P.S. You Should Know... | Issue #320

Hi mom!

my story 🚀

i’ve been thinking 💭

🧃 Remember when Naked Juice’s Green Machine became popular about 10 years ago? I loved drinking them. They tasted great and their branding convinced me that they were great for me! I probably had one every morning for the better part of a year. That lasted until I realized I had gained a bunch of weight and started figuring out why. It turns out I was starting my day with 53 grams of liquid sugar. Yesterday a popular food/health influencer told me about the 4 years he drank daily kale-spinach smoothies until he learned they were essentially oxalate cocktails. I don’t yet know much about oxalates, but I do know that good nutrition can be very confusing!

fun facts 🙌

Catching spies is a lose-lose proposition. “[If] counterintelligence officers aren’t finding those spies, they have failed. … [W]hen they do catch them, the public perception is that they’ve failed again, by not detecting them for years on end. Spy-catchers are thus damned if they do and damned if they don’t, and one may sympathize if they drink too much or doubt if God is just.” ~ learn more

Whalefall. An incredible example of the food web in action. “When a whale dies and sinks to the ocean floor, it creates a new ecosystem that changes the local food web for up to a century afterwards. They only occur in deep sea areas where the very cold water temperature slows rotting and there are fewer large scavengers, so it reaches the bottom in one piece.” ~ learn more

For 20 years the nuclear launch code was 00000000. There’s an interesting tension between top-down control over our nuclear arsenal and decentralized ability to launch even if communication lines were wiped out. “Oh, and in case you actually did forget the code, it was handily written down on a checklist handed out to the soldiers.” ~ learn more

oh, chicago 🏆

Chonkosaurus. There’s a very very well-fed turtle living in the Chicago River. This brings back memories of Chance the Snapper. ~ learn more

tech, startups, internet ⚡

The state of private markets in Q1 2023. Carta’s doing some content marketing with their data (which is arguably pretty good). “Total venture capital raised by startups plunged 80% from Q1 2022 to Q1 2023. Venture deal count fell 45% over the same span. Overall, Q1 was the slowest quarter for both capital raised and deal count since 2017.” ~ learn more

This Texas solar farm’s panels will sit flat on the ground. This is very interesting because it seems that soon the mounting hardware and installation will become the limiting factors to cost-reduction in solar power generation. “Erthos … will become the only utility-scale solar farm mounted flat on the ground to date.” ~ learn more

Companies are allowed to do bad mergers. Matt Levine, in his “Money Stuff” column, covers the legality behind the terrible merger that was Block + Tidal: “Or if you are the CEO of a payments company and you want to buy Jay-Z’s music streaming company because you like hanging out with Jay-Z, you can do that.” ~ learn more

better doing 🎯

Robo-coaches are here. Sure, the advice that an AI chatbot offers can be found elsewhere on the internet in blogs, books and podcasts. Yet this new format for interacting with the advice might just be better for many uses. “At risk of sounding like another vapid member of the AI hype train, I think AI-generated advice represents a huge shift that we have barely begun to feel the consequences of.” ~ learn more

to your health ⚕

The Soviets invented paid time off. But they also dictated how workers would spend it, and with whom. “Broadly speaking there were two types of Soviet vacations: one where people stayed in a single place, and one where they moved around. The former took place at the aforementioned resorts, also referred to as sanatoriums or rest homes.” ~ learn more

You lose glycogen before fat and glycogen is heavy. “The issue is: Glycogen is 10 times heavier than body fat per stored calorie. This means that changes in diet produce sharp swings in body weight that are easy to misinterpret if you don’t think about glycogen.” ~ learn more

under the microscope 🔬

Extending the life of a yeast cell by 82%. There are two ways the cell deteriorated over time: either deterioration within its cellular nucleus or its mitochondria. “[R]ather than the entire cell aging at once, the aging process was toggled between different physical parts of the organism, extending its life.” ~ learn more

big ideas 📚

Bill Gates celebrates start of building a new nuclear facility. “When it opens (potentially in 2030), it will be the most advanced nuclear facility in the world, and it will be much safer and produce far less waste than conventional reactors.” ~ learn more

profiles of people 🚶

Shaka Senghor and the power of transformation. A hidden gem interview with a man who transformed his prison gang from ruthless to non-violent. “Jordan Ching & Shaka Senghor discuss about Shaka's journey of transformation from being in solitary confinement to becoming a writer, entrepreneur, and motivational speaker.” I first learned of Senghor from Ben Horowitz, who writes about him often including in his latest book (my notes here). ~ learn more

thanks for reading!