P.S. You Should Know... | Issue #400

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my story 🚀

🏕️ We camped by the shores of Lake Travis last weekend, enjoying the perfect weather for spending time outdoors. After several camping trips in Texas over the past couple of years, I’ve come to the conclusion that the natural landscape is decidedly “prickly” 🌵. This time, I also noticed that cacti in the area tend to grow near trees. I guessed this was because of easier access to water siphoned from the trees’ root systems. A bit of research led me to believe their relationship is at least somewhat symbiotic. In the great give-and-take of life, we’re all just trying to make the best of our environments and coexist with our neighbors!

fun facts 🙌

The crooked forest of Poland. “Blending science fiction and ecological abnormality, a group of 400 trees in Poland’s Krzywy Las or “Crooked Forest,” are mysteriously bent. The trees strangely buckle out at 90 degrees and form an odd J-shape with a potbelly hovering just above the ground. The trees are also neatly organized, with all their crooks pointing northward.” ~ learn more

For every winner a loser: what is finance for? “But the assets of British banks ‘mostly consist of claims on other banks. Their liabilities are mainly obligations to other financial institutions. Lending to firms and individuals engaged in the production of goods and services – which most people would imagine was the principal business of a bank – amounts to about 3 per cent of that total.’” ~ learn more

Hilton’s bizarre 1967 plan for a space hotel. “Barron Hilton was an aviation enthusiast who could fly airplanes, gliders, helicopters and hot air balloons. He organized flying competitions and get-togethers with pilots and astronauts at his “Flying M” ranch in Nevada, which included an airfield. He has a gallery named after him at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum. Space was his next frontier: “I firmly believe that we are going to have Hiltons in outer space, perhaps even soon enough for me to officiate at the formal opening of the first,” he told attendees in Dallas.” ~ learn more

The ornate bird palaces of Ottoman-era Turkey. “An important element of Ottoman architecture in Turkey was the addition of birdhouses affixed to the outer walls of significant city structures, a safe space for regular avian guests to nest outside of mosques, inns, bridges, libraries, schools, and fountains. The birdhouses were not simple concrete structures, but rather elaborate feats of miniature architecture that ranged from one-story homes to multiple-story bird mansions.” ~ learn more

tech, startups, internet ⚡

Lessons from my first exit. After selling his small business for 2.4x earnings, this founder shares the lessons he’s learned. One of them: “Due diligence is unbounded, high-stress work” ~ learn more

AppLovin is coming in hot to the ad markets. They seem to have figured out a better method for targeting in-game ads to users, creating performance comparable to Meta ads in a new high-value channel with a differentiated audience. ~ learn more

better doing 🎯

I tried breathwork, guided by this video. I overheard breathing coach Nick Sweeney talking about using a breathing technique to fight off infection, so I edged my way into the conversation. The idea is to exhale all your breath and then hold for ~1.5 minutes, activating the sympathetic nervous system and your body’s stress response. That sounds both hard and a bit scary, and there’s more to it pre- and post (so don’t just sit there and try it now). Here’s the guided video Nick sent me. In favorable news, I’m not fighting an infection — just Texas Cedar Fever. ~ learn more

to your health ⚕

Your morning caffeine as a delayed-release pill the night before? I do not wake up spry and ready for action — never have. This product solves a (perceived) problem I have. However, I cringed a bit at the idea. But after a few days, if nothing else, I must admit this is innovative. “We've designed Zest to proactively release at the ideal time in the morning, with a sustained release of caffeine and other ingredients that work synergistically to reduce sleep inertia and improve morning alertness.” ~ learn more

Sleep health is getting interesting. Here’s an excellent newsletter from Out of Pocket Health, focusing on the convergence of clinical and consumer sleep. It’s where I learned about the Zest caffeine pills linked above. “Considering how massively underdiagnosed sleep issues are, I think making this screening more accessible is going to increase the prevalence of mild-moderate severity sleep issues and then create demand for follow-on services to deal with them.” ~ learn more

Cali sober: a world without alcohol. “The term Cali Sober can be traced back to a 2019 Vice article, by a writer who quit all drugs except marijuana and certain psychedelics when she moved from New York to California.” ~ learn more

under the microscope 🔬

Watch water form out of thin air. “For the first time ever, researchers have witnessed — in real time and at the molecular-scale — hydrogen and oxygen atoms merge to form tiny, nano-sized bubbles of water.” ~ learn more

When muscles work out, they help neurons to grow. “Surprisingly, the researchers also found that neurons respond not only to the biochemical signals of exercise but also to its physical impacts. The team observed that when neurons are repeatedly pulled back and forth, similarly to how muscles contract and expand during exercise, the neurons grow just as much as when they are exposed to a muscle’s myokines.” ~ learn more

teaching the kids 👩‍🏫

I guess we need to be even more wary of business school research. Remember the big ironic scandal about research into cheating being fabricated? It get’s worse. “Gino was accused of faking numbers in four published papers. Just days into her digging, Schroeder uncovered another paper that appeared to be affected—and it was one that she herself had helped write.” ~ learn more

big ideas 📚

Abolish the NIH (National Institutes of Health). This is compelling. “The NIH is a tyrannical, capricious, self-serving $50 billion a year Kafkaesque Leviathan ruled over by a clique of septuagenarians who couldn't care less for science or for scientists. The reason biomedical science advances one death at a time is because if you're not about to die the NIH will not give any money. It provides 7 times more funding to scientists 66 years old and older (literally retirement age) than to those 35 and younger. And it's getting worse every year.” ~ learn more

profiles of people 🚶

The Russian family that lived alone in the Siberian wilderness for 40 years. They were more than 150 miles from the nearest human settlement! “In 1978, Soviet geologists stumbled upon a family of five in the taiga. They had been cut off from almost all human contact since fleeing religious persecution in 1936” ~ learn more

staying thirsty 🚰

Is desalination everywhere realistic? “Earlier this week, I made the case that desalination will be able to fulfill most of our freshwater needs. But is this realistic? Has it been done before? Won’t it cause pollution? Can the economics be as good—or even better—than I described? This is what we’re going to explore today. And we’ll start with the country that’s the most advanced in this field.” ~ learn more

thanks for reading!