P.S. You Should Know... | Issue #455
Retraining my instincts
my story 🚀
🤖 I was driving behind a Waymo the other day. It was taking a right turn at an intersection with a short green light cycle. In the middle of the turn it started slowing down for no apparent reason. I was annoyed because I didn’t want to get stuck waiting for another light cycle. I was about to honk at it when I realized that honking at a robotaxi isn’t going to get me anywhere. How are we supposed to express displeasure at the robots who share the road with us? Alas, I guess this is one of the downsides of the future! Driverless cars are still a great trade, in my humble opinion.
👋 I hope that you enjoy this week’s newsletter. Each week, I’m honored that you invite me into your inbox. If it’s been a while since we’ve connected, please do drop me a line as I’d love to hear from you! Happy holidays to all!
fun facts 🙌
I skied down Mount Everest (world first, no oxygen). Andrzej Bargiel “becomes the first person to climb Mount Everest and ski back to Everest Base Camp without supplementary oxygen.” After nearly 16 hours in the “death zone,” he made history on skis. ~ learn more
The rapid decline of horses. “Then, between 1930 and 1950, 90% of the horses in the US disappeared.” The shift from horse power to engine power was abrupt, despite two centuries of gradual technological advancements. ~ learn more
Monogamy: Humans vs. meerkats and beavers. Humans are surprisingly monogamous, ranking “between meerkats and beavers” in a study measuring full sibling rates to infer mating patterns. The research uses genetic data to place humans in a “premier league of monogamy” among mammals. ~ learn more
oh, chicago 🏆
Predicting murder without a totalitarian state. Chicago’s data-driven approach suggests “murder can be predicted and we can prevent it from happening.” Recent records forecasted shooting risks accurately, with a shocking 13% of high-risk individuals getting shot within 18 months. ~ learn more
tech, startups, internet ⚡
Al Goldstein tells the Pangea Properties story. This comes from a fantastic entrepreneur who saw opportunity where everyone else saw risk. “In late 2008 (a full month after I officially left Enova), while banks were imploding, we started buying foreclosed apartments on Chicago’s South and West Sides that no one else wanted. … This is the unglamorous, rejection-filled, wildly rewarding story of Pangea Properties—from boarding up windows ourselves to building a 500+ employee team, a winding road to exit, and everything in between.” ~ learn more
The $1B Al company training ChatGPT, Claude & Gemini. Surge AI, with fewer than 100 employees, “surpassed $1 billion in revenue last year, completely bootstrapped—the fastest company in history to reach this milestone.” This is an opinionated interview with Edwin Chen, its founder. ~ learn more
Hack reveals the phone farm flooding TikTok with Al influencers. “The hacker also shared a list with me of more than 400 TikTok accounts Doublespeed operates. Around 200 of those were actively promoting products on TikTok, mostly without disclosing the posts were ads, according to 404 Media’s review of them.” ~ learn more
Has the cost of building software just dropped 90%? “AI Agents … massively reduce the labour cost of developing software.” This transformative shift is due to agentic coding, which is streamlining processes that previously required entire teams, reducing project timelines from months to weeks. ~ learn more
better doing 🎯
The trap of pure incentive thinking. “When you start seeing every human interaction as a game-theoretic puzzle, you lose access to information that matters.” By reducing relationships to mere transactions, you risk losing out on genuine partnerships and trust. ~ learn more
Most problems are people problems. “Most technical problems are really people problems.” In tackling technical debt, it’s often the human issues—such as outdated habits, unclear requirements, and unrealistic deadlines—that are the root causes. ~ learn more
to your health ⚕
To get more effective drugs, we need more human trials. “Even if approval requirements were relaxed, the underlying need would remain: we still have to learn, through testing in humans, which treatments are effective and which are not.” Clinical development is a costly stage in drug discovery but crucial for determining a therapy’s real-world efficacy. Focusing more on this phase could unlock significant potential in drug innovation. ~ learn more
retail therapy 💸
Cannabis reclassified to Schedule III. Weed will now be much less illegal nationally, but with plenty of gray area and contradictory laws. “Trump ordered agencies to begin the formal process of reclassifying cannabis as a drug with medical value and lower abuse potential.” ~ learn more
under the microscope 🔬
Meet targeted protein degraders. “Targeted Protein Degraders (TPDs) are a revolutionary class of drugs that hijack the cell’s natural waste disposal system to eliminate disease-causing proteins, rather than just inhibiting them.” By leveraging the cell’s own machinery, TPDs promise potent new therapies for cancers and other hard-to-treat disorders. ~ learn more
big ideas 📚
South Korea’s population disaster . Holy cow! “If current fertility rates persist, every hundred South Koreans today will have only six great-grandchildren between them.” This dire projection highlights the country’s profound demographic crisis, driven by extreme career-motherhood conflicts and an intensive parenting culture. ~ learn more
on the blockchain ⛓
Crypto scandal in Argentina. “Javier Milei involved the presidential investiture to allow the alleged $LIBRA scam to effectively take place: without his tweet, $LIBRA would not have had the volume of purchases it did.” The congressional report paints a picture of deliberate misconduct tied to Argentina’s president. ~ learn more
Heating homes with crypto. “I’ve seen bitcoin rigs running quietly in attics, with the heat they generate rerouted through the home’s ventilation system to offset heating costs.” ~ learn more