She decided to rent instead of buying a home and invested the money she would’ve spent on a house into the stock market instead. Her portfolio is now approaching $1 million

What happens when you post a real Monet and say it’s AI? The coolest art social experiment I’ve seen in a while. Thank you @SHL0MS

I gave Claude access to 1,647 emails I sent to myself between 2010 and 2025... 15 years of private thoughts that I never went back to look at until this week. It's wild looking back at these now... from my desk on Wall Street to 2am existential spirals. ...from “I’m wasting my life at this desk”... to starting a business... to moving to Europe... to still dreaming about ski patrol in a little mountain town when I'm 50. Life and dreams can be a mess. I suppose that is the entire point. I just published a long-form detailed piece in @TheJunteau.

If you’ve followed me over these past five years, then you’ve followed a philosophical journey… one of introspection and social observation… dissecting everything from why we work, to how to live well, to the nature of reality itself. You’ve read eight interviews with young ambitious men who left their traditional careers to pursue self-employment or to buy a business… interviews that were as much a challenge to my own philosophical journey as they were portraits of theirs. You’ve read direct challenges to the most sophisticated motivating philosophies on earth… from what drives Elon Musk to build rockets into space, to the unique kid who came from nothing trying to build a career on Wall Street or in tech, to the Puritan coding that still governs how most Americans think about work and worth and time. What follows is a new @TheJunteau essay… one that corrals and synthesizes roughly 60 philosophical essays, interviews, and frameworks I’ve developed over the years. For longtime readers, it should serve as a summarizing compendium… a single thread pulled through everything. For newer readers who’ve joined recently, it’s a way to catch up… and perhaps a doorway into the deeper archive.

Quite a different post than you’re used to seeing from me… For 20 years, I’ve been researching the world of early American prizefighting… the fighters, the saloons, the promoters, and the mostly Irish immigrant communities that built the sport from nothing. That research has grown into a multi-volume project centered on my great-great-grandfather Paddy McGuigan, the lightweight boxing champion of New York and New Jersey in the late 1800s. Along the way, a bigger question emerged that nobody has answered in a single narrative… which was why did American sporting culture emerge when it did, where it did, in the form it did? Today’s piece in @TheJunteau lays out the answer for the first time — an argument that traces an arc from ancient Egypt to the saloons of post-Civil War New Jersey, through the Puritan founding that buried the fighting and spectacle instincts for two and a half centuries, the immigrant waves that cracked the suppression, and the Civil War that shattered it completely. The first book is called The Resurrection of Sport and Spectacle in America. Will look to publish it this year — in honor of the 250th Anniversary.

Aegean Sea

This may sound obnoxious but I find it kinda weird if you’re not trying to vibecode something. Not because you need to use AI (at all) but rather how does everyone not have an accumulated list of things they wanted to make but didn’t have the ability to get it built before?

Awesome interview Q&A just dropped in @TheJunteau with @BaDaily12. Inspiring story of starting as an entrepreneur, then jumping into Big Consulting, then back to entrepreneurship… to pursue a fulfilling life and career balancing family and personal ambition. Great read heading into the most thankful time of year.

New weekend read out moments ago.

Great one this morning

This great interview piece is now free to read.

New feature interview just dropped. We sat down with the (unofficial) American Ambassador to London... J.P. Teti aka founder and CEO of the multi-unit American restaurant and dive bar chain @passyunkavenue. J.P. is a perfect subject for our interview series because, like our other interviewees, he quit his long-time corporate job in his 30s to build something of his own. He embodies almost perfectly what The Junteau itself champions — the American “pursuit of happiness” ethos, entrepreneurship and independence, and the ongoing work of balancing family, health, and commercial ambition. We hope you enjoy.

Epic interview coming out tomorrow in @TheJunteau. It’s a long one. Big chunk will be behind the paywall.

Today in @TheJunteau , we unpack what the name "Junteau" actually means -- both the word itself and the inspiration behind it. If you’re a fan of early American history, the tradition of social clubs, or globetrotting statesmen who were also connoisseurs of the epicurean arts… then you’ll probably enjoy this one.

Interview is out. It was a pleasure and I'm honored @blueprintsmb22 took time for some Q&A. Many in SMB/ETA/X circles know the account, fewer know the man behind it, even fewer know his full story. Born in Seoul and having spent his first few years in an orphanage, he was adopted by a loving family in Kansas City and went on to build a successful American life. But the path was not without struggles for meaning and purpose, especially once he built a family of his own. Enjoy the full interview in @TheJunteau where he shares his early beginnings, rise to the Ivy League, years in investment banking and then the hedge fund world, and ultimately his dive headfirst into the dirty, gritty, chaotic world of buying and running a small manufacturing business.

Great interview coming out in 2 hours in The Junteau. Q&A with a well-known SMB account here on X. Tons of perspective for those thinking about the ETA or alternative career/life paths.

Chapter 7 out this morning

Friday or weekend reading.

Chapter 6 of The Anti-Course is live: From cold sore cream to buffalo chicken dip… to a rug pull that nearly sent me into architecture school… to the most unlikely path back to New York.

Our latest Junteau Interview is out this morning. We talk with @hayes about getting punched in the head in San Francisco, quitting his W2 to start a company, and countless other topics. Read for free... link in the bio.