P.S. You Should Know... | Issue #438

Yay free stuff

my story 🚀

🎉 Happy Birthday to my Amazing, Beautiful, Caring, Determined, Energetic, Fun, Generous, Honest, Inspiring, Joyful, Kind, Loving, Motivated, Nurturing, Outstanding, Patient, Quirky, Radiant, Strong, Talented, Unstoppable, Vibrant, Wise, X-traordinary, Young and Zestful wife, Kim!

🍖 The Chomps brand of meat sticks is a big hit with the half of our family that eats meat. They are a Chicago brand and came down to Austin to host one of those fancy expensive ‘brand activation’ events. We showed up in force. Thanks for all the free meat sticks and swag, Chomps!

🏀 Attention basketball fans! My friend Paul wrote a book about Moses Malone and it’s available for pre-order now. “Moses Malone overcame abject poverty in segregated Petersburg, Virginia, to become the first modern-day basketball player to jump directly from high school to the pros, paving a path for future stars such as Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett, and LeBron James to follow.”

fun facts 🙌

Right forearm tattoo (left side oriented toward the wrist)

5,000 year old frozen mummies have sweet tattoos. “Here, the authors use high-resolution, near-infrared data in conjunction with experimental evidence to re-examine the tools and techniques employed in Early Iron Age tattooing.” ~ learn more

Elephants have names for each other. “When the researchers played a clip to an elephant of their friend or family member calling out their name, the animal reacted positively and “energetically” and moved towards the speaker, the researchers said. But the same elephant was not really interested when they played the names of others.” ~ learn more

Reviving a modular cargo bike design from the 1930s. “The Brilliant Kûter cargo bike design offered a swappable front end to carry everything from mail bags to milk cans.” You may remember that I’m into cargo bikes these days. ~ learn more

Owls in towels. We’ve been reading Panchatantra (an ancient Indian collection of interrelated animal fables) at bed time and the owls come up a lot. Did you know that they are blind during the day and eat other birds at night? This link is a bunch of adorable owl pics. “Wildlife rehabilitators often wrap owls in fabric so they can be weighed, treated, and fed. If not, the owls get in a flap.” ~ learn more

tech, startups, internet ⚡

Notion invited Wired reporter to vibe code on their code base. Anything to help get the free media impressions, I suppose! “I spent two days at Notion and saw an industry in upheaval. I also shipped some actual code.” ~ learn more

We’re in the Groupon Era of AI. Remember when Groupon exploded with a new business model spurring on countless competitors (including in China)? Tom Tunguz writes that AI feels eerily similar right now. The rapid adoption of AI mirrors Groupon's meteoric rise, driven by consumers eager to explore each new iteration. But as the novelty wears off, the key will be in converting fleeting attention into lasting value. ~ learn more

better doing 🎯

Anki is already dead. “Anki’s fatal flaw is that you think you are learning content, but you’re actually just memorizing rectangles." The article argues that static Anki cards aren't aligned with natural human learning processes and suggests dynamic methods using LLMs might enhance language learning experiences.” ~ learn more

Curing your AI 10x engineer imposter syndrome. I think the danger of adopting this writer’s point of view is that one stops looking around and eventually does miss the boat. “A few months ago I went through a bit of a mental slump. I've always been confident of my abilities as an engineer, but I couldn't help but feel like my skills were falling hopelessly behind as I scrolled places like LinkedIn and Twitter. If these sources were to be believed, engineering had moved on from the medieval practice of typing code into an editor. Real engineers were now 10-100x more productive than I was. I'm writing this hoping to help others who are feeling similar anxieties.” ~ learn more

to your health ⚕

‘Superagers’ seem to share this one key personality trait. “The new paper shows that the brains of superagers share a host of characteristics that may allow them to retain their cognitive function. And while there’s still much to understand about whether lifestyle choices play a role, researchers did observe one personality trait that all superagers seem to share: they’re sociable.” ~ learn more

retail therapy 💸

Selling on Amazon boosts your direct sales too. I like to read these “scientific” points about improving online performance. Often they’re based on thin data and contrived studies. But that’s the nature of online A/B testing anyway! This study provided evidence that Amazon doesn’t cannibalize. “Every 71 sales on an online marketplace generated one customer who switched to buying directly from the company website.” ~ learn more

under the microscope 🔬

Failures to understand how everyday objects work. “The results demonstrate that most people's conceptual understanding of this familiar, everyday object is sketchy and shallow, even for information that is frequently encountered and easily perceived.” ~ learn more

thoughts of food 🍔

David Protein’s cutthroat move. “A newly filed lawsuit accuses David Protein of executing a "coordinated scheme" to monopolize the wellness market by controlling EPG, a critical fat replacement ingredient. Allegedly, once their grip on EPG was secure post-acquisition, they cut off competitors, causing financial havoc.” ~ learn more

Starbucks wants to ditch canola oil. “In June, Starbucks Chief Executive Officer Brian Niccol pledged in a meeting with US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to further align the chain’s menu with the Trump administration’s health priorities, Kennedy said in a post on X.” ~ learn more

big ideas 📚

World Energy Investment 2025. Here’s a fantastic executive summary to catch you up on what’s happening with energy. “Ten years ago, investments in fossil fuel supply were 30% higher than those for electricity generation, grids and storage. Today, these positions are reversed. Investment in the electricity sector is set to reach USD 1.5 trillion in 2025, some 50% higher than the total amount being spent on bringing oil, natural gas and coal to market.” ~ learn more

The remarkable rise of ‘greenhushing’. This Economist article explains that whereas businesses used to parade around talking about how green they were without doing anything, things have changed. “Now they seem to be “greenhushing”—getting on with the job of decarbonisation, without making a fuss.” ~ learn more

thanks for reading!