Why Pantone colors are so expensive A while back Scott Alexander gave some grants. Here's a status update on said grants. The Claude Bliss Attractor Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Aviation The supply chain behind making a pill of clonazepam Some good advice on writing on the internet Palmer Luckey and the B-Boys Precise gene expression with gene circuits Nattokinase seemingly can reverse atherosclerotic plaque Combine drugs, get rich Why are aerospace parts so expensive? Scott on the missing heritabil…

Sasha Chapin on spiritual awakening Works in Progress links post 50 facts about construction Why aren't more companies working on atherosclerosis plaque removal? Prime Medicine's pipeline then ($16/share) and now ($1.2/share) Casey Handmer questions about AI in 2025 Make thee FDA great again On the importance of precise instructions New podcast, Development & Research; first episode on clinical trial efficiency The Tesla of stoves Owlposting on AI and its application to clinical drug development Patrick…

Retinoids (retinoic acid, retinol, retinal, tretinoin, adapalene, etc) are commonly claimed to both revert and also slow down skin aging. But this seems wrong to me. Reversing aging is quite difficult, and to my knowledge only a handful of things have enough data to support the claim of age-reversal (reprogramming being my go-to example). Slowed aging occurs in animals with caloric restriction and a few other things, but in general the default for both of these effects should be "no effect until proven…

Why can't biology move faster? How El Salvador solved their crime problems with a gigaprison: CECOT Robot dexterity is still difficult Why did Doordash win? Equity trader does ayahuasca, becomes psychedelic facilitator, then addicted to ketamine, then explains Elon on ketamine. "Spare human bodies" for transplantation Profile of Steve Davies, who runs DOGE The Purism, a $2000 smartphone mostly manufactured in the US Trevor Klee on gallbladder mysteries Matt Kaeberlein on biological age tests (read…

Sasha Chapin on Enjoying Things and Being Sasha Chapin Scott Alexander reviews The Body keeps the Score. I recently read the book, which makes claims that will sound familiar and even obvious to many people that have engaged with many forms of therapy, particularly the idea that events that happened in someone's childhood can affect their current mental health. But I learned there that the author of the book had to fight for psychologists to accept this! Seemingly once upon a time the idea was considered ob…

There's this practice called Circling1 that I do sometimes. I remember before I did it the first time I tried to get a sense of what it was like: Why do people do this? Are there mistakes that I can learn to avoid? There wasn't much I found written that I found that useful, with the exception of this post from Aella and this other one from Tasshin Fogleman. [1]. Circling is a registered trademark so one can find similar practices by other names like Relatefulness (in the Bay Area) When I explain Circli…