P.S. You Should Know... | Issue #384

Caught in the rain

my story 🚀

Taking cover during a sudden rainstorm in Madison, WI.

🌷 Happy 9th anniversary to my incredible wife, Kim!

fun facts 🙌

The first official presidential aircraft was nicknamed the Sacred Cow. “The Sacred Cow featured a conference room, windows made of bulletproof glass, and an elevator so that Roosevelt, who used a wheelchair, could easily board and deplane.” ~ learn more

The rare ‘golden walleyes’. Fish pics, but not of ordinary fish. “These snaps are the ONLY “golden walleyes” I’ve EVER come across after yeeeeaaaars of scouring the interwebz! Hope you get to see one in real life some day, but in the meantime, enjoy!” ~ learn more

Reuters buys fentanyl ingredients online. Yikes. “We bought everything needed to make $3 million worth of fentanyl. All it took was $3,600 and a web browser…” ~ learn more

What was the TED talk? “I like to call this fusion “the inspiresting.” Stylistically, the inspiresting is earnest and contrived. It is smart but not quite intellectual, personal but not sincere, jokey but not funny. It is an aesthetic of populist elitism.” ~ learn more

oh, chicago 🏆

Foxtrot reopening soon. “We can’t make everything right from the past, and we know there’s work to be done. But we also know opening our doors again is the best way to provide the most opportunities for all.” Internet commenters are unhappy. I suspect customers will still shop, but my local store is gone for good. ~ learn more

tech, startups, internet ⚡

How Loom got a sweet deal on loom.com. They spent $150k to acquire it in 2018. For context, the owners of pavel.com wanted $98k for my namesake domain the same year. ~ learn more

California’s rideshare drivers are not employees. “Uber, Lyft, and other app-based companies scored a major win on Thursday after California’s Supreme Court upheld a ruling that classifies gig workers as independent contractors rather than employees.” ~ learn more

MedLM, a family of healthcare-focused generative AI models. “In summary, Google Cloud's MedLM represents a significant advancement in healthcare-focused generative AI, offering capabilities like medical question answering, drafting summaries from medical documentation, and generating insights from unstructured data. This is part of a broader Healthcare AI Arms Race, with key players like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google developing AI technologies for clinical decision-making, note generation, and copiloting.” ~ learn more

to your health ⚕

Debunking the dopamine detox trend. “The fad of temporarily fasting from pleasurable activities likely won’t “reset” dopamine levels and doesn’t accurately reflect this molecule’s nuanced functions.” ~ learn more

retail therapy 💸

Amazon and Temu swap strategies. “Temu wants to be more like Amazon, to reduce supply chain risk and offer faster shipping, while Amazon is racing to replicate Temu because it cannot ignore the fact that its low prices trump Amazon’s convenience for some shoppers.” ~ learn more

Nike: an epic saga of value destruction. Former Nike marketer Massimo Giunco indicts the three key strategic decisions taken by CEO John Donahue since January 2020. 1) Eliminating sports-based categories in favor of men/women/kids; 2) Cutting wholesale sales in favor of d2c; 3) Centralizing its marketing model and pushing performance rather than brand. ~ learn more

under the microscope 🔬

Oral Alzheimer’s drug advances to Phase 2 trial. “Asceneuron’s lead drug candidate ASN51 is a small molecule designed to block OGA, an enzyme that plays a role in protein aggregation. By preventing tau aggregation, the drug is intended to slow Alzheimer’s progression. In Phase 1 tests in healthy volunteers, Asceneuron said results showed its brain-penetrating drug was taken up by the central nervous system and hit a high percentage of its OGA target enzymes.” ~ learn more

thanks for reading!