So I went down to the beach. "Kinda nice", I thought. The sky had a particularly vibrant blue color, the waves had 'the right size', their roar was pleasant. I started to walk around trying to continue meditating. I focused my awareness on an arising sensation of open heartedness and then I noticed my eyes tearing up ("Huh? I thought"). I looked again at the ocean and then I saw it. It was fucking amazing. So much color and detail: waves within waves, the fractal structure of the foamy c…
The term "agency" is popular these days. Though the term gets many definitions depending on who you ask, I'll define someone agentic as someone that both:
Is aware of what's possible, beyond the obvious next step
Gets what they want, if that's different from what their environment wants
And I'll define an action as agentic if it's vastly more predictable from knowing the individual than from knowing the environment in which the individual is immersed.
It's possible to have one, both, or neither.…
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…