weekend notes

Anecdote: “If you haven’t read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren’t broad enough to sustain you.” It is one of my favorite quotes from General James Mattis, our former Defense Secretary. My son Jackson and I were discussing the unusual meeting that Pete Hegseth, our current Secretary of War, had called

Hope all goes well… “Would I want my eldest son, who is 15 years old, eventually joining the types of formations that we are currently wielding,” asked Pete Hegseth, rhetorically, to 150 high-ranking commanders gathered in Quantico, Virginia. America’s new Secretary of War outlined his plan to lift standards across our armed forces. “Every parent deserves to know their son or daughter that joins o

Anecdote: When the story broke, I knew a few things for sure. The first was that this wouldn’t be the last. When the world’s most valuable company invests $100bln in its best customer to help it buy more AI chips, it’s not a one-and-done sort of transaction. The second thing I knew was that bearish traders would see this news as a definitive sign of the bull market top, kind of like they called th

Hope all goes well… “You mentioned Einstein and general relativity, and I agree. I think that’s like one of the most beautiful things humanity has ever figured out. Maybe I would even say number one,” said Sam Altman, speaking to British physicist David Deutsch, a founding father of quantum computing. “If in a few years GPT-8 figured out quantum gravity and could tell you its story – the pro

Anecdote: I’ve spent my whole career taking risk. Which means I’ve thought about it from every angle imaginable. And I have a pretty good imagination. It also means I’ve suffered some soul-searching losses and enjoyed the windfalls that come to those who refuse to give up. One risk-management lesson I’ve learned above all others is that nothing good ever happens to dead people. So, the most import

Hope all goes well… “Guys, look at these videos we took of sunspots on the sun!!!” texted Liv to our family group chat, unleashing her inner nerd. She’s a space science major, which is part of the Physics and Nuclear Engineering Department (PANE for short). I asked if sunspots are solid or just so much cooler than the surrounding plasma that they appear dark? It’s one of an infinite number of thin

Hope all goes well… “Did you see the news about Charlie Kirk?” I asked my youngest, Charlie, 16. I knew rather little about Kirk, but understood he resonated with young people. The graphic video of his assassination flooded my feeds. It had only been a day since the clip of Iryna Zarutska’s gruesome murder had done the same. The inhumanity of her killer, Iryna’s innocence, the cowardly, chilling i

Anecdote: I remember hiding beneath my desk in 3rd grade. School shootings weren’t a thing back then. But the Soviets had their nukes pointed at Manhattan. So, when the siren went off, we learned to put our pencils down and curl up. Roots came out back then. Everyone watched it, learned about slavery, struggle, underground railroads, Kunta Kinte. My best friend was black, most were Jewish, Public

Hope all goes well… Wasn’t exactly the August I’d expected. Wyoming, Connecticut, Zurich, San Diego, Los Angeles. And I drove a Jeep halfway across America with my oldest boy, pulling a U-Haul, heading to Camp Pendleton, California, his new station. Rolled through New Mexico, its Breaking Bad desolation, Arizona, the southern border, the dark metal wall snaking through desert. Wyoming loves its gu