👋 Hello friends,

Thank you for joining this week's edition of The Saturday Morning Newsletter. I'm Drew Jackson, and today we're exploring 16 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: 5 minutes.

Let’s dive in!

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#1: Rhizome

Description: Rhizome is a climate resilience planning platform.

Why Is This Company Interesting?? Rhizome recently raised $6.5M in venture capital funding. Their platform helps power grids model climate risk, planning for reliability and resilience in our new era of weather extremes. These models help take the guesswork out of long-term planning, enabling more stability in these utility platforms.

#2: Astrolight

Description: Astrolight is a space communication startup.

Why Is This Company Interesting?? Astrolight recently raised $2.8M in venture capital funding. Their mission is to connect the Earth and outer space using a network of high-speed lasers, primarily for satellite connectivity and deep space exploration.

#3: LIS Technologies

Description: LIS Technologies is a uranium enrichment provider.

Why Is This Company Interesting?? LIS Technologies recently raised $12M in venture capital funding. Their patented laser technologies separate isotopes to help enrich uranium, providing several major advantages over traditional methods such as gas diffusion, centrifuges, and prior art laser enrichment.

#4: Solestial

Description: Solestial is a space solar business.

Why Is This Company Interesting?? Solestial recently raised $17M in venture capital funding. Space-based solar can leverage the technological advancements that have been made over the last couple of decades, designed with scalability in mind. This technology can lead to large, new, exciting opportunities in space.

#5: Sublime Systems

Description: Sublime Systems is a concrete decarbonization startup.

Why Is This Company Interesting?? Sublime Systems recently raised $3M in venture capital funding. Their manufacturing process makes cement more energy efficient than traditional cement processes, a more durable, whiter, and consistent quality of cement.

IEEE Spectrum: Wooden Wind Turbines

A Swedish startup, Modvion, is working on building wooden wind turbine towers, with the tallest constructed thus far reaching 119 meters in height, matching most onshore wind turbines in operation. The tower can support a 6.5MW turbine, growing the potential for wood to be used as a strong, lightweight, and low-emission structural building material.

Reuters: US Nuclear On Tight Timeline

For nuclear to be the solution to the vast energy needs of AI datacenters, it needs to be deployed very rapidly. In the meantime, renewable energy seems to be the frontrunner for actionable energy, potentially usurping nuclear energy for the energy demand.

Futurism: Stealing Wind From Wind Farms

When wind passes through wind farms, it slows down, creating a wake of less windy wind, potentially stretching 60 miles long. This can affect other wind turbines that are behind the original turbine, effectively having wind farms “steal” the wind from other turbines, decreasing the outputs.

The New York Times: Global Forest Loss To Wildfires

Our planet lost a record amount of forest land last year, largely due to wildfires plaguing the land, reaching 6.7M hectares in 2024. For the first time, wildfires, not agriculture, were the leading cause of this loss, accounting for nearly half of all the destruction.

The New York Times: NOAA Predicts “Above Average” Hurricane Season

The NOAA is expecting to see between 13 and 19 major hurricanes this year, an above-average season, but likely not as large as 2024 was. Looking over the last two decades of the number of hurricanes, there has been quite a lot of variation in the number of hurricanes, not necessarily showing a direct correlation with climate change.

The Wall Street Journal: The Science Behind Mining for Riches on the Deep-Sea Floor

Explorers have been harvesting key minerals and metals from the deep-sea bed since the 1870s. Today, deep-sea mining has been off-limits in international waters since 1982. The Trump Administration is trying to seek otherwise, aiming to vacuum up rocks containing the necessary elements demanded today. The U.S. isn’t a signatory of the 1982 treaty, potentially leading to an international problem going forward.

Space: Marsquakes

Mars is experiencing earthquakes, helping researchers uncover signs of water sitting 3-5 miles below the surface. This continues to expand the possibility for life on the red planet, potentially in our near future.

NASA: Adjusting 2025 Space Station Planning

Due to a revised ISS flight schedule, NASA is shifting launch opportunities for several of their upcoming missions—Axiom and 2 SpaceX missions. NASA continues to review operations and plans to make sure their launch schedules are the most optimal going forward.

Wiley: DoD Intellectual Property Guidebook

The Department of Defense recently released its Intellectual Property Guidebook, the standardized guide to how the DoD approaches intellectual property. The goal of this is to clarify the legal and operational challenges involved in acquiring IP and the rights, allowing the DoD to strengthen future partnerships with industry players.

Action on Armed Violence: The Philosophy of Violence

This series gives examples of how great philosophers “have challenged, explained, or reimagined violence.” By examining their perspectives on violence, we can understand some people’s rationales for violence or the lack thereof, enabling us to shape our society to prevent violent attacks.

In the depths of trying to find a good poem to put at the start of one of my recent articles, I stumbled across this one, titled Beautiful, by Lindsey:

I used to look in the mirror

And point out everything wrong with me

I would ask myself

Why wasn’t I born differently

Why are my brown eyes so big

Why are my lips thin

Why is my jawline not slim

It took me years to realize

I was beautiful

I am beautiful

Quite imputable

To be called beautiful

The beauty not just on the surface

But deep within

Everything wrong with me

Was just precisely me

What made me different

Was what made me the one and only

I adore myself so much

And now I know

I will always be enough

See you Wednesday for Brainwaves,

Drew Jackson

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.