I believe that gambling is going to become a national epidemic among young men in America.
You can't watch a sports event or scroll social media without getting an ad shoved in your face from a sports book, prediction market, or crypto exchange.
The self-discipline of these young men is no match for the machine learning algorithms optimized to dispense dopamine at the right time to elicit another bet to "make it all back."
What looks like innocent entertainment on the surface will end up destroying families, ravaging personal finances, and pushing bettors to depression or worse.
The capitalist incentives are too strong to slow the direction of travel for the industry and society. The only way to combat the negative side-effects of a gambling society is to give hope to victims that they can recover from the addiction.
That is why I am excited to announce that we have taken an ownership stake in one of the fastest growing media properties in the world: Nothing's Off The Table with Louis Ruggiero. (@nothingsoffpod)
The podcast focuses on addiction recovery, including alcohol, drugs, and gambling.
The host, Louis, personally overcame each of these vices. He lost over $10 million gambling before he was able to emerge on the other side of this vicious issue.
Louis resonates with the target audience because he intimately understands the problem, while simultaneously having the personal experience of successfully navigating the recovery process.
Nothing's Off The Table is doing tens of millions of views per month across platforms and I believe it will become one of the largest media platforms in the world.
We have only seen the start of the gambling epidemic. Louis and his team are prepared to serve as the counter-narrative to rescue young men from the death grip of big corporations who are working diligently to drain the last dollar out of their bank accounts.
I will always bet on optimism.
Please consider checking out the podcast or YouTube channels. This is an important mission that can use all the support it can get.
In recent years, we have all learned that Russians are evidently the most repulsive people on the planet.
When you are already down on the ground, they kick you in the stomach. If you fight back, they start whining and accusing you.
After today's Ukrainian attacks on Moscow, the Russians will scream: "Ukrainian terrorists, murderers..."
Stop.
Russia started this war, which violates international law. For over four years, Russians have destroyed Ukrainian cities, killed, raped, and abducted people.
And the entire Russian population was fine with that.
Have no pity for the Russians in Moscow—they must end the war.
She lost her voice that week.
Standing in Killian Court, MIT Class of 2026 in front of her. Lisa Su, AMD's Chairman and CEO almost didn't make it through the speech.
She gave it anyway.
Fall of 1986. A 17-year-old freshman from Queens, born in Taiwan, walks into MIT. Confident in her math.
Two weeks into Rooms 6-1 and 6-2, that confidence breaks. Everyone around her is just as sharp. Many are sharper.
Forty years later, she runs the company at the center of the AI compute race. One of roughly 10% of Fortune 500 CEOs who are women.
So when she gave the Class of 2026 her real career advice, I stopped scrolling.
"The best people find ways to make their luck."
Not luck as timing. Not luck as chance.
Luck as a decision.
She broke it into four moves:
→ Take the risk to work on something genuinely hard.
→ Choose problems where you don't already know the answer.
→ Surround yourself with people who make you better.
→ Believe you can actually change the outcome.
That's the whole formula.
No mention of network. No mention of credentials. No mention of timing the market.
25 years building and advising tech and Web3 companies taught me the same thing. The operators who win aren't the smartest in the room. They're the ones who keep choosing the hardest problem in the room.
Every founder I've backed who built real traction did this exact thing. They ran toward the unsolved problem before it was obvious or fundable.
The Class of 2026 is graduating into the most consequential technology shift since the internet.
The same rule applies to you, reading this right now.
You don't need more luck.
You need a harder problem.
What's yours?
One day after the U.S. signed a deal with the Islamic Republic، the regime in Iran, handed Parastoo Ahmadi 74 lashes for singing on YouTube.
They call America the Great Satan. And then they flew to the table and signed a deal with the «Devil«. But a woman’s voice scared them more than any superpower ever could.
A regime that whips women for showing their hair and singing, there’s not a normal government.
This is called apartheid against women.
Our hearts ache as we announce the passing of John Kinsel Sr., a cherished elder and one of the immortal Navajo Code Talkers. At 107, he leaves behind a legacy of unbreakable bravery forged in the fires of Bougainville, Guam, and Iwo Jima. From 1942 to 1946, as a U.S. Marine, he wielded his sacred language, the uncrackable code, to weave the vital communications that defied the enemy and tipped the scales of World War II.
Very emotional moment from the interview with Zelenskyy. You should watch this.
JOURNALIST: Do you miss being an actor?
ZELENSKYY:?I miss being a good father.
JOURNALIST: When your children were little, what did you tell them the most? What was the thing that you told them the most when they were small?
ZELENSKYY: I love you.
JOURNALIST: And what do you tell them now that they're older?
ZELENSKYY: Oh, I miss you.
JOURNALIST: When was the last time you cried?
ZELENSKYY: I will try to do it after our interview. No, I mean this, between us. I'm a normal man and then there are a lot of different moments, between us, almost each day, a lot of losses on the battlefield and civilians, and there are absolutely crazy attacks on our people.
And I'm just, it's… I mean, It's very difficult really, when I give orders (medals). I said about it. It's always difficult for me when I give orders (medals) to the mothers and fathers, who lost their children. In such moments, really, I often cry.
JOURNALIST: Are you a hero?
ZELENSKYY: No.
JOURNALIST: So who is your hero?
ZELENSKYY:?My hero? My children, my army, our army, and Ukrainian people. So I'm a part… I'm also a Ukrainian, so I'm a part of our nation. But now our nation, I think, that our nation is absolutely heroic.
Quote from Albert Einstein: “If Americans are less scholarly than Germans, they have more enthusiasm and energy, which cause a wider spread of new ideas among the people.”
The quotable Einstein, page 21
The New York Times July 12, 1921
The subjects were:
-Portfolio construction
-Risk
-Volatility
-What to look for in pricing of Gold, Bitcoin, Bonds, Insurance companies, Stocks, Timber, and Treasuries.
-American economic/political history for almost a 100 years
-And the big financial challenges America faces.
Great interview, Porter Stanberry being interviewed by Anthony Pompliano on YouTube (or Spotify or other online venues). The interview is an hour and a half and covers a ton:
https://t.co/MtQtCE2EuO via @YouTube
Efforts to deal with the aftermath of the Russian strikes are ongoing in Kyiv, as well as in Kharkiv. Last night, the Russians launched more than 60 missiles at the capital alone. In total, 70 missiles and 611 drones were used against Ukraine. As of now, 28 people have been reported injured and four killed in the capital. My condolences to all their families and loved ones. A Russian strike on the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra set the Dormition Cathedral on fire – a church whose history dates back to the 11th century. And this is one of Russia’s most serious crimes against Christian culture to date. The State Emergency Service has already extinguished the fire on the cathedral’s roof. In Kharkiv, the Russians carried out a repeat strike against our rescuers as they were putting out a fire at the site of an earlier strike on an industrial facility. So far, tragically, five people have been confirmed killed. My condolences to all their families and loved ones. Nine people have been injured. In Dnipro, Russia struck the grounds of a railway station, a college, and several enterprises.
Other cities and communities were targeted as well. The Kyiv, Dnipro, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Sumy, and Mykolaiv regions were also under attack. This is how Russia shows the world its intention to continue the war. It is very important that there be a response from the G7 countries, which are now gathering for their summit – and that this response be decisive and substantive: more pressure on the aggressor and more support for Ukraine’s air defense, especially anti-ballistic capabilities. I thank everyone who is helping us protect lives.
Jensen Huang told a room of global investors that AI is not one industry. It is five stacked on top of each other. Most people are investing in layer four and ignoring layers one through three entirely.
He called it the five-layer cake.
Layer one is energy. Jensen said this is the single greatest opportunity for the energy industry in a hundred years.
The first time in a century that the grid in most countries can actually attract serious capital. Nuclear, solar, wind, hydrogen, it does not matter what form. If it produces energy, it gets funded. Siemens, GE Vernova, Mitsubishi. That is why they are all doing so well right now.
Layer two is chips, computers, networking, and silicon photonics. Everything that processes the intelligence.
Layer three is infrastructure. Land, power, buildings, data center operations. Every single one in short supply today.
Layer four is the model layer. OpenAI, Anthropic. The layer everyone talks about.
Layer five is applications. Every startup applying AI to financial services, legal, healthcare, logistics, transportation. Last year alone, a hundred billion dollars of venture capital went into this layer. The single largest VC year in the history of humanity.
Then he said the number that stopped me cold.
We are putting one trillion dollars into this five-layer cake this year. That sounds enormous. Jensen thinks the AI industry will eventually run at twenty trillion dollars per year.
We are one trillion in of a twenty trillion dollar per year ecosystem.
Most people watching AI are staring at layer four. Jensen was describing layers one through five as a single compounding system where every layer feeds the one above it.
The people who understand that will invest differently than the people who do not.
If there’s only one thing I want you to remember as someone who actually grew up in Iran, it’s this:
A bully only backs down when he faces a bigger bully.
Trump’s approach is messy, unconventional, and disruptive, but that’s exactly why it has a real chance of working. Because the regime itself is messy, unconventional, and disruptive.
This is not a normal government. It doesn’t play by any rules, and it doesn’t care about looking good or ethical.
Anyone who tries to act diplomatic or “proper” with them has already lost. For the mullahs, diplomacy has always just been a fancy word for lying, deceiving, and hiding their true intentions.
Now they’ve run into someone their old tricks don’t work on. Someone who flips the table whenever he feels like it, who doesn’t care about diplomatic etiquette, and who is completely unpredictable to them.
They can’t outsmart him like they used to. Messing with the lion’s tail this time could cost them dearly, because unlike Obama, Trump actually has his finger on the trigger, and unlike @netanyahu , nothing is holding him back.
Another reason his style seems so chaotic is that the global system and other powers have long benefited from keeping the status quo, a corrupt system that quietly protected the regime. Trump is breaking that old order apart.
For Trump, this whole negotiation and deal-making process is basically a soft war. It’s a deliberate strategy to gradually disarm and weaken the regime piece by piece, at minimum cost.
Even if a deal is reached, he won’t stop, He’ll continue until the regime is so eroded and weak that the Iranian people finally have a fair chance to confront and defeat it themselves.
It won’t happen overnight, but if you look at the direction things are going, the trend is clear.
President Trump knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s not performing for us. He’s taking massive risks with his political capital.
It’s a big gamble, yes, but it doesn’t mean it won’t work. And if one person can actually pull Iran out of this cancer, it’s him. No one else. Trust the man, trust the process.
@gnoble79 Had a great finance prof. Joe Stanford at Northeastern University. It was FI 101/102, evenings in 1995. Two big memories: He said a PE ratio is like two bricks connected by a spring. The higher the ratio, you pull the bricks apart…also Netscape went public, reaching a high $140.
If you zoom out, we are still so early
Alex Sacerdote has spent twenty years studying S-curves
He says AI is the biggest one, and it has barely started:
- "Hundreds of millions of people are using AI. They're just using AI 1.0, which is like a search engine on steroids."
- "Sundar Pichai said it's ten bips (.1%) of the knowledge workers of the world."
- "The enterprise application AI market is less than 1% penetrated."
- "So it's classic S curve where these are the tinkerers, and then it's gonna go to the early adopters, then it's gonna go to the early mainstream.
- "You're going to go from .1% to 1% to 5% to 15% percent in the next four years."
- "We're at ten basis points of people really using AI, and there's not enough compute in the world.
- "We have this infrastructure layer S-curve, which we think is 10% penetrated. We think it's still one of the best ways to play AI."
- "Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) said in the next four years, one thing he's sure of is there's not gonna be enough compute."
- "We've been lucky that we've had Internet 1.0, mobile, cloud, e-commerce, and now AI, which we can confidently say is the biggest, and all these things build upon one another."
- "The rewards are the highest, because we're talking about a market in the trillions –– we now think three to five."
- "But what's amazing about AI is you just, at least with consumers or even business, you just open up the browser and it's there.
- "We talk about S curves, we call this a backward L curve, just straight up."
image source: @damianplayer
شماری از زنان و دختران افغانستانی در ایران، در واکنش به اقدامات اخیر طالبان علیه زنان و دختران در هرات و دیگر مناطق افغانستان، مقابل سفارت طالبان تجمع کرده و شعار «کار، تحصیل، آزادی» سر دادند.
We are only 14 states away from forcing Congress to call a convention. Twenty states have already taken a stand. New Hampshire could be the first in the Northeast to join them.
But this will not happen from the sidelines.
We do not need more spectators. We need people willing to step forward. People willing to talk to neighbors. To meet with legislators. To help organize and lead.
That is where you come in.
You have already signed the petition, you have already taken the first step. Now it is time to turn that support into action.
Become a District Captain. Join as a volunteer activist. Help carry this across the finish line.
Visit the Convention of States volunteer website today and find out how you can get involved.
“Live Free or Die” is not just something we say.
It is something we do. Volunteer today.
https://t.co/0LVQx2uhxq
Adam Grant posted this on Substack today:
I didn’t post about your cause because��I’m not an expert on the issue and I didn’t have something novel or useful to say.
I didn’t post about your cause because the world is already too divided and I want to be a force for unity.
I didn’t post about your cause because I decided that today we could all use a break from depressing news.
I didn’t post about your cause because it would quickly turn my feed into an endless drip of outrage.
I didn’t post about your cause because I’m not an activist and empty words are usually just slacktivism.
I didn’t post about your cause because I don’t want to be a victim of audience capture where my content is dictated by a loud minority.
I didn’t post about your cause because your cause is not my cause.
I didn’t post about your cause because I don’t take requests I’m not a DJ.
It’s my platform and I’ll post if I want to. I didn’t post about your cause. Because.
—Adam Grant
I get 95% of my news from online posts and writers/podcasters who report news out of their own initiative. I am grateful for the work they do.
The Constitution is not static. It can be amended, which is one reason it has lasted. But amendment is intentionally difficult. That difficulty is part of the design, not a flaw. It forces major constitutional changes to be broadly supported across time, region, and political change.
Here the states matter again. Proposing amendments can involve the states through Article V, which recognizes that constitutional legitimacy should not come only from Washington, D.C. It allows states to play a role in correcting constitutional problems—particularly when federal institutions become unresponsive or when the national government strays beyond its intended bounds. https://t.co/jXUhCHLoTR
#America250