The promise of indoor farming is an attractive one: super-efficient land and water usage + hyper-local food. Sadly, most companies that have tried it have failed, including Chicago’s FarmedHere. Fast Company profiles Plenty, which is taking a run at a sustainable business model for indoor farming. | learn more
The Human Genome Project was a huge win for science. It’s outcome: we are now able to read our DNA. Next up on the docket is writing our DNA. Dr. Jef Boeke is the director of the Institute for Systems Genetics at New York University. He expects scientists will be able to create artificial human DNA within 4-5 years. What happens after that? | learn more
Everyone knows that there’s a placebo effect in blind studies, where pills without active drugs still cause patients to feel better. Studies now find that this is true even if the patient knows the pill is a placebo. | learn more
Some years back, someone made a graphic showing how each Craigslist category spawned today’s successful vertical marketplaces. In that sense, Excel might be the next Craigslist. “Need to calculate? Excel. How about a task list? Excel. How about a lightweight CRM to manage customers? Financial model? Waterfall chart for project management? Simple dashboarding/charting tool? Data exchange format between a supplier and a buyer? Light ETL tool for moving data around…
First came search engines. Then, came the profession of optimizing content for ranking in search engines. Then came the endless cat and mouse game of search engines updating algorithms, and optimizers updating content. This post on Hubspot Research discusses what they call Topic Clusters, which may be the latest basis for ranking algorithms. | learn more
Chicago’s very own Ezra Galston writes in TechCrunch analyzing managed marketplaces, with deep dives into OpenDoor, TheRealReal, Beepi and others. Ezra’s articles are always worth the read. | learn more
The 2017 Global Drug Survey of almost 120,000 people asked participants what drugs they took and how often they needed emergency services. | learn more
Sarah Chrisman and her husband love the 19th century Victorian era so much, that they are basically living in it. Right now. In Washington state. Clothing, high-wheel tricycle, oil lamps, and all. | learn more
I almost didn’t know which of my “categories” this fell into, because there for sure isn’t a self-help section. Tim Ferris uses the term lifestyle design, so I’ll consider this a topical deep-dive into that process. First, I hate the title. I hate that this book is an example of him practicing what he preaches (half the book is links to apps/services) by selling information. But, I do love some…
Written by Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit. This book is heavy on research studies, diving into the topics of motivation, focus, and goal setting, among others. Of note was the section on teams, with highlights from Google’s People Operations team and the founding of Saturday Night Live. This is a must-read for anyone who’s on a mission to become more effective. (View on Amazon)