Spring is here on the farm, and everything is coming alive at the same time :-)
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The trees are in bud. The grass is starting to green. The pigs on are pasture.
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And signs of life are exploding all around us.
Clockwise from top left: a pair of Canada geese (Branta canadensis) on the pond; the red sporophytes of hair cap moss (Polytrichum) emerging on an old stone wall; garlic (Allium sativum) we planted last fall already poking its head above ground; and a meadow of striped squill (Puschkinia scilloides) already in full bloom. Claude helped me with the Latin on a few of these. Spring is here.
It’s one of my favorite times of year, that transition from winter to spring.
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But this week, the family and I are heading to Texas.
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Specifically the Rio Grande Valley, where Tylene grew up and where her parents still live.
We’ll be enjoying all of our Mexican favorites along the way: botana, barbacoa, menudo, tamales, and more.
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For those who have followed the full trajectory of our story, the Rio Grande Valley is also where Tylene and I first landed after moving back to the US from China back in 2009.
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For about a year, we lived in a tiny apartment in Brownsville, back before Elon Musk showed up and started launching rockets down the road…
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It was in Brownsville where we had our “ramen noodle and bologna sandwich” days, building our tiny little business from the ground up…
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I think it’s valuable to revisit the stops along the way of your past. It gives you deep perspective not on what’s in front of you, but how far you’ve come.
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In that spirit, here are three things I’m watching, listening to, and reading right now that I think you might potentially benefit from as well…
1 | Watching: The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist
This film screened at SXSW last month, where I was delivering a session (which I wrote about in [Issue #091] What’s YOUR “AI Barbell” Strategy?).
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We sat down and watched it together as a family, and I think it is very much worth watching (the discussion we had with our boys afterward was worth far more than the purchase price of the film.)
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The premise: a filmmaker who is about to have his first child asks the question… is now the worst time to be bringing new life into this world?
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It features Sam Altman, Dario Amodei from Anthropic, Demis Hassabis from DeepMind, Yuval Noah Harari (the author of Sapiens), and many, many others.
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What I found most striking is that the film presents both sides of the AI case. And what comes through is the vast disparity in views among the people who are actually building this technology, even at the highest levels and at the absolute frontier of AI development right now.
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In Return to Real, I describe it this way:
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The degree of optimism varies wildly from one room to the next. But among those paying the closest attention, the responses tend to fall into one of three broad camps:ÂFoolishly optimistic: “AI will fix everything. Robots will farm for us and nobody will be poor.”ÂPainfully ignorant: “Nothing is going to change. Don’t buy into all the AI hype.”ÂCripplingly afraid: “We’re headed into techno-feudalism and we will all be serfs.”ÂBut there is a fourth camp. One that’s far more nuanced: realism without collapse, hope without naivety. A group that believes the truth is in the tension, because at least one thing is for certain: we are in uncharted territory. The future is not yet written.
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All four of these camps are represented in the film. The filmmaker himself is visibly trying to find that fourth position while his wife is pregnant…
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If you watch one thing on AI this year, I’d make it this one…
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Here’s the Rotten Tomatoes link (currently rated 89% Fresh).
2 | Listening: Howard Marks, "What's Going On in Private Credit?"
Howard Marks published his first written memo to clients on October 12, 1990.
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That’s 35 years of consistent writing.
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Warren Buffett has said that when he sees a memo from Howard Marks in his inbox, it’s the first thing he opens and reads.
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I feel the same way. I read every single Howard Marks memo as soon as it hits my inbox.
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In many ways, Howard Marks is an exemplar case of what happens when you write a regular “source of truth” newsletter, build thought leadership around it, and let it compound over time. He’s now co-chairman of Oaktree Capital, which manages $223 billion.
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That didn’t happen overnight.
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It happened one newsletter at a time, over 35 years.
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Now, the reason I’m bringing this particular memo up is that last week I presented my portfolio defense to one of my investment groups.
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(This is where you articulate your investment thesis and stress-test some of the beliefs and assumptions behind your portfolio decisions.)
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One of the areas that I think is really interesting right now is private credit as an investment vehicle.
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The allure is its cash-flowing properties, but at the same time there’s an argument that much of private credit is overvalued right now, and that return rates do not adequately take into account both the risk premium and the illiquidity premium that investors should be getting. Howard Marks digs into all of this.
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For reference… Howard Marks is arguably one of the greatest thinkers alive on the topic. Some weeks, depending on what I’ve got going on, I’ll listen to his memo instead of read, and with everything happening this week, this was one of those weeks.
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If you’d like to understand the mechanics of private credit, the history that brought us to this moment in time, and what it means for your investment portfolio, I highly recommend checking this out.
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Here’s the link to the memo.
3 | Reading: My (Final) Manuscript for Return to Real
Normally I’d be sharing a book recommendation here.
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But I’m in super crunch time right now and only have until the end of the month to get the absolute final draft of my manuscript for Return to Real over the finish line.
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And now that my new MBP arrived with a white hot M5 Pro chip (early by a few weeks), I’ve got no excuse to get this thing done.
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One of the downsides of the travel schedule I’ve had over the last few weeks is that it’s pulled me away from getting the manuscript finished.
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It’s added some depth of perspective, which I appreciate, but I haven’t had the concentrated time to just deeply focus.
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So the only thing I’m going to be reading on the bus, on the plane, and on my time away from the farm in Texas are the nearly 10,000 beta reader comments that I’m continuing to work through as I bring this project to a close.
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Having a week off the farm is going to give me the space to do exactly that.
4 | Question for Reflection...
I’ll leave you with a question that came up on my Front Row Dads call this week.
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In the weeks leading up to the Return to Real Boston Mastermind and the time since, I’ve had a flood of opportunities come my way.
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(Opportunities to partner, invest in businesses, clients who want to work with me, and an opportunity to potentially build out a portfolio of companies I’m involved in…)
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And as I look ahead to a new season I feel myself entering into, as my older son takes his first early steps into adulthood with boarding school next year…
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I find myself reflecting on how much I want to dive into all of this.
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The question that came up on the call, which I think is worth reflecting on for all of us, is this:
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What is driving “more,” and what does “more” cost?
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As you think about your life and what gains you the most and costs you the least… what might that be for you?
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Okay, I’ll leave you with that for now…
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It’s off to Texas for me and la familia…
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Have a great rest of your weekend.
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Remember to hug the ones you love.
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And until next week,
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Ryan :-)
