P.S. You Should Know... | Issue #382
Puppies
my story 🚀
🐡 I spent this week in Orlando at “the world’s largest sportfishing tradeshow” getting an immersive introduction to the fishing industry. A few things that I thought were cool: truck-trailer sized fish tanks for demonstrating baits, a tuna-carving sashimi station, and a brand (clearly for cool kids) that offered haircuts & tattoos in their booth during a happy hour. This week’s newsletter is brought to you from the Orlando airport, where I’ve spent the last couple days waiting to fly home. I’d like to share a non-exhaustive list of things I am grateful for during this experience: child-free travel, easy last-minute hotel booking and uber rides, an omnivorous allergy-free diet, and good health!
fun facts 🙌
Steak knife history: never a dull moment. “How sharp knives disappeared from the dining room table, only to return, centuries later, in steak knife form. Kings, cardinals, and factories are involved.” ~ learn more
The International Entrepreneur Rule. This 2017 law allows a visa for up to 30 months (“parole”) for foreign entrepreneurs on a case-by-case basis. “Since FY 2021, USCIS has received only 94 applications,” and approved only 26. This whole program feels a huge waste of government time and money. I’d like to see us recruiting entrepreneurial immigrants instead — let’s play offense! Also, I recommend thoroughly ignoring all the political claims and posturing in this article (including its fraudulent title). ~ learn more
Computer, find us some metal. Silicon Valley firm KoBold uses big data and machine learning to search for metals to mine. “On Thursday, their company, KoBold Metals, informed its business partners that their find is likely the largest copper discovery in more than a decade. According to their estimates, reviewed by The New York Times, the mine would produce at least 300,000 tons of copper a year once fully operational. That corresponds to a value of billions of dollars a year, for decades.” ~ learn more
oh, chicago 🏆
Famous Wrigley Field rooftops will be town down. “City Council on Wednesday approved the rezoning of three iconic properties on Sheffield Avenue — including the Eamus Catuli and Torco buildings — to make way for a single 29-unit apartment building.” The beginning of the end was the 2015 installation of the massive video scoreboard that blocked the view from the rooftops. ~ learn more
tech, startups, internet ⚡
Managing AI employees. Lattice is a platform for managing employees. Today, they “became the first company to give digital workers official employee records in Lattice. This marks a huge moment in the evolution of A1 technology and of the workplace.” This is a stunt, I assume, yet an entertaining one! ~ learn more
Do software companies want authentic reviews? A new startup called Noble believes they do. The tool uses a company’s customer database to help prospects get real product feedback from users who they already know. ~ learn more
Startup makes butter from CO2 and water. “They ultimately developed a process that involves taking carbon dioxide from the air and hydrogen from water, heating them up, and oxidizing them to trigger the separation of fatty acids and then the formulation of fat. The result is real fat molecules like the ones we get from milk, cheese, beef, and vegetable oils.” ~ learn more
better doing 🎯
Encouraging mingling at a party. “Recently a friend and I thew a little party, and wanted to layer on a format or gimmick that would get help people mix and mingle between groups more easily.” ~ learn more
Don’t put this off. “When you first become a parent, your whole life gets turned upside down. As you scramble to manage and handle all the things now on your plate, you sometimes say to yourself: When they’re a little older, this will calm down. As soon as we get through [insert phase], everything will go back to normal.” ~ learn more
to your health ⚕
Don’t let the man tell you how to sleep. “If you look to scientific academies for answers about how much you should sleep, you are assuming you are the average person, in spite of all evidence to the contrary. People who say “everyone ought to get 8 hours of sleep” are assuming that everyone is the average person, in spite of the fact that that is obviously not true.” ~ learn more
retail therapy 💸
Warehouse injuries. Senator Bernie Sanders published an “interim report” this Prime Day, based on Amazon warehouse injury data from the week of Prime Day 2019. The report claims the company experienced 45 injuries per 100 workers. That’s a shockingly high rate, right? I clicked through to the actual report to learn more about the types of injuries. That never made it into the report, possibly because it doesn’t bolster the senator’s argument. However, there are several anecdotes that surely don’t make the company look great. The Senator recommends the company to pay more, set slower delivery expectations for customers, and decrease worker productivity demands. ~ learn more
Nike sues The Shoe Surgeon for $60 million. “Within the lawsuit, Nike lawyers explicitly state that this case is not concerning the one-of-one customisations, but rather Ciambrone's 'attempts to build an entire multifaceted retail empire through their unauthorized use of Nike’s trademark rights and the associated goodwill that Nike spent decades accruing.’” ~ learn more
under the microscope 🔬
How a microbe and a prebiotic work together against food allergies. “In a new study from the lab of Prof. Cathryn Nagler in the UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, researchers found that treatment with a concoction of A. caccae and the prebiotic lactulose increased butyrate levels in the intestinal tracts of mice, stifling allergic responses to cow’s milk.” ~ learn more
The effects of intense lifestyle changes on early Alzheimer’s. “After 20 weeks, what we found for the first time in a randomized controlled trial is that an intensive lifestyle intervention, without drugs, significantly improved cognition and function in many patients who had mild cognitive impairment or early-stage AD.” … “Not every patient in our study got better, but our primary outcome was the same measures of cognition and function that are used in FDA drug trials.” ~ learn more
thoughts of food 🍔
The grocery economics of GLP-1. “Lean protein “emerged as the biggest winner” on supermarket shelves among shoppers who have taken popular new weight-loss drugs, according to a report using consumer surveys.” ~ learn more
Whole Foods offering “surprise bags” of discounted food. It’s nice to see an idea like this gaining traction in the market. “More than 450 Whole Foods Market stores are now offering "surprise bags" of surplus food on the Too Good To Go app.” ~ learn more
on the blockchain ⛓
Skin in the game or stfu. “The point is markets are a better source of truth than both a group of pre-selected elites (old media) and profit seeking algorithms (new media) and will play a key role in bringing more truth to the world in the coming years.” ~ learn more