1/ A few select excerpts from Lux Q2 letter to LPs…
“The best hedge against running out of cash—is raising it”
2/
-“Question your teaspoon”
-“While many talk of discouraging ‘conflicts of interest’
few appreciate and encourage ‘interest in conflicts’
-The Binary (dichotomous, stark contrasts)
-The Blur (dialectic, smooth continnum)
3/ “We don’t mistake for genius what is partly attributable to central banks buying …driving rates low…and raising asset prices”
“Means may move (upward) but a reversion to the mean (downward) may move away people’s means….
4/ “Eventually the proverbial bath water will turn from TAINTED to TOXIC
& babies may not just be thrown out with the bathwater––but forcibly hurled”
The effect will eventually be the cause of low returns
We know that eventually “eventually” will arrive—but not when “when” will
5/ Lux is increasingly backing entrepreneurs hailing from—or building—overseas…
London, Dublinm Berlin…
The sun hits first and the day starts ahead in Europe—as do many trends from hairstlyes (via soccer stars) to regulatory watchdog decrees (from GDPR to new AI regs)…
6/ Decentralizing + Recentralizing
-Mechanical fans moved off our computers and en masse into server farms
indentured servitude of machines of loving grace
on China v US
-Dependence demands concessions + compromises
-Independence supplies indifference + comprises self-reliance
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1/ On Feb 21 I told my boss aka my wife @LTwolfe that I had my third conviction call not yet appreciated + to buy a basket
*In 2016 it was NVDA, pitched publicly at Invest For Kids in Chicago (80x+) when Lux portfolio company Zoox was using NVDA chips and I predicted the narrative would change from gaming consoles PS4/Xbox to simulation and AI…
3/ In the fall is 2024 I pitched SK Hynix, Micron, Samsung and we bought in our pa
Mostly because I had read a technical paper about LLMs and inference on device with local flash (again changing narrative from commodity memory players to coveted attach rates on HBM AND edge)
1/ New paper from @ylecun et al on alternative approach for AI to learn more biologically...
paper basically says AI is super smart but still can't learn like a toddler can...
the main critique
the main critique...
is that top models today dont learn once deployed.
and curating data + training pipelines + filtering out noise is all done by humans in loop instead of being an intrinsic skill of the AIs...
here's Claude explaining the paper simply
3/ not quite Kahneman style but they call it System A +B
System A = learning from observation
this is self-supervised learning like predicting next word or video frame. good at making representations but passive and struggles to understand cause + effect...
1/ We are ABSOLUTELY insanely lucky to be able to witness this conversation
MASTERCLASS in military + geopolitical strategy + Arab/Israeli conflict
@havivrettiggur's brilliance+ Dan Schueftan's realpolitik rationality
watch whole thing or pick any segment🤯
2/Key excerpts (summarized).
Hard to disagree with anything.
The Nature of the Enemy + "Barbarism"
The Definition of Barbarism: Barbarism is not just violence; it is a societal decision to value the death of the enemy over the lives of one's own children. When Hamas places weapons in tunnels but forces civilians to stay above ground during war, they are declaring that they do not care for their own survival, only the destruction of Jews.
The "Love of Death" is Literal: We must stop projecting Western rationalism onto enemies who openly declare, "You Jews will lose because you love life; we will win because we love death." This is not a slogan; it is a strategic doctrine that renders traditional deterrence mechanisms (like threat of death) ineffective.
The Danger of "Happy Wife, Happy Life" Geopolitics: The Western belief that economic prosperity ("a better life") leads to moderation is a fatal fallacy. The Second Intifada was launched when Palestinians had their best economic situation in history. You cannot buy off an ideology that considers killing Jews a higher calling than feeding children.
Culture is Deterministic: You cannot "de-radicalize" a society that does not want to change. Just as Libya’s failure is cultural rather than resource-based, Gaza’s failure is rooted in a culture where the only role models are those who kill Jews. The West’s refusal to discuss culture—viewing it as "progressive" to ignore it—blinds them to reality.
3/ (Summary continued) Strategic Realpolitik
Solutions are for Crossword Puzzles: In the Middle East, serious problems do not have solutions. The two-state solution is a fantasy for the "simpleminded." The only realistic strategy is combining "damage control" with the use of opportunity. If you are looking for a solution, you are looking for something that does not exist.
"Violent Maintenance" is the Only Peace: There will never be "peace" in the Western sense. There is only the constant destruction of the enemy's capacity to wage war. Israel must adopt a policy of "violent maintenance"—preemptively destroying capabilities (like factories and tunnels) before they can be used, regardless of the immediate diplomatic cost.
The "New York Times" Test: When fighting "barbarians," proportional response is a mistake. The response must be so overwhelming that it shatters the enemy's will. A good rule of thumb for Israel: "If the New York Times is not outraged, it's the wrong response.".
Western Aid Funds the Conflict: The West is funding its own enemies. Palestinians are the only refugees in history paid billions for generations to remain refugees. This funding teaches them that "behaving like barbarians" is a profitable business model that attracts French, British, and American support.