fun facts
Offspring of Italy’s last king sue state in battle to reclaim crown jewels.
“King Umberto II descendants take legal action over treasure kept in Bank of Italy deposit box for 76 years.” | learn more
fun facts
Nicolas Cage blew $150 million on a dinosaur skull, pygmy heads and 2 European castles.
“Despite his financial ruin, Cage doesn’t regret all of his purchases. “You have good investments and bad investments,” he says. “The good investments came from personal interest and my honest enjoyment of the history.” | learn more
fun facts
An octopus breeding program proposal.
“Octopuses are surprisingly intelligent, and reproduce at 1 year old. If we’d started a breeding program 50 years ago, we probably could’ve gotten them smarter than dolphins by now. A disappointing failure of the long-term mad science ecosystem.” | learn more
profiles of people
The unknown entrepreneur who built the great UPS.
The founder, “Jim [Casey] led UPS for fifty-five years. He continued as the Chief Executive Officer of UPS until 1962, when he handed over the reins at age seventy-four.” | learn more
on the blockchain
MetaFi: DeFi for the metaverse.
A really interesting read from Outlier Ventures: “We believe the next phase of growth in the evolution of DeFi will come not from better integration into the existing financial system, more regulation or real world assets and CeFi but instead […]
on the blockchain
Crypto theses for 2022.
I finally got around to reading the annual tome from Messari’s Ryan Selkis. It is an incredible snapshot of what’s going on in the ecosystem. He does not shy away from making predictions (and drilling into SEC Chair Gary Gensler. | learn […]
on the blockchain
An anatomy of Bitcoin price manipulation.
This gets detailed! “I show how price manipulation to liquidate traders is done in cryptocurrency markets. I point fingers at people.” | learn more
big ideas
Batteries and the new lithium gold rush.
This is a theme I’ve been following since last year. Most batteries, especially vehicle batteries, rely on Lithium. In the near-term, there isn’t enough supply. For reference, the spot price is up 5x YoY, and about 30% in the past […]
thoughts of food
The untold story of sushi in America.
True World Foods, the company established by Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, is responsible for bringing the taste for sushi, and the supply of fish, to America. | learn more
under the microscope
Book review: Life’s Edge.
“From the beginning we are introduced to a menagerie that perches in the gray area between alive and not-alive: creatures like tardigrades and nematodes that can reemerge from cryptobiosis with the touch of water, pythons whose basal metabolic rates can […]