2023-07-26
If Alexander Graham Bell had not secured the patent for inventing the telephone, Elisha Gray would have gotten it because they both applied for the telephone patent on the same day (Feb 14, 1876).
That is via Noahpinion in his interview with Kevin Kelley. Kelley's point is that invention is an emergent property of society (what he calls the technium), rather than an individual act.
2023-07-26
HIV transmission in Sydney has plunged more than 88% from the 2008-2012 average to just 11 cases per year.
It seems it will be possible to greatly reduce or even eliminate HIV transmission.
Via Tyler Cowen.
2023-07-24
From Wikipedia:
Square or cube watermelons are watermelons grown into the shape of a cube. Cube watermelons are commonly sold in Japan, where they are essentially ornamental and are often very expensive, with prices as high as US$200.
They are grown in boxes, which form them to their distinctive shape. I discovered these via the Kroger app, which has distinctly wonderful food facts as it's loading screen.
2023-07-24
I think about this Tyler Cowen question a lot:
What is it you do to train that is comparable to a pianist practicing scales?
I'm a product manager by trade and, until recently, never really been satisfied with the answers I've come up with. However, I've found one I really like.
I try to come up with two tweet length product ideas per day. I don't judge the ideas. They can be big or small. They just have to be plausible product pitches. I've been doing this for a couple of weeks now and it has been a small enough exercise that I can commit to doing it daily but big enough that I can feel myself stretching. Most importantly, I've noticed more, better ideas coming to me at other parts of the day.
Somewhat related: I really enjoyed this Range Widely post about "pouring out your lesser ideas to get to the great ones."
2023-07-21
I found this video to be a helpful distillation of concepts I'd heard before with a couple things that were new to me.
I'd known that trust is a combination of credibility, reliability, intimacy, and self interest, but I hadn't heard the sub components before:
Credibility
Reliability
Intimacy
Self interest (destroys trust)