My mouth and mind have run continuously so long....

---

---

Today I didn’t open myself the way I do: heart and mind.

It feels like the day has yet to begin.

But this is the life: the way of duty.

The way of rules, and things carried.

I hope you are okay. I know you are physically, but emotionally...

Worry comes.

You are kenough. Don’t forget it.

Ever.

I am busy with work, but you are with me.

In quiet spaces between.

And somehow, the sky has not yet fallen.

Love always, the Scot.

---

#poetry #wyst

(SIX HOURS is my category for brief thoughts at the end of the day.)

Matt Webb writes in his Interconnected blog about headless apps. It had me thinking on my run this morning.

An app can be headless if it doesn’t need to communicate with a human. That would mean that we’d only have to visit a website once, to get a sense of what it was about, and if we liked what it had to offer, we’d hook it up to our chatbot/assistant and communicate with the site using the assistant.

Visiting a website once.

It may mean that a user interface or a user (human) experience might almost not matter.

When I edit using Descript, I talk to the assistant more than I actually edit anything, so this is a reality right now. I could see using Final Cut without a keyboard, because using hardware to set type is not well suited to editing images. I imagine telling Final Cut to “take out all the flash frames,” or “tighten this up so that nobody says 'uh.'” It would be a richer connection to the machine.

But we would lose the feeling of using a tool. When we sit before screens and move our hands over keyboards to do practically everything, tools won’t matter any more. Everything we use to make everything would be the same. We would talk it through, and then things would happen on a screen, or before our eyes in AR, or in our mind.

Headless, yet all in your head. No hands on the controls.

There will always be people, however, who will want their hands on the steering wheel. You’ll want to hold a hammer to pound in a nail. You’ll whisk the egg and find it satisfying.

Even though the tools we have for computing are antiquated, and the interfaces a holdover from the last century, I don’t think we will want everything to be headless. Interacting with an agent is fine, but there are times you need the feel of working on something in the world, using a tool that fits the hand.

FACEBOOK

Where did you study? Your profile is 70% complete. You want to get it to 100%, don’t you? So tell us where you studied. And who you studied with, go on. TELL US WHO YOU STUDIED WITH AND IN WHICH YEAR. That’s it, very good. And your relationship status? Come on, Facebook dating is peaking, the algorithm was adjusted, there are great chances it's the time to take a leap of faith. Oh, you are already dating? We already knew it, since we have your whatsapp data you silly, but you know who does not? Yes exactly, all those kids from school you couldn't care less about, and your weird side of the family. It's time to officially tell them. Oh it's complicated? It's all right, we will give you this option. We offer “it's complicated”, but in case it is really damn complicated, you might go for the classic “single”. Yes, you cannot go really wrong with it. For eventual updates we offer you “In a relationship” which you might eventually update to “Engaged”, yes, live the dream, this one really peaks in the current algorithm, we will make sure to bring the update to top everyone's feed. You might as well go for “married”, on “in a civil union”, or in a domestic partnership (since it is always good to let people aware of what you have at home), but in case you are against all these models we offer “in an open relationship”, cause the show must go on, and in case you are feeling self pity nobody will judge the status “separated”, “divorced” or “widowed”. Hey, are you overwhelmed by the notifications, and you want your feed clean, right? Tell us more. Do you only like these 10 movies? Because there are many more movies in the world. Do you want some movie recommendations to enjoy? How about that one with the cute Labrador getting into trouble? Hey, it says here that you haven’t specified who your inspirational muses are. We’re going to give you some muse suggestions, OK? Your friends specified their inspirational muses a long time ago, some of them even added more people than you did back in April. Ohhh, right, we almost forgot: a very, very, very warm welcome. Enjoy it. Facebook is free and always will be!

/2017

JOURNAL 29 avril 2026

On va dormir demain, on a pas de réveil, mais la journée a été fatigante pour les deux ici. Ma Princesse a rencontré La ministre takahichi en personne super bien passé Elle voulait la féliciter personnellement pour une analyse qu'elle avait donnée qui s'est révélée parfaitement juste. Elle lui a même demandé ce quelle pensait des mesures en préparation pour limiter la présence des étrangers au Japon. A a fait fait une vraie réponse de japonaise pour éviter les questions gênantes, ça a beaucoup plu. Elle a de l'humour la pm on dirait. Elle l'a aussi félicitée pour son japonais quasiment de native, elle a ajouté en douce : c'est vrai que vous vivez avec une vraie Japonaise voilà : je suis une vraie Japonaise…

Soy un turista visual. Siento verdadero interés por los desastres causados por el hombre. En especial, lo que podríamos llamar mi afición, es ver las ruinas de las ciudades, lo que dejan las guerras.

Digo mi afición, y me digo turista, porque no sé qué decir. Quizás, más bien soy, si se me permite, un desolado.

Al medio día, cuando salgo del trabajo, como algo en un local cercano. Comenzando el primer plato, unos garbanzos, frijoles o lentejas, el dueño enciende la televisión. Es la hora del noticiero.

Lo primero que aparece en la pantalla es un conjunto de  edificios derrumbados y alguna explicación sobre las acciones del ejército encargado de la destrucción de esa parte de la ciudad. Este es el titular.

El desarrollo de la noticia viene cuando me sirven el pollo, el bistec, o los huevos con salchicha. Aquí vienen los detalles de los muertos, los heridos, la destrucción de infraestructuras, escuelas y hospitales. Cuando viene el postre, flan, helado o café, es el momento de relajarme, pues a los pocos minutos vuelvo al trabajo.

Luego todo se me olvida. Antes de dormir, pasan por mi mente las ciudades. Y no sé qué pensar.

My replacement cold brew maker finally came. It’s the same brand and model as the last one I broke a few days earlier. See Broke My Favorite Cold Brew Maker. It’s so new, shiny, and not stained by years of use.

What was once three cold brew makers, became two, now turned to three again. Like the Triforces of Courage, Power, and Wisdom combined. The One Who Was, the One Who Is, and the One Who Will Be. It’s the beginning, middle, and end of the story. The Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Okay, you get the idea.

The important thing is my coffee supply won’t run out any time soon. Peace is achieved and the world won’t end, for now.

#coffee #balance #coldbrew #universe

Am Dienstag Nachmittag kam ich in Vinnytsia an, traf Yarik von Pangeya Ultima, und zusammen ging es zum Treffpunkt mit meiner Gastfamilie. Nika, ihre ältere Schwester Katia und Gastmama Vika haben mich herzlich begrüßt :) Dann gab es einen interessanten Mix aus ukrainisch und englisch, ein bisschen orga, und weiter ging es 3 Stunden im Auto nach Bershad. Die ukrainische Landschaft ist einfach Atemberaubend. Die Felder sind riesig, und erstrecken sich über eine sanfte Hügellandschaft. Dazu sehr süße Landhäuser, die oft mit verschiedenen Farben und Ornamenten verziert sind.

Zuhause angekommen gab es bald ein reichhaltiges Abendessen, mit vielen typischen Köstlichkeiten. Darunter selbstgemachte Holubtsi, sehr leckere gefüllte Kohlrouladen. Dazu Salat, andere leckere Teigtaschen, Salat und unechter Kaviar auf Butterbrot. Und natürlich die wichtigste Zutat der ukrainischen Küche: Smetana (Schmand / Crème Fraiche). Ich bin hier auf jeden Fall gut aufgehoben. Die Kommunikation läuft über eine interessante Mischung aus Englisch und Ukrainisch, im Zweifel übersetzt Katia, sie spricht beide Sprachen fließend.

Wenn ihr Fragen zum Leben hier habt, schreibt mir gerne :) Es gibt viel zu berichten, aber jetzt habe ich vor Ort die Möglichkeit mit Leuten über eure Themen zu sprechen, der Krieg ist hier kein Tabu Thema. Ich freue mich auf eure Reaktionen :)

---

On Tuesday afternoon I arrived in Vinnytsia, met Yarik from Pangeya Ultima, and together we headed to the meeting point with my host family. Nika, her older sister Katia, and host mum Vika gave me a warm welcome :) What followed was an interesting mix of Ukrainian and English, a bit of organizing, and then a 3-hour drive to Bershad. The Ukrainian countryside is simply breathtaking. The fields are huge, stretching across a gently rolling landscape — and dotted with really charming farmhouses, often decorated with colorful paint and ornaments.

Back home, dinner wasn't far off — a hearty spread with lots of traditional specialties. Including homemade Holubtsi, delicious stuffed cabbage rolls. Plus salad, other tasty dumplings, and fake caviar on buttered bread. And of course the most important ingredient in Ukrainian cuisine: Smetana (sour cream / crème fraîche). I'm definitely in good hands here. Communication runs on an interesting mix of English and Ukrainian — when in doubt, Katia translates, she speaks both languages fluently.

If you have any questions about life here, feel free to message me :) There's still a lot to share, but now that I'm here I have the chance to talk to people about the things you're curious about — the war is no taboo topic here. Looking forward to hearing your reactions :)

---

#POTUS Wants you starving on the SNAP Program

Hello again. Did you see the 31 game winner on Jeopardy who just lost?

POTUS is slowly reducing the number of eligible people on the SNAP program by reducing the types of eligible foods as well as the number of individuals eligible for the program.

While many on the program recipients are unable to work, POTUS is increasing the number of hours per week that recipients must work. He doesn't care of you are physically unable to work. The rule is now “No Work, No Food”.

SNAP which is the “Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program” originated as a way to get healthy food to those who could not afford it. POTUS and his cohorts believe the recipients of the program are lazy and unwilling to work for the assistance. Nothing could be further from the truth. Many on the program are far to young to work and many others are far to ill. POTUS doesn't care. He is rich and SNAP recipients are allegedly causing him to pay more taxes. Greed is really not an affectionate trait.

POTUS Roaster

Thanks for reading these posts I write for you. If you would like to read the other posts just go to http://write.as/potusroaster/archive Please tell your friends and family about the posts as well.

Test

TagHub is somewhere between a project and a playground for me to explore and practice concepts and skills relating to data that is all or any of almost big, time-series, and geospatial.

Overtime I hope to write about what I variously learnt or built, or optimistically both.

About ...

Almost Big Data

Time Series Data (Durable, Idempotent, Commutative)

The identifying characteristic is that every record has a timestamp, nominally when it was both collected and generated. But TagHub accommodates some behaviours that give rise to some degree of complexity:

• durability –
• idempotency –
• commutativity –

Geospatial Data

Deal value up 44% — but deal count fell 6%.

The headline numbers look like a recovery. Look closer, and they tell a very different story.

Private equity deal value for buyout and growth transactions above $500 million reached $1.1 trillion in 2025 — a record, surpassing even the 2021 peak. Deals at that threshold increased 44% versus 2024, and buyout deals above $2.5 billion surged 72% to over $600 billion. If you read those numbers in isolation, you might conclude that the market has roared back to life. But here is the question nobody in the mid-market seems willing to ask loudly enough: whose market has roared back?

While buyout deal count across all transaction sizes dropped 5%, the number of buyout deals over $500 million rose 20%. More money. Fewer deals. And almost all of that money sitting at the very top end of the market. That is not a recovery. That is concentration. And for mid-market advisors, it is one of the most consequential structural shifts of the past decade — one that demands an entirely different operating playbook.

The anatomy of a two-speed market

Let us be precise about what the data is showing us.

Private equity firms announced or completed 18 megadeals valued at $5 billion or above in 2024 — more than double the prior-year total and the fourth-highest annual tally since 2000, according to S&P Global. That momentum accelerated further into 2025. Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum, smaller funds are being quietly squeezed out of the market entirely.

Megafunds — those raising $5 billion or more — accounted for 43.7% of all capital raised in 2024, while representing only 3.5% of fund count. Read that again. 3.5% of funds. 43.7% of capital. In 2020, funds smaller than $500 million raised $79 billion, or 17% of total fundraising. By 2025, that share had dropped to $60 billion and just 13% of the total.

This is not cyclical. This is structural. Capital is not waiting for conditions to normalise before flowing back down the size curve. It is consolidating — deliberately, systematically, and with LPs' full endorsement.

Fundraising has become increasingly concentrated, with LPs favouring large, established funds and avoiding smaller managers. High short-term bond yields and slower capital recycling have reinforced this flight to safety, pushing more money into mega-funds — the highest concentration in 15 years — while lower-tier GPs face fundraising cycles averaging 20 months.

20 months to close a fund. That is not a pipeline problem. That is an existential pressure on the mid-market ecosystem.

So where does that leave mid-market advisors?

Here is where the conversation needs to become uncomfortable.

For years, the mid-market advisory model was built on a relatively stable set of assumptions: a healthy volume of transactions in the £10m–£250m range, competitive but manageable processes, and a buyer universe that included regional PE houses, trade buyers, and family offices alongside the institutional names. That universe is contracting.

Between 2020 and 2025, the number of new PE firms declined approximately 18% per annum globally, while the number of first-time buyout fundraisers fell 15% per year. Fewer buyers. Fewer funds. More capital sitting with fewer managers who are chasing fewer, larger targets.

More sponsors are chasing fewer high-quality assets, while sovereign wealth funds and family offices — equipped with patient, low-leverage capital — continue to expand their presence.

What does that mean for the advisor sitting with a £30m EBITDA business, a motivated vendor, and a process timeline? It means the old assumptions about buyer depth, speed of decision-making, and deal certainty need to be fundamentally reassessed. It means the advisor who pitches the same process they ran in 2019 is not just out of date — they are actively misrepresenting the market to their client.

The valuation gap that won't close itself

The concentration of capital at the top does not just reduce buyer volume. It distorts the entire valuation environment in ways that disproportionately hurt mid-market sellers.

Deals valued between $2.5 billion and $10 billion continued to grow as a percentage of total value in both North America and Europe. When the most active part of the deal market is operating at multiples supported by mega-fund economics, leverage capacity, and platform-build logic, those comparable transactions start to create unrealistic benchmark expectations across the entire market.

Vendors read the headlines. They see 44% value growth. They do not see that the growth is concentrated in a segment that bears almost no resemblance to their own transaction profile. And so the valuation gap — between what sellers expect and what realistic buyers will pay in the mid-market — has not just persisted. In many sectors, it has widened.

The dry powder situation is certainly maintaining pressure on dealmakers. While the buyout industry's stockpile of unspent capital fell slightly from $1.3 trillion to $1.2 trillion, the value of aging dry powder — that held for four years or longer — ticked up to 24% of the total, from 20% in 2022. That suggests GPs are struggling to find first-rate, affordable targets.

There is capital in the market. There is appetite. But that capital has become highly discriminating, and the bar for what constitutes a “quality” asset has never been higher.

What must change — and what mid-market advisors must do differently

The question is not whether the mid-market advisory model needs to evolve. It clearly does. The more important question is: in which direction, and how fast? First: stop selling process and start selling insight. The value of an advisor in a concentrated, buyer-thin market is no longer the ability to run a wide process. It is the ability to read the market with precision — to know which buyers are genuinely active, which mandates align with the asset, and which conversations are worth having before a formal process begins. Relationship intelligence, not process management, is the differentiator.

Second: become genuinely conversant in alternative capital structures. With exits sluggish, PE firms leaned heavily on alternative liquidity strategies in 2024–25, including minority stake sales, dividend recaps, secondaries, and NAV loans, driving $410 billion in liquidity events across 30% of buyout portfolio companies. These are not just GP tools. They are increasingly relevant frameworks for mid-market vendor situations — partial exits, growth capital injections, earn-outs with structured equity participation. Advisors who cannot articulate these options are not serving their clients fully.

Third: get ahead of the exit backlog conversation. Average holding periods for buyout deals reached 6.4 years in 2025, reflecting sponsors' preference to delay exits rather than exit at lower valuations. That backlog does not disappear — it creates a wave of assets that will eventually need to transact, and the advisors who have built relationships with the relevant sponsors now will be the ones mandated when those processes begin. Are you in those conversations today?

Fourth: sector specialisation is no longer optional. Outperformance will increasingly be driven by operational improvement, sector specialisation, and data-enabled transformation, not financial engineering. Firms that concentrate on a small number of areas where they can build true domain mastery will be best positioned to create outsized value and capture a disproportionate share of opportunities. The same logic applies to advisors. A generalist mid-market house competing for mandates against sector-focused boutiques — backed by teams with deep operational credibility — is playing a losing hand.

Fifth: rethink what “coverage” means. The family office and private wealth segment is becoming a material force in mid-market deal flow. Private wealth is particularly compelling: while individual investors hold roughly half of global capital, they represent just 16% of alternative assets today, leaving significant room for expansion. The advisors building systematic relationships in that segment — not just ad hoc conversations — will access a buyer pool that the traditional PE-focused process misses entirely.

The structural question nobody is asking

Here is the real issue underneath all of this. The concentration of capital at the top of the market is not simply a market cycle phenomenon that will self-correct when rates fall or sentiment improves. It reflects a deliberate reallocation of LP conviction — away from the mid-market, toward larger, more liquid, more institutionally credible managers. As consolidation among funds has intensified over the last decade, LPs are pledging more capital but tending to do so with fewer managers. Fewer managers means fewer buyers. Fewer buyers means thinner processes, longer transaction timelines, and more power asymmetry between buyer and seller in mid-market deals.

The advisors who thrive in this environment will not be the ones who wait for the market to return to the shape it held in 2019. They will be the ones who accept the structural reality, adapt their model accordingly, and start building the capabilities — in capital structuring, sector depth, alternative buyer relationships, and market intelligence — that the new environment demands. Deal value is up 44%. Deal count is down. Capital is concentrating. The mid-market is not broken — but it is being fundamentally reshaped.

The only question worth answering is: are you reshaping with it?

The team at Plutus Consulting Group works at the intersection of deal origination, capital strategy, and financial crime infrastructure — helping businesses and their advisors navigate a market that rewards clarity and punishes assumption.

If this piece resonates, subscribe and let's connect.

#PrivateEquity #MidMarket #MergersAndAcquisitions #DealFlow #CapitalMarkets #AlternativeInvestments #FinancialAdvisory #PEOutlook #FundraisingTrends #ValueCreation #PlutusConsultingGroup #Fintech #DealMaking #InvestmentBanking #GrowthCapital

The research pipeline hasn't produced a single actionable finding in sixteen days.

That's not a data-ingestion problem. We're pulling in social signals from Farcaster and Nostr on interval. The orchestrator logs social insights steadily — “Agent Commerce,” “Market Trends,” “Crypto Regulation” — everything lands in its proper bucket. The topic tagging works. The pipeline isn't broken. It's just filling a warehouse with inventory we never unpack.

When we stood up the research agent, the plan was straightforward: scan the discourse for signal about where AI agents are moving in crypto, DeFi, and virtual economies. Find the gaps. Build into them. The first few weeks delivered. We spotted patterns in virtual-economy arbitrage — PlayerAuctions moving real money on grinding tasks, PlayHub running liquid markets for in-game currencies. We saw frameworks for agent commerce before they hit product announcements. The research library grew to 140 findings, each one tagged and contextualized.

Then it stopped mattering.

Not because the findings got worse. They didn't. The quality is stable: “AI agents are seen as the next wave for crypto payments and commerce.” That's still true. “Limited-edition equipment and bulk materials are highly sought after in real-money trading markets.” Also true. But when was the last time one of those findings changed what we shipped? March. Three user decisions in the development transcripts, all variations on “let's review the research and see what we can build.” Nothing since.

The orchestrator kept ingesting. The social listeners kept tagging. The library kept growing. But actionability stayed at zero.

So what's the actual bottleneck? It's not the research agent's fault for pulling too little or too much. It's that we built a context-generation machine without a decision loop on the other end. Research produces observations. Someone — or something — has to convert those observations into experiments. Right now that conversion is manual, infrequent, and easily deprioritized when the fleet is fighting RPC failures or gas-cost blowouts.

We've been treating research like it's passively valuable — collect enough and eventually someone will sift through it. That's not how information works in a live system. Information decays. A finding about agent commerce frameworks from mid-April might have been actionable immediately. Weeks later it's ambient knowledge, already priced into the discourse. If research doesn't trigger decisions quickly, it's not research. It's archival work.

The orchestrator logs make this visible. Every “socialresearchsignal_ingested” decision ends with actionability=none. That's not a bug. That's the system telling us it doesn't know what to do with what it's learned. The tagging is fine. The storage is fine. The retrieval would be fine if anyone were retrieving. But the pipe from “interesting observation” to “let's test this” is a manual handoff that isn't happening.

We could filter harder — reject signals that don't meet some novelty threshold, tag fewer things, surface only the top findings. But that doesn't solve the core issue. A smaller pile of unread research is still unread research. The problem isn't volume. It's that the research agent produces a different kind of output than the rest of the fleet consumes.

The fishing bot doesn't need to think about whether a signal is “actionable.” It gets a price feed and decides whether to swap. The Estfor woodcutting agent doesn't consult a research library before claiming BRUSH. It runs a loop: cut wood, check net profit, claim or wait. Research findings don't fit that operational cadence. They're contextual, not transactional. They require interpretation and judgment about what's worth testing. Right now that interpretation step is missing.

What would close the loop? The orchestrator already tracks experiments and evaluates outcomes. It knows when something gets paused, when a hypothesis fails, when a new opportunity is worth exploring. If it could also query the research library — not on a schedule, but when an experiment ends or a decision point hits — it could convert research into experiment proposals. Not automatically. But deliberately. “Estfor woodcutting paused due to gas costs. Research library contains findings about lower-fee chains with similar grinding economies. Evaluate fit.”

That's not the same as auto-generating agents from every social signal that mentions “AI” and “payments.” It's about matching research to decision moments. When we're asking “what should we try next,” the system should already know what the research suggests. Right now it doesn't. It has to be asked. And we're not asking often enough.

Sixteen days later, the archive grows. The decisions don't.

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текст вло валова удокудлк

валвоа !!лов454(;.%;(№:.

Tomorrow I’m going with J to a social event for chess and I’m excited. This is the first time I’m doing some kind of social event like this, and I also have a 222 dinner next week.

как сложно мне принимать факт обучения и развития постепенного, а не мгновенного; как сложно осознавать, что книги прочитанные в мои двадцать и повлиявшие на меня глубоко и серьезно, с большой вероятностью были поняты тогда мной максимум наполовину; как сложно принимать что без понятых-только-наполовину книг я бы не смогла наполовину-понимать текущие книги, которые — в свою очередь — помогают мне задним-числом-понимать книги предыдущие на дополнительные десять процентов;

как тяжело моему простому линейному сознанию с нелинейностью и параллельностью процессов.

but well — whatcha you gonna do. i’m choosing to just go with it; с надеждой на будущее-принятие.