don’t try to impose your will on the world. Instead see yourself as fortunate to receive and respond to the will inthe world.”)
From Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Seneca the Younger, and beyond, Holiday draws all manner of wisdom, and he confidently pulls out threads of Stoicism from the works and lives of others.
By virtue of the daily format of some of his titles and the infrastructure around them—social media, podcasts, and YouTube channels—many of his fans engage with his content every day, as one might with a religious leader."
https://www.texasmonthly.com/arts-entertainment/ryan-holiday-stoic-king-bastrop-painted-porch/
28. A very sober conversation on the rise and fall of great powers. Dalio has a good take here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEy3FgvWC0M&t=85s
29. Useful metric to track, which countries the wealthy are leaving and where they are going to. Good precursor of the future.
30. "Two generations later, Dr. Bronner’s has vastly outgrown its quirky, humble origins and become the top-selling natural soap brand in North America. The company now sells not only its liquid soap but highly successful lines of balms, toothpastes, coconut oil, and hand sanitizers, in addition to newly launched chocolates that were immediately hailed by gourmands as a premium product.
Today, the iconography of its labels—and Emanuel’s far-out messaging—is imprinted firmly in the psyche of the American consumer. And yet, even as so many Americans have come to possess a fondness for the soap, the raw numbers around the success of Dr. Bronner’s—over $170 million in revenue in 2022—are still kind of staggering. Especially staggering, maybe, to the customers who’ve been affectionately buying its signature minty formula since the days of the natural-product boom of the ’60s and ’70s. Emanuel’s grandsons David and Michael now preside over an empire in which a bottle of Dr. Bronner’s soap is sold every two seconds or so.
Growth is one thing, but Dr. Bronner’s has managed to become a major player in its market while painstakingly encoding its ethics into every step of the production process. In fact, it could be argued that Emanuel Bronner predicted the current era of ethically minded business, and certainly ethically minded marketing.
And now the humble soap brand finds itself at the vanguard of every philosophical and logistical question that American entrepreneurs are grappling with right now. All of its good deeds—from rigorously engineered fair trade supply chains to charitable donations and environmentally minded manufacturing—are thoroughly cataloged in the Dr. Bronner’s annual public accountability report card, the All-One! Report.
These ideals are built into the complex corporate architecture of Dr. Bronner’s—a certified Benefit Corporation as of 2015—and an agreement between David and Michael ensures that the business won’t be sold off to a global conglomerate anytime soon. It’s a fate that’s befallen so many household-name natural health and food brands, many of which began to flourish in the same era following the late-’60s counterculture revolution that Dr. Bronner’s did."
https://www.gq.com/story/dr-bronners-corporate-success
31. "Despite the challenges, we believe that now is as good a time as any to be building transformative solutions, with both consumers and businesses facing multiple pressures that can be solved through technology. High-quality startups with strong teams, positive unit economics (or a pathway to reaching them), a long runway of growth, and a data-driven approach to building their business will be able to raise.
Sturgeon Capital is actively investing in Central Asia, the Caucasus, Bangladesh and Pakistan and will continue to back founders building category-defining businesses in these difficult times."
https://sturgeoncapital.substack.com/p/how-startups-can-raise-money-in-emerging
32. Great discussion this week. All in Podcast is at its best when they talk about tech and business.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cQXjboJwg0
33. Solid tips for B2C companies (applies to some B2B too)
"Setting up the basics of a monetization system makes a world of difference as your company grows. The cohorts that sign up and don’t monetize are likely gone forever, so it really, really pays to set up a strong foundation.
If you can get to a place where a strong checkout page, pricing structure, paywall, payment processing and churn appeasements, then you’ll be better than 90% of early-stage companies."
34. "The San Francisco city government might take some of the blame here, as they did encourage tech companies to come to the city (especially under the previous mayor, Ed Lee). If you build offices without building houses, rents will go up — that’s about as close to an economic law of the Universe as you’ll ever find. But the city’s actions were understandable given its perverse incentives — because of California’s notorious Proposition 13, cities like SF can’t tax property as much as they should, and thus they have to attract and tax businesses in order to fund public services.
In other words, the affordability crisis in SF is the result of the collision of economic forces with political ones. A nationwide industrial shift, local clustering effect, and perverse California tax law drove up housing demand, while local NIMBYs and urban fragmentation made it impossible to increase supply to compensate. SF’s middle and working classes were driven out and homelessness went way up, which probably increased crime as well.
That collision of economic forces with political dysfunction, not any deliberate action by “tech bros”, is the cause of SF’s long-term woes.
But the old SF can never return. No number of mean tweets will drive the tech industry from its most important cluster; brute economics overrides cultural unfriendliness every time. The only way out is through — to build denser housing, to build more transit, and to do whatever it takes to make regular people feel safe walking the streets.
That is what needs to happen in order to make SF a place where both the rich and the middle and working class can live, once again. If we refuse to build, and instead content ourselves with bitter nostalgia and finger-pointing, then SF will remain a dysfunctional, chaotic playground for the rich."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/did-tech-bros-ruin-san-francisco
35. "And now that the TradFi Devil is causing trouble for some of Satoshi’s faithful, the market is freaking out regarding the potential removal of the US retail investor from the crypto capital markets. I believe this concern is misplaced, and if you are prompted to sell alongside US-domiciled institutions that feel they have to sell or discontinue crypto services to US persons, you will be just another sucker who bought the top and sold the bottom.
Because across the world in Asia, China and Japan’s silent currency war for export competitiveness is going to drive an insane amount of credit issuance by the second largest economy globally. This credit issuance — aka money printing — will ultimately weaken the yuan and prompt some of China’s mass affluent to shift their capital elsewhere. And given the sheer number of individuals that make up the Chinese mass affluent, when they want to “get out”, all manner of hard assets get pushed higher."
https://cryptohayes.substack.com/p/fungible
36. "A lot of companies from around the world are investing in Mexico which makes their short to mid term grown almost inevitable, I would buy that stock. What going to hold them up is mostly the security issue, because the transportation part can be solved by just throwing money at it. We don’t live in the 1600s, violence and business do not mix, big business requires stability and I’m afraid the security issue always makes that a huge grey area. How are companies going to feel when truck loads of semi conductors keep getting stolen and sold to China on the black market?
I’m afraid this might force companies to not continue investing too heavily. Why get your cargo stolen when you can go to another country and have that not happen? So what I see happening is more of a diversification away from China than outright replacement. Places like Vietnam are getting some of the shine too."
https://bowtiedhitman.substack.com/p/mexico-will-be-bigger-than-china
All In to Win: the Power of Will
“Gentlemen, go mad. Go!”—Shoin Yoshida of the Meiji Restoration before he was beheaded.
This was the rallying cry that kicked off the bloody revolution that made modern day Japan. We can learn a lot from old Japanese revolutionaries.
Half measures don’t work. This is what I see in the Western world of general prosperity, now showing the rot and complacency that comes with too much good times. If you want to win, you have to be all in. You have to commit everything. You don’t hold anything back. You do the things that others are not willing to do (as long as it’s not against the law, of course). This is the necessary mindset of everyone I know that is successful.
I live in the United States but am fortunate to travel all the time in Europe, Asia & North America like Mexico and Canada. I see the comparison of lifestyles and pace. As much as I think the quality of life is so much better elsewhere, I prefer the hustle and bustle of the USA. I appreciate ambition, big thinking and competitiveness here. Yet, on the other hand, the USA can be a vicious place. The business environment & workplace reflect this. It’s why this place engenders excellence at the individual level.
Nowhere in the world does fear and greed permeate the culture as much as it does here. Greed for wealth that is truly attainable here. And fear of ending up on the streets, as there are limited social programs and a widely viewed culture and opinion that people get what they deserve. It hones a pretty sharp blade and high standards. There are very few places in the world like this, for better or for worse.
A man with ambition, brains, the right attitude and willingness to work hard can go far here.
It also requires a ruthlessness that most people will not or cannot stomach. I saw this over the last 23 years here.
And you demand of others what you demand of yourself. As the founder of Royal Dutch Shell once said: “Whoever is not with me is against me, and I shall treat him accordingly.”(Aeilko Jan Zjilker BTW if you are curious). Or maybe the US Marines said it best: “No better friend, no worse enemy.”
Personally, as I meet the middle of my life, I have less time to waste and so much more to do. Just like America, I need to be more ruthless with how I use my time and with whom I spend my time with. All critical things if I want to have the impact that I am aiming for. Desperate times require desperate measures and we need to act accordingly. It’s time to go MAD.
Be Kind: Treat everyone Like it’s their Last Day
Lorraine Carlson was my godmother, the one who took care of me and my family when I was born in Nebraska. After I moved away, she would religiously send me a letter and a check every year for my birthday when I was growing up in Canada.
I remember the last time almost 6-7 years ago when I last saw her. It was in San Francisco when she was visiting her son. We were scheduled to meet them for lunch. But due to work and my own disorganization/lack of prioritization we were over an hour late. It was just a terrible & disrespectful act on my part.
I tend to do this as I always put my career ahead of family, as I just take them for granted. I wish I could say it was just due to my youth and stupidity, but I was in my early 40s. But we still had a nice time together. I recall when we parted, she cried. She might have had a premonition that that was the last time we would meet. It sadly was the case, as she passed away last year in 2022. God rest her soul.
It fills me with shame when I think back to that day. I wish I was more diligent with my personal life versus the work, that I was actually on time. I wish I was more thoughtful & patient towards people. All people, but especially towards my family and loved ones.
James Altucher once said you need to treat people like they will be dead tomorrow. This way you are more understanding, patient with others and just let stupid & petty things slide. I have been trying to do this more this year.
And to also extend this to everyone I run into. To make allowances for people and their failings. I hope you do the same. The world can do with much more kindness and understanding. And of course, please tip your waiter/waitress/server really well.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads June 18th, 2023
“Ambition is the path to success. Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in.” – Bill Bradley
"The current fundraising environment for B2B SaaS companies is more challenging than it has been in years. While venture capital firms still have ample dry powder, they have largely retreated to shoring up existing investments (or investing in AI!) and are being far more selective with their investments.
For founders of post-seed B2B SaaS companies that have raised some funding but are struggling to achieve the growth rates required to raise a Series A on the venture track, this poses an existential question: continue pushing for venture scale at all costs or explore alternative paths to a meaningful outcome for the founders and team?
This article is aimed at founders in this position, caught between the venture capital (VC) and private equity (PE) tracks, and unsure which direction will lead to the best outcome for their companies and teams.
Here we define the key characteristics of the VC and PE tracks, discuss the factors influencing the choice between them, outline the potential benefits and risks of each, and advise on appropriate timing for making a switch."
https://www.discretioncapital.com/articles/the-crucial-choice-vc-track-or-pe-track
2. "Should Startups Pursue LLM Opportunities? Absolutely Yes!
The takeaways for startups here are twofold. First: choose your target carefully. While companies like Microsoft and Amazon can integrate LLMs with relative ease, large legacy companies in antiquated industries do not have the capability to do so. They lack both engineering and fast decision-making, making them the same attractive targets they’ve always been.
Second, startups need to be thoughtful about their product. Try to find less obvious but equally powerful uses of the tech. This can mean focusing on less sexy markets rather than building the 50th competitor to Jasper. Or by connecting LLMs to workflows to make them more difficult to copy via an OpenAI plugin.
When it comes to LLMs, David won’t always beat Goliath. And startup founders have to be very strategic about which fights they pick."
https://aaronmichel.substack.com/p/when-goliath-wins-who-benefits-from
3. "Ultimately, there is ego, and there are business realities. Crivello said the growing consensus from him and his cohort of founders is there’s simply no replacement for in-person collaboration. For one, virtual meeting technology just sometimes doesn’t work, and even when it does, the quality of conversation is just not up to par.
“The experiment is over; we tried, and we failed as an industry,” Crivello said. “It’s very hard to beat how the brain has evolved over millions of years for synchronous in-person collaboration. Everyone just wants to get out of the darn Zoom meeting.”
His thoughts echo a growing chorus of public comments from tech leaders like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who called the industry’s rush to embrace permanent remote work one of its “worst mistakes in a long time.”
https://sfstandard.com/business/is-san-franciscos-remote-work-backlash-finally-gaining-steam/
4. "That said, the outcome of our analysis plays a key role in whether or not we invest in a startup. If, at the end of the day, there isn’t a version of the future where a company can generate a 50x return on our investment, then we will not invest. No matter how good the team is. No matter how cool the product is.
Because to VCs, market matters most."
https://chrisneumann.com/blog/why-market-matters-most-to-vcs
5. The folks at Fifty Years are doing great stuff. A truly important VC working on real world life changing solutions.
https://fiftyyears.substack.com/p/a-vc-that-builds
6. This is an absolutely must read and understand. How to benchmark yourself for financial independence.
"Everyone’s different. But while almost everyone can adapt to their stuff, having control over your time through independence will always feel great when you have it and always be a miserable burden when you don’t."
https://collabfund.com/blog/the-spectrum-of-financial-dependence-and-independence/
7. Athens is a cool place. Can't wait to return there.
"Athens is an accidental capital in search of an identity, even nearly 200 years after achieving independence from the Ottoman yoke. The key components of a night on the town were Karelia cigarettes in a flip-lid box; a café frappé at the Art Deco Open Air Cinema Thision (still open today); and gyros at O Kostas, also still going strong.
The financial crisis that caused a humanitarian and social collapse a decade ago ended up galvanizing Greece’s creative and entrepreneurial spirits. The art scene, lubricated by a flow of activism, was the response—the howl of anger—of a society under pressure.
In the past decade, Athens has drawn expats from the United States and Europe due to its relatively low cost of living. Now it’s a playpen for artists and hipsters, as Berlin was 20 years ago."
https://airmail.news/issues/2023-6-3/athens-unbound
8. "A ramp-up in artillery production won’t be instantaneous in either the US or Europe. But plans to do so are a signal of political support — a sign, at least, that the West is willing to support Ukraine for the long haul.
But, in lots of ways, the decisions by Washington and Brussels to invest in arms manufacturing goes well beyond Russia’s invasion."
https://www.vox.com/2023/6/6/23744349/ukraine-artillery-counteroffensive-united-states-europe
9. "Eager Ukrainian soldiers are getting their guns and ammo faster than ever, thanks to the work of the U.S. government’s top bulk shipper: the U.S. military.
The Europe-based unit in charge of shipping weapons to Ukraine has sped up deliveries by 30 percent compared to the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion last year, said a spokesperson for the U.S. Army’s 21st Theater Sustainment Command."
10. I actually enjoyed this. Raoul has a good perspective on the global macro environment. He is a Bitcoin guy but has very good experience as a global macro investor in the past.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UzMNewP5pc&t=5210s
11. “Youth unemployment is a more pressing issue than the aging population,” says Keju Jin, an associate professor at the London School of Economics and author of The New China Playbook. “The 1.1% annual reduction in the labor force doesn’t compare to the fact that the most productive and highly-educated generation cannot find jobs.”
The crisis has led to an outpouring of sardonic grumblings on Chinese social media and the inevitable pushback from officials.
Youth joblessness reinforces growing discontent over a lack of social mobility in China."
https://time.com/6284994/china-youth-unemployment-aging-demographics/
12. "This is one of the dirty little secrets of the debate over defense spending. Governments need to increase military budgets to respond to a new threat environment, but the defense industrial base must be expanded all over the world or those growing budgets will go unspent.
Colby denies that he wants to abandon Ukraine. Rather, Europe should be leading in the defense of one of its own, while relying on the U.S. nuclear deterrent and conventional capabilities that are not needed to counter China. As always, this challenge demands reapportioning the division of labor between the U.S. and its allies.
This also means rethinking the U.S. approach to sharing defense technologies: licensing its systems to make them easier to produce and promoting the use of allies’ weapons systems."
13. "The Arabs have what it takes to be an important player in the new emerging world. Their natural and human resources, geography, history, and civilization enable them to be an independent pole that can confidently deal with the rest of the world based on mutual respect and interest.
With a population of more than 450 million - around 60 percent of whom are under the age of 25 - and a geographic area of over 13 million square kilometers, the Arabs would be ranked the 3rd and 2nd in the world, respectively. Most Arabs share the same religion, history, culture, and language.
The Arab world's combined nominal GDP of around $3 trillion would make the Arabs among the top eight economies in the world. When measured in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) terms, the combined economic output of the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt alone would make them one of the top six global economies.
The Arab world is in the center of global trade routes; it is the place where the three continents of Asia, Africa and Europe intersect. The Arabs administer some strategically important maritime trade chokepoints such as Bab Al-Mandab and Suez Canal, through which around 12 percent of global trade and approximately 30 percent of global container traffic pass."
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202305/1290387.shtml
14. "The top 5% of S&P 500 index firms have contributed 50% of the index gains in the past year. The bottom 2% have contributed 50% of the losses.
Sub-divide any portfolio (including our partnership) and one will find a similar pattern.
This implies an essential rule: only make investments that have the potential for power law outcomes. The magnitude of power law outcomes (10x, 100x, 1000x returns or more) is such that catching them, and hanging on when you do, is nearly all that matters."
https://phronesisfund.substack.com/p/power-laws-rule-the-world
15. The Comanche were pretty frightening foes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXIF8q1sHek
16. History is fascinating. Lessons & reforms from defeat leads to victory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-022t9VbFU
17. So much to learn from this guy. How to live an abundant life with intention.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEQvFT5EQ-8
18. “The thing we see across all the wargames is that there are major losses on all sides. And the impact of that on our society is quite devastating,” said Becca Wasser, who played the role of the Chinese leadership in the Select Committee’s wargame and is head of the gaming lab at the Center for a New American Security. “The most common thread in these exercises is that the United States needs to take steps now in the Indo-Pacific to ensure the conflict doesn’t happen in the future. We are hugely behind the curve. Ukraine is our wakeup call. This is our watershed moment.”
But a swift response may not be possible, in large part because of how shrunken the U.S. manufacturing base has become since the Cold War. All of a sudden, Washington is reckoning with the fact that so many parts and pieces of munitions, planes, and ships it needs are being manufactured overseas, including in China. Among the deficiencies: components of solid rocket motors, shell casings, machine tools, fuses and precursor elements to propellants and explosives, many of which are made in China and India.
Beyond that, skilled labor is sorely lacking, and the learning curve is steep. The U.S. has slashed defense workers to a third of what they were in 1985 — a number that has remained flat — and seen some 17,000 companies leave the industry, said David Norquist, president of the National Defense Industrial Association. And commercial companies are leery of the Pentagon’s tangle of rules and restrictions.
“Unfortunately, the more you dig under the hood the more problems you see,”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/06/09/america-weapons-china-00100373
19. "Asparouhov’s realm has steadily expanded over the past several years, and the latest marker of his growing profile came just a week ago: After careful tutelage by Founders Fund founder Peter Thiel and top Thiel lieutenant Keith Rabois, Asparouhov was officially elevated to partner at Founders Fund, a reward for landing deals like Hadrian, which manufactures parts for the aerospace and defense industries, and Cover, a custom home startup.
What part of my time with Asparouhov presented was a rare window into the closed-door world of Thiel and Founders Fund. Over the last decade and a half, Founders Fund has established itself as one of the top venture capital firms, funding Facebook, Stripe, Airbnb and SpaceX, among a slew of other notable businesses. But unlike those at many of the other big firms, its partners prefer to shy away from much media attention. When they do want to speak, they prefer to do so for themselves—often through Twitter.
And Asparouhov has certainly learned not only how to invest like his mentors but how to talk like them: He delights as a libertarian provocateur on Twitter—endorsing Donald Trump, joking about moving Silicon Valley to Dubai and applauding Elon Musk’sleadership at Twitter. Still, he’s undeniably proved himself to be more than another contrarian loudmouth. It was a viral Asparouhov tweet to Miami Mayor Francis Suarez that sparked the great migration to the Magic City during the pandemic.
Yet Founders Fund represents just one half of Asparouhov’s world. There’s Varda, too, his gamble that the dawn of the commercial space industry is indeed finally here.
With his two worlds tightly wound together, Asparouhov has managed to both simultaneously position himself as a leading successor to Founders Fund’s aging old guard and become a leading player in what might be one of the fastest-growing industries in the coming decade.
“Delian has been the single most important player in hard tech in the last three to four years,” said Jai Malik, the general partner at Countdown Capital. “With Varda, Delian and his co-founders showed investors that space is a market to invest in and take seriously beyond SpaceX.”
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/the-overlapping-galaxies-of-delian-asparouhov
20. This guy very much hates the USA & Dollar run world but it’s good to understand the other side’s view.
I think he is a bit too idealistic and his hate collars his view too much. Like the alternatives of China or Russia will be so much better & fairer (hint: it WON'T)
https://slkanthan.substack.com/p/10-benefits-of-dedollarization
21. Hmmm.......
"In the US, banks and corporations control the government. In China, it's the other way around.
Thus, a successful Chinese system threatens the corporatism in the West
Chinese can think in gray areas, while the West lives in a bubble of reductionist and absolutist slogans. Thus, the collective West cannot fix its system, let alone admit its failings. Instead, its only option to is to take down its competitor."
https://slkanthan.substack.com/p/usa-v-china-who-runs-the-system-heres
22. This guy SL is an A--hole & anti-USA on everything but I try to read counter-veiling views out there.
His criticism of Peter Zeihan's views are interesting. Zeihan has been more right than wrong so far though & I do think Zeihan ignores important technological trends and is too bombastic/negative about China's ability to figure stuff out.
Some good points on deglobalization and how real it is.
"The West’s “China plus one” strategy has become “China plus China” strategy!
While you may see more “Made in Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Mexico” etc. labels in the stores, they are still mostly made in China.
So, you see, decoupling is a delusion. The US economy cannot function without other countries. And that’s true for China and all countries in the world."
https://slkanthan.substack.com/p/peter-zeihan-is-the-jim-cramer-of#details
23. Great conversations this week. Very interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPMNbMR1p70
24. "We should all care about a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. The global semiconductor industry would freeze. Inflation would spiral further upwards and the post-COVID recovery would be reversed. So many of the tools we rely on would disappear from our shops for years. It would wreak enormous damage on us all —- with the Taiwanese people bearing the greatest cost."
25. "Andreessen is one of the more prominent names in a new class of tech wealth that includes figures like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel whose political vision and methods conflict both with dot-com tech titans like Bill Gates and Pierre Omidyar, as well as with those of old world industry and media, like Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner.
While it might seem strange, given his own position of power, for someone like Andreessen to criticize elites, the truth is that elites have cliques, just like the rest of us. And in the cafeteria of America’s billionaires, Andreessen and his peers are hurling food and spoiling for a fight, while the incumbents are calling in favors at the State Department and New York Times.
Of course, neither camp is driven solely by high-minded ideals, but both maintain fundamentally irreconcilable views of the kind of country they want to build. While Reid Hoffman and Pierre Omidyar, respectively, founders of LinkedIn and eBay, pledged $27 million to help artificial intelligence “vindicate social values of fairness … and justice,” Andreessen publicly laments the ill effects of training artificial intelligence on the “woke mind virus.”
Marc Benioff’s company, Salesforce, announced last year that they would tie executive pay to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives, which Andreessen has sharply criticized.
While these disagreements may look like a contest between conservatives and liberals, the reality is not that simple. Garry Tan, a successful investor who is now the president and CEO of famed startup incubator Y Combinator, has been a vocal critic of San Francisco’s progressive politics in recent years, while affirming that he has “always been and likely will always be a Democrat.”
He and Andreessen, like others, appear to believe instead that this disagreement is centered around the embrace or rejection of a certain set of principles—uncovering and amplifying the best talent, valuing meritocracy over credentialism, fixing problems by circumventing institutions, and thinking from first principles—which underpin the tech industry’s runaway success.
Both camps also believe that the other team is the root of the country’s (and maybe the world’s) problems. It’s a fight worth watching, and understanding, because its outcome will have long-term implications for all of us."
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/silicon-valley-civil-war
26. This is long overdue but better late than never.
https://www.autoblog.com/2023/06/10/the-us-is-building-factories-at-a-wildly-fast-rate/
27. Maybe.....
"The United States and the European Union, he said, would lose from moves to freeze hundreds of billions of dollars of Russian sovereign assets as many countries were moving to settling payments outside the U.S. currency and the euro while China was moving towards a removal of currency restrictions.
"The long historical era of the dominance of the American dollar is coming to an end," Kostin, 66, told Reuters on the 59th floor of the gleaming VTB (VTBR.MM) skyscraper overlooking southern Moscow. "I think that the time has come when China will gradually remove currency restrictions."
28. Great profile on a liquor tycoon Sidney Frank.
https://www.shaanpuri.com/sidney-frank
29. "Entrepreneurs would do well to put together a Google Doc or Notion Doc with a running list of their favorite interview questions. It should be a living doc that’s visited regularly, and when a new question emerges, add it to the list and continually experiment with them. The better the interview questions, the better you understand the candidate."
https://davidcummings.org/2023/06/10/build-a-running-list-of-interview-questions/
30. "Make no mistake: Governor Ueda knows exactly what he is doing. It has been more than 30-years since inflation was a real problem in Japan, so inflation expectations are still firmly anchored in the deflationary “post bubble” mindset. He is right, in my view, to insist - for now - on the virtues of continuity with his predecessor’s policy. The all-out attack on deflation is still on"
https://japanoptimist.substack.com/p/no-bubble-no-trouble
31. Love these kind of stories.
"Turner started her shop last November, around the time Swift announced her Eras Tour. That tour, which began in March, is expected to be one of the most lucrative in history, generating ~$11.3m from tickets and ~$2.4m from merchandise every show, according to industry analysts.
It’s also opened up a market for Swiftie entrepreneurs. As fans swarm concert venues for Swift, some have chosen to forgo hours long lines to buy official concert merchandise, and others couldn’t afford tickets in the first place.
Instead, many have purchased Swift-related merchandise from online shops that can gross several thousand dollars per month.
Lately, Turner has been making four to six sales a day of Swift-inspired hats, sweatshirts, T-shirts, candles, and more — enough to cover her monthly rent.
“Honestly,” Turner said, “running this Etsy shop has been pretty life-changing financially.”
https://thehustle.co/the-etsy-sellers-paying-rent-with-taylor-swift-merch/
32. "This war is not going to end with these Ukrainian operations, and much of this conflict has been defined by incremental gains and attritional warfare. The Ukrainian counteroffensive might not shift the map all that drastically, but Kyiv does need to emerge stronger, Russia weaker.
Russian President Vladimir Putin likely believes he has the advantage, that he can wait out Ukraine and its Western backers. But if Ukraine can batter Russia’s forces, or even leave Russia with less territory than it had at the start of this offensive, it will be hard for Russia to continue to claim it is winning. That likely does not usher in the war’s end, but it will transform this conflict once again."
https://www.vox.com/2023/6/10/23750041/russia-ukraine-war-counteroffensive-begins-explained
33. I've always liked Ryan Gosling. A fellow Canuck trying to figure out his way in America.
"Gosling started asking himself: What is my talent? He began auditioning, and the auditions he was traveling to led to him being cast, at age 12, in Disney’s The All-New Mickey Mouse Club, alongside Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera, and Britney Spears. Unlike his peers, he did not make much of a mark there. “Everybody was at, like, prodigy level.
I certainly wasn’t a child prodigy. I didn’t know why I was there. And I think that was the consensus. It’s why I didn’t work—it was like, they dressed me up as a hamster or put me in the background of someone’s song. But it was all a great experience in a way because it helped me figure out what I wasn’t going to be good at. Which is important to learn too.”
https://www.gq.com/story/ryan-gosling-summer-2023-cover-profile-ken-barbie
Dependencies are Dangerous: Self Reliance and Diversification is the Cure
There is a scene in the excellent sci fi series Peripheral tv episode 5 on Amazon video where the mom talks with her kids, the main protagonists, about power imbalances. All gifts come with a cost. And dependencies are always dangerous.
“I also took it to heart. The idea that the worst thing a person can do is grow dependent on some outsider.”
This was quite an enlightening scene and a reminder and object lesson for all of us in the real world. It’s incredibly dumb and risky depending on one country, one income, one job, one customer, one investment, one key employee or partner. I’m thinking through my own dependencies even as I write this. As the famous Andy Grove, co-founder and CEO of Intel named his insightful book: “Only the Paranoid Survive.”
You have to take inventory constantly and treat all your dependencies like a metaphorical gangrenous limb that you have to cut off the minute you smell rot. Cut off the blight and cauterize the wound. It’s the only way to save the rest of your body. This works for both individuals and for growing startup organizations.
Learn to count on oneself first. That means taking responsibility and pure ownership for everything you do and everything that happens.
Have high standards in people around you. And people come through for them, do all that you can to keep them around. And yes, you can and should give people some allowances. As Imam Shafi’i said: “Be hard on yourself and easy on others.” So always assume good intentions and give them one chance. But if they mess that up, you have to cut them off right away, especially if they prove untrustworthy or weak. This is a mistake I’ve made throughout my career and even in recent times. And was one that cost me a lot of money and time.
Build options. Keep your cost structure low. Have extensive savings and assets. Be and build for flexibility. This might seem like a lonely, cynical or sad way to live. But personally it’s worked well for me. Quoting Jodi Picault: “There were two ways to be happy: improve your reality, or lower your expectations”
I keep working at making my life better, being reliable to a fault myself and at the same time, I keep my expectations of most people around me low. Alexander Pope said: “Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.”
Mundane Dreams Equals a Mundane Life: Existing in the Matrix
I spent a good part of the 2022 winter break wandering around downtown Vancouver. And it was lovely. A short break in a ridiculously busy year of business and travel. Some valuable time to reflect and think.
It’s great to be by oneself, eating lunch, having a coffee, reminiscing. But also really interesting listening to young and old people around me, talking to each other about their lives and dreams. But without judgment, their lives and hopes seem so plain & boring to me. Trying to get that job or promotion, getting good grades, trying to find a boyfriend or girlfriend or spouse. Or the car or clothes they want to buy. It’s like they are literally programmed. I see people going through the motions with dead eyes. No real excitement or joy in their eyes. They are not really living, they are almost like Lichs or zombies.
What happened to big dreams? Adventure, excitement, seeing the world, having a positive impact on others at scale. Building things, big beautiful and great things.
I recall an exercise I did at the World Domination Summit over a decade ago. The speaker asked when was the last time you thought anything was possible. When you dreamed about being an astronaut or explorer or something fantastical?
Almost universally it was around age 10. And then it kind of disappeared because “school”: our education system and our families told us we had to grow up and be realistic. Our imaginations were literally drummed out of us. We were laughed at when we shared our big dreams.
It took me leaving Canada, backpacking around Europe and then moving to two new countries (Taiwan and the USA), surrounding myself with books, new friends and a community of achievers to rediscover this. But I also admit I spent a lot of time flailing around as well. Yet I figured it out (mostly). Or at least directionally.
And now my life is almost literally what I dreamed of growing up. I spend the year traveling the world speaking, advising and investing, going to countries most people have never even heard of. I get paid to travel. I also continue to learn new things. I work with smart, awesome people and go wherever I want, whenever I want. I can buy any book I want and eat fine or not fine, yet delicious foods. I am pinching myself as I write this.
It goes as the old Napoleon Hill saying: “whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve”. In other words, dream big and literally work your ass off to make it real. It’s really possible. Dreams are the first step. (I should note, sadly, that many people get stuck in the dream phase and don’t do any of the hard work needed.)
Dream big, live big. Dream small, live small. It’s a lesson I’m trying to instill in my kid as well. And doubly important in this ever changing world we live in now: it’s full of promise and peril. Life is short so why not make it count for something, so dream big and take big swings in life.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads June 11th, 2023
“The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.” – Steve Jobs.
"Nationality is not something most people choose; it’s a status or a barrier thrust on us by birthplace or heritage. Cities, though, are places—and identities—that we choose for ourselves.
And when we feel enough of a connection to stay somewhere, perhaps cities can choose us too. But with the freedom to live and work from anywhere, how do you navigate choosing—or staying long enough for a place to choose you?"
https://globalnatives.substack.com/p/where-are-you-from
2. History is amazing. Thread on the fall of Constantinople.
https://twitter.com/Varangian_Tagma/status/1663183116981207040
3. So many nuggets of wisdom here. Seth Godin is the GOAT.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HekHk6yLmF0
4. Old write up but still bullish on Uzbekistan.
"E.g., if you want to make 10, 20 or 50 times your money or achieve an outsized dividend yield that you just couldn't achieve in more mature markets, these so-called "frontier markets" are a place that you should pay attention to.
In case you haven't got a clue what's been happening in Uzbekistan over the past two years, you are not alone.
The Chinese, the Russians and the South Koreans are already significant investors in the country. Foreign direct investment is growing rapidly, but Western countries generally have not been paying much attention to this corner of the world. Nor have there been overly many journalists visiting the country to report about its economy and businesses.
Uzbekistan lies at the center of the region known as Central Asia, which also comprises Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan.
Historically, these were the countries that made up the fabled Silk Road, i.e., the trading route that first connected Europe to Asia."
5. "Anyone who has been to Istanbul will understand what I mean by the country's great entrepreneurial spirit. It's a buzzing, booming, modern city – with much of its economy running on euros and dollars. When I last visited in June 2022, I concluded (to my own surprise) that I'd be happy to spend more time there (which, sadly, is not something I'd say about quite a few Western European capitals anymore).
With all that wrapped together, the Turkish stock market is a market that I am rather interested in. Something that is cheap, opaque and a bit unpopular generally piques my interest."
https://www.undervalued-shares.com/weekly-dispatches/turkey-taking-stock-in-times-of-change/
6. Good primer on credit card churning. ie. using points for flights, hotels and excursions.
https://bowtiedbull.substack.com/p/guest-post-on-credit-card-churning
7. "Anyone that’s ever dealt with ballooning debt understands the ramifications. At a certain point, you lose the ability to manage both the debt and interest payments regardless of how much your salary increases. In this case salary can be substituted for tax receipts. At some point, all you’re really doing is making interest payments. For an individual, that can be crushing for quality of life. For a nation, that likely means all types of problems down the road.
Now combine the realities of expanding Debt to GDP trends with some of the other trends we’ve seen lately.
Inflation and resulting contraction of the middle class purchasing power and quality of life. The financial warfare of the West vs Russia that in many ways ushered in a time of mutlipolarism with many nation-states finding ways to strengthen alternative global partnerships while diversifying foreign currency reserves. And of course, the massive accumulation of gold reserves of central banks around the world.
The writing is on the wall for anyone willing to pull their heads out of the sand and look."
https://www.thesovereignindividualweekly.com/p/weve-entered-doom-loop
8. Fascinating thread on the Venetian empire.
https://twitter.com/byzantinemporia/status/1663916403433381890
9. "Germany looks increasingly willing to cut Chinese companies in the semiconductor supply chain off from important materials and components. For China’s optics industry, and by extension its efforts at developing advanced photolithography, this could present a major roadblock going forward."
https://thechinaproject.com/2023/05/01/chinas-semiconductor-industry-cant-quit-german-optics/
10. "Drone Lab is not the only IT company in Ukraine working on developing innovative military technology.
Before the war, Ukraine’s IT companies were transforming the country into an emerging digital leader. Now, these companies are also transforming Ukraine into a military innovator.
Traditional military production follows the waterfall approach. In the waterfall method, the entire set of requirements for a solution must be identified before building the product, and testing only occurs once the product is entirely constructed.
Startups opt for the agile approach, prioritizing the most critical requirements and tackling problems as they arise.
For Ukraine, time is of the essence. Solutions must come fast, and testing new products during combat offers an opportunity to enhance essential features and functionality in real-life situations.
“This is why startups are winning,” Vasylieva said."
https://kyivindependent.com/fighting-smarter-ukraines-transformation-into-military-innovator/
11. Talk about very creative re-tooling.
"According to Reuters, Ukraine is specifically asking for Mk 20 Rockeye II cluster bombs. Also known as CBU-100, Ukraine’s reported plan for the weapons would not involve dropping them from combat aircraft. Instead, they would take the Mk 20s apart and their submunitions would be adapted into bomblets that will be dropped by lower-end drones."
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ukraine-wants-u-s-cluster-bombs-but-not-for-what-you-think
12. This seems to be endemic to tech world last decade or so. It has been a hard wake up call for many this last year.
"Toni says that, while Lecha has taken much of the blame for the change to the company’s culture, the roots of the problem began with Typeform’s generous perks in the early days.
“With the unlimited holiday about a third of people were taking the piss and weren't really being held accountable,” she says. “A lot of the toxicity in my opinion comes from the fact that there were all these nice things thrown at people with not much accountability at the beginning. People became really entitled.”
https://sifted.eu/articles/us-hustle-mentality-typeform-spain
13. Pretty scary stuff. USA is very much at threat by our enemies. Power Grid blackouts are a real risk.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cibrirsq5Gc&t=374s
14. "I argued a while back, that, seeing how the Ukrainians had waged war before, that there would be such attacks the closer they came to the counteroffensive. They would not want to do such attacks too early (giving Russia time to recover) and they would not want to do them right at the start of the counteroffensive, because they would want forces at the front to struggle a little with supplies before attacking.
However a sustained campaign of this type would indicate the counteroffensive is approaching."
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/the-ukrainian-counteroffensive-getting
15. Highly recommend Capital Camp if you are an investor. Been there last 3 years in a row. Good write up about it here.
https://chrisneumann.com/blog/dont-forget-the-big-picture
16. I enjoyed this interview more than I expected. Rob Lipsett seems like a cool dude living his best life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaWX55EVHA4
17. "But we don't achieve true, unadulterated freedom until we graduate from college. Armed with a sheet of paper that shows that we are employable, we emerge from our alma maters with a world of opportunity before us.
No longer living at home. No longer constrained by class schedules. We can, for the first time, literally do anything that we want.
And then this peculiar thing happens. We don't do whatever we want.
After spending 22 years preparing for this moment of unbounded freedom, we spend the next 40 years squandering this freedom making money that we don't need to buy stuff that we don't want to impress people that we don't care about to maybe, if we are lucky, spend our excess cash in retirement when it is least valuable to us because of our limited energy."
https://www.youngmoney.co/p/case-traveling
18. "In other words, much of what made China’s economy special during its glorious decades was due to its unusual real estate system. Now that era is ending, and China is going to have to start looking much more like a normal developed country. If it fails to make that transition, difficult times could lie ahead."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/real-estate-is-chinas-economic-achilles
19. "For once, Turkish stocks are very difficult to access. With the exception of some foreign-listed Turkish stocks, investors need to open a local brokerage account, which makes it difficult but also potentially interesting. Once it becomes easier to trade Turkish stocks – which it will at some point, e.g. thanks to trading apps such as Piapiri eventually opening to foreign users – the market could see additional investment flow into some of these names.
Valuations are an issue, though. Some Turkish stocks are cheap, but are they cheap enough?
At a time when many stocks listed on Western exchanges are trading for p/e ratios of 3-6 (banks, energy, and other Old Economy sectors), is it worth going the extra mile to invest in Turkey?"
https://www.undervalued-shares.com/weekly-dispatches/turkey-investor-trip-what-we-learned/
20. "No, to love a problem like that is to meet it with dozens, hundreds or even thousands of solutions. To recognize that perfection is impossible. To love a problem like that is to face frustration and closing walls, to meet rejection and rough compromises.
But perhaps—just perhaps!—through the humble process of asking and attempting and asking and attempting and asking and attempting—we take the tiniest of steps forward. We make progress. We make something of ourselves.
Love the problem, and in its swirling abyss, find the reward."
https://lg.substack.com/p/the-looking-glass-love-the-problem
21. "The Overall Defence Concept embraces an asymmetric approach to defence strategy. Wisely, the Overall Defence Concept doesn’t seek a symmetrical, head-to-head competition with the much larger PLA.
Instead, the resources available for Taiwan to ensure its defence are prioritised on targeting high value targets, denying a Chinese landing and ensuing the survival of the Taiwanese military – and the nation itself - until intervention by the United States, Japan or other countries begins.
It does not do this by completely ridding the armed forces of Taiwan of warships, combat brigades or fighters. However, it does readjust the balance of national investment in these conventional capabilities with increased procurement of weapon systems and munitions that permit an indirect approach to attacking any PLA invasion force.
While the Overall Defence Concept pre-dates the Ukrainian defence against Russia, many of its key proposals have been validated by the Ukrainian strategy of corrosion that has been executed over the past 16 months.
Not only does it offer a model for the most effective and efficient use of Taiwanese defence resources in peace and war, but it also offers a framework for other nations in the region to potentially emulate."
https://mickryan.substack.com/p/the-overall-defence-concept
22. A good thread for those interested in the 5 Flag strategy.
https://twitter.com/StirlingWisdom/status/1664616165031698433
23. Brave men.
"In Taiwan, he was in the coffee industry and military reserves.
After Russia invaded Ukraine, Yao Kuan-chun volunteered to go fight.
He has been on the ground in Ukraine the past three months, one of a handful of Taiwanese soldiers who have joined other international fighters in the war that started in February 2022.
Yao, 30, knows the threat of invasion from a bigger authoritarian neighbor – China – and is fighting for the larger causes of democracy and freedom.
But he’s also getting first-hand combat experience in case China decides to invade his island.
"Tensions have escalated (across the Taiwan Strait), so we need to pick up the pace if we're to be ready. Whether or not they dare to invade depends on our preparedness,” Yao said.
“Who's going to come to your rescue if you don't defend your own country?"
"There's a saying that goes, 'Today, Hong Kong, tomorrow, Taiwan'," he said, referring to fears that the erosion of Hong Kong’s freedoms could be repeated in Taiwan should it come under Chinese rule.
"Or you could say, ‘Today, Ukraine, tomorrow, Taiwan,’" he said."
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/taiwan-soldiers-ukraine-05302023144044.html
24. "young people’s time spent outside of the house is a forward-looking indicator of their success.
For most uber-successful people, however, online activity is leverage for relationships and achievements established in person. The only way you will be loved by others, get to love them, and live a life you do not deserve is to take uncomfortable risks.
Today the risks are mundane but offer greater returns. Say yes, go to the second place, and be promiscuous when it comes to expressing your regard, interest, and love for others. You will experience disappointment, sore muscles, hangovers, and awkward moments. And looking back, you will regret none of it. Say yes."
https://www.profgalloway.com/yes/
25. "YPF went from public to private and back, and in the middle of these shenanigans a small group of insiders made bank.
Today, YPF is worth $4.418 billion dollars, which makes Argentina’s 51% worth $2.253 billion dollars.
For that 51% Argentina will have to pay $20 billion for having expropriated it, little over 9 times more, not counting the fact that Grupo Petersen was able to get their 25%+ thanks to public funds stalled in Switzerland in the first place, which are no longer accounted for as we’ve seen above.
Even though it is clear who were involved in this laundromat of epic scale, and there’s little doubt about the irregularity of the financial loophole in transactions and ownership, it is almost certain that no one will end up in jail or even prosecuted for receiving YPF bags of at least $20 billion+ in FU money at the tax payer’s expense."
https://bowtiedmara.substack.com/p/ypf-the-laundromat-of-the-century
26. I think this is a great thing and inspiration for men everywhere. It's absolutely wonderful that people work on themselves and stay in shape. Don't get this snarky article.
"It’s not just Zuck and Bezos getting swole. We are in “the era of the buff mogul”, the New York Post declared last year. “Ripped abs are the new power trip for CEOs,” El País has stated. “Billionaires these days are buff,” the Guardian recently observed. The size of your biceps has become as much a status symbol these days as the size of your bank balance.
There are numerous reasons for this, including the tech world’s obsession with biohacking and treating the human body like it’s a machine that can be optimized."
27. For anyone who thought the American Indians were push overs or peaceful. This documentary puts that lie to pass.
The vicious wars of extermination between the Comanche & Apache tribes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSYN7GF_ll0
28. Russia reaps what it sows. I expect there will be more of these attacks soon. Slava Ukraini!
https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/05/politics/ukraine-sabotage-agents-russia-drone-attacks/index.html
29. "First, a short description of what AI is: The application of mathematics and software code to teach computers how to understand, synthesize, and generate knowledge in ways similar to how people do it. AI is a computer program like any other – it runs, takes input, processes, and generates output. AI’s output is useful across a wide range of fields, ranging from coding to medicine to law to the creative arts. It is owned by people and controlled by people, like any other technology.
A shorter description of what AI isn’t: Killer software and robots that will spring to life and decide to murder the human race or otherwise ruin everything, like you see in the movies.
An even shorter description of what AI could be: A way to make everything we care about better."
https://a16z.com/2023/06/06/ai-will-save-the-world
30. "Throughout all of this chaos, tensions with Russia, China, and Iran are on the rise… while the US military is being weakened by woke politics, fiscal mismanagement, and terrible leadership.
It seems like every few days there’s another major embarrassment… from a guy who never met a staircase he can’t fall up, to the humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan, to a major crisis in the US banking system, to ‘mostly peaceful’ protests, to the debt ceiling soap opera.
And every one of these emboldens America’s adversaries.
Many of us are old enough to remember a time when such things were unthinkable, when America’s reputation for strength was unquestionable.
But these days, a major, national humiliation is just another Tuesday afternoon in the Land of the Free."
31. "Here’s the hard truth about experience as well. Some people just have better experience than others. If you worked for a company from seed to IPO, you’ve got a better story to tell than someone who hasn’t seen an exit yet. If you’re a partner, you can generally speak more to what your firm looks for than if you’re the associate.
If someone is trying hard to learn about the fundraising market, not just “any” investor will do. You ideally want someone who has seen a couple of cycles and has some sway in their own firm."
https://ceonyc.substack.com/p/why-most-startup-events-suck-for
32. Slava Ukraini!
"As to what happens next, even seasoned pundits are kept guessing. For my part, I would expect more Ukrainian attacks intended to shape the battlefield – causing the Russians to divert resources and even commit their reserves. This they have already partially done, moving several VDV (Airborne) units, which were part of their operational reserve, to Bakhmut in the last few days.
If pushed to guess, I would say that the Ukrainains have decided to strike decisively in Donbas first with Bakhmut being their primary objective, before launching an attack to breach Russian positions in Melitipol or even Mariupol."
Lessons from a Road Warrior: My Routine for Surviving Jet Lag
For those who know me, they know that I'm pretty much on the road all the time. I do international travel at least 50% of the year which is a big decrease from the 80%+ when I was at Yahoo!. I get asked all the time: how do you get over jet lag?
Doing this intense international travel for over 20 years now you have to develop a process and routine, especially as you get older when you don’t have as much gumption and energy as you used to. I clearly love the adventure of travel and international business. It’s energizing. But the jet lag especially when you cross so many time zones coming from California to Asia or to Europe and the MENA region is brutal.
So here is what I do. As always, trying to get a good night's rest prior to flight is important. I almost always fast on the airplane, the food on the airplane tends to be super salty and not so good for you anyways. Fasting has been shown to help with time zone adjustments too.
I also make sure I am hydrated and try to have a full water bottle (Yeti of course) of water mixed with trace minerals and LMNT which is a powdered mineral & salt mix that tastes pretty good. It’s easy to get dehydrated on the flight so drinking lots of this water is helpful.
When I board the plane, I set my time to the time zone of the destination and force myself to adjust on the plane. If it’s night time there, I sleep. If it’s daytime over there during the flight, I force myself to stay awake during the entire flight. This is how I get so much reading done.
When I land, if it’s sunny outside, you have to get as much sunlight as possible. And it’s why I try to get there one day early so I can walk around. And have lots of water with trade minerals and LMNT. You will feel much better.
I also try to do some weight exercise or lots of walking. I try to go easy on cardio on the first day or two. Weights are more important here.
No naps at all as much as you feel tired. I usually try to take a very hot shower or even better, take a nice hot bath or sauna which helps your body’s circulation after a flight. You have to force yourself to stay up all day till 10 or 11 pm. Melatonin is key to helping you sleep through the night.
And in the morning, take a cold hard shower which wakes you up and gives you a lot of mental clarity.
That’s my travel routine, a process I’ve tried and tested over the last 2 decades of intense work travel. I hope you find this as helpful as it’s been for me.
Beauty Comes from Pain: My Life in Silicon Valley
I have been a long time fan and follower of the science fiction world of Warhammer 40k since i was a child. It’s a dark future world of never ending war that features the beleaguered Imperium of Man. One of the most interesting protagonists are the Blood Angel Space Marine Chapters. Great defenders and exemplars of humanity. Yes, I know, it’s totally random and nerdy. But many of the stories are a work of art. You can learn from stories. One of the Blood Angels talks about his existence.
“They tell me you have some art. So imagine, every time you pick up a quill, you find yourself in the presence of the greatest writer who ever lived. A creator so peerless and immaculate that anything you produce, by contrast, must appear to you shabby and unworthy. And everytime you try to emulate that art, to mimic it, you must always fall short, because only one soul in all creation can possibly be so perfect…..
You are trapped, pursuing your objective, knowing you must fail, and every time, no matter what you do, the evidence of your shortcomings will be right in front of you. But you venerate the artistry, all the same. More than that–you love it. And thus you are torn. Shame, because you can never ascend the pinnacle. Adoration, because you see it for what it is. A kind of unreality. (Source: Sanguinis: The Great Angel by Chris Wraight)
It’s an incredible passage and describes exactly how I feel being in Silicon Valley. Surrounded by incredibly brilliant investors and startup operators. They provide a model and ideal for you. Yet, while continually striving, working and learning, you are always falling short of the ideal around. Torn. You feel like a complete loser all the time. This is my life.
While in any other place in the world I’d be considered on top of my game, here I’m not even rating myself tenth best. So the game goes on and I continue to work my ass off, struggle and push myself toward these probably unrealistic ideas and goals.
But no pain, no gain. Or as the Blood Angels remark more beautifully: “Transfiguration only comes through suffering.” Transfiguration is defined as: a complete change of form or appearance into a more beautiful or spiritual state.
If you are going to suffer and pursue something in life, let it be for something great and beautiful.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads June 4th, 2023
“A man's worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions.” – Marcus Aurelius.
Great profile on my friend and fellow investor Sheel. Probably one of the best seed stage Fintech investors on the planet.
https://meridian.mercury.com/sheel-mohnot
2. My favorite new influencer. Justin Waller. He is absolutely right that the trades and blue collar are coming back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6WS3Uzx0uE
3. "While it is undeniable that demographics are one of the most profound constraints that influences geopolitics, demographics are not destiny. If demographics were all that mattered to great power politics, then the ancient Greek city states would not have stood a chance against the collective might of the Persian Empire which ruled over 44% of humanity at the time. History is rife with examples of how the demographic underdog, through superior tactics, technology, and morale, can decisively beat geopolitical rivals.
However, demographics are not destiny because power on the world stage is relative.A nation with a rapidly shrinking demography may experience a subsequent hit to its absolute power, but this is irrelevant if its peer rivals suffer from even worse demographic crises.
If a power controls the key nodes of global commerce and manages to monopolize the extraction of vital raw materials, it might be able to fortify, and even enhance, its geopolitical position despite sub-optimal demographics.
This is why the growing coordination between Russia, China, and Iran across Eurasia is a trend to carefully watch. U.S. power is no longer omnipotent, and the U.S. is struggling to shift its strategy from counterinsurgency back to traditional great power competition. There is a window for revisionist nations to make power plays.
That is not to say the moves will be successful. That remains to be seen. After all, the U.S. and other nations across Eurasia also have hands with which to play the game of great power politics. What's important to realize is these things take time, and only time will truly reveal what lies ahead."
https://www.shatterpointsgeopolitics.com/p/are-demographics-destiny
4. "Startups are hard. Doing it part-time makes it 10x harder. If possible, figure out a path to being full-time as quick as possible and improve the chance of success."
https://davidcummings.org/2023/05/26/side-hustle-to-full-hustle/
5. "And this is why I’m so bullish on doing things like living in another country. Not a vacation. Not a “trip".” Just going somewhere to live. It doesn’t matter if you do it later in life or fit in into your 30s like I did. It’s a way of tapping into a deeper and more relaxed state of being that many of us never have time to experience.
You might wander around as I did for a few weeks and notice that the thoughts from back home start to dissolve. For the first time, you will experience a state which feels calm and peaceful. You will walk into a grocery store and be amazed at all the new fruits you’ve never seen. You will start to become curious about the world. You might even spontaneously start crying in a park that has trees from all over the world because you are filled with love and joy."
https://boundless.substack.com/p/go-wander-abroad-ideally-224
6. "Like any asset, sports teams trade on supply and demand, and demand is a function of the number of uber-wealthy people desperate for relevance. A sports franchise is the most conspicuous consumption imaginable. A nice car and a house mean you’re prosperous. A plane makes you interesting. Owning a sports team cements you as fucking fascinating.
Just as crypto and SPACs, for a short time, were driven by Greater Fool Theory, sports teams are driven by Greater Fear of Death Theory. A Lamborghini impresses the valet; a sports team impresses Kim. And there are a lot of wealthy men arriving at the realization that biology is unimpressed by their money. So they spend it on their last meal of sorts: a sports team."
https://www.profgalloway.com/goals/
7. "The free world depends on U.S. leadership—as it has since the end of World War II. But Mr. Kissinger is worried. “We have no grand strategic view,” he says of the U.S. “So every strategic decision has to be wrested out of a body politic that does not organically think in these categories.” When the U.S. does adopt a strategy, it has a tendency to “go into it on the basis of overreaching moral principles, which we then apply to every country in the world with equal validity.”
America has its strengths. When challenged, “the mobilization of resources to resist the challenge is comparatively easy.” But threats are “interpreted in terms of physical conflict. So until such conflict approaches, it’s harder to mobilize. And so to act on the basis of assessment and conjecture is harder in America than in comparable countries.
Mr. Kissinger leaves no doubt that he believes in a Pax Americana and in the need “to defend the areas of the world essential for American and democratic survival.” But the ability to “execute it politically,” he says, “has declined sharply, and that is our overriding problem now.”
8. This was a good interview. Lots of stuff going on in the MENA region.
Wish more Americans travelled, we can learn alot from what the UAE gov't is doing to make themselves competitive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtFFgPcNjoc&t=2014s
9. "In the past, we’ve had two catalysts that tend to produce the opportunity to create new consumer startups at scale.
One was the emergence of a new platform, like smartphones or social media, that brought new capabilities to market and allowed entrepreneurs to either create net-new experiences or create experiences optimized for those platforms.
The second catalyst has been the emergence of newer behaviors, including one-to-many social audio, creating and consuming short-form video on mobile devices, and augmented reality experiences on mobile phones. Sometimes these new platforms come with new distribution channels that can turbocharge growth, which makes the platforms even more attractive.
Right now, it doesn’t feel like we have a large-scale new platform or enduring emergent behavior that can provide a tailwind for a new consumer company."
https://chudson.substack.com/p/will-we-ever-see-another-renaissance
10. "Some people will try to embrace this new technology and others will run in fear. History suggests that embracing the technology will be the right move, but it still makes people uncomfortable because of the uncertainty involved.
Maybe humans augmented with a computer in their brain can change things though.
Artificial intelligence is a data game. The more access to data, supposedly the better the outcomes you will get. One of the most unique data sets in the world is the information that is stored in our brains. It is nearly impossible to copy that database. You would have a hard time porting that information from one human brain to another.
But imagine overlaying the human brain with artificial intelligence — the possibilities are endless."
https://pomp.substack.com/p/elon-musk-and-the-intelligence-arms
11. Lots of entrepreneurial wisdom here. Worth reading the whole thing.
"I’ve worked with smart, well-known people who turned out to be low integrity people.
And I kinda knew it from the beginning but I forgave them because I was trying to learn and accelerate my career. That’s a mega mistake and is really leading from a place of fear.
My advice to myself would be lead from a place of abundance, not fear. You don’t need to work with low integrity people. You have your pick of the litter.
I’d rather less customers but better customers
I’d rather a co-founder who lifts me up than brings me down.
It isn’t worth it. There are enough opportunities that you do not need to work with people you do not think are easy."
https://latecheckout.substack.com/p/a-letter-to-my-20-year-old-self
12. "What’s most interesting about a thesis is that it creates lines beyond which the burden of proof is higher to break your proposed rules. Interestingly, while we’ll mostly adhere to this thesis, when you do deviate it’s perhaps because you have greater conviction. Interestingly these deviations often lead to outsized returns.
I was speaking to my friend Carl, a partner at Swedish firm Creandum recently, and he mentioned how they do not invest in LatAm, yet the few times they had were into unicorn startups. They “didn’t do it,” yet when they had it proved wildly successful.
The reason, I believe, is because the burden of proof for deviation, or drawing outside the lines, is higher. As such you probably do more homework, get more comfort, and have higher belief when you do break the rules that it’s all worth doing. As such, we have a thesis almost insofar as we can break it to find the irreverent parts of ourselves."
https://ideas.scotthartley.com/p/table-stakes-economy
13. "There will be nothing lovely about what the Ukrainian armed forces will need to do in the coming weeks and months. Success will demand an optimal blend of Ukrainian physical, moral and intellectual capacity to maximise its fighting power against Russia.
But their military offensives, along with the myriad of military, intelligence, information and diplomatic activities that will accompany them, are essential to Ukraine’s ultimate victory."
https://mickryan.substack.com/p/the-ukrainian-offensives-are-near
14. "With the ideological goal of a multi-polar world, the resources and intention to wage a technological gray war, and a desire to get an edge through espionage, it’s clear that there is an ongoing Cold War with China.
There is something left to be desired when it comes to alliance building, but that’s a grand strategy project that’s not going to be sorted out in a couple of years. Multiple generations of politicians and diplomats will have to create a Western web of alliances that can hold its own against the centralized powers of the Chinese Communist Party led by Xi Jinping."
https://sss.substack.com/p/knots-of-war
15. "Assuming that the Belgorod raid is aimed at forcing the Russians to divert more forces to defend its own territory, it is another piece of evidence that the major part of the Ukrainian counteroffensive is still a ways a way (in other words that we are still in the shaping stage of the offensive—with the Belgorod Raid an example of a shaping operation).
It would take Russia time to switch forces to the border areas—and Ukraine would want time to launch more raids to persuade them to do it and to give the Russians time to redeploy.
So the raid was probably a sign that the major part of the counteroffensive is still a ways a way—otherwise why do it?"
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/weekend-update-30
16. "What I can tell with certainty is that for the vast majority of people, life does not get better with time. In fact, it gets worse.
Their bodies grow older, they put on weight, their income doesn’t rise much, and the stress from their jobs shows on their face.
Life does not get better unless you make it better. If you are not working to actively make life better, it will only get worse."
https://lifemathmoney.com/does-life-get-better-with-time-where-are-you-headed-in-10-years/
17. "Non-venture backable software companies could explode. If the price of software drops dramatically, that means we will get more software. Most likely that means more fragmented software markets, and that means perhaps we see a lot of $15M revenue software companies with 5 employees and 30% net margins that can’t grow at venture scale."
https://investinginai.substack.com/p/will-ai-kill-vertical-saas
18. What a stupid thing. No phone case being the ultimate flex. Not for me.
"But while some may associate the concept with fine tailoring, a rejection of logomania, or cashmere sweaters from the Row that will set you back over $1000, there’s one quietly trending stealth wealth signifier that, technically, millions of people could adopt right now: stripping the case off your smartphone.
The message here is obvious: no case, no problem, because I can afford to replace it."
https://time.com/6280905/iphone-no-case-rich-people/
19. We absolutely need to be building back up our military industrial base in America. ASAP.
"Back then, the U.S. had 86 military ammunition plants as part of an industrial mobilization designed to meet wartime ammunition needs. Over the decades, the number of facilities dwindled. Today, the Pentagon has just five so-called “government-owned, contractor-operated” plants that supply the military with most of its conventional ammunition, propellants and explosives.
General Dynamics has been enhancing recruitment efforts in anticipation of additional artillery orders for the Scranton plant."
https://time.com/6252541/inside-the-us-army-plant-making-artillery-shells-for-ukraine/
20. Logistics and supply chain are critical pieces of winning wars.
"To understand how the U.S. and its allies are delivering this arsenal, TIME spent months speaking with dozens of people in the U.S. and Europe involved in planning, manufacturing, and distributing military aid for Ukraine.
Those conversations, as well as visits to three states and three countries to observe different elements of the effort, revealed an operation that has overcome many of the challenges posed by supply-chain issues, diminished manufacturing capabilities, and international logistics to get Ukraine what it needs.
But it remains an open question whether the mission can be executed quickly enough to ensure success on the battlefield."
https://time.com/6274688/arming-ukraine-counteroffensive/
21. "Examining the blue whale's life cycle and Redstone's corporate empire, a pattern emerges—one that mirrors the laws of nature and the stark realities of power. The decomposing bodies of these behemoths, one from the natural world and the other from the realm of industry, essentially become a feast for scavengers, whether they be marine critters or high-flying execs.
However, the repercussions diverge: The blue whale's death provides valuable nutrition and contributes to the rich biodiversity of marine life, while Redstone's personal and corporate value mostly ends up captured by a small group of middle managers who contribute nothing.
These stories serve a dual purpose. They're sober reminders of certain immutable truths of existence. The blue whale eventually meets its end, transforming into a charcuterie board for deep-sea scavengers. Similarly, the power and wealth of a billionaire like Redstone ultimately dwindles, leaving behind remnants that attract a flock of opportunists."
https://every.to/napkin-math/a-note-on-power
22. "That’s what Toffler missed. The future came and it didn’t shock us with its complexity. They simplified everything so we can manage by swiping left or right, or just clicking on a button.
It’s “information underload” nowadays—and huge corporations work to deliver it. They ensure that our digital lives have no shocks or surprises. Their algorithms are designed to deliver today something almost identical to what they gave us yesterday. And tomorrow will be no different.
As a result, the future has fallen from view, replaced by a sense of stasis. And so has the past, which ought to be a resource but has become so weightless that it might as well not exist at all. All this is causing real sicknesses, and we don’t need to invent new names for them. They’ve been around a while, only now they’re much worse and afflicting more people.
In a situation like this, we ought to reverse Alvin Toffler’s advice. We need more change, not less. And it ought to be centered on the areas of greatest numbness and disconnectedness. I’m talking about the culture itself, not the technology."
https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/in-1970-alvin-toffler-predicted-the
23. This is worth watching. Jensen Huang of Nvidia's commencement speech at NTU in Taiwan.
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7068599441879953408/
24. Malmo, Sweden is a very cool town. I will need to find some time to re-visit it after a 12 year hiatus.
25. Big fan of this guy. I agree with 90% of what he says. Justin Waller is the man.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xG7oQoo9YpA
26. "Any reasonable assessment of Xi's personality and China's own stated goals to become the world's preeminent power suggest not.
But the piece of the puzzle that really should worry us is that China will increasingly have the military to go far beyond Taiwan. As a matter of pure logic, this does not strictly mean they will, but that is the only prudent bet.
The upshot of this is that Washington, Tokyo and their allies should be prepared to defend Taiwan, with the goal of deterring Beijing from attacking by demonstrating that its efforts to subordinate the island would be too likely to fail.
If Beijing cannot seize the island, its forces will still be essentially constrained behind the island chain formed by the Japanese archipelago, Taiwan and the Philippines. In this context, Beijing will be compelled to negotiate the terms of its further rise on grounds tolerable to the rest of us."
https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/China-s-military-buildup-shows-its-ambitions-go-well-beyond-Taiwan
27. "If China’s economy is to withstand a military conflict with Taiwan, and the inevitable sanctions that such an attack would trigger, it needs to ensure a stable supply of energy. That means fuel for the economy, as well as for the citizens who power it.
Ensuring that China’s population has enough food has plagued every leader since the imperial dynasties. The country is home to one-fifth of the world’s population but only 7% of its arable land and as the population has urbanised, diets have shifted and the number of farmers has declined.
That has left China increasingly reliant on imports to fill its 1.4 billion stomachs. If, in the event of a conflict with Taiwan, China enters a wartime economy, then ensuring a stable food supply will be vital for China’s leaders."
28. "While the roles he has chosen for his acting return are familiar, he’s approaching the work from a whole new vantage point. After an early career that saw him take on movie after sitcom after reality show—always grinding—and a decade-plus of frenzied tabloid attention, Kutcher is settled now. Free. He’s married to an old friend who became a life partner, and he’s enjoying fatherhood.
Kutcher is very much financially independent, too, thanks in no small part to his wildly successful second career in venture-capital investing.
His friend and fellow venture investor Josh Kushner vouches for Kutcher’s skill at assessing opportunities. “Some are surprised that Ashton is good at this, because he has another job that is completely different,” says Kushner. “The reason why he is an exceptional investor is no different than why other people are. He is deeply creative and an extraordinary product thinker.”
Kutcher’s goal in the VC space is simple: as he puts it, “to find cool shit and solve big problems.” The problems change—that’s what keeps it interesting, even as the market gets crowded and good deals get harder to find. Right now, Kutcher has two big themes on his mind: sustainability and the paradigm-shifting potential of AI. Finding the right innovators and disrupters to bet on isn’t easy, but Kutcher’s been right before. On a grand scale, too. And not just with Uber and Airbnb. Spotify. Pinterest. Warby Parker. Those, too."
The Battle of Midway: Heroism in War
The pacific war in WW2 was one of the most horrific campaigns fought. But one of the most critical battles was that of Midway where the whole course of the war was at stake with the American west coast at risk. This was the turning point as Japan was pretty much winning every battle till then. Up that moment the Japanese navy was thought to be unstoppable and the US Navy wildly overmatched skill-wise and majorly outnumbered.
The Americans launched an audacious trap which resulted in the sinking of 4 Japanese carriers, buying America time to ramp up their industrial base and military for war.
The US Navy suffered tremendous losses and in this specific battle they lost half of their pilots doing it. The war defined America at its best.
There is a scene in the Roland Emmerich movie of Midway that I found indicative.
One of the officers Dick Best, is trying to convince his copilot to get back in a plane after a hellacious bombing run on the Japanese carriers.
“You’ll remember this moment for the rest of your life. If you know you came through for the people counting on you, you will be able to face anything. We’ve come this far, don’t make me go out there without you.”
These men literally turned the tide of the war in the Pacific. They held the line and bought time for America. True heroes.
We should all take heart from their courage and heroism and try to put it into every little thing that we do in life. We should honor their sacrifice and be a worthy legacy for them.
Top Gun Maverick: Lessons in Self Sacrifice & Doing the Right Thing
I obviously loved this movie. Watched it like 50 times at least. There is a great scene in the beginning of the movie when Maverick decides to take one last flight of the hypersonic plane ahead of an Admiral showing up. This is to make the Mach 10 grade so the program is not canceled.
As he is taxing up the runway, His colleague asks him: “it’s not too late to stop, you know what happens to you if you go through with this.”
Maverick replies: “I know what happens to everyone if I don’t”. Basically everyone else loses their job if the program gets shut down. He is willing to risk his career for others.
Yes, this is just a movie. But think about the workplace or political world in our modern life. How few people would be willing to risk their careers, let alone their lives for someone else. I’d throw myself in this. As a man, I hope I will do the right thing. But you won’t really know until that moment.
We’ve been so lucky to live in the prosperous world that we are in that we have not been put in these situations. And also where the stakes are relatively low. We’ve not had to exercise this “muscle”. Instead we have low stakes, lots of virtue signaling and plenty of cowardice around us. That’s why “ghosting” is a thing now. It’s such a weak move when you disappear without closing things off because you don’t want to have the difficult conversation.
But the world is changing. And we’re going to be put in a hard place where tough decisions will come fast and hard. And doing the “right thing” comes at deep personal costs. Even more so than before.
I read about some Russians who left their country & family to join the Ukrainian Armed forces to fight against the barbaric invading Russian army. What bravery and what honor! Especially the former Gazprom executive who gave up a cushy life to fight as seen here: https://www.reuters.com/world/im-not-afraid-says-ex-gazprombank-executive-who-defected-ukraine-2022-04-28/.
If only all of us would have the guts to do a shade of this in our everyday life. It’s something I think about and aspire to every single day. It’s the only way to make the world better for each other.
Marvin’s Best Weekly Reads May 28th, 2023
"For the great doesn't happen through impulse alone, and is a succession of little things that are brought together."--Vincent Van Gogh
These are some smart guys. Every young and old man needs to watch this. I wish I learned some of this much earlier in my life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx83bNO00R8
2. "Since 2016, the average monthly burn rate difference between successful and unsuccessful companies has been fairly small: $59,333 for successful graduates vs. $47,365 for companies that failed to graduate.
This suggests that the more important thing is how the money is spent and what it produces than how much is spent overall. The job of a pre-seed founder is to turn investor dollars into insights that get the company closer to finding product-market fit."
https://chudson.substack.com/p/finding-the-right-burn-rate-for-pre
3. This looks good. Bit dystopian but good Sci-Fi.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXiFamc5bYI
4. "Hype is good for innovation: it attracts capital, draws talent, and raises awareness from prospective customers. But inevitably expectations get out of touch with reality and the hype bursts. What happens next depends on user adoption or, put differently, the technology finding product market fit.
For early stage investors, success isn't about predicting the future of how technology evolves. Rather it’s about finding signs of a clear market need (that may appear nascent or even solved by existing players) and backing teams who can capitalize on these needs. In short, when it comes to returns, product-market-fit eats hype for lunch."
https://1984.substack.com/p/hype-the-enemy-of-early-stage-returns
5. "U.S. intelligence agencies have long tracked Beijing’s clandestine attempts at political influence inside the United States.
And they don’t like what they see. One former CIA analyst put it bluntly: Beijing’s agents in this country aim “to turn Americans against their own government’s interests and their society’s interests.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-china-built-an-army-of-influence-agents-in-the-us
6. "Bottom line: The discussion we should be having in the United States and among our allies is about the imperative to rebuild our capacity. Simply reallocating assets from one theater to the other solves nothing. It fails to address the structural vulnerability that remains. The expansion of our defense-industrial base is the answer for another reason: During the last 20 years of operations in Afghanistan and in the Middle East, our logistical supply lines were secure.
But in the environment of actual and potential great-power conflict that we inhabit today, we must assume that our logistical chains will be threatened, making systemic redundancies for weapons stocks and ammunition imperative.
Today we have a non-NATO force grinding down Russian land forces on non-NATO territory — all Ukraine needs is weapons and money to buy us more time to rearm. In the process, the Ukrainian military is in effect dismantling the two-frontier crisis, while Beijing watches carefully whether we have the political will to complete the job.
The starting point for any grand strategy in our era of great-power competition is an acknowledgement that the European and Asian theaters are connected, and that Ukraine and Taiwan are not an either/or proposition."
https://www.19fortyfive.com/2023/05/ukraine-vs-taiwan-americas-defeatist-pointless-debate/
7. "With Nuclear weapons your can destroy cities from the comfort of your own home. Russia and the United States have thousands of them. In WW1 If you were a not obligated by treaty to join the war you could be incentivized by land gains. If you participate in WW3 in a meaningful way, the only thing you’re going to gain is an extra ICBM.
The potential to get nuked will disincentivize all countries that are not bound by treaty from joining in. Some countries would even hugely benefit from not participating and watching the involved parties destroy each other (what the US did in WW1 lol)."
https://bowtiedhitman.substack.com/p/ww3-will-not-happen
8. Valuable conversation here. Pretty agree with many of these thoughts here. Worth listening to if you are a startup founder or investor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oc5tHbEK0IQ
9. I wish the so-called Realists actually understood how NATO actually works. This is a good counter to the BS that NATO caused Russia to invade Ukraine. Russian propaganda and the Vatnik enablers like Sachs, Sacks, & Mearsheimer among others.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh4QU7hxKVg
10. Maximum bullish on Japan. Macro outlook is very good.
"All said, the ability and willingness of Japan’s private sector -households and corporations- to take risks is going up, and public policy remains steadfast in its commitment to promote it; and -in contrast to fellow G7 leaders- PM Kishida and BoJ Governor Ueda are more worried about tightening pre-maturely than about needing to be conservative.
Clear-speak: after more than thirty years, a positive break-out above the historic “Bubble Peak” of 40,000 on the NIKKEI stock index is finally becoming a realistic prospect over the next 15-18 months."
https://japanoptimist.substack.com/p/were-all-bullish-japan-now
11. "Bringing all these factors together results in higher churn rates and reduced consumption revenue that is worse than anticipated. Record high downgrades and cancellations translates into even lower growth rates. Premature increased customer growth plus premature downgrades and cancellations paint an incorrect picture.
Startups would do well to take their historical gross and net renewal rates applied to their core business and project out potential scenarios. Core growth plus traditional renewal rates will likely result in reaccelerating growth in the near future.
The good news: once this painful series of adjustments works its way through the system and we’re at the new normal, growth rates will improve. Many startups have strong business models delivering tremendous value to their customers. The lack of growth is masked by remnants of one-time extra growth and one-time extra churn. Higher, renewed growth is on the horizon."
https://davidcummings.org/2023/05/20/many-startups-will-reaccelerate-growth
12. "Russia was and is too weak to have ever conquered even half of Ukraine, let alone achieve the kind of maximalist goals that Putin possessed, and we see now that the Russian economy cannot even produce the kinds of weaponry needed to hold on to 18% of the country. It was why I thought if Putin had any idea of the situation he was in, he would have tried to back out back at the start."
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/weekend-update-29
13. Love Packy's newsletter. This was a good, optimistic and interesting interview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOfWnBcBdPY
14. Always better to assume incompetence not malevolence. China's Belt & Road Initiative is a mess. I ascribe to this view.
https://twitter.com/nils_gilman/status/1659892961801564160
15. "In speaking with many startups and people on the buy side of technology, it feels like things are changing. More customers seem to want fewer things - fewer vendors, less complexity, and better ROI for their software spend. I think internal cost-cutting initiatives are driving some of this desire to revisit the benefits of best-of-breed products versus bundles.
In addition to the cost-cutting pressure, the complexity of managing multiple best-of-breed products is starting to create challenges for customers, many of whom have smaller teams due to layoffs or hiring freezes. In some cases, I’m seeing the pendulum swing back toward having a single system or vendor where everything works over assembling one’s own collection of individual tools.
I am curious to see how this transition plays out. As someone who invests primarily in companies that do not yet have product-market fit, the un-bundled software world has been a great place to invest. You can build an MVP for a product of limited scope with a modest budget. Buyers were very willing to purchase point solutions from new vendors if those products could address the buyer’s pain points.
Moving back toward a world where buyers have a strong preference for do-it-all bundled products could upend all of this."
https://chudson.substack.com/p/the-rebundling-cycle-has-begun-in
16. "As with near-every technological innovation, AI will inspire job losses in the short run and then, over the long term, net job creation. Automation destroyed jobs on the factory floor, but at first we didn’t see the jobs that heated seats and car stereos would create.
There will be a plethora of new service providers in the streaming business that leverage AI. In addition, there is usually a “winner takes most” effect. A decent writer gets culled, a great writer earns more. In sum, AI won’t take your job, but someone who understands AI will.
Pro tip: While you’re on strike, let your Netflix queue grow and play with Notion AI."
https://www.profgalloway.com/struck/
17. I don't expect this to last but a recession could be pushed back a bit longer.
"As we’ve discussed repeatedly, consumer finances have been in remarkably good shape despite what weak sentiment may suggest. And robust demand for labor continues to fuel job creation. All of this represents massive tailwinds powering spending, which has been bolstering economic growth for months.
Just last week, San Francisco Fed researchers estimated consumers were still collectively sitting on $500 billion in excess savings — the extra cash consumers piled up since February 2020, thanks to a combination of government financial support and limited spending options during the pandemic."
https://www.tker.co/p/consumer-spending-resilient-finances-strong
18. WORD.
"No doubt Momoa misses his family, but he also recognizes this is the life he’s chosen. “I don’t get to see my kids right now for a very long time. I gotta share things with them,” he says, his rapid-fire speech pattern slowing way down.
“I’m doing everything that I want to do, everything that I’m designed to do. And you’ve got to do that. I want my children to know that and do that. I worked for a very long time when they were young doing shit I didn’t want to do to put food on the table.
And now? You should only work with the people you wanna work with. You should create with the people you wanna create with. And if you’re not, then you got one shot in this life—you gotta get the fuck out. Whatever situation you’re in, you gotta find your path, you know?”
https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/a43530779/jason-momoa-fast-x-interview/
19. "If you could achieve whatever professional goals you’ve set out for yourself, but you couldn’t tell anyone that you’d achieved them, would you still want them? The question can help remove the noise of other’s opinions and center the desire that are uniquely your own.
The key to thick professional desires, in my mind, is to craft a personal definition of success that takes into account what you value and what the market values — in the words of theologian Frederick Buechner, to figure out “where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
Some of that gladness may come from your working life. Some of it might come from what your job allows you to do when you’re not working. But getting clear on what you care about — independent of any particular job, title, or company — is a good place to start."
https://read.lukeburgis.com/p/how-to-craft-an-anti-mimetic-career
20. "The entitlements problem is all too real. But, there are ways out. First, people will simply work longer. They are already postponing retirement. Fidelity’s data shows that the percentage of its clients who have enough savings to cover their retirement expenses is down by five percentage points since before COVID, “to 78%”.
Not surprisingly, then, older people are returning to work or postponing retirement. Others are not retiring at all and instead creating a portfolio of cash and wealth-generating activities. Some will pay off; some won’t. But the trend is clear.
The over 55’s are now the fastest growing component of the labour force according to The Bureau of Labour Statistics. They write, “Among people age 75 years and older, the labor force is expected to grow by 96.5 percent over the next decade.” Employers are loving this for many reasons.
But, perhaps the single biggest reasons are 1.
These Boomers bring a much-desired old-fashioned work ethic into the workplace and 2. They bring a wealth of experience that money cannot otherwise buy. These older workers are not in it for just the money either.
They are seeking purpose, fulfilment and human connection. Employers find it easier to deliver on these requirements than it is to find more cash for higher wages."
https://drpippa.substack.com/p/why-druckenmiller-and-the-pessimists
21. "I am not sure if there is a real takeaway or “so what” from this blog post. It’s an observation that, like many other technologists I know (the amazing Gary Laudermade a similar assertion recently which truly resonated), I am rather good at predicting how the future of technology will play out. However, because I can easily imagine this future, I believe it will happen very soon, while culture and institutions move slowly, and things end up playing out over decades.
As a friend told me: “entrepreneurs confuse the present with the future. Their conception of it is so realistic that they often think they’re already there.” Perhaps as my thoughts on AI are highlighting, I am now correcting for that in my investing behavior, if not in my fundamental optimism."
https://fabricegrinda.com/timing-is-everything/
22. "Momentum is building for the Arabs to be a force in the new world order that is emerging. Many in the Arab world believe that now is a golden opportunity for the Arabs to make their presence felt in the world. The Arabs are strategically, demographically, and geographically well positioned to emerge as an autonomous pole of global influence in the coming decades.
The Arab world is a swing player in the great power rivalry. The Arabs’ decisions about their own future strategic direction will help determine how the great power competition plays out and contribute to shaping the international and regional systems.
What we are experiencing today is nothing short of global regime change. We have already seen so many changes in the current decade – and it has only just started. The next few years are set to be the most eventful, and perhaps the most dangerous, since World War II. The evolution of global multipolarity did not start recently as a result of the vacuum left by those losing relative power.
It began during and after the Second World War when peoples in different regions of the world broke the shackles of colonialism. Momentum for change only accelerated after the 2008 global financial crisis. The transformative shift gained further traction with the pandemic and the Ukraine crisis."
23. "So beyond policies in the developed democracies aimed at forcing decoupling, a lot is just going to happen on its own, due to a combination of China’s increasingly unfriendly business climate and the increasingly obvious risk of assets in China vaporizing in the event of a war. And if I’m right about that, it will represent not a clean or sudden break with the past, but a continuation of a decoupling trend that has been in evidence for about a decade, for those who cared to look.
But wherever the investment goes, the clear fact is that the old world where China was a push-button, no-brainer destination for corporate investment is being swept away."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/decoupling-is-just-going-to-happen
24. "These regulations have indeed left scars. Entrepreneurs in sectors that include ride-hailing, video games, and especially online tutoring were left shell-shocked. But pain set in for sectors that went beyond those directly targeted by the state. A common sentiment from an entrepreneur goes along the lines of: "I would like to focus on building a business and working on my product; instead I'm being forced to become a political scientist to understand the direction of policy."
The major question today is whether these scars will persist or fade over the next few years. It's undeniable that a lot of entrepreneurs were angry about the crackdown; and there are many anecdotal reports of wealthy Chinese who have decided to move to Singapore. Beijing has shifted its tone since the end of 2022, saying the most soothing words about how much it loves private businesses. But who can blame entrepreneurs for feeling skeptical, after many of their creations were strangled by the state?
I think that one of China's essential problem is one of state overcapacity. Since imperial times, state officials would rarely hesitate to entirely restructure a peasant's relationship to her land. The Communist Party has had even fewer scruples.
I think that China stands out because state officials are often mesmerized by some strain of utopianism; but it has the unique capacity to pursue these visions harder than other states. And because it doesn't know when to give up, the Chinese people suffer peculiar disasters."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/interview-dan-wang-china-specialist
25. "Confidence that China's economy can rebound from Covid restrictions is untethered to economic realities, Rockefeller International chair Ruchir Sharma wrote in the Financial Times.
"Something is rotten in the Chinese economy, but don't expect Wall Street analysts to tell you about it," he said, listing several indicators that point to underlying weakness.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinas-economy-turned-rotten-reopening-232901546.html
26. Not sure what to think here. I'm biased & pro-USA & Ukraine here, so see nothing wrong with this (except for risking Nuclear war due to our clumsiness).
"Based on its actions, the US strategy in this war (see “America Needs Enemies” for more) is focused on regaining the global dominance it had after the end of the Cold War, with an understanding that it won’t be squandered on policing peripheral disputes (the Middle East, Afghanistan, terrorism, etc.). Instead, it will be focused on boxing in Russia, China, and any other emerging power that seeks to challenge US control."
https://johnrobb.substack.com/p/the-end-of-the-western-swarm
27. Big relevant topic. Is De-Dollarization happening? I think it's a long way off but inevitable the way we are running things.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTwwNoh0E6Q
28. Hmmm.....this explains alot of the weird geopolitical movement toward China that Saudi Arabia has made (besides MBS hating Biden personally)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4V2s5-lOKAA&list=RDCMUCsy9I56PY3IngCf_VGjunMQ&index=1
29. "If you look at startup exits (liquidity events), they’ve been practically non-existent for the past six quarters. These startups exiting and returning capital to VCs and their investors (LPs) is typically what funds the majority of capital being invested into the venture capital asset class. But who can blame them?
Valuations are down significantly since 2021. It also means valuations are down in other asset classes, which institutional LPs will likely need to sell in to make new venture investments.
None of this bodes well for emerging managers. It’s the riskiest sub-asset class within venture capital, of which is one of the riskiest asset classes. This makes it very impacted during funding pullbacks."
https://www.thespl.it/p/emerging-managers-are-not-ok
30. This is a great episode this time. The guys are really good when it comes to talking about the tech industry.
Health is Wealth: Never Forget This
I’ve always been blessed with having great health ever since I’ve been a child. I rarely get sick and if I do, it’s because I wore myself down from too much work and travel combined with crazy extreme weather. Add my regular biohacking and supplements, it’s very rare that I get sick. And naturally I tend to take this for granted until I get badly ill.
This happened to me in Q4, 2022, during a trip to Uzbekistan. I’d been on a whirlwind of travel the prior 5 months and also stressed from having made too many commitments of various projects, deals and initiatives. So when I got to Tashkent, with an overly packed schedule and an unusual drop in temperature I subsequently became incredibly ill, even losing my voice. My hosts there were incredibly gracious and kind, trying different home brews to try to heal me but what was needed was just plain rest and sleep which my schedule there did not allow for. This sickness dragged on when I returned to San Francisco, losing a whole week in bed. An awful Hacking cough, foggy brain and plain weakness throughout the body. Last time I felt this bad was when I got Covid earlier in 2022.
Now why do I raise this beyond just bitching and moaning? It’s a clear reminder of the importance of taking care of yourself physically. You can have money, you can have time but if you don’t have decent health, you can’t enjoy anything. I was so excited to visit Uzbekistan for the first time. I got to see the amazing Silk Road splendors of Bukhara and Samarkand, but I was in tremendous pain and in brain fog the entire time. It was pretty much the same as not being there frankly. I just did not get to enjoy the place as much as I would have liked.
Health is wealth. That is Rule 1. Never forget it or you will regret it. Take care of yourself and make sure you understand your limits. You will never get that time back.