tb @thelestborn

"Mehdi Hasan should go into exile. The village idiot should be banished." Thanks for the hat tip @willcain!

Parisian urbanism is fascinating from the social perspective, and wholly unlike anything in the Anglo world. While the city is massive, the scale still feels very human as the density is (literally) upper-bounded given height restrictions on building. The net result is that life unfolds inside your 'quartier' as if you lived in a village: you go to the same shops with the same people, everyone looks you in the eye and every interaction feels very personal (almost too personal). The sort of dissociative anomie you feel living inside Anglo or more Northern European cities doesn't exist really, as the human still bursts through (whether you like it or not). The barista girl flirts outrageously with a regular client (slowing down your coffee order); the waiter engages in an entire debate with a seated party about their reservation, fluctuating between emotional appeals and whatever the 'règlement' says; go to the same bar twice and the guy will remember your order and start pouring it when you walk in; eyeball someone across the street while people-watching and the stranger will meet your gaze as if you were standing face to face. In NYC, SF, or other cities, the crowd greets you with indifference (or if you push, hostility). In Paris, you have to negotiate a hundred human interactions every day--often warm, occasionally hostile, but never indifferent-- everywhere. This is why Americans often think of the French as 'rude' when really there's just an interpersonal dance whose steps they don't know. It's not very WEIRD in the Henrich sense of total strangers being offered rule-bound (but cold) dignity by default; you kind of have to earn it. But it imbues what would normally feel like being another ant in the pile with a human drama that most urban life lacks.

As someone who's gotten invited to this Dialog business just about every year from 2022-2025, let me explain to you what I call 'The Green Room Confederacy'. The 'green room' is the waiting room in a conference or media studio, and who populates it is an ever-shifting cast of writers, founders, tycoons, and general people of note who shuffle around to the various podcasts and retreats that define a certain stratum of influence and cultural valence. The billionaires: They're the only lifetime members, mostly because they're paying for the entire thing. Everyone is to some degree there to cozy up to them. The founders: Usually not actually the leading founders (who are too busy or disinterested to attend), but the type of founders who 'thoughtfluence' and are making a bid to be taken seriously intellectually, moving themselves from the intellectual Premium Economy of Harari/Gladwell to the First Class of Ferguson/Henrich (but never quite the Yarvin/Land level, as that's too dicey and weird). The writers/creatives: They're the intellectual backbone here, and probably the only ones in a group chat with the billionaire, kept there as a sort of court jester (don't ask me how I know). It's all top-of-funnel and brand accrual to however they monetize, which is likely a Substack and/or podcast. Historically, these things were about as uncontroversial as it got: Davos, Aspen Institute...nobody is losing a job over going; on the contrary, going is a major brand-building exercise. But since 2020 or so we've seen the rise of a counter-elite attempting to create counterbalancing cultural institutions and media, which is where the sparks really start as attending the upstart version is declaring your side in the culture war (which is why Ezra is furiously backpedaling here...he's got his NYT roost to maintain). (If this is all sounding like a high-school popularity contest, it's not too far off, though the downstream implications here are rather more real.) The claim this is some secret cabal though is laughable, and thought mostly by second-string writers at places like WIRED who've spent their lives with their noses pressed against the glass and never entering, and write about this as a form of envy and pandering to their credulous outsider audiences. Oh, and did I ever go? No, for two reasons. I had an iron-clad rule that I'd only go to one of these events only if free (or they paid me), never as a paid attendee. Free/paid, and you're the creative; pay, and you're just a striving customer. And AFAICT, all but the true A-listers had to pay for Dialog. Also, I was working on @spindl_xyz and this is all very distracting, and getting swept up in all this (as the writer talent), means putting yourself on the relevance/virality treadmill, something I wanted to escape by making a bag instead. But I will say there were some real intellects on the Dialog invite list (along with a lot of strivers and arrivistes), and I'm all for billionaires creating alternative cultural institutions since our current ones are so clearly decayed and in need of overthrow. There, that's the backstory to all this. It's all a lot less lurid and conspiratorial than anyone is letting on here.

Ezra Klein @ezraklein

4 months ago

Enough people have asked me about the Peter Thiel-Dialog story that I think it's worth saying what it is, or at least what I saw it to be. So: –Dialog is a conference. I went once in 2018 and once in 2022. No one ever asked me to keep it or my presence a secret. –My

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Ok, I will shit-talk VCs just a little bit. It was curious to see, when @spindl_xyz was being acquired by Coinbase, how many of our VCs discouraged me to sell, and pushed me to either keep on building or launch a token and pump it as much as possible. Spindl was a modest success, and early investors got a passable DPI, but nowhere near a fund maker. In their minds, this was failure. Tech is like the cliché WWI movie: the VC generals lounge in their plush tents in the rearguard, ordering frontal assaults on unassailable redoubts, no matter the casualties, to claim the glory of a capturing this hill or that town. After all, it's 10x or nothing for them: Over the top, boys! Over the top! The corpse-strewn field will be forgotten by them (and everyone else), but they'll be there to takes selfies with the one guy who somehow made it through the rat-tat-tat alive, and claim it a providential inevitability and testament to their strategic acumen. And the only right answer when the VC orders another suicide charge is to laugh in their faces and say: "well *you* go grab a rifle and take that hill then, motherfucker" and do what's best for you and your squad to get out of the mess alive. There'll be a different set of generals the next war anyhow.

GREG ISENBERG @gregisenberg

5 months ago

I was once pitching in a board room at a top 3 VC firm for a $15M Series A. 12 people in the meeting. One of the GPs fully fell asleep. Out cold for 30+ minutes. Nobody acknowledged it. Everyone just kept going. I kept presenting my Series A slides to an unconscious man in a

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My grandparents left their poor villages in Northern Spain to emigrate to Cuba and make their fortunes, while also building a nation that was once the pearl of the Caribbean. Now Cuba is sub-third world and can't even keep the lights on, thanks to 60 years of communism. Nations can just commit suicide like that. Learn from their tragic example.

Open Source Intel @Osint613

7 months ago

JUST IN 🔴 Cuba’s entire electrical grid collapses, plunging the country into blackout - CNN.

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To make it more concrete: instead of just taking over SF city politics, a place where elections are won by 5k votes and campaign budgets are a tech rounding error, they'll propose building some new city in the middle of nowhere, and then running it like the only organization they've ever been part of: a large tech company. I too could build utopia with FAANG L6s and a semi-annual perf process that removes the unproductive or degenerate. The entire pursuit of politics is what to do when you *can't* run things like a tech autocracy, and must consider popular will, the wastrel children of elites, criminals, the mentally ill, etc. But rather than solve the real problems facing humanity, they build a test-tube version where the real problems don't exist. And then they wonder why the entire industry punches way below its weight culturally and politically...when their vision of utopia is one they can't sell or make work in the real world (beyond a corporate campus). Good for technocapitalism though.

In Miami, you’re either upper-middle-class and live in a high-rise condo building with all the amenities that means you need never leave: gym, pool, sun deck, pet area, children’s play room, doorman to get all deliveries. Or you’re really upper-class and live in a walled villa.

I started the first programmatic ads product at Meta and was a huge champion of the technology. OpenAI considering an ad tech partner like TTD is wrongheaded, and the worst possible way to build an ads business for such a unique and intent-rich consumer experience. It’s banner and video ads powered by pixels firing on websites, the most legacy ad tech around. Assuming this is true, it means that likely there’s either no internal interest in building this properly, or an utter lack of ads vision.

The Information @theinformation

8 months ago

Exclusive: OpenAI held early talks with The Trade Desk to help sell ads in ChatGPT, signaling the AI company may rely on outside ad tech partners as it ramps up its advertising business. thein.fo/4lfz1Pq

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Why there isn't an LLM version of Kayak I don't understand. All these vibe coding LARPers who claim they're so busy building: WTF are you doing? Travel is a gajillion-dollar market, there are open APIs, and there's even an affiliate market you can use to monetize from day one.

Dan Romero @dwr

8 months ago

Surprised there isn't a one shot book me a flight agent yet. Assume it would be popular with business travelers.

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Everyone liquid and mobile is heading for the exits of Miami/UAE. Everyone illiquid and building is staying chained to the AI engine rooms in NYC/SF. Everyone else is struggling and indulging in the resentment politics of communism or populism. Odd timeline.

The biggest flex in a city like SF or NYC isn't a house or a car or a job, it's a baby stroller with a baby in it (rather than a dog). In our society of sclerotic government, stagnant building, and full-throttle hyper-capitalism, children are the ultimate Veblen good.

Ben Smith @semaforben

8 months ago

Fascinating chart on who can afford big families in New York open.substack.com/pub/biggerappl…

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Looked for a @grok button on a @business piece I was reading inside the BBG app. Everyone will get used to have an AI interlocutor for everything they read. There’ll be AI buttons on all forms of media: NYT, Substack, whatever. Hope someone is building this.

@dylan_a @chrisalbon Little known fact. This iconic scene in the iconic 'The Right Stuff' was filmed right there in AIC (the other more modern building, not the one you're in).

Base Ads is hiring our first product manager. Work directly with me building the future of onchain growth and user acquisition across Base and our partner companies. You sit at the gnarly intersection of ad tech and onchain: Come build it for real at Base. (Link in reply.)

SF is so back! (Email from the building HOA.)

🚨CALL FOR STARTUPS🚨 Interested in hearing from or about any startups building on the new x402 standard for AI payments. Content monetization, agentic commerce...whatever. Shill me your ideas or startups. DMs open.

The embassy for SF culture in NYC is sadly closing its doors. Not to worry! OpenAI is moving into the same building, so SF diplomatic representation will endure.

nicole alonso @_nicolealonso

a year ago

pretty sure I’m one of the few people who is genuinely sad about the REI in nyc closing

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The entire arc of 20+ years of internet and ‘content moderation’ has been to stuff the internet hive mind back within the borders and confines of nations and institutions. The next phase will be building nations and institutions around the borders of the internet hive mind.

This will get built in a totally walled and verticalized way by @OpenAI because it'll be Meta people building it and that's how they think. @perplexity_ai seems so clueless about ads, they'll likely just give up. There will be startups building the components in a third-party way hoping it becomes an open ecosystem like programmatic ads now.

Antonio García Martínez (agm.eth) @antoniogm

a year ago

MCP will be the new 'ad server' of AI ads (functionally, not literally serving ads necessarily), in effect the buy side. The ranking/optimization layer is invoked by an AI-enabled consumer experience (in which personal context is shared), and is functionally the SSP/ad exchange.

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