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3,726 words to stop the 19 month rattle of some specific thoughts in my brain
a substack was made to house the infrequent rattles that reach a crescendo
tl;dr: ai’s immediate second-order effects are not being sufficiently considered. we all should be thinking a lot more about closed networks
thank you to the closed network of @aweissman, @bennygiang, @kneelingbus, @epaley, @matdryhurst, @max_eyr, @eclecticcapital, @nicksusi, @pmontee, @HipCityReg, @sorenwrenn and @ystrickler for reviewing drafts of this piece
link in tweet below
apologies if i forgot to mention someone else who reviewed
feel free to shame me here or on any other open network platform of your choosing
open models closed networks
There's a huge opportunity for invite-only social networks because current networks are flooded with noise or contain people who don't want to talk to each other.
Any network that isn't great (e.g. Goodreads, Yelp) can be rebuilt easily now. The 10x better product is the curation of people and information.
The internet can't just be split between broadcast networks for everyone and group chats for dozens of people. There has to be something in between.
erika is so unbelievably talented
this is a top 3 erika song for me along with polite + bikini
i think i've seen her perform five or six times
@banacrisp is the best for putting me onto her & signing her
it feels like it’s only a matter of time before the AI bots that are designed to provide psychological value
like AI romantic companions or AI therapist bots
merge with the AI bots designed to provide utility value like Instinct or Muse and other consumer agents
very much agree with @pkafka that the rise of microdramas in the US has me more convinced than ever that quibi was ahead of its time…been thinking that for a little bit
they would have 100% figured out that they needed to make their content more cost efficient & melodramatic — and that they could do away with the horizontal + vertical video combo
launching as COVID struck killed the use case which they were very savvy in identifying of having a minute or two free out in public and wanting something more narrative based in those periods
it’s a good example of how important staying efficient with investment money is
as the more money you raise the more expectations inflate — which can cause you to get over your skis even if you have a prescient idea
curious if others who were involved in or covered quibi like @tconrad or @RichLightShed agree
maya is such a cool investor with a great eye for people and ideas across a variety of industries
Congratulations to @ClementDelangue 🤗 and the entire @huggingface team on the acquisition by @nvidia!
I will never forget the day Clem did a full whiteboard session explaining the fundamentals of NLP to me at the original Hugging Face Dumbo office just so I could take it back to my brother for our grocery delivery chatbot idea LOL.
Fast forward to 2021: when I launched Spice Capital, Clem was right there to support me. He stood as a founder reference, offered his time, wrote angel checks, and even floated sneaky acquisition offers to our portfolio companies 🌶️.
When ChatGPT had its first viral moment, Clem reminded me of the importance of open source and how models would eventually become commodities. That prediction is coming true to a tee and gave us an informed edge for our AI investing framework at Spice Capital.
What a fun journey. I feel so lucky to have had a front-row seat to watch a team achieve total excellence without ever sacrificing their core values 🤗
Attaching some fun photos - Clem and my mom at our annual family Diwali party in Florida, v1 screenshot of the OG hugging face app + my favorite merch combo!! Congrats to everyone 🫶
2020: "We are an apolitical culture"
2020: "We don't engage here when issues are unrelated to our core mission"
2026: goes on stephen miller's wife's podcast as "Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong"
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong says donating to charity is net negative
"The common view is that philanthropy is this noble cause, and Bill Gates is like 'I'm going to go rehabilitate my image and do philanthropy.'"
"A lot of charities and philanthropies are actually net negative for the world and they get captured. It's remarkably hard to find a foundation that has not gotten captured by ideology.”
“By trying to do something good, like criminal justice reform, it turns out they just increased crime. I have a donor advised fund and I put money toward things helping civilization advance, but I don't think at this moment I would ever create a foundation."
"If you look at the Ford Foundation, I think Henry Ford would be turning over in his grave if he knew what they were up to.”
“I have a DAF, a donor advised fund, and I just try to put money toward things that I think are helping civilization advance. But I don't think at this moment I would ever create a foundation."
drake selling 56% of OVO clothing for ~$66M to Authentic Brands Group (and VNCE) is interesting
considering he doesn't really need the money at all and ABG's reputation of being a graveyard for brands
this is spot on; I think it’s a phenomenon specific to one industry towns
i have this theory that in sf, unless ur fuck-you rich, the fear of perception is so high that u eventually have to become robotic. too many of your future jobs, friendships, funding rounds, intros, opportunities run through the same small network, so being fully human starts to feel reputationally expensive
eccentricity is a reputational liability below a certain threshold of power. once u cross it, it's ✨charisma✨
niche down
Charli xcx expects “anti marketing” to gain traction as a strategy. She’s describing a shift away from spectacle toward something more personal and “less about the projection of scale.”
It’s a sentiment that tracks with where a lot of culture has been drifting. Artists have increasingly leaned into rollouts built around limited access rather than mass reach: invite-only listening sessions, text-message-only show alerts, and a level of scarcity that feels intimate rather than exclusive. The instinct isn’t new, but it’s becoming a more explicit alternative to algorithm-driven promotion, where the goal is virality at any cost, often at the expense of the art itself.
On July 10, @charli_xcx played an intimate show at Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, bringing out @clairo, @underscoresplus, and @kimpetras to join her for their own songs — “Sofia,” “Music,” and “Jeep,” respectively. The set mixed early singles and new material from her forthcoming album ‘Music, Fashion, Film’ with a few Charli classics, including “party 4 u.”
It was a working example of the “anti-marketing” she’d described.
i love vertical specific social networks around media but curious how netflix would integrate
netflix being the streaming service competing on quantity & recently adding video podcasts doesn't really align with letterboxd users' focus on quality & cinema
Netflix in Talks to Buy Letterboxd: Report variety.com/2026/digital/new…
