under the microscope

How disorder toughens materials.

“In a new paper in PNAS Nexus, researchers … found that adding just the right amount of disorder to the structure of certain materials can make them more than twice as resistant to cracking.” ~ learn more

retail therapy

Beer distributors’ ‘total beverage’ power.

The booze market is both heavily regulated and fragmented by state, which makes for interesting market dynamics. “The middle tier is the crucible of the American bev-alc industry, and California, a frequent harbinger of its broader tectonic shifts. So it’s […]

to your health

What 30 days of junk food did to Scott’s gut.

Two founders in Austin teamed up for a health experiment. Cheryl Sew How of Tiny Health provided the lab tests and Scott Hickle of Throne was the n=1 subject. “For one month, he swapped his balanced, high-protein meals for an […]

tech, startups, internet

The bitter lesson in scaling.

This is a story about Grok 3, which has come from behind not because of the constraints (see: Deepseek), but because of their huge fleet of the latest GPUs. The author’s point is that constraints breed creativity, but its still […]

tech, startups, internet

The deep research problem.

Ben Evans does a lot of research, and would like to use OpenAI’s Deep Research, but he can’t really. Here, he explains why: “This table looks great – hours of work compiling this data all done for for me by […]

tech, startups, internet

Anthopic’s tips for building AI agents.

First, they helpfully clarify that most things people call agents are really just workflows. Also, they were not able to reference actual agents in production yet. Yet, I think there remains cause for hope. “Anthropic’s Barry Zhang (Applied AI), Erik […]

fun facts

Figgie.

“Figgie is a card game that was invented at [trading firm] Jane Street in 2013. It was designed to simulate open-outcry commodities trading. Most of the skill in Figgie is in negotiating trades that benefit both the buyer and seller. […]

fun facts

Photographs of the Old West from the late 1800s.

“As you look through his images below, you may find yourself realising that all of those faces once belonged to people whose lives were as rich and varied as your own. It may occur to you that nothing besides remains […]

fun facts

Dollar street.

“Imagine the world as a street ordered by income. Everyone lives somewhere on the street. The poorest lives to the left and the richest to the right. Everybody else live somewhere in between… A team of photographers have documented over […]