Evan (Captain Sidd)

This is the best wine bar in the world (in my humble opinion). Here's the story of my first visit: I duck my head into what looks like an abandoned cellar. A young man looks at me and cocks his head slightly, asking "why are you here?" I'm here to drink wine, obviously. He asks what kind of wine I like, and I say I don't really know much about Georgian wines. He pops a cork, puts two glasses on the table and says "I will keep pouring until you like one." Each "sample" is basically what I'd pay full price for at a wine bar in Paris. After 4 of these samples, I settle on an amber wine, golden and dense, made the same way humans first made wine 8,000 years ago: by essentially tossing the whole vine in a giant clay vessel buried underground, and waiting a while. He fills the glass to the brim. "That's too much," I said. "No. This is how we do it here. I want you to get your money's worth." That glass cost EUR 4. The cellar we're seated in is 300+ years old. Bricks everywhere, small arched alcoves stuffed with bottles. Dust drifting down from the ceiling, adding a new terroir to each glass. Currencies from around the world are plastered on the walls. Over 120 private local wineries are represented in this tiny cellar. Most of them are a single family, one small vineyard, making maybe 500 bottles a year, which are sold almost entirely into the domestic market. Yet the wine is extraordinary, and the prices are rounding errors compared to anything at a wine bar in Europe or the USA. To put that in perspective... the most expensive bottle in the house is $60. It's from 1960. A Soviet label proudly displays some nameless workers. But the best part was not the value, the ambiance, the friendly service that never once made me feel like I was being educated; the best part is that despite drinking multiple bottles of wine here over multiple nights... I never once woke up with a hangover. Find the name of this wine bar on the newsletter - it just dropped (link in bio)

@stackhodler How did you apply that thinking to building a company?

Steep climb up to my favorite mountain coffee spot to start the day. Perfect Sunday morning. I vividly remember sitting here when I had like $100k saved up, wondering how I was going to turn it into millions so I could afford to stay at a hotel like this whenever I wanted. I had no doubt I'd make it, but I remember wishing I could jump to the future just to see the path that got me there. Now that I'm here, I realize how little the specific details of the actual path mattered and how a few specific beliefs were everything. Number 1 is believing that opportunity is absolutely everywhere Especially when you get to the point where you have some capital to invest. Do whatever you have to do to get your first $100K saved up. But then realize that there are incredible investment opportunities that can multiply your capital in a relatively short period of time. How do you find them? It sounds silly... But you need to do what most people don't: Actually look for them Most people are terrified to invest in anything besides an index fund If you want average results you should do the same But if you want extreme results you need to do something different Set a clear objective of what you are looking for in your mind. "I want a quality asset with real 10x potential over the next 5 years that I can hold with conviction through extreme volatility" Set that as your mental filter. Set it as a strict bar. And you will find the right asset. Trust yourself. Trust the universe. Do the work until you find that asset. And when you find the asset, have some balls and size up. Not financial advice. This worked for me but may not work for you. Oh one last thing... The goal is not the number on the screen. It's not to cheerlead for any one asset either The goal is to multiply your capital to provide your family with a high quality of life Set that as your guiding principle and you'll win

In 1992, a prosecutor in rural Italy showed up with sixty armed police and a court order to dynamite a mountain. He'd been told there was an illegal structure underneath. When the owners finally opened the doors, he found a bewildering sight. One man had spent fourteen years secretly excavating that mountain with ten companions. Four-hour shifts, picks and chisels, loud music playing to mask the drilling. No engineering plans. Just sketches from a childhood vision he'd been carrying since the age of eight. What they found inside was cathedral-scale. Eight interconnected halls across five underground levels. A hall with a ceiling sheathed entirely in gold leaf and nine illuminated spheres. A four-sided mirrored pyramid topped with a Tiffany stained-glass dome. The deepest chamber painted with constellations from 22,000 years ago. Every surface was created by hand, over decades, in total secrecy. The prosecutor's jaw dropped. He assumed legal custody on the spot, then handed stewardship straight back to the people who built it, recognizing the artistic and devotional significance of what he was looking at. He'd arrived to blow something up. He left as its legal guardian. The man who built it started the community above ground back in 1975. Today around 600 people live there in small communal groups, governed by a living constitution, trading in their own currency pegged one-to-one with the euro. They have elected representatives, seasonal festivals, and an ongoing building program. When the founder died in 2013, he said the temple complex was only 10% of his vision. You can visit on a guided tour starting at €78 for 3.5 hours. Or stay overnight in five rooms designed specifically for lucid dreaming, each themed to a different underground hall, built from natural materials by community artisans. I should mention that this place is controversial for its "unconventional" take on societal organization. Some call it a cult. But it's interesting enough I had to share it. No cameras are allowed inside, so all photos are from the owners. Thanks to Joy and Michael for the tip on this place - I plan to visit next month! Full story in the newsletter - link in bio

I have 3 CEOs/ serial-entrepreneurs in my upcoming 10-week coaching program. All Bitcoiners. All inspiring, generous people with a growth mindset who don't operate from ego or trying to look good. Looking for one more such person who would like to be part of a high performance environment with their peers, while getting world-class coaching from a fellow Bitcoiner who cares about your mission as much as you do, and then the group is full. If you're interested to know more and that's you - reach out. We start in June.

Every morning at 6 AM here, monks carry a hot meal to a man who hasn't moved since 835 AD. They believe he's not dead, just meditating. They haven't missed a day in 1,200 years. I slept in one of these temples built near this "eternal resting place" during cherry blossom season in 2023. The temple I stayed at was founded 1,200 years ago by a disciple of the man they're still feeding, continuously maintained and inhabited since then. It's on a quiet mountaintop south of Osaka, two trains, a cable car and a bus away from the city center. The cemetery is the main attraction of this small town, and it starts at the front door of the temple. Two kilometers of cobblestone through old-growth cedar house 200,000 graves that date back not only centuries, but millennia. Feudal lords, famous artists, wealthy traders. Even Panasonic and Nissan have memorials here. Strangely, a pest control company built a monument for the termites it exterminated. So Japanese... At the end of the path, over 10,000 lanterns burn in a single hall. Two have been lit for 900 years. This is where the leader of a certain Buddhist sect sits "eternally meditating". Every evening at the temple, they prepare traditional Buddhist vegetarian cuisine by the rules of five colors, five flavors, and five methods. While I'll stick to yakitori and curry in Osaka, it was an interesting cultural experience to say the least. Hopefully the monks are carrying a few treats to our eternal meditator, too. Full story in the newsletter - link in bio

@niftynei Do it!!

man this would be a dream vacation (see matcha tea farm!!)

@CaptainSidd Lol as I was reading the story I thought to myself, this is a story my friend Evan would really like

A friend of mine spent years working in import/export in Mexico before coming home to a valley that produces half of one of Japan's most celebrated teas. The locals had no idea what they were sitting on. He did. I found this valley through a mutual friend who runs Smorgasburg, an outdoor food market across the U.S. We rode motorcycles through the valley together in 2024, when he connected me to the man who is focus of today's little adventure: Shota. About 300 farming families work terraced hillsides in this valley, which has produced tea for over 700 years. The valley is designated one of Japan's Most Beautiful Villages. It sits about an hour from one of Japan's most-visited cities. Yet almost no international tourists come. Shota speaks fluent English, Spanish, and Japanese. He understands both the farming tradition and the international market - which is a rare combination in rural Japan. He's now running valley tours: working-farm access, the history behind the terraces, how the tea is made, how the families live. He introduced me to one farm that's been in the same family for over 300 years. In 1980, the sixth-generation tea master abandoned pesticides. His neighbors thought he'd lost his mind. The farm lost crops for years. He kept going. The family became among the first in Japan to earn JAS organic certification - they now hold USDA and EU credentials too. Their finest matcha goes to auction for Japanese tea houses, a mark typically reserved for the country's top producers. Shota is building something serious. In five years, this valley won't be so quiet anymore. The chance to tour this valley with someone who comes from its culture and history, yet spent time in the west as well - that window is open right now. Go before it closes. Full story in the newsletter - link in bio

@GoldenGatsby MotoToursJapan!

@CaptainSidd genius move. What was the tour operator called?

You guys sick of Japanese posts yet? Japan is starting to get sick of tourists... Kyoto abolished the tourist day bus pass in 2023. There were too many tourists to fit on the buses. Meanwhile, 750 rural villages across Japan face extinction by mid-century. Japan doesn't have a tourism problem. It has a distribution problem. There's a motorcycle tour operator in Japan that figured this out, and they're working on an ingenious solution to fix it. Backed by Japan's largest travel agency, they've spent the last year building guided routes specifically designed to pull tourist spending out of congested cities and into rural communities that need it to survive. I rode one of their routes in late 2025 - all these photos are from my trip. This tour operator is definitely on to something. I'm speaking from experience: I've been to Japan eight times since my early teens. I've done two other motorcycle trips there (solo). Japan is a beautiful place to explore, especially on two wheels, but it is one tough nut to crack as a foreigner. This tour agency cracked it. When you're on a shinkansen between Tokyo and Osaka, you see the back of cities. When you're on a motorcycle threading rural mountain roads, with a Japanese guy leading you, you see the Japan that existed before the factories. A sword-smith at his forge in a provincial town no bullet train serves. A ninja castle in a city most tourists will never hear of. Mountain shrines where you're the only foreigner, and the wooden boards have been worn smooth by centuries of hands. Japan didn't industrialize until after World War II. The countryside still carries an older character, and you can't feel that at 300kph from a rail window. Japan is also - I'll just say it - possibly the best place on earth to ride a motorcycle. The land mass is 70% mountains. Which means twisties - more than most riders can imagine. The road quality maintained to a standard that would embarrass most developed countries, even in areas that see almost no traffic. Drivers are patient in a way that breaks the Western mind, and they're respectful of motorcyclists. Hot springs pop up at regular intervals across the countryside so you can soak out the saddle soreness at the end of each day. The bike options for rent here also run the gamit - from 50cc scooters to Ducatis and Harleys - so you are spoiled for choice. This tour operator also just so happens to be in the same group as Japan's largest motorcycle rental network, which operates 130+ shops renting 3,600 bikes nationwide. I always rent from them in Japan, and their bikes are always immaculate. If you ride, do not miss Japan. And do it with this agency - they will unlock a side of Japan, and an insight in to Japanese culture, that is hard to get even with years spent living in Japan. And you'll be supporting the countryside of Japan, which could use your fresh faces! Learn more about my favorite motorcycle tour agency in Japan at the link in bio

@CaptainSidd 🤔

@levelsio @Hetzner_Online @TermiusHQ Still most of the work will be done remotely via SSH from laptop or phone with termius/mosh. But I'm thinking that if anything goes really wrong, it'll be easier for me to just plug a screen in to the mac mini to troubleshoot instead of a Hetzner box running ubuntu or whatever

@levelsio @Hetzner_Online @TermiusHQ Do you think the Hetzner approach is suitable for a non-developer? I know Claude can fix most of the issues I might run in to, but I'm also weighing using a Mac Mini instead - since I'm comfortable with the Mac interface / OS.

I laugh when I see people in holding their laptops half open so their Claude Code doesn't shut off All my projects run on a @Hetzner_Online VPS with Claude Code installed next to the sites/apps that I work on and I just SSH in with @TermiusHQ and it keeps going forever even if I disconnect (I use Mosh or Tmux or I just /resume) My MacBook Pro battery life is also much better as everything happens on the server not my laptop I work so incredibly fast now, it's like having a secret benefit over everyone else who are still AI coding on a laptop, then deploying to their server, while their battery life dies and they can never close their laptop And whenever I want I can just switch to Termius on my iPhone and continue working! My workflow is literally: I have a bug or feature, I open Termius, I type it in the project tab, it fixes it, every fix it auto commits to GitHub but it doesn't actually deploy from there anymore because it's editing the site on the server live I don't recommend that to everyone, but I do recommend getting a VPS you can code from and then use as staging and test and deploy from there to your production server

If gently lapping waves don't put you to sleep, don't stay here. This isn't quite a hotel... it's a ship. Cruising the inland seas of Japan, it was built by the same shipyard that's made working ships for this coastal community for generations. Named after a crab from this region. The architect designed a silver hull to reflect the shifting tones of clouds and water. A gabled roofline in bungalow blue echoes the fishing towns you pass. Inside you'll find 11 varieties of local wood, every piece shaped by craftspeople from this same stretch of coast. The propulsion runs diesel-electric. Near-silent. Passing 700 tiny islands and you barely know you're moving. Each room is a suite, some with open-air hinoki cypress baths on private terraces. Chef Kenzo Sato runs the kitchen in the kaiseki tradition. A six-seat sushi counter with sea views serves made-to-order nigiri throughout the day. There are no fixed mealtimes. The deal: what you want, as much as you want. Everything included. But you're not trapped on the boat either. You get shore excursions to art-filled islands, ancient temples, fishing villages, artisan workshops. A private speedboat to islands without docks. This part of the Japanese seas is known for some of the best oysters in the world and the stone used to build Osaka Castle. But it's just a little bit out of the major cities and the Shinkansen network; which means it's devoid of tourists. TIME named this one of the World's Greatest Places in 2019. Not the sea; but this ship. If you're like me and enjoy the idea of a cruise ship more than the reality; this might be the one to book. Full story in the newsletter - link in bio

If you'd met this man in the 1980s, he'd be selling you a Xerox machine. In the era of Japanese businessmen "washing their feet in beer", he was caught in the fever. But this is no ordinary man; he is the 25th generation in a line of master craftsmen working on one very specific tool since the 15th century. At some point he decided, he wasn't going to be the son to break the family line. What he returned to was chasen-making: the production of bamboo tea whisks at the center of Japanese matcha ceremony. Today, his workshop employs 30 people. They produce 20 whisks a day. Only about 18 chasen masters remain in Japan. He's one of them. His son is now learning to become another. As a chasen master, it still takes him three full hours to make a single whisk from start to finish. The bamboo they use is harvested young, boiled to remove its natural oils, sun-dried for weeks, then stored in a curing shed for two additional years before a craftsman touches it. Full mastery of the seven-step production process takes 15 years to acquire. The region where this workshop operates produces roughly 95% of Japan's domestic chasen. The craft traces to the mid-15th century – to a tea master's request and an emperor so moved by the first whisk presented to him that he renamed the town. Chinese factories now supply the majority of the world's whisks using heat-curling. This workshop hand-curls every tine, 20 per day, because that's the way they've always done it. And this man nearly sold copiers his whole life. I'm sure glad he didn't. You can meet this man in Nara, Japan - more info at link in bio

A family that lived in the same Transylvanian village since the 12th century was forced out by the communist regime. One came back in 1967 to find the ancestral home in ruins. His son came back decades later and started buying the village piece by piece. Count Miklós returned to a place that no longer belonged to him. The castle was expropriated. The estate had become rubble. He couldn't reclaim it, so he did something more patient: established a charitable trust, funded scholarships for local children, and spent the rest of his life pursuing UNESCO recognition for the castle. He died in 2001 without ever getting it back. His son, Count Nikolaus, took a different approach. Starting in 2007, he began acquiring the neighboring properties – a caretaker's cottage, Saxon farmhouses, a granary, an abandoned schoolhouse. One by one. The same village. Different buildings. The hotel that emerged doesn't look like a hotel. Ten rooms dispersed across three restored structures in an actual Transylvanian village, each one roughly 300 years old, each one renovated on the principle Nikolaus articulates this way: "Every house has a different story, and you need to renovate it so that it's not trying to be something else." The surrounding landscape is just as much a highlight as the buildings. Twenty minutes away sits the Breite Ancient Oak Tree Reserve, 74 hectares, some of the oldest oaks in the region. A certified ecologist leads guests through it. These trees were standing when the family first built here. Beyond the reserve: bear country. Romania's national bear population is among the largest in Europe, and bear-spotting excursions run from the estate. You'll also spot foxes, falcons, and deer. Or you can hunt truffles, take to the skies in a hot air balloon, or bike through other Saxon villages most tourists never reach. Sighișoara – UNESCO-listed with medieval vibes, birthplace of the brutal and aptly named Vlad the Impaler – is about a half hour drive away. King Charles III owns property in this corner of Transylvania and founded a local heritage preservation organization here in 2015. He apparently sees what this family has always seen. This place received Romania's first Michelin 2 Keys distinction for a boutique hotel. Also the first Romanian destination admitted to Small Luxury Hotels of the World. Eight centuries. One village. Still standing. Send this to someone who needs a reason to believe that what was lost can be rebuilt. Get the name of this place at the link in bio

This hotel has a bed under the stars. That alone is not so noteworthy among the well traveled... but a bed in a desert, open to a sky flanked by two international dark sky parks, giving a clear view of the Milky Way swirling above? That is one of a kind. And, this is someone's first hotel. In 2017, Lauren Werner was on a road trip. She never been to the area where her hotel would one day stand, when she heard about a piece of land with unobstructed mountain views and a sky so dark the Milky Way appeared. She detoured. Made an offer on the spot. She had no architecture degree, no contractor, no plan. But she knew how to put one foot in front of the other. So she taught herself the necessary design software. Served as her own general contractor. Lived on-site through the year-long build. The design inspiration came from Georgia O'Keeffe's home in Abiquiú - specifically the windows. Not framing the room. Framing the land beyond it. So she built eleven casitas with unfinished concrete exteriors that match the desert floor. Flat parapet roofs that vanish against the horizon. Every porch aimed at the mountains with nothing in between. "Light colors and pitched roofs stick out in the desert." The whole point was to disappear into it. And then there's that "star bed" - a padded platform dangling from a steel frame above a ravine at the property's edge. On clear nights here, you can see the Milky Way's dust lanes with the naked eye. No restaurant or room service. Just a communal kitchen, a fire pit, and people who drove hours to reach somewhere this remote on purpose. This place opened in 2019. And I sure hope it's not Lauren's last property. Full story in the newsletter - link in bio

The seabirds dive at it every time. Two hand-tiled marlin at the base of a cliffside pool, so precisely rendered that birds have been dropping toward them for years. They can't tell they're not real. And that tells you everything about the people who built this place. In 1989, a large extended family of LA artists, architects, and writers bought 12 acres of raw Baja desert. They moved in while construction began. They lived in tents. Over the next 15 years, they built a compound by hand alongside local Mexican artisans – beams shaped on-site, terracotta tiles laid by hand, ironwork and stonework custom-designed and executed from scratch. The ceilings were painted with angels. One is mid-prank, peeling back a trompe l'oeil curtain as if it knows you're watching. When it eventually opened to guests, the ping pong room became a dining pavilion. Today there are 10 freestanding casas across 12 acres – some beach-side, some jungle-side, each with a stone fireplace and private terrace above the Sea of Cortez. The living room holds an 11-foot table reputed to have belonged to Mark Twain. The balustrades and moldings came from the Jack Warner Estate in Beverly Hills. Thomas Hart Benton paintings on the walls. A living gallery you can fall asleep in. The property runs fully off-grid on solar. Bobcats and foxes still wander the grounds. Hummingbirds, herons, and deer too. Only 10 rooms. An hour down a dirt road from the resort strip – in distance and in spirit. Full story in the newsletter - link in bio

A building that has been, in order: a Napoleon III garrison, a girls' school, a boys' school, a cinema, a dance studio, and a parish hall. Last May, two childhood friends who grew up spending summers on a car-free French island opened it as a hotel. The island is 8 kilometers long and 4 wide, sitting about 20 kilometers off the western French Atlantic coast. No cars. Bicycles everywhere. You get there by fast ferry in 30 minutes, then rent a bike. Seven interconnected buildings arranged in a cloister around a central garden. The former schoolyard is now a courtyard with a century-old plane tree and a heated outdoor pool. Architect Émilie Roy preserved the bones: dry stone walls, traditional tiles, white facades, colorful shutters. Interior designer Pauline d'Hoop, known for the Sézane boutiques, gave each of the 22 rooms its own color scheme, with terrazzo bathroom floors and bold prints. The duplex suites have mezzanine king beds and cabin-style children's beds tucked in the corners. The restaurant rewrites its menu every day around whatever came off the boats. Grilled hake, ceviche, tuna steaks. The bar is named for the birth year of Alexandre Dumas. It claims to be France's largest rum bar: 150 varieties on hand, free masterclasses every afternoon. The rooftop above it has 360-degree views of Atlantic horizon and runs through October. Open year-round except late December through February. A place to slow down and wander through the alleyways of your mind. Full story in the newsletter - link in bio

A fishing village in Norway has 19 permanent residents. No new buildings went up since the golden age of fishing, and the first road only arrived here in the 1960s. This year, you can sleep there – in a heritage cabin built in 1888, with the bathroom 100 meters away. That slight discomfort is the whole point. Every January for centuries, Arctic cod migrated from the Barents Sea to spawn in these waters. Hundreds of seasonal fishermen arrived by boat, packed into the rorbuer – the red and yellow timber cabins on wooden stilts above the harbour – and worked through to April. Then the fishing ended. The boats stopped coming. The village stayed exactly as it was. Someone had the idea to turn to tourism. But instead of building a resort here, they made the village the resort. The entire settlement functions as the accommodation. The rorbuer are the rooms. The cod liver oil factory is a museum. The smithy, the sawmill, the smokehouse – all still there. No new buildings have gone up around the harbour. The place stopped in time. The heritage rorbuer built in the late 19th century are nationally protected monuments. Sleeping in one means the outer equipment room, the inner stove room, the layout sits exactly as the fishermen knew it. That hundred-meter walk in the Arctic dark to the bathroom is all part of living that history. The accommodation range is remarkable. On one end: those original fishermen's quarters. On the other: The House of Dahl, a five-bedroom private villa built in 1926, sleeping ten, available for full private hire. In between: The Isolated Fisherman – a private cabin on a remote hillside, ten minutes from the village by RIB boat, champagne on arrival, and an outdoor fireplace for when the northern lights come. Oh, there's also an open-air spa. You can sit in the hot tub and watch the aurora. This year Fotografiska, one of the world's most respected photography institutions, chose this village to display a major exhibition. It's now woven through the rorbuer, the coastal paths, the working structures of a place where 19 people live year-round until this October. A 2,400-year-old settlement, turned in to a time capsule you can stay in. That's about as close to a time machine as we're going to get. Full story in the newsletter - link in bio