More or Less: Everyone Old is New… AGAIN
Discussion of Digg coming back (so is delicious, with Tasti)… path probably should as well :)… It is probably time for myspace to come back as well… old song samples are back topping charts on Tiktok. Sex robots are more likely than sex massage therapists…. Shorsey. excitement for our first ever billboard on the 101.
Hot Takes:
- ?Trump Make Poor? — in January trump make rich. Everyone liked trump make rich… but now trump make poor?? People don’t like make poor (especially in crypto, hi crypto reserve of “this go down too much, trump make go up - at least for 24 hours” More to discuss on ‘Trump Make Poor / Trump Make Rich’ I am sure in coming months (and years!) vol is en vogue! (Also P.S. like everyone else, I like this new framework that PE is just ‘VOL washing’ / so managers don’t have to watch number go up number go down / that is the product — good framing)
- AI is Not Your Moat Billboard - Live on the 101… and I for one think this is hilarious…. / worth every penny… and it was fun to yell about this more on the technology brothers podcast today)… and here is a funny video we made about the billboard.
- The Hypocrisy of AI companies building stand alone vertical apps while telling everyone else to give up their front-ends to their chatbot… is pretty cringe. So much so that I thought chatGPT’s own response / acknowledgment that it is cringe / attempt to defend itselfpretty funny. … (and HT MSG on the rec of https://chorus.sh/ if you want to query all the LLMs at one time !)
- Memetic Finance— gave a presentation on this that I will shortly be turning in to something for public consumption… but the basic upshot is this — currencies tend to exist in their technological context. Before the railroad most trade was local, could be done with local banknotes… the railroad was really what made trade at a distance in the US matter / forced the dollar… the tech of decentralized exchanges, auto-liquidity pools, etc. AND the social moment / decomposition of mass culture into niche cults means we are at another moment… where technology supports pricing anything in anything dynamically and efficiently — and should lead to the rise of dynamic local ‘cult’ currencies and stores of value.
- Harvard New Yorker Article Long Read — appreciate Nathan going so deep and telling the harvard story overall - as well as going deep on the work we have been doing at 1636 in depth. It was funny I will note how many people sent me this article as ‘did you see X’ … not realizing that I was in a lot of it / clearly contributed to it :) — goes to show people just want a headline to share :)
- AI Parental Controls for Youtube… seems like such an obvious obvious product win… but I am not holding by breath
- Jelly in-feed tipping — it is fun to watch jelly jelly / this new conversational media format come together … and Iqram introduce tipping into the feed with crypto / Solana. I know I am pumping this kinda hard, but it really does feel like another ‘again’ moment where team Venmo is once again working on social payments and ‘likes with money’ in a 2025 relevant way. They need engineering help on some issues of performance and polish / but it is fun when you see a roadmap go from speculative to obvious.
Enjoy the long weekend,
Sam
P.S. JOBS — if you want… we are looking for an Associate for the slow creator fund AND Iqram needs some killer engineers for Jelly Jelly (seriously, this is interesting / the vision of where to go and making this big is there… but we do need killer engineers (not AI) to build it!
P.P.S. Palm Spring Party? — If you are in Indian wells give a shout and join the Racket mag surf party Saturday night :)
P.P.P.S Last Kings of Shanghai - Been recommending this book for a long time, but actually finally almost at the end myself — it is amazing. Whole new picture on relationship with china / the jews/ etc. couldn’t RX enough.
sam lessin | @lessin | want to talk | podcast | stop | to get added to the mailing list email [email protected]