P.S. You Should Know... | Issue #322

Good reads for your long weekend

my story 🚀

Hello from Bentonville, AR

This week I’ve managed to cover a lot of ground! I spent a couple days in Mountain View, CA early this week for Google’s Marketing Live 2023 event. Then I road tripped from Austin to Chicago with a brief mountain biking stop in Bentonville, AK. Now I’m writing this week’s newsletter with spotty cell phone internet on a train to reunite with my family in Montauk, NY. Wishing you all a Happy Memorial Day!

fun facts 🙌

When civilization collapsed. A video: “In the 12th century BCE the great Bronze Age civilizations of the Mediterranean—all of them—suddenly fell apart. Their empires evaporated, their cities emptied out, their technologies disappeared, and famine ruled. Mycenae, Minos, Assyria, Hittites, Canaan, Cyprus—all gone. Even Egypt fell into a steep decline. The Bronze Age was over.” ~ learn more

Crooks’ mistaken bet on encrypted phones. “Hardened phones were ingenious, but these networks had some inherent security flaws: the clustering of a criminal clientele made them a tempting target for police officers in many countries. It was as if all the villains had holed up in a castle with twenty-foot-thick walls and dared invaders to attack with catapults and battering rams.” ~ learn more

Why do dogs tilt their heads to one side? “The endearing behavior is well-known, but few researchers have investigated the reasons why dogs tilt their heads. A recent study offers some clues.” ~ learn more

oh, chicago 🏆

YouTubers and TikTokers are flocking to the south side to mock ‘The Hood’. I see both sides here. On the one hand, highlighting the worst aspects of the neighborhood doesn’t do the folks trying to improve things any favors. On the other hand, pretending everything is alright doesn’t quite seem right either. ~ learn more

tech, startups, internet ⚡

7 years of amazing progress in self-driving cars. Oliver Cameron has been working on this since 2016 when he and a team began working on an open-source self-driving car. Since then, every part of the stack has moved from rules-based to using machine-learning, and the outcomes in performance are stunning. ~ learn more

Are emergent abilities of large language models a mirage? This paper argues that by choosing the specific tests and measures that most researchers gravitate toward, they bias the results to look like emergence. “Specifically, nonlinear or discontinuous metrics produce apparent emergent abilities, whereas linear or continuous metrics produce smooth, continuous, predictable changes in model performance.” ~ learn more

better doing 🎯

You can't reach the brain through the ears. “Why must every generation of humans spend their entire lives learning what the last generation already knew? Why can’t we reach the brain through the ears? The lives we could save, the years we could get back, the progress we could make, if we could just solve this problem!” ~ learn more

to your health ⚕

All about heart rate variability (HRV). The metric offers insight to the functioning of the nervous system. Specifically it’s thought that when the metric is high, it’s a sign that the nervous system is in “rest and digest” mode, while when it’s low it signals “fight or flight” mode. This is content marketing from Whoop, a leader in the space of tracking HRV. They use it to generate an overnight “recovery score” to guide customers toward ideal levels of exercise the following day. ~ learn more

under the microscope 🔬

New understanding of "wavy wounds" may make for faster post-op healing. “For some time now, it has been observed that wounds with a zig-zag pattern heal faster than those which simply form a straight line. Scientists have now determined why this is the case, and their findings could change the ways in which surgical incisions are made.” ~ learn more

CapScan capsule gathers gut data where it counts the most. "Measuring gut metabolites in stool is like studying an elephant by examining its tail," said Envivo Bio's Dari Shalon, inventor of the capsule. “The device consists of a polymer shell which contains a collapsed fluid-collection bladder. When the capsule is ingested and reaches the small intestine, a pH-sensitive coating on the device dissolves, exposing an integrated one-way valve. That valve allows digestive fluid to be drawn into the capsule's bladder, expanding it in the process. Once the bladder is full, the valve keeps it from collecting any other liquids lower down in the digestive tract.” ~ learn more

thoughts of food 🍔

Saving the Cavendish banana. The bananas we know and love were not always the top banana in the market. A disease wiped out their top competitor the Gros Michel, leaving them in pole position. Now there’s a disease coming for the Cavendish. “After earlier studies into the disease-resistant gene RGA2, the researchers spent more than six years growing the modified fruits in field trials in the Northern Territory. The result has been plants growing Cavendish bananas as we know them, but ones that are also highly resistant to the TR4 fungus.” ~ learn more

Consumer-obsessed: food as medicine. An insightful new report from the team at Listen Ventures. ~ learn more

teaching the kids 👩‍🏫

The inconvenient lack of demand for higher quality education. “My favored model is that schools have an iron triangle: - Parents need someone to watch their kids while they work. They often don't want to think about it, and they are usually content as long as their kids can reach the same status or skill levels they have. - Most students prefer doing as little work as possible and focusing on fun activities like sports. - Teachers don't want to be bothered by disruptive students, nagging parents, or overbearing administrators.” ~ learn more

big ideas 📚

Adapting to climate change. “The remarkable decline in the US temperature-mortality relationship over the twentieth century.” Air conditioners are one of the three adaptations. This reinforces the point that climate predictions that don’t account for adaptation (probably most of them?) are missing something critical. We should be funding further adaptation technology in the popular fight against climate change! ~ learn more (here’s a sci-hub link to full paper that sometimes works)

JP Morgan’s big bet on carbon removal. They are funding direct-air capture, which is probably my favorite technology solution for removing carbon from the air. The problem is that it requires a lot of energy, so it’s expensive. But by both raising capital for the providers (they helped Climeworks raise $650 million last year) and agreeing to buy carbon credits from them, they create opportunity for entrepreneurs to do what they do best. ~ learn more

thanks for reading!