Not Boring by Packy McCormick - Weekly Dose of Optimism #113
Weekly Dose of Optimism #113Nuclear Capitalism, Building Chips in America, TSMC Arizona, Orion, Argentinian Rent ControlToday’s Weekly Dose is brought to you by … PlaidFinance can be fickle. Today’s innovative ideas can be tomorrow’s old news, and vice versa. Money is one of the few things that impacts everyone, which is why it’s important to stay on top of what’s happening in the world of money. Lucky for you, Plaid has it covered. Their latest report on the Top Trends Driving The Future Of Finance breaks down what’s moving and shaking finance today, how these trends are shaping the next era of the industry, and why they should matter to you. I found the section on how AI is being used to both perpetuate fraud and fight back particularly terrifying and relevant. This quick, free guide peels back the curtain on the 4 biggest trends in finance, and walks you through some actionable insights like…
Ready to check it out? Download your free copy right here from Plaid. Hi friends 👋, Happy Friday and welcome back to our 113th Weekly Dose of Optimism. We hope our readers in the Southeast are safe this morning, as Helene makes its way through the region. As of writing, some 3 million folks are without power and obviously lots of property has been damaged and lives have been upended. On a lighter note, I turn 30 this weekend. I’ll spare you the 30 lessons for B2B sales I’ve picked up along the way, but wanted to share that writing this newsletter, working with my brother each week, and getting to track all of the cool stuff happening in the world are some of the things I’m most appreciative of as I enter my 30th year. Let’s get to it. (1) International banks express support for nuclear expansion From World Nuclear News
Follow the money. Earlier this week at New York Climate Week, 14 of the world’s largest financial institutions acknowledged the importance of nuclear energy and pledged their financial support for growing the nuclear energy industry. The institutions include Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Brookfield, and Ares, among others. Heavy hitters. The full buildout of the nuclear industry won’t be cheap and it won’t be quick. The backing of financial institutions is crucial, as it will allow governments and private companies to finance these high-upfront cost, long-term investments. Over the past couple of years, financial institutions have shifted from reluctance to increased support for nuclear energy projects, recognizing nuclear as a crucial component of the clean energy transition and mirroring the shift in general public sentiment. Packy tweeted about the news when it broke on Monday, and a lot of the quote tweets made the same point: it’s beautiful that capitalism is going to end up saving the planet. Before the demand from AI, nuclear didn’t really have a deep-pocketed champion. Utilities are typically bad buyers for nuclear, solar has been booming, and while public support has swung towards nuclear, there hasn’t been a big source of demand to force the issue. With the hyperscalers all scrambling for power, there is now. Amazon, Microsoft, and other trillion-dollar companies are signaling that they have a practically bottomless bid for nuclear power, which means there’s a business case for the banks to get involved, which means the banks are getting involved. With some luck, we might even be able to use demand to bring nuclear down the cost curve. Show me the incentives, and I’ll show you a safe, clean baseload power source that just might save the world. (2) Biden breaks with environmentalists, House Dems on chip bill Brendan Bordelon for Politico
Uncle Joe! NGL, kind of forgot my man was still cooking. Against the will of some top Democratic brass and environmentalists like the Sierra Club, Biden plans to approve a Congressional bill that would weaken some environmental requirements for federally funded microchip projects. The bill, Building Chips in America Act, which already passed the House with bipartisan support, reduces the need for certain projects to undergo reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). More American-made chips and less red tape? Sign me up! Beyond the obvious wins here, this move from Biden reflects two major trends within government.
It’s been a really bad week for the Sierra Club, which means it’s been a really great week for the rest of us. (2a) Apple Mobile Processors Are Now Made in America. By TSMC Tim Culpan for Tim Culpan’s Position
Speaking of American-made chips, Apple mobile processors are starting to be made in TSMC’s Arizona facility, making them the first chips to be made by TSMC on American soil. As Tim Culpan noted in his coverage, “this is a BFD.” TSMC’s Arizona facility is, in many ways, the marquee project of the CHIPs Act — it’s big, it’s expensive, it’s strategic, and if it works out as planned, will make the CHIPs Act seem like a brilliant piece of legislation. The U.S. will be able to manufacture its most important technologies on U.S. soil, lessen some geopolitical tensions in the South China Sea, and prove that America can, once again, pull of big manufacturing projects (with a little help from our friends)! The TSMC Arizona project has faced some setbacks over the last couple of years: shortages of skilled labor, higher-than-expected construction costs and production delays. But with this latest news, things seem to be back on track and production is scheduled to really start to ramp up in the first half of next year. What a beautiful sight it will be to see top-of-the-line, American-fab’d chips coming off the line. (3) Introducing Orion, Our First True Augmented Reality Glasses From Meta
Some of those American-made chips may also make their way into Meta’s new Orion product one day. The company unveiled Orion earlier this week, claiming it is the most advanced pair of AR glasses ever made. And that’s tough to argue with.
Orion is not available to the general population, but is being tested on Meta employees and some select audiences. Whatever Meta eventually brings to market will certainly incorporate many of the features from Orion and, based on R&D efforts over the coming years, some not-yet released features. It’s very fun to see this long-term bet starting to pay off. Zuck got lambasted for his Reality Labs spend when the market went south a couple of years ago, but he and Meta have been executing a plan that he laid out in conversations with Lex Fridman (here and here). Essentially, make a VR headset and make glasses, and over time, pull more of the stuff from the VR headset into the glasses. Sprinkle in some AI. At some point, you have very wearable devices that enhance the world around you. Orion seems to be a big step on that progression. Crazy thought…but what if this Zuck guy was just right this whole time? (4) Filming a Supersonic Test Plane (Boom Supersonic) Jason Carman for S3 Blake Scholl, the CEO of Boom Supersonic, studied computer science and built a startup to make barcode scanning games. That taught him a lesson: any startup is hard, you might as well do something meaningful. So in 2014, he studied: aerospace engineering, math, physics, and then he just… started a supersonic plane company. At the time, he wrote a short essay that he recently shared on why: I feel the need, the need for speed. Ten years later, Jason Carman beautifully captured the a test flight of Boom’s supersonic test plane, XB-1. In this flight, it successfully reached Mach 0.6, and the plan is to speed up to Mach 1 by the end of the year. Turns out, if you’re really smart and work hard enough, you can just do things, up to and including making planes fly faster than sound. (5) Argentina Scrapped Its Rent Controls. Now the Market Is Thriving. Ryan Dubé for The Wall Street Journal
A quick follow up from a story we covered back in mid-August. Argentinian President Javier Milei’s plan to bust rental inflation by scrapping rent control is really starting to work. Back in August, we noted that rental supply in Buenos Aires had jumped nearly 200% in the eight months after rent controls were banned. This week, the WSJ reported that supply is up 170% and that rental prices have dropped 40% since last October. 40%! Turns out that by removing artificial controls on rent, supply goes up, and price goes down. It doesn’t take a former economics professor to figure out how that works. But it does take a former economics professor that is serving as president of a country in crisis, to take the courageous steps to implement a policy like this. Certainly landlords will lose some money and rents on some tenants will go up, but on the whole, the countries rental market will normalize. That, at a national level, is a major win. ¡Control de alquileres…AFUERA! P.S. Milei addressed the UN General Assembly this week at the Summit of the Future, and he… did not hold back. Give it a watch: Have a great weekend y’all. Thanks to Plaid for sponsoring! We’ll be back in your inbox on Tuesday. Thanks for reading, Packy + Dan |
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Weekly Dose of Optimism #112
Friday, September 20, 2024
Three Mile Island, Obesity Goop, Metformin, Antigravity, The Prize, Porphyrion ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
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Prize x Plan x Probability, or Why Vertical Integrators are Mispriced ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
Weekly Dose of Optimism #111
Friday, September 13, 2024
Polaris Dawn, Lithium Pioneer, Chai-1, PaperQA2, Daycare Air Purifiers, BONUSES ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
Vertical Integrators: Part III
Tuesday, September 10, 2024
Building Vertical Integrators is Hard ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
Weekly Dose of Optimism #110
Friday, September 6, 2024
SSI, Neo, Solar Saturation, Replit Nuclear Clock ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
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