What I Am Reading:
How Not To Die - Chris DeMuth Jr
Vittorio is a biotech accelerationist and thinker exploring reality, how to transcend biology, and truth. He shares the science of how not to die, or at least how to live well, and his thoughts on human potential.
Doubling Down on your Winners
If a company is performing well (and communicating well), continue to invest in subsequent rounds. That follow-on capital can be just as important to overall fund returns as the initial investment.
18 months of Reflection - Sanjeev Agrawal
A personal essay detailing the author's deep introspection on life, career, and values after a major transition. It re-evaluates the pursuit of traditional achievement, noting that true joy was more often found in moments of physical mastery than in financial success.
These Brain Implants Are Smaller Than Cells and Can Be Injected Into Veins
The tiny chips hitch a ride on immune cells to target inflammation in the brain. Scientists hope to kick off clinical trials within three years.
Synthetic tongue rates chillies’ heat and spares human tasters
Gel-based device inspired by the cooling powers of milk assesses peppers whose burn ranges from mild to dangerous.
Human brains have 5 distinct 'epochs' in a lifetime, study finds
As we age, the human brain rewires itself. The process happens in distinct phases, or “epochs,” according to new research, as the structure of our neural networks changes and our brains reconfigure how we think and process information.
Memory is not stored in the brain
The leading theories of memory describe it as being stored in the brain – similarly, some argue, to the way a computer stores memory. But this assumption relies on materialist assumptions and problematically bypasses the hard problem of consciousness. Memory is not stored in space, but in time, argues philosopher Victoria Trumbull.
Introduction: Why should I read this guide? | 80,000 Hours
You’ll spend about 80,000 hours working in your career: 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, for 40 years. So how to spend that time is one of the most important decisions you’ll ever make.
Nervous System Reset | 13 Effective Ways to Regulate and Reground
Our ability to activate the relaxation response and down-regulate our body is directly connected to our vagal tone. ADHDers and Autistic people tend to have reduced vagal tone, meaning it is more difficult for us to activate our relaxation response and recover from the stress response.
Wireless Device ‘Speaks’ to the Brain With Light
In a new leap for neurobiology and bioelectronics, Northwestern University scientists have developed a wireless device that uses light to send information directly to the brain — bypassing the body’s natural sensory pathways, as detailed in a new study published in Nature Neuroscience.
25 Rules for Living an Excellent Life in a Chaotic World
25 rules for living an excellent life in a shallow, distracted, and too often isolated world.
From Private to Public and Back Again - Sophie Bakalar
There’s an interesting inversion happening in venture right now. For years, public market investors tried to act more like VCs by chasing growth rounds, writing big checks into private companies, calling themselves “crossover” funds. This made sense when venture capped out around Series D. But now it’s going the other way. The venture firms are the ones acting like crossover funds.
The Coffee Bank and the Speed of Change
That mismatch - between how fast people can build and how slowly institutions can respond - has become one of the defining forces of modern life. It’s not that people are breaking the law; it’s that the law no longer describes what people are doing.
There's something worse than recession and we're already in it.
I used to think recession was the absolute worst thing that could happen because recessions cause heavy economic damage. I don’t think that anymore. There’s something just as bad if not worse. Unchecked inflation. It can just as easily create riots and instability as a lack of job opportunity in an economic downturn. Neither is good, but inflation turns out to be potentially worse given the distribution of its effects.
Nature’s Ozempic: A Look Into the Supplement Berberine
As the frenzy over Ozempic, Mounjaro, and other incretin-based weight-loss prescriptions continues, a herbal supplement known as berberine has gone viral on TikTok, with devotees calling it nature’s Ozempic.
What I Am Listening to:
Elite Achievers Use This Math To Dominate
Ryan Serhant explains his 1,000 minutes / $1,000 rule, a daily framework for allocating time intentionally and avoiding the trap of letting a few bad minutes or a single tough call derail the rest of the day.
"Clean Up Your Messes!" - How Open Loops Drain Your Energy
When you live in a state of mental and physical clutter, it's likely that you won't be very productive. When you don't complete tasks, you can't be fully prepared to move into the present, let alone into your new future.
What the "Shower Test" Says About Your Life - Jimmy Carr
You can tell what you care about by what you think about in the shower. No other inputs going on. If you expand your time you get more space for thinking about what you want.
What I Am Watching:
The Thinking Game - Full documentary
The Thinking Game takes you on a journey into the heart of DeepMind, capturing a team striving to unravel the mysteries of intelligence and life itself. Filmed over five years by the award winning team behind AlphaGo, the documentary examines how Demis Hassabis’s extraordinary beginnings shaped his lifelong pursuit of artificial general intelligence.
Mars Keeps Teasing Us - But Is There Really Life Out There?
The search for alien life is more chemistry than sci-fi. From isotope fingerprints in Martian methane to ancient carbon trapped in zircon crystals on Earth, scientists are learning how to read the chemical breadcrumbs that life leaves behind. No green people, no catfish (yet). Just the quiet, meticulous science that could one day prove we’re not alone.
