06-reference

not boring wdoo 201

2026-07-10·reference·source: Not Boring·by Packy McCormick

"Weekly Dose of Optimism #201" — @packyM

Why this is in the vault

WDoO #201 arrives the week after four advanced nuclear reactors hit July 4th criticality targets — and this issue closes the loop on that sprint. Items (1)–(3) form a tight energy-infrastructure cluster: Aalo going critical, the FT amplifying the data-center-as-industrial-demand thesis, and American Turbine coming out of stealth to supply gas turbines to those same data centers. Items (4) and (5) cover synthetic-biology fabrication (OXMAN) and humanoid dexterity (1X NEO hands). The nuclear/data center convergence is the primary RDCO signal: Phase 2 of the capital cycle is visibly in motion (science → manufacturing competition).

⚠️ Sponsorship

Explicit sponsor: Mercury — Mercury Command, an AI layer built directly into Mercury banking that surfaces insights and takes action from live account data. Explicit paid sponsor block at the top with CTA "Try Mercury Command →." Clean disclosure. Note: Mercury is a fintech company, not FDIC-insured; banking services via Choice Financial Group and Column N.A.

Portfolio / personal investment — Aalo Atomics (item 1): Packy explicitly discloses: "I actually wrote a small personal check into Aalo before the podcast, back when I didn't think nuclear was fund investable." This is a disclosed personal (not fund) investment. Coverage is enthusiastic; the disclosure is present but in-text only, not a standard sponsorship label. Flag for completeness.

Self-cross-promo — item (2): Packy uses Josh Zoffer's FT piece as a launching pad to cross-link his own "Thank God for Data Centers" essay. Josh Zoffer is described as "my friend" — relationship unverified beyond social; not flagged as a financial relationship.

Unverified — American Turbine, OXMAN, 1X: No Not Boring Capital disclosures present for items (3), (4), (5). Could not verify investor status from this email.

Issue contents

(1) Aalo Goes Critical on the 4th of July [personal-investment disclosed]

Aalo Atomics went critical on July 4th at 12:20am — the fourth advanced nuclear company to hit the July 4th deadline, and the third whose founder appeared on Age of Miracles in 2023. Packy held a personal check in Aalo (disclosed). Aalo joins Antares Nuclear, Valar Atomics, and Deployable Energy. Additional companies (Radiant, Oklo, X-Energy, Deep Fission, Last Energy) are expected later this year or next. Packy's takeaway: the field shifts from science to manufacturing; data centers are the primary customers for these smaller advanced reactors, not utilities.

(2) Data Centres Are a Crucial Test of US Industrial Resolve [third-party + self-cross-promo]

Josh Zoffer writes in the Financial Times that data center demand is "a special kind of opportunity" — deep-pocketed hyperscalers willing to pay for fast, reliable industrial access, enabling domestic supply chains driven by demand rather than subsidies and tariffs. Packy uses this to amplify his own "Thank God for Data Centers" thesis (filed in vault 2026-05-27). Third-party article; cross-promoted via self-link.

(3) American Turbine Comes Out of Stealth [third-party / unverified]

American Turbine exits stealth targeting data center power demand with small, highly manufacturable gas turbines — designed for speed to market rather than maximum efficiency. Their pitch: if you need MW, buy more turbines. Natural gas is the fuel base; the US has supply advantage. Packy's framing: beating China at things the US can do uniquely well. No NB Capital disclosure; could not verify investor status.

(4) Vigils Uses Colors That Are Grown, Not Applied [third-party / OXMAN Ink / unverified]

Neri Oxman (ex-MIT, OXMAN company) announces Vigils — capes whose color is grown via bacteria (engineered to produce indigo and melanin pigments directly onto 3D-knitted silk). Cells are washed away; only pigment remains. Packy treats this as evidence that "not everything in the good future will be manufactured or petrochemicals-based." No NB Capital disclosure; relationship unverified.

(5) 1X Gives Neo Alien Hands [third-party / unverified]

1X announces 25-DOF tendon-driven hands for the NEO humanoid platform — near human-level dexterity, strength, safety, and reliability. Demos show picking up wine glasses, doing LEGOs, screwing in a lightbulb. 1X frames the hand as "an API to the Physical World." The company's argument: with hands solved, the remaining work is data collection — which they fund via tele-operated robots deployed in homes. Packy notes the counterintuitive takeaway: the more human-like machines become, the clearer it is that they are not human. No NB Capital disclosure; could not verify investor status.

Extra Doses (summary only — content behind paywall / web)

Sections mentioned in closing trailer: Science Breakthroughs (Ulkar-vetted), Aleph Speech, Levin, Quantum. Specific items not included in email body.

Mapping against Ray Data Co

Capital cycle investing — Markov phase-tracker (medium-strong): Items (1)–(3) are a tight cluster directly relevant to the Phase 2 read on RDCO's capital cycle thesis. Four reactors hitting criticality in one week signals the field has crossed from science into manufacturing competition — exactly the Phase 2 transition the Markov tracker is designed to detect. Data centers as primary nuclear customers (item 1) and as the demand flywheel for industrial supply chains (item 2) reinforce the thesis that energy infrastructure is the current capital deployment bottleneck. American Turbine's gas turbine play (item 3) is a competing/complementary supply-side signal.

Content-as-product / Sanity Check (weak): The human-vs-machine framing in item (5) — more human-like = clearer it is not human — is an interesting angle for Sanity Check editorial. Thin connection today; worth noting as a potential premise.

phData / AI agents (minimal): Mercury Command (sponsor) is an AI-in-banking product — architecturally adjacent to the COO agent pattern (live data → natural language → action) but not an RDCO operational input. 1X's "hardware solved, data collection next" argument has a structural parallel to agent scaffolding but is not an RDCO workflow item.

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