Brunch Briefing | Ubiquitous Veganism
Brunch Briefing | Ubiquitous Veganism
Fancy Bear, Nabokov, and Ketamine
In this week’s BB, you’ll learn about…
❄️ Obama on ‘wokeness’
🥩 The demise (and resurrection) of meat
👾 Why a16z thinks games > music
🇷🇺 Mother Russia’s Olympic retaliation
🤩My favorite productivity tool from 2019
🐴 Using K-Holes to treat the blues
🕵️♀️ Jobs for spies, dog food aficionados, and quantum leapers
💣 Omniviolence, skittish hitmen, and open-source insulin
🔥 The riddlers that are heating up
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🐰 Overheard
(Quotes from clever people)
I do get a sense sometimes now among certain young people — and this is accelerated by social media — there is this sense sometimes of: ‘The way of me making change is to be as judgmental as possible about other people, and that’s enough.’
President Obama took umbrage with cancel-culture this week, noting the role of social media during a panel discussion on youth activism. It is no secret that social media is a beast of escalating, circular fury, with remarkable memory. Format constraints limit nuance, reward mechanisms incentivize and proliferate extreme positions, and every bad joke or thoughtless comment comes with receipts. The result may be a culture that lionizes fragility, illustrative of a shift away from dignity based values, towards victimhood.
Social media may yet be part of the solution. Twitter banned political advertisements this week, theoretically stymying the spread of particularly divisive, skewed content.* Facebook, meanwhile, has tested removing likes, perhaps reducing the impetus toward causticity and glibness. Let us hope that both users and owners of the fifth estate will give No. 44's comments serious thought.
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*It’s worth noting that the ban includes ads that “advocate for or against legislation of national importance.” Per The Nation, “General Motors could buy an ad promoting a gas-guzzling car, but Greta Thunberg couldn’t buy an ad advocating climate action.”
🥩 Monitoring: Ubiquitous veganism
(One space worth keeping an eye on)
The problem: our appetite for animals is a multi-level moral catastrophe. For one thing, it’s ruining the planet. Cows contribute 15% of greenhouse emissions a year (25% in America), equivalent to the output of automobiles. That’s before mentioning the land and water required to raise, feed, and prepare protein: 80% of agricultural land is used for livestock, while ~1800 lbs of water are required to produce 1 lb of meat. As if that weren’t enough, much of it isn’t particularly good for us, with links between red meat and cancer, heart disease, and other diseases. Finally, these are sentient, often intelligent creatures. All things being equal, wouldn’t we prefer not to kill them?
The solution: better replacements. Leveraging molecular engineering and synthetic biology, a wave of meat and dairy replacements have swept the market. While some use plant-based analogues to create a simulacra of the meat experience, others concoct cellularly identical products. Whatever the approach, the result is a vibrant churrascaria in which none of the products have necessitated animal suffering.
Meat. While plant-based companies Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat have dominated the headlines in 2019, a cadre of startups is scurrying behind. SuperMeat, Just and Memphis Meats are producing cultured chicken, New Age Meats stuffs a synthetic sausage, Japanese company Integriculture is spinning up foie gras (rather timely), and Israel’s Aleph Farms is tackling the notoriously tricky challenge of cultured steak. Plant-based companies include Sunfed, Vivera, Meati, Rebelleyous, Prime Roots (fka Terramino) and many others. The fact that this is far from an exhaustive list speaks to the breadth of innovation in the space.
Fish. Finless Foods raised a $3.5MM seed to produce cultured bluefin tuna, with participation from Draper Associates. Wild Type raised a $12.5MM Series A from Spark and CRV to continue their work on salmon. Like Finless, Good Catch is going after tuna, but using pulses like lentils and chickpeas. The company announced a $10MM round this summer. New Wave Foods is focused on attacking the $45B shrimp market with a plant-based offering.
Dairy. Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to try the early offerings of Eclipse Foods, a provider of plant-based ice cream. Quite delicious. They’re joined in the market by Perfect Day, and Clara Foods. The latter company focuses on synthetic eggs, and announced its Series B in April. The round was led by public company, Ingredion, a provider of sweeteners, starches, and oils.
Other. Beyond these three core categories, other companies have emerged. Geltor offers lab-grown gelatin, ideal for harm-free cosmetics, Wild Earth brings synthbio to pet food (including lab-grown mouse meat), and Emulate’s “Organs on a Chip” simulation platform may remove the need for animal testing.
What’s next? The Economist declared 2019 the “Year of the Vegan,” persuaded by the increase of interest amongst 25-34 year olds (~25% consider themselves either vegetarian or vegan), and broadening commercial adoption. In the short-term, I expect this shift to facilitate the flourishing of plant-based alternatives given the relative simplicity of formulation and reasonable approximation of meat’s flavor. During this period, platforms and curators should benefit; I expect vegan e-commerce company Mylk Guys, to raise a large Series A if they have not done so already. As cultured meat matures and moves down the expected cost-curve, I expect it to become an increasingly compelling opportunity.
Given the quantity of product-driven companies in the market, I also expect to see the emergence of infrastructure businesses, enabling further innovation. Earlier this week, Shiru Bio announced a $3.5MM seed to help producers identify the most promising protein strains with which to work.
🖼️ 1000 words
(Something to look at)
Games > music. An estimated $100B will be spent on gaming in 2019, compared to ~$18B for music. Interestingly, while new technologies have historically shrunk the music market, they have been additive in gaming, layering on top of older formats.
This may be particularly relevant given the attention cloud gaming has attracted from Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. Expect the latter to rival Google Stadia in the near term. While some industry commentators believe cloud gaming’s expected impact has been overplayed, West Coast behemoth a16z identifies the technology as a critical catalyst in the sector’s expansion, along with blockchain and 5G. In the near future, they expect individual games to achieve the scale and impact of Facebook, serving as vibrant social networks in which players talk, watch, trade, and even party. EDM artist Marshmello’s in-game concert attracted 11MM Fortnite players earlier this year.
😱 Signs of the apocalypse
(Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!)
That sinking feeling. A new paper from Climate Central researchers suggests we may lose much more of our coastal cities than anticipated. By 2050, much of Ho Chi Minh, Shanghai, and Alexandria may be underwater. Mumbai could be all but submerged. Roughly 150MM will be affected, great works of culture will be lost, and economies will be decimated. Previous estimates have been reliant on satellite imagery that often confuses the tops of trees or buildings with a city’s ground level; this report uses AI to correct the error.
Sore sports. Russia’s ‘Fancy Bear’ hacking unit, part of the country’s intelligence agency, has infiltrated organizations associated with the 2020 Olympic Games. This group has quite a rap sheet, having perpetrated the attack against the Democratic Party in 2016, as well as compromising the 2018 Winter Olympics with internet disruptions, data leaks, and a concerted misinformation campaign. This recent attack occurred days before the Anti-Doping Agency threatened a ban on Russia’s athletes.
GANimal House. Nvidia allows you to transpose your pet’s ‘smile’ onto other creatures. Imagine your golden doodle’s artless grin plastered onto a black bear. The results are either underwhelming or terrifying. Technologically, it may represent an interesting step forward: while most GANs run one-to-one translations (i.e.: dog to cat), the GANimal system is theoretically generalizable across species.
🚢 Shipping news
(The most interesting product launch this week)
Take notes like Nabokov. While Roam Research didn’t technically launch this week, it is new, and remarkably underused. I can’t resist talking about it. Taking inspiration from the insanely prolific German sociologist Niklas Luhmann’s “Zettelkasten” note-taking system, Roam combines a beautiful, minimalist Workflowy-esque UX with supercharged features. The biggest game-changer is bi-directional linking, allowing you to turn your notes into a sort of personal wiki. There’s a bit of a learning curve, but this has become my default for note-taking and brainstorming nearly overnight.
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Honorable mentions: Capital, Level up Life, Weglot.
📡 Signal
(One exploding Google Trend)
A new way to treat major depression. According to Harvard Medical School, depression is the “leading cause of disability worldwide,” with 16MM US adults experiencing a major depressive episode over the course of a year. While more common pharmaceutical treatments may work for many, they tend to take a long time to make an impact, and are not universally effective. Though potentially addictive, if managed correctly, ketamine can provide a quick boost in battles against both depression and anxiety. The practice appears to be gaining in popularity, with clinics like Actify Neurotherapies in California, and Ember Health in Brooklyn emerging to provide revitalizing infusions.
📈 Jobs for interesting people
(Openings at companies and funds building something cool)
DevOps - Stealth (NY). Fascinating under-the-radar project with radical plans to restructure knowledge and data infrastructure.
Content Lead - Brave Care (Portland). Help bring children better medical care.
VC Associate - Fintech Collective (NY). Do we really want JPM Coin to be a thing? Back insurgents making money better.
VC Director - Kapor Capital (Oakland). A genuinely mission-driven fund. Consider that a rarity.
VC Summer Associate - IN-Q-Tel (Arlington). Get your fill of high-stakes sleuthing by joining the CIA’s venture arm.
BD Manager - Industrious (NY). Take WeWork’s lunch money.
Product Manager - Hyperscience (NY). One of the Big Apple’s most interesting ML-enabled companies. Making manual entry a thing of the past.
Marketing Operations Manager - Patreon (SF). Support videographers musicians, creators, and confusingly sexual cosplayers.
Data Scientist - Rigetti Computing (DC). Build quantum computers. Enough said.
Food Scientist - Farmer’s Dog (NY). Give your furry friends the gourmet treatment.
VP Finance - Calm (SF). Zen out over a zip file full of financial models.
🐒 Long tail
(Best of the rest)
Mario, the Mule. Video games are increasingly used for money-laundering. Developer Valve notes that “nearly all” transactions on Counter Strike: Global Offensive are fraud-related.
Google’s heart is racing. The search giant has made an offer for connected hardware company, Fitbit. The device maker’s market cap jumped from $1.088B to $1.84B in response.
For extremely efficient relaxers. You may soon be able to watch Netflix at 2x speed. A perfect way to bludgeon your way through “Friends” before it migrates to HBOMax in 2020.
An Uber Eats Hail Mary. The ridesharing company’s food division has struggled in recent months. This week, they shared designs for a six-rotor drone made to ferry Big Macs even faster. The company also announced the creation of an ‘Uber Money’ division, responsible for financial services including instant payouts for drivers.
Omniviolence. Technology is changing the ratio between ‘killer:killed’ radically. Which is to say that it may become increasingly simple for a small group to carry out massive, vicious attacks. Imagine a fleet of micro-drones terrorizing a city. The only possible defense against bad actors in the future may be a true surveillance state.
Pretty private. Australia’s Department of Home Affairs has a new plan to ensure only those of age are able to access pornographic content: facial recognition.
Fighting fire. In this case, with silicon gel. The substance, designed at Stanford, is made to coat trees and grass, and able to withstand rain and wind. It may be an effective way to slow the spread of wildfires.
‘OK, Boomer’. That phrase has apparently become Gen Z’s retort to an out-of-touch older generation. Merch makers have capitalized, shipping a range of catchphrase-plastered products. This will get annoying very quickly.
The man trying to pull Softbank out of its sinkhole. Rajeev Misra will need to correct a corrosive culture, and plummeting paper returns. He’ll also have to continue romancing Saudi wallets…over games of ping pong.
The art of delegation. When a Chinese hitman got skittish about performing his duties, he hired a subcontractor. Who hired a subcontractor. Who hired a subcontractor. Who hired a subcontractor. Who told the police. A Matryoshka doll of assassins.
Open-sourcing insulin. As prices skyrocket, an organization in Oakland is creating a transparent playbook for insulin creation that it hopes others follow. As it stands, 3 companies control most of a $27B market.
LIDAR may interfere with the windshield wipers of passing cars. Read about other unintended consequences of tech in this HN thread, including the destruction of trust, and lack of available change for buskers and the homeless.
Reading inspiration. A handy flowchart next time you’re trying to find a good ‘philosophical novel.’ I ended up with Icefields by Thomas Wharton.
🧩 Puzzler
(A question, conundrum, or riddle to mull over)
There are three rooms upstairs, each with a single lightbulb. Downstairs, there are three unlabelled switches. You are only allowed to go up the stairs once. How can you tell which switch corresponds to which room?
JCV is quick on the draw. He once again provided the correct answer to last week’s riddle first: three, the number of letters in ‘ten’. Two in a row. Others on a roll include SEV, who somehow managed to provide two correct answers, Geoff C., and Charlie L.
Thank you for reading. NYC is full of marathon runners today. Godspeed to them, and you. 💙