This auspicious 250th Independence Day, I find myself thinking of what Om wrote in iAMerican when he became a US citizen in 2013.

On a globe, America is a landmass, a country. In an immigrant’s heart it is a belief that future is almost always better. It may not be perfect and it is certainly not equal, but it still is one of a kind — the only place where an absolute stranger with a funny name and a funny accent with no friends or contacts can show up, work hard and actually get to do what he was destined to do. […]

In most places in the world, outsiders like me don’t have that chance. That simple truth is what makes America so special. A chance – to be somebody even if you are nobody. America is a state of mind and I have opted-in!

I feel lucky to have been born here, and if I hadn’t been, I think I would have gotten here as fast as I could. I’m grateful to the public schools that educated me, the teachers who pushed me, the internet that freed my mind, and the culture of risk and innovation in technology that invested a million dollars in a 21-year-old dropout kid trying to build a company around (but not replacing) an Open Source project.

It’s not unimaginable that these things could have happened someplace else, but it would have been a long shot.

On the lighter side, SNL’s Washington’s Dream skit is one of their best ever, Google has a pretty funny commercial reimagining the Declaration being written, and another famous Matthew (McConaughey) gives a great 2-minute speech. “We need skeptics. Yes, we do. We do not need cynics. One cares enough to question, which we should, and the other one’s already quit.”

I’m sorry I couldn’t be there in person, but I was so excited to watch the Midjourney Medical launch from afar. This is a really big deal. David Holz, one of the most underrated pioneers in AI, has taken money from making cat pictures to build a full-body ultrasound scanner that can give you incredible visibility in 60 seconds.

You can re-watch the livestream here, which I recommend. You might remember David from Leap Motion, which I blogged back in 2012. It’s so cool to see a small but mighty independent company innovate and apply learnings across seemingly disparate sectors.

I wish all my friends in jazz and the arts who are despondent about tech could meet David:

“We’re going to be a little confusing for the next six months as we announce all the things, but I’m hoping as they all are out there, they form a picture which I hope feels cohesive. Most of them are around creativity, but some of them, like this, are just around positive human futures that we actually want to be a part of. And I think this is an important thing for AI companies to do—for all humans to do.” — David Holz

If you understand imaging, you know the tradeoffs between X-ray, CT (computed tomography), MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), and ultrasound, and Midjourney’s approach doesn’t cover everything, but what’s incredible is the speed, amount of data, and using AI to process and get something useful out of it. Ultrasonics will be an incredibly exciting area over the next few years, first for imaging and later for intervention. I can imagine a future where you dip into one of these once a month just to keep an eye on things, not just to find bad stuff but to see the impact of exercise or dietary changes.

We’re fairly new to scanning healthy people, and I always advise friends getting their first whole-body MRI with Biograph or Prenuvo that it’s very common to hear something scary at first, only to find it’s benign. Also, I’ve now heard many examples of things that were caught and treated early, years before they might otherwise have been noticed.

Spelling bees have gotten a lot more intense. How many of these do you know?

torrone, enthymeme, iguape, Denebola, fais-dodo, cywyddau, pohutukawa, monadnock, émeute, nannofossil, tongkang, Natchitoches, flaith, semele, rusell, sawder, campernelle, Nicol, Zamenis, Tharparkar, tlachtli, madoqua, retiarius, balintawak, tessaraconter, taurokathapsia, rapakivi, uayeb, paroemia, melengket, teraglin, homelyn, chikungunya, bromocriptine (cashaw)

Check out the first 90 seconds of this video where Shrey Parikh gets 32 out of 34 correct to become the 2026 champion. That speed round is called a “spell-off,” and so many of the kids are getting all the words right that they use it to break ties. Lots of words to press. 🤠

Feeling Lucky? by Tara Hunt: “It turns out that there IS such thing as lucky people, but it’s not some sort of mystical fate playing its hand at work after all. Instead, ‘lucky people’ are those who are really observant and open to opportunities.”

Curious if you guys have any favorite keyboard covers, I vaguely recall reading about one on Alex King’s site but can’t find it now. I’m looking for one to put over my laptop keys when I close the cover to avoid damaging the screen.

My friend Liz Welch recently finished up her new book with her siblings, The Kids are All Right. “Well, 1983 certainly wasn’t boring for the Welch family. Somehow, between their handsome father’s mysterious death, their glamorous soap opera star mother’s cancer diagnosis, and a phalanx of lawyers intent on bankruptcy proceedings, the four Welch siblings managed to handle each new heartbreaking misfortune together. But all that changed with the death of their mother. While nineteen year-old Amanda was legally on her own, the three younger siblings—Liz, 16; Dan, 14 and Diana, 8—were each dispersed to a different set of family friends.” I just ordered it on my Kindle.