SWL Week in Review - Tiktok, Trade Wars, and Financial Nihilism

Sam Lessin's end of week roundup ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏  ͏ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­  

More or Less Tiktok and Trade War… and we get awkward figuring out how to talk about Masculine and Feminine ‘energy’ while staying married… here is some gender spice

Some Other Hot Takes:

• Wealth is mostly just stored in memes — even the value of ‘profits’ aren’t really fundamental, they are just a communication tool / language valued by a community… As the world fractures from one cohesive pax-Americana into cultus and communities, the way we store wealth and what we value (and exchange rates between forms of value) gets a whole lot more complicated.


• Technological Unemployment — is already here…. We just force people to do that unemployment while sitting at desks — and other musings on how poorly understood and measured the impact of tech is on the economy… you can parrot the ‘tech doesn’t destroy jobs’… but does it?
• The rise of the ‘re-seed’ — seeing more and more companies that got way ahead of themselves (especially during AI money burning party) that have something, but are terribly mis-positioned… will people soberly do ‘re-seeds?’ And reset the clock or just throw in towel.


• Tiktok — America’s number one unforced national security error. What a week! Will we defend ourselves or will we not!? This is the week… also I love the future-war sci-fi narrative where we ban china’s control over American social media distribution, and their retribution is dropping flight restrictionson DJI / Chinese drones in the US to mess up our security… great plot line for a book.


• “Scream and people will listen” from a great conversation with Nuseir Yassin, one of the most successful creators I know … and Venmo co-founder iqram magdon-ismail talking about ‘podcast less podcasting’ and jelly.


• Negative EV bets with your time (cough startups) — before you get mad at meme investing and gambling… just remember that all you out there doing startups are making negative EV bets as well — :)

Sam

P.S. Ripped Jeff Bezos Rocket Launch made me laugh pretty hard this week — if this isn’t AI generated, does reality even matter anymore?

P.P.S. I also loved this silly Woolly Mammoth post… 200m on 10B post round announcement is always a sign of the height of rational investing (or maybe the investor just really deeply believes in meme-cult-capitalism ... it doesn’t matter if you do it or if doing it makes any economics sense, only that more people buy in to you doing it!)

P.P.P.S welcome my new associate at Slow Jack Raines… AKA ‘young money’ …. all bad ideas are now his... all good ideas are mine.

P.P.P.P.S the show 'english teacher' is great... the world is healing... and hilarious.

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sam lessin | @lessin | want to talk | podcast | stop | to get added to the mailing list email sl@wlessin.com