P.S. You Should Know... | Issue #350
Travel week
my story 🚀
✈️ I’m freshly back from a week of travel. In Savannah, I spent time with the Nutrisense leadership team forming plans for 2024. One key change for the coming year is that I’m no longer leading the marketing team, after helping to recruit my successor. I can’t believe my “interim” role lasted almost three years! I’m excited to remain involved to help the company march forward on its mission. I also stopped in Chicago to attended The Economic Club of Chicago’s dinner meeting with author and biographer Walter Isaacson. It was so great to visit with many old friends and make several new ones as well. If I saw you this week, thanks for helping to make my travels so delightful!
🕎 Happy Hannukah to all who are celebrating!
fun facts 🙌
World travel game. This is really hard, or I’m just really bad at it. “Name countries to travel from the Start Country to the End Country. Try to get there in the fewest guesses!” A new puzzle is released daily at midnight. There are local versions for the US and other countries as well. ~ learn more
How Qatar became the world’s go-to hostage negotiator. “Qatari officials compare their role to that held by Swiss diplomats. For decades, the Swiss have been involved in international hostage negotiations, but in today’s geopolitical landscape, the Qataris are in a more useful position.” ~ learn more
Minnesota is accepting submissions for a new flag. If they choose F59 I’ll probably avoid the state forever. ~ learn more
oh, chicago 🏆
Chicago Housing Authority’s empty “scattered-site” units. “In all, the CHA owns about 2,900 scattered-site residences dispersed through dozens of neighborhoods. But one out of every six of the homes is empty, and dozens of them have been unoccupied for years, records show.” ~ learn more
tech, startups, internet ⚡
The next frontier of materials science. “Two landmark publications came out today: one on the use of Google's Deep Mind to simulate millions of new possible materials, the other describes and autonomous self driving robotic laboratory to synthesize the materials prediction by DeepMinds simulations.” ~ learn more
The $445 million robot pizza revolution that wasn’t. “In June 2023, five years after the CNBC segment [on Jim Cramer’s show] almost to the day, Zume was liquidated. The company, which raised approximately $445 million in its lifetime, is one of Silicon Valley’s most embarrassing failures. Cause of death? Well, for one, too many ideas and not enough business.” ~ learn more
An interview with investor Brad Gerstner. This comes with a transcript, so it’s easy to skim and covers a lot of ground. “I had a theory. Technology companies are going to scale faster because of this thing called the Internet. The private markets and private capital will mature and be able to provide the capital they need to scale faster. And that there was a huge informational advantage from being in both. Right. That I could bring the value of that venture network to the public markets and the public markets to the venture investors. Because if you're bold enough in 2008 to think you're a venture brand that can break in against the Sequoias of the world.” ~ learn more
better doing 🎯
The Al Capone problem. “The Al Capone Problem is another specific example of this broader trend: if you try to understand Capone's imprisonment based only on the court ruling that put him away, you don't understand Capone's imprisonment.” ~ learn more
Failure story: my $500 million Mars Rover mistake. “The pulse was sent to the motor. As always, the result was immediate, but this time, alarmingly unfamiliar. The strip chart did not look like anything we had seen before. It did not even look like a broken motor. It was decidedly — something else. My mind raced for explanations and in what seemed like an instant, arrived at the most likely explanation.” ~ learn more
to your health ⚕
No one’s promising you can keep your doctor anymore. “Even before the pandemic accelerated a massive shift to virtual care, more than a quarter of Americans were seeing nurses and physician assistants at their health care visits, according to research published in The BMJ. The study also found that the percentage of visits handled by non-physicians nearly doubled between 2013 and 2019.” ~ learn more
retail therapy 💸
What happens when rich Russians can’t import G-Wagons from Germany? Click to see some fun charts. ~ learn more
under the microscope 🔬
Irrelevant ‘aha moment’ can change your world view. Take a worldview such as “people’s core qualities are fixed” and mix up the last word’s letters, like “iexfd”, and the reader will have a little ‘aha moment’ when they unscramble it, which also makes it more likely that they’ll internalize it. “These results demonstrate that artificially induced aha moments can make worldview beliefs seem truer, possibly because humans partially rely on feelings of insight to appraise an idea’s veracity.” ~ learn more
FDA says life-extension drug for dogs has a reasonable expectation of effectiveness. “The company hasn’t yet shown that its drug actually extends lifespan, but the FDA decision signals the agency’s confidence in Loyal’s approach, and the drug will soon be tested in a bigger trial.” ~ learn more
thoughts of food 🍔
Espresso tonic. I haven’t had the chance to try one of these, but a colleague did and liked it. “The combination of espresso and tonic water originated in Sweden in the early aughts, allegedly created by a barista at Koppi Roasters in 2007. It grew in popularity throughout Scandavia [sic], and eventually made its way abroad through barista competitions, like the World Barista Championship.” ~ learn more
big ideas 📚
The future of aviation. “Indeed, the greatest question facing the aviation industry today is: why does progress seem to be so difficult to achieve? Why have we seen regression on metrics like speed, altitude, and commercial flight times?” ~ learn more
profiles of people 🚶
Joshua Kushner. His firm, Thrive Capital, manages over $5 billion, up from $40 million when he started it. “Kushner's firm won over top Silicon Valley CEOs, from OpenAI to Instagram, in record time. Insiders detail how he paved a path outside his famous family.” ~ learn more