SWL Week in Review - The Voice of America

From:

sam lessin <s@wlessin.com>

To:

Hidden Recipient <hidden@emailshot.io>

Date:

7/5/2026, 9:16 PM

MORE OR LESS — THE AMERICAN INTERNET

We talk about how great America is… the need for a validated ‘American’ internet for civic discourse, Taylor and Travis, and Foiling… I spend a bunch of time discussing my 250th birthday gift to America… Vox Americanus — because I am pretty sick of waiting for major social platforms to let you scan your license and get a badge as an actual ‘American’ (we can debate citizen or not, but at least not a Russian bot).... and yes the fallout of this will be non-american internets, sovereign AI, etc. which sucks -- we are gonna need to re-figure out love and culture export... but we can't deny where we are (and maybe we just should host the World Cup more often).

HOT TAKES

VOX AMERICANUS — Stripe, Persona, etc. all make it really easy to validate state licenses with just an API for like $1 a pop — I really think the big platforms should let you ‘badge’ real Americans at a minimum… it is insane that people are swayed by, and spend hours arguing with state actors, bots, etc…. We need an ‘American’ conversation / where we engage with other Americans as REAL citizens…. But look, it is 2026… so the right way to do things is just build them and show the way. Vox Americanus anyone can listen, but only validated ‘Americans’ with US driver’s licenses can speak. I got work to do, and the iOS app is coming, but if you are interested in joining the conversation with JUST AMERICANS — signup here (and send feedback)

ALTMAN’S UN-AMERICAN / CYNICAL PROPOSAL — I want to be clear, I hate the game not the player…. But man this 5% thing Altman is doing is cynical…. I get it… you realize you are in a commodity business as a ‘utility’ but without any regulatory capture and zero global friction (so much worse than being PG&E) — that doesn’t work.. so you gotta figure out how to generate regulatory capture however you can. I also get it, you are behind so you pop out 5% of your challenged business to put pressure on Anthropic (doing well), and Google / Meta / etc people with real businesses… it is all politically strategically smart — but deeply un-capitalist, un-free-market … we have a GREAT open, pretty fair, free, high belief thing bonding us with winners, losers, etc — I so sympathize with ‘if you don’t like the game change the rules’ — I just wish folks weren’t selling out capitalism quite soo hard right now, because real capitalism built on strong laws and a fair and open society is just so so good for everyone.

RO KHANNA’S UN-AMERICAN PROPOSAL — you have got to be kidding me… On one hand, on historical timelines, in the Foucault ‘discipline and punish’ sense… once the state can properly ‘see’ something, it can attack it …. Old trend… from the body, to the mind, income…. And now the state can ‘see’ wealth (in a sense)… so this is coming…. On the other hand, now we are just talking broad-based asset seizure — that is, unless Ro is playing 5D chess, and realizes that once you abstract from ‘tax 2,000 billionaires’ (let's be honest there are probably 50% more than we think) to ‘tax 200,000 deca-millionaires our job is to push to ‘actually just tax anyone who has any wealth, it is only fair to include everyone’ (and thereby expand the population to such an absurd level that everyone realizes how deeply anti-American we are getting here.)

25 DECADES — I asked Claude to do 25 highlights of USA, one per-decade… it is pretty interesting to zoom out to decade level on the history, especially when you have lived through 4 of 25. 25 decades seems both very long and quite quite short.

CELEBRATING THE DECLARATION > LIBERATION — I love a good declaration, but I also have also been / am also quite wary of our era of ‘narrative over substance’ — maybe this is nothing new…. You celebrate the declaration, not when we actually won… so this whole ‘buy the story (sell the news)… is nothing new? Heck it was even pretty painful for quite a while AFTER we gave the brits the L with us figuring out government, way better to be long-story-celebration.

WHERE IS ALL MY TAHOE MILITARY HARDWARE? — one of my absolute favorite things about Tahoe 4th is all the military hardware that comes out of the wood works as pilots have fun buzzing the lake with sweet airplanes for the 4th… this year tho I only saw one F16.. I don’t mean to be ungrateful - that was sweet… but where did they all go? DC? Middle East… I like my tax dollars on parade celebrating FREEDOM.

DOES ANYONE CARE ABOUT WEALTH PRESERVATION ANYMORE? — of note… as the world gets more unequal… people with no wealth don’t care about preserving it (hello long-odds kalshi-meme rationality)… but funnily enough, folks who have a ton of money also don’t really care… they are worried about getting order-of-magnitude left behind, but earning 6% pre-tax just does nothing for them either … so are we just in an era where no one cares about wealth preservation?

AN ERA OF DIRTY SPORTS? — speaking of eras… the NBA finals was pretty dirty… and that red-card seems crazy against USA, but red-card nonetheless… are sports just getting dirtier? Full aggression up to the rules? Interesting in a panopticon sense where the refs could have eyes everywhere.

Happy Summer,
Sam

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