Organizations and Initiatives
Organizations, institutions, and initiatives referenced during the call.
Agricultural & Environmental
Schumacher Institute
- Location: United Kingdom
- Project: Hosting Klaus Mager's initiative with two work streams:
- Getting food hubs into wholesale markets
- Paying farmers for ecosystem services
- Context: Regenerative Agriculture economic models
- Mentioned by: Klaus Mager
- See: Klaus Mager, Regenerative Agriculture
Food with Thought
- Who: Klaus Mager's effort
- Focus: Engaging "the neglected part of the market" - small to medium-sized farmers
- Goal: Help "agriculture of the middle" access markets
- Secondary Goal: Create revenue stream for environmental services
- Mentioned by: Klaus Mager
- See: Klaus Mager
Union of Concerned Scientists
- Activity: Sending "last urgent warnings" about climate
- Frequency: For 3-4 years
- Hub: Portland State or Oregon State (consolidating data)
- Message: "Passing one tipping point after the next"
- Klaus's Frustration: Warnings ignored, need transition to action
- Mentioned by: Klaus Mager
- See: Klaus Mager
CSA (Community Supported Agriculture)
- Definition: Partnership between farmers and consumers
- Model: People buy "share" of farm's harvest in advance
- Return: Regular boxes/baskets of fresh, seasonal produce (+ sometimes eggs, dairy, meat, flowers)
- Frequency: Usually weekly or biweekly throughout growing season
- Market Share: Combined with farmers markets = only ~3% of total food sales
- Defined by: Pete Kaminski in chat
- Context: Klaus Mager's discussion of market access
- See: Klaus Mager
Technology Companies
OpenAI
- Description: "The AOL of our day" - Mike Nelson
- Status: Completely overinflated stock price
- Strategy: Sam Altman using valuation to make deals
- Prediction: Deals "going to not look very good in a year or two"
- Context: AI Financial Bubble
- Mentioned by: Mike Nelson
- See: Mike Nelson, AI Financial Bubble
Cloudflare
- Connection: Mike Nelson was employee #130 before IPO
- Impact: "Good chunk" of his retirement portfolio still in Cloudflare stock
- Context: Tech investment bubble concerns
- Mentioned by: Mike Nelson
- See: Mike Nelson
NVIDIA
- Context: Unsustainable growth concerns
- Shorting: Michael Burry shorting NVIDIA
- Status: Part of AI chip bubble
- Mentioned by: Mike Nelson, Doug Breitbart
- See: AI Financial Bubble
Palantir
- CEO: Alex Karp
- Incident: Burry shorted Palantir heavily
- Impact: Stock price went down 12% after Karp's panicked interview
- Mentioned by: Mike Nelson, Doug Breitbart
IBM
- Context: Part of Mike Nelson's tech investment portfolio
- Mentioned by: Mike Nelson
Capgemini
- Description: French-headquartered global consultancy & tech services firm
- Location: Applied Innovation Exchange in San Francisco
- People: Andreas Sjöström (VP & SF AIE Lead)
- Project: Working with Gil Friend on net positive initiatives
- Training Program: Second year of training cohorts of 100 Hispanic-background managers/executives
- Focus: Sustainability and net positive practices
- Mentioned by: Gil Friend
- See: Gil Friend
Factory Eye
- Product: Droid - agentic AI coding assistant
- Feature: Web version (works on mobile)
- Promotion: "Big promotion" running
- Mentioned by: Pete Kaminski
- See: Pete Kaminski, Droid
Anthropic
- Product: Claude Code - agentic AI coding assistant
- Versions: Terminal and web
- Promotion: $250 credit for Claude Code Web (expires Nov 18, 2025)
- Mentioned by: Pete Kaminski
- See: Pete Kaminski, Claude Code
Agricultural Corporations
Monsanto
- Context: Working on automation and "climate-smart technology"
- Criticism: Hugely capital-intensive, excludes smaller farmers
- Mentioned by: Klaus Mager
- See: Regenerative Agriculture
Nestlé
- Context: Grouped with Monsanto as big ag company
- Same issues: Capital-intensive automation approach
- Mentioned by: Klaus Mager
Government & Policy
Virginia State Government
- Results: Democratic landslide in 2025 elections
- Governor: Abigail Spanberger
- Lieutenant Governor: Democratic
- Attorney General: Democratic
- Legislature: From 1-seat majority to 14-seat majority
- System: Term limits - one 4-year term for governor
- Impact: Focus on talent building and multiple choices
- Mentioned by: Mike Nelson
- See: Mike Nelson, Political Shifts 2025
Clinton Administration
- Connection: Mike Nelson joined January 1993
- Role: Worked with Al Gore
- Story: Security clearance drug testing incident
- Mentioned by: Mike Nelson
Standards & Internet Governance
IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force)
- Meeting: Week of the call
- Debates:
- New authentication system for digital transactions
- Tool to prevent website content scraping
- Dilemma: Balance between preventing abuse and allowing research
- Standards Discussed:
- draft-sbriz-identity-trust-system-04 (Identity Trust System)
- AI Preferences (aipref) working group
- Mentioned by: Mike Nelson
- Links: https://datatracker.ietf.org/
- See: Mike Nelson
Media & Information Services
Epsilon Theory
- Founder: Ben Hunt
- New Project: Panoptica.ai
- Description: Tracking narratives globally
- Technology: AIs scanning ~8,000 sites worldwide
- Output: Multi-colored graphs of conversation trends
- Topics Tracked: Bubbles, recession, interest rates, etc.
- Content: Articles, analysis, meta-view on "stories that power the world"
- Mentioned by: Gil Friend
- See: Gil Friend, Panoptica and Narrative Tracking
Panoptica.ai
- Creators: Ben Hunt and Rusty Gwynn
- Function: Global narrative and trend tracking
- Scale: Scanning 8,000 sites regularly
- Description: "Fascinating meta-view on the stories that power the world"
- Content: Wealth of articles and analysis
- Assessment: "Much of it very OGM-y"
- Mentioned by: Gil Friend
- See: Gil Friend
Second Foundation Partners
- Founder: Ben Hunt
- Type: Asset management company
- Strategy: Confessed longtime short
- History: Shorted real estate bubble in 2008
- Question: "Can somebody be a short for a long time? Maybe so."
- Mentioned by: Gil Friend
- See: Gil Friend
Think Tanks & Research
Carnegie Endowment
- Connection: Mike Nelson works there
- Resources: Library with Wall Street Journal
- Recent Events:
- Information ecology session
- Book launch by colleague
- Session on the radical right
- New World Order discussion
- Calendar: https://carnegieendowment.org/events?lang=en
- Mentioned by: Mike Nelson
- See: Mike Nelson
Noetic Sciences
- Description: "Woo-woo noetic science territory"
- Topic: Non-Local Consciousness
- Jerry's Evolution: "Beginning to respect a lot more"
- Mentioned by: Jerry Michalski
- See: Jerry Michalski, Non-Local Consciousness
AI Platforms
ChatGPT
- Issue: Built-in bias discovered by Alex Kladitis
- Behavior: Couldn't provide neutral Chinese news summaries
- Always Added: Commentary on why information might be wrong
- Bias: "Inbuilt into the training data"
- Mentioned by: Alex Kladitis
- See: Alex Kladitis, AI Bias and Perspectives
DeepSeek
- Origin: Chinese AI
- Western Criticism: "Biased towards pro-China stuff"
- Behavior: Censored topics like Tiananmen Square
- Assessment: "Not behaving by our standards"
- Context: Comparison showing Western AIs also have bias
- Mentioned by: Alex Kladitis
- See: Alex Kladitis, AI Bias and Perspectives
Delphi
- Usage: Gil Friend built custom bot on this platform
- Context: Automated transcript de-identification
- Mentioned by: Gil Friend
- See: Gil Friend
Museums & Cultural
Mr. Rogers Museum
- Location: Pittsburgh
- Visitor: April (Jerry's partner)
- Souvenir: "Kindness Zone" road sign
- Mentioned by: Jerry Michalski
- See: Jerry Michalski
Events
TEDx Mid-Atlantic
- Date: Saturday before call
- Speakers: Joe Trippi, Michael McFaul, DC rapper, others
- Impact: Contributed to Mike Nelson's overstimulation
- Website: https://tedxmidatlantic.com/2025-speakers/
- Mentioned by: Mike Nelson
- See: Mike Nelson
Publications
The Plex
- Type: Publication/newsletter
- Connection: Kevin Jones
- Status: Recent issue with two contributors Kevin requested
- Context: Limited information provided
- Mentioned by: Kevin Jones
- See: Kevin Jones
Wall Street Journal
- Access: Carnegie Endowment library
- Coverage: Daily AI bubble articles (3+ weeks)
- Notable: "The U.S. economy is now AI" article
- Owner: Murdoch (moral ambiguity noted by Mike)
- Mentioned by: Mike Nelson
- See: Mike Nelson
Other
Gates Foundation
- Project: Agricultural development strategy
- Critiques: Shared by Klaus Mager
- Links:
- https://usrtk.org/bill-gates/critiques-of-gates-foundation/
- https://docs.gatesfoundation.org/Documents/agricultural-development-strategy-overview.pdf
- Context: Regenerative Agriculture approaches
- Discussion: David Witzel asked Klaus about reviews
- See: Klaus Mager, David Witzel
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