Maybe you've seen photos of Tehran in the 1970s, just before the Islamic Revolution: images of young women going to work in miniskirts, of couples making out in parks while wearing bell-bottoms, of people at pools in bikinis. It looks like Paris or Milan or Los Angeles. But in 1979 the revolution happened, and now Tehran looks like something from an earlier century. Sometimes I think that our whole world has become kind of like that'going backwards in time. The religious movements thriving in today's secularized age are the traditionalist ones that dissent from large parts of contemporary culture'not only the Shiite Islam of post-revolution Iran, but Orthodox Judaism and conservative Catholicism. Young Americans are flooding into Eastern Orthodox churches. Many of us thought that the world would get more democratic as it modernized, but for the past quarter century, we have seen a reversion to authoritarian strongmen. Donald Trump, acting like some 16th-century European prince, has made the presidency his own personal fiefdom. Vladimir Putin borrows ideas from reactionary thinkers such as Aleksandr Dugin'an Eastern Orthodox, anti-liberal philosopher who rejects the Enlightenment'to justify his imperial conquest of Ukraine....

Granular convection takes place everywhere: candy in a box, sand on the beach, foam in a cushion. Often referred to as the 'Brazil nut effect,' granular convection occurs when solid, independent, irregularly shaped particles reorder themselves following agitation. One might think, intuitively, that the larger pieces fall to the bottom, but it is their size, and not their density, that alters their location, and the larger pieces end up on the top. In the world of competitive running, elite athletes have their footwear individually designed for needs such as foot shape and pressure points. Comfortable and supportive footwear can assist optimal performance. However, most footwear is standardized and doesn't offer a personalized performance. MIT associate professor of architecture Skylar Tibbits, founder and co-director of the Self-Assembly Lab in the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, along with various MIT colleagues, have been developing tests surrounding the phenomenon of granular convection within the midsole ' or middle layer, between the outsole (bottom) and insole (top) ' of running shoes to create a shoe that evolves over time to provide an individualized product. As we approach the running of the 130th Boston Marathon ' one of the world's most prominent displays of footwear supporting athletes ' Tibbits answers three questions about bead-based technologies as applied to running shoes....

' Hey, Linas here! Welcome back to a ' weekly free edition ' of my daily newsletter. Each day, I focus on 3 stories that are making a difference in the financial technology space. Coupled with things worth watching & most important money movements, it's the only newsletter you need for all things when Finance meets Tech. Anthropic accidentally leaked Claude Code's entire source. Here's what 512,000 lines reveal ' [The first production AI agent architecture ever made public, and a blueprint for where the entire industry is headed] 10 AI Prompt Skills That Actually Change How ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini Respond ' [Stop telling AI to 'write clearly.' Give it real frameworks with measurable constraints and watch the output transform] Block wrote the best argument for killing middle management, then proved why you shouldn't trust them to do it '' [why their argument is brilliant, yet Block shouldn't be trusted here + bonus deep dive into where AI market is headed based on the latest VC funding & startup pitches, and how to productize yourself in the Age of AI]...

Good morning & happy Thursday! Today's issue is incredibly packed as we're diving into Block, which wants to replace middle managers with AI (why their argument is brilliant, yet Block shouldn't be trusted here + bonus deep dive into where AI market is headed based on the latest VC funding & startup pitches, and how to productize yourself in the Age of AI), Claude that's now running a $50,000 portfolio with ZERO human override (what it's all about & why it indicates where financial markets are headed + deep dive into Claude Code's leaked source code that's a blueprint for the future of AI & a full guide on how to turn Claude in Excel into your senior financial analyst), and Monzo, which just quit America so it can win Europe (why it's the right move for Monzo & what to expect next + bonus deep dive into Revolut's latest 2025 financials inside). Let's jump straight into the awesome stuff '' Following the trends ' Five weeks after cutting 4,000 employees, Jack Dorsey and Sequoia's Roelof Botha published a 3,000-word essay arguing that hierarchy is an information-routing protocol, and AI can replace it....