P.S. You Should Know... | Issue #256

An octopus breeding program proposal. “Octopuses are surprisingly intelligent, and reproduce at 1 year old. If we’d started a breeding program 50 years ago, we probably could’ve gotten them smarter than dolphins by now. A disappointing failure of the long-term mad science ecosystem.” | learn more

Nicolas Cage blew $150 million on a dinosaur skull, pygmy heads and 2 European castles. “Despite his financial ruin, Cage doesn’t regret all of his purchases. “You have good investments and bad investments,” he says. “The good investments came from personal interest and my honest enjoyment of the history.” | learn more

Offspring of Italy’s last king sue state in battle to reclaim crown jewels. “King Umberto II descendants take legal action over treasure kept in Bank of Italy deposit box for 76 years.” | learn more

I just learned about the Texas school recapture program. “The 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.” Of note Austin’s school district is paying $710 million while the next biggest payment is from Houston at almost $200 million. | learn more

Startups often need more capital. “I’ve also come to believe that if you’re going to get on the fundraising train, it’s important to plan for enough capital to get to a scale that provides for some exit opportunities in the event the business doesn’t achieve hypergrowth.” | learn more

What’s wrong with Shopify? From a customer and shareholder. “Shopify stock is down 50% over the past 12 months. Its mission may be to "arm the rebels,” but it is giving us muskets in a war that is increasingly being fought with machine guns.“ | learn more

The Intel split. Stratechery discusses Intel on the heels of its becoming a customer of competitor TSMC. | learn more

Heuristics that almost always work. “This new invention won’t change everything. This emerging disease won’t become a global pandemic. This conspiracy theory is dumb. This outsider hasn’t disproven the experts. This new drug won’t work. This dark horse candidate won’t win the election. This potential threat won’t destroy the world.” | learn more

Allbirds will now sell you “used” shoes. I had just finished a conversation about resale as a market when the shoe company Allbirds emailed me to announce they’re now selling “slightly imperfect and gently used products.” I love it! | learn more

American companies that failed in China. Visualized! | learn more

How Italian roaster Illy reimagined the coffee supply chain. “Thirty years ago, Guatemala was using coffee beans to mend roads—the commodity was so cheap, it was more economical than using gravel…” | learn more

US suspends Mexican avocado imports! “Avocado 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.” | learn more

New research causes concern for our entire approach to preschool. “That’s 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.” | learn more

How would you run a 10,000-year endowment? Byrne Hobart ponders this interesting question. “Trends like the Internet and the Industrial Revolution occur in "the short-term.”“ | learn more

Web3 is going just great. “…and is definitely not an enormous grift that’s pouring lighter fluid on our already-smoldering planet.” Woo! | learn more

The promise of DAOs, the latest craze in crypto. “The blockchain business model has made headlines for sensational ploys. But in quieter corners DAOs are forging a promising new ecosystem for digital startups.” | learn more

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

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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