iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

I.e. they’re so effective at using capital to create value (unlike the rest of us) that we should pay them to use it. You know, to make all our lives better. They’re performing a public service in their mind. Andreessen in echoes this view in his confused straw man account of Marx

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

I think it speaks to the Randian notion of capitalists as unappreciated value creators who deserve to be better treated / rewarded by society. Thiel frequently asserts that what makes SV unique is the culture in which creators capture some of the value they create (knowin that VCs get the rest)

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

PitchBook: >25% of unicorns likely sub-$1B, while total unicorn value holds steady (top 10 > 50%). Hypergrowth was always meta-growth -- valuation above fundamentals, organizing time, capital, expectation. Exit well: simulation becomes institution Miss the moment: undercorn

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

Two neurosurgeons just raised $25M to use living neurons as compute. Wow. Capital abides no limits. If biology = infrastructure, we’re not just solving an energy crunch but paving a path to biocommodification: life as circuit component. fortune.com/2026/02/11/t...

fortune.com

Two neurosurgeons just raised $25 million betting brain cells can (someday) outcompute silicon | Fortune

The Biological Computing Co. (TBC) has raised $25 million in seed funding, Fortune has learned.

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

Interesting piece on VCs using “AI second brains.” Legitimation dressed as efficiency. VC turns capital + audacity into “genius.” AI now accelerates it: faster theses, denser hype, cleaner inevitability. Future “necessity” can’t arrive fast enough it seems. www.businessinsider.com/how-venture-...

businessinsider.com

We asked 13 rising-star VCs how they use AI. Here's what they told us.

For up-and-coming venture capitalists, tools like ChatGPT and NotebookLM have become a core part of the job.

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

Musk’s SpaceX–xAI move is less “AI ambition,” more VC power logic at planetary scale. Loss-making xAI gets laundered through SpaceX’s future necessity; it’s an attempt to capitalize on anticipated dependence (orbital compute) before it exists. Contrarian optionality: burn now, monopolize later. 🚀📈

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 02/11/2025

Seen at an AI investment summit hosted by UC Berkeley today. We need to stop being so overly deperndent on AI folks.

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

The second (excellent) article from Distinktion’s special issue on Silicon Valley imaginaries is now available. Check it out below.

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Reposted by Mark Howard

Olivier Jutel 🇵🇸 @ojutel.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

A recording of my seminar "A Critical Theory of VC" www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhJy...

youtube.com

A Critical Theory of Venture Capital

YouTube video by Olivier Jutel

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 27/08/2025

Huge thanks to @ojutel.bsky.social and folks in the Media, Film, and Community programme at U-Otago for helping me think through and refine the ideas contained here.

Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 14/08/2025

Although Jaron might not approve of me using social media to express this — oops!

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 14/08/2025

Having Jaron Lanier visit my Ethics and Technology class today to talk to my students was a real treat. Generous, thoughtful, and refreshingly optimistic - the class and I feel so very lucky to have had this opportunity.

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 30/06/2025

Hey folks — my friend Randy is running for congress in a Republican-held district and needs support. Randy is running a grassroots campaign but the Democratic establishment wants someone who will take corporate money. Please, if you’re able, consider chipping in: secure.actblue.com/donate/callt...

secure.actblue.com

I just gave to Randy Villegas!

Show your support with a contribution.

Olivier Jutel 🇵🇸 @ojutel.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

Reposted by Mark Howard

I am very happy that my program is hosting @mrshoward.bsky.social in two weeks for a discussion of the role of contrarianism in the Silicon Valley founder/VC mythos. QR code for Zoom Deets

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

Part of the “selling point” is that investors and would-be entrepreneur-residents can just pick their legal code from a figurative dropdown.

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

Extra-judicial zone. So essentially has its own laws or lists of laws. With prospera for example, the only laws they were bound to were the Honduran constitution and criminal code. The rest is a free for all.

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

The so-called “cathedral” that Musk and others (following the writings of Curtis Yarvin and Nick Land) have set their targets on includes not just government, but the press and higher education. What appeared to be a batshit political theory just a few years ago is becoming a serious proposition.

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

Yes, but it’s often scholars who make things more complicated in the first place. I mean, that’s practically our job.

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

Digital proof-of-personhood (World ID) is the ultimate data tracking tool. Most countries/authorities have pushed back for this reason causing world to scale down those capabilities, but with Musk currently steamrolling the US gov.. the functionality remains a potentiality.

Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

Nah. It’s just a catalyst for the ai arms race that investors in “Open”AI said they wanted to avoid. The private commercialization of AI was always inevitable, and so was an arms race. Buckle up, and don’t badmouth AI just in case it becomes self-aware and decides to kill you (and me!)

Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

And so the FTC’s careers page has seemingly been deleted. That didn’t take long. It seems Silicon Valley’s cozying up to the incoming administration is already paying dividends. Prepare yourself for unprecedented monopolization and market manipulation.

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

One of my greatest dislikes about being an academic/writer is my ability to come up with perfect sentences (and sometimes even paragraphs) in the shower that I am somehow incapable of writing coherently 5 minutes later. Sigh.

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

Ah yes, the guy that hosted the first Bay Area fundraiser for Trump this cycle, breaking the seal for nervous wealthy tech folks who didn’t want to offend their liberal neighbors. Money buys political office. Who would have guessed we were a plutocracy..

Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

I like this piece a lot, especially the repudiation of lazy ascriptions of widespread libertarianism. However I think a fundamental factor here that you do not mention is an almost unanimous adoption of “contrarianism” in the valley — the idea that the masses (i.e the demos) are wrong. This is key.

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

We will draw or win against Leicester and the cycle of giving him more time will continue. Has to be admitted that we haven’t played the same suicidal football the last two games—signs of progress? (Losing to an excellent Arsenal team is hardly shameful)

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

Apparently Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI argues that latter violated antitrust law by asking investors not to back competitors. If he wins, this could all but make illegal a basic principle of VC investment: don’t spread your bets; monopoly FTW.

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

Not in the slightest, I still get a buzz of excitement every time I pick up something I have been waiting to read for a while. I just wish I could read more.

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

Nah, you just test them afterwards.

Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

Paqueta playing deep with Soler behind the front three seemed to result in more one touch passing through the middle. Both playing to their strengths? There’s an idea.

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

Critique of pure reason is readable? Prologomena a better choice I think. Also, why not philosophical investigations over Wittgenstein’s tractatus? Again, far more readable. And being and time is an immensely difficult read. Great works, for sure, but not for the faint of heart

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

What is this from? Where can I find the whole thing?

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Mark Howard @mrshoward.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

Libertarianism is simply about not disrupting status quo privilege. If you talk to libertarians you will find a wide range of variation that generally aligns to whatever particular privilege or interest that individual (sic) has and deems under threat. For the wealthy it’s taxes, for white men..

Maybe you disagree, but I thought a merit of the doc was its (albeit limited) capacity to humanize trans ppl for cisgender skeptics. If there’s one common thing about transphobes I meet it’s that they haven’t met (m)any trans people and form their biases on the basis of an abstract false signifier.

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Indeed, he is a self-professed Leninist

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I think this is the point that much of the media has missed — Trump knows if he goes crazy with his nominations it’s a win-win. They either win the nomination, or he gets to put forward another crazy appointment who looks acceptable in comparison. It’s literally the strategy outlined in “his” book.

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Axios reporting a second order boom in nuclear fusion tech investment to support the AI acceleration. No Roko’s basilisk for these VCs. Skynet thanks you.

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I mean, I’d say to a large degree It’s about FOMO. Silicon Valley is the epicenter of this phenomenon, and no one wants to be left in the dust right now. The AI industry may be too big to fail, but incumbents no longer are. Intel is in a panic, for example.