P.S. You Should Know... | Issue #441

It's "bonus summer" season in Austin

my story 🚀

😎 After another year around the sun, I can honestly say that I’m just happy to be here! Especially since as the weather up north turns to fall, down in Austin it’s becoming what I like to call “Bonus Summer”. I plan to spend the all day at the pool tomorrow. Thanks for reading!

fun facts 🙌

List of biotech founders and drug hunters who were unlikely to succeed. And yet they did! ~ learn more

Padel leaving pickleball in the dust? Here’s a race I don’t have a horse in. “Padel, for the uninitiated, is like pickleball’s cooler, jet-setting cousin. It’s a racket sport played on a turf or carpet court about the size of doubles tennis — except here, the walls are fair game. Think tennis meets squash with a dash of pickleball thrown in. The ricochets alone make it a whole new ballgame. … Hotels have clocked the trend, and they’re racing to serve it up. From The Ritz-Carlton in Key Biscayne to Boar’s Head Resort in Charlottesville, Virginia, and The Houstonian Hotel, Club & Spa in Texas, padel is quickly becoming a baseline amenity.” ~ learn more

Microsoft launches Copilot AI function in Excel, but warns not to use it. I certainly am not yet ready to trust LLMs with my spreadsheets. “However, Microsoft specifically warns not to use it for "any task requiring accuracy or reproducibility," like numerical calculations. Microsoft also advises against using the feature for "financial reporting, legal documents, or other high-stakes scenarios," so basically most of the things people turn to Excel for.” ~ learn more

oh, chicago 🏆

The Chicago River’s first open-water swim coming soon. “Signs of the river’s better health include visits from “Chonkosaurus,” a giant snapping turtle who’s a global social media sensation. Chicago is so optimistic about the river’s improvements that the city plans in a few weeks to hold its first open water swim downtown in nearly a century. The tradition halted in the 1920s due to sewage polluting the water.” ~ learn more

tech, startups, internet ⚡

The dawn of the GBO (Growth Buyout). A slide deck from Slow ventures that’s worth reading quickly, as it’s already a year old. “Industries will be transformed by software via new players competing on the basis of proprietary technology/IP. For many founders building vertical-specific software, combining with a incumbent to compete is the best way to capture value from their innovation/product.” ~ learn more

Where are all the trillion dollar biotechs? Despite countless innovations, biotech is plagued by shrinking returns. The approval of new drugs per billion dollars in R&D has halved approximately every nine years since 1950. ~ learn more

Coding with LLMs in the summer of 2025. “Despite the large interest in agents that can code alone, right now you can maximize your impact as a software developer by using LLMs in an explicit way, staying in the loop. This will inevitably change in the future, as AI will improve, and eventually many coding tasks will be better served by AI alone: in this future, the human will decide the what & how, which is still crucial. But we are not yet there.” ~ learn more

better doing 🎯

A million tiny whispers. This is a good podcast interview with a very clever content pro I used to work with, Logan Freeman. “Logan shares tactical approaches for optimizing content for LLMs (large language models), including using FAQ schemas, focusing on off-page visibility, and thinking like a product marketer. They discuss how brand mentions are now more powerful than backlinks, why traditional SEO tools fall short for GEO, and how Logan approaches measurement when attribution is nearly impossible.” ~ learn more

to your health ⚕

The great American fitness boom. “Pilates is surging. Gyms are packed. Americans are working out more than ever.” ~ learn more

under the microscope 🔬

Ketosis-inducing supplement shows preliminary promise for neuroprotection. “Researchers have long debated whether the apparent benefits seen with ketosis are truly unique to this unusual metabolic state or instead are merely due to reduced energy intake and reductions in body fat. The present results offer compelling evidence that calorie restriction alone cannot fully account for improvements in inflammation and synaptic function, as BD-treated animals diverged substantially from both AL controls and PF controls in these areas.” ~ learn more

Evolution in action. “Found exclusively in Atlantic Ocean waters, the Mobula yarae now joins the reef manta (Mobula alfredi) and the giant oceanic manta (Mobula birostris) as the third formally-recognised manta ray species worldwide.” ~ learn more

teaching the kids 👩‍🏫

Goodbye gentle parenting. “The internet calls it “FAFO,” short for “F—Around and Find Out.” It’s a child-rearing style that elevates consequences over the “gentle parenting” methods that have helped shape Gen Z.” ~ learn more

big ideas 📚

A long-running autonomous ship without passengers. “Since 2020, DARPA has been pushing its No Manning Required Ship (NOMARS) program to create a new class of medium-size warship that can operate autonomously at sea for up to a year without human supervision or intervention.” ~ learn more

profiles of people 🚶

Tyler Cowen, the man who wants to know everything. “Whether they know it or not, many tech gurus now subscribe to an economic analysis that Cowen first proposed in the 2010s, when he argued that technology could rescue America from a “great stagnation” that had been keeping its growth rates depressed for almost half a century.” ~ learn more

thanks for reading!