staying thirsty
The growing importance of desalination.
“A deep dive into the booming desalination industry.” This article updated some of my prior beliefs about the current/future costs of desalination (making freshwater from seawater). The promise is better than ever! ~ learn more
on the blockchain
Are you ready for the Finternet?
“The bottleneck lies in the very architecture of how value is transferred from one customer to another — as messages flowing between trusted intermediaries. Supplanting it with a superior design will be less like replacing carrier pigeons with telegrams, and […]
big ideas
The future of humanity’s energy no one knows about.
This video features Casey Handmer of Terraform Industries (disclosure: I’m invested!), who showcases the technology he developed for making natural gas from thin air. I never get tired of sharing content about this! ~ learn more
thoughts of food
Food deserts are not the cause of nutritional inequality?
“Counterfactual simulations show that exposing low-income households to the same products and prices available to high-income households reduces nutritional inequality by only about 10%, while the remaining 90% is driven by differences in demand.” ~ learn more
under the microscope
False-positive psychology.
“In this article, we show that despite the nominal endorsement of a maximum false-positive rate of 5% (i.e., p ≤ .05), current standards for disclosing details of data collection and analyses make false positives vastly more likely. In fact, it […]
better doing
Take ownership of your future self.
This feels related to the idea of using a secret identity or alter-ego to enhance your performance. “Your personality, skills, likes, and dislikes change over time — but that change isn’t out of your control. What can you do to […]
tech, startups, internet
Chain of Thoughtlessness.
This research makes the claim that using “Chain of Thought” prompting for LLMs does not generalize. I consider this evidence of LLM limitations (at least for now?). “This spotlights drawbacks of chain of thought, especially because of the sharp tradeoff […]
tech, startups, internet
Time sinks and money sinks.
“To dramatically oversimplify the internet, every product on the Internet is just one of two things…” I didn’t realize it at the start of my career, but one reason lots of other businesses didn’t make sense to me is because […]
oh, chicago
Chicago’s fake robbery visa scam.
Here’s a story about a, “ Chicago-based scheme that staged armed robberies so the purported victims could apply for U.S. immigration visas reserved for legitimate crime victims.” ~ learn more