P.S. You Should Know... | Issue #452

Thanksgiving Travels

my story 🚀

🗽 Greetings from New York, where we have been fortunate to spend Thanksgiving week with our East Coast family.

fun facts 🙌

Hillbilly Elegy, with a twist. J.D. Vance’s book became an unlikely smuggling vehicle. “Siebert soaked the book’s pages with narcotics and mailed it to Grafton Correctional Institution disguised as an Amazon shipment.” ~ learn more

The spaghetti harvest of 1957. The BBC convinced viewers that spaghetti grew on trees. Richard Dimbleby narrated the faux report, and “an estimated eight million people watched the original program,” many fooled by the whimsical claim. ~ learn more

After-dinner snuff in 1964. I knew nothing of this curiosity before watching this video about snuff. Now I know that there’s a communal snuffbox kept at the door of the House of Commons in the UK Parliament. ~ learn more

tech, startups, internet ⚡

The age of research. AI pioneer Ilya Sutskever says, “We are squarely an age of research company.” In this interview with Dwarkesh, he discusses the shift from scaling to focused AI investigation and the nuances of effectively harnessing pre-trained models. ~ learn more

Self-driving cars are finally here. “Fully autonomous driving is no longer a question of if, but when. And that ‘when’ is now upon us.” This article explores the dramatic shift towards self-driving technology and its implications for transportation. ~ learn more

The battle over open banking. Chase wants to charge fintechs for accessing Open Banking data. This move is part of a broader conflict over whether banks can monopolize and charge for all economic activities, despite not operating the payment methods. “Almost all discussions of it center on ‘data’, but it’s actually a fight about payments.” ~ learn more

Venture capital déjà vu. “AI has given venture capital a new way to repeat an old mistake: kingmaking. The pattern from 2021 is back: a category becomes ‘obvious,’ a top-tier firm anoints its winner, and everyone else acts like the decision is final.” Jaya Gupta highlights the ongoing cycle in the startup world. ~ learn more

better doing 🎯

Why aren’t smart people happier? “Across 50 years of data and 30,346 people, the folks who scored higher on the vocab test were a tiny bit less happy.” A deep dive into intelligence and happiness reveals a curious finding: being smarter doesn’t necessarily lead to a more joyful life. ~ learn more

Confidently wrong. “The gap between what they know and what they think they know is widest.” A study reveals that those who oppose scientific consensus often have lower objective knowledge but higher subjective confidence. ~ learn more

to your health ⚕

Dementia rates declining in older adults. The percentage of older US adults with dementia dropped from 11.6% in 2000 to 8.8% in 2012, which indicates a nearly 25% decrease. “If the rate of dementia in 2012 had been what it was in 2000, there would be well more than 1 million additional people with dementia.” ~ learn more

retail therapy 💸

The truth about delivery app tipping. Travis Kalanick argues, “Delivery app tipping isn’t about feedback mechanisms.. it’s a tool for maximizing price paid by consumers… eaters are economically irrational with tip.” This practice exploits human psychology to boost app revenues and gains a competitive edge. ~ learn more

The norm of haul culture. “Consumers’ bedrooms have become the new changing rooms, and ‘haul culture’ has made excessive purchasing the norm.” Gen Zers and me are apparently guilty of buying multiple sizes with the intention of returning most. However, I have never bought clothes to take pics wearing them and then return them. At least, not yet. ~ learn more

under the microscope 🔬

A trigger for lupus confirmed. Researchers have pinpointed the Epstein-Barr virus as a direct cause of lupus. “For the first time, we have a clear biological explanation of how Epstein-Barr virus can lead to lupus,” says Dr. William Robinson of Stanford Medicine. ~ learn more

Nanoparticle vaccine breakthrough. Researchers at MIT have developed a new lipid nanoparticle that “significantly enhances the potency of mRNA vaccines,” making them 100 times more effective in mice and reducing dosage requirements. This could make vaccines cheaper and reduce liver toxicity. ~ learn more

thoughts of food 🍔

We want plates. A great blog showcasing the bizarre trend of restaurants serving food in unconventional vessels, from gravy in a beer can to soup in a shoe. ~ learn more

teaching the kids 👩‍🏫

Where do the children play? “In physical space, Western children are almost comically sheltered. But in digital space, they’re entirely beyond our command; and increasingly, that’s where children spend most of their time.” This article makes the point that our parental hovering has blocked off outdoor kids-only space, so children find autonomy online away from adult supervision. ~ learn more

big ideas 📚

What we find in the sewers. “The sewer is the conscience of the city. Everything there converges and confronts everything else.” This article starts with a history lesson to remind us of the complex sewer waste systems beneath our feet, which are rediscovered today for their potential in resource recovery and epidemiology. ~ learn more

Shooting things to space. Longshot Space has an audacious plan: build a 6-mile-long space cannon to shoot objects into low Earth orbit. “If you want to send a 1,000 lb object into space at Mach 23, put 3,000 lb of packing material around it that you don’t mind when it simply ablates into vapor,” he explains. ~ learn more

on the blockchain ⛓

Kalshi’s bold move. Kalshi, a prediction-market platform, is gearing up to compete directly with the U.S. stock market. “This is starting to look like a trillion-dollar market,” says CEO Tarek Mansour. ~ learn more

thanks for reading!