Not Boring by Packy McCormick - Weekly Dose of Optimism #75
Weekly Dose of Optimism #75ALOHA, LNG, Weight-Loss Capsules, Meissner Effect?, AVC Predictions, Choose Optimism.Hi friends 👋, Happy Friday and welcome back to our 75th Weekly Dose of Optimism. We hope you had a lovely holiday season and are feeling energized for 2024. We are hitting the ground running this year. I found myself whispering “We are so back?” to myself while writing this week’s edition. I’m not sure if we are, indeed, so back quite yet. But things are certainly pointing in the right direction. Let’s get to it. The Weekly Dose is brought to you by…Create Beyond writing the Weekly Dose, my main venture is running Create — a creatine gummy company. Kind of surprising, right? Not when you look into it:
If you’re looking to get stronger, faster, leaner, or more energized in the New Year, I’d highly recommend working creatine into your routine. If you order now and are consistent with supplementation and training, you’ll see real results (like 10-15% stronger) by the end of the month. Not Boring readers can get at least 30% off using code notboring30. Plus, you got to try our latest flavor, Blue Raspberry…it’s got a 4.9/5 star rating and is flying off the shelves. (1) Mobile ALOHA - A Smart Mobile Manipulation Robot - Compilation of Autonomous Skills From Zipeng Fu, Tony Z. Zhao, Chelsea Finn A team of Stanford PhD roboticists and AI researchers released the latest version of their autonomous, mobile robot. Essentially, this bot combines the dexterity of a humanoid and the intelligence of an AI model to learn and then execute everyday tasks. In the video, you’ll see Mobile ALOHA do everything from cooking shrimp, to calling elevators, to cleaning up messes, to giving (totally not creepy) high-fives to humans. Seriously, check out this post of all the things the robot can do. One of the big findings in the research behind Mobile ALOHA is that demonstrating behaviors alongside standard AI training leads to a massive jump in the robots ability to autonomously complete complex tasks. Today it can learn to cook up some shrimp, tomorrow we could train it to complete any number of complex tasks that we flesh humans no longer want to do. (2) US Becomes Top LNG Exporter After Overtaking Australia and Qatar Ruth Liao for Bloomberg
At Not Boring, we talk a lot about the clean energy transition — the rise of solar, advancements in batteries, the increased interest in fission, and the opportunity of fusion. We talk less about natural gas, and that's probably a mistake because American’s liquid natural gas production is probably the biggest story in energy over the last 5 years. Today, the U.S. exports nearly 100 million metric tons of LNG, ranking it the top exporter in the world. But as little as 7 years ago, the U.S. barely did any exporting of LNG. So what changed and why is it important? The what changed question is easy: advancements in shale fracking led to a significant increase in natural gas production in the U.S., creating a surplus that enabled us to export. The why is it important question has a multipronged answer:
Let’s do a lot more LNG production and exporting in the upcoming years while we build up the capabilities necessary to execute an abundant clean energy transition. (3) MIT scientists are working on a vibrating obesity pill Brian Heater for TechCrunch
This news dropped right before the holidays, but was picked up in the media again yesterday. A team at MIT released findings on a new “vibrating capsule” that mimics drinking a full glass of water prior to eating, thereby creating the sensation of being full. The capsule seems to have the same effects as GLP-1s like Ozempic and Wegovy, in that it decreases hunger and ramps up the digestion process. Early animal studies of the capsule report a 40% decline in food consumption. The capsule provides and alterative to current weight-loss methodologies that is potentially more effective, less invasive, and not as cost prohibitive. We talk about this a lot here at Not Boring, but we truly think obesity will be a thing of the past in the US in the next couple of years. That’s not only good for the folks that suffer from obesity, but it’s also good for everyone else — it means lower healthcare costs and higher productivity rates. (4) Possible Meissner effect near room temperature in copper-substituted lead apatite Wang et al
OK, let’s not get ahead of ourselves here….but we have a POSSIBLE MEISSNER EFFECT…AGAIN! If you recall, back in July of 2023, a South Korean team claimed to have discovered a room-temperature superconductor called LK-99, which was said to exhibit superconducting properties. However, subsequent replication efforts fell short and the material’s flow was found to resemble a semiconductor rather than a superconductor, and the Meissner effect was suggested to actually be a diamagnetic response. The eventual findings were a bummer, but the real-time, world-wide replication process the research kicked off was exhilarating. For a couple of days, the world was treating LK-99 replication like it was the finals of the World Cup. And no doubt, that attention and hype drove more resources and researchers towards trying to actually replicate the Meissner effect at room temperature. We can’t speak to the credibility or validity of this most recent paper. We’re sure much more will come out over the coming days on that front. But as Packy posted, “The great thing about the Room Temperature Superconductor thing is that at worst, it's fun like sports are fun, and at best, it's fun like the Industrial Revolution was fun.” From Fred Wilson
Fred Wilson, of Union Square Ventures fame, published his 2024 predictions on his OG VC blog, avc.xyz. Wilson notes that he “has never seen an environment with more innovation in the forty years (he) have been in the tech sector.” That’s high praise for an investor who has lived and invested through the rollout of the internet, ecommerce, social media, cloud, and more. Below, we’re consolidating his 5 main predictions for 2024:
(BONUS) Choose optimism From Steph Ango
To close out the Weekly Dose, we’re leaving you with this short but aphorism-filled essay from Steph Ango on his transition from a pessimist to and optimist. No additional commentary needed. Go spend two minutes and read the essay. Choose optimism 🤝. That’s all for this week. We’ll be back in your inbox on Tuesday. Thanks for reading, Dan + Packy |
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