odell

Rome, the capital of a great monarchy, was incessantly filled with subjects and strangers from every part of the world, who all introduced and enjoyed the favourite superstitions of their native country.

Gambling is a big part of a small, trivial thing. Market-makers are a small part of a big, useful thing.

The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence but even religious concord

"I strongly recommend listening to this and not reading the transcript; Kevin Kelly narrates the story that led to his conversion to Christianity. Probably the most moving and beautiful short essay I’ve ever listened to." —@nabeelqu in today's issue of Words That Matter thisamericanlife.org/50/shoulda-bee… by @kevin2kelly

@zachtratar Why are taking meeting notes the canonical example of AI? I’ve never reviewed meeting notes in my life

A couple monks came into Notion today to tell us how they use the product. Totally flabbergasted that they're configuring custom AI agents and taking AI meeting notes with custom instructions. This is advanced, power-user usage... monks! Use AI... find inner peace?

youtu.be/ste4L1OLjkM?si… what an incredible incredible three minutes

@hypersoren be more explicit here please :)

the counter positioning opportunity continues to become clearer the labs need to sell lots of tokens what if you didn’t

richard pryor

@davidsenra @pmarca Go! Where ?

Great men of history had little to no introspection. The personality that builds empires is not the same personality that sits around quietly questioning itself. @pmarca and I discuss what we both noticed but no one talks about: David: You don't have any levels of introspection? Marc: Yes, zero. As little as possible. David: Why? Marc: Move forward. Go! I found people who dwell in the past get stuck in the past. It's a real problem and it's a problem at work and it's a problem at home. David: So I've read 400 biographies of history’s greatest entrepreneurs and someone asked me what the most surprising thing I’ve learned from this was [and I answered] they have little or zero introspection. Sam Walton didn't wake up thinking about his internal self. He just woke up and was like: I like building Walmart. I'm going to keep building Walmart. I'm going to make more Walmarts. And he just kept doing it over and over again. Marc: If you go back 400 years ago it never would've occurred to anybody to be introspective. All of the modern conceptions around introspection and therapy, and all the things that kind of result from that are, a kind of a manufacture of the 1910s, 1920s. Great men of history didn't sit around doing this stuff. The individual runs and does all these things and builds things and builds empires and builds companies and builds technology. And then this kind of this kind of guilt based whammy kind of showed up from Europe. A lot of it from Vienna in 1910, 1920s, Freud and all that entire movement. And kind of turned all that inward and basically said, okay, now we need to basically second guess the individual. We need to criticize the individual. The individual needs to self criticize. The individual needs to feel guilt, needs to look backwards, needs to dwell in the past. It never resonated with me.

Adobe grew revenue 3.3% QoQ and has 35% operating margins and $10B of annualized free cash flow. The stock is selling for $105B...

The OODA LOOP

@johnarnold Thiel believes that he will live forever. So he is going to keep it all.

I understand and agree with many criticisms of philanthropy. But practically, fortunes have to go somewhere. There are only 3 options: philanthropy, heirs & govt. If not nonprofits, is Peter Thiel's plan to give $10B+/child? I'm more skeptical of that than he is of philanthropy.

@davidsenra @pmarca Introspection is the only reason your podcast does numbers. People listen to it thinking they are going to get that one key insight to build something great.

@regulatorynerd @nickabouzeid Have you heard of fraud and theft?

@nickabouzeid I don’t make the rules (Visa does). I just read ‘em.

You can tell how much power Visa has in the Bay Area because we’re the only place in America where the cash price would be higher than the credit card price.

LOUIS C.K. on GOOD WILL HUNTING (1997) & Matt Damon

@kiaran_ritchie Cuz ur dumb

I don't see how Anthropic, OpenAI or any of the model providers have any hope of defending their moats. And consequently, I think they're going to get wiped out. Right now, in early 2026 they have a meaningful advantage in terms of model capability. But far cheaper and open source models are not far behind. How long can they maintain a meaningful advantage? For the vast majority of use cases, we don't actually need much higher intelligence. It doesn't take 140 IQ to automate Turbotax or powerpoint. Eventually we will be saturated in cheap, local models that are "good enough". Of course some scientific labs and frontier research will always want the latest and greatest. But that market is orders of magnitude smaller than these company valuations can justify. What am I missing?

your company will drastically become more efficient overnight if start doing spontaneous phone calls instead of 90% of meetings

I lose a little bit of respect for someone when I find out they lack lateral quickness

@PFTCommenter Once intelligence is a commodity the value swings backs to the dumb guys.

Nobody likes these AI guys left or right. Feels like this is a issue with 99% American consensus that they should be stuffed back in a locker