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February 20 · Issue #256 · View online |
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đ Welcome back to P.S. You Should Know⌠probably the best newsletter published on Sundays between 6-7am CST, and definitely the best one published by me. Now in its fifth year!
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We know how to have fun!
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An octopus breeding program proposal. âOctopuses are surprisingly intelligent, and reproduce at 1 year old. If weâd started a breeding program 50 years ago, we probably couldâve gotten them smarter than dolphins by now. A disappointing failure of the long-term mad science ecosystem.â | learn more
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Nicolas Cage blew $150 million on a dinosaur skull, pygmy heads and 2 European castles. âDespite his financial ruin, Cage doesnât regret all of his purchases. âYou have good investments and bad investments,â he says. âThe good investments came from personal interest and my honest enjoyment of the history.â | learn more
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Offspring of Italyâs last king sue state in battle to reclaim crown jewels. âKing Umberto II descendants take legal action over treasure kept in Bank of Italy deposit box for 76 years.â | learn more
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I just learned about the Texas school recapture program. âThe decades-old system, known commonly as Robin Hood, is meant to balance resources among less property-wealthy school districts, with the goal of leveling out the per-student spending across all districts statewide.â Of note Austinâs school district is paying $710 million while the next biggest payment is from Houston at almost $200 million. | learn more
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Startups often need more capital. âIâve also come to believe that if youâre going to get on the fundraising train, itâs important to plan for enough capital to get to a scale that provides for some exit opportunities in the event the business doesnât achieve hypergrowth.â | learn more
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Whatâs wrong with Shopify? From a customer and shareholder. âShopify stock is down 50% over the past 12 months. Its mission may be to "arm the rebels,â but it is giving us muskets in a war that is increasingly being fought with machine guns.â | learn more
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The Intel split. Stratechery discusses Intel on the heels of its becoming a customer of competitor TSMC. | learn more
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Heuristics that almost always work. âThis new invention wonât change everything. This emerging disease wonât become a global pandemic. This conspiracy theory is dumb. This outsider hasnât disproven the experts. This new drug wonât work. This dark horse candidate wonât win the election. This potential threat wonât destroy the world.â | learn more
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Allbirds will now sell you âusedâ shoes. I had just finished a conversation about resale as a market when the shoe company Allbirds emailed me to announce theyâre now selling âslightly imperfect and gently used products.â I love it! | learn more
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American companies that failed in China. Visualized! | learn more
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How Italian roaster Illy reimagined the coffee supply chain. âThirty years ago, Guatemala was using coffee beans to mend roadsâthe commodity was so cheap, it was more economical than using gravelâŚâ | learn more
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US suspends Mexican avocado imports! âAvocado exports are the latest victim of the drug cartel turf battles and extortion of avocado growers in the western state of Michoacan, the only state in Mexico fully authorized to export to the U.S. market.â | learn more
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New research causes concern for our entire approach to preschool. âThatâs right. A statewide public pre-K program, taught by licensed teachers, housed in public schools, had a measurable and statistically significant negative effect on the children in this study.â | learn more
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How would you run a 10,000-year endowment? Byrne Hobart ponders this interesting question. âTrends like the Internet and the Industrial Revolution occur in "the short-term.ââ | learn more
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Web3 is going just great. ââŚand is definitely not an enormous grift thatâs pouring lighter fluid on our already-smoldering planet.â Woo! | learn more
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The promise of DAOs, the latest craze in crypto. âThe blockchain business model has made headlines for sensational ploys. But in quieter corners DAOs are forging a promising new ecosystem for digital startups.â | learn more
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DJ Steve Aoki made more money from NFTs last year than royalties ever. Reading this might be like a Rorschach test, highlighting exactly how you want to feel about the new market. | learn more
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Crypto-mining gangs are running amok on free cloud computing platforms. This is from May 2021. Basically there are a bunch of web services that offered free tiers of virtual machines. The gangs got the idea to create a bunch of fake accounts to run crypto mining scripts, leaving the services with the bill. | learn more
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Chicago, IL 60622
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