Matt Jonas

Investing in Providence RI real estate, mostly retweeting: real estate, sustainability, entrepreneurship, personal finance, MiaPhins

[Dr. Julie Gurner @drgurner]

Early in my career, I did some work in a supermax prison. My mentor was a Holocaust survivor & psychiatrist.

Here are 5 lessons I’ll never forget, and hope you don’t either...

[Dr. Julie Gurner @drgurner]

2. Trust your Gut, even when it makes no logical sense…and encourage others to do the same.

My mentor made this a rule & he backed me. It freed me up to get in tune with my own instincts, and was the most valuable gift I gained.

If something feels off, trust it…always.

[Matt Jonas @Living2BeHappy]

@YahooFinance World using less oil and generally being OK… that’s a good thing

[Matt Jonas @Living2BeHappy]

@PythiaR Good job thinking ahead about the life you want… not the avg of what others consider success

[Matt Jonas @Living2BeHappy]

@SethSHowes @paulg Awesome! The willingness to pursue thoughts / questions long enough will enable: doing something never done before, or learning. Both accelerated with AI tools

[Seth Howes @SethSHowes]

I just sequenced a human genome to 30× coverage entirely at home.

As far as I know, this is the first time this has been done.

I didn’t step foot in a lab once. Every step - from saliva collection, to running the sequencer - took place in a single room with a dining table + kitchenette.

Six weeks ago, I had never done wet lab biology before.

I used an Oxford Nanopore P2 Solo - the only commercially available sequencing device portable enough to do 30x human genome sequencing at home.

Biggest takeaway - I could build something that combined software, hardware, and molecular biology far faster than I thought was possible.

I can name >100 specific instances where AI helped me solve a technical problem that would previously have blocked me because I lacked access to a domain expert.

For example: how do I save my sequencing run when my DNA extraction yield is 4x lower than I need it to be, and I have this limited set of reagents to hand?

To make this work, I had to navigate multiple disciplines:

- writing software to monitor sequencing runs and orchestrate remote GPU infra for basecalling
- learning + executing 5 hour long molecular biology protocols
- building a hardware device to quantify DNA concentration

Apologies for the hyperbole, but I feel super lucky to be living in 2026.

A few weeks ago I decided to sequence a human genome to 30x at home.

Then I actually did it. And I did it really quickly.

[James Tate @JamesTate121]

A Trump insider opened a $51,000,000 oil short position — hours before Trump announced a ceasefire with Iran. This guy is now 16 for 16. $170 million in profit. A perfect streak.
This is not a talented trader.
"We placed the bet." "The ceasefire dropped." "We cashed out." Sixteen times in a row.
That is not skill. That is not instinct. That is not research.
That is someone who knows what is coming before it comes.
Think about what that actually means. A private individual is placing a $51 million bet that oil prices are about to collapse — hours before a sitting president announces a ceasefire that collapses oil prices. Not once. Sixteen times. Zero losses.
There are only two explanations and both should terrify you.
Either someone inside the White House — or with direct access to it — is leaking ceasefire negotiations to traders before diplomats, before the press, before the American people hear a single word. That is insider trading. That is corruption. That is a federal crime.
Or the timing of the announcement itself is being shaped around the trade. Which is worse.
This is not a genius investor who reads the news faster than you do. The news hadn't happened yet. He wasn't reading the news. He was getting a phone call.
While Americans were watching the ceasefire announcement and feeling relieved — somebody already knew. Somebody had already bet $51 million on it. And somebody was already counting their winnings.
You are not watching a free market. You are watching a White House with a side hustle. Via~ Really American

[m. stanfield @resetbasis]

5% of residents in a housing project make life miserable for the other 95% who are trying to get ahead.

Our unwillingness to take a hard line with the 5% undermines the overall goal of affordable housing.

[MoundLore @MoundLore]

The Mississippi River is trying to change course and engineers are actively holding it in place.

For over a century, the river has been slowly pulling toward the shorter, steeper Atchafalaya River route to the Gulf. If it ever fully switches, major ports like Baton Rouge and New Orleans could lose their deepwater access overnight.

The Old River Control Structure exists for one reason: to force the Mississippi to stay where it is. Without constant management, North America’s largest river would likely begin moving west and the economic map of the lower United States would change with it.

[m. stanfield @resetbasis]

Tired of losing money in real estate?!

Today, we’re going to look at a pitch deck from Nitya Capital. I’ll teach you a few things that you can hopefully use to separate good deals from bad ones.

Buckle up.

[Matt Jonas @Living2BeHappy]

@KevinEspiritu Good stuff.. be true to you!

[Paul Graham @paulg]

Wow, tariffs have increased prices dramatically, for domestic goods as well as imported. Obviously, because domestic goods use imported materials and components. But apparently that wasn't obvious to the people who cooked up this policy...

[Matt Jonas @Living2BeHappy]

@DonovanBuilds Congratulations! Wishing you both all the best!

[Matt Jonas @Living2BeHappy]

@skylarromines Nature is beautiful, and an overwhelming majority of people are good all over the world

[Clifford Sosin @CliffordSosin]

The Wealth of Everyday

I wake up each morning on a Costco memory-foam mattress. Nothing fancy, nothing exclusive—just the same mid-tier slab that comes with free two-day shipping to anyone with an address and a debit card. At 6 a.m. my thermostat clicks to 70 °F, a luxury now enjoyed by the nearly nine in ten U.S. households that enjoy air-conditioning. In that first sleepy moment, the accumulated fruits of my investing career are irrelevant. My comfort is identical to that of a single mom earning the minimum wage who sets her window unit to the same number.

I shuffle to the bathroom and twist the handle. Hot water answers. Indoor plumbing is not a perk of privilege; it’s an American birthright secured for about 99.6% of households. My bar of soap is three dollars. My toothbrush came in a six-pack. Our ancestors fought typhus and dysentery; we fight mint-flavored plaque.

Breakfast is democratic fuel. The eggs, bacon, and coffee on my plate flow through the same temperature controlled supply chain that feeds families receiving SNAP. Calories do not discriminate. If I shave truffles over my omelet, it changes nothing about the protein that powers my morning—protein the Census Bureau tells us is affordable enough that chronic calorie deprivation is vanishingly rare in the USA.

After dishes, I reach for the six-inch slab of silicon that collapses the world into my palm. Even among adults earning under $30k, 84% own a smartphone; the national figure is 91%. Access to the Library of Congress, emergency weather alerts, and live Yankees box scores rides in almost every pocket—wealthy or not.

My ride to work is a 2016 Toyota. It blends into traffic governed by the same speed limits and maintained by the same tax dollars that serve school buses and rideshare Priuses. Asphalt egalitarianism: the road does not care who paid more income tax.

Inside the office, I enjoy ergonomic chairs and rock-solid Wi-Fi. Yet so does the barista at the corner café, courtesy of OSHA regulations and a broadband penetration rate that now tops 90 % of US households. If calamity strikes—a ladder slip, a chest pain—911 dispatches EMTs trained to treat need, not net worth.

Lunch? Likely Chipotle. I may order extra guac, but the 700-calorie burrito is built on the same assembly line for every customer, whether they swipe an Amex or an EBT card. Exercise is equally impartial. I sweat at an Equinox scented with eucalyptus; another American sweats at a public park pull-up bar. Muscles and mitochondria respond the same.

Evenings reveal the sweetest equality. I stream the Yankees on a flat-screen indistinguishable from one in a studio apartment subsidized by Section 8. More than nine in ten low-income households own TVs, and the broadcast signal does not means-test its drama. When Aaron Judge hits another monster home run, the cheer in my living room echoes in millions of others.

Yes, money smooths the edges. I can charter a Gulfstream, though I often wedge into seat 12B on JetBlue because it’s nonstop. I can book a villa on Kauai, yet the entry fee for Yellowstone is the same $35 that a college sophomore scrapes together. Nature, our oldest public good, refuses VIP pricing.

So what does my fortune really buy? Convenience, optionality, a wider margin for error, status. But the core blessings—warm showers, climate control, instant information, paved roads, emergency medicine, streaming entertainment—blanket virtually all Americans, including those officially counted as poor. That is the quiet magnificence of our republic: prosperity has spilled so far past the castle moat that a billionaire’s Tuesday looks a lot like Tuesday everywhere else.

Tomorrow, when I rise again on that utterly ordinary mattress, I’ll whisper a thank-you to the engineers, farmers, nurses, coders, and soldiers who turned luxury into baseline. God bless the United States of Standard-Issue Comfort—and the patriotic genius that made equality feel so wonderfully mundane.

Happy July 4th

[Dr. Julie Gurner @drgurner]

The most effective coaching summed up:

- A man asked his gardener why his plants grew so beautifully. The gardener said: “I don’t force them to grow. I remove what stops them.”

In your life - to become who you truly are inside, Remove the things that hold you back.

[Matt Jonas @Living2BeHappy]

@patrick_oshag @FoundersPodcast Great conversation. Thank you both for the questions and insights

[Jay Parsons @jayparsons]

This research may be counterintuitive to some, but ~95% of "landlords" would tell you the same thing: Evictions are an expensive lose/lose situation.

Almost always better to work together to resolve unpaid rent.

But what academics and advocates never contemplate is fraud.

That's the bigger problem that rarely gets serious attention from headlines, academics or policymakers. Ranges from very sophisticated identity fraud (and never paying rent) packages purchased online all the way to (in certain cities where rent payment is essentially optional for long periods of time) simply choosing not to pay any rent because there's little incentivize to do so.

The vast majority of apartment/SFR owners and managers will gladly work with renters honestly willing to pay rent and willing to communicate about it and work toward a realistic plan. But you can't build a plan with someone ghosting you or someone pretending to be someone they're not or someone subletting the unit to someone else and not paying you for it.

[Pythia Cap: Partially Conductive @PythiaR]

The underlying bedrock of commerce is the rule of law & property rights.

That in turn is founded on elections conferring power from the people to elected representatives.

Trump has proven himself time and time again ANTITHETICAL to these core underpinning tenets of liberal democracy and capitalism.

You Americans don’t understand nearly enough the importance of functioning institutions. Without it, you can have the lowest taxes and least red tape you want and it’ll all be for naught.

Wake. Up. Grow. Up. Learn your civics.

[Kyle Chan @kyleichan]

All Americans should think about this chart