P.S. You Should Know... | Issue #415
New game
my story 🚀
🐓 Our household discovered a new game: 368chickens.com. No surprise, Kim has quickly vaulted into first place on the leaderboard. Try your hand and feel free to email me your high score for consideration.
fun facts 🙌
Hot tub of despair. “This stagnant brine pool at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico is so toxic it kills and embalms any crabs and amphipods that are unlucky enough to stumble into it.” ~ learn more
Science of microwave ovens. This is such a great explanation of this ubiquitous technology. “Where as a conventional oven heats indiscriminately, a microwave oven can reach below the surface, and concentrate its heat on certain ingredients. Which may be viewed as a "feature" when cooking molten chocolate cake, or a problem when reheating a breakfast sandwich...” ~ learn more
The world’s first code deployable biological computer. “Real neurons are cultivated inside a nutrient rich solution, supplying them with everything they need to be healthy. They grow across a silicon chip, which sends and receives electrical impulses into the neural structure.” ~ learn more
oh, chicago 🏆
This $830 million debt plan is Brandon Johnson’s parking meter deal. Detailed and scathing. Can’t wait for more from this author, Austin Berg. “How Chicago’s governance structure, political culture, and a sympathetic City Council helped an unpopular mayor sell out the city’s future.” ~ learn more
tech, startups, internet ⚡
Andrej Karpathy: How I use LLMs. This is excellent. “The example-driven, practical walkthrough of Large Language Models and their growing list of related features, as a new entry to my general audience series on LLMs. In this more practical followup, I take you through the many ways I use LLMs in my own life.” ~ learn more
Manus, a new AI agent. The demo looks promising! I’ve applied for early access and will report back if I get it. Interestingly this was promoted as “China’s second DeepSeek moment.” The founder, Yichao ‘Peak’ Ji, has a pretty crisp American accent and his github profile placed him in Boulder, Colorado for what seems to be his prior startup. I wonder if he was pushed or pulled back to China? ~ learn more
better doing 🎯
It should be good, not easy. “By eliminating all challenges from Nero’s path, she created what Dio describes as a person whose “behavior began to be absolutely insensate”—essentially, a monster who became one of history’s most notorious tyrants.” ~ learn more
The danger of overthinking. This is a machine learning paper about Large Reasoning Models dropping the ball by way of overthinking. Does this apply to humans too? “ Our analysis reveals that simple efforts to mitigate overthinking in agentic environments — such as selecting the solution with the lower overthinking score — can improve model performance by almost 30% while reducing computational costs by 43%.” ~ learn more
to your health ⚕
The wellness forecast. “The wellness industry is at an inflection point: More empowered than ever, consumers are seeking greater control over their well-being. At the same time, the gap between economic growth and health outcomes is widening. … Here’s where we see an opportunity for founders and investors to create lasting impact.” ~ learn more
Is health-tech entering its ‘influencer’ era? “Let’s be real: most companies compete with Instagram and TikTok to engage patients in their solution, which can be a losing battle. So if you can’t beat ‘em, why not join ‘em? Of all the ways to get the word out these days, I’m seeing more interest in working with influencers. Companies in digital health are experiencing huge brand lifts because of these relationships.” ~ learn more
retail therapy 💸
My dad’s an influencer. Exactly how many TikTokers can start their sales videos with “my dad is the highest paid nutritionist in…” ~ learn more
under the microscope 🔬
Migraine is more than a headache. From this article I learned that the headaches associated with migraines are just one of a slew of symptoms that occur as part of a cycle. “Drugs that can prevent or relieve migraine attacks are only effective for some people. Research is starting to untangle the reasons why.” ~ learn more
Gene therapy surgery restores some vision to legally blind children. “Scientists in the UK have successfully used gene therapy to restore some vision to legally blind children with an inherited retinal condition. All 11 children in the clinical trial saw improvements within weeks of a single surgical treatment.” ~ learn more
big ideas 📚
Trapping carbon in cheap rocks. It’s interesting that this work comes from Stanford, which is host to Professor Mark Jacobson (not mentioned here), profound hater of carbon capture as a climate solution. True diversity of opinions over there! “Stanford University chemists have developed a practical, low-cost way to permanently remove atmospheric carbon dioxide, the main driver of global warming and climate change. The new process uses heat to transform common minerals into materials that spontaneously pull carbon from the atmosphere and permanently sequester it. These reactive materials can be produced in conventional kilns, like those used to make cement.” ~ learn more
profiles of people 🚶
Palmer Luckey, American Vulcan. This is a long read about the founder of defense tech contractor Anduril, and of VR company Oculus before that. I suspect you’ll keep hearing about this guy for decades to come, so this is a good time to read up on his story. And what a story it is! This is a decidedly uncritical article, with a lot of history-lessons-as-context, and I think it’s a great read. “In Luckey’s phrase, the mission of Anduril is to serve as the Western world’s gun store, turning America and its allies into “prickly porcupines so that no one wants to step on them.” ~ learn more
The Unusual Suspects. Malcolm Gladwell and Kenya Barris teamed up on this 8-episode podcast on Audible with some very interesting people. What I really want to share most is Episode 7, the first interview I’ve ever heard with Dr. Dre. ~ learn more