The Saturday Morning Newsletter #48
Bill Nye, Abduction, Disneyland, Mystery, Substack, and More
👋 Hello friends,
Thank you for joining this week's edition of The Saturday Morning Newsletter. I'm Drew Jackson, and today we're exploring 19 articles, essays, companies, ideas, podcasts, videos, or thoughts that caught my attention this week for their potential to significantly impact our future.
Before we begin: The Saturday Morning Newsletter by Brainwaves arrives in your inbox every Saturday, a concise and casual digest of current events, optimistic news stories, and other interesting tidbits about venture capital, economics, space, energy, intellectual property, philosophy, and beyond. I write as a curious explorer rather than an expert, and I value your insights and perspectives on each subject.
Time to Read: 6 minutes.
Let’s dive in!
#1: Substack
Description: Substack is a newsletter and social network site.
Why Is This Company Interesting? Substack recently raised $100M in venture capital funding. I’m highly biased on this one as it’s the platform I write on. With this recent round, Substack received a $1.1B valuation. Rumors are that they are thinking of IPOing in the next couple of years.
#2: Stellaria
Description: Stellaria is a developer of sustainable nuclear power.
Why Is This Company Interesting? Stellaria recently raised $27.9M in venture capital funding. They aim to develop the world’s first liquid-core reactor capable of renewing 100% of its fuel during operation. To be a bit technical, their reactor is a fast breeder reactor with a molten salt liquid core, capable of maintaining multiple types of fuel, all of which produce as much fissile material as they consume.
#3: 38 Degrees North
Description: 38 Degrees North is a developer of community-based solar.
Why Is This Company Interesting? 38 Degrees North recently raised $240M in venture capital funding. 38 Degrees North is focused on development-stage and construction-ready distributed generation and community solar projects. Thus far, they’ve aggregated, financed, constructed, and managed over 400 MW across over 100 projects.
#4: Apolink
Description: Apolink is a satellite connectivity startup.
Why Is This Company Interesting? Apolink recently raised $4.3M in venture capital funding. Legacy space communications heavily rely on sparse ground stations, creating dead zones for critical data. Apolink is aiming to achieve continuous, global connectivity for satellites in space.
Description: Impossible Metals is a deep-sea mining startup.
Why Is This Company Interesting? Impossible Metals is in the market to raise over $1B this year. Critical minerals play a vital role in our world today, with the demand for these materials only supposed to increase over time. Impossible Metals is trying to find these critical minerals on the bottom of the sea in a responsible manner.
Renewable Energy Magazine: The Battle for the Future of Wind Energy
Wind energy is widely seen as a clean, sustainable solution for the future, but it has received pushback along the way, including opposition from local communities and landowners, economic issues, and policy and regulatory setbacks. Despite these challenges, there are many solutions being proposed, so there may be hope for the future.
New York Times: China and Europe Make Climate Pledge
As the United States continues to back out of climate-related regulation, pledges, agreements, and the like, China and the European Union have just pledged to work together to slow down planetary heating. Their statement opened with the following:
In the fluid and turbulent international situation today, it is crucial that all countries, notably the major economies, maintain policy continuity and stability and step up efforts to address climate change.
New York Times: Fires Hamper Forest’s Ability to Fight Climate Change
Over the last 20 years, the amount of CO2 absorbed by the world’s forests has been steadily declining. In 2023 and 2024, the world’s forests only absorbed a quarter of what they did in 2001. This is mainly due to forest fires (as they emit CO2 and decrease absorption), logging, and agriculture-driven deforestation.
New York Times: Climate Science is Now the Law
The United Nations International Court of Justice has been busy recently regarding climate change. This week, they recognized that the root cause of climate change is primarily the burning of fossil fuels. Another recent court opinion explained that countries must protect citizens from climate change, and if they fail to do so, they may be held liable for an “internationally wrongful act.” This increase in recognition may finally lead to some consequences in place for climate dodgers.
New York Times: Trump’s War on Solar Power Will Fail
The Trump administration has been ending support for the renewable energy transition. The last time this significantly occurred was the 1980s; it took over 35 years to get us back on track. However, there is some hope as it seems the entire world is moving in this direction, and it’s almost inevitable that America will follow at some point or another.
Wall Street Journal: Extreme Weather is Driving Global Food-Price Spikes
Extreme weather events are driving short-term surges in food prices across the world. Until we reverse some of the effects of climate change, the prices of these goods will only continue to increase as supplies receive shock after shock after shock.
iPolitics: David Suzuki Says the Fight Against Climate Change is Lost
Suzuki refers in this article to the work of Johan Rockstrom, a Swedish scientist who has defined 9 planetary boundaries. If we live within these constraints, humanity can live forever. Ozone is just one of the 9, but we think we’ve saved the entire world. Unfortunately, we passed the seventh boundary this year, entering the extreme danger zone. Suzuki also points to the fact that we’ve had 28 international climate change meetings, but still haven’t been able to stop carbon emissions yet.
Space: SpaceX Launches Mystery Satellite
This week, SpaceX launched a mystery satellite into orbit. The company hasn’t identified the payload, but speculators believe it’s an Israeli communications satellite called Dror-1, a proprietary communication satellite intended to meet demand needs for the next 15 years. It wouldn’t be surprising if, in the coming years, more and more mysterious payloads begin to be launched.
NBC News: X-Energy Developments
X-Energy has recently broken ground on a ~$2B facility for new uranium fuel fabrication near Oak Ridge National Laboratory. This will help create a domestic supply of enriched uranium to achieve the President’s goal of quadrupling nuclear power in the United States in the next 25 years.
CNBC: Westinghouse to Build 10 Large Nuclear Reactors in the U.S.
Westinghouse’s interim CEO recently announced their plans to build 10 large nuclear reactors in the U.S., with construction starting by 2030. The U.S. has collectively only built two nuclear reactors over the past 30 years, so this is going to be an incredibly daunting task.
CNBC: Disney Spent 70 Years Funneling IP Into Disneyland
Over the last 70 years, Disney has grown its intellectual property portfolio significantly, with acquisitions of Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and 20th Century Fox. Disney has leveraged their significant IP portfolio in its theme parks (Disneyland) - creating immersive experiences fueled by beloved stories.
Iowa State University: Belief & Reasoning
This article contains a description of abduction, a term which refers to “inference to the best explanation.” It’s the term to describe something that is “probably true because it best explains the facts we have.” Underlying it all is the concept of beliefs, with this researcher seeing philosophy as evaluating “packages” of beliefs to find abduction.
Daily Nous: Studying Philosophy Makes People Better Thinkers
A new study found that, when attempting to control for the fact that people who choose to major in philosophy already have the skills to do well on tests, philosophy makes people better thinkers and helps them perform better on tests.
Reddit: Meeting w/ Bill Nye
Bill Nye is a childhood legend for most people.
Someone on Reddit in the Space community recently reported being in a meeting with Bill Nye and an unnamed member of Congress. Whether or not this is true, I think it’s quite interesting what it revealed about our mindset in the United States toward space.
Bill starts by explaining how NASA is one of America’s best brands. Funding for NASA is critical for maintaining leadership in space and continuing the image of America as a superpower in the sciences. To quote the writer:
NASA science represents something unique and special to Americans and to people around the world because NASA pushes the bounds of what is knowable. The threat of impoundment on NASA funds is reckless and ignorant of what NASA does and what it takes to successfully explore (more successful than any other space agency in history at least) farther than any human in existence.
It’s interesting to consider the perception of our country from an outsider’s viewpoint, as it’s something that we rarely do, but is becoming an extremely valuable practice to engage in.
See you Wednesday for Brainwaves,
Drew Jackson
Website: brainwaves.me
Twitter: @brainwavesdotme
Email: brainwaves.me@gmail.com
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Disclaimer: The views expressed in this content are my own and do not represent the views of any of the companies I currently work for or have previously worked for. This content does not contain financial advice - it is for informational and educational purposes only. Investing contains risks and readers should conduct their own due diligence and/or consult a financial advisor before making any investment decisions. Any sponsorship or endorsements are noted and do not affect any editorial content produced.