P.S. You Should Know... | Issue #425
Summer is coming
my story 🚀
💡 The longest word with only one vowel: strengths.
fun facts 🙌
Written by a human. “Imagine, for a moment, a world with no humans. Just machines, bolts and screws, zeros and ones. There is no emotion. There is no art. There is only logic….” ~ learn more
Why human hair is limited to a handful of colors. “Why, with such a vast array of colors all around us, are our hair colors so limited? Well, the pigments in our hair are predetermined by a genetic blueprint that isn’t likely to change anytime soon. Let’s untangle the mystery behind this phenomenon.” ~ learn more
The Wisconsin governor has wild veto powers. The state’s supreme court has upheld the governor’s right to veto individual words of bills, even if it changes or reverses the meaning of the sentence, paragraph, or bill overall. “[O]ur constitution does not limit the governor’s partial veto power based on how much or how little the partial vetoes change policy, even when that change is considerable.” ~ learn more
Why do we have half-moons on our fingernails? “Embedded in your nails are other tiny mysteries, including the light-colored half-moon shape at the bottom of the nail plate. Though few of us stop to think about the purpose of this mark, its existence is a vital part of our nails and also serves as an indicator of our overall health. Here’s a closer look at this curious feature of our fingernails.” ~ learn more
oh, austin 🤠
How does one form a new town in Texas? Starbase shows the way. ~ learn more
tech, startups, internet ⚡
The computing breakthrough that could end Big Tech’s AI stranglehold. Ashlee Vance interviews Guillaume Verdon (aka ‘Beff Jezos’). “Extropic has shown early success with “thermodynamic computing.” It’s a form of computing that Verdon says harnesses the underlying properties of nature and probabilities in far better ways than traditional computers and in more practical ways (possibly) than quantum computers.” ~ learn more
OpenAI’s prompting guide for GPT-4.1. “GPT-4.1 is trained to follow instructions more closely and more literally than its predecessors, which tended to more liberally infer intent from user and system prompts. This also means, however, that GPT-4.1 is highly steerable and responsive to well-specified prompts - if model behavior is different from what you expect, a single sentence firmly and unequivocally clarifying your desired behavior is almost always sufficient to steer the model on course.” ~ learn more
Mortgage your 401(k). Matt Levine covers a new startup offering that allows savers to leverage their retirement accounts 4:1. “There are no margin calls or mark-to-market triggers. If the market falls below a certain level, you aren’t forced to liquidate. The financing is structured more like a mortgage: It’s a loan to a separate entity (an LLC) that holds the assets. There’s no personal recourse beyond your initial contributions; you cannot owe more than you put in, even if the market crashes.” ~ learn more
better doing 🎯
How to title your blog post or whatever. “A title has two goals. First, think of all the people in the world who, if they clicked on your thing, would finish it and love it. Ideally, those people would click. … Other people will hate your thing. It’s fine, some people hate everything. But if they click on your thing, they’ll be annoyed and tell everyone you are dumb and bad. You don’t want that.” ~ learn more
Why be a ghost? “Will we be an ancestor to our children…or a ghost? Will we support and guide? Will we haunt and plague? Will our presence fill them with joy and comfort…or fear and pain?” ~ learn more
to your health ⚕
One man, 856 venom hits, and the path to a universal snakebite cure. “Over the course of 18 years, a truck mechanic from Wisconsin injected himself with snake venom hundreds of times. His actions were considered stunts by some over those years, but his blood has just helped lead the way toward a universal antivenom.” ~ learn more
retail therapy 💸
How much of the U.S.’s exports are made of blood? The Economist wrote it was ~2%. Seems high? “The article doesn’t explain how they arrived at 1.8%. And since the Economist speaks in the voice of God (without bylines), I can’t corner and harass the actual journalist.” So, this blogger cracked his knuckles and began to dig in… ~ learn more
under the microscope 🔬
A structure design that shrinks when pulled. Thankfully there’s a video, since this is hard to imagine. “We've shown that mechanical systems can be designed to behave in ways that seem almost paradoxical," says Bas Overvelde, principal investigator of the Soft Robotic Matter Group.” ~ learn more
Shingles vaccine lowers the risk of heart disease for up to eight years. “People who are given a vaccine for shingles have a 23% lower risk of cardiovascular events, including stroke, heart failure, and coronary heart disease, according to a study of more than a million people published in the European Heart Journal.” ~ learn more
China just made the world’s fastest transistor and it is not made of silicon. “With a slender sheet of lab-grown bismuth and an architecture unlike anything inside today’s silicon chips, they’ve built what they call the world’s fastest and most efficient transistor. Not only does it outperform the best processors made by Intel and TSMC, but it also uses less energy doing so. And most important of all, there’s no trace of silicon involved.” ~ learn more
thoughts of food 🍔
Have I been drinking fake tequila? “Two of your favorite tequila brands are in hot water. A class action lawsuit alleges that Casamigos and Don Julio tequilas "consist of significant concentrations of cane or other types of alcohol rather than pure tequila." ~ learn more
teaching the kids 👩🏫
The higher ed nomenklatura. “The Soviet nomenklatura was a category of people approved by the Communist Party as well as the list of important government posts. Only the Party could appoint a name from the list to a job on the list, so belonging to the in-group meant promotion and privilege. … The list concept has stuck with me ever since as it seems not so different from the ways that networks work in the U.S. Think of the term “thought leaders,” the same groups of people you notice talking about the same things in the same ways, whether on the opinion pages, Sunday talk shows or tech podcasts.” ~ learn more
big ideas 📚
Abundance. I cheated on Audible with this audiobook from Spotify. “Progress requires facing up to the institutions in life that are not working as they need to. It means, for liberals, recognizing when the government is failing. It means, for conservatives, recognizing when the government is needed. In a book exploring how we can move from a liberalism that not only protects and preserves but also builds, Klein and Thompson trace the political, economic, and cultural barriers to progress and propose a path toward a politics of abundance.” ~ learn more
This stove boils water instantly, cooks meat perfectly. And it is a backup battery for your home’s electric needs. “In this episode, we travel to San Francisco’s design district to meet Sam D’Amico, the founder of Impulse Labs, who’s turning the humble stove into a high-performance, battery-backed, grid-ready Trojan horse. The Impulse cooktop boils water in seconds and can cook just about anything to absolute perfection. It's the most precise stove ever made.” ~ learn more
Ontario isn’t sitting around waiting for clean energy. “Ontario has begun building the first of four new, small nuclear reactors, as Canada seeks to lead the Group of Seven industrialized nations in developing next-generation nuclear technology.” ~ learn more
on the blockchain ⛓
Bank charters for crypto companies? “Several crypto firms — including stablecoin issuer Circle and trust company BitGo — plan to apply for U.S. bank charters and licenses, according to a new report in The Wall Street Journal. Crypto exchange Coinbase and stablecoin issuer Paxos are also considering similar moves, the report said.” ~ learn more