oh, chicago
Illinois spent $14 million on now-mothballed projects.
In case you’re interested in even more evidence of how our state has made poor fiscal decisions in the past. | learn more
fun facts
Why cow meat is beef, not cow.
I remember chuckling at a restaurant in Europe when the waiter said the burger was made of cow. It sounded foreign to my ear. I hadn’t considered how it came to be that we refer to animal meats by unique […]
profiles of people
Brad Tusk advised Uber on political strategy and got paid in stock.
His usual $25k/month fee was paid in stock, and now estimated to be worth $100MM. Now he’s become a venture capitalist with an interesting approach to getting allocation in hot tech deals. | learn more
staying thirsty
Chicago and Israel partner on clean water technology.
It’s been a long time since I’ve talked about water. Well, let’s dive right back in. Being next to an abundant source of drinking water puts Chicago at a disadvantage for developing water technology. Israel is in the opposite position. […]
under the microscope
The story of the scientific papers that deny climate change.
“Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech University, worked with a team of researchers to look at the 38 papers published in peer-reviewed journals in the last decade that denied anthropogenic global warming. ‘Every single one of those analyses […]
under the microscope
Stem cells enable paralyzed human to regain upper body movement.
This has actually worked in 5 patients already! “AST-OPC1 cells are being developed at California-based Asterias Biotherapeutics using embryonic cells and converting them into cells normally found in the brain and spinal cord and whose function it is to support […]
better doing
Ownership is a defining trait of a leader.
Tomasz Tunguz bring us a nice short post highlighting two times when people took public ownership of their errors, and the positive consequences that ensued. One error was deadly serious – a friendly fire incident involving Navy Seals. | learn more
big ideas
Where will artificial general intelligence come from?
AI researcher Andrej Karpathy just took a job as Director of AI at Tesla. He made this great presentation analyzing the state of and prospects for AGI. | learn more
big ideas
Electricity-free cooling by beaming heat into space.
A team from Stanford has made progress on a system they call radiative sky cooling. Originally created in 2013, their latest real-world test … “found that throughout the summer the panels cut the power needed to cool the building by more […]
thoughts of food
Lab-grown seafood is coming.
A few weeks ago, I posted about lab-grown meat, and talked about how I’m really excited for it. Well, lab-grown seafood is also exciting, and entrepreneurs and scientists are making great progress there as well. | learn more