P.S. You Should Know... | Issue #357

Bike rides

my story 🚀

Family bike ride to see the peacocks

fun facts 🙌

52 things I learned in 2023. This list was so interesting that it sent me down many rabbit holes, including visiting the author’s prior lists. One example: “Pheasant Island, a 200-meter long island in the middle of the Bidasoa River between France and Spain, swaps sovereignty every six months.” ~ learn more

Cannabis before exercise study published in Sports Medicine. “A study of 42 runners reveals that using cannabis before exercise can boost mood and enjoyment. The study shows that both THC and CBD can enhance exercise experience, with CBD even outperforming THC in some aspects.” ~ learn more

Why is there so much fraud in academia? “Some of the biggest names in behavioral science stand accused of faking their results. Last year, an astonishing 10,000 research papers were retracted. We talk to whistleblowers, reformers, and a co-author who got caught up in the chaos.” ~ learn more

oh, chicago 🏆

The mayor’s panic attacks. “Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson is “stressed out” and has been admitted to the hospital for panic attacks. That’s according to veteran Chicago journalists John Kass and Anita Padilla, who discussed Johnson’s panic attacks on an episode of WGN-AM’s Chicago Way Podcast.” ~ learn more

tech, startups, internet ⚡

Rebuilding organizations for AI. The premise is that major technology not only changes products, it also changes org charts. The post’s author Ethan Mollick draws analogy to the railroads of 1855. “I am not sure who said it first, but there are only two ways to react to exponential change: too early or too late.” ~ learn more

The agent economy and economic growth. Rob May looks somewhat far into the future (I think?) and comes up with an interesting scenario to consider. “Once this happens, you can see an economy growing among agents. Agents that collect unique interactions and data sets will sell them to other agents. Agents with broad goals (e.g. “help me grow my business”) will go out and find some sources of knowledge that they believe they need to achieve the goals they are given. What happens to the world economy as the agent economy grows? At 5% of all economic activity it probably doesn’t matter, but what about at 50% of the world economy?” ~ learn more

better doing 🎯

There are no statistics in the Kingdom of God. A point on the practical limitations of statistics and p values and such. “Hey dude, remember that statistics are just a tool for distinguishing signal from noise. If we really knew what was going on, we wouldn’t need statistics. It’s fine to use them, just like it’s fine to use training wheels and water wingies. But we should aspire to shed them eventually.” ~ learn more

An interview with Tony Robbins. The podcast host Shaan Puri went to one of Robbins’ seminars years ago that impacted his career. His excitement shines through this great interview. “Tony has built a $7 billion dollar empire and helped people like Ray Dalio, Connor McGregor and Nelson Mandela level up. In this conversation he shares what makes a championship mindset and what he’s learned from working with the top 1%.” ~ learn more

to your health ⚕

Neurosurgeon pioneers Alzheimer’s and addiction treatment using ultrasound. This is an incredible recent 60 Minutes segment. It was published about two weeks ago about Dr. Ali Rezai, who has created a focused ultrasound machine that does a sort of brain surgery without cutting open the skull. It shows remarkable promise for both Azieimer’’s and addiction. ~ learn more

The story of Novo Dordisk, maker of Ozempic. This is a roughly 4-hour epic history of the most valuable company in Europe. “Once we dug further, we quickly realized this company has it all: an incredible 100+ year history filled with Nobel Prizes, bitter personal rivalries, board room dramas, a generation-defining silicon valley innovation, lone voices persevering against all odds — and oh yeah, the world’s largest charitable foundation at its helm. Tune in for one incredible story!” ~ learn more

retail therapy 💸

Mindsets of modern midlife women. Commissioned by consumer VC firm Listen Ventures, this report focuses on women roughly ages 37 to 62. “The goal of this body of work is to unpack the mindsets that define midlife womanhood in the US in a consumer-obsessed way — to identify opportunities ripe for VC-backed innovation and to turn our intellectual curiosities into investment conviction”. ~ learn more

Kit Kat Canada just used a Google DeepMind study to advertise chocolate. This is a cool advertisement! ~ learn more

under the microscope 🔬

CAR-T hype faces infrastructure reality check. Scientists invented a cancer therapy that is incredibly effective for certain cancers, but quite difficult to administer. “To make CAR-T therapies, the patient’s own T cells are extracted during a two-day process called apheresis. Manufacturers then alter the cells for weeks before sending the final product back to the facility for treatment. After the infusion, patients are required to stay near the treatment center for a month to monitor for potentially life-threatening side effects.” ~ learn more

What if we could make CAR-T cells inside the body? CAR-T therapies have operational scaling challenges (see above). Maybe viral vectors can circumvent those challenges by modifying your T cells while they’re still inside a patient. “Scientists are devising ways to edit the genomes of immune cells without having to extract them from those being treated.” ~ learn more

There are five (or more) variants of Alzheimer’s. “It’s plausible that this not only explains some of the differences we see in how Alzheimer’s progresses, but also signals the need to treat each variant differently, potentially explaining the high failure rate in finding successful treatments up until now.” ~ learn more

teaching the kids 👩‍🏫

Schools repealing ChatGPT bans. This NYT article discusses a few public school districts who have done an about face on their earlier bans of the technology. “Administrators say they are simply taking a pragmatic view: Students will need to learn how to prompt chatbots to answer their questions, just as they learn to query search engines like Google.” ~ learn more

on the blockchain ⛓

Fred Wilson has a vision for Web3 Minting. “It starts with us owning our work and allowing others to pay us to collect our work. The thing that makes me so optimistic about this is that it is not some dream. It is happening right here on this blog. The tools we need to change the way the world works are already here. We just need to start using them.” ~ learn more

Going post-crypto. It’s not all sunshine and sparkles. “You can go down the rabbit hole into crypto. This is a post about getting out.” ~ learn more

2023 crypto developer report. One of the lines of thinking I’ve embraced in the past was that when thousands of smart engineers work at something, magical things can happen. That remains true. “While developers overall are down 24%, the most valuable segment of developers (2+ year tenure who contribute the most code) continues to steadily grow.” ~ learn more

thanks for reading!