value

@schwartzbWSJ powerful insights: "It’s an instance of the administration scrambling to decide what to do with AI."

SCOOP: VP JD Vance held a secret call with CEOs of giant AI companies including Elon Musk, Dario Amodei and Sam Altman. Vance expressed concern with the potential of AI systems and impact they could have on local banks + other smaller businesses. It’s an instance of the administration scrambling to decide what to do with AI. Story w/ @AmrithRamkumar + @natalieandrews wsj.com/tech/ai/trump-…

@deepakshenoy @balaj824 who are the willing buyers of $28B of new shares?

@balaj824 This is strange Do you say that hdfcbank diluted itself 130% to acquire hdfc? No. It's just a merger with a cash component

I think this is genuinely strange as a question to ask. Gamestop is buying EBay for $55bn - but it's a merger with part stock part cash payout. This is a very common occurance and it's strange the anchors were using some weird math of counting current market cap of Gamestop as if it would be given as part of the deal. Gamestock issues about $28bn of fresh stock. It has $28bn of cash plus debt. A shareholder of ebay gets Gamestock shares plus cash, equivalent to the amount per share that Gamestop is buying ebay for. Gamestop's current market cap is $11bn. It will therefore become - if you want to "math" it - $11bn+$28bn fresh issue = $38bn. And for that, what matters is the effective diluted EPS of the merged entity, which is in the GME presentation. I know he's gruff. But he's right in saying he doesn't understand the question. It's like a trick question.

@drewfallon12 what's going on with Thorne and Hiya on this table?

Unilever's acquisition of Grüns this morning has the industry shaking. Unilever isn't know for disclosing financial terms, but I threw together some publicly available comps that would indicate average revenue exit multiple of 3.5x. Given Gruns' publicly disclosed 300m run rate, is almost for sure the newest billion dollar brand. I, however, am not convinced that Gruns commands an 'average' exit mutliple as it is one of the fastest growing, well run, well done brands in recent memory.

@DittiePE did he bring Alito's brother from Sicily with him??

Trump goes to SCOTUS. He thinks by his showing up that he will intimidate the justices. That’s the only reason he’s going. He’s not a president, he’s a low IQ street corner thug. And he should be treated as such.

@mikefutia Nano

Claude Code + Nano Banana 2 is f*cking cracked 🤯 I built a system inside Claude Code that researches any brand, writes 40 ad prompts from scratch, and fires them all to Nano Banana 2. One brand name + one URL = 40 production-ready static ads. All inside Claude Code. I took @alexgoughcooper's brilliant framework and automated the whole thing inside Claude Code. Perfect for DTC brands and agencies who need high-volume ad creative without briefing a designer or spending hours in Canva. If you're finding winning ad concepts on Meta and manually recreating them one at a time in Higgsfield — copying prompts, pasting product details, tweaking aspect ratios, downloading, organizing... This system eliminates the entire loop: → Give Claude a brand name and URL → It researches the brand's fonts, colors, packaging, and photography style → Builds a Brand DNA document from scratch → Fills in Alex's 40 proven ad templates (headline, us vs them, testimonial, UGC, review cards, stat callouts) with brand-specific details → Fires every prompt to Nano Banana 2 with your product photos as reference → Downloads finished ads into organized folders with an HTML gallery No Higgsfield. No manual prompt filling. No copy-pasting between tools. What you get: → 40 ad formats filled with your exact brand colors, fonts, and copy → 4 variations per format so you pick the best output → Product photos passed as reference so the model matches your real packaging → A reusable system — new brand, new folder, same pipeline Built 100% in Claude Code with Nano Banana 2. I put together a full playbook & Loom video showing the exact process to set this up yourself. Want access for free? > Like this post > Comment "NANO" And I'll send it over (must be following so I can DM)

@Cashflow_Cowboy DPI seems concerning, no?

For their 2014 vintage, Thrive tracking ahead of a16z and Founders Fund's funds of the same year. Thrive at 5.4x net while a16z at 4.1x and Founders Fund at 4.0x. Notable that FF's 2011 Fund and a16z's 2012 Fund were both significantly better (both over 10x net) than the Thrive equivalents at 5.7x and 6.1x. Not same vintage years, but a16z and FF 2017 Funds are both at 4.1x net. Thrive's 2016 Fund is at 3.5x net. Fun to get context for these big names in venture capital.

@LuxuryWatchGuy1 @Geiger_Capital that's what he says in the post? also, that's arguably the worst of all reasons to do this

@Geiger_Capital I’m not a fan of us entering the war but you cut the first 30 seconds of Rubio saying we were going to hit Iran he said why now because Israel was gonna hit first..dont be dishonest

George Washington warned us about this.

@FredLambert How would one cool a space datacenter?

After talking to a few smart people with a good understanding of the needs of AI and the potential of datacenters in space, I've come to the conclusion that it's mostly bullshit. Elon is likely to build a few, but it won't be competitive in the long term with earth-based data centers powered by nuclear, hydro, and solar energy.

This guy cooked. And he is sadly likely to be mostly right.

@AliceFromQueens And could get penicillin from literally anywhere else

What to make of a story that Bill Gates, whose philanthropy probably did more than anyone else’s in world history to prevent disease, didn’t think to wear a condom with a prostitute.

@CharlotteAlter One thing I’ve never understand is that for all the slander of Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas,” Markwayne is actually the one grifting off is 1/128 heritage

in the United States of America, we do not get executed for alleged felonies in the middle of the street without a trial.

@PalmerLuckey @JeninYounesEsq palmer wants those DOD appropriations. num num num

@JeninYounesEsq The wheels are turned to the left when she hits the gas.

I'm a former defense attorney and currently a civil liberties attorney with no political dog in this fight. I watched the video at least 10 times from different angles and at different speeds and waited to offer an opinion, which I still reserve the right to change if additional information changes the calculus. It is very clear that the officers instigated the confrontation. The woman initially tried to wave them past her. ICE officers have no authority to search a US citizen or arrest her (unless there's probable cause to believe she's harboring undocumented individuals, not a contention here). A woman surrounded by masked, armed men who have no law enforcement authority over her has every right to try to escape. Video shows her steering wheel is turned to the right, clearly an attempt to leave WITHOUT hitting anyone and steer clear of the officer standing towards the front of her car. That officer had time to step to the side, which is where he was when he shot her. Even a real police officer would not have the right to shoot at her for trying to flee. This is well-established in the case law; deadly force may not be used simply to prevent someone from getting away. Given that the ICE officers had no law enforcement authority to begin with, AND the video footage shows she was trying to escape a perceived threat, not to kill anyone, the crime is all the more inexcusable. I'm praying for the victim's family, especially her children. I'm also praying for all the conservatives who are so unprincipled and lost they're excusing this terrible crime, and gloating over a death that will leave three young children motherless, because of the victim's politics.

@mattyglesias Also, this is the SCIF at mal

@typesfast You can just start on chapter 3? 😂

I would read so many more biographies if they skipped the childhood years.

@tanayj I think there would be an interesting study in mapping VC investors returns like this with powerball winners.

Was reminded yesterday that Bay Area based Saint Francis High School made $34M from writing a $15k check (~2267x) into the seed round of Snap

@pitdesi I wouldn’t have predicted *any* of this. Love it

United airlines top international destinations by state & overall. I would have expected Tokyo to be lower than it is.

@IlvesToomas Yea—the shtick is they say they love free speech while trampling on free speech. No more huh?s—just call it for what it is

Huh?

@pitdesi Thank you for this post. Thoroughly informative and enjoyable. I was in Mayakoba recently and this history makes perfect sense now.

Cancun is not my cup of tea, but boy is it an incredible success story of engineering: the Mexican government engineered a tourist hotspot custom-built to attract American dollars, from a place that had nothing in 5 short years. In the late 60s, Mexico ran a huge trade deficit with the US. They were industrializing rapidly, importing machinery and materials that had to be paid for in dollars. Tourism offered a solution, a way to earn foreign currency using assets Mexico already had: beaches, climate, and ancient ruins. They actually spent months building a computer model, feeding data to an IBM 360 to analyze Mexico’s entire coastline, evaluating climate, beach quality, accessibility, and development costs. The computer selected Cancun #1, a remote sandbar that had a population of 3 people during the 1970 census. The 2nd option was Ixtapa. Cancuns location was perfect: turquoise water, white sand, ideal weather, and proximate to all of the eastern seaboard, the largest concentration of Americans enduring brutal winters and seeking affordable beach escapes. Hawaii was already popular for folks on the west coast but Cancun offered what Hawaii couldn’t: a winter getaway without the 12+ hour flight, and a much cheaper experience. The Caribbean location and dry season from November to April aligned perfectly with when East Coasters most desperately wanted sun. The government invested over $100 million in infrastructure, building an international airport, roads, utilities, and dredging lagoons. They built the hotel zone for foreigners and downtown Cancun for workers, all in 5 years They marketed Cancun aggressively to Americans, positioning it as a safe, convenient Caribbean alternative with better prices than anywhere else. Hotels catered explicitly to American tastes with English-speaking staff, American brands (Hyatt, Hilton etc) familiar food options, and all-inclusive packages. The genius was creating a place where Americans could feel like they’d “been to Mexico” without experiencing much of Mexico at all - you could go to a Hilton, speak English, eat burgers and hot dogs, pay in dollars, but get to say you went abroad. At the time, “going abroad" was often seen as something for the wealthy or the adventurous. For many Americans, especially those from the interior who don’t travel internationally often (as you see on the map) a Cancun vacation counts as cultural exploration, a stamp in the passport that feels adventurous while remaining completely comfortable and affordable. You didn’t need a passport to go there until 2007, which was helpful too. The whole thing worked brilliantly, beyond their expectations. They started the project in 1970 and welcomed the first guest in 1975. By 1980, Cancun had grown to a half million tourists and a population of 34,000 supporting tourism. Cancun is EXACTLY what Mexico designed it to be: a dollar-extraction machine that turns American desire for easy, safe “foreign” travel into billions of dollars flowing to Mexico. —- This story from the New York Times in 1972 was a good read: Mexico had a young Harvard-trained head of INFRATUR spearheading the program nytimes.com/1972/03/05/arc…

@TidyWire Love to take my hunting rifle to my boxing match

Notice how he's alone.

@jbarro also, my neurodivergent condition is a result of me being smarter than you.

"I have a 'neurodivergent' condition that exempts me from being polite or following social norms" -- hearing this everywhere these days

@MikeNellis The premise of the letter is so insane

Seems pretty clear to me that the DOJ knowingly released a fake letter from Epstein just to give MAGA influencers a talking point to defend Trump from all the other incriminating shit in these files.