With 2023 receding in the rearview mirror, you need to park your brain in neutral before you embark on your New Year’s self-improvement jag. We can think of few ways better to shift into a lower gear than to explore what we think is quite possibly the most American corner of the internet, wherein boys in their 20s, 30s and even 40s:

Buy tanks (as in military main battle tanks) and then use them to destroy buses and SUVswhile smashing through brick walls.

Purchase helicoptersand planes even though they don’t have a pilot’s license. (And try to flythem indoors.)

Buy and fly around in Blackhawk helicopters, give you tours of their monster garages, and occasionally destroy hovercraft and drive a truck onto moving trailer and build the world’s largest monster trucks and stress-test G Wagons (here and here and here) and buy USD 400k Ferraris to try to destroy over time and then sell them for literal scrap to viewers.

Yeah, you can feel your brain atrophy as you watch. It’s also oddly difficult to look away.

Are you sick of OpenAI yet? We’re fast getting there, but this is still a must-read. Even if you don’t care about the politics of who gets to control the largest player in generative AI, you’ll still want to read this Wall Street Journal piece — it’s master class C-suite and boardroom politics.

The pitch: “Over the past two decades, [OpenAI founder and CEO Sam] Altman has lost the confidence of several top leaders in the three organizations he has directed. At every crisis point, Altman, 38 years old, not only rebounded but climbed to more powerful roles with the help of an expanding network of powerful allies.”

Three times now, staff and board members at startups Altman has founded have pilloried him for (a) being duplicitous, (b) running side hustles that have conflicted with his day job, or (c) both.

Whether you’ve got a Sam Altman on your executive team (or cap table, or both) or you just want a good story, go read: Sam Altman’s knack for dodging bullets — with a little help from bigshot friends.

Tags: