P.S. You Should Know... | Issue #376

Something new!

my story 🚀

🎣 I’m excited to announce that I’m one week into a new venture, leading a turnaround of consumer fishing brand CatchCo, maker of the original Mystery Tackle Box. (Get yours today!) I’ll certainly have more to share on this in time, but for now I can report that I am both very energized and quite busy. Huge thanks and appreciation to Kim for all of her support!

fun facts 🙌

Close. Map every block in a city by how close it is to places like parks, schools, restaurants, dentists, grocery stores and more by foot, bike or transit. ~ learn more

How researchers cracked an 11-year-old password to a $3 million crypto wallet. A lesson in never giving up! Also a reminder that computers don’t do random very well. ~ learn more

Nordic prisons not better at rehabilitation? This author comes in hot: “It’s a well-documented fact that a small number of repeat-offending criminals are responsible for a large share of all crime. The primary reason why prisons effectively reduce crime is exactly because they prevent the crimes that these offenders would otherwise (had they not been incapacitated) commit over the duration of their imprisonment.” I know some of my readers have opinions on criminal justice and I’d be interested to hear from you! ~ learn more

tech, startups, internet ⚡

The complete history & strategy of Microsoft. “The company that put a computer on every desk and in every home. The company that invented the software business model. The company that so thoroughly and completely dominated every conceivable competitor that the United States government intervened and kneecapped it… yet it’s STILL the most valuable company in the world today.” This links to an episode of the Acquired podcast and it’s 4 hours long, getting as far as Windows 95. It’s great! ~ learn more

Multimodal LLM innovation continues. From a team at Meta: “Called Chameleon, the new system is built on an early fusion architecture, and because of that it is able to comingle multiple inputs in ways not possible with most other systems.” ~ learn more

better doing 🎯

How philosophers think. “Like intellectual boxers; they come to understand ideas by making them fight with each other. Their style of analysis is effective because it’s so bloody. One friend calls his style “violent thinking.” He talks about thinking like a soldier talks about interrogation. He subjects ideas to ruthless torture, shaking them and grabbing them by the throat until they can no longer breathe and, eventually, reveal their true nature.” ~ learn more

Ergodicity economics — a history. I first heard the term ergodicity in Nassim Taleb’s writing. I first learned of ergodicity economics from this article about its history. Definition from wikipedia: “Ergodicity economics is a school of thought that questions whether expected value is a reliable indicator of economic performance over time. It builds on criticisms of expected value that began shortly after its introduction in 1654.” ~ learn more

to your health ⚕

A critical view on the war against prediabetes. Science reporter Charles Piller questions the pharmaceutical industry incentives in the fight against prediabetes. “A third of Americans are considered prediabetic—but many may be better off without treatment.” My take: I think he makes a good point about incentives but somehow misses the fact that people don’t just wake up one day with full blown type 2 diabetes. ~ learn more

Monoclonal antibodies and its production. This is a youtube video with great animation and explanation, but poor sound quality. ~ learn more

retail therapy 💸

Home is where the cartel is. “My view is that the “market urbanist” diagnosis of the problem is more persuasive than its prescription for addressing it. As a positive matter, they just won’t win the political fights they propose. On normative grounds, I’m not sure that they should.” ~ learn more

The 30-year mortgage is an intrinsically toxic product. Byrne Hobart spent a lot more time thinking about this than the rest of us: “The thirty-year fixed-rate prepayment-option mortgage is an economic disaster. It encourages mass malinvestment. Policies designed to help low-income people build wealth actually trap them at the worst possible time.” ~ learn more

under the microscope 🔬

A new efficiency frontier in thermal power cells. “A new heat-to-energy converter has reached a record efficiency of 44% – the average steam turbine manages about 35%, for comparison. This thermophotovoltaic cell is a major step on the way to sustainable, grid-scale renewable energy storage.” ~ learn more

The brain science of obesity. A TED talk given by researcher (and Novo Nordisk employee?) Mads Tang-Christensen in September 2021, before most of us had ever heard of GLP-1. ~ learn more

big ideas 📚

John Doerr on OKRs and the climate crisis. An episode of the Tim Ferris Show from November 2021. Doerr is the famous investor who backed Larry & Sergey with the biggest check his firm had ever written when they were 24 years old without a business model. He taught them a goal setting process that seems to have worked! Now his goal is getting the world to Net Zero carbon emissions by 2050. ~ learn more

Bank of Spain: we need 24 million migrants. I found this interesting in the context of John Doerr’s talk of future climate refugees. Maybe these problems help alleviate on another to some extetent? The bank “has warned that the country’s economy will need around 24 million migrant workers until 2053 if the pension system is to remain sustainable.” ~ learn more

thanks for reading!