Multiple Sclerosis, a disease of hithertho unknown etiology has been somehwat elucidated: Infection with the Epstein-Barr virus is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for it. Moderna is working on a vaccine for EBV at the moment. More here.

Cambrian Bio's secret master plan to build aging drugs.

Some people have trouble recognizing faces. Others remember them all

Progress in storing data in DNA

The Charisma of Leaders (ht/ Molly Mielke)

Quanta's The Year in Biology

Apprenticeship Online

Are warp drives science now?

Sir Francis Drake landed in Point Reyes (California), the first land the UK ever claimed in America

The external validity debates: Let's take the con out of RCTs in development, and External Validity and Policy Adaptation

Make Manhattan Greater

Progress in aging clocks

In what sense is the science of science a science?

(Some) saturated fat is bad

US' Nuclear Regulatory Comission denies Oklo's application for their new reactor design.

Relatedly, why is the nuclear power industry stagnant? (I wrote on this topic in 2018)

First ever transplant of a heart from pigs to humans

You knew about Mont-Saint-Michel, but there's also St Michael's Mount

Perturb-seq on the entire genome

Moxie Marlinspike critique of crypto, with replies from Brian Armstrong, Vitalik, and Balaji

Danielle Baskin, builder of companies as "performance art". Lot's of interesting bits:

If you're running a factory in Shenzhen, you also are paying for lodging and food for your employees. People live there. It's a campus, which is actually so different than anything in this country. Yeah. You try to get repeat business from larger clients, and then take that money and scale your operation and just keep doing it gradually.

Psychedelics alters metaphysical beliefs somwhat (I'd say largely in the right direction! Alvaro de Menard thinks otherwise)

Samurai, Conquistadors, Ottomans, and Aztecs fought each other at one point, in the same battle.

Ants infected with tapeworms live 3x longer

In vivo CAR-T cells. CAR Ts are T cells with modified (chimeric) receptors to target arbitrary antigens, usually neoantigens (from cancer). Here, the authors target the cells to fibrosis-inducing fibroblasts (Think of fibrosis as a wound that heals poorly, leaving a scar instead of fully functioning tissue) in the heart, resulting in a recovery of function in an injury model. (In mice!)