Free The Hostages...And A Bit About Me and The Seachange

Good morning…

I have no good news.

For my regular readers who just want a touch of normalcy from this newsletter I offer a peace offering…some chum. Here is the latest Howard Marks letter. It is great. It is titled ‘Seachange’. Not the ‘Seachange’ that is now in play since October 7. Maybe 5 percent of venture capitalists have read Howard or read him because the ‘All Sin Podcast’ is what the algo of Elon serves up. The ‘Seachange’ brought upon us by higher interest rates. Cliff notes:

Onward…

I will remind anyone that is sane, is honest and has a soul, that nothing good will happen to Gaza until the hostages they hold with Hamas are released.

Why Is This Not Being Screamed From Every Interview?

Normally I spend twenty minutes to an hour putting together my newsletter each morning. The markets and investing are impossible to predict, but rather predictable. Human nature/behavior and all.

The last week it has been 5-10 hours of reading and writing to do the same amount of work. I have spent every extra waking moment rejiggering my algos, watching TV news and talking to founders and friends in Israel.

Let me tell you a bit about me so you can hopefully understand why this terrorism attack and war have shocked me into grief and a fog.

I was born in Toronto in 1965. I grew up in York Mills area and than Cedarville (near Forest Hill). I went to a conservative Jewish Day School until high school (Forest Hill Collegiate) called Beth Tzedec and walked to and from school almost every day.

I have a few deeply vivid memories of elementary school. The first was Paul Henderson scoring a winning goal to beat the Russians, in Russia to win a special tournament that meant EVERYTHING to a young Canadian at the time. After that my most vivid memories are of El Al hijackiings, Munich Olympics Israeli massacre in 72, Entebbe, 6 day war and Yom Kippr War. They were ingrained in my psyche, but my teacher, many grandmothers and rabbi’s NEVER taught to hate arabs or muslims.

I wore a Levi’s Kipah (early progressive) and was the class clown. I loved my Judaism and my friends. School seemed easy to me, but I never liked having to learn English, French, Hebrew and Yiddish. Today, I wish I took Yiddush more seriously because it was such a hysterical language to listen in on as my parentss, aunts, uncles and grandparents spoke it at family events and big jewish holidays like Passover.

I had my Bar Mitzvah and travelled a few times to Israel. I never felt pressured to marry jewish but luckily for me I was fixed up with Ellen and we married (now 29 years) and have had two fantastic kids Rachel and Max. While they were not raised conservative like Ellen and I (Phoenix and Coronado) we made sure they attended Hebrew school and had jewish friends and their Bar/Bat Mitzvahs. They have travelled to Israel..Rachel for a few weeks again recently.

Max is at UNLV and Rachel in New York. Both have been deeply affected by the Hamas massacre because of Social Media and where they live. It is impossible for them to withdraw from the Hamas terrorism and the new war. We have had some long conversations and they are reading my blog and we are sharing articles amongst the kids and extended nephews and nieces and through our whats app groups. We are not balanced because there is no balance to be discussed. We stand with Israel.

I am so proud of Ellen, Rachel and Max for working to get to a place where they can discuss all the sides of the massacre with us and understand the higher level non complex ‘good versus evil’ war at hand. Social media and algos will try to slice and dice your soul into guilt, doubt, hate and despair. I have been there many times. It will kill some of your/their friendships. It will make them question everything because they have the free time to be messed with by the algo. There are no guardrails. This is life.

I am using this time to make up for many parenting mistakes i’m sure I have made along the way and be there for them daily to check in and talk and to summarize ideas and news. To help them try to stay focused on ‘Good versus Evil’ and ‘Life over Death’. There will be a time down the road, hopefully sooner than later when we can move down the heirarchy of feelings and second guessing and worry about the extended horrors of October 7.

For now we want the Hostages Free. 

Stick your algo and feelings up Hamas’s ass in the meantime.