Well, this is officially peak life as a man. Been a dad for less than 12 hours. Haven’t slept in 2 days. As a mf who has basically done it all and seen it all by 29, I’m telling you…becoming a father is the peak. You don’t need the millions. You don’t need the cars, the watches, the businesses. If you have ever held your own son or daughter you’re already in the 1%. If you don’t have kids? You’re unfortunately missing out on the greatest blessing there is. I really don’t know how else to say it tbh. My daughter in my arms. My superwoman of a fiancée in the bed sleeping. Just feeling these little fingers grasp my pinky to soothe herself to sleep is worth more than any deal or any car or any business. Makes every single one of these unread emails or business “problems” I have feel completely insignificant. Sure, one can love the game. Purpose, passion, philosophy, politics, these are important facets of living a full life as a man. But fatherhood? This is the peak.

Name the cuisine for 1 billion internet points.

McDonald's is spending 8.5 billion dollars to find out why families stopped coming. I can save them the 8.5 billion. They took out the playground. The plan, announced Wednesday at investor day. Better food, faster service, new equipment, AI tools, hospitality training, and a bigger push into chicken and beverages. They call it Next. The goal, they say, is making customers feel more comfortable. Wall Street loved it so much the stock fell 5 percent to its lowest since 2022. Over five years McDonald's shares are down 3 percent. Burger King's parent is up 14. The owner of Taco Bell and KFC is up 13. This is not a hamburger problem. This is a McDonald's problem. So let us talk about who used to eat there. Parents. That was the whole business. Parents at 5:40 on a Tuesday with three kids in the back and nothing thawed at home. You did not go for the burger. You went because your kids could run screaming through a plastic tube for 40 minutes while you sat with a coffee and experienced silence. That was the product. The food was the cover charge. The first PlayPlace opened in 1971 in Birmingham, Alabama, and for fifty years it did one job. It made small children demand to go to McDonald's. Then 2020 arrived, every play area in the country closed, and a great many never came back. The equipment came out during a remodeling program named Experience of the Future. The Experience of the Future turned out to be a touchscreen. Their own chief executive said he did not know if ball pits were in their future. Sir, you were not selling ball pits. You were selling forty minutes. So now there is no counter, no playground, and no reason for a seven year old to want to go. A screen, a window, and a bag. And for that we pay prices that require a moment of reflection in the parking lot. For thin, overcooked, oddly uniform pucks that taste like a memory of beef. I did not love them because they were good. I loved them because I was eight and there was a slide. And have you seen the new buildings. The old ones were unmistakable. Red roof, yellow arches, legible from a highway at 70 to a child who could not yet read. The new ones are a flat gray box with a small logo and a drive through wrapped around it. A regional claims office with a fryer. They removed the color, the characters, the counter, and the playground, and then hired consultants to find out why it no longer feels like anywhere. Which is why, when I have to eat fast food, I go to Chick-fil-A. Not for the politics. For the competence. They have led the customer satisfaction index for fast food eleven years running, and average 8.5 million dollars per location against McDonald's 4 million. More than double, while closed on Sundays. Fifty two days a year with the lights off, and still double. A seventeen year old hands you a bag and says my pleasure and means it about 70 percent, which is 70 percent more than a touchscreen has managed. McDonald's is spending 8.5 billion on hospitality training. Chick-fil-A earns 8.5 million per restaurant by just having some. So here is my consulting proposal, free of charge, on behalf of mothers everywhere. Put the playgrounds back. Not a nostalgia campaign. Not a retro cup. The structure. Tubes, slides, a door the kids cannot open from the inside, and a bench where a tired woman can sit. And understand what you are buying, because it is not lunch. A six year old does not know your food is bad. He has no basis for comparison and no functioning palate. He thinks the burger is incredible because he is standing in a castle made of tubes. That is the window. That is the only window you get. You catch them before the taste buds arrive, and thirty years later they drive past your sign, feel something they cannot explain, and pull in anyway. That is not a menu strategy. That is imprinting, and you shut it down in 2020 to save on cleaning. Eight and a half billion dollars for AI tools and hospitality training. Or a slide. 🦋

He kind of got into investing by accident. He landed in merger arbitrage and special situations work, found out he loved it, and in 1988 joined Seth Klarman's famous Baupost Group. He spent a decade there learning deep value investing before striking out on his own.

🚨 META JUST UNVEILED THE VR GLASSES 100 grams on your face - about the weight of a deck of cards. Meta says it has “the best display system that we have ever made,” and people in the demo were literally saying “it is like a computer” and “you could edit a whole movie just using the table.” As Mark explained this is cinema, computer, and a game console all in one, with 3D space, virtual screens, hand occlusion, and DisplayPort over USB-C. James Cameron’s reaction is probably the best quote in the whole segment “I’m inspired by what you’ve created. I’d like to see my work in these glasses.” I am completely one shotted these look amazing!

when Anthropic released their Functional Emotions paper, I gave it to Claude and asked for a song. tonight I asked Opus 5.5 to create a video for it. and it's breathtaking.

Signed my first client contract today. Huge enterprise (in top 100 nationally). And immediately submitted candidate (who I already had). It took 20+ multi-channel touches and weeks of persistence across multiple stakeholders to get this done. Calls, emails, LinkedIn video messages, holy sh*t do you need persistence in this game Loooooooooong road ahead ha. But proof of concept... is there. As an analytical person, ramping up my outreach volume has been my biggest personal challenge. In the beginning, you are so freaking slow and inefficient, and you have to fight the perfectionist impulse of a decade long analyst stint. You overthink EVERYTHING. But this is progress. Small wins, every day

Same on the buyside. The analyst with the new house never pushed back on anything.

I’m 34 with $4.3M net worth. The closer I get to financial independence, the less stress and anxiety I feel at work. Prospect reams me out on a call. Deal falls through at the finish line. Client cuts you loose. Contract doesn’t renew. Stuff that used to mean sleepless nights. Now it barely registers. Not because I stopped caring about the job. I still sell. I still chase quota. Because a bad week at work stopped being an existential threat. When your baseline life is covered by assets and a low cost of living, work drama loses its teeth. Same W2. Same industry politics. Completely different nervous system.

It's incredible how fast the utility of money decreases after a certain level of wealth. You can get the exact same bag, clothes, personal trainer and almost the same flight experience with a good business class and only make a couple hundred k a year.

Is 10 million enough? > reached retirement number; wondering if it should be higher > gets laid off; wonders if he should go back to work > might stay retired, might consult > no plan for health insurance or aging parents What would you tell them?