“I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive”--Joseph Campbell
A strong case against Xi Jingping's China. We have to establish growth, deterrence and stability.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wQYf2PspkI&t=2167s
"The reason for this explosion is simple: the cost of starting a software company has plummeted. What once required $1–2M of funding to hire a small team can now be achieved by two founders (or even a solo founder) with little more than a laptop or two and a $20/month subscription to ChatGPT Pro.
With these tools, founders can build, test, and iterate at unprecedented speeds. The product build-iterate-test-repeat cycle is insanely short. If each iteration is a “shot on goal,” the $1–2M of the past bought you a few shots within a 12–18 month runway. Today, that $20/month can buy you a shot every few hours.
This dramatic drop in costs, coupled with exponentially faster iteration speeds, has led to a flood of startups entering the market in each category. Competition has never been fiercer. This relentless pace also means faster failures, and the startup graveyard is now overflowing."
https://allensthoughts.com/2025/01/09/ai-has-democratized-everything/
Always a good discussion on Silicon Valley with BG2.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8chNXhA8o8
Learning from the best. Hedge funder who learned at the feet of two of the top guys around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCMMbBz4uRk
"Military support to Ukraine - actually there appears to be a commitment herein from the US to continue to supply military kit to Ukraine. I think this is far more credible/realistic in ensuring Ukraine’s defence. If Ukraine is assured supply of the full range of conventional military kit to defend itself I think it can assure its own security - the evidence is the fact that Ukrainians have held back a far better armed foe, Russia, now for close to three years.
I would call this the State of Israel assurance - giving Ukraine the same access to military tech as what Israel currently gets from the US. Russia will obvioualy aim to set limits on Ukraine’s military capability as Putin will want the option of invading again in the future. This will be a key battle in negotiations, and could ultimately determine whether Ukraine has security, and it is sustainable long term.
I would think if the talks are going to stall/fail it will be around the issue of territorial give ups, European troop deployments and also around what military capability Ukraine is assured of - Russia will look to limit the arms supplies to Ukraine as part of any deal, but without NATO membership or other security guarantees Ukraine will see limitations on its future military capability as a make or break issue for talks."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/ukraine-the-peace-plan
Conversation on how the US or any country can stay ahead technologically.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS8Ue2B1wm4&t=5s
The Future of AI from two of the top investors around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ3pNPFwAeM
"Bicycles, sanitation, airplanes, vaccines, and Crispr are just a few technologies that have changed the world, but their benefits were dispersed across society rather than being hoarded by a few shareholders. I increasingly believe AI will join this roster — it presents dynamics similar to most stakeholder vs. shareholder innovations:
Government-backed or university-developed (the internet, GPS, vaccines);
Open-source or public domain (Linux, Python, Wikipedia, USB); and
Too foundational to be monopolized (bicycles, sanitation, airplanes).
In sum, the winners here will be stakeholders, not shareholders. Scan your emotions after reading the last sentence. Did you reflexively grab your shareholder pearls and feel this was, maybe, a bad thing? It isn’t.
America becomes more like itself every day, and our obsession with, and idolatry of, the dollar has put the public good in the back seat. Billions of stakeholders benefiting from AI, vs. one business becoming worth more than every stock market on Earth except Japan and the US, and one man being worth more than Boeing feels less sexy … less American. (Hint: NVDA & Jensen Huang.)"
https://www.profgalloway.com/a-new-ai-world/
Always learning from this guy. Lots of insights on where tech is going.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wG97nnGmaKk&t=1155s
Lots of good discussion here on what's up in Silicon Valley news. Softbank & AI Super Bowl: short everything!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9idY0ind-H8&t=907s
Great power war? At least a Cold War for sure. "The Eurasian Century" is worth reading.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws8X2rbdlXs
"The Pitchbook numbers are accurate, but the conclusions are not.
I think the opposite will happen. Counter-intuitively, I think the number of VCs will continue to grow.
More VCs will be needed because the VC model now applies to all industries. AI will make all companies digital technology companies between 2024-2040 and hopefully accelerate their growth. Thus the surface area where VC investment applies will expand: defense, healthcare, energy, climate, space, techbio, education, government, etc. More VCs will be needed to cover all that surface area."
https://www.nfx.com/post/venture-capital-3
"The next time you talk to an entrepreneur, listen to his voice. Pay attention to the excitement around the idea. After the conversation, do a mental analysis of his level of passion. Some of the most successful entrepreneurs I know are also the most passionate about their mission."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/02/08/the-entrepreneurs-passion/
"The rouble is depreciating again, too, nearing the lows it experienced after a brief crash at the outset of the war; this means Russians won’t be able to afford as many imported goods.
The economic troubles aren’t at a crisis point yet, but they are probably causing strains in Russian society — birth rates are falling, crime is up, and elites are getting restless. It has now been three years since Russia invaded Ukraine; historically speaking, maintaining a high-intensity war effort for more than three or four years is pretty difficult. World War 1 lasted only four years, and the Korean War lasted three.
Nor does Ukraine look like it’s about to be overrun and conquered in the next year. Despite the constant drumbeat of headlines about Russian advances, on a map the amount of territory seized — about 1600 square miles in 2024 — looks pretty minor. As for the prospect that Ukraine’s military will collapse, that looks unlikely too — the country has far less manpower than Russia does, but it has enough to keep defending tenaciously and making Russia pay for every square mile of territory for a while yet.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s economy is growing, and domestic arms production is soaring. The country has built a bunch of hardened underground factories, and now claims to be able to produce 4 million drones per year. Even if Trump does decide to draw down U.S. aid to Ukraine, that will probably not cause Ukraine to collapse. The Ukrainians are not flimsy U.S. puppets; they’re dead set on defending their country against the invader by any means necessary, and they’re very good at making stuff.
So while the Russians isn’t ready to make a peace deal yet, if Trump puts increased economic and military pressure on them, there’s a decent chance they could be persuaded to accept the offer.
The next question is: What happens then?
My bet is that Ukraine’s leaders have already thought along these lines. I predict that they’re probably ready to take the plunge and sign a deal of the type Trump is proposing, even though doing so could spell the end of their political careers. And because Putin almost certainly understands this historical parallel, he’s reluctant to make that deal — he knows it means that most of Ukraine will semi-permanently escape Russia’s orbit, fulfilling the dreams that Ukrainian nationalists have cherished for over 150 years. But if it’s a choice between that and a catastrophe in Russia, I think he might take the deal anyway.
In other words, given Ukraine’s inherent military weaknesses — a lack of manpower, and a small population compared to Russia’s — Trump’s deal is probably the best they can get. So if Trump really wants to follow through on his campaign promise and end the war, his primary task is to convince Russia, by hook or by crook, that his deal is the best they can get."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/whats-going-to-happen-to-ukraine
I don't like MacGregor who is a Russia shill but many of the things he talks about is correct. USA is donor-run oligarchy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn8KxL6sMyI
"In the early dawn hours, as the sun rose in the first week of December 2024, a symphony of drones began to sound.
But this was no ordinary drone wave.
In fact, this one was the first attack of its kind: a successful, all-drone assault on Russian positions. The assault, deserving of a place in the history books, took place near Lyptsi, in the Kharkiv region of northeastern Ukraine.
It was a test – initially expected to fail – of whether multiple units could orchestrate a mission with dozens of FPV, recon, turret-mounted, and kamikaze drones all working in tandem on the ground and in the air."
https://newsletter.counteroffensive.pro/p/the-first-ever-all-drone-assault-by-ukraine
I try to listen to different opinions. Detest MacGregor & his Russian propaganda & isolationism, Pascal Lottaz is a naive European. But there is much here to consider.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ixu6MB3T_qE
Erik Prince is an American treasure. Letter of Marques & Private Military Companies coming back for sure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIeNObrmUc8
This was a fun interview on investing and thinking about careers & philanthropy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0v_DWE-Sio4
This is an Alt-geopolitics conversation. Very non-mainstream views, his observations on the power of London City financial centre are interesting, something there.
Disagree with his perspective of the Russian invasion of Ukraine & his anti-Israel views which are incredibly bizarre. Krainer is kooky.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL8daFrsVZg
Great profile on the long historical megacity of Chengdu.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6DR5Hh4AHM
Dr Pippa's writing has been very insightful. This panel talk was interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mowxwJOpgoA
"This is where the second theory comes in: if Trump was actually threatening tariffs to negotiate, he got outplayed by both Sheinbaum and Trudeau. Why? These seem like token gestures. There’s nothing in any of these “deals” that he couldn’t have gotten with a simple phone call. This is also a very inefficient use of force. This would be the equivalent of holding a grenade in your hand, walking up to your neighbor, and saying, “Give me a pen or I’ll blow both of us up.” Your neighbor would give you a confused look and say they would have given you the pen anyway. You didn’t need the grenade.
Round one goes to Mexico and Trudeau because for the threat level they didn’t give up much, Xi Jinping didn’t say a word, and Trump did not increase tariffs on Canada as promised after they retaliated."
https://www.globalhitman.com/p/the-trump-tariff-wars-round-1
Very illuminating and nuanced discussion on China under Xi. Well worth listening to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gDqOqeKARM
"You can optimize for many things. Money. Freedom. Fame. Sleeping well at night. Great relationships. Learning the secrets of the universe.
But here’s one of those secrets. You can only optimize for one thing at a time. So I’ve chosen to optimize for energy, because as long as I have energy, I can achieve all the other things at my own pace.
How do I optimize for energy? I get more sleep, I work out regularly, I eat well, and I spend some time having fun every day.
What do you optimize for?"
https://newsletter.sanjaysays.co/p/feeling-tired-and-run-down
"There are important similarities between the choices faced by ancient and modern leaders. Trump and Xi both have choices, just as Hadrian and Chosroes did. Neither may choose to step back from potential conflict, particularly from their positions on Taiwan, but the choice to do so exists. It would be helpful if the policy community could move past preoccupation with the “Thucydides Trap” and realize that a range of options exists for peaceful coexistence between the U.S. and China. Hadrian had a vast array of competing interests as Trump and Xi will. He chose the peace and stability of the Roman Empire over the previous path of conquest and expansion. He faced pushback, particularly from the Roman elites, yet held to the course that avoided war.
His descendants eventually chose otherwise, reflecting the inevitability of change in international arrangements. Yet this does not change he chose not to act based on the supposition that shifts in the balance of power made another Parthian war inevitable. He had choices, and chose peace. U.S. and Chinese leadership can and hopefully will choose to do the same."
"One lens through which to view companies is to ask "what companies are an index of their underlying market"?
Index companies often take a cut of every transaction in their space, or are a piece of infrastructure everyone in the market needs. For example, it is a hard to launch something into space in the West without using SpaceX. These companies may be ways to participate in the market broadly without having to worry about how wins in it."
https://blog.eladgil.com/p/index-companies
Identify where the world is going and get in front of it. Lots of investing wisdom here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbVSGu7CiYE
This is a hard discussion on the massive changes in the geopolitical world.
American power is declining. This is the harsh truth because we have alienated many countries in the world and our massive debt makes us weaker.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eb86povWn00
"The small-car driver takes risks because he has no other choice (or so he thinks). The large-car driver takes risks selectively, because he can afford to.
This is the fundamental difference between an investor with limited capital and one with substantial wealth. When you have little, you’re forced to play an aggressive game, often at the cost of risk management. When you have more, you can afford patience, discipline, and strategy.
Of course, not everyone starts in the large car. Many successful investors began in the small one, taking risks to build their wealth. But the best understood that once they reached a certain level, their game had to change. They switched from chasing returns to preserving capital, from high-risk bets to calculated investments."
https://buildingthingsthatlast.substack.com/p/a-tale-of-two-drivers
"There are many opportunities – but also so many unanswered questions and challenges to overcome.
Even if rebuilding the Ukrainian economy began soon, it will likely be 10% below its pre-war level in 2027. This provides an idea for how long a process is needed before the country can get back to some kind of normal, economically and financially.
Besides, there are many voices who don't quite believe yet that a deal will be struck, or that a deal can be executed successfully.
Still, it all boils down to this: with a potentially new political set-up and plenty of financial support from the West, we could see Ukraine develop in a previously unseen fashion. It might be a 10-20-year investment theme, and it's worth spending a bit of time to dig deeper into the opportunities that sound like a fit for your particular investment needs."
"Not all of this is Trump’s fault, obviously. Some of Biden’s policies created underlying inflationary pressures that Trump now needs to do the hard work of cleaning up. The enormous national debt, which is now incurring skyrocketing interest costs, is only partly from Trump’s first term — most of it was built up during previous administrations. And like some of his Republican predecessors, Trump happens to be coming into office at the peak of the macroeconomic cycle.
So the deck is a bit stacked against him. But so far, Trump’s proposed policies — big tax cuts, tariffs, and yelling at the Fed to cut interest rates — look exactly what America doesn’t need in order to keep inflation down and growth high.
So Trump is in danger of piling self-inflicted wounds on top of existing bad luck. As a result, the Trump economy could end up as a severe disappointment. Already, warning signs are flashing.
So a lot of stuff Trump is doing — tax cuts, pressuring the Fed to lower interest rates, and threatening tariffs — is inflationary. Realistically, there’s no way that DOGE, or congressional spending cuts, are going to offset all that. Americans may be starting to realize this; some measures of consumer sentiment are beginning to fall again."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/trumps-economy-is-already-in-trouble
"So while everyone appears to be focusing on Putin and Zelensky, the game that is being played out here is more about America’s redefined role in the newly emerging world disorder. Trump wants Europe to step up its military efforts and it is a push to get NATO members to spend 5% of their GDP (where today the average struggles to even get to 2%) on defence.
This is the shining object in the room and the Europeans were given a clear message by way of Pete Hegseth. Europe is now more than ever on its own and will have to start footing the bill for the defence of not only Ukraine but itself, a point NATO Secretary-General, Mark Rutte, has been making for quite a while now.
There is a very long way to go in getting any Ukraine-Russia settlement across the line and in meantime the war continues. And a ceasefire and deal across the current frontlines secured by European troops is hardly a win for Putin give his original objectives."
https://pieterdorsman.substack.com/p/europe-alone
"However, there's a saying in Japanese: "the clever hawk hides its talons." Ishiba is cannily continuing his predecessor's pop cultural pushes; Japanese press revealed his gifts to the President, which included a golden golf driver and a gilt samurai helm. What might seem a traditional sort of gift is actually another pop cultural appeal; Shogun swept the Oscars, and Otani peacocked in a similar helmet on the baseball diamond.
The Japanese government has announced a plan to make cultural exchanges, in the form of tourism and cultural exports, a pillar of its economy going forward. And the New Cool Japan strategy proposes doubling the production capacity of Japanese content-production industries. This is key, and when you look at Japan not as a manufacturing powerhouse but a pop-cultural superpower, you see that the relationship between Ishiba and Trump echoes that of Japan and the world.
Japan, once a feared enemy, is now seen as a friend by pretty much everyone outside of its immediate neighbors of China and Korea. And even their citizens love Japanese anime, manga, and games. Perhaps no other nation has ever so successfully transformed from a public enemy into a factory of dreams.
As I’ve written about before, Japan’s pop-cultural products have grown even more ubiquitous and influential than its manufactured goods were in the postwar era, and one secret to their success is how Japan stays out of the headlines economically, politically, and militarily. Preserving this status quo is what Japan stands to gain from playing a dove rather than a hawk, a pussycat instead of a tiger. And it’s nothing new.
We are now witnessing Chinpokomon diplomacy firsthand. Protocol means little to the current American administration; history and treaties even less. Everything is up for grabs, for the right price. But maintaining the US-Japan security alliance is key for Japan, for the island nation is surrounded by powerful rivals. Japan has only a small self-defense force, and nowhere near the population needed to scale it up to the size it could withstand a prolonged conflict with a neighbor."
https://blog.pureinventionbook.com/p/chinpokomon-diplomacy
Lots of interesting discussion on what's up in Silicon Valley.
w.youtube.com/watch?v=_wQYf2PspkI&t=2167s
"The reason for this explosion is simple: the cost of starting a software company has plummeted. What once required $1–2M of funding to hire a small team can now be achieved by two founders (or even a solo founder) with little more than a laptop or two and a $20/month subscription to ChatGPT Pro.
With these tools, founders can build, test, and iterate at unprecedented speeds. The product build-iterate-test-repeat cycle is insanely short. If each iteration is a “shot on goal,” the $1–2M of the past bought you a few shots within a 12–18 month runway. Today, that $20/month can buy you a shot every few hours.
This dramatic drop in costs, coupled with exponentially faster iteration speeds, has led to a flood of startups entering the market in each category. Competition has never been fiercer. This relentless pace also means faster failures, and the startup graveyard is now overflowing."
https://allensthoughts.com/2025/01/09/ai-has-democratized-everything/
Always a good discussion on Silicon Valley with BG2.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8chNXhA8o8
Learning from the best. Hedge funder who learned at the feet of two of the top guys around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCMMbBz4uRk
"Military support to Ukraine - actually there appears to be a commitment herein from the US to continue to supply military kit to Ukraine. I think this is far more credible/realistic in ensuring Ukraine’s defence. If Ukraine is assured supply of the full range of conventional military kit to defend itself I think it can assure its own security - the evidence is the fact that Ukrainians have held back a far better armed foe, Russia, now for close to three years.
I would call this the State of Israel assurance - giving Ukraine the same access to military tech as what Israel currently gets from the US. Russia will obvioualy aim to set limits on Ukraine’s military capability as Putin will want the option of invading again in the future. This will be a key battle in negotiations, and could ultimately determine whether Ukraine has security, and it is sustainable long term.
I would think if the talks are going to stall/fail it will be around the issue of territorial give ups, European troop deployments and also around what military capability Ukraine is assured of - Russia will look to limit the arms supplies to Ukraine as part of any deal, but without NATO membership or other security guarantees Ukraine will see limitations on its future military capability as a make or break issue for talks."
https://timothyash.substack.com/p/ukraine-the-peace-plan
Conversation on how the US or any country can stay ahead technologically.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS8Ue2B1wm4&t=5s
The Future of AI from two of the top investors around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ3pNPFwAeM
"Bicycles, sanitation, airplanes, vaccines, and Crispr are just a few technologies that have changed the world, but their benefits were dispersed across society rather than being hoarded by a few shareholders. I increasingly believe AI will join this roster — it presents dynamics similar to most stakeholder vs. shareholder innovations:
Government-backed or university-developed (the internet, GPS, vaccines);
Open-source or public domain (Linux, Python, Wikipedia, USB); and
Too foundational to be monopolized (bicycles, sanitation, airplanes).
In sum, the winners here will be stakeholders, not shareholders. Scan your emotions after reading the last sentence. Did you reflexively grab your shareholder pearls and feel this was, maybe, a bad thing? It isn’t.
America becomes more like itself every day, and our obsession with, and idolatry of, the dollar has put the public good in the back seat. Billions of stakeholders benefiting from AI, vs. one business becoming worth more than every stock market on Earth except Japan and the US, and one man being worth more than Boeing feels less sexy … less American. (Hint: NVDA & Jensen Huang.)"
https://www.profgalloway.com/a-new-ai-world/
Always learning from this guy. Lots of insights on where tech is going.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wG97nnGmaKk&t=1155s
Lots of good discussion here on what's up in Silicon Valley news. Softbank & AI Super Bowl: short everything!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9idY0ind-H8&t=907s
Great power war? At least a Cold War for sure. "The Eurasian Century" is worth reading.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws8X2rbdlXs
"The Pitchbook numbers are accurate, but the conclusions are not.
I think the opposite will happen. Counter-intuitively, I think the number of VCs will continue to grow.
More VCs will be needed because the VC model now applies to all industries. AI will make all companies digital technology companies between 2024-2040 and hopefully accelerate their growth. Thus the surface area where VC investment applies will expand: defense, healthcare, energy, climate, space, techbio, education, government, etc. More VCs will be needed to cover all that surface area."
https://www.nfx.com/post/venture-capital-3
"The next time you talk to an entrepreneur, listen to his voice. Pay attention to the excitement around the idea. After the conversation, do a mental analysis of his level of passion. Some of the most successful entrepreneurs I know are also the most passionate about their mission."
https://davidcummings.org/2025/02/08/the-entrepreneurs-passion/
"The rouble is depreciating again, too, nearing the lows it experienced after a brief crash at the outset of the war; this means Russians won’t be able to afford as many imported goods.
The economic troubles aren’t at a crisis point yet, but they are probably causing strains in Russian society — birth rates are falling, crime is up, and elites are getting restless. It has now been three years since Russia invaded Ukraine; historically speaking, maintaining a high-intensity war effort for more than three or four years is pretty difficult. World War 1 lasted only four years, and the Korean War lasted three.
Nor does Ukraine look like it’s about to be overrun and conquered in the next year. Despite the constant drumbeat of headlines about Russian advances, on a map the amount of territory seized — about 1600 square miles in 2024 — looks pretty minor. As for the prospect that Ukraine’s military will collapse, that looks unlikely too — the country has far less manpower than Russia does, but it has enough to keep defending tenaciously and making Russia pay for every square mile of territory for a while yet.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s economy is growing, and domestic arms production is soaring. The country has built a bunch of hardened underground factories, and now claims to be able to produce 4 million drones per year. Even if Trump does decide to draw down U.S. aid to Ukraine, that will probably not cause Ukraine to collapse. The Ukrainians are not flimsy U.S. puppets; they’re dead set on defending their country against the invader by any means necessary, and they’re very good at making stuff.
So while the Russians isn’t ready to make a peace deal yet, if Trump puts increased economic and military pressure on them, there’s a decent chance they could be persuaded to accept the offer.
The next question is: What happens then?
My bet is that Ukraine’s leaders have already thought along these lines. I predict that they’re probably ready to take the plunge and sign a deal of the type Trump is proposing, even though doing so could spell the end of their political careers. And because Putin almost certainly understands this historical parallel, he’s reluctant to make that deal — he knows it means that most of Ukraine will semi-permanently escape Russia’s orbit, fulfilling the dreams that Ukrainian nationalists have cherished for over 150 years. But if it’s a choice between that and a catastrophe in Russia, I think he might take the deal anyway.
In other words, given Ukraine’s inherent military weaknesses — a lack of manpower, and a small population compared to Russia’s — Trump’s deal is probably the best they can get. So if Trump really wants to follow through on his campaign promise and end the war, his primary task is to convince Russia, by hook or by crook, that his deal is the best they can get."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/whats-going-to-happen-to-ukraine
I don't like MacGregor who is a Russia shill but many of the things he talks about is correct. USA is donor-run oligarchy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn8KxL6sMyI
"In the early dawn hours, as the sun rose in the first week of December 2024, a symphony of drones began to sound.
But this was no ordinary drone wave.
In fact, this one was the first attack of its kind: a successful, all-drone assault on Russian positions. The assault, deserving of a place in the history books, took place near Lyptsi, in the Kharkiv region of northeastern Ukraine.
It was a test – initially expected to fail – of whether multiple units could orchestrate a mission with dozens of FPV, recon, turret-mounted, and kamikaze drones all working in tandem on the ground and in the air."
https://newsletter.counteroffensive.pro/p/the-first-ever-all-drone-assault-by-ukraine
I try to listen to different opinions. Detest MacGregor & his Russian propaganda & isolationism, Pascal Lottaz is a naive European. But there is much here to consider.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ixu6MB3T_qE
Erik Prince is an American treasure. Letter of Marques & Private Military Companies coming back for sure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIeNObrmUc8
This was a fun interview on investing and thinking about careers & philanthropy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0v_DWE-Sio4
This is an Alt-geopolitics conversation. Very non-mainstream views, his observations on the power of London City financial centre are interesting, something there.
Disagree with his perspective of the Russian invasion of Ukraine & his anti-Israel views which are incredibly bizarre. Krainer is kooky.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL8daFrsVZg
Great profile on the long historical megacity of Chengdu.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6DR5Hh4AHM
Dr Pippa's writing has been very insightful. This panel talk was interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mowxwJOpgoA
"This is where the second theory comes in: if Trump was actually threatening tariffs to negotiate, he got outplayed by both Sheinbaum and Trudeau. Why? These seem like token gestures. There’s nothing in any of these “deals” that he couldn’t have gotten with a simple phone call. This is also a very inefficient use of force. This would be the equivalent of holding a grenade in your hand, walking up to your neighbor, and saying, “Give me a pen or I’ll blow both of us up.” Your neighbor would give you a confused look and say they would have given you the pen anyway. You didn’t need the grenade.
Round one goes to Mexico and Trudeau because for the threat level they didn’t give up much, Xi Jinping didn’t say a word, and Trump did not increase tariffs on Canada as promised after they retaliated."
https://www.globalhitman.com/p/the-trump-tariff-wars-round-1
Very illuminating and nuanced discussion on China under Xi. Well worth listening to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gDqOqeKARM
"You can optimize for many things. Money. Freedom. Fame. Sleeping well at night. Great relationships. Learning the secrets of the universe.
But here’s one of those secrets. You can only optimize for one thing at a time. So I’ve chosen to optimize for energy, because as long as I have energy, I can achieve all the other things at my own pace.
How do I optimize for energy? I get more sleep, I work out regularly, I eat well, and I spend some time having fun every day.
What do you optimize for?"
https://newsletter.sanjaysays.co/p/feeling-tired-and-run-down
"There are important similarities between the choices faced by ancient and modern leaders. Trump and Xi both have choices, just as Hadrian and Chosroes did. Neither may choose to step back from potential conflict, particularly from their positions on Taiwan, but the choice to do so exists. It would be helpful if the policy community could move past preoccupation with the “Thucydides Trap” and realize that a range of options exists for peaceful coexistence between the U.S. and China. Hadrian had a vast array of competing interests as Trump and Xi will. He chose the peace and stability of the Roman Empire over the previous path of conquest and expansion. He faced pushback, particularly from the Roman elites, yet held to the course that avoided war.
His descendants eventually chose otherwise, reflecting the inevitability of change in international arrangements. Yet this does not change he chose not to act based on the supposition that shifts in the balance of power made another Parthian war inevitable. He had choices, and chose peace. U.S. and Chinese leadership can and hopefully will choose to do the same."
"One lens through which to view companies is to ask "what companies are an index of their underlying market"?
Index companies often take a cut of every transaction in their space, or are a piece of infrastructure everyone in the market needs. For example, it is a hard to launch something into space in the West without using SpaceX. These companies may be ways to participate in the market broadly without having to worry about how wins in it."
https://blog.eladgil.com/p/index-companies
Identify where the world is going and get in front of it. Lots of investing wisdom here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbVSGu7CiYE
This is a hard discussion on the massive changes in the geopolitical world.
American power is declining. This is the harsh truth because we have alienated many countries in the world and our massive debt makes us weaker.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eb86povWn00
"The small-car driver takes risks because he has no other choice (or so he thinks). The large-car driver takes risks selectively, because he can afford to.
This is the fundamental difference between an investor with limited capital and one with substantial wealth. When you have little, you’re forced to play an aggressive game, often at the cost of risk management. When you have more, you can afford patience, discipline, and strategy.
Of course, not everyone starts in the large car. Many successful investors began in the small one, taking risks to build their wealth. But the best understood that once they reached a certain level, their game had to change. They switched from chasing returns to preserving capital, from high-risk bets to calculated investments."
https://buildingthingsthatlast.substack.com/p/a-tale-of-two-drivers
"There are many opportunities – but also so many unanswered questions and challenges to overcome.
Even if rebuilding the Ukrainian economy began soon, it will likely be 10% below its pre-war level in 2027. This provides an idea for how long a process is needed before the country can get back to some kind of normal, economically and financially.
Besides, there are many voices who don't quite believe yet that a deal will be struck, or that a deal can be executed successfully.
Still, it all boils down to this: with a potentially new political set-up and plenty of financial support from the West, we could see Ukraine develop in a previously unseen fashion. It might be a 10-20-year investment theme, and it's worth spending a bit of time to dig deeper into the opportunities that sound like a fit for your particular investment needs."
"Not all of this is Trump’s fault, obviously. Some of Biden’s policies created underlying inflationary pressures that Trump now needs to do the hard work of cleaning up. The enormous national debt, which is now incurring skyrocketing interest costs, is only partly from Trump’s first term — most of it was built up during previous administrations. And like some of his Republican predecessors, Trump happens to be coming into office at the peak of the macroeconomic cycle.
So the deck is a bit stacked against him. But so far, Trump’s proposed policies — big tax cuts, tariffs, and yelling at the Fed to cut interest rates — look exactly what America doesn’t need in order to keep inflation down and growth high.
So Trump is in danger of piling self-inflicted wounds on top of existing bad luck. As a result, the Trump economy could end up as a severe disappointment. Already, warning signs are flashing.
So a lot of stuff Trump is doing — tax cuts, pressuring the Fed to lower interest rates, and threatening tariffs — is inflationary. Realistically, there’s no way that DOGE, or congressional spending cuts, are going to offset all that. Americans may be starting to realize this; some measures of consumer sentiment are beginning to fall again."
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/trumps-economy-is-already-in-trouble
"So while everyone appears to be focusing on Putin and Zelensky, the game that is being played out here is more about America’s redefined role in the newly emerging world disorder. Trump wants Europe to step up its military efforts and it is a push to get NATO members to spend 5% of their GDP (where today the average struggles to even get to 2%) on defence.
This is the shining object in the room and the Europeans were given a clear message by way of Pete Hegseth. Europe is now more than ever on its own and will have to start footing the bill for the defence of not only Ukraine but itself, a point NATO Secretary-General, Mark Rutte, has been making for quite a while now.
There is a very long way to go in getting any Ukraine-Russia settlement across the line and in meantime the war continues. And a ceasefire and deal across the current frontlines secured by European troops is hardly a win for Putin give his original objectives."
https://pieterdorsman.substack.com/p/europe-alone
"However, there's a saying in Japanese: "the clever hawk hides its talons." Ishiba is cannily continuing his predecessor's pop cultural pushes; Japanese press revealed his gifts to the President, which included a golden golf driver and a gilt samurai helm. What might seem a traditional sort of gift is actually another pop cultural appeal; Shogun swept the Oscars, and Otani peacocked in a similar helmet on the baseball diamond.
The Japanese government has announced a plan to make cultural exchanges, in the form of tourism and cultural exports, a pillar of its economy going forward. And the New Cool Japan strategy proposes doubling the production capacity of Japanese content-production industries. This is key, and when you look at Japan not as a manufacturing powerhouse but a pop-cultural superpower, you see that the relationship between Ishiba and Trump echoes that of Japan and the world.
Japan, once a feared enemy, is now seen as a friend by pretty much everyone outside of its immediate neighbors of China and Korea. And even their citizens love Japanese anime, manga, and games. Perhaps no other nation has ever so successfully transformed from a public enemy into a factory of dreams.
As I’ve written about before, Japan’s pop-cultural products have grown even more ubiquitous and influential than its manufactured goods were in the postwar era, and one secret to their success is how Japan stays out of the headlines economically, politically, and militarily. Preserving this status quo is what Japan stands to gain from playing a dove rather than a hawk, a pussycat instead of a tiger. And it’s nothing new.
We are now witnessing Chinpokomon diplomacy firsthand. Protocol means little to the current American administration; history and treaties even less. Everything is up for grabs, for the right price. But maintaining the US-Japan security alliance is key for Japan, for the island nation is surrounded by powerful rivals. Japan has only a small self-defense force, and nowhere near the population needed to scale it up to the size it could withstand a prolonged conflict with a neighbor."
https://blog.pureinventionbook.com/p/chinpokomon-diplomacy
Lots of interesting discussion on what's up in Silicon Valley.