My most important send yet

Hi,

This one is deeply personal. It may be the most important piece I have ever published in these pages. At least so far and at least for me. It may not always seem abundantly related to Earth's climate systems, or energy production, distribution, and storage, or all the systems, technologies, practices, companies, investors, other organizations, and individuals that ladder up to and influence those things.

But it is. Because everything is.

It’s also the longest piece I’ve written (~6,000 words). I did not skimp on length or detail because these are all things I absolutely had to say. I trust you to navigate/skip/skim sections as you see fit. That said, again, it’s very important to me (in case that isn’t abundantly clear by now).

Please do read if you have time and appreciate the work I do (largely for free) here.

RULES FOR THEE, NOT FOR ME

On Friday last week, President Trump granted clemency to Trevor Milton, former CEO of the now-bankrupt Nikola Motor Company. The company started with hydrogen fuel-cell technology more than a decade ago and then added a battery-electric approach.

Milton was sentenced to four years in prison for securities and wire fraud in 2023. Of note, and perhaps still alive in some of your memories if you’ve been around the block a bit, was Milton and Nikola’s faked truck demo, where they rolled a vehicle down a slight downhill gradient, claiming they were demonstrating an operational prototype. No, there was no sophisticated engineering at work. That was just gravity… sighs.

This is the first of multiple instances where I could close this newsletter and deliver a clear takeaway pertinent to the subjects I typically write about. I doubt the dozens of climate, energy, and future-of-transportation technology-focused investors who collectively allocated some $700 million in funding to Nikola—nor the individuals and other public market investors who invested in its publicly listed stock—are particularly pleased.

Especially because Trump offered little to no substantive rationale, whether legal, ethical, or otherwise, for pardoning Milton. What, if anything, did our President say about his decision? The best I can find is this summary from Naomi Lachance for Rolling Stone:

Please tell me if you feel differently, but I do not see how or why Milton and his family’s (substantial) support of Trump’s campaign (Milton and his wife contributed more than $1.8 million to Trump’s reelection effort last October, as per Axios Salt Lake City) or even the general public’s perception thereof (I doubt many people knew, cared much, or paid attention at all) has much to do with Milton and Nikola’s embarrassing and fraudulent ‘fake-truck-rolling-down-hill’ demo.’ If anything, that all raises more questions.

It’s also odd Milton was a priority for Trump at all. Without making too many assumptions, the fact that Milton’s lawyer is the brother of new U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has the distinct whiff of a scent trail that any good bloodhound would pick up. With haste.

Unfortunately, Milton is far from the only white-collar crook Trump pardoned recently. Trump also commuted the sentence of Ozy Media's CEO, Carlos Watson, who was quite literally en route to prison (he was on the fucking plane) when pardoned. He was hours away from beginning a nigh-ten-year prison sentence in California. He and his company, Ozy Media, would have owed close to $100 million in asset forfeiture and restitution. Trump also pardoned other white-collar criminals, including crypto execs.

Watson will be less familiar to some of you, even as the (frankly comical) unraveling of his media company made national news. He and his company’s story may be familiar to some of you who watch the evolution of the general media industry more closely. Famously, indubitably at the behest of Watson (more on that later), Ozy’s COO used a voice changer to impersonate a YouTube employee during what was supposed to be a customer reference call between Goldman Sachs and YouTube (sans any representative of Ozy present). Goldman was interested in getting unbiased details on and insights into the performance of one of Ozy Media’s “shows” (if one could call it that, as it had no real audience. It certainly had a smaller ‘real’ audience than this newsletter does).

The call would have been part of normal operating proceedings as one of the world’s most prominent investment banks—where both Watson and Ozy’s COO used to work—conducted due diligence on a Series B funding round Ozy was raising. Goldman almost invested $40 million in the round. The saving grace for $GS? Ozy blew up in 2021, as its house of cards crumbled before it could close on more funding.

This was catalyzed in large part, to his credit, by reporting from Ben Smith, who published a damning article in the New York Times first before writing about it more elsewhere. Ozy’s COO eventually admitted, in court, to his crime and named Watson as a party to, if not the predominant ‘mastermind’ behind, the entirety of the scheme (as well as a literally physically present body in the room where it all went down). 

Longer story short (for now), Watson—as CEO of the company and undeniably a party privy to the vast majority, if not all, wrongdoing—was summarily found guilty of many charges (conspiracy to commit securities fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft), sentenced to 116 months in prison, and left on the hook for nine figs.

Now, per Trump’s pardon, he may well do no time, pay no fees, let alone do the deep, deep penance in prison that he should.

Again, I could close the newsletter here with a clear takeaway for startup founders and company CEOs and executives, whether of climate and energy tech companies or not.

DO NOT BEHAVE THIS WAY. Even if you think or know you are sufficiently close to Trump’s cohort to bribe your way out of a pinch. Even setting aside the outright fraud and massively significant legal missteps and their ramifications, there is no scenario where one should ever ponder the behaviors now revived in my and many others’ memories. I wish I didn’t have to elaborate on this. But apparently, our President thinks it’s all good.

It’s the judiciary, silly. Not the court of my opinion.

Mind you, none of this so far is opinion. We’re not talking about the court of public opinion or the court of my opinion. We’re talking about the judiciary system of the United States. All the criminals pardoned by Trump recently were found guilty as part of a “speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury,” as guaranteed to them by the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. There was little to no kerfuffle in the court proceedings. In Watson’s case, the jury found him unanimously guilty in less than a day of deliberation. That should matter for something in this country.

Again, at minimum, in pardoning these criminals, one would expect the President of the United States to offer some semblance of an explanation for what is otherwise a massive incursion of the executive branch into the domain of the judiciary. We have covered what little he said re: Milton. In Watson’s case? Trump actually said nothing! I have looked extensively and asked sophisticated LLMs to put a lot of time and electrons into searching for any statement of Trump’s. No dice!

All of this alone is alarming. It should be so for anyone, including, if not especially, for anyone who considers themselves a ‘Conservative.’ Conservatives, who I harbor no baseline judgment against, as well as many of Trump’s ardent supporters (again, who I am not casting any judgment against), certainly like to invoke the Constitution and its amendments. Especially the second amendment, namely the right to bear arms. Many of them also like to emphasize the importance, as Trump also often does, of platitudes, like the utmost importance of “the rule of law.”

Perhaps those folks agree with me here. Perhaps they are coming around. If not, we are not speaking the same language. Perhaps, to them, I am speaking Swahili.

But this, like injustice itself (coming in two sections), is nothing new. Ben Hunt—an inimitable analyst of almost everything—often calls in a literary reference to the “widening gyre” (from Yeats) to break down complex social dynamics. He did so as early as 2022 (if not earlier) to describe how some, if not most, of Americans today operate in entirely split, decidedly not parallel realities. Many people with whom we rub shoulders daily share little to none of our worldview. See the below from 2020, which still rings true:

This chasm between people’s worldview alone makes consensus-building, which is incredibly important for all things climate and energy tech investment and deployment, incredibly difficult. Building many more AP-1000 nuclear reactors or novel small modular reactors, or deploying much more of whatever your preferred energy and/or climate technology is, requires significant levels of consensus building between countless stakeholders across many settings and stages.

In addition to his debasement of foundational governance (next section), Trump has used and leveraged this insight—his grasp of the growing chasm, the widening gyre—to great success. In ouroboros-esque fashion, he feeds off of it and fuels it himself. He divides and distracts intentionally. I may not consider him ‘smart.’ But I do see him as wildly cunning and intuitively perfect at what he does best. Which, like Watson, is to iteratively find ways, regardless of the required action, to skirt consequences and proverbially “win.”

I say all of this as someone who counts among his close friends individuals who voted for Trump. I love some people who voted for Trump, including in this most recent election.

Still, I can and will proceed. I’m far from done, so buckle up!

Calling in the big boys

To continue, allow me to quote what one of the U.S.’s literal “founding fathers,” James Madison, wrote in his 51^st Federalist Paper (h/t to Cory Booker for invoking these quotes as well in his recent marathon [25-hour] Senate speech):

In my own words? The separation of the three branches of government—the executive branch, the judiciary, and the legislative, as enshrined by the Constitution—must have built-in bulwarks and protection mechanisms. It must also matter to people, akin to how Americans historically pride themselves on the separation of church and state, an integral part of this country’s very raison d'être.

Madison also goes to great lengths to reinforce that all members of government, as well as really all citizens of the U.S., must, well, reinforce the separation of the three government branches if and when needed. Repeatedly. Staunchly. In perpetuity.

In Federalist Paper No. 51, Madison continues:

Alas. Men—including myself, a million times over—are no angels. In the case of the pardoning of Milton, who defrauded climate and energy tech investors and wasted the time and expertise of employees, not to mention valuable material resources, media attention, and more, I imagine James Madison would roll in his grave were he to catch wind of the pardon. He probably would (and maybe is) rolling more vigorously than Milton’s fake truck infamously rolled down that hill.

Mind you, I also know I’m not alone in my concerns here. Polling from the Cato Institute in mid-2024 (Cato is by zero means a “liberal” or “leftist” institution) found:

I imagine the Cato Institute conducted its polling and framed its results with arguments pertaining to government overreach in mind. Ironically, I’m now using them to cement my argument that, yeah, Americans care about constitutional protections. Not a huge surprise.

Again, I could close this newsletter here. Next slide, though.

“Rules for thee, not for me”

“Rules for thee, not for me,” or more simply, injustice, is nothing new to America, of course. The blatant, in your face, corruption on display at the highest levels of our government, as well as in the private sector and elsewhere, was plainly obvious to Gary Indiana, who, in his novel “Rent Boy,” published a year before I was born (1994), wrote:

Once again, particularly in light of the gift of these quotes and words that have withstood the test of time, I could close this newsletter here with neat takeaways on sustainability, air pollution/emissions, environmental justice, and whatever else comes to mind for you.

But we proceed.

No, it is not that there hasn’t long been injustice in America. One only need cast even a sliver of a glance at the history of slavery, or treatment of Indigenous Americans, or [insert umpteen other instances of incomprehensible horror perpetrated by our government].

It is, rather, in the instances of Milton, Watson, and Trump’s pardoning of them, again, most striking to me that Trump has made no effort to offer any reasonable rationale for his overreaches of power. It’s not like overreach is new. Nixon did shady shit. But he tried to hide it. Meanwhile, Trump does not care. He parades around openly, cavorting with his cadre, willing any and all of us to stand up and say something. Do something.

I’m no white knight. But, hell, here I am. Saying something.

I’m under no illusion it's much. But considering I wrote less than two months ago that I “will not try to cover every iterative U.S. federal policy update that may or may not impact the U.S. and world’s climate and energy efforts…,” the extent to which I am now writing about the actions of our President is a considerable shift. Which I will always reserve the right to do, as that’s part of living a responsible, responsive, conscientious life.

Further, I will add that in writing this piece and publishing it, I am not only trying to do something in the vein of taking a firm stand. I am taking a risk. I do not really know quite how significant it is. But who knows? Without being overly melodramatic, could Watson sue me for defamation? Maybe (see coming sections). Could those he leveraged to secure pardon find a pretext to punish me (or punish me sans pretext)? Surely.

Do I care? Not really. I’ll die on this hill as needed. Again, not to be overly melodramatic or needlessly martyr myself, but that’s the inflection point I think we’re at here, whether with respect to defending our systems of governance in the U.S., advocating for efforts to mitigate the drivers of climate change and the destabilization of Earth’s climate system, or addressing the litany of other ‘symptoms of disease’ all around us, everywhere, every day.

So, yeah, this is all pretty nuts, folks! It’s almost comical. Except the joke is on us. All of us. And it’s not funny. Or fun. Save for those who have Trump’s ear and plump his pockets.

To put bluntly the implications for climate and energy tech, sustainability, or whatever other words you would choose to describe efforts to reduce the rate at which we—collectively as a species—destabilize Earth’s climate system, the separation of the three branches of government is foundational to the functioning of society. In this country, at least. Without said separation, I would not go so far as to say that “all hope is lost.” But at minimum, in the U.S., abnegating the separation of the three branches of government—again, as enshrined by the Constitution—would plunge us into yet another new paradigm. As if all the rapid technological change afoot (and climate change) weren’t enough. That would impact everything and everyone in the U.S. and many people worldwide.

The exact impacts would be uncertain. I won’t claim to know what all that might look like. But uncertainty, as I often say, is, in and of itself, risk. And risk, whether in economic theory or as intuitively felt in our bodies, communities, counties, and countries, comes at a cost. Financial markets certainly seem to be pricing in more risk, whether due to tariffs or any other of the myriad erratic decisions being made federally in the U.S. (see below for today’s market performance, as well as market performance since Trump’s election).

To reason this all forward a bit in the context of energy, could a fascist state or an anarchistic state still, say, continue to grow energy abundance, as the world has at large for centuries (though at considerable environmental cost)? Sure—totally possible. Which matters! For all kinds of reasons, but the below offers a solid heuristic to start.

Would that abundance be shared, or at the bare minimum, even extended in part to all people or even to most? Unlikely, in my opinion, given our current systems of governance—and many other countries’—aren’t particularly great at distributing existing abundance.

Are there entrepreneurs, investors, operators, politicians, and everyday citizens for whom—whether behind closed doors or not—the prospect of not equally or even modestly and moderately distributing some of the abundance technological innovation has and will continue to unlock isn’t an issue? Sure. They’re out there.

Do I consider them a necessary party to this conversation? Or any of mine? Not really.

At a less macro level, fraud should have consequences. This isn’t complicated. I often discuss capital allocation, whether from an investor, operator, or policymaker’s perspective. Unpunished fraud makes capital allocation (already a very challenging enterprise in its own right, regardless of whether success is measured by economic or environmental impact or both), way harder. If fraud metastasizes across sectors and societies, it becomes untenable altogether. The energy transitions we’re endeavoring regionally, nationally, and internationally are herculean endeavors as is. You don’t need me to tell you that having hucksters and conmen in the mix doesn’t help the cause.

You will note that I am now thousands of words into this before I introduce you to the main reason this story has activated and agitated me so dramatically. If you really knew me, you’d know that I have known Watson—one of the criminals Trump pardoned sans any modicum of rationale—for half my life. To paint a picture of how deep the ties run, I:

• Conducted my first-ever interview for a job with him as a freshman in high school when I applied for an internship at Ozy. (I wore shorts, and he gracefully advised me not to do so in the future, for which I’m man enough to give him credit still).

• Attended the funeral of his mother (an inimitably wonderful woman).

• Worked for his company, Ozy, across at least three stints for ~3+ years total

Mind you, Watson’s two closest confidantes at Ozy, colleagues—and at times even friends—of mine, both of whom I worked with closely and whom I liked as human beings, turned themselves in during the legal proceedings, admitting to their participation in various criminal acts (a much, much more honorable thing to do than Watson has done in decades). They also identified Watson as deeply involved in every bit of everything. As per the Daily Beast, here are some of the things these colleagues (and past friends) of mine courageously copped to (*trigger warning for suicidal ideation*):

You can take it from them; you can take it from me. Or take it from the judge and the jury. But I promise you. I have a deep, abiding confidence and faith—and years-long eyewitness experiences—that Carlos was the architect of everything that ever happened at Ozy Media. He micromanaged everything. Wanted to know everything. Would call or text at any hour of the day for updates or to ask questions. Would put his phone in a plastic bag to take calls while showering. You get the idea. Ozy’s COO said as much in court:

As you can perhaps intuit and imagine, what makes this personally harrowing for me is not just the grave political upheaval that Watson’s pardon portends. It is also that a man who I personally know, once trusted, viewed as a mentor, and now loathe, and who ruined the lives of people I care about, may well suffer zero consequence for any of his actions.

Where, may I ask, is the pardon for the parties that honorably admitted to crimes they were privy to, even if they were at the behest of Watson? I will wait patiently for them. I imagine I may wait for them forever. I’m a very patient man. But forever is a long time.

Now, on to you, Carlos

This is a man I know well. For instance? I have heard him grunt loudly while shitting (I was sitting on the pot myself in the stall to the right). That may seem like odd information to offer in a newsletter. But you can actually learn quite a lot about someone if you register the extent to which they vocally express their lived experience of their bowel movements.

I digress. Carlos Watson:

• Never seriously took any responsibility for his actions (nor is he likely to)

• Never exhibited any sign of real remorse, feeling, empathy, or sorrow, whatsoever

• Pulled the race card where it, for once (!!!), did not apply at all.

Let me say more about the last bullet. A lot of Watson’s ultimate defense rested on framing his persecution as racially motivated. When addressing the court, Watson referred to his sentencing as a “modern lynching” and likened himself to Nelson Mandela.

Frankly, the use of such metaphors makes Watson, a man who clearly had no problem cozying up to the Trump administration to obtain a get out of jail (probably not “free”) card, despite positioning himself as a lifelong champion of equality, black people, and victims of racial injustice, virulently disgusting. These statements are so dramatically beyond the pale that I cannot tell if, at some deep level, he, like Trump, is fucking with us.

What, may I ask, does white-collar wire fraud involving an investment bank (again, his ex-employer) have to do with race? What does running an organization with a work culture so unbearable that everyone who worked there has horror stories have to do with race? Watson has accomplished nothing in the time that I have known him (15 years) that could, by any stretch of the imagination, elevate him within a country mile of Mandela.

By pulling the race card, purely for personal gain, as opposed to a real pursuit of equity, justice, or restitution, Watson threw all victims of racial injustice, ever, under the bus.

Come at me for that one if you like, CW. It’s been a minute!

//

Tl;dr: he is a dangerous megalomaniac. I doubt you need more persuasion of that by now.

Now, let’s weave things back to sustainability. Sustainability is always a conversation about many things. One of which is equitable outcomes, whether equitable protection from air pollution, which kills millions of people annually, equitable expansion of electricity access to meet new load growth (which is growing faster than previously globally) or, in places like sub-Saharan Africa, to grant electricity access to those that have none at all…or, in places like India (or South Africa, re: Mandela), to expand access and capacity for air conditioning, which people need to survive extreme heat conditions. These are all equally sustainability and equity conversations, energy growth and demand conversations, climate and energy tech conversations, and comprehensive “climate” conversations. It’s all the same thing. That shouldn’t be hard to see.

But that's what makes Watson so reprehensible to me. In the rare case where a black person was not the subject of racial targeting or injustice—when in so many other cases historically they have been—he used that long, loaded history as the pretext for his defense. To save his own ass. I can think of few actions more heinous or less honorable. Few actions more diametrically opposed to promoting or even preserving equity.

Further, there's little difference between sustainability at the level of an individual person, a company with a terrible work culture (unsustainable), or the ongoing dysregulation of Earth's climate systems. They are all interwoven and intertwined. The good news is that righting one wrong can help arrest the process, even if only to a small degree. It can begin to stop or even reverse the trend. The bad news is that every unrighted wrong accelerates dysregulation, which always, of necessity, is not isolated to any individual, company, country, or the entire planet.

The U.S. federal register has over 1.08 million rules. Enforcement of those rules—even as many may, and in some cases, should change—matters. For, well? The functioning of everything. Absent that, again, I don’t know what we can accomplish as a society.

What this has cost me (and what I have gained)

Not that this is most important, but I do need to say it. As a journalist or writer in general, one is often taught to take oneself out of the story as much as possible. That's a great practice in many contexts. But, as I also wrote in a recent email, I think we live in times where there’s very ripe and fertile ground to reevaluate many of the things that we've been taught and that we believe to be true, whether about the world, ourselves, or others.

So, here goes: Watson made my life hell while I worked there too. Thankfully (for me), it was not to the degree he did for others. But it was still pretty damn bad! In some sense, I’m still unwinding nasty, entrenched habits I built and that hardened within me while I worked there. They’re hard to unwind because they helped me survive. Hence, I can’t diminish or discount the damage Watson did to me and my life and to those who love me.

Thankfully, after leaving that job, I started doing what I do now. At least at some innate, intuitive level, I knew I wanted my life, work, and impact to look like the polar opposite of whatever the fuck I had extricated myself from. I was pretty adrift, lost at sea. But I knew for sure—even if only subconsciously—that I never wanted to be like that guy. I’m proud of some, if not much, of the progress I’ve made since. And I’ll keep going. Step by step.

More lessons for founders, investors, operators, and us all

If you’ve made it this far, and if nothing else, you know me a bit better now. And you know why I care about the things I write about. Explicitly, they’re about mitigating drivers of climate change and the destabilization of Earth’s climate systems. Implicitly, to this day, they’re also, at least under the surface, also about living with a daily orientation toward:

• Taking responsibility for one’s actions

• Trying to right wrongs, especially one’s own, though, given the opportunity, and without overstepping one’s boundaries, helping clean up others’ messes too

• Not simply trying to save one’s own skin or striving for personal gain all the time

In my heart, I believe all human beings are, at their cores, well-intentioned, good, and kind-hearted. Carlos Watson is that, was that. He got, and remains, deeply, deeply lost.

So, here’s actionable lesson #1: be very careful where you hitch your wagon

At his best, Carlos was fiercely passionate, endlessly devoted, and an absolute bull of a salesman and negotiator. It wasn’t easy, especially at my age of, say, 25 at the time, to discern that he was a narcissist, a sociopath, and a fraud. He had charm! He was very kind at times. He had an extraordinary memory and an extraordinary way of introducing people to one another. Every time he would introduce me to someone, he wouldn't just say, "Hey, this is Nick van Osdol. He does X, Y, and Z."

He would say, "Hey, this is Nick van Osdol. He is from this town. I've known him for this long. He is really talented at X, Y, and Z. He's got a really sharp mind for A, B, and C. I think you two would find it really interesting to talk about H, F, and G."

Yet, he was and is also an absolute snake. Ultimately, he cared and cares about no one but himself (and perhaps still, some of his family).

In the vein of Elizabeth Holmes and the other high-profile, venture-backed tech frauds of the world, he was also fantastic at selling, even when products behind the scenes were not what they seemed. He was fantastic at raising money, even when the business in question was foundering the entire time. These are attributes, of course, that, if amplified by anyone, whether you or someone you work for, can get you into hot water. Real fast.

All that’s to say, these people walk among us. Is it easy to discern who they are? No.

Carlos also could not, would not, nor will ever give up on his fantastical delusion that Ozy Media was, is, and will still somehow become a titan of the media industry. Make no mistake; it never was, is, nor will be. The company never had any product market fit. It was an awful business, through and through, not just culturally, but financially. Economically. The accounting department alone was an absolute shitshow. It was all a shitshow.

To be sure, there were many fantastic journalists who passed through. Who did amazing writing and reporting. I hope they’re all off elsewhere doing fantastic work. Most left quite quickly, to their credit. Which also tells you a lot of what you need to know about a company. And leads us to lesson #2.

Actionable lesson #2: you gotta know when to fold em’. And you gotta get the hell out sometimes. Whether you’re a CEO or an employee at any level. If you can sense, whether in a professional setting or elsewhere, that something’s off, trust your gut. Tune into the intuition. Not just intellectually. Tune into the sensation. How does it feel in your body?

Is it easy to get out of bad situations? No. Like an abusive relationship, I tried to quit Ozy probably 5 or 6 times before I did for good. Each time—because I was and always have been pretty damn good at whatever I put my mind to—they cajoled me into staying.

I happen to be able to handle a good amount more ‘pain’ and discomfort than most, which isn't something I pride myself on, per se. No, in fact, it gets me in trouble more often than not. Just because one can handle hard or horrible things doesn't mean one should. Am I built to withstand them? Yes. Am I searching for and ideally entering a softer era? Even more importantly, yes.

It is often much easier to mortgage challenges and problems for the future instead of addressing them head-on, just in the same way that it is easier to continue burning coal to produce energy (which people do need, even as that energy comes with significant long-term consequences, for human and planetary health alike) than it is to comprehensively overhaul something like India's electricity production, transmission and distribution, and storage systems. It’s easier to say, “Urgh, we’re not ready.” But in most cases, that doesn’t help. No, instead, it’s really one of the biggest drivers of why there are still so many problems in society, miraculous technological innovation notwithstanding.

So, sometimes, if not often, we gotta learn to bite the damn bullet. Promptly. As I wrote around in a short fiction piece published in Dirt, what should Carlos & Co have done? They should have thrown in the towel on Ozy after maybe, like, 2-3 years. The biz was shit. It was always shit. The main guys were just far too high on their own supply to see clearly.

In contrast, and in service of walking the walk, I take 100% responsibility for not leaving Ozy sooner myself. That’s on me. It’s on me that I was not sufficiently strong, courageous, and steadfast in standing up for myself, setting boundaries, and taking care of my own needs, even if that meant disappointing others. To take a step that I doubt Carlos ever will, I will take all that responsibility for not leaving sooner. For not quitting after, say, six months. The (not at all insignificant) harm that delay caused me and those who love me is on me. Full stop.

Which brings me to my next point!

Here’s actionable lesson #3: namely a few sage words of wisdom on all these threads:

There are so many more things I could say. But as it pertains to sustainability, to building and scaling startups, technologies, and policy frameworks, well?

All the things discussed today are interwoven into ever-widening, ever-narrowing, ever-overlapping, concentric circles. It's all one and the same, echoing inward and outward. Into infinity. Whether it’s sustainability at the level of your individual personhood (dare I say soul?), a small business, a large company, a massive corporation, a country, or the entire world, none of us will make truly sustainable progress until we—at whatever stakeholder level in question—learn to take full responsibility, right wrongs, and try to tackle problems head-on, as close as possible to when they become apparent to us.

Here’s a final take. To bring it on home. I am among the most privileged class of people on Earth. I am white, male, tall, heterosexual. I hold not one but two of the most valuable passports known to man. I have time to read 50+ books per year. I am well-resourced financially, am in good health, and have a veritable wellspring of loving friends and family.

I thank God for that every day.

And yet? Less than three months into his second term, Trump found a way to make me angrier at a deeper, personal level than I have been in a long time. He personally impacted me seriously and directly, despite how protected the class of people to which I belong likely, in most cases (check yourself here!), assumes itself to be.

My gravely unfortunate prediction? “It” will come for you, too. In time. If it hasn’t already.

It, of course, has already. For so many.

Hence? Prepare yourself. Protect yourself. Take care of yourself. Stand up as you can.

Find people, places, practices, principles, and precepts that resource you and offer refuge.

Last but not least! How could I forget?

Carlos, if you're reading this, the final thing I would say to you is that—while still loving you deeply, I’m sure—I'm inordinately confident your mother, whom I knew (as you know), is not proud of what you have wrought. Rather, I reckon she would encourage you to a) hang your head in shame and b) spend the rest of your time on this Earth—which is likely not all that long, considering your age—atoning for the things that you've done, finding your way back to the light, and trying to do some good. You will have to relearn what that even looks like, let alone how to begin to build your way back towards it.

For my part, while I would listen to your true, heartfelt, sincere contrition, were you to offer it, that would not suffice for me to want to have anything to do with you ever again.

Goodbye, and good luck.

To all my readers: thank you for reading and for lending me your attention. I welcome feedback. I do not require support, advice, or help.

We’ll see if the feds come knocking on my door within a fortnight.

Till next time, with lots of love,

— NVO