P.S. You Should Know... | Issue #428

Midwestern Summer

my story 🚀

😎 After a fun visit to New York, we’re heading to Chicago to spend the rest of the summer. We’re blessed to be able to spend this time away from the Texas heat, and I intend to appreciate that every day! You’ll find me soaking up as much sunshine as possible, which means lots of walks (especially during calls/meetings) and hikes, bike and boat rides, and dining al fresco. If you’re nearby, I always appreciate good company! We could talk about AI and stuff :).

fun facts 🙌

Incredible photos from inside musical instruments. “The photo above may look like a city or some sort of industrial plant, but it's not: it's actually the inside of a pipe organ, photographed by Charles Brooks.” ~ learn more

Real-time AI video. It’s like walking through an interactive video game (maybe an old one like Duke Nukem), except it’s being generated in real-time by AI. The future is bright! “Powering this is a new world model, demonstrating capabilities like generating pixels that feel realistic, maintaining spatial consistency, learning actions from video, and outputting coherent video streams for 5 minutes or more.” ~ learn more

The Chernobyl dogs. “A study analyzed the DNA of 302 feral dogs living near the power plant, compared the animals to others living 10 miles away, and found remarkable differences.” Radiation or inbreeding? Still unclear, but maybe slightly tipping toward radiation with the most recent study. ~ learn more

The stunning decline of the preference for having boys. “Globally, among babies born in 2000, a staggering 1.6m girls were missing from the number you would expect, given the natural sex ratio at birth. This year that number is likely to be 200,000—and it is still falling.” ~ learn more

oh, austin 🤠

How many millionaires in Austin? Roughly 10x fewer than SF and NYC! This article is actually about Houston, which has the most in Texas. ~ learn more

tech, startups, internet ⚡

God is hungry for context. Writing about the o3 pro model and… “The key, I discovered, was to not chat with it. Instead, treat it like a report generator. Give it context, give it a goal, and let it rip. And that's exactly how I use o3 today.” ~ learn more

Deep learning gets the glory, deep fact checking gets ignored. Required reading if you are hyped about Gen AI. “This pair of papers on enzyme function prediction make for a fascinating case study on the limits of AI in biology and the harms of current publishing incentives. I will walk through some of the details below, although I encourage you to read the papers for yourself. This contrast is a stark reminder of how hard it can be to evaluate the legitimacy of AI results without deep domain expertise.” ~ learn more

better doing 🎯

The bruised peach problem. “My claim is that an amazing-looking second-hand car that's priced well below market and still hasn't sold is disproportionately likely to be a lemon, or, more evocatively, an internally bruised peach.” ~ learn more

Managing strong personalities. “If you are not able to coach the big players, you are not able to coach anyone. It is very important for a coach to understand that you are not going to teach them how to play football. You're not going to teach Ronaldo how to take a free kick. You’re not going to teach Ibra how to hold the ball on his chest. You’re not going to teach Drogba how to attack the first post and score in the air. You are going to teach them how to play football in that team.” ~ learn more

Thrive in obscurity. “Even the most successful creators have spent years (if not decades) putting content out in obscurity. Just a complete total void.” P.S. Thanks for reading my newsletter :). ~ learn more

to your health ⚕

“Normal” bloodwork is “average” bloodwork. “I learned that most reference ranges on your lab results are based on the average values of the population being tested, which, in the US, often means metabolically struggling, chronically inflamed, and far from optimal. These ranges tell you if you’re in the same ballpark as everyone else. They often fail to adjust for age, sex, genetics, menstrual phase, personal baselines, or health goals (like optimizing fertility).” ~ learn more

retail therapy 💸

Hexagonal water. In a woo-woo type shop on the east coast I saw a little card promoting ‘structured water’ (same thing, different name) that they make on site with lots of ‘possible benefits.’ Now, Wikipedia labels it a “marketing scam” and that’s most likely the case. But we can dream, can’t we?! ~ learn more

under the microscope 🔬

Robin: a multi-agent system for automating scientific discovery. For much of history we’ve put computers to work. Now computers put humans (lab techs, specifically) to work. “As the first AI system to autonomously discover and validate a novel therapeutic candidate within an iterative lab-in-the-loop framework, Robin establishes a new paradigm for AI-driven scientific discovery.” ~ learn more

big ideas 📚

One step closer to green hydrogen. “The Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (KIMM) … has developed a technology that stably generates high photocurrent under natural sunlight to efficiently produce hydrogen.” More energy is better! ~ learn more

First electric aircraft lands at JFK. “Beta Technologies became the first U.S. company to land an all-electric aircraft carrying passengers at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport June 3, 2025.” ~ learn more

Investors pile into rocks to absorb carbon emissions. “Tech companies, banks and shipping groups are investing in a method of carbon dioxide removal that promises to speed up the chemical reaction between absorbent rocks and rainfall. The natural geological process is accelerated by spreading crushed silicate rock onto farm land to increase the surface area of the rock and its contact with CO₂, its promoters say. The alkaline materials can also be added to the ocean floor.” ~ learn more

thanks for reading!