P.S. You Should Know... | Issue #375

Hello, summer!

my story 🚀

Wandering around a Crypto conference in Austin with Chad!

🛻 Soon, our family will make our annual journey to the North where we’ll spend the summer near family and friends in Chicago. This is always an exciting and stressful time, and we’re so fortunate to be able to make it work year after year. After all, it’s already quite hot in Austin!

fun facts 🙌

Jerry Seinfeld at Duke’s 2024 Commencement. This was pretty good! "All of you here, without question, are the best of the best. Just don't lose your humor. It’s not an accessory. It's your Stanley Cup water bottle on the brutal, long hike of life," said Seinfeld. ~ learn more

Messy desks and the myth of the perfect workspace. “Whenever I see one of those ‘here’s my workspace’ posts with the perfect photos of a sleek, clean, and pristine desk, I vom a little.” I do not have a messy desk, but that’s only because I have not had a desk for several years. ~ learn more

Go ahead, little goat, eat some poison ivy. We have recently cleaned up a poison ivy outgrowth in our alley without goats. Next time, we’ll call in the A-team! ~ learn more

Phase diagrams. “Understanding and interpreting phase diagrams. Created by Sal Khan.” ~ learn more

oh, chicago 🏆

Chicago’s fake robbery visa scam. Here’s a story about a, “ Chicago-based scheme that staged armed robberies so the purported victims could apply for U.S. immigration visas reserved for legitimate crime victims.” ~ learn more

oh, austin 🤠

Cisco’s Restaurant. This is a nice positive story about a longstanding Austin restaurant. “The longtime establishment is one of many local businesses that Austinites hope will remain the same as new money, big companies and a booming population transform the city. Some mom-and-pop shops have uncovered the secret to longevity in the fast-changing city, while others are threatened by rising costs and new development. Matt Cisneros said a future expansion is possible, but ultimately, he wants Cisco's to stay true to his grandfather's vision: to create a gathering place in East Austin where locals can eat good food.” ~ learn more

tech, startups, internet ⚡

Time sinks and money sinks. “To dramatically oversimplify the internet, every product on the Internet is just one of two things…” I didn’t realize it at the start of my career, but one reason lots of other businesses didn’t make sense to me is because I have always lived in a ‘money sink’ environment. ~ learn more

Chain of Thoughtlessness. This research makes the claim that using “Chain of Thought” prompting for LLMs does not generalize. I consider this evidence of LLM limitations (at least for now?). “This spotlights drawbacks of chain of thought, especially because of the sharp tradeoff between possible performance gains and the amount of human labor necessary to generate examples with correct reasoning traces.” ~ learn more

better doing 🎯

Take ownership of your future self. This feels related to the idea of using a secret identity or alter-ego to enhance your performance. “Your personality, skills, likes, and dislikes change over time — but that change isn’t out of your control. What can you do to become the version of yourself that you most want to be? Start by acknowledging the differences between your past, current, and future selves.” ~ learn more

under the microscope 🔬

False-positive psychology. “In this article, we show that despite the nominal endorsement of a maximum false-positive rate of 5% (i.e., p ≤ .05), current standards for disclosing details of data collection and analyses make false positives vastly more likely. In fact, it is unacceptably easy to publish “statistically significant” evidence consistent with any hypothesis.” ~ learn more

thoughts of food 🍔

Food deserts are not the cause of nutritional inequality? “Counterfactual simulations show that exposing low-income households to the same products and prices available to high-income households reduces nutritional inequality by only about 10%, while the remaining 90% is driven by differences in demand.” ~ learn more

teaching the kids 👩‍🏫

Sal Khan is pioneering innovation in education…again. Bill Gates sings his praises in this post. “His main argument: AI will radically improve both student outcomes and teacher experiences, and help usher in a future where everyone has access to a world-class education.” ~ learn more

big ideas 📚

The future of humanity’s energy no one knows about. This video features Casey Handmer of Terraform Industries (disclosure: I’m invested!), who showcases the technology he developed for making natural gas from thin air. I never get tired of sharing content about this! ~ learn more

on the blockchain ⛓

Are you ready for the Finternet? “The bottleneck lies in the very architecture of how value is transferred from one customer to another — as messages flowing between trusted intermediaries. Supplanting it with a superior design will be less like replacing carrier pigeons with telegrams, and more like substituting the existing 700-year-old record-keeping system with something analogous to an internet protocol, built for finance.” ~ learn more

staying thirsty 🚰

The growing importance of desalination. “A deep dive into the booming desalination industry.” This article updated some of my prior beliefs about the current/future costs of desalination (making freshwater from seawater). The promise is better than ever! ~ learn more

thanks for reading!