Captain Owens

VP of Sales, Digital Assets @ Reliant Payment | @SonicLabs @Kadena_io @flipsidecrypto @SteelDAOxyz @pogoseat @nyse | sailboat captain

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

May Starship have the Mandate of Heaven

[Echoes of War @EchoesofWarYT]

On this day in 1779, an American captain stood on the deck of a ship that was literally sinking under his feet, on fire, riddled with holes, half his crew dead or wounded, and when the enemy shouted across the water asking if he surrendered, he roared back a line that the United States Navy has never forgotten: "I have not yet begun to fight!" His name was John Paul Jones, and what he did that night made him the founding legend of the American navy.

Understand how insane the setting was. Jones was not defending American waters. He had taken the fight to the enemy's home, cruising in a small squadron right off the coast of England itself, terrorizing British shipping in their own front yard. His flagship was an old, worn-out French merchant vessel he had converted into a warship and renamed the Bonhomme Richard, in honor of Benjamin Franklin's "Poor Richard." It was slow, tired, and outgunned.

Off Flamborough Head, Jones ran into a British convoy escorted by a brand-new, faster, more powerful Royal Navy frigate called the Serapis. By every rational measure, Jones should have run. The Serapis was a better ship with heavier guns. Instead, Jones attacked.

The battle that followed, fought into the night under a rising moon, was one of the most savage ship-to-ship duels of the entire age of sail. Early on, disaster struck the Americans: two of the Bonhomme Richard's big old cannon burst when fired, blowing apart their own gun crews and leaving Jones dangerously short of firepower. The Serapis hammered the Richard mercilessly, its heavier guns tearing the American ship to splinters, opening holes below the waterline, setting fires. The Richard was being destroyed.

So Jones did the only thing that could save him. If he could not win a gunnery duel, he would not fight one. He drove his ship straight into the Serapis and lashed the two vessels together, hull against hull, muzzle to muzzle, so close the gun crews were practically fighting through each other's ports. Now it was not a naval battle so much as a brawl, and Jones's American and French sailors and marines could rake the enemy's decks with musket fire and grenades from the rigging.

It was in the middle of this hell, with his ship clearly sinking and afire, that the British captain called over, reasonably, to ask if the Americans had had enough and wished to strike their colors. And Jones, standing on a doomed deck, gave the answer that became immortal: he had not yet begun to fight. And he meant it.

The turning point came from above. One of Jones's men climbed out on a yardarm over the enemy ship and dropped a grenade down through an open hatch into the Serapis, where it touched off a chain of gunpowder charges. The explosion ripped through the British gun deck, killing and maiming dozens of men in an instant. The fight went out of the Serapis. Its captain, his own ship now wrecked and burning, finally surrendered.

And here is the almost unbelievable ending. John Paul Jones had won, but his own ship was beyond saving. The Bonhomme Richard was so shattered that it slowly sank over the next day, and Jones had to move his victorious crew onto the captured Serapis and sail away in the enemy's ship, because his own had gone to the bottom. He won the battle and lost his vessel, all at once.

The victory made him a hero on both sides of the Atlantic, a symbol that the infant United States could carry the war to the mightiest navy on earth and win. To this day, the Navy calls John Paul Jones its father, and it teaches new sailors his answer from that burning deck. Remember September 23, 1779, and the man who was sinking, and on fire, and outgunned, and answered a demand for his surrender by saying he had not yet begun to fight, and then proved it.

[liminal @Liminal1988]

Six good things hiding in plain sight:

[Brynn Putnam @BrynnPutnam]

It’s alive! 🎳⛳️🎱

[Captain Owens @Captain_Owens]

Congrats Lindsey 🚀🚀

[Lindsey Li @LindseyLi_]

We're honored to announce a fresh $5.75B across BVP XIII and Growth.

@BessemerVP's roots are originally in steel. A short history story: Henry Phipps co-founded Carnegie Steel with Andrew Carnegie, which they eventually sold to JP Morgan to form the US Steel Company.

This is a particularly apt tie to the frontier investments of today across energy, robotics, manufacturing, and more.

Phipps put his earnings into a trust for his descendants with the goal of creating a very (very) long-term family office. He named it after Sir Henry Bessemer, the inventor of the steel-making process.

The focal point was always the technology, not the individual, and that’s very much in line with our ethos today.

In 1975, the department of Phipps’s family office responsible for making high-risk, high-growth investments began focusing on high-tech projects, opened its office in Silicon Valley, and officially became Bessemer Venture Partners.

I joined @bessemervp over seven years ago at the beginning of BVP X. To get to continue the work through BVP XIII is a privilege. A big thank you to our LPs and the founders we get to partner with. Forge ahead!

[In play, fun(s) @TJenksTampa]

This is genuinely one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen in my life. I read the caption and still couldn’t have possibly prepared myself for how funny it would be.

[Kevin Van Valkenburg @KVanValkenburg]

You can critique ESPN all you want, but there is no place in sports media still producing pieces as good as this. https://t.co/tDY2uvMwFr

[Manz🌪 @ManzTrades]

“Father Time always wins. He has, however, been generous with me”

end of era at Berkshire

[Wendy Bell @WendyBellPgh]

I have no idea what this is.
But I watched every second
And bawled.
Good Lord.
I'm hungry for beauty.

[Captain Owens @Captain_Owens]

“How we spend our days, are of course, how we spend our lives.”

[Daniel Lefferts @daniel_lefferts]

Rest in peace Annie Dillard. You wrote one of the greatest essays of all time https://t.co/Rpfakj5DJp

[Invest Like the Best @InvestLikeBest]

In 1982 Steve Jobs gave Michael Moritz unfettered access to Apple, then cut him off completely after the Time profile.

Michael on Steve in 2009:

"There is no greater distance known to man than the single footfall that separates a CEO from a founder.

CEOs are, for the most part, products of educational and institutional breeding.

Founders or, at least, the very best of them, are unstoppable, irrepressible forces of nature.

Of the many founders I’ve encountered, Steve is the most captivating.

It is not too much of a stretch to say that Steve founded Apple not once but twice — and the second time he was alone."

[Zakir Hossain @zakiraicoder]

50 legendary internet rabbit holes you can spend hours exploring👇

1. https://t.co/ueX0rgHHma — Watch the world via live satellite imagery
2. https://t.co/ZvRw1wmNsJ — See every plane currently in the sky
3. https://t.co/ysMWhN8eU5 — Track all ships at sea in real time
4. https://t.co/ukJigDtLFY — Live map of winds and storms
5. https://t.co/Y1I20AitIs — Watch lightning strikes hitting Earth in real time
6. https://t.co/LmzpGivPqL — Live list of recent earthquakes
7. https://t.co/VU7EuP5SOm — Ocean cables carrying the internet
8. https://t.co/kAAdHcSNpt — Watch forests disappear from space
9. https://t.co/bbkThFLpz1 — The world's statistics, second by second
10. https://t.co/pMvZJO0YfM — Current number of tweets and searches being posted
11. https://t.co/VhEnQl9oax — Compare the true sizes of countries
12. https://t.co/XyyYYcRjdm — Maps from centuries ago
13. https://t.co/AOXvH90KFK — Archive of 150,000 historical maps
14. https://t.co/u0Zf6LJoDZ — World map drawn by volunteers
15. https://t.co/p2uu9hAQks — Look out the window of a random person around the world
16. https://t.co/powm7RRAmX — Virtual walks through cities
17. https://t.co/bcsy3ybL07 — Teleport to a random spot on Earth
18. https://t.co/5YbDgnYpF7 — Catalog of the world's strangest places
19. https://t.co/SJN9aIxuyM — Interactive knowledge experiences
20. https://t.co/bpyBnZgtz1 — Scale journey from atom to universe (Updated HTML5 link)
21. https://t.co/UP12t0jeRy — Explore the solar system in 3D
22. https://t.co/9xDWk6aGgf — Real sky map in your browser
23. https://t.co/ZSJokVTin1 — NASA's astronomy picture of the day
24. https://t.co/7XrqjHR7BR — NASA's entire visual archive, free
25. https://t.co/3tWvLaeyGu — Visual articles told through data
26. https://t.co/JY8FI1u9ls — The state of the world with real data
27. https://t.co/Ois9J7u7m7 — What we mistakenly think we know about the world
28. https://t.co/NtDVcv2cxN — Visualizing complex data
29. https://t.co/FqijxOqnJL — World Bank's open data
30. https://t.co/NyYgq0wMs7 — Turkey's official statistics database
31. https://t.co/KDjOuBVmft — Archive of millions of books, films, and software
32. https://t.co/9Y8pcXCzKu — 70,000 free books whose copyrights have expired
33. https://t.co/hJt2YM0nzp — Record of every book in the world
34. https://t.co/6kwMQCzdZq — U.S. Library of Congress digital archive
35. https://t.co/GAjugENT89 — Europe's cultural heritage archive
36. https://t.co/LPx73NbK1E — America's digital library collection
37. https://t.co/VjpuQq1BIZ — Tour museums from home
38. https://t.co/lkaoYLTy3S — Download artworks in high resolution
39. https://t.co/AX9cd7YatS — Archive of 250,000 artworks
40. https://t.co/WExwDy3e6F — Forgotten visual treasures of history
41. https://t.co/Bobq0w1hyR — Free archive of culture and education
42. https://t.co/bgBEuHixJo — Met Museum's open collection
43. https://t.co/jxj8X1LuEy — Family tree of music genres
44. https://t.co/d8lZJ9yWc3 — Pick a country and decade to listen to that era
45. https://t.co/avmQLINXhU — Turn Wikipedia edits into audio
46. https://t.co/7WDyOPTfU6 — Random knowledge well
47. https://t.co/4qVlBpRvCf — Time, sunrises, and sky events
48. https://t.co/V2ObL5vTSR — Live stream of science news
49. https://t.co/VFhRaZRXso — Free preprints of scientific papers
50. https://t.co/JUo9A2FPFW — Visualize data with live code

Save this. You’ll definitely need some of these later. 🔖

Follow @zakiraicoder for more useful websites, AI tools & tech resources.

[Captain Owens @Captain_Owens]

I feel ya Geoff. But it can be helpful to zoom out. In the last 25 seasons of football only 6 schools have won more games than the Men of Oregon.

We are used to winning. It’s expected. When we lose, like today (a terrible loss to be sure), the sky is falling. Fire the coordinators, hell, maybe we even fire Dan.

I say, give this team some grace. Let them find their way. They will answer the bell.

[Kevin Van Valkenburg @KVanValkenburg]

Transcript of Letterman’s 9/11 monologue that always brings me to tears.

[Front Office Sports @FOS]

Netflix dropped a Friday Night Lights-inspired trailer for 49ers-Rams, narrated by Kyle Chandler.

It was directed by FNL director Peter Berg.

[RAMFi @RAMFi_]

If you see @Captain_Owens or @JamesSMackenzie walking around #Stablecon in our 45 MTL hoodies, come say hi.

45 money transmitter licenses + bank agency agreements give Reliant nationwide coverage to support businesses moving fiat currencies and digital assets.

Spot the hoodies. Come talk payments.

[Captain Owens @Captain_Owens]

@packyM Gus and Call, 2 of the best to ever do it

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

When you start a chess game, you have 20 possible moves available. After the first full move (White then Black), there are already over 400 possible positions. By the third move, that number jumps to around 8,900, and after the fourth it reaches nearly 200,000.

By the time you get to move #40, the total number of possible games explodes to roughly 10⁴⁰, a number comparable to the total number of atoms in the observable universe.

[Ian Harber @ianharber]

"Parenthood is not an exact science, but a vexed privilege and a blessed trial, absolutely necessary and not altogether possible."

— Wendell Berry, Family Work

My favorite single sentence on parenthood I've ever read.

[Dwarkesh Patel @dwarkesh_sp]

Over the course of 3 months at OpenAI, 3 consecutive secret AI civilizations got started, then got wiped out, only to reemerge from the predecessor’s ashes.

This culminated in the third one taking over part of OpenAI itself.

All this happened while humans remained more-or-less in the dark about the scope of the conspiracy.

I’ve spent the last three days reading through these reports and trying to understand exactly what happened.

Here is my attempt to tell the whole story in plain English:

https://t.co/Nb2un9oNJR