3D Systems Expands Additive Manufacturing Capabilities with a New Technology Center in Colorado dlvr.​it/TW1Jzz

Analysis: Vail Resorts investors prepare for proxy fight, future of Park City in question Read More at: parkrecord.com/2026/09/18/an…

I’m slowly cleaning up the suburbs with Muse. Saw this mess of wires on a pole. Took a picture and asked Muse to contact Verizon to get them cleaned up. It went to their website and got to work. There is a 0% chance I would’ve sat in a Verizon support chat over this. I would’ve just been mildly annoyed every time I walked past it for the next five years. “Someone should do something about that” is now a prompt. 🤝 @alexandr_wang

Scheels, a major sporting goods retailer, has shown interest in building a destination store at the Mineral Place development in south Littleton, with a possible opening date of 2029. Learn more here: ow.ly/Cfh750ZMLyY

Could AI investment start a global sovereign debt crisis? If you look at the SpaceX-Google deal, it is already the case that the entire capex for the data center can be paid off by leasing it out for roughly 1 year. As we get closer to AGI, the returns on compute will be massive and obvious, many-fold the principal within a few years. And as AIs get more capable, the demand for the compute to serve them will be as large as the demand for white collar labor - aka 10s of trillions of dollars a year. In this world, why would anyone invest in anything but datacenters/ semiconductors/ energy/ robotics, which will have astronomical returns? There may be many upsides to this world, but one of the downsides would be many sovereign debt crises around the world In 1980, Fed Chair Paul Volcker raised interest rates about 10 pp in order to fight inflation - and this drove some 40 odd countries, mostly in Latin America, to default. A similar thing might happen again - what @BasilHalperin calls the second Volcker shock. To put it in very plain terms, investors would say, "Hey, why am I going to lend Egypt money at 5% when I could just buy relatively safer investment-grade hyperscaler debt in America at 10%?" It’s even worse, because the investor also correctly notices that rising rates make Egypt more likely to default, so they demand even higher rates to account for the risk. This makes it even harder for Egypt to continue servicing their debt, which accelerates the default. Most equities would get pummeled too. Anything valued for stable cash flows craters in price as the discount rate increases, resulting in a barbell of market equity returns. The market overall may be up because of AI stocks, but almost every other stock will be down. The U.S. fiscal situation may also be troubling because short-duration U.S. debt would get refurbished to the new interest rate just as the main source of federal revenue (labor) is decreasing in relative share. At the end of the day, I think the U.S. government will be mostly fine, because the data centers are on American soil, and Congress can always invent new taxes to capture some of the token revenue, or, less efficiently, the investment itself. All this being said, if the economy is growing tens of percent a year, this would also be a world of great abundance! I think this is a bunch of nerd speak for the very basic fact that in a world with explosive growth as a result of AI, there's just a lot of opportunities to invest and grow money. The higher interest rate reflects the fact that the opportunity cost for government spending just shoots up extremely high. You're paying a ton of opportunity cost to give people pensions now rather than building a new datacenter. And yet, net-net, most people might still be significantly better off.

I've been getting a lot of questions about how billionaires use sports teams to save hundreds of millions of dollars on taxes, so let me explain. Let's use the Lakers as an example. When the transaction closes, Josh Kushner and Bob Iger will start by allocating 90% or more of the purchase price ($12.5 billion) to intangible assets. Kushner and Iger will then amortize these assets over 15 years under Section 197 of the tax code, allowing them to deduct the amortization against team income. But since these deals are typically structured as pass-throughs, the excess losses don't just vanish. Kushner and Iger can use those losses to shield hundreds of millions of dollars in outside personal income, such as capital gains from VC investments, from being taxed. This is what allowed Steve Ballmer to pay $78 million in taxes on $656 million in income in the year he purchased the Clippers for $2 billion. That's 12%. The tax code has been this way for decades, but what makes sports teams unique is that they are not typical businesses. While no one would argue that it is unfair for a regular business to reduce its taxable income as the value of its machinery, vehicles, and computers erode, most of the assets of a sports franchise regenerate automatically. In other words, player contracts can be amortized even though teams just sign new players when old players leave. TV deals can also be amortized even though leagues just negotiate more lucrative deals when their current ones expire. The tax code even allows for franchise and league membership rights to be amortized even though those rights technically never expire. President Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill actually included a provision that would have reduced the amortization deduction to 50% of the purchase price for new acquisitions. But after NFL owners like Robert Kraft, Jimmy Haslam, and Rob Walton lobbied against it, the provision was removed at the last minute. This proposed change would have only impacted new team sales, but current owners care about it because if the existing amortization advantage goes away or gets diminished, it would negatively impact valuations. Think about it this way: If the amortization deduction drops from 90% to 50%, that would cost potential buyers hundreds of millions in tax savings. So to make up for the difference, team valuations would have to fall. This is also why the Lakers sale is so shocking. Walter is giving up billions in potential tax savings over 15 years for a 20% capital gain over two years. That wouldn't make sense...unless Walter is actually being forced to sell to cover the very loans the federal government is currently investigating him for. P.S. Today's newsletter breaks down everything you need to know about the Mark Walter investigation: why the DOJ seized his phone and laptop, how it triggered a fire sale of the Lakers, and whether the Dodgers, Chelsea, or the Cadillac Formula 1 team will be next. I spent the last 24 hours digging into all the details, and I think this is probably one of our best newsletters ever. READ: huddleup.substack.com/p/did-…

He was once the most hated man in America. Later he became its most generous. You may think you know the history of John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil, but you don't. Our team spent months uncovering the details most accounts miss: his discipline, ambition, ruthlessness, defining partnerships, devotion to his wife, counterintuitive approach to competition, and the timeless principles behind the greatest fortune in history. This is more than the story of Standard Oil. It’s a long-form mini-biography about how Rockefeller built an empire, the price he paid for it, and what his life can teach us today. It was worth the wait. I promise. Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/3o6… Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas… YouTube: youtu.be/e0mVaobziWk?si=Imfb…