P.S. You Should Know... | Issue #253

Correction: Last week I left a link out. Here is The poor ROI of truck autonomy.

I automated my job over a year ago and haven’t told anyone. An IT worker at a mid-size law firm was asked to work from home and leaned into the situation. | learn more

The solution for Scurvy was lost for a hundred years. The confluence of factors that led to its rediscovery is a lesson in how messy the world can be. | learn more

Austin fake news is at least funny. “No, tables are not being lowered at Round Rock Independent School District to accommodate kids who identify as animals and want to eat without their hands, the district said, after a woman running for House District 136 made the claim on social media.” | learn more

The drawbacks of Robinhood democratizing IPO access. “I went through my inbox and every single stock chart that was being marketed through the IPO Access program looked like that [a downward sloping line].” | learn more

Nuclear startup Oklo gets thumbs-down from regulators. “If innovative reactor designs can’t pass muster with the federal government, the U.S. nuclear industry is in trouble.” | learn more

Cell rejuvenation tech is a gambit to slow aging. “Start-ups bet that carefully controlled cell reprogramming may lead to age reversal, but hurdles remain.” This article in Scientific American profiles the billionaire-backed Calico Life Sciences, Life Biosciences, and Turn Biotechnologies. | learn more

When to sell investments, and when not to. From famed investor Howard Marks: “The more I’ve thought about it since writing Liquidity, the more convinced I’ve become that there are two main reasons why people sell investments: because they’re up and because they’re down.” | learn more

The presence prison. Jason Fried of Basecamp writes about their evolution from caring about teammates away status (presence) to not. “But it wasn’t until we gave up on Presence that we really got to embrace the sense of calm that comes from not caring about when someone is working (or not) or where someone is (or isn’t) at this very moment.” | learn more

The secret to a great mentorship. “Chemistry is a harmonious or effective interaction between people working together. Just as any other great relationship, a mentorship needs chemistry to reach its full potential. If it’s not already there, how can you set the stage to build chemistry with your mentor?” | learn more

Is it better to exercise in the morning or evening? “Working out at different times of the day might have unique benefits for health, an ambitious new study in mice suggests.” | learn more

Jolting the brain’s circuits with electricity. “Brain stimulation is booming… This expanding field of research is slowly revealing truths of the brain: how it works, how it malfunctions, and how electrical impulses, precisely targeted and controlled, might be used to treat psychiatric and neurological disorders.” | learn more

Business booms for unlicensed and unproven stem cell treatments. Little FDA enforcement and bold claims make for a problematic pair. “Although stem cells for some conditions promoted by the clinics Turner studied have produced promising results in early-phase studies, they generally haven’t been shown to be safe and effective in well-designed randomized clinical trials.” I want to be a contrarian believer here, but I don’t know enough to get there. | learn more

A warning to angel investors. From investor Phil Nadel. “Why am I telling you this? Because I am concerned. Concerned about the current startup investing environment, concerned about the lack of due diligence, concerned about the impact of FOMO (fear of missing out) overcoming investors’ good judgment.” | learn more

The future of psychedelic medicine will be drugs you’ve never heard of. I’m not sure I totally buy the author’s headline, but this is certainly a track companies pursue for a reason. The economics of selling plain ol’ mushrooms don’t seem as attractive as pharma reimbursed by health insurance. And maybe they’ll discover new beneficial effects that we haven’t see yet? | learn more

Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, the most likable person in the world. “But Johnson wasn’t always this likable. In fact, he was quite the opposite. As a teenager, Johnson led a life of lies, anger, violence, and delinquency. Growing up, his parents lived paycheck to paycheck, moving to a new place every time his dad got a new gig.” | learn more

David Swensen, of the Yale Endowment. “In his three-decade career, he grew the university’s endowment from $1 billion in 1985 to $31 billion in 2020. The results speak for themselves as he is largely considered to be one of the greatest investors of our time.” | learn more

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