Ashraf

[Bill Gurley @bgurley]

This is what’s causing Anthropic to aggressively beg for govt protection (see below). Customers are finding cheaper alternatives. Keeping employees requires continuing ultra-rich secondaries ($$$) that are dependent on revenue growth. When you can’t win on the field go to DC.

[Ashraf @ashrafaadj]

@blc_16 @AnthropicAI This is the way to defeat the grindsloppers 👏

[Ashraf @ashrafaadj]

Let me record your apartment. Dw we'll "anonymize" it. Just trust us, pls.

[shift @joinshift]

Today, we're launching shift. We're starting by cleaning your apartment in New York City, for free.

Here's how it works. Book a shift cleaning. A vetted shift operator comes to your home wearing one of our devices. They clean. They leave. You pay nothing.

In exchange, we record the cleaning. Robotics is being built on data about how people do daily tasks, and the value of that recording is what funds the service. Anything personal in it is anonymized before the recording is processed.

By now, you have heard about the shift to AI more times than you can count. About the shift toward you, the part where you actually feel it, you have heard almost nothing. Shift is what starts to make it concrete, in specific cities, with specific services.

Today, cleaning in New York. Soon, handymen, repairs, and errands across the globe. And this is just one side of shift, with more on the way.

Comment “shift” and we’ll send you an early access link.

[cephalopodshop @macrocephalopod]

Here’s the honest read. Here’s the real consideration. This is the genuine tradeoff. Here’s the honest answer. Here’s the key insight. This is the crux of the question. It’s worth flagging this. It’s not one or the other. Here’s what’s actually happening.

Shut the fuck up.

[Ashraf @ashrafaadj]

God, grant me a Ferrari, but I'd rather burn in hell than get this one

[La Gazzetta Ferrari @GazzettaFerrari]

🚨 | BREAKING!

Ferrari has just revealed its first fully electric car, the Luce.

[Ramit Sethi @ramit]

@chamath You can buy Loro Piana but not a sense of humor

[Melissa Chen @MsMelChen]

May I offer a different perspective on the whole transatlantic family feud brewing over NATO.

Europeans are furious at what they call American unilateralism and "wars of choice," while Americans are done subsidizing allies who won't lift a finger when Washington actually needs them. Given all the sentimentality and historical baggage, there’s been a lot of bad blood and high grade insults thrown both ways.

A lot of pride here is at stake. But given that I am not American or European, what I can provide is an Asian perspective. The whole thing looks very different as there are no blood ties or cultural nostalgia to pull me either way. Because of distance, the default Asian lens on America has always been colder, clearer, and far more pragmatic than the European one.

Asians have never lived under the illusion that their relationship to the US is one based on shared values. If they ever did, the illusion was shattered during the Cold War. Instead, Asian nations saw the relationship to America as a cold, interest-driven bargain in a dangerous neighborhood full of communists, insurgents, and bigger powers.

Fast forward to today, and this lesson still holds. Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, Singapore and Indonesia all partner with America because their interests (not values) align - especially when it comes to countering China.

These nations have reasons to be alarmed about Beijing's ambitions in the South China Sea, around Taiwan, and across the Indo-Pacific. They don't need lectures about democracy or liberal international order to see the value in US forward presence, intelligence sharing, tech transfers, and security guarantees. It's a straight-up transactional deal: the US keeps the sea lanes open and the PLA at bay. Meanwhile, Asian nations host your bases, buy your weapons, and join your alliances (Quad, AUKUS, etc.). When interests diverge, they adjust pragmatically, without the drama and meltdown.

Probably not many in the West know this, but one of the forces that shaped this attitude was the US pullout of Vietnam and the rest of America’s Cold War shenanigans. Lee Kuan Yew was one of America’s loudest cheerleaders in Southeast Asia. In 1967 he flew to Washington, testified to Congress, and begged Lyndon Johnson (and later Nixon) not to cut and run in Vietnam. He warned that a hasty US exit would trigger the dominoes - Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and then pressure on the rest of Southeast Asia.

Singapore became a logistical hub, providing a haven for US troops on R&R, oil refineries supplying the American war machine, and Lockheed servicing aircraft. At one point, US military-related spending made up 15% of Singapore’s entire GDP. Singapore didn’t support the war because it loved American democracy but because it kept the communists tied up and bought Southeast Asia time to build up its own economy and military.

Then came the pullout - the Paris Accords in 1973 and then Saigon falls in 1975. Despite all the lobbying, despite the blood and resources America had spent, domestic politics in the US (the anti-war movement, Congress, Vietnam syndrome etc.) ended it. LKY watched in disbelief as the superpower that had promised to hold the line simply walked away.

The lesson was that American commitments are real only as long as they serve American interests and American voters don’t get tired. It’s a brutal one to internalize. LKY was disappointed and noted American “unreliability” but Singapore didn’t collapse into panic or anti-Americanism. They just recalibrated and kept pursuing pragmatism by building its own deterrent, diversifying partners, and later offered the US naval logistics access (Sembawang port) when the Philippines kicked them out of Subic Bay in the early 1990s.

Malaysia drew the same conclusion. The Tunku was pro-Western and anti-communist early on, but Malaysia never joined SEATO and pushed ZOPFAN (Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality) instead. When the British announced their East-of-Suez withdrawal in 1968 and Nixon’s Doctrine (1969) told Asians “you defend yourselves first, we’ll just help,” Kuala Lumpur accelerated its neutralist tilt.

The message was clear - don’t count on Washington to bleed indefinitely for distant allies.

South Korea is similarly pragmatic but it operates under far higher stakes due to baggage from the Korean War and the ongoing North Korean threat. American intervention literally saved the South from conquest, resulting in a bond that is forged in blood. While South Korea had to learn the same lessons - that the American umbrella isn’t permanent, sharing a border with a nuclear-armed adversary forces tighter coupling with Washington.

The reverberations of Nixon’s 1973 opening to Beijing cannot be understated. It shocked the entire region that America, the great anti-communist crusader, suddenly would cozy up to Mao to counter the Soviets. If Washington could flip on core principles when interests demanded it, why should smaller states pretend the relationship was about anything deeper?

The core Asian critique of the European approach to dealing with America is that it is entirely bound up in moral values and civilizational kinship. This means that every disagreement feels like a betrayal and breeds resentment on both sides.

Because Europe is so hyped up on abstract values, it makes NATO feel like a sacred club that America is disrespecting. Asia's interest-based lens sees alliances as tools - useful until they're not. Maybe Europe thinks the Asian approach is cynical but the irony is that this is actually what keeps Indo-Pacific partners far more reliable counterweights to China than many NATO members ever were against Russia.

[Ashraf @ashrafaadj]

@tferriss, this reminds me of The No Book h/t Baltasar Gracián

[james hawkins @james406]

110-year-old Turkish grandma shares her secret to a long life:

"i never once used Microsoft Teams"

[John Ganz @lionel_trolling]

The syllogism being attempted here is "I am one-dimensional and boring, I am a great man, therefore all great men are one-dimensional and boring."

[Ashraf @ashrafaadj]

Princeton's finest

[Ryan Petersen @typesfast]

Guys, relax, the only risk in transiting the Strait of Hormuz is that Iran will shoot a missile at your ship. Otherwise it's open for transit.

An all-time quote from our Secretary of War.

[Ashraf @ashrafaadj]

History rhymes because we insist it must

[Ashraf @ashrafaadj]

@NateSilver538 This heuristic like most heuristics assumes some level of common sense

[Ashraf @ashrafaadj]

@TerribleMaps This level of thinking unfortunately surpasses our Caligula's

[Ashraf @ashrafaadj]

@AmandaAskell, is this ethical?

[The Washington Post @washingtonpost]

To strike 1,000 targets in 24 hours in Iran, the U.S. military leveraged the most advanced AI it’s ever used in warfare.

Anthropic’s Claude partnered with the military’s Maven Smart System, suggesting targets and issuing precise location coordinates. https://t.co/dDQ8KoWdVT

[Ashraf @ashrafaadj]

@naval Talk is cheap. If you're not fighting, you should shut the fuck up.

[Ashraf @ashrafaadj]

@davidbessis @BerryBeli @StanDehaene Merci, now I just need to learn French :)

[Walker @IndLongShort]

@nntaleb