Pedro Torres-Mackie

Sanctions hurt people, not dictators. Right? Wrong! This book by @miguelsantos12 @JoseMoralesA and @zp2903 carefully looks at Venezuela and tells a much more interesting story: the sanctions forced the dictator to reduce their damaging command and control destructive measures. Read this 🧵!

Introducing USVC - a single basket of high-growth venture capital, for everyone. No accreditation required, SEC-registered, and a very low $500 minimum. Includes OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, Sierra, Crusoe, Legora, and Vercel. As USVC adds more companies, investors will own a piece of that too. Liquidity typically comes when companies exit, but we’re aiming to let investors redeem up to 5% of the fund every quarter. This isn’t guaranteed, but if we can make it work, you won’t be locked up like in a traditional venture fund. It runs on AngelList, which already supports $125 billion of investor capital. And I’ve joined USVC as the Chairman of its Investment Committee. — Go back to the 1500s, you set sail for the new world to find tons of gold - that was adventure capital. Early-stage technology is the modern version. It says we are going to create something new, and it’s risky. It’s daring. But ordinary people can’t invest until it’s old, until it’s no longer interesting, until everybody has access to it. By the time a stock IPOs, most of the alpha is gone. The adventure is gone. Public market investors are literally last in line. This problem has become farcical in the last decade. Startups are reaching trillion dollar valuations in the private markets while ordinary investors have their noses up to the glass, wondering when they’ll be let in. Investing in private markets isn’t easy. You need feet on the ground. You need judgment built over years. Most people don’t have the patience to wait ten or twenty years for an investment to come to fruition. But there is no more productive, harder-working way to deploy a dollar than in true venture capital. USVC enables you to invest in venture capital in a broad, accessible, professionally-managed way, through a single basket of innovation, focused on high-growth startups, at all stages. It is how you bet on the future of tech: the smartest young people in the world, working insane hours, leveraged to the max, with code, hardware, capital, media, and community. Your dollar doesn’t work harder anywhere. There is an old line - in the future, either you are telling a computer what to do, or a computer is telling you what to do. You don’t want to be on the wrong side of that transaction. USVC lets you buy the future, but you buy it now. Then you wait, and if you are right, you get paid. Get access here: usvc.com

This is awesome. A top tier VC fund anyone can invest in with as little as $500. Congrats @AngelList @naval @ankurnagpal

timeline cleanse: pediatrician with a young patient

In 1993, the New York Times published an article criticising Federico Fellini and some other foreign language films for being "hard work". MARTIN SCORSESE sent this incredible letter in response.

@zooko privacy is normal 🤘🏼

hey errybody please reply to this so i can see who u r kthxbye

@WillManidis examples?

we live in age of great moral panics about things that don’t matter at all and zero moral outrage over some of the most egregious societal sins we’ve ever seen

@dieworkwear is an oxford button down ok to wear untucked with a sport coat and jeans?

OXFORD BUTTON-DOWN If you get a sport coat, you will naturally need some button-up shirts to wear with it. Oxford cloth button-downs in staple colors (white, light blue) are a versatile option you can wear with tailored jackets or casualwear.

Let me show you a wardrobe you can build with $1,700 🧵

Of course that's your contention. You're a first-time SaaS bear. You just got finished listening to some podcast, Dario on Dwarkesh, probably. Now you think it’s the end of white collar work and seat-based pricing is screwed. You're gonna be convinced of that til tomorrow when you get to “Something Big is Happening”. Then you’ll install ClawdBot on a Mac Mini, vibe code a dashboard on top of a postgres database and say we’re all just a couple ralph loops away from building a Salesforce competitor. That’s gonna last until next week when you discover context graphs, and then you're gonna be talking about how the systems of record will be disintermediated by an agentic layer and reposting OAI marketing graphics. “Well, as a matter of fact, I won't, because ultimately the application layer is just ….” The application layer is just business logic on top a CRUD database. You got that from Satya’s appearance on the BG2 pod, December 2024, right? Yeah, I saw that too. Were you gonna plagiarize the whole thing for us? Do you have any thoughts of your own on this matter? Or...is that your thing? You get into the replies of anyone posting a SaaS ticker. You watch some podcast and then pawn it off as your own idea just to impress some VCs and embarrass some anon who’s long SaaS? See the sad thing about a guy like you is in a couple years you're gonna start doing some thinking on your own and you're gonna come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life. One: don't do that. And two: you dropped thirty grand on Mac Minis and LLM API calls to come to the same conclusion you could’ve got for free by following a handful of VC accounts.

Crazy opportunity to be at the center of AI investing

This is wild

👀

As a Venezuelan, these last few days have been a rollercoaster of happiness, frustration, and sadness. On the day I thought would be the most important for my life and my country, I find myself struggling to make people understand that our reality isn’t an internet slogan. It has left me completely broken to see that the fall of the criminal dictator who destroyed my family, my friends, and my country was not universally celebrated. What I found instead has left me with a profound sense of emptiness: What I have seen confirms something I have felt for a long time. Nuanced thought has practically vanished. There is no longer a common ground where we can reason with any depth. We are so consumed by radical narratives that we have reduced complex, painful realities into simplified versions that feel comfortable to us. Today, people react before they even try to understand. They take a stand based on their hatred of a figure or an ideology first, and only then do they look for a way to justify it. The question is no longer about what actually protects human life, but rather who is saying it and which side they belong to. Moral analysis has been replaced by political identity. Fewer and fewer people bother to learn from direct sources or real communities. Very few take the time to actually talk to those living the realities they criticize from afar. Instead, we consume fragments of information filtered by social media and algorithms designed to reinforce what we already believe, all seen through the lens of privilege. We have reached a point where trying to understand nuance feels dangerous. Defending something objectively good is seen as a betrayal if the person doing it is on the "wrong side." Many people now reject actions that relieve human suffering simply because acknowledging them would mean agreeing with someone they have decided to hate. Ideology has been placed above reality. We are reducing entire countries and cultures to Instagram posts and slogans shared without context. People are taking to the streets to defend realities they have never experienced and pains they have never had to carry, convinced that a narrative learned online is enough to speak for others. We have never been so technologically connected while being so humanly disconnected. Being right has become a priority over listening. What disappoints me most is seeing how human rights fall below personal or political interests. People aren't thinking from a place of reason or shared humanity; they are completely rooted in extremes. I only ask for a little respect and compassion for those of us who have suffered through 30 years of dictatorship. Please, listen to the voices that have been silenced for so long.

A Call for New Aesthetics: newaesthetics.art.

@dieworkwear is there a ny based tailor you recommend for a made to measure tux?

If you're interested in bespoke tailoring and based in the United States, I have some trunk show announcements that may interest you. A hundred years ago, if you wanted a world-class suit, you'd make a pilgrimage to London, walk down Savile Row, and step inside any one of the many reputable tailoring shops frequented by the likes of Fred Astaire or Cary Grant. Today, I'm not so sure. First, celebrities are rarely a good compass for how to dress (many are little more than walking billboards, paid by brands to wear designer clothes). Second, as the tailoring trade has diminished, so has the labor pool. Today, some of the best tailoring I see is done by small, little-known shops, partly because large operations can't find enough talent to produce the volume of clothes customers order while still maintaining standards. Whitcomb & Shaftsbury is one such modest operation with consistently high standards. Founded in 2004 by Suresh and Mahesh Ramakrishnan, they don't have the same history as some of the larger Savile Row names. (In fact, they're technically located around the corner on St George Street). But their team is no less impressive. Their cutters include John McCabe (formerly at Kilgour, French Stanbury for 17 years) and Bob Bigg (who worked with Anthony Sinclair, the tailor who famously made Sean Connery's Bond suits). Sian Walton, who worked for Thom Sweeney and Alexander McQueen, also cuts here. Notably, she has experience cutting womenswear. As experienced clients of bespoke tailors know, the name on the label doesn't matter as much as the hands that lay on your garment. On that front, Whitcomb & Shaftsbury boasts an impressive team of people who make a house style that can be described as "light drape." That means a soft, natural shoulder (by British standards) and just a bit of fullness in the chest. It's a cut I personally favor because it's flattering on a wide range of men and offers tremendous comfort, as the clothes don't feel binding. I will mention price last because I think they're sometimes unfairly pegged as a "value tailor," which makes people believe that they're "good for the money," rather than just "good." But Whitcomb & Shaftsbury offers two services: a full bespoke service made in London, and then a service where the pattern drafting and cutting are done in London, while the coat-making is done in India by tailors they trained. The second offers a more affordable garment without sacrificing workmanship. Ultimately, it's the company's managers who guarantee the fit and quality of a garment, regardless of where the tailoring was done. Consider Whitcomb & Shaftsbury if you, like me, have a particular fondness for classic British style. During the 2020 COVID lockdowns, I interviewed some tailors about how they were getting by with restricted travel. Since at least the end of the Second World War, Western European tailors have had to travel to the United States to keep order books full (remember: Europe was devastated by the war, but the US enjoyed much post-war prosperity). Many told me that they were setting up remote fittings via Zoom. But they also candidly told me, "This is not an ideal setup." There's a reason why tailors insist on seeing customers in person. Nuances such as a person's posture and figuration can't always be easily captured through a screen. Different fabrics will also respond to a needle and thread differently, which can impact how a garment hangs from the shoulders. This is why I don't recommend buying from online tailoring operations where you never see a fitter in person. Sartoria Pastena is one of the few exceptions. During my last few years on a menswear forum, some guys were sending their best-fitting suits to this small Neapolitan operation, having things copied, and then doing remote fittings via teleconferencing and photos. To my surprise, the results were very good — so good that I would have never thought it was done remotely. With their growing popularity on the forum, one member organized a trunk show in the US, which has since grown into a full ten-city tour. Being Neapolitan, Sartoria Pastena follows in a particular tailoring tradition. These garments are very softly constructed with minimal padding and no domette. That makes them lighter, softer, and more breathable (perhaps ideal for warmer climes). Of course, the problem with soft tailoring is that, without much structure, the garments can sometimes sit too close to the body. But as you can see above, Pastena cuts very classic garments — shoulders that aren't too narrow, a chest that's full enough for movement, and pants that have shape without looking like leggings. If you like how @DavidLaneDesign dresses, you may want to use Pastena, as they make many of his suits and sport coats. Consider Pastena if you like soft, Neapolitan tailoring and want someone you can continue to work with if you ever decide to move. They're one of the few operations I would trust to do remote fittings (although, still always better to see them first at a trunk show). Finally, my usual disclosure: this is not a paid tweet, as I don't do paid tweets. I get nothing from making these announcements — no kickbacks, commissions, freebies, discounts, or whatever else. I make these announcements simply because I love tailoring, and it's my pleasure to promote real tailors. If you have questions, please get in touch with the tailors directly, as I am not their representative.

This image looks grim to us, but when Terence Cuneo painted it in 1947 it was a picture of progress. In fact it was commissioned by Ford, whose factory it portrays.

In case you missed it, @Function just announced a $298M Series B at a $2.5B valuation from Redpoint, a16z, Spacecadet, and many others. Huge congrats to @swerdlin, @drmarkhyman, @pranithapat, and the entire Function team for building what is quickly becoming the operating system for human health. I couldn’t be more proud or more grateful to be one of the earliest investors. The most rewarding part is having a front row seat to the impact Function is having on hundreds of thousands of people in the US, and soon, millions around the world. America spends ~2x more per capita on healthcare than Canada (my home country) and yet we have substantially worse outcomes and higher rates of disease. The biggest problem that plagues healthcare in America is that we’re far too reactive and not preventative enough. For most Americans, their first interaction with the healthcare system is a hospital visit, which is expensive and means the person waited far too long. By pushing healthcare from reactive to truly preventative, Function has a chance to rewrite how we care for people around the world, and, if they succeed, to become one of the most valuable companies on the planet 👨‍🚀

YC is the YC for crypto

Short term price moves do not measure long term progress. 2025 was a huge year for fundamental progress in crypto adoption and innovation. We're sharing 9 ideas we’re ready to back that could define crypto’s next big thing in 2026. They break down into 4 main themes: 👇

Shame on you, @Cartajuanero, for doing the Venezuelan regime’s bidding. Fortunately, human rights watchdogs such as the @HRF exist to unmask people like you who help keep these criminal structures in power. It’s unforgivable that reputable journalists such as @amanpour/@CNN give a platform to lies and misinformation.