P.S. You Should Know... | Issue #316
Risks and opportunities abound
my story 🚀
fun facts 🙌
Some diamonds truly are rare. So rare that they get their own names, like the 105 carat Koh-i-Noor diamond. ~ learn more
The truth about the calendar mishap. Why aren’t SEPTember, OCTOber, NOVember, and DECember the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th months of the year? “The normal version of this story you'll hear is that this is all Julius Caesar's fault for 'adding' July, but that's not quite right, a bit of folk history. July and August existed long before, they were called Quintilis (fifth) and Sextilis (sixth).” ~ learn more
Throbbing pain doesn’t follow your heartbeat rhythm. “Contrary to what you might think, throbbing pain is not beating to your heartbeat or pulse. … Researchers further analyzed the simultaneous recordings and found that the two rhythms weren’t synchronous in any way.” ~ learn more
tech, startups, internet ⚡
On the value of small angel checks. “Taking small checks from angel investors often leads to introductions to other investors, resulting in a multiplicative effect, or the "money multiplier." These angel investors often work in the tech industry and are keen to help startups grow. As a result, they are an excellent resource for solving problems and making introductions to other companies.” ~ learn more
Maker risks. Risk is all around us. Indie hacker Ryan Kulp: “advising what “not” to do, however, is still useful. so in this post i’m sharing a few tech entrepreneur strategies to avoid, accompanied by mitigation tactics in case you’re already knee-deep in their execution.” ~ learn more
The AI communication paradox. AI-enhanced replies change the game. People rate these messages higher, and the conversation partners as “closer and more cooperative.” But that breaks down as soon as people suspect an algorithm was invovled in the response. So AI helps, unless you get caught using it. ~ learn more
Don’t expect AI to take work away from lawyers. I read this opinion about a week ago and I think it holds up nicely, at least in the first phase of the machine takeover. “AI will allow us to cover the 1,000 most likely edge cases in the first draft and then the parties will argue over it for weeks.” ~ learn more
better doing 🎯
Leverage accelerates everything. “The reason that supply chain issues were so bad is that leveraged organizations needed to figure out how to extract every penny from their cash flow, and having less inventory on hand seemed like a smart way to eke out a bit more leverage.” ~ learn more
to your health ⚕
GPT is not a doctor. This is the bear case, of course, and I think the optimists aren’t completely out on a limb. “STAT News reports that the research, while not yet fully released and still pending peer review, found that nearly 60 percent of ChatGPT's answers to actual medical situations either disagreed with a human expert's opinion or weren't relevant enough to be helpful. Not exactly an A+.” ~ learn more
under the microscope 🔬
Peanut and other allergies may be treatable. The liver is regularly bombarded with foreign substances, and is home to antigen-presenting cells that train the immune system to tolerate foreign proteins rather than attacking them. Delivering carefully selected protein fragments to the liver helps put a damper on future allergic reactions. Researchers showed that in 2021. In this most recent study, researchers made two upgrades. First, they used an mRNA payload that coded for the protein instead of the actual protein fragment, improving the potential of the platform. Second, they added a sugar molecule to the nanoparticle that binds to antigen-presenting cells to improve the targeting. Mice that were treated showed milder symptoms compared to two other groups. ~ learn more
The psychedelic DMT causes the brain to become hyperconnected. “Researchers gave 20 healthy subjects potent, intravenous doses of the psychedelic DMT and observed their brains with both functional MRI and electroencephalography. They witnessed the brain's business-like hierarchical organization collapse, replaced with a state of global hyperconnectivity. Brain entropy, defined as "the number of neural states a given brain can access," skyrocketed.” ~ learn more
How do birds migrate such long distances? With the aid of proteins called cryptochromes that work as blue-light-sensitive photoreceptors. It gets more complicated from there. “In a way, it appears that bird's eyes can "see" magnetic fields, giving a completely new meaning to the phrase "from a bird's eye view." ~ learn more
thoughts of food 🍔
Not clickbait: Could ice cream possibly be good for you? I almost didn’t read this because the title is so outlandish, but I’m glad I did. There’s some delightful research over the years finding benefits from ice cream, disowned by the researchers themselves. There’s a subtext here that I think has broader application to science: “You don’t want to overstate stuff that you know probably has a high likelihood of bias, but you also don’t want to do the opposite and seem to be burying it, either.” ~ learn more
big ideas 📚
We must be willing to consider what might at first seem absurd and unworkable. “A recent paper proposes the deployment of volcanic geothermal energy from the Yellowstone Caldera Supervolcano, using a completely new copper-based engineering approach.” This qualifies as a big idea. An accordingly some commenters handily dismiss it. ~ learn more
profiles of people 🚶
Big Shot, a podcast celebrating Jewish entrepreneurs. Brought to you by Harley Finkelstein (President of Shopify) and David Segal (Founder of David’s Tea). Their first interview is with Charles Bronfman who brought baseball to Canada and founded the nonprofit Birthright. ~ learn more