Malcolm

Full post malcolmsmith188699.substack.com/p/wheres-the-w…

California's water crisis is here. We can build our way out. Bookmark this. You'll want to come back to it once it's obvious.

If American Dynamism means anything, it means this. @pmarca @KTmBoyle @DavidU Let's take control of our country's future starting in CA and make it repeatable for Texas and states beyond

The fix: • 9 desalination plants on the California coast • ~1.6M acre-feet/year of drought-proof water • Covers urban demand of LA + SF + San Diego combined • ~$45B project cost • Payback in 10-15 years Pencils today. Scales to 2040.

The water story isn't really a water story. It's a story about whether we still know how to build. Israel built itself drought-proof in 15 years. Australia in 10. The Gulf drinks from the sea now. We just hold meetings

@billclerico Try Factorio

Claude Code is Farmville for 40 year old former software engineers

I can see the appeal in wanting to hit pause and prioritize the human/societal side of all this. Genuine question though: does anyone have a strong example of Congress writing effective legislation that won’t mostly just protect today’s incumbents and slow everyone else down? Doesn’t seem like we need to jump to this extreme unless it’s mostly just posturing for the next election cycle

Can someone tell me why I’m wrong If dialysis costs Medicare ~$45B a year. And kidney failure patients are 1% of Medicare but 7% of the budget. the biggest winner of the GLP-1 era won’t be the drug companies. it’ll be the US budget Since GLP-1s slow CKD progression in diabetics. diabetes causes half of all dialysis cases.

Finally our revenge

Peruvian cab drivers drive like they’re being scouted by Formula 1 teams

@Airbnb has 47 filters and none of them tell me if the kitchen knives are sharp

@brian_blum1 The Overstory. One of the top 3 books I’ve read

I’ve decided my brain is cooked and the only solution is to read some fiction What book should I start with?

@Mho_23 UGC

i should never be sharing this but f*ck it seedance 2.0 + claude code + tiktok is THE best combo for AI videos i cracked the formula for generating videos that look hyper realistic & make your audience feel like "holy shit this person gets me" i'm finally sharing my FULL system with you.. here's what you're getting: - my prompting method for realistic voices (works every time) - my realistic human movements & breathing claude skill (this is key for realistic videos) - my exact method on how to make infinite length videos that maintain consistency - how to get AI tools for dirt cheap (90% off) RT + reply 'UGC' and i'll send you the step-by-step system (must follow so i can dm)

@garrytan The future is here, just not evenly distributed yet. The assistant I’ve fine tuned off posts like yours has me running two companies better than a full ops team

In 2024 Ed Zitron said "Generative AI is peaking, if it hasn't already peaked. It cannot do much more than it is currently doing." Since then: costs dropped 1000x, 50%+ of Americans use AI weekly, OpenAI hit $2B/month revenue, and I went from not coding for a decade to shipping production software daily. His argument went from "the economics don't work" to "they must be lying about the economics." That's not skepticism. That's cope.

@Clara_Gold Controversial take: New York is the new SF. Grown completely bored with the 'so what do you do' conversation here at SF parties

6 months ago, I moved to San Francisco. It’s the best place in the world to build, and one of the worst places to stay human. My unfiltered take: 1. SF is both overhyped and underrated The overhyped part: there are a lot of people with incredible resumes who are deeply unimpressive in real life. They were at the right company, at the right time, in the right market, and got carried by the wave. They made money, got comfortable, and now spend their time “exploring opportunities” over coffee, wasting your time. The underrated part: the top 1% here is insane. But almost impossible to get. Hiring in SF feels like being a guy on a dating app: everyone you want is out of your league, and everyone in your league wants someone out of theirs. The best people have unmatchable packages, endless options, and are optimizing for maximum impact: labs, frontier companies, or startups raising $100M pre-seed rounds. If you raised $10M from Tier 1 investors, you’re not hot shit here. You’re a B-player. It’s humbling. 2. There are fewer mission-driven people than I expected Especially on the application layer. A lot of people are in “secure the bag before it’s too late” mode. And honestly, it gives me the ick. The real religious builders I’ve met are often in labs, hardware, biotech, deeptech, defense — places where the work is hard enough that you can’t fake obsession. 3. The status game favors builders This is what SF does better than anywhere else. It rewards obsession. It rewards weirdness. It rewards people who make building their entire personality. Europe punishes that. SF gives it status. If you’ve felt like an outsider your whole life because you care too much, work too much, think too radically, or refuse to be chill about things that matter, this city will make you feel less insane. 4. The market liquidity is absurd Even if you don’t build a billion-dollar company, if you manage to build a strong product with a great team, someone smart might still acquire you for $ 100M. Yeah I know, it’s not your dream outcome as a founder, but on the days you feel desperate, it helps to keep going. 5. SF does not care about the meaning crisis that’s coming Anyone paying attention here can feel that something massive is happening with AI. But I’m shocked by how little people talk about the meaning crisis coming next. Everyone wants to talk about AI liberating humanity. Almost no one wants to talk about what happens when work — the thing that gives most people identity, structure, dignity, status, and purpose — starts disappearing. The vacuum will not be peaceful. People are underestimating the chaos that comes from humans suddenly having no idea why they matter. And I really feel like no one cares. 6. Personally, I’ve never been more unhappy I moved to SF and entered the matrix. I’ve always been intense. I’ve always worked crazy hours. But here, I lost the last parts of myself that were not about building. I don’t go to events. Most networking events feel like theater for people pretending to be important. The only events worth going to are small, curated dinners with people who are actually alive. I’ve made 0 real friends. I don’t do well with transactionality. I don’t do well with people constantly performing greatness. I don’t do well with rooms where everyone is optimizing and no one is being honest. So yes, SF is lonely, transactional, delusional, addictive, inspiring, boring, extraordinary, and completely insane. But it is still the only place to be right now if you’re a founder trying to build the next wave of humanity. And for now, that’s enough.

Dario did it again. Claude can now sing

@dunkhippo33 Up triple digits in the last 12 months leaning into exactly this. The picks nobody was talking about a year ago were the winners, although they might be more silicon substrate or photonics adjacent. Curious what’s on your list @dunkhippo33

This is not financial advice, but one thing that I have noticed is while everybody is going really gaga about AI related stocks, I think there are some overlooked areas in the public markets that are adjacent and will ride the wave.

@Impish_Bunny Cook food together - it’s an art form

genuinely how do you make friends

the problem isn’t finishing. it’s that AI makes it so easy to start 3 more while you’re in the middle of the first one