On August 25th I found myself sleeping under a tent at Black Rock City (BRC), the temporary city where Burning Man takes place. It was my first time going. A month before that I had no plans to get there though earlier in the year I had thought of going but made no definite plans. I thought well, perhaps next year, which is what I had also thought the year prior. But then, two weeks before the event, a conversation with a friend that was looking for someone else to go with changed that.
Ultimately, to go to…
Jean Hebert, who proposes the stepwise replacement of brain tissue, has now joined ARPA-H
Why does Ozempic cure all disease
Scott Alexander on Nietzschean takes on morality, with an additional take from David Chapman, You should be a God-Emperor
Radiant, company started by ex-SpaceX engineer to
PBMs: a key player in the fuckupedness of the american healthcare system
Via Scott Alenxader's links, powering airplanes via microwaves. I had this idea back in 2021.
Blue Origin's factory
Using toxoplasma for deliv…
AI companies need to make a lot of money for the current market state (NVIDIA going to the moon) to make sense. Right now it's far from that.
Interview with the current co-CEO of Netflix
Lambda School, a scam
A tour of Starfactory, with Elon
Advantages of incompetent management
Ben Kuhn on trust and growing teams
Mehran's Steak House: making of
Why haven't biologists cured cancer?
The occurrence of cancer seems to continue to raise exponentially even in old age, contrary to what was previously thought
Using…
Michael Lewis (author of a recent book on FTX)'s Blind Side
Xylitol bad?
Demons and Internal Family Systems
GLP1 analogues do not cause muscle loss in excess to what one would expect via caloric restriction. And we know that in that case one can avoid that to some extent by a high protein diet + exercise.
Cradle (formerly known as Lorentz, a name I deem more based), Laura Deming's new startup working on cryopreservation of tissues
Lumina, the probiotics company trying to cure cavities, playing very dirty he…
Some debate over the merits of Minicircle, the gene therapy startup. It's a case of "in theory, it shouldn't work", with "working" defined in the most damning way: probably not even raising follistatin.
The debate over the usefulness of healthcare, Scott and reply from Robin Hanson, followed by reply from Scott and reply from Robin, with some highlights from Scott, which I think contains a good closure to the saga, with Hanson stating what he believes in and Scott agreeing roughly with …
In defense of Academia
The Breslow saga
Interview with Scott Alexander
On Lockheed Martin's Skunkworks
An interview with the founder of Cyclarity, a company working on reversing atherosclerosis
On East Asian drinking culture
The ultimate lab leak debate
Why did supersonic airliners fail.
Supersonic airliners coming back
Casey Handmer on making fuel out of air
On David Sinclair, sirtuins, and resveratrol
Devon Zuegel, Jan Sramek, and MIke Solana on California Forever
A TV show: Three Body Problem
A song: Syr…