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…
An inside view via 19 cameras of the NYC restaurant Crown Shy (which I recommend, get the gruyere frites and the roasted short rib)
Curtis Yarvin's recent interview [transcript]. The interviewer's reaction near the beginning sums up part of mine "I'm asking you what you had for breakfast and you go "Well, since the dawn of time!!, just answers"+"I find the depth of background information obfuscating, instead of illuminating". Though I could see how his style of storytelling could be…
First commercial-scale fusion plant plans announced, to be built in the early 2030s
Roger Penrose's biography
Renaissance Philantrophy (and within, a link to recent research on wearable cortisol trackers!)
Bringing Elon to a knife fight
Google Willow, their new quantum chip
Something I long suspected: Most of senescent cells are immune cells (hence immune rejuvenation should also solve cellular senescence)
This year in biology: 2024; of particular interest is the brain control of bodywide inflammation throu…