Had a 20-minute walk down Market Street with a friend who remarked, "I've never seen anything like this," as his head was on a swivel the entire time. I love SF. What the city has become is unconscionable.
Several pockets of 20 to 30 people all off their heads. A number of them with pants barely on. Zombies. The walking dead. Cops observing the proceedings from 100 feet away.
This isn't tolerance. It's giving up. The city's leaders should not be able to sleep with their shame.
My son never wants to go to SF for a visit. Nor do his friends. They think it's a war zone.
The first time I visited SF at 18 the city felt magical. It had its rough around the edges spots. But so do all big cities. The center of the city now is apalling. Any official not spending every waking moment trying to fix it should go.
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🧵 Well, friends, after a long, epic run at Bloomberg, I'm launching my own thing - Core Memory - a sci-tech media company making movies, shows, pods and stories.
We're going deep on brains, energy, AI, transporation, manufacturing, you name it. And we could use your help.
Why I'm doing this and what we'll do is spelled out here in detail.
But the short of it is that we think sci-tech coverage can be better and go deeper on an independent platform, and we're ready to run and ready to make.corememory.com/p/so-begins-co…
Films, series, pods and real reporting in the field are not cheap. We already have a small team together and could very much use your support to get this thing going and to sustain it.
If you've enjoyed my work over the years or benefitted from it or simply want to see better sci-tech coverage, now is the time to act.
Well, the Russians have fired a missile at the Yuzhmash plant in Dnipro. This is a symbolic gesture and then some.
Am reasonably confident that I'm the only reporter to have ever strolled around Yuzhmash unfettered with a camera. So here goes 🧵
The plant looked like this a few years ago. It made rockets and, well, buses and other bits and bobs
The factory was once the pride of the Soviet Union. It pumped out more ICBMs than any plant on Earth. From my recent book, "When The Heavens Went on Sale."
Am not allowed to say who said this, but someone with a very, very deep knowledge of AI and modern factories says Tesla has massive edge on bridge between AI and physical world.
This person thinks the others building humanoid robots don't have a great first customer. Tesla can test on its own factories first before it sends the robots out to customers. The AI builders, meanwhile, don't have factories
Thinks people don't count Musk companies individually as among the Big Tech Empire but that collectively they have something the other Big Tech players can't match
Have been on deadline, so didn't have a chance to write on this. But, if you're into cell reprogramming (and who isn't?), you need to watch this preso from @newlimit and @brian_armstrong - because they seem to have made some major transcription factor discoveries youtube.com/live/5OMEfYeNy…
In honor of what is likely @RafaelNadal's last French Open, I present my best Rafa story.
A few years ago, I went to hit with Mark Hurd at Larry Ellison's house/resort in Palm Springs. (Ellison literally bought a resort with an 18-hole golf course, tennis courts, etc. and made it a home)
Hurd, RIP, used to always give me grief because I only played D3 in college and he played D1 at Baylor. So, I was often asking him to play. We hit for about 45 minutes, as I recall.
He refused to play points with me. Had a mean forehand. Not much backhand. I had youth on my side at the time, and Mark hated to lose at anything. But he was nice and enjoyed running me around.
Think I've been to as many European start-ups as just about anyone on the planet. There's a weird psychological limiter on start-up ambitions that is not helped by universities or governments
For reasons that I will never understand, the universities still tend to be very greedy during IP transfers. Stanford figured out the playbook about 80 years ago. Just do that. Risk taking. Fondness for the weird and eccentric. Also low
The US, China and Israel are the clear standouts in terms of VC funding, work ethic, networking and general energy devoted to start-ups