big ideas

What Shenzhen knows.

What Shenzhen knows. “What Shenzhen knows’ is not written down in a book whose covers can be sliced off and ingested into a model, it’s a few million humidity stories stored in people, and a pace of knowledge-rich adjustment that […]

big ideas

Kinetic prompt injection.

Kinetic prompt injection. A presentation from the Black Hat USA conference demonstrates how one can jailbreak a robot with voice or visual input. “Prompt injection is usually treated as a text problem contained on a screen: a bad output, leaked […]

teaching the kids

Smart is dime a dozen.

Smart is dime a dozen. “I tell my kids the world doesn’t need nor give a smouldering turd about another smart person. Dime a dozen.” A blunt parent essay about growing up in a high-achievement bubble, and why he thinks […]

teaching the kids

A negative data point for Alpha School performance.

A negative data point for Alpha School performance. They created a charter school in Arizona called Unbound Academy using their 2-hour-per-day learning software. “Unbound Academy’s 2025-26 assessment scores underperformed not just its predicted targets above, but also the Arizona state […]

thoughts of food

48 out of 54 avocado oil-labeled products failed the test.

48 out of 54 avocado oil-labeled products failed the test. “Numerous studies have demonstrated that products marketed as avocado oil may be partially or wholly substituted with lower-cost vegetable oils or refined oils, resulting in mislabeling and economic adulteration.” This […]

under the microscope

A natural peptide that makes erections 56% harder.

A natural peptide that makes erections 56% harder. “Kisspeptin administration resulted in a significant increase in penile tumescence over the course of an 8-minute sexual video compared with placebo.” In a small double-blind crossover RCT (32 men with HSDD), the […]

under the microscope

All living things emit a faint glow.

All living things emit a faint glow. Seeing the mouse images was “a defining moment”, says Daniel Oblak. Living mice gave off a ghostly glow in a dark chamber, and when the team re-imaged them after death, “the glow had […]

to your health

Peter Attia on the popular peptides craze.

Peter Attia on the popular peptides craze. My summary: he’s not into it! Especially not BPC-157. Frankly he forced me to re-investigate and there’s less support for the mechanism of action than I had believed. “If you’re putting something into […]

better doing

Compression is prediction.

Compression is prediction. “Compression and LLMs are trying to solve the exact same problem…” Based on my read of this post, I am reasonable confident that I don’t really understand modern compression. ~ learn more

tech, startups, internet

Magic is in the multiples.

Magic is in the multiples. “why the ‘magic is in the multiples,’” is how Harvard Business School professors Ruback and Yudkoff summarize the whole game of buying small businesses (“Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition”) well. This episode is a tight refresher on […]