COPE

LeBron the most unintentionally funny player in the NBA because why is he complaining to this little kid 😂😂😂

this is the stuff every 20 year old needs to hear. not bullshit career advice from people who never took risk to build something real. game from a guy who got pushed out of his own company, cashed out billions, and started building again like nothing happened. different breed.

Birdman: "I got enough power to help everyone" Inmate: "We need books" Birdman: "So you think reading books gone help y’all?"

SERVICE-AS-A-SOFTWARE. That is the real opportunity for 90% of us. I keep watching smart people pour months into building beautiful UI applications that Anthropic and OpenAI are going to absorb in a single product update. It will feel ARCHAIC in two years that we used to click through user interfaces to navigate databases and complete tasks. Agents just do it. One prompt. Done. 90% of the entire application layer is going to get eaten over the next decade. The dashboards. The forms. The CRUD. All of it. Where does that leave you? Exactly where the money is. Service-as-a-software. E.g. An ad agency that bakes its winning playbooks into AI systems and serves 1,000 clients with the quality they used to give 10. An IP law firm that encodes decades of expertise into AI skill files and sells legal services at infinite scale with near-zero marginal cost. A consulting firm. An accounting practice. A creative studio. Pick your vertical. The backend is AI. The frontend is your expertise packaged as a service. The moat is that YOU actually know what good looks like in your domain. You're not competing with OpenAI. You're competing with other service providers who are still doing everything manually. That's not a hard fight to win. Encode your knowledge. Automate your delivery. Sell the service. Scale infinitely. The technology gets commoditized. The person who knows how to USE it doesn't.

Here is re-post of an internal post: We have been working with the DoW to make some additions in our agreement to make our principles very clear. 1. We are going to amend our deal to add this language, in addition to everything else: "• Consistent with applicable laws, including the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, National Security Act of 1947, FISA Act of 1978, the AI system shall not be intentionally used for domestic surveillance of U.S. persons and nationals. • For the avoidance of doubt, the Department understands this limitation to prohibit deliberate tracking, surveillance, or monitoring of U.S. persons or nationals, including through the procurement or use of commercially acquired personal or identifiable information." It’s critical to protect the civil liberties of Americans, and there was so much focus on this, that we wanted to make this point especially clear, including around commercially acquired information. Just like everything we do with iterative deployment, we will continue to learn and refine as we go. I think this is an important change; our team and the DoW team did a great job working on it. 2. The Department also affirmed that our services will not be used by Department of War intelligence agencies (for example, the NSA). Any services to those agencies would require a follow-on modification to our contract. 3. For extreme clarity: we want to work through democratic processes. It should be the government making the key decisions about society. We want to have a voice, and a seat at the table where we can share our expertise, and to fight for principles of liberty. But we are clear on how the system works (because a lot of people have asked, if I received what I believed was an unconstitutional order, of course I would rather go to jail than follow it). But 4. There are many things the technology just isn’t ready for, and many areas we don’t yet understand the tradeoffs required for safety. We will work through these, slowly, with the DoW, with technical safeguards and other methods. 5. One thing I think I did wrong: we shouldn't have rushed to get this out on Friday. The issues are super complex, and demand clear communication. We were genuinely trying to de-escalate things and avoid a much worse outcome, but I think it just looked opportunistic and sloppy. Good learning experience for me as we face higher-stakes decisions in the future. In my conversations over the weekend, I reiterated that Anthropic should not be designated as a SCR, and that we hope the DoW offers them the same terms we’ve agreed to. We will host an All Hands tomorrow morning to answer more questions.

The Day Africa Built Its Own Money Rail: PAPSS Is the Beginning of a New Financial Order. When I first heard about PAPSS, the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System, my reaction was simple and honest: “This is it. This thing is going to wipe out every remittance startup in Africa.” I wasn’t alone. The whispers in fintech circles were loud, almost anxious. A continent-wide payment rail backed by Afreximbank and the AU? Instant cross-border transfers in local currencies? No SWIFT, no dollar middlemen? It sounded like a death sentence. But I was wrong. And the more I dug into PAPSS, the more I realized something startling: PAPSS isn’t here to kill anyone. It’s here to change the entire terrain beneath us. If the old systems were narrow roads built by outsiders, PAPSS is a massive African-built super-railway, loud, fast, unapologetic, cutting across borders that once choked trade and slowed innovation. And for remittance companies? This isn’t an ending. It’s a reckoning. A moment where you either evolve with the new rails, or get crushed by the shift. The Old Problem: Moving Money in Africa Was a Maze Sending money from Ghana to Nigeria used to feel like sending a letter in the 90s. It hopped through correspondent banks in Europe, waited in SWIFT queues, and got sliced by FX conversion fees until it arrived, late and thinner than it started. African traders paid dearly for every border their money crossed. Remittance startups emerged to solve this - faster, cheaper, mobile-first, but they still had to ride on foreign rails. And that’s where PAPSS walks in. The New Rail: PAPSS Changes the Rules PAPSS, built by Afreximbank and the African Union, allows Africans to send money across borders instantly in local currencies. No USD. No European intermediaries. No multi-day waits. A Ghanaian merchant can pay a Nigerian supplier in cedis, and the supplier receives naira instantly. The system handles the FX conversion and final settlement through connected central banks. It’s like Africa finally built its own financial internet backbone and everyone else is just logging in. So, Should Remittance Startups Panic? No. But they should pivot. Fast. PAPSS won’t replace fintechs; it will reshape them. It’s not coming for customers, it’s coming for the plumbing. Here’s the truth: PAPSS doesn’t do KYC. It doesn’t onboard users. It doesn’t handle compliance, UX, or trust. That’s still your job and it’s where your moat lies. The New Playbook for Remittance Companies. To survive, remittance players must evolve from “money movers” to “experience builders.” Here’s what that means: 1. Build on PAPSS, Don’t Compete With It. Integrate directly or through a PAPSS-enabled bank. Market your app as “Powered by PAPSS” instant, compliant, and AfCFTA-aligned. You’ll ride the same rails governments are betting Africa’s trade future on. 2. Win on User Experience. If PAPSS is the infrastructure, you’re the interface. Your users still need seamless mobile apps, WhatsApp chatbots, receipts, local agents, and languages that feel familiar. People don’t fall in love with rails, they fall in love with how you make those rails feel easy. 3. Go Niche, Not Global. Forget trying to outspend Western Union. Be the best at Ghana–Nigeria trade payments, or at paying Kenyan freelancers from Rwanda. Specialize in one corridor, one community, one use case and dominate it. The Future of PAPSS: How I envision the next 50 years? The real power of PAPSS isn’t what it is today, it’s what it’s becoming. As it isn’t just another payment system or a fancy cross-border switch. PAPSS is the first financial rail built by Africans, for Africa, and eventually, for the world. Right now, PAPSS is focused on connecting African countries to each other, making it possible for 1.4 billion people to trade in their own currencies, without begging the dollar for permission. But this is just the opening chapter. In a few years, PAPSS will sit side-by-side with SWIFT, not as a replacement, but as a continental partner. Where SWIFT handles global correspondent flows, PAPSS will handle African economic flows and together, they’ll open up a two-way bridge for Africa to trade directly with Asia, the Middle East, South America, and eventually Europe and North America. PAPSS will handle most of the remittance outflows while SWIFT will handle most of the inflows. And for many African countries facing currency instability and liquidity crises like Mozambique, Sudan, Malawi, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, DRC, Zimbabwe, and others - PAPSS is not just a convenience. It’s salvation. It brings: 1. Local-currency trade, reducing reliance on unstable FX markets. 2. Liquidity stability, by settling through trusted central banks. 3. Inclusion, by giving every African country a fair chance to participate in continental trade. 4. Resilience, by reducing pressure on fragile USD reserves. Imagine struggling economies finally trading freely with their neighbors, not waiting for IMF dollars or suffering from high FX spreads. That’s the promise. And here’s the most important part: The PAPSS everyone sees today is not the PAPSS being built for tomorrow. The next version will be: - Stablecoin-enabled - Instant - Programmable - Fintech-friendly - Borderless Fintechs will build on PAPSS rails not because they’re forced to, but because the rails will be too efficient, too cheap, too reliable, and too deeply integrated into African central bank infrastructure to ignore. PAPSS is not a competitor. It’s the foundation. Maybe the uncomfortable truth is this: Africa was never lacking talent, it was lacking rails. Now that PAPSS is here, the excuses are gone. So the real question isn’t whether PAPSS will change the game. It’s this: Are African fintechs ready to stop hiding behind the dollar and finally build for Africa?