July Week 2 - 2025

AI MUSIC RESET
Spotify’s Breakout AI Band, It Was Just a Matter of Time 🤦🏻

Remember those garage bands that hustled for years to get one song on the radio? Yeah, well, an AI outfit called The Velvet Sundown just leap-frogged the entire grind. Zero humans with guitars, zero sweaty rehearsals, every riff, lyric, and “band photo” was spun out by algorithms, yet they’ve racked up nearly a million Spotify streams in a month.

Here’s the playbook, in case you’re curious (or terrified). First, the creators opened Suno v4.5, an online music generator that coughs up full tracks in about 20 seconds. They fed it a ChatGPT-written style prompt—think “fast, catchy, emotionally-charged punk with teenage angst.” Suno cranked out two versions, they picked their favorite, and—boom—single #1. Hit Persona, save the vibe, and Suno will keep delivering songs that sound like the same band. Rinse, repeat, you’ve got an album.

Next came the visuals. ChatGPT’s image tool whipped up promo shots: three pop-punk bros in matching life jackets, Abbey-Road-style crosswalk poses—you name it. The tell-tale giveaway? Slightly wonky life-jacket straps and paddle shapes—AI still struggles with wardrobe continuity.

Distribution is even easier. For $25 a year on DistroKid, anyone can upload WAV files, slot in a made-up songwriter (“Arty Intelligence,” naturally), and let the aggregator blast the tunes to Spotify, Apple, and every obscure streaming service you’ve never heard of. Thanks to Spotify’s “similar artist” radio, the algorithm started recommending the tracks to real users—and listeners clicked without suspecting silicon was behind the mic.

Why should you care? Because this is the beginning of a flood. Cheap, decent-sounding “AI slop” could crowd playlists, siphon royalties, and blur the line between genuine artistry and digital pastiche. So keep an ear out for those too-perfect vocals and slightly generic hooks. The next viral band you love might not have a pulse at all.

ECONOMY RESET
From Austerity Promises to the Big Beautiful Bill, It’s the Trillion Dollar Party

Remember when Trump stormed into the White House talking up a financial crackdown? He and Elon Musk were pitching massive spending cuts, leaner budgets, and slapping tariffs on imports to funnel cash back into the U.S. economy. People from both parties were low key excited by this idea of some tough love austerity.

Reality however said, “Hold My Beer”. By mid term, whispers were spreading through GOP backrooms, “Those cuts are going to cost us the midterms”. Foreign governments hit back with tariffs of their own, and the markets started wobbling a little too much. This reality check was strong enough that the administration made an immediate u-turn and scrapped the whole austerity playbook, much to the chagrin of Elon Musk. Fast forward to present day, and they’re firing up the money printers!

Enter the “Big Beautiful Bill,” a gargantuan relief package unleashing $3.7 trillion into the economy. We’re talking corporate tax breaks, a fourfold boost to state and local deductions, no tax on tips or overtime, and a $1,000 starter fund for every kid born through 2028. This is a high stakes Hail Mary play by this administration, who’s banking that AI and crypto innovation will help us climb out of this mountain of debt. They’re saying “We can grow out of this ordeal!”

Is it possible? Sure anything is possible, but we’ve all seen this movie before. Dem & Republicans make a big to do, and get into office, to basically do the same thing the prior administration did, print and add to the deficit. This Bill alone tacks nearly $3 trillion onto the national debt, and some are warning this last ditch effort, could push us to the edged of the debt cliff.

What is for sure though, is the next 2 years are going to be a PARTY for crypto, stocks and real estate.

So will this Big Beautiful Bill spark the next economic boom? or just delay the inevitable reckoning? Your guess is as good as mine, but for now, the party’s back on baby and we just ordered another round! 🤷🏻‍♂️🥃

TECH RESET
Flipping the Switch on Tomorrow’s Computers

We all learned that computers talk in tiny charges, little packets of electricity zipping around silicon highways? Turns out that’s only half the story. Electrons also have spin a built in quantum compass that can point “up” or “down.” And using this spin instead of a charge could be exactly what our overheating laptops and AI’s appetite for compute need.

Here’s the quick tour. Traditional chips shove charges through ever shrinking transistors. Great for speed, lousy for energy, more traffic means more heat (why your laptop sometimes doubles as a space heater). Spintronics flips that logic. Instead of moving electrons, it nudges their spins, which mostly stay put. Same 1s and 0s, but far less energy and virtually no friction.

The workhorse device is the Magnetic Tunnel Junction (MTJ). Picture two ultra thin magnetic layers with an atomic scale wall between them. If both layers’ spins line up, current tunnels through, call it a “0.” Opposite spins block the path “1.”

Now let’s layer on the cool part, those MTJs can compute while they store. Pack them into a grid and you get in memory multiply accumulate operations, the backbone of every AI model, without shuttling data back and forth. Suddenly chips start looking more like brains, where each neuron is both a calculator and a filing cabinet.

Scaling actually helps here. As we squeeze down below 2 nm, classical transistors fight quantum tunneling, while MTJs use tunneling as the feature, not the bug. Early spintronic memory already ships in hard drives and industrial IoT gear, and researchers are eyeing probabilistic and even quantum dot variants for next gen AI and sensing.

Ok some caveats here…… Manufacturing atomic thin layers uniformly, keeping them reliable for billions of cycles, and controlling spins (maybe with lasers!) at room temp all tough puzzles. But companies like Everspin, Micron, and a crop of startups are chasing answers.

Bottom line, if the last 50 years belonged to charge, the next 50 might belong to spin. So keep your eye on it, things are about to get magnetic. 💻🧲

DISCLAIMER:
This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions or investments. Please be careful and do your own research.