I think GLP-1 drugs might be the most underrated technological change currently underway. We're talking about big shifts in what people eat, how they look and feel about themselves that run counter to the last ~50 years of consumer trends.
With this in mind, I found this Cricana report to be eye opening.
First, I love that the report using real transaction data - this isn't what about what consumers are saying, but what they're doing compared to what they were doing before.
Spending went up on:
🫗 Drinkware and water filtration (+28%)
⌚️ Fitness trackers and wearables (+183%)
🧴 Skin care (+12%)
💋 Lip care products (+14%)
And down on:
🥗 Refrigerated salad dressing (-19.5%)
🥩 Dried meat snacks (-17%)
🍷 Alcoholic beverages (-10-12%)
My simple model here is that people drift away from unhealthy foods and towards healthier ones. As they do this, they start getting out more and doing more things (see the spending on wearables, cosmetics). They're also spending more on the things that mitigate the downsides of the drug (mints for bad breath, tea to soothe stomachs).
The entire thing is worth a read.
(Hat tip to Dan Frommer whose New Consumer newsletter flagged this for me)
Noah Smith on China Talk. Interesting throughout but what I enjoyed most was him talking about the types of posts he writes:
1. Things he already understands that are topical (he can just sit down and write)
2. Things where he is going out and doing the research because he thinks something should be better understood
3. Things he is passively interested in and just collects links as he goes, so when it becomes topical, he can go back and find those things and quickly write them.
I think I can adopt some of this into my own work.
The short case for Nvidia, but also a fantastic explainer on how different approaches to AI work. I now understand what makes Groq special.
Musings
Goals:
I’ll never forget standing in your kitchen in Oakland, watching you juggle a toddler and two babies while making margaritas and asking you about your next venture - what problem you wanted to solve. You looked at me replied “I want to bring commercial super-sonic flight”
The most successful one was drafting an update to a document. We have a Partnerships document that we use as a part of our sales materials and we're onboarding a new partner. I needed to go to the Partner's website and draft some language for them to edit / approve.
I've been putting this off for a couple of weeks so I fed it to Operator. It took a little nudging, but eventually it was able to read through their site and write passable copy that I could refine and send to the partner for their review. So that's a success. Worth $200 a month? If I have 2-3 tasks like this each month, I think so.
I also tried seeing if I could get Operator to compile information for me (e.g., create a CSV file with the meeting dates and times of the Roswell City Council for the rest of January). It failed here in two ways:
First, the meetings were wrong. It grabbed one that was in the past and then chose not to grab some of the meetings upcoming this week. It's possible that some of this was prompter error and could be fixed with more trials.
There was no easy way to export the information. I wanted it to create a CSV file for me, but couldn't get it to. I do imagine that this will improve over time.
This past summer, I tried out several other products in this space (e.g., AutoTab) and this is a big step beyond what was possible then... but still not there yet.
Pine needle tea has more than 100 percent of the vitamin C of orange juice — Nautilus
The value of returned purchases in the United States would make it the 16th largest economy in the world — Rohit
Musings
“Great problems have to be discovered; often the solution of the problem is only a tiny part of the story, most of it is really about discovering the problem.” — From Michael Nielsen, ~Quick thoughts on research:~ (found via Zheng Dong Wang)