MORE OR LESS — Did Jensen Make the AI Boom, or Did the AI Boom Make Jensen? (Jessica's question & answer) — we taped this one Wednesday, mid-scandal, as the Jensen Huang/Nvidia story was still breaking in real time. A few things worth arguing about from the episode: I called who'd be "out" first in the episode... lick the cookie.... and we got into narrative capitalism — the world isn't getting more entertaining because algorithms got better, it's getting more entertaining because everything, including the news, is just content now, and we consume all of it exactly the same way. Everything is stories people want to tell and consume, and you have to admit — purely as narrative, from a gallows humor perspective — this is by far the most entertaining swerve we could have had this week... the internet LOVES it... and AI is excellent at driving internet entertainment. Listen in and you get Dave riffing on "best trade ever," and Jess pointing out the real dos and don'ts on lying (ok to journalists, not to your board)... if nothing else this is a super fun real-time history piece of entertainment because we recorded it Wednesday as this went from side-show to THE story while we taped. — Listen on Spotify · Watch on YouTube
HOT TAKES (NON JENSEN)
- The Lessin Fellowship, Promoting Clever Chaos at College — I am proud to announce a new fellowship to fund the smartest, funniest, and most audacious pranks and performance art by college students in America... as judged by a truly excellent panel of experts — including Eric Antonow, Gabe Whaley, Adrian Aoun, Rob Denning, Ricky Van Veen, Joey Flynn, and Casey Neistat (and more TBA). The fellowship comes with cash grants AND access to some of the great minds in finance, tech, media, and entrepreneurship.... more soon, but please send around to college kids who might want to apply.
Why? Because we need to bring back clever (safe, legal) pranks — the decline of which at college campuses is one of the clear cultural canaries in the coal mine... Also, I have a strong thesis that the best college pranksters tend to grow into the defining leaders of every generation. So it is also selfish as I get old — I don't want to meet the kids who lead their college consulting / investment "clubs" (yuck); I want to know the ones experimenting brilliantly and humorously with lines.
Why now? I have thought about doing this for a while / spending time on it... but credit to my youngest son Wilder... He turns 5 soon, but — we discovered yesterday — played a hilarious prank on his pre-K teachers, totally independently, fully convincing them that his birthday was days ago (with full class fanfare) so he could be one day older than another kid in class "because he is bigger." The consequence for him? His parents can't come celebrate his actual birthday in class because HE already got the celebration (which they got to do for his older brothers!)... not all pranks are without any consequence... but that is tolerable for him, and I couldn't be more proud of his harmless but hilarious full send deception. The kid is gonna be all right.
- Creators as "World Builders" — this was a great weekend conversation with a smart / great friend... and Megan, who runs our creator point, responded with "obviously, I have been saying this for years" — but it really struck me this weekend. The point of "creators" isn't the content, the content is just part of the world construction. REAL creators are constructing new universes for their community to find, engage with, and expand.... and the business of leading "worlds" as local communities / the neighborhood gets quashed (I was reading some of my dad's history of the family, talking about how important neighborhoods were to families a hundred years ago, makes sense) — world building is the "business."
- Superior Demons? — I really have no idea who sent this to me, but thank you — I like it.
- The Poetry of What My Home Sees — this really is poetry... my AI ordered camera kits, routers, and set up its own vision system so it can see around my house real-time, comment back, track things, make suggestions, etc... pretty sick... but what is even better is the poetry it is writing me every day about my home and what it sees (unintentionally).
- What My Bot Buys — my bot has a $100-a-day allowance to just buy things and act on things for me to make my life better... this honestly hasn't been great yet — but it should be... it knows everything, why can't it buy me nice things well!
- Peptides Seem To Work via DEXA Scan — best evidence that peptides do something — the second dot on this chart was my previous marathon — killed my lean mass and spiked my fat... most recent dot is this marathon / right after... totally different story on lean mass protection and fat.
- Torah Bot Continues To Be Funny — Esau's pricing on long-dated illiquid, contingent claims... Honestly, getting the Torah to be more accessible and on-demand to learn has been great...
HOT TAKES (ON JENSEN)
- It Isn't the Dreyfus Affair... It Probably Is Profumo 2.0 — unless it turns out that OpenAI and Anthropic really are framing Jensen and racially discriminating against him to lock down chips out of China, cut off open-source, and create a regulatory moat for themselves.
- Yes, the Narrative of "Tim Cook Should Run NVIDIA" Was Obvious From Wednesday — fun, obvious storyline, we had it first, but that's the way the cookie crumbles when it takes you days to publish.
- Halloween Retailers Must Be Kicking Themselves — the "Chinese spy" costume would have crushed the year... and yes, right take — where is our offense — like seriously, seriously.
- Feel Bad For Jensen? Not Sure — I am not sure whether we should feel bad for Jensen or not, but I do think (as discussed on the pod) that at a certain level of success people just stop "feeling" things / nothing matters... you walk through walls... and the concurrence of affairs and stratospheric power / success has less to do with a sense of invincibility and more to do with the human need to feel something / feel risk — whether it is BASE jumping, or les liaisons dangereuses.
- Most Expensive Affair In History — the line on the internet floating around of "if she's a 10 you are an asset" is great... as is "if Helen was the face that launched a thousand ships, but Jensen banged $800 billion out of NVIDIA" is also pretty great... and also Hamlet / Sunil — it is pretty cool you can use the AI to do this analysis on the fly.
Happy weekend,
Sam
P.S. FAA down is totally AI right? This is new normal... and Outlook! Wild world we live in.