Every Friday
dailylight savings time and war
You tell us, but it might be 2012 again and Mumford & Sons are back. Winter finally loosened its grip and the group chats have re-energized on all fronts. Last week’s Every Friday edition came out late because we were busy monitoring the situation with Dario and the DoW.
We hit publish, went AFK for the night, and then — like everyone else — woke up to a notification that we were suddenly at war with Iran. So incredibly cursed. But also, peak timeline scroll to start a Saturday.
Fast forward 48 hours and we’re all buried again — work trips, race training, disappearing into work holes. Then our favorite holiday calls and asks us to hold hands: Daylight Saving Time. If you want to drink from the standard time fountain year round, we hear you.
The train is leaving the station people. Press play on Mumford and hop on.
“When has any man ever been content with what he has? “When has any tyrant ever said to himself, ‘This is enough’?”
– Brandon Sanderson (I’ll never stop with the Brandon quotes, just finished Oathbringer for you other beasts in the chat)
“And I have by me, for my comfort, two strange white flowers—shrivelled now, and brown and flat and brittle—to witness that even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man.”
– H.G. Wells
Top of Mind
On Current Events (Relay)
Department of War, Iran, Anthropic vs DoW, Palantir, Sam Altman vs Anthropic, NVIDIA, Fundraising rounds, Trump, Kristi Noem, Kash Patel, Event Contracts, NYC vs SF, LLMs, Agents, Multi-Agent Systems, Drones, Drone Swarms, Oil prices, Unemployment, Energy, AI Data Centers, and so on and so on and so on…
Uneventful 48 Hour Work Trip to London, Relay
mon 10am: *trip originates on 2 day notice*
tues 6pm (EST): redeye, NYC (EWR) → LON (LHR), famously can’t sleep on redeyes, economy class, refuse dinner (someone online said plane meals were bad for you), eye mask for 7 hours, in and out of sleep
wed 6am (GMT): 15 minutes in the maze between plane exit and customs
wed 6:30am: board wrong train at the airport (+23 minutes to ETA), cortisol-maxxing, the tube is tiny, loud drunk russians sinking pints, everyone else in business casual
wed 7:30am: office shower, double shot of espresso raw (1)
wed 8:45am: mini tour of London on the way to the client, british accents everywhere (hilarious)
wed 9:15am: client meeting in the walkie-talkie building, adrenaline, i really am him, double shot espresso raw (2)
wed 10am-4pm: inevitable decline, god’s truest test, iced americano (3), meetings meetings, talking, meetings
wed 4:30pm: walk at the park, salvation, the sun is out and its 55 degrees, what if i just move here?
wed 5pm-7pm: delirium, team building event, sugar free red bull (4)
wed 7:30pm: doner kebab on the way to the hotel (no longer care about health and/or wellness), asleep by 8pm
thurs 6am: body and brain confused (jetlag), 2 hotel single shots of espresso, room in state of chaos
thurs 6:30am: tourist 5k, oh shit big ben, what if i moved here?, *turns on some british rap*, remember when headie one + fred again at their peak, running is the best way to explore a city
thurs 8am: 50 minute walk to the client, peak work trip tourism, move flight up 3 hours (hope)
thurs 12pm: board the correct train to the airport, seek out the airport lounge, competitive eating competition
thurs 3pm: departure
ICYMI: Happy Hour Edition
Consider the protein movement cancelled (ushers Fiber in through the front door).
There is a sad place to take this: I was a slightly different person with my mom, and my wife will never know that me; my wife was a special person with her mom, and I will never know that her. But now we are parents. My wife, who will never know me as a son, will always know me as a father. And I, who will never know my wife as a daughter, will always know her as a mom. There is the third reason to become a parent: It gives the people you love another way to know you.
On Being a Dad, Derek Thompson
Best of Substack this Week
That’s Neat Paddy is a great sub – Paddy
This Week in Relay’s Shopping Cart
Oeuvers Sensibles, Zach
Sometimes the purpose of the shopping cart is to be aspirational, to try and put y’all onto something new. This week is a particular tablecloth from Oeuvers Sensibles (a small french brand which makes everything custom, by hand). Now, I personally won’t be buying a €1,000 linen tablecloth, but I hope that someone here does.
New Balance Ellipse v1, Jack
New Balance has that dad style retro vibe down to a science and they’ve injected it beautifully into their new daily trainer release without going too far.
Core Hoodie, Ian
Snagged this hoodie just in time for the summer months. Another black hoodie to bake on the sunny embers patio.. just what I need.
It’s Not That Deep, Randy
Substack’s X <> link embedder is broken.. classic.
Thanks for reading—or for mega scrolling all the way down here.
The internet is an overwhelming mess of headlines, ads, and mid takes from the worst people you know. Big Tech owns our attention spans. Everything is content. Nothing makes sense.
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Thoughts on Benjamin Netanyahu?