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Some Dad Books to get you back into Dad reading:
Endurance
The Wager
Shadow Divers
Pirate Hunters
Skunk Works
Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea
Empire of the Summer Moon
The Wright Brothers
Undaunted Courage
The First American
A History of the American People
The Frontiersmen
The Lost City of the Monkey God
Centennial
The Greatest Knight
Empires of the Sea
Very strong 'my bad hedge fund website is a flex' game from @CliffordSosin
Cliff Sosin (@CliffordSosin) is one of my favorite people to call, ask some big questions, and then shut up and listen.
This conversation is a version of one of those calls.
We discuss:
- The limits of intelligence
- Owning the complements to it
- Meta, the frontier labs, and the AI build-out
- Capital markets
- Why he's comfortable with 80% of his portfolio in Carvana.
TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Intro
10:41 The Limits of Intelligence
18:03 Investing Beyond Cheap Intelligence
24:03 Will AI Become Commoditized?
35:10 Who Profits From AI?
43:00 AI Agents Reshape Competition
52:06 America's Capital Markets
58:04 Transforming Companies With AI
68:19 AI and Portfolio Concentration
73:16 Education in the AI Era
Everyone is wrong about the greatest rock songs of the 21st century.
10. '59 Sound - Gaslight Anthem
9. I Don't Live Here Anymore - War on Drugs
8. The Underdog - Spoon
7. Slow Dancing in a Burning Room - John Mayer
6. Famous Last Words - My Chemical Romance
5. To Be Young (Is to be sad, is to be high) - Ryan Adams
4. Beautiful Day - U2
3. All These Things That I've Done - The Killers
2. Hard to Explain - The Strokes
1. Ball and Biscuit - The White Stripes
Welcome to new Kansas City/River Club/Thomas Hart Benton-respector followers.
One of the first podcasts I ever did was on William Volker, who we can thank for the Liberty Memorial, the University of Kansas City (now UMKC), and an admirable legacy of personal giving from a wealthy elite.
The Volker Memorial fountain still carries his name and has a wonderful St. Martin of Tours statue that was commissioned by the City of Fountains in his honor.
But in 2021, the city crudely axed his name ('Volker Boulevard' R.I.P.) from one of the main thoroughfares in lieu of renaming it to the unremarkable 'MLK Jr Blvd.'
(From what I could tell, most locals didn't care about the change and/or didn't really know what was going on anyway.)
Fittingly, just a few years ago the aforementioned statue was also vandalized, and as far as I'm aware is still in a state of disrepair.
Yet the Kansas City River Club still exists on the top of this bluff, one last bastion of a fading civilization
"Technological progress is not inevitable. It's not some kind of abstract concept. Humans make technology. If we don't do it it will not happen."
- Elon Musk (The Book of Elon - @EricJorgenson)
Anthropic, but just stop annoying everyone when you open your mouth
Always genuflect when on the first base side of the new Royals stadium
The continued ratcheting up of the social norm to give out *full sized* candy bars on Halloween has been a major boon for the Flattery children.
My HOA sent me a letter requesting that I stop handing out full-size candy bars for Halloween this year.
-Fun-size bars are usually 15–25¢ each.
-Full-size are around 75¢–$1.
Most people give out 2–3 fun-size anyway, so the real difference is often only a few cents per kid.
Am I crazy, or is it weird for an HOA to police this?
A new illustration mocked up for the forthcoming BOYS’ BOOK
During the “golden age of illustration,” children were depicted with anatomic accuracy that was faithful to the stage of life they were in, and in poses that were natural and believable for a child. Jesse Wilcox Smith, Elsa Beskow and Mary Cassat are examples of artists who did such work and they were able to do so because they not only observed children closely, but also loved them.
However, modern illustrations of children feature joints that don’t articulate–elbows and knees don’t exist– and facial expressions that are emojis rather than anatomically correct changes that belie bone structure and fat distribution underneath.
As a circle with a triangle under it depicts a woman on a bathroom stall, so modern illustrators depict children with large heads, goofy bean mouthed expressions and noodle arms and legs. In essence, children are no longer depicted as human beings but rather emoticons of human beings.
And the reason for this is not merely due to changes in “artistic styles”, but rather the far more oily and avaricious greed of publishers, the sloth and incompetence of modern artists and most heinously, a modern disdain for children.
- An excerpt from my latest essay, soon to be published.

































