P.S. You Should Know... | Issue #457

Journey to the snow

my story 🚀

Nothing like a tiny snowman after finding a lucky place to sled

🌬️ As we drove through West Texas we encountered a stretch of road where we felt utterly surrounded by wind turbines. ChatGPT research led me to learn about Sweetwater Wind Farm and Roscoe Wind Farm, which together had over 1,000 turbines in the immediate area. Then I found this interesting 2007 article: “The wind project is largely due to the vision of a one-armed, 65-year-old cotton farmer named Cliff Etheredge.” Also I found this handy U.S. Wind Turbine Database.

fun facts 🙌

What an unprocessed photo looks like. “Far from being an ‘unedited’ photo: there’s a huge amount of math that’s gone into making an image that nicely represents what the subject looks like in person.” This deep dive into camera sensor data shows the intricate steps required just to approach what our eyes perceive naturally. ~ learn more

Growing up in China’s “404 Not Found”. This secret Chinese nuclear city called 404 wasn’t on any map. Built in the Gobi Desert in 1958, it housed elite scientists and workers focused on atomic bomb production. Life there was harsh but uniquely prestigious. ~ learn more

British Prison leaders worried about drone escapes. Inmates might be lifted out of prisons using drones capable of carrying the average British man, warns the president of the Prison Governors Association. "Logistically, the threat is all there now," he cautions, as organized crime gangs could leverage agricultural drones like the DJI’s Agras T100 to execute daring escapes. ~ learn more

Top UK comedy club bans audience members with botox. “In a drastic move, those with botox will be unable to see similar stars live at the London venues after stand-up acts shared concerns that audience members with frozen faces aren’t reacting to their jokes.” ~ learn more

tech, startups, internet ⚡

The Frontier in 2025. This is great! “How did the world change this year? Which results are speculative? Which are biggest, if true? We collected and scored 202 results. Filter by field, our best guess of the probability that they generalise, or their impact if they do.” ~ learn more

The world needs a better measure of manufacturing output than GDP. “the fundamental problem is that economics treats manufacturing as a flow (inputs, outputs, productivity per hour) when the strategic question is actually about stock. what capabilities exist? who holds them? are they regenerating or depleting?” ~ learn more

better doing 🎯

What’s going on here, with this human? “When I try to figure out what game I’m playing, I see that for the last 25 years I have been playing a game of strategy applied to people, a game where over and over I try to answer the question “what’s going on here, with this human?” In this essay, I make recommendations about candidate selection based on thousands of assessments I have made and my somewhat obsessive interest in the topic.” ~ learn more

to your health ⚕

Overuse of noise-cancelling headphones? “You have almost created this false environment by wearing those headphones of only listening to what you want to listen to.” Some audiologists are concerned that this could impact the brain’s ability to process complex sounds. ~ learn more

retail therapy 💸

Google Maps as market maker. The app is not just reflecting, but actively organizing urban demand, transforming restaurant survival “into a cumulative-advantage dynamic that looks remarkably similar to the way capital compounds in financial markets.” ~ learn more

When odds become absurd. “You’d need to play Powerball for roughly 5.6 million years to have a 50% chance of winning once.” This website shows two lotteries being played every second, making the astronomical odds of a jackpot win visible in real-time. ~ learn more

under the microscope 🔬

The power of surrogate endpoints. “Surrogate endpoints: measurable intermediate biological signals that reliably predict clinical benefit, such as biomarkers or imaging readouts.” By utilizing these proxies, clinical trials can be significantly expedited, decreasing costs and increasing efficiency in drug development. ~ learn more

The power of urolithin A. “This study is that critical first step and shows that urolithin A can safely enhance immune function in humans,” says Dr. Dominic Denk. Found in foods like pomegranates and walnuts, this compound rejuvenates immune cells, potentially broadening cancer treatment efficacy and slowing middle-age cellular decline. ~ learn more

big ideas 📚

You might soon believe in aliens. “Luckily, if you start investigating aliens today, you can be at just the right time to be part of the “early majority” – your friends will remember that you were talking about it just before it became popular, but after the New York Times published testimony from US Navy pilots that they’d seen objects doing things that no known human technology can do.” ~ learn more

thanks for reading!