P.S. You Should Know... | Issue #488

Don't feed the ducks bread

my story 🚀

🦆 I grew up feeding our local ducks bread and only now, thanks to this sign, have I learned that it’s not good for them.

fun facts 🙌

Ancestor of the pickup truck. I didn’t know that this was a truck before it was a rock band. “The REO Speed Wagon (alternatively Reo Speedwagon) was a light motor truck model manufactured by REO Motor Car Company. It is an ancestor of the pickup truck.” It debuted in 1915 and kept going through at least 1953, showing up as everything from delivery trucks to hearses. ~ learn more

Castle Map. “Castlemap is a free interactive map of 5,793 of the world’s greatest castles, fortresses and palaces across 138 countries.” Click any point for a photo and quick facts, and if your favorite fortress is missing, you can get it in by improving its Wikidata entry. ~ learn more

The science of using drugs and not dying. “If you can, do drugs with other people, and do them in a place where you feel safe.” It’s a practical harm reduction guide: assume people will use, then focus on the small choices that keep them alive. ~ learn more

How elevators push your buttons. “It turns out these fancy kiosks are in general worse for wait times compared to the traditional good ol’ up and down buttons.” The reason is flexibility: “RSR also re-optimizes every 5 seconds,” but kiosks lock you into the assigned car even if the world changes. ~ learn more

tech, startups, internet ⚡

How to tell the market you’re about to spend a lot of money. “Tesla is entering a much broader and more capital-intensive growth phase.” Cern Basher’s thread frames Elon’s core point as a shift from demand constraints to production constraints across cars, robotaxi, robots, chips, and electricity. ~ learn more

Who’s afraid of Chinese models?. “What this means is that tokens are not a commodity.” Ben Thompson argues the thing that becomes fungible is the output, not the raw token count, so cost structure and token efficiency end up mattering more than headline prices. ~ learn more

Five tenets of cult brands. “First is doctrine. Having identity before features, what is the sacred text that everybody abides by?” Will H. Mayer breaks down the full checklist: doctrine, ritual, symbols and language, a charismatic leader, and an enemy. ~ learn more

retail therapy 💸

Lawmakers make weird laws. New Jersey just banned “surveillance pricing” on groceries and other necessities. Here’s the boogeyman: grocery stores are going to charge you more because of data they have about you. So, not only are the shelf price labels going to change as you or I walk past them (lets hope we’re not walking together), but by the time we get to the register the scanner will know that you and I are supposed to pay a different price? And of course I won’t notice so I would never just shop at … a different store. Congratulations to all the lawmakers patting themselves on the back for saving consumers from this imaginary evil. ~ learn more

The genius tax collection trick by Taiwan. Taiwan turns every receipt into a bimonthly lottery ticket so customers demand receipts and businesses can’t hide sales. It also gives the people a little taste of gambling in a country where it’s illegal. ~ learn more

under the microscope 🔬

A computer inside a thread. “Here a textile fibre computer that monolithically combines analogue sensing, digital memory, processing and communication in a mass of less than 5 g is presented.” They thermal-draw eight microdevices into a machine-washable, stretchable fibre, then get a garment to do distributed inference by networking one fibre computer per limb. ~ learn more

Reviewing slop papers at gunpoint. “I am basically reviewing slop papers at gunpoint. It feels like living in some weird level of hell.” Two reviewers describe a summer where 15 of 22 submissions they saw had fabricated citations, fake author lists, or unmistakable LLM-generated writing. ~ learn more

thoughts of food 🍔

A dream begins with a ¥1 ice cream. “As of Q3’24, Mixue operates more than 45,000 stores globally (only 20 being self-owned). This makes it the largest food chain worldwide by store count.” ~ learn more

CheapFoodMap - Find meals under $10 across the US. “Cheap eats under $10, all over the map. Tap a pin.” A simple little site that does exactly what it says: shows cheap food spots near you on a map. Proof that you can just build things! ~ learn more

thanks for reading!