“Your ancestors spent 99% of human history just trying to survive. You wake up with the freedom to choose your career, your city, your beliefs, and your breakfast. That’s not normal. That’s a miracle.

Every day I hear the same complaint: “Kids today have no options.”
I saw someone blame Zohran’s win in NY on this idea—that young people are cornered, with no paths forward. That’s not just wrong. It’s the opposite of reality. We are drowning in options.
Never in history has a generation had more freedom to choose, build, and grow.

No mandatory military service
No wars on our soil
No inherited duties or feudal chains
Just a phone, Wi-Fi, and the entire world’s knowledge

A 22-year-old in Lisbon or Lagos can:

Learn to code for free on YouTube
Launch a business on Shopify in 48 hours
Reach 1 million people on X or TikTok
Raise capital on Kickstarter or AngelList
Work remotely from Bali while earning in dollars

The Forbes list proves it.
Rockefeller? Gone.
Carnegie? Vanished.
The top is now filled with new money—people who started with nothing but an idea and a laptop. What’s wrong with that?
Nothing.
It’s the greatest upgrade in human history. Your ancestors fought for survival.
You get to fight for meaning. So when someone says “there are no options,” smile.
They’re not seeing the board—they’re just not playing the game. Today, pick one thing.
One skill. One idea. One move.
The field is wide open.

“A kid with a laptop in Lagos today has more access to knowledge, capital, and global markets than Rockefeller did in 1920.”

@APompliano

Peter Thiel recounts the most important moment in the history of Facebook “The most important moment in the history of the company was in July of 2006 when Yahoo offered us a billion dollars. Zuckerberg was 22 at the time, and he owned a quarter of the company. It was just a college site. We had maybe $35 million in revenues, no profits, and so we had a board meeting.” That Monday morning, Zuckerberg started off the meeting saying: “Well, this is a formality. Obviously we’re going to turn this down.” Thiel and the other investors on the board urged Mark to think it through a little bit more: “Mark, you’d make a quarter of a billion dollars. There’s a lot you could do with this money.” Mark responded: “Well, I don’t know what I’d do with the money. I’d probably just start another social networking site, but I kind of like the one I have, so why would I get rid of it?” Ultimately Mark was able to convince the board not to sell Facebook to Yahoo by convincing them that there was a whole set of products that Facebook was planning to build that Yahoo was not valuing properly. Thiel reflects: “And he was right. The future is never valued in these things.”

I’m flying to Japan next Saturday, but the ordeal just to leave the country already has me dreading the return. Two hours snaking through passport control, corralled like cattle, shouted at for glancing at my phone. Begging a barely-literate security officer for permission to enter a nation that should be grateful for my tourism. This isn’t safety; it’s ritual humiliation, calcified into “the new normal” since 9/11. Today in Houston, TSA lines stretch 3+ hours because unpaid screeners aren’t showing up. The system punishes the innocent to protect against a threat that’s now two decades old. Give me my quiet country house, a book, and the freedom to travel in my head. A peaceful home is the ultimate refuge from the chaos of the world.

"He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I just completed the Transportugal Roads Race, an epic ultra-endurance cycling challenge for amateurs that crosses Portugal from tip to tip in six days, covering 1,000 km from the northern border to Tavira in the south. This year, I finished in 37 hours, placing 9th with an average speed of 26.7 km/h. A flat tire cost me an hour (I had to call for assistance), and I rode the final stage solo after the main peloton pulled ahead. That hour likely dropped me a few positions, but I’m thrilled with my result—especially since the top almost pros finished in 33 hours. For an amateur with a bit of a belly, being within 10% of their time feels like a personal victory!This year, I felt stronger than ever, even though I’m not at my ideal race weight. Cutting out alcohol in 2025 has been a game-changer—my inflammation levels dropped significantly, which meant less pain and more speed. That’s critical for an event like this, where endurance and recovery are everything.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W46m2l_sAVA

https://youtu.be/O_r_IN9tWiI

….Does the best of everything makes the best people? …

Grandmothers memo when they had a child:

Here is the baby.

Take it home and let it grow.

Let it speak when spoken to.

carry on with your liver.

Today’s memo: Here is the baby: Never allow anything difficult to happen to your child.

what should be the new memo :

Here’s your baby

Love her at home, at the polls, in the streets.

Let everything happen to her/him

Be near.

I like the Grandmothers memo, I think kids these days speak to much and listen to little.

From Glennon Doyle book, I do not subscribe to most of her ideas but the chapter about raising kids is a must read.

From GROK synopsis. In Glennon Doyle's memoir Untamed, the central message is a powerful call for women to break free from societal expectations, cultural conditioning, and the "cages" that dictate how they should live, love, and behave, instead embracing their authentic selves by trusting their inner voice, intuition, and wild instincts.

WOW

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished." Lao Tzu

I am currently reading Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts, and it has revealed how little I truly knew about Napoleon Bonaparte. Far more than just a brilliant military leader, Napoleon was a transformative figure whose impact extended well beyond the battlefield. He achieved victories in 55 of the 60 battles he fought, largely due to his innovative strategy of concentrating his forces rather than dispersing them, combined with his remarkable speed in military maneuvers. However, his contributions were not limited to warfare. Napoleon established the Napoleonic Code, a revolutionary civil code that replaced thousands of fragmented local laws and was adopted across Europe, providing a foundation for modern legal systems. He also reformed education, built roads, and reduced the church’s influence over civic life, promoting secular governance. A patron of the arts and sciences, Napoleon’s vision reshaped society.His personal tolerance was extraordinary. For instance, he forgave the treacherous Talleyrand and retained a drunken coach driver who had proven crucial in a battle in Italy. Napoleon himself was abstemious, rarely drinking and preferring diluted wine when he did. Yet, despite his sweeping reforms and enduring legacy, his downfall was swift. At Waterloo, he deviated from his core principle by splitting his forces, a critical error. His earlier decisions also contributed to his demise: at the Tilsit summit with Tsar Alexander, he spared Prussia, which later attacked him four times. At Waterloo, Marshal Blücher’s role proved decisive. While it’s tempting to reduce Napoleon’s success to a simple system, I believe his genius lay in his ability to combine strategic simplicity with bold, multifaceted leadership.

Søren Kierkegaard: “The more a person seeks to secure himself against every contingency, the more he loses the possibility of living.” (Paraphrased from Works of Love, 1847)

quoting from David Senra , twitter page

"From studying the outcome of past expeditions, he believed that those that burdened themselves with equipment to meet every contingency had fared much worse than those that had sacrificed total preparedness for speed."

Roald Amundsen, who prioritized speed and minimalism in his successful 1911 South Pole expedition, contrast with Robert Falcon Scott’s overburdened and ultimately tragic attempt.