A diary about money, machines and the mind.
By Julián Martin · 100 posts, one tile each · tap one · point at one
road (travel), mind (philosophy), world (history), machines (AI), money (investing)
64 posts are linked across fields
Start here
One piece from each field: three essays that reach into the others, and two to try.
The road
Everyone Wants a Cabin
Two years of “opting out” taught me the same lesson – you can’t remove yourself from the system. You can only choose your dependencies.
Linked with The Job of the Future (machines), The Race Condition (money) and 5 more
Machines
The Last Leash
We spent years fighting over who owns the AI. The real question is whether anyone human owns it at all – which flips feudalism into the good ending.
Linked with You Can’t Store Time (the mind), The AI Landlords (money) and 10 more
The world
Climate, Culture, and Calipers
Cold climates built rich civilizations through pressure, not genes. Singapore hacked it. Germany squandered it. Geography isn’t destiny. It’s a constraint.
Linked with Green Pastures (the road), Atoms vs Abstractions (money) and 4 more
Or try one
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The mind
Midwit Detector
Where you land on the bell-curve meme, in ten questions from investing to diet.
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Money
Money is Time
What anything costs, in hours of your life. Fair warning about the car.
Newest · Essay · 8 November 2026 · 1,449 words
Ninety-nine essays, one algorithm: everything you value is something else, stored. The crack: what can’t be stored is what everything else is priced in.
What I can’t stop thinking about
Every post in its field, and every link from one field into another.
The road 21 posts
Travel, home, and living out of a backpack.
Contigo Hasta el Fin del Mundo, Green Pastures, and In Praise of the Ruined Trip
The mind 31 posts
Philosophy, psychology, luck, and what a self is.
You Can’t Store Time, You Can Have Everything (which I reread whenever I catch myself trying to), and The Shape of Luck
The world 18 posts
History, geopolitics, food, and what countries do to each other.
Machines 16 posts
AI, work, and who owns what comes next.
Money 14 posts
Investing, inflation, and what money is for.
Money is Stored Time, Am I Early?, and If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?
Every post, by field
The road 21
- Dog-Sitting a Life Sep 2026
- In Praise of the Ruined Trip Sep 2026
- Everyone Wants a Cabin May 2026
- Green Pastures Apr 2026
- Contigo Hasta el Fin del Mundo Feb 2026
- Terra Incognita Oct 2025
- Home Is Where You Are Dec 2024
- Slow Life Oct 2024
- Morals2go Oct 2024
- Currency for the Soul Aug 2024
- Roam vs Home Aug 2024
- Ichi-go Ichi-e Aug 2024
- Make Time for Serendipity Jul 2024
- The Inner Odyssey Jul 2024
- Latitudes & Attitudes Jul 2024
- Veni, Vidi, On to the Nexti? Jul 2024
- The Antidote to FOMO Jun 2024
- Hot Canada™ Mar 2024
- Tropical Fruit & Gasoline Feb 2024
- Life Hack Apr 2023
- Location, Location, Compromise Apr 2023
The mind 31
- You Can’t Store Time Nov 2026
- The Content Cringeator Nov 2026
- Deadlines Nobody Assigned Oct 2026
- Who Represents You? Oct 2026
- The Wrong Alley Oct 2026
- Smart, and Still Broke Oct 2026
- The Thing Mugging You Sep 2026
- Why Summers Used to Last Longer Aug 2026
- Master of None, On Purpose Aug 2026
- The Whirlpool Jul 2026
- Fallacy Factory Jul 2026
- The Missing Link Jun 2026
- You Are Your Thoughts Jun 2026
- True, But Incomplete May 2026
- The Shape of Luck Apr 2026
- Observer’s Doom Apr 2026
- Got Thumos? Feb 2026
- Time Is A Feeling Feb 2026
- How ’Bout Zero Neuroticism? Dec 2025
- How To Get Things Off Your Chest Nov 2025
- You Can Have Everything Nov 2025
- Keep It Simple, Stupid Mar 2025
- Escaping Plato’s Cave Nov 2024
- The Game of Life Aug 2024
- “Don’t Mid-Curve It.” Apr 2024
- More Information ≠ More Informed Dec 2023
- Trust Your Gut May 2023
- Stop Lurking Apr 2023
- The Mosaic Mind Apr 2023
- The Art of Simplifying Apr 2023
- Welcome to Huliwood! Apr 2023
The world 18
- The Math Ain’t Mathing Sep 2026
- The Penny University Aug 2026
- Quid Pro Quo May 2026
- Climate, Culture, and Calipers Apr 2026
- The Ships Are Sailing Again Mar 2026
- Haters Gonna Hate, Potatoes Gonna Potate Mar 2026
- No Tomatoes in Italy Mar 2026
- From Buzzed to Wired Jan 2026
- The New World Order #2 Jan 2026
- The New World Order #1 Jan 2026
- Boomerlandia Jan 2026
- Strip Mall Neverland May 2025
- Pricing People Apr 2025
- Interesting Life Sep 2024
- The Great Divide Sep 2024
- The Death of Nuance Sep 2024
- Interesting Times Sep 2024
- Forget Esperanto May 2023
Machines 16
- Everybody Picks Seven Oct 2026
- Why Build at All? Oct 2026
- Huh. Aug 2026
- “I Just Call It Working” Jul 2026
- The Last Leash Jun 2026
- Who Owns the Hammer? Jun 2026
- Miracle Inflation May 2026
- Human Language Model May 2026
- The Manifesto Industrial Complex Feb 2026
- Meet Agent Sigmund Feb 2026
- Why I’m Interviewing for a Job I Don’t Want Dec 2025
- The State and the Self Dec 2025
- The Crisis of Credentials Nov 2025
- The Outsourced Mind Nov 2025
- The Job of the Future Dec 2024
- Echoes of the Future Apr 2023
Money 14
- Landlord or Bottleneck? Nov 2026
- Where the Water Goes Aug 2026
- When Your Name Becomes a Verb Jul 2026
- Atoms vs Abstractions Mar 2026
- The Race Condition Mar 2026
- If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich? Jan 2026
- The AI Landlords Dec 2025
- Am I Early? Nov 2025
- Nothing Stops This Train Jun 2025
- Everything is a Ponzi Scheme Jun 2025
- Sunlit Serenity Apr 2025
- Money is Stored Time Oct 2024
- Synonym Companies Apr 2023
- Ditch Diworsification Apr 2023
Or the essays and the shorts, each in the order they came out.
Every post, by month
Luck doesn’t live on lines
In The Shape of Luck, luck also needs R, for randomness exposure: the degree to which you put yourself in situations your past behavior can’t predict.
“Travel is a brute-force R multiplier.”
About me
I’m Julián Martin. Half German, half Spanish, 100% insufferable. Kidding. Mostly.
Language nerd, then ~7 years in Berlin marketing other people’s sofas and cars, and somewhere along the way a finance bro. In 2024 I sold everything for a backpack, betting the investing could pay for the road. Still going, still solvent.
Content Cringeator
Human Language Model
Jr. Analyst, Reptilian Moon Capital
Currently hopping through Australia
Scored in public
One experiment. In The AI Landlords I bet on the companies that run AI’s data centres, and every week I score the bet here.
−65.3 percentage points behind the Nasdaq 100
The landlords, 82% IREN and 18% CIFR, from the last close before the piece (Friday 12 December 2025): −52.6%. The same money in the Nasdaq 100, over the same days: +12.7%.
IREN −51.5% CIFR −58.1%
12 December 2025 to 12 November 2026
“The bear case is simple: efficiency gains outpace demand growth.”
How it’s scored
Named in the piece, 14 December 2025: IREN and CIFR, “the landlords running AI factories” (about 44% of the portfolio it laid out); TSLA and PLTR (about 33%); QQQ, the Nasdaq 100 fund, and crypto (about 11% each).
Two counts on the two landlords, each against the same money in QQQ, in dollars, dividends in, refreshed weekly: since I published, from the last close before the piece ran (12 December 2025), and since I bought, from the day I first bought each (IREN 3 July 2025, CIFR 24 September 2025). The split, 82% IREN and 18% CIFR, is how I held them when the piece ran. Tesla, Palantir and the crypto are left out: the thesis is the landlords.
On 12 November 2026: since I published, the landlords −52.6% and QQQ +12.7%, 65.3 percentage points behind; since I bought, the landlords +4.1% and QQQ +22.9%, 18.8 percentage points behind.
Trades since the piece don’t count. None of it is advice.