Mohnish Pabrai remarks that all of the best investors share one indispensable trait: “the ability to take pain.”
~William Green
Unexpected Articles from this Week
A recent study has found that scientific journals deviating from the norm of presenting objective facts and instead publishing political endorsements risks eroding public trust in the scientific community. This was illustrated with the case of Nature’s endorsement of Joe Biden before the 2020 presidential election, which reportedly caused backlash from Trump supporters and failed to positively influence Biden supporters or opinions on either candidate. Political endorsements by scientific journals can undermine and polarize public confidence in the endorsing journals and the scientific community. Read more here.
A new study conducted by Tel Aviv University researchers has found that plants emit click-like noises that are similar to human speech volume, but at high frequencies beyond the hearing range of humans. Plants emit these sounds when under stress, and the researchers developed machine learning algorithms to identify the plants and determine the type and level of stress from the recordings. The findings suggest that plant sounds contain information, and that they may be used by other creatures and possibly other plants to detect environmental conditions and respond to them. Read more here.
In California, housing affordability deteriorated in 2022 for all ethnic home-buying groups, as home prices soared to record highs and interest rates jumped to levels not seen in more than a decade. The minimum annual income needed to qualify for the purchase of a $822,320 median-priced home was $186,800 with a 20 percent down payment. Black and Hispanic/Latino households had the lowest affordability index with 12 percent, while Asians had an index of 31 percent and White/non-Hispanics had an index of 26 percent. Read more here.
DataFlik, an AI-powered real estate startup, has achieved 634% growth in monthly recurring revenue in 2022 thanks to the release of their machine learning model developed with the help of NineTwoThree Venture Studio. The model is able to accurately identify motivated home sellers, processing over 42 billion data points from 6,000 data sources with a prediction accuracy of 68%, resulting in 8 times higher ROI for DataFlik’s customers. NineTwoThree supplied the technical expertise and staff augmentation necessary for DataFlik to build their machine learning model which has helped the company with their record growth. Read more here.
What I am reading
•Scientists ‘Switch Off’ Autism Symptoms Using $3 Epilepsy Drug: Discovery (Article)
•Study Reveals the Great Pyramid of Giza Can Focus Electromagnetic Energy (Article)
•Buy Then Build (Book)
•Competition Demystified (Book)
•Ages of Discord (Book)
If you are looking for an investment in your startup, please tell me about your project.
As always – I would enjoy hearing from you (what you found interesting, the format of this email, notes from your own explorations, etc.), feel free to just respond to this email.
Until next week,
Ian Eliason