P.S. You Should Know... | Issue #439

No sign of Batman

my story 🚀

🦇 We took evening trip to the Congress Street bridge in hopes of seeing the bats wake up and emerge from their dark sleeping spots. There were so many people lined up—way more than we expected. We saw a few bats, but it was once again a bit of a let down. And then as we went to leave we realized that the people may have also been lined up awaiting a surprise evening parade.

Wishing everyone a Happy Labor Day and a great weekend!

fun facts 🙌

Whittle. A simple daily game where you whittle away letters from a phrase to make as many words as possible. What fun! ~ learn more

Tattoo equity calculator. “Calculate how much equity you can earn by getting a Browserbase tattoo.” ~ learn more

Disaster. Etymology, the origin of words, has always a had a place in my heart. Disaster comes from Italian disastro, literally “ill-starred”. Send me your favorites! ~ learn more

Historical tech tree. “The tech tree is an interactive visualization of technological history from 3 million years ago to today. A work in progress, it currently contains 1997 technologies and 2400 connections between them.” ~ learn more

tech, startups, internet ⚡

Robotaxis. “I maintain that robotaxis will first grow by replacing cabs, then by taking new use cases that were previously impossible... A key input is going to be the cost of each car: The cheaper they are, the cheaper the price tag can be, and the more competitive they will be. And Tesla’s cars will be nearly an order of magnitude cheaper than Waymo’s…” ~ learn more

Meanwhile, Waymo is coming to NYC. “The Alphabet autonomous vehicle subsidiary received its first permit from the New York Department of Transportation on Friday to start testing in New York City, Mayor Eric Adams announced Friday. The rollout is the city’s first autonomous vehicle testing launch.” ~ learn more

LLM daydreaming. Humans do something that LLMs don’t, and that might be exactly why we are creative and they are not. But, what if… “A reason may be that they lack some fundamental aspects of human thought: they are frozen, unable to learn from experience, and they have no “default mode” for background processing, a source of spontaneous human insight. To illustrate the issue, I describe such insights, and give an example concrete algorithm of a day-dreaming loop (DDL): a background process that continuously samples pairs of concepts from memory.” ~ learn more

Why Radiology AI didn't work and what comes next. “Over the last decade, dozens of radiology AI startups have come and gone. Zebra. Aidoc. Qure.ai. Nines. A few remain. Many others have pivoted, wound down, or been quietly folded into teleradiology platforms. So what happened? Why didn’t radiology, one of the most data-rich, image-heavy, and overburdened fields in medicine, embrace AI the way it seemed destined to? This essay is my attempt to answer that. It’s part postmortem, part roadmap.” ~ learn more

to your health ⚕

Determining optimal protein intake from data, not dogmatism. Peter Attia opines on protein, pushing back on the US Recommended Dietary Allowance. “After an onslaught of mainstream articles questioning protein needs, it’s time to question the questioning with a critical look a t existing data” ~ learn more

Calories in, calories out. “So, I did this for myself. I used measured my calorie intake, activity, etc., and I started predicting my weight changes with a shocking degree of accuracy. I tried and failed a few times at the outset, but eventually, after I got all my measurements dialed in, it all just worked, and I could even plan my days ahead of time and still get accurate weights predictions.” ~ learn more

Presidential fitness test is coming back. Remember the sit & reach? “The move is part of the administration’s goal to “restore urgency in improving the health of all Americans,” according to a statement released by the White House.” ~ learn more

under the microscope 🔬

World’s first ‘behavior transplant’ between species. Wild times! “In a breakthrough study, scientists have transferred a courtship behavior from one species to another, triggering the recipient to perform this completely foreign act as if it was its own.” ~ learn more

Fairness is what powerful can get away with. “We wanted to answer the question, is our individual idea of what is 'fair' just what we think we can get away with? So, we designed an experiment to test whether the behavior and beliefs of those with and without power changed depending on how easy or difficulty it is for those without power to act collectively.” ~ learn more

Wiggling magnetic micro-robot goes after kidney stones. “Once in the body, the filament can be imaged via ultrasound, and moved by an external robotic arm equipped with a rotating magnet at the end. As that magnet rotates, the filament likewise wiggles back and forth, making its way through the urinary tract by pushing off against its inner walls. Upon reaching the kidney stone, the filament is stopped. It can then be held in place for several days via an external magnetic patch that's adhered to the skin.” ~ learn more

big ideas 📚

$31M carbon removal pact pushes ocean alkalinity into the mainstream. I’m pleased to share some great news from a company I am fortunate to be a small investor in. “Ocean alkalinity enhancement boosts the ocean’s natural chemistry to capture CO2, converting it into stable bicarbonate that remains locked away for more than 10,000 years. It also helps buffer against ocean acidification in coastal areas. That can improve survival rates for oysters, lobsters, crabs, and other marine calcifiers, a benefit for both fisheries and natural ecosystems.” ~ learn more

Will we ever understand the brain? “We asked 12 leading neuroscientists to reflect on our understanding of the brain.” Don’t hold your breath. ~ learn more

Aliens wouldn't do that. “A good reason to not believe in UFOs is that only 13% of tenure-line faculty at major research institutions do. This post attempts to address other, less-good reasons people dismiss them.” ~ learn more

thanks for reading!