Finished reading: The Genesis Machine by Amy Webb 📚
Finished reading: Play Nice by Jason Schreier 📚
Finished reading: Autocracy, Inc. by Anne Applebaum 📚
The Strategic Shift: Why UPS is Rethinking its Amazon Partnership and What it Means for Last-Mile Delivery
Sunday, February 9, 2025
We’re well in the middle of earnings season, but something stood out to me regarding a firm in particular. UPS revealed a significant shift in its strategy: a reduction in its delivery volume for Amazon by 50% by the end of next year. This move, while surprising to some, is a calculated step aimed at improving UPS’s profitability and streamlining its operations. Let’s delve into the reasons behind this decision and what it means for the future of last-mile delivery.
Finished reading: The Big Nine by Amy Webb 📚
One of my goals going into 2025 was to talk less and listen more. In this goal, I’m attempting to become more knowledgeable and a more well-rounded person. Self-improvement is important to me for my personal and professional lives. In this endeavor, I’ve been reading and listening to more eBooks and audiobooks, respectfully. You’ll see me post more about what I read and less about what I believe.
The next titles I plan on consuming (in no particular order) are as follows:
- "The Sirens' Call" by Chris Hayes
- "America's New Map" by Thomas P.M. Barnett
- "Autocracy, Inc." by Anne Applebaum
Finished reading: Chip War by Chris Miller 📚
DeepSeek's Surprise Entrance into the AI Arena
Thursday, January 30, 2025
DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup, has rapidly become a major disruptor in the AI landscape with its new AI model, R1. This model has gained global attention for its ability to compete with models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, but at a significantly lower cost. The emergence of DeepSeek has caused ripples across the tech industry, impacting stock markets and sparking debates about data privacy and the future of AI development. DeepSeek was founded in mid-2023 by Liang Wenfeng, a Chinese hedge fund manager.
Ditching Instagram: Focusing on Meaningful Connections
Friday, January 24, 2025
Yes! You heard it here first. Like all of you, I was excited for Instagram when it first hit the scene back in late 2010 and still had my original account from that time. Meta (formerly Facebook) famously purchased the business for $1 billion and successfully integrated it into its ad network and social graph, but I'm not here to relive or debate history -- we can save the positives and negatives for another post.
LLMs will Augment Employment; Not End it.
Sunday, May 28, 2023
LLMs, such as GPT-3.5 & 4 developed by OpenAI, possess impressive language processing capabilities. However, despite their remarkable abilities, LLMs are not poised to replace human workers. In this blog post, we will explore how LLMs will augment employment rather than supplant it, providing evidence to support this claim. Contrary to the doomsday predictions of job losses due to automation, LLMs are not designed to replace human workers entirely. These machines excel at processing and generating human-like text, but they lack the cognitive abilities, creativity, and emotional intelligence that make human workers invaluable.
Divestiture Debrief: The Kellogg Split
Tuesday, June 21, 2022
Earlier this morning before the bell, Kellogg announced that it would be splitting itself into three-separate tax-free spinoffs: the slow growing cereal business, a snacking business, and an unnamed plant-based food business mainly consisting of Morningstar Farms. In the press release, the company said splitting these businesses will unlock shareholder value. During the past year, we've seen a number of larger, slower-growing business attempt to divest to grow. Kellogg itself was unlikely to be sold due to its slowly growing cereal business, such as what Post and General Mills have previously announced.
On this Day in 2001: The Robert Hanssen Case
Wednesday, March 23, 2022
Yesterday, I was reminded on LinkedIn that yesterday in 2001, the State Department notified the Russian government that four of its diplomats were considered persona non-grata and immediately jetted from the country (National Counterintelligence and Security Center, 2022). This is an older piece I wrote on Robert Hanssen, in particular. During the transition period from the Soviet Union into the Russian Federation, an FBI agent, Robert Hanssen was handing over top secret, and code word clearance intelligence to the Russian authorities at the KGB and its successor, the SVR (FBI, 2017).
Apple's Newest Diversification: Business Essentials
Monday, November 22, 2021
Much like your own investment portfolio, companies continually must diversify to negate the ebbs and flows of their business segments. Up until 2001, Apple, then still called Apple Computer, was primarily a hardware company. The iPod was released and forever changed how the music industry conducted business. In 2007, Apple then released the iPhone, knowing it would cannibalize it's own iPod dominance in the market Followed by the inclusion of the App Store, then eventually iPads would see the light of day, all while still selling their signature computers to "
Google's Tensor: The Data Company's Data Chip
Monday, November 15, 2021
Ever since the release of the iPhone in 2007, Apple has designed and fabricated its own chips for its own devices. At the time, "owning the supply chain" or the vertical, was the way of controlling the full stack of hardware down to software of the manufacturing and distribution process. Since then, we have seen the practice known as economies of scale, for Apple to make more revenue on each phone sold.
Primary Source Material is Crucial for Facts & Research
Monday, November 8, 2021
Back in college we all had access to those often bulky, hard to use research databases, that sometimes worked, but often steered us in the wrong direction. We had to teach ourselves Boolean operators to properly navigate them. There was a reason other than torture for utilizing those; to help us all find primary source materials to write our research papers. As is often the case, that's about the only time we used academia, raw data and studies to conduct our analysis on any given topic.
One Year at a Non-Profit
Sunday, February 14, 2021
Volunteering has always been a part of my personal ethos. I'm reminded of my time as an AmeriCorps VISTA at Engaging Creative Minds, which I spent a year from 2017 until 2018. I wrote this post some years ago, but it is an experience that I hope that all younger folks will take advantage of. In creating my plans long ago, the thought never came into my mind about actively working for an educational non-profit for a year through the AmeriCorps VISTA program.
A Reminder of Intelligence Leadership and National Oversight
Friday, February 5, 2021
As the Intelligence Community (IC) works to rebuild trust between its agencies, it's citizens, and other partner nations, this is a great time to remind us all about the basics of how leadership within the IC and it's ongoing struggle with national oversight through checks and balances. I originally wrote this piece in October of 2018. Setting the Scene It is the role of Congress to monitor and create oversight of the intelligence community.
A Primer on Apple's Q1 2021 Earnings
Friday, January 29, 2021
I won't normally write about quarterly earnings reports from companies. You can get that story from many various sources. For the purposes of this article, I want to discuss why Apple's most recent earnings report was remarkable. I am also not recommending buying or selling Apple stock one way or another. Yesterday, Apple released an almost perfect Q1 2021 earnings report to Wall Street. Keep in mind this report ended on December 26, 2020, so these numbers do not reflect the post-holiday bump that most consumer electronics companies receive.
Arms Race in the Arctic
Tuesday, January 19, 2021
Gone are the days of the threat of nations stockpiling ICMB's to deter one another from catastrophic launches, and the last known war. With the threat of climate change, and the need for natural resource consumption and build up, the Arctic is quickly becoming the most sought-after area for these rich resources and positioning by first world nations. The Arctic is growing in geostrategic importance and potentially becoming yet another zone for strategic competition, as this previously impenetrable territory becomes increasingly accessible to navigation and exploitation.
The Edge Case: Redux
Monday, January 11, 2021
For years now, businesses have migrated a full cloud solution; if not in the process of adopting a hybrid system at the very least. The continual building out of data centers by the major tech companies coupled with low power consumption chips from the likes of ARM and TSMC have created efficiencies in power on-site, computation, and rendering back to a customer or client's PC. In this case, I will refer to the PC as anything from a desktop, laptop, tablet, phone, or other similarly purposed device.