Hola Libertinus,

Washington rolled tanks down Pennsylvania Avenue back in June for the Army's 250th.

Now fast-forward to this week in Beijing, and they crank it to stadium tour.

Robot wolves. Nukes on flatbeds. Lasers they hid in rehearsal just to yank the tarp for the big “ta-da!” Xi standing there with Putin and Kim like a dystopian boy band.

It was your typical Tuesday in Tiananmen Square.

Nations sacralize themselves through such secular liturgy: flags, marches, sacred dates (marking 80 years since Japan's defeat at the end of WWII in this case).

On parade day, the state does the priesting, the hardware does the relicing, and the budget pays the tithe.

It’s quite the spectacle.

And somewhere between the missile displays, a hot mic caught an interesting remark between Putin and Xi.

Let's get into it.

📡 S I G N A L S

Vance's Alarming Take on Fed Independence

Vance directly states the President should have the ability to make monetary decisions. Letting the executive make monetary policy decisions is a bad idea, and saying that he should be doing so out loud is an even worse idea. Central bank independence exists for a reason, and its not ideological. If markets can't trust the central banks to be acting in a way that minimizes inflation and unemployment, investors can't confidently invest. But why would the President want to influence monetary policy? The answer is always the same: drop rates. This provides short term economic stimulation that makes the President look good, and by the time the fiscal hangover kicks in, the President is already out of office. ~West

Keir Starmer backs digital ID cards to tackle illegal immigration" (BBC)

“Papers, please.”

That's where Britain's heading, except the papers will live in your phone. And they'll track everything you do. Keir Starmer's selling digital IDs as the fix for illegal immigration. Classic bait-and-switch. Create panic about boats crossing the Channel (and yeah, 906,000 net migrants last year is an all time record), then slip in the surveillance state while everyone's distracted. Here's how it'll go down: First, you'll need the ID to work. "Gotta stop them illegals taking Bri’ish jobs, guv’na." Then you'll need it to rent a flat. Open a bank account. Book a flight. See a doctor. Buy groceries.

One day you wake up and discover you need digital authentication just to leave your flat… and the app's crashed on your gov’t issued phone, so you're trapped inside… like some Black Mirror episode nobody bothered to write because it’s too on-the-nose.

Meanwhile, the boats are still coming. Brilliant, innit? ~Zack

Malema Hate Speech

After years of advocating for the killing of white South Africans, EFF party leader Julius Malema has finally been found guilty of hate speech. The soundbite that got him was "No white man is going to beat me up... you must never be scared to kill. A revolution demands that at some point there must be killing." After Malema's conviction the EFF released a statement saying that the ruling "is fundamentally flawed and deliberately misreads both the context and the meaning of the speech." I feel like I have all the context I need. ~West

Hot mic catches Xi and Putin discussing organ transplants and immortality (BBC)

Two dictators walk into a summit. Putin leans over to Xi: "So… about those organ transplants..." This isn't a joke. Chinese state TV caught it on tape. Two septuagenarian autocrats casually discussing immortality. Peak boomer energy: refusing to die because you’ve got more oppressing to do. Xi's talking about living to 150. Putin's musing about "continuous organ transplants." Futurama tried to warn us with Nixon's head becoming president again in the year 3000. We laughed. Putin and Xi: "Hold our формальдегид." ~Zack

Wonderful Portfolio

Mr. Wonderful nails it on the head: if you've won the game, then stop playing it. Successful entrepreneurs are fantastic at making money, but they usually aren't as good at keeping it. If you've made 7- or 8-figure wealth, don't put it at risk. Some diversified combination of stocks, bonds, cash, and possibly alternatives (like real estate and gold) should do you just fine.

Unfortunately, most entrepreneurs manage their portfolios like this:

"Just put money in it and you'll be set for life." ~West

The Matrix Will Be Voluntary

Go ahead. Open Midjourney.tv. I'll wait. You’re greeted by an endless stream of AI-generated visuals. It’s mesmerizing. Sublime. A beautiful “awe” that borders on “terror.” It’s easy to marvel at the creativity of the machine, even if you sense something alien about the pixels.. hypnotic and hyper-real, addictive, eerily post-human.

Next up. Give this a click:

"Here kids, make your own Matrix!”

Here's the pitch: Upload any photo, get a 3D world. China's literally handing out reality-building software like it's candy. Forget jackboots. Instead we get: "Would you like to voluntarily trap yourself in a digital fun-house? We made it open source uwu."

Remember when everyone made fun of Zuck's Metaverse? “We'll never live in his PS2 hellscape!”

Tencent: "What if the virtual panopticon was like really, really pretty though?"

Everyone: "Son of a b*tch, I'm in."

By 2040, half of humanity will be living in 3D renders, eating virtual tendies, wondering why the real world feels so low-dopamine. ~Zack

Diversification Value of Gold (Lazy Portfolio Etf)

One of my past times is running portfolio backtests. Needless to say, I'm the life of the party. I've always been a fan of gold in small amounts as a portfolio diversifier, and wanted to run a backtest comparing the results of 4 portfolios comprised of the total world stock market alongside some percentage of gold (0, 10, 20, and 30%). I limited the backtest to 30 years to account for the outperformance of gold in historical data going back much further than that - many gold critics cite the 1970s performance as anomalous because that's the decade we went off the gold standard. The results are fascinating. There is a direct relationship between how much gold was held in the portfolio and both performance and risk metrics. ~West

The Zoomer Catholic Friars of Western North Carolina (The Assembly)

Plot twist: In an age of VR and dopamine addiction, a band of young men in their 20s and 30s are bucking the trend in the most hardcore way: LARPing as medieval monks. Except, they’re not LARPing. They're actual monks. Poverty, chastity, obedience. No WiFi. No podcasts. Just vibes from 1223. These bros looked at modern society (the apps, the anxiety, the pronouns in bio) and said "Nah, we'll take the Latin chants and rope belts." All but their founding friar are in their 20s and 30s. While mainstream society mainlines TikTok, these guys are literally off in the mountains, building a timber-frame monastery BY HAND and praying seven times a day. Extreme? Bröther, they took a vow of poverty in the age of crypto. And their sect is GROWING. But maybe they're onto something. When society offers infinite dopamine and zero meaning, maybe the most punk rock thing you can do is move to the mountains and sing ancient hymns. Your move, tech bros. ~Zack

That’s it for this week.

At the top, the gerontocracy won’t leave the stage. At the bottom, the screen stops being a screen: AI makes dopamine cheap and endless, and the feed feels easier than the reality of late stage empire. On the edge, a minority opts out hard (stone, silence, rules) because when everything’s liquid, some folks will choose walls.

None of the above merits a conspiracy. Incentives do all the heavy lifting.

Treat it like weather. Don’t argue with it. Dress for it.

Sic semper debitoribus,
~ West & Zack

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