P.S. You Should Know... | Issue #419
Zero-tariff newsletter
my story 🚀
📅 Was this one of those weeks when a decade happened? Stay positive everyone! The future will be bright even if we have to pass some speed bumps and potholes to get there.
fun facts 🙌
Why is the world losing color? “Studies of everything from car paint to consumer objects show that we’re in the midst of a vast aesthetic shift. What used to be vibrant has become sterile. What used to pop out and catch our attention now fades into the background. The question is — why?” ~ learn more
Are people bad at their jobs… or are the jobs just bad? Of course it’s the former, but it might be because of the latter? “Jane sent a photo of the bed to Wayfair, who promised to send a replacement part. But then the photo made its way to the Wayfair parts department, where someone looked closer: it wasn’t the wrong part. The assembler had just assembled the bed incorrectly.” ~ learn more
The way this artist removes tape from his art. This is quite cool. ~ learn more
tech, startups, internet ⚡
On-demand human workforce for your AI agents. At first the computers work for us, but eventually we work for the computers. “We provide specialized human operators who handle your edge cases, ensuring 100% reliability while generating training data.” ~ learn more
better doing 🎯
How to use em dashes (—), en dashes (–) , and hyphens (-). As you may know, nobody uses em dashes except AI. But not really—they can be great great! ~ learn more
Wheel of emotions. Since we can’t escape our emotions it may help us to label them better. “Created by American psychologist Robert Plutchik in 1980, Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions is a graphic depiction to describe how emotions are related. Through years of studying emotions, Dr. Plutchik proposed that there are eight primary emotions that serve as the foundation for all others: joy, sadness, acceptance, disgust, fear, anger, surprise, and anticipation.” ~ learn more
Sometimes papers contain obvious lies. “The authors of scientific papers often say one thing and find another; they concoct a story around a set of findings that they might not have even made, or which they might have actually even contradicted. This happens surprisingly often, and it’s a very serious issue for a few reasons. For example…” ~ learn more
to your health ⚕
New dietary guidelines aim to optimize public health, not personal health. Peter Attia discusses the newest US nutrition guidelines. “Federal guidelines on nutrition are intended to promote health and fitness at the national population level, largely as a means of reducing the burden on the healthcare system. The best way to accomplish this goal is to raise the health of those on the lower end of the population’s health spectrum, as these are the individuals who have the greatest room for improvement by relatively simple measures and are also those who would otherwise incur the vast majority of medical costs.” ~ learn more
under the microscope 🔬
New materials pulls carbon from air using changes in humidity. “The paper demonstrates the significance of a material's pore size (pockets of space within porous materials where carbon dioxide can nestle) in predicting its power to capture carbon. The engineers argue this type of research will support the development of design principles to improve performance by modifying a material's structure.” ~ learn more
thoughts of food 🍔
H-Mart stays winning. “Kwon’s go-to market strategy was straightforward: sell Asian goods (rice cookers, aluminum-lined ramen pots, meats, seafood, vegetables) in neighbourhoods that didn’t sell them. In the first 15 years, H-Mart followed that formula to open five stores across New York and New Jersey. H-Mart’s 6th location was when the real expansion began.” ~ learn more
teaching the kids 👩🏫
The average college student today. This does not sound good. “I teach at a regional public university in the US. Our students are average on just about any dimension you care to name—aspirations, intellect, socio-economic status, physical fitness. They wear hoodies and yoga pants and like Buffalo wings. … Most of our students are functionally illiterate. This is not a joke.” ~ learn more
on the blockchain ⛓
Fixing the internet. “zkTLS isn’t just cool tech, it’s the best path towards fixing the internet today. It fundamentally changes the laws of physics of the internet.” This is just a tweet, but you can follow the rabbit down the hole. I suspect this could be one of those all-of-a-sudden-huge technologies in the future. ~ learn more