What I read this week…

Pelosi's Taiwan visit, new era in digital biology, gas prices fall

Aug 05, 2022

Why Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan is utterly reckless (NYT)
‘New era in digital biology’: AI reveals structures of nearly all known proteins (Science)
Tiger Global’s July gain leaves fund down 50% (Bloomberg)
Industrial policy starts with semiconductors (Noahpinion)
The U.S. climate bill could make now the best time to go solar (Bloomberg)
Summer gasoline demand in U.S. drops below pandemic levels (Bloomberg)
How to wear a suit without a tie (and more successfully than these world leaders) (WSJ)
Why the old elite spend so much time at work (The Atlantic)

On Twitter…

Twitter is full of "wonder science" accounts, many of them full of stolen images & misinformation. The recent viral tweet about the alleged void in space offers a good case study in how to spot the fakes. 1/5

Jon Erlichman @JonErlichman

Amazon’s stock fell 80% in 2000. Here’s what Jeff Bezos told investors:

Devika Krishna Kumar @Devikakrishnak

US #crude just fell below $90 for the first time since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Yesterday the prompt spread fell below $1 for the first time since April. Brent trading near $95. Recession worries are well and truly offsetting some of the concerns about tight supplies.

ian bremmer @ianbremmer

what americans say is the most important issue facing the country inflation: 17% govt/leadership: 17% economy: 12% abortion issues: 8% (record polling high) judicial system: 6% unifying the country: 6% immigration: 6% -gallup

Yonah Freemark @yfreemark

UK public support for climate change mitigation efforts is *far* stronger than in the US, where the partisan divide is enormous pewresearch.org/science/2022/0…

Leo Hickman @LeoHickman

New IPSOS polling: 52% think the UK should bring all emissions to net-zero before 2050 26% think the target is about right 7% think the target should be achieved more slowly https://t.co/t4hNSj3Mft https://t.co/4EKUgNmd5H

Axios @axios

Cities could dramatically reduce peak summer heat by replacing hot, dark surfaces — like streets and rooftops— with cooler alternatives, a new advocacy group says. Some interventions could even make temperatures feel up to 15 degrees cooler.

trib.al“Smart” surfaces could chill overheating cities“Smart surfaces,” like reflective roadways, can produce dramatic cooling.

Justneedsomecommunication

Aug 5, 2022

I'll have to steal some of the tips from the tieless suit article. I also wish we had more people interested in doing game changing science like Deepmind and less people attempting to develop a new app that does the same thing as 8 other apps. I agree with you on a lot of these topics and with the topics brought up in the pod today. My one gripe was with the Twitter comment section. While I do agree that twitter needs to do a mass bot scrub of their system as well as get rid of pay per post accounts based in similar spam calling centers, you can't get mad and go silent because real people are complaining about the status of your current SPACs and past SPACs/Stocks. That's like Elon complaining about Tesla questions/critics in his feed. Instead of turning off comments maybe communicate back and explain why stocks like SPCE, SOFI, CLOV plummeted after going to market or why you are currently silent about IPOF/D. You can't expect people to not get heated over you constantly being in Italy seemingly on vacation while they wait for some kind of feedback.

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Ben Alexander

Aug 6, 2022

Would love to know Chamath’s take on 2nd and 3rd order impacts to society from all the oldies working longer.

Chamath Palihapitiya

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