chris muscarella (@cm) header
chris muscarella (@cm) profile picture

Intersections: stablecoins, emerging markets, credit, and AI. Art of being human + the art of craft. Double Sharp, founder/ceo; Field Co, ironman / founder

astral projection
Joined December 2006
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Watching Josh cook for a few years and having a front row seat has consistently made me update my priors on how we get to scaled robotics—Tutor’s models learn from real work, and that’s the data the rest of robotics has been missing. GTM in the ai/robotics age almost everything
We raised a $75M Series B to deploy intelligent robots now, led by @a16z, with participation from @usv and @neo. @tutorintel robots work real jobs across the United States, directed by human “tutors” and the foundation models we’ve trained on the work done. This round accelerates frontier model training, robot manufacturing, and deployment into industry. We’re in almost 4x as many sites as a year ago; nearly a third of this year’s deployments went to existing customers coming back for more; and we’re on track to have more than 1,000 robots under contract by the end of 2027. Our mission is to proliferate robotics for the common good. If you want to make robots reliably do things others think are impossible, for people who’ve never had access to this technology, join us.
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I believe in 8 year vesting schedules for founders; and liquid founder equity should be redistributed pro-rata amongst remaining founders. That's the trade. And the current state of play.
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And I suppose there's a lot of other black belt capital structure ops I should probably keep to myself that let you run the table on recruiting the best people you know, etc
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This is signal. And a bitter pill
Dinner with an exec/friend at a large national property management company tonight. This person oversees ~150k apartments; access to an insane amount of data. Current multifamily market in most of the country is worse than S&L, .com bust, or the GFC. Worst they’ve seen. Class A mostly fine, decent rent growth. However: - credit scores at class A have gone down meaningfully over the past 3 years. - more people are paying rent via credit card. - average bank account balance noticeably lower than even 2 years ago - class A tenants stretched thin, living beyond their means. 20k comes in, 20k goes out every month. - starting to see these renters move down a tier Class B: - simply too many apartments, we built too much new stuff. Ripple effect is enormous. - fewer renters tomorrow than today. Same store foot traffic noticeably down year over year. Some markets down 40-50% - considering dropping rents below $700 a month on some 1beds in major southern markets. Class C: - looking at degrading NOI. Rents aren’t growing for a long time, but expenses keep creeping up - more renters are one missed paycheck away from disaster than they can remember seeing in decades - tenants aren’t paying rent because they simply don’t have it - wage growth has not kept up Lenders: - some major investment funds, household names, haven’t paid their mortgages in 2-3 years. Banks won’t foreclose because “X is a big client.” Mexican standoff. - a roof leak gets ignored, becomes water damage, then mold, then a down building. Buildings are rapidly deteriorating as some owners choose cash preservation over funding losses. - number of pre-foreclosure and REO deals is the highest as a % of total units they can recall. - data providers know it’s bad, but they’re paid to sell optimism to owners/lenders. So every forecast is “it will probably get a little better next year maybe” and that gets regurgitated at investment committees all over. I asked “how do you think this ends?” “Not sure. My gut says slowly then suddenly, and things will get really bad. Been doing this 40 years, you can feel it in the air. But, there’s a chance it’s just a decade of tolerable pain. I’m praying for that.”
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"Real slop is people saying things they don’t mean."
For most work I have ever done, editing is 90% of the effort. AI doesn’t change that. Instead of “did you make this with AI?” you should really ask “do you stand by every word?” Real slop is people saying things they don’t mean.
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Context: AI built game around Lagos, Nigeria goes mega hype fast. More context: Africa is the future of youth on planet earth. Adjust your priors on what the future of culture might look like. This is fun.
5 MILLION PLAYERS IN JUST 9 DAYS!!! 😭🇳🇬👑🔥 WHAT IS HAPPENINGGGG!!! 🚀🚀🚀 We just crossed 5,000,000 players on Lagos Life! 👑 5M+ players 🔥 110,000+ playing right now 🌍 34 MILLION+ visits ALL IN JUST 9 DAYS!!! What started as an idea is becoming something bigger than I ever imagined. To every single person playing, sharing, building, and making noise about Lagos Life, THANK YOU! ❤️ And the craziest part? WE ARE JUST GETTING STARTED! 5M DOWN. 10M NEXT! 🚀👑🇳🇬 lagoslife.app/stats #LagosLife
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The theme of private gain / public cost is already deeply important for understanding current political climate—it's going to become more so
I’ve argued before Anthropic must not IPO on its current metrics. The bottom line is simple- The might of American capitalism rests on a sacred social contract: if humanity must bear its risk, the public must also share in the prosperity, not just pay for it. My thoughts below:
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Related: political fault lines around things like Florida real estate development / disaster relief / federal emergency funds / lack of state income taxes
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No comment on his policy positions—but pay attention, you're watching a next level political talent on the come up. Cute moustache
Never been to the opera before? Now’s your chance. We’re giving away 70,000 free tickets to the @MetOpera at the iconic Lincoln Center. Go to on.nyc.gov/opera to enter the lottery. There’s not a bad seat in the house.
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The degree to which it is frustratingly not possible to have an adult conversation about the inadequacy of current KYC/AML for the future (agents) and the present (2/3 of the world where the primitives are wrong) cannot be overstated
Replying to @lex_node
AML/KYC are a big moat, especially for the biggest banks. Their cost of compliance is diffused along millions of clients (and trillions in balance sheet). The big banks will never campaign to eliminate it because it gives an advantage to the smaller ones.
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"Bessent’s obsession. The entire funding base of the US government is, at the margin, LEVERED. The buyers are not holding the bonds with their own money.. they are holding them with borrowed money, rolled overnight, against collateral that gets marked to market daily."
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There are people who turn a combat sport into a problem in epistemology and engineering (John Danaher), and then it seems there are those who are intent on turning epistemology / engineering problems into a combat sport.
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The way @Substack is just as user hostile to unsubscribing as the NYT shouldn't be a surprise... but it is. All the user admin UX is genuinely terrible (which doesn't matter that much when you mainly deliver email).
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Also genuinely curious about what hostile UX / dark patterns become in an era of AI agents... small-scale warfare where things like chargebacks go through the roof?
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Related / unrelated: one of more interesting competitions in technology starting to emerge is Stripe vs. Cloudflare re: payments and business model of the internet
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chris muscarella retweeted
The More Modest the Definition of Heaven, the Oftener We're There by Albert Goldbarth
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Beautiful.
Following the amazing reaction to the Marble Curriculum yesterday, we've decided to make it open source 🛰️👇 Everything a child learns in primary school. 1,590 concepts. 3,221 connections across 8 subjects, from Math and Science to Computing and Life Skills. Anchored in the US and UK curriculums, standard by standard (NGSS, Common Core, DfE). What you will find in the repo: every concept as structured JSON with its age band and the evidence a child must show to master it. Every prerequisite link marked hard or soft, with a written rationale. It's a true DAG you can compute learning paths on. Open license, you can build whatever you want with it. Now is a unique time in history to be building in education. Getting AI and kids education right is likely one of the hardest and most important problems to crack over the next decade and we need as many smart and creative minds behind it. We think a common solid basis, accessible to all and that can be built upon, is critical to move fast. That's why we're making this curriculum open source. It's not perfect but we know it's a robust basis, and we believe that sharing it openly is the fastest way to progress in this field. If you're building in education, share this around you and tell us in comments if you find this useful and if you want to contribute. We'll keep working and investing on it @withmarbleapp. Credit goes to @guillaume_boni for building this. I just made it look pretty. Links below 👇
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A milestone on a long journey down—for posterity here. Temperamentally I don't really celebrate wins, the upside to that is non-fatal losses are also taken in stride. Onward.
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Proposition people. The only way you find your humans that are game for the most absurd adventures is to parlay.
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But let us not forget: parlay time is dangerous hyperessays.net/cotton/book/…
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