Cringe Intelligence (CI), Soullesscon Valley and The Midterms

Good Sunday morning.

It is a ‘bigly’ week ahead. We will find out the shade of Orange this country will be the next two years.

Polymarket has the Dems with a 70 percent chance of sweeping both the House and the Senate and a 94 percent chance they take back the House.

I have made no bets, but if I were to make one it would be that Abdul El-Sayed wins Michigan (he is at 74 percent now on Polymarket). El-Sayed seems despicable to me. Too much hate for Israel and jews, too many connections to Hasan Piker and Muslim Brotherhood and the whole calling himself Doctor thing. Unfortunately, Trump’s rhetoric is not helping the Republicans. Instead of focusing on the actual words of El-Sayed he has just spewed hate and convinced Democrats on the fence that any vote against Trump is a good one.

Onward…

I listened to this podcast interview of Dr. Sarah Paine titled ‘Why The World is Turning Away From America’ on the recommendation of a few people in my streams and it was excellent. It is an uncomfortable listen.

I have been mostly overseas for the last two months and did not get any personal anti-American vibes ( I stay in nice places). In Lisbon though, the uber drivers were definitely anti-Trump calling him names including ‘Orange’. This happened to a few others as well.

At the highest level this is just the deglobalization trend that has been in process from Trump 1.0. It is Trump’s tactics of kicking and screaming at everyone on the way out as he slams doors that make me feel that the trend will only accelerate. This has greatly affected our ‘yoots’ and he higher prices and rates are likely here to stay.

Next…

The Anthropic S-1 and IPO …

It is easy to be skeptical, but now that the numbers are in an S-1 I am going to assume (not because I plan on buying the IPO as it has fleas too) that there is a good effort to capture the state of the revenue and debt and growth. This chart from portfolio company Fiscal.ai puts the growth in perspective. This growth has both fed the boom and the ‘bubble’ discussions and the behavior of the other hyperscalers who have themselves put everything on the line to be an AI winner.

I mostly use Google for my AI because I still sit at a desktop to do my serious work and I am a man of habit in my search process. I like How Google AI works in Chrome and Gmail.

I am also bullish on all aspects of AI, but I also know the funding of it makes predicting the ultimate winners of it 30 years from now pretty difficult. Why I mostly market cap weight index.

When I get too bearish on AI, I look at the long term chart of the railroad giant CSX and remember we are in the early days of this AI trend.

One thing I don’t and won’t do is call Artificial Intelligence Super Intelligence.

I have started to call this moment ‘cringe intelligence’ as Silicon Valley bends to every whim of Trump and the media welcomes anyone bearish onto their TV show or podcast to say it is a bubble.

There are so many smart, hard working behind the scenes people in Silicon Valley, but the frontmen for the brand of Silicon Valley have lost me and I think the script.

The number one podcast in the world right now is The ‘All Sin Podcast’. I do not listen, but they have the access and the distribution and the status so I check who the guest is each week and skim the topics.

David Sacks, one of the hosts, was the Trump Czar for crypto and AI for his 130 day term. A joke. I was hoping he would resign. Instead, under is czarship, Trump launched his Trump coin grift and the World Liberty grift. The Binance CEO got a pardon. A chain from Singapore called Hyperliquid is dominating the degenerate landscape, not an American one. Not to be outdone in his AI Oversight, Sacks has been most vocal against Anthropic - see chart above for how well he did stopping them, oversaw the debt explosion by AI companies and of course invested in his pal Chamath’s (one of the other hosts) new ‘data center’ focus.

Last we heard from Chamath’s goals in life back when he was grifting his SPACS onto the public, Chamath had just two things on his mind…

He convenienty left out 'pardons’ which I am sure he has been seeking as a hedge and made it easy for him to vote for and kiss Trumps ass since his SPAC’s imploded.

Here he is 2021 in his own words explaining that all the jail time that would be given to the Jan 6 rioters should be added up and given to Trump (start minute 3)

The only alpha on the podcast is aimed at their own pockets.

What else is a trend in the world of venture investing and Silicon Valley - one that makes grocery price and oil inflation quaint - check seed stage investing prices which are up 800 percent in the top 5 percent since 2017.

Soulless is not enough to stay on top in Silicon Valley anymore, one must pay the highest prices too.

I would argue that this will fade, but recently Union Square Venture upsized what they do as well. When Fred (full of soul) does something new I listen. Have a read.