P.S. You Should Know... | Issue #432

Catalysts

my story 🚀

⛽ Have you ever taken a road trip in a Tesla? Many of the superchargers that I've been to are smack dab in the middle of nothing. And of course you have to hang out there for about 45 minutes. It was spitballing the idea of supercharger vending machines as a business model. The (very smart) friend I was talking with criticized the idea on the grounds that there's probably not much foot traffic, so no wonder there weren’t any businesses there already. My view was that it’s a matter of sequencing. Prior to the superchargers, there was just prairie. And now, the superchargers provide a captive audience of people with disposable income, free time, and possibly even bored children. What kind of products would you put into that vending machine?

🚲 You may already know I love riding my cargo e-bike. I brought it to Chicago for the summer and it’s been a great way to get around the suburbs with the kids. Unlike Austin, where I see other families riding on e-bikes regularly, they're pretty sparse in the Chicago suburbs. It makes me wonder whether there's something fundamentally different about the market here, or whether it's simply at a different stage of adoption. One thought is that winter makes it unattractive in Chicago, but summer climate in Austin is similarly adverse. Bike infrastructure may be another difference, though there are decent roads and trails in both. One factor I believe contributed to the recent growth in Austin is a small brick and mortar store in South Austin that has become a big volume mover for multiple brands. Maybe this sort of catalyst is what the Chicago suburbs are waiting for?

someone else's words 💬

“Craftsman is knowing how to work, Art is knowing when to stop” - Ben Affleck

fun facts 🙌

What is a sluice? “A sluice (/slus/ SLOOS) is a water channel containing a sluice gate, a type of lock to manage the water flow and water level. … Sluice gates are one of the most common hydraulic structures ^[6] used to control or measure the flow in open channels.” ~ learn more

Maybe the Fed can’t count? “At the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago's Money Museum, there's a big transparent cube on display. It's filled with tightly packed stacks of $1 bills, claiming to contain $1,000,000.” ~ learn more

Out West, beware the corner crossing. Imagine a spot where 4 plots of land meet in a corner. On two opposite sides are public federal land. Is it legal to step from one plot to the other? “Elk Mountain Ranch owner Fred Eshelman has stated in just-filed court papers why he believes four Missouri hunters who stepped from public land to public land, over a corner of his Carbon County property in 2021 are guilty of trespass and should pay him $7.75 million or more in damages.” ~ learn more and more

tech, startups, internet ⚡

Our Soham Parekh story. Soham is the engineer who recently became famous when the internet realized he was working multiple full-time in-person jobs at YC companies simultaneously. Here’s one startup founder’s play-by-play experience of the time they hired him. ~ learn more

Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists. “To my knowledge, this is the first case of a company developing a feature because ChatGPT is incorrectly telling people it exists.” ~ learn more

An interview with Roy Bahat of Bloomberg Beta. They are not a typical venture firm (for example, 5 funds of exactly the same size is uncommon), and Roy does not sound like a typical venture investor. ““How many founders have become millionaires after we invested? That’s the point of pride more than rate of return.” (Bahat pegs the number of millionaires his firm has helped to create at 93.)” ~ learn more

better doing 🎯

Does every group need a Serjeant-at-arms? “The formal role of a sergeant-at-arms in modern legislative bodies is to keep order during meetings, and, if necessary, forcibly remove any members or guests who are overly rowdy or disruptive.” ~ learn more

to your health ⚕

How GLP-1s are breaking life insurance. “This means the underwriter has just locked in a 30-year policy at preferred rates for someone who'll be high-risk again by year three. Insurers call this type of screw-up "mortality slippage." Mortality slippage means accidentally classifying someone as lower-risk than they actually are. It's ridiculously expensive. A single mistaken classification can cost insurers millions in unexpected payouts over the life of a policy.” ~ learn more

retail therapy 💸

That dropped call with customer service. They hung up on you on purpose. “To keep bosses happy, Tenumah explained, agents develop tricks. If your average handle time is creeping up, hanging up on someone can bring it back down. If you’ve escalated too many times that day, you might “accidentally” transfer a caller back into the queue.” ~ learn more

under the microscope 🔬

Kazakh scientists develop a way to block pollen allergies. “Scientists from the Kazakh National Agrarian Research University (KazNARU) have developed a monoclonal antibody that, when delivered into the nose, delivers a preemptive strike, blocking pollen from having any effect. While this novel treatment was developed to combat mugwort pollen – a leading hay fever allergen in Europe and Asia – the researchers say their blueprint can be used to target any species.” ~ learn more

big ideas 📚

Breaking the Fourier ceiling. An optimistic blog post about the future of physics with the help of AI. “Every engine spark, Wi-Fi packet, or solar flare adds ripples to the soup of electric (E) and magnetic (B) fields around our hardware. Inside a single 3 nm processor, roughly 6 × 10¹⁷ electrons race through the interconnects every millisecond—and each one feels those ripples. When even a tiny slice of that torrent goes astray, boards fail validation, chips miss power budgets, and satellites drop links.” ~ learn more

Molten salt reactor for nuclear power in Texas. “The construction of the Natura Resources MSR-1, which is a liquid-fueled molten salt reactor, would be the nation's first in about 30 years, Abilene Christian University wrote in a press release. Molten salt reactors are a type of nuclear reactor that use molten salt as fuel or a coolant.” ~ learn more

on the blockchain ⛓

The wisdom of crowds is in dispute. “A high-profile Polymarket contract asking whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would wear a suit before July closed with a final resolution of “No” on Tuesday evening, despite widespread media coverage and images suggesting otherwise.” I looked up photos, and whether it was a suit or not is not so clear-cut to me, so maybe this is just what grey area votes feel like! ~ learn more

thanks for reading!