Evocative / Griffin Smith
Greetings, ladies and gentlemen (the term is to be judiciously applied),
Welcome to those new to Serendipity. If you are reading this for the first time, the premises of these musings can be found in the provenance email all the way back from August 2023. (In short, it's the fastest-growing newsletter in America that delivers game-changing insights, according to The Onion.)
I am thinking about breaking up with my LLM. We have just outgrown each other; I'm looking for accuracy, and it's just looking for my monthly subscription dollars. Honestly - that’s how I feel about GPT5.
But since GPT6 is just around the corner, I will stay in this unhealthy relationship with the hope it sees the error in its ways and comes around to my way of thinking. But know this, we are not sharing secrets like we used to. Moving forward, this is all business.
Is anyone else feeling let down by their LLM lately - any tips on turning it into my dream clanker?
On the flipside, my real-life neglected relationships are flourishing. I have more people than ever that I owe a call and a text back to. Hopefully, reading this, they can understand that human friends are just not important to me anymore because they don’t know everything about everything like AI.
Moving on.
This month’s ‘Serendipitous moment’:
This month’s serendipitous moment comes from January’s feature, the super connector, Nick Araco, who got to know Dan Irvine, the financial oracle and our fourth post’s feature, personally and professionally at the Congressional Country Club in DC. How’d I do making it sound super important?
Moving on, on.
This month, I am dedicating a few more words than I usually do about the featured person because, quite frankly, I have known him since his nanny held us as babies in her arms and swapped the milk bottle between us.
Please meet Griffin Smith.
Griffin Smith
Griffin works with family offices, HNWIs, and investors all over the world and has built a career in the more subtle sides of international finance. He helps individuals and organizations navigate the complexity of wealth, business, and compliance when international guile, skill, and expertise are needed.
He is fluent in zero languages, bought his way through Harvard, is the least successful of his siblings (one of them is actually famous), is compromised by several spy agencies, and has a sense of humor so dry that one could question if it is there at all.
You see, if I say these things on social media, he would be able to counter; however, in this format, he has to suffer through it in silence.
Despite his clear downsides, he is truly one of the most fabulous, interesting, and kind people who wander around this space rock. He is gracious with his knowledge, generous with his time and energy, and there is never a conversation you don’t leave smiling.
He is now following in my footsteps (albeit 20 years late) and has moved from London to Nashville to start the next phase of his life in the colonies.
If you have never clicked a link before in my emails, please click this one. Reach out and say hi if you are in the USA, or good riddance if you are in the UK.
You can find him here.
And if you are in or around Nashville - please hit Mr. Smith up for his world-famous guided tours.
Finally, thank you for reading these and thank you for not unsubscribing - each person that does breaks a little piece of my soul. I pour my heart into these letters to help people, and the fact that you rejected me like that says I probably owe you a text or a call because I am a shitty friend.