Study Suggests Humans Are Not Born Afraid of Snakes
A short video post claims scientists have confirmed that human fear of snakes is learned rather than innate. The post contains little detail beyond the claim and the attached media.
A short video post claims scientists have confirmed that human fear of snakes is learned rather than innate. The post contains little detail beyond the claim and the attached media.
Carolyn Rockey recounts how Jo Nagai, as a second grader, worked with Georgetown entomologist Martha Weiss to show that trained swallowtail butterflies retained an aversion through metamorphosis and that their untrained offspring inherited it.
Matt Krisiloff announces that Conception has generated the first early human eggs derived from stem cells. He frames the result as a major step with real potential to redefine fertility, shared with a photo.
Cardiologist Afshine Emrani argues AI tools are moving medical diagnosis into patients' hands. He cites OpenAI's o3 diagnosing rare pediatric diseases in an NEJM-published study, a WashU blood-marker biological age calculator, and AI-enhanced CT angiography detecting inflamed arteries.
Cardiologist Afshine Emrani outlines blood markers he tracks beyond standard physicals, including fasting insulin, HOMA-IR, HbA1c, triglyceride-to-HDL ratio and ApoB, with target ranges for each. The post argues these tests detect metabolic decline years earlier than typical panels.
Paavan Shukla reports that India switched on a plant at Kalpakkam on June 26 that produces hydrogen using nuclear heat rather than electricity, describing it as built domestically. The post is brief and promotional, with the full explanation left to a thread.
Kydo describes Midjourney's new ultrasound-based imaging machine, which scans the full body in about 60 seconds with MRI-level resolution and no radiation, using a warm water pool and half a million sensors. The post highlights that the team building it is only nine people.
Midjourney @midjourneyA technical dive inside our new "Midjourney Scanner"
Coach Alan Couzens says nearly any healthy 50-year-old can train to push VO2max above 50 ml/kg/min, though only about 5% of men and 1% of women do, and urges readers to stay in that minority.
Alan Couzens @Alan_CouzensIf your VO2max at 50 isn't already 50 ml/kg/min+, your chance of it being there when you hit age 70-80 isn't great.
It only gets harder.
Dan Go reports wearing an Apple Watch, Whoop, Oura and Fitbit Air simultaneously for a week and found the data diverged more than expected. The post is a teaser with the full findings presented in attached media.
Joe Barrow and Denis Peskoff of UC Berkeley announce a paper releasing a large corpus of nearly all publicly accessible city and county laws in America, totaling about 2.2 million laws. The dataset is positioned as making scattered legal texts usable.
Bryan Johnson shares his latest sleep data, including over four restorative hours and a resting heart rate of 42, and lists five habits: finishing food four hours before bed, screens off an hour before, a fixed bedtime, morning light and daily exercise. He argues sleep underpins most other life outcomes.
Karthik describes experiencing exertion-related chest discomfort that he initially ignored, later identified as stable angina linked to undetected cholesterol problems, and urges readers not to dismiss such symptoms, citing a linked news story about a man who waited too long.
Amy Deng, an AI researcher and brain tumor patient, says she used AI models to identify the cause of her fatigue faster than her primary care doctor, and shares a method she believes others can apply to their own symptoms.
Bryan Johnson reports that an elderly woman with ten years of Alzheimer's took a single 5-gram psilocybin dose and briefly regained speech, recognition, bladder control and mobility, with gains reportedly lasting weeks. The post is an anecdote with a photo and no cited study.
Yishan says researchers have finally figured out muscle fibers for robots, suggesting motors may no longer be needed. The post is a brief one-line claim with no details or source.
Demis Hassabis states that AI should primarily improve human health and says Isomorphic Labs, building on AlphaFold, has received $2.1 billion in new funding to reimagine drug discovery. The post is a video.
Ole Lehmann outlines Demis Hassabis's plan to use AI for drug discovery, from AlphaFold's protein structure work to Isomorphic Labs' new $2.1 billion round led by Thrive Capital. The post says its first AI-designed cancer drug enters human trials this year.
Demis Hassabis @demishassabisI’ve always believed the No.1 application of AI should be to improve human health.
That work started with AlphaFold, and now at @IsomorphicLabs with the mission to reimagine drug discovery and one day solve all disease!
We are turbocharging that goal with $2.1B in new funding.
Varun Guru highlights Sthyr Energy, a startup founded by three IIT Madras scientists, which converts electricity into metal that can be stored for months and later converted back. He argues it could enable long-duration storage and transport of renewable energy.
Chris Powell shares a video describing a claim from Dr. John Kirsch that hanging from a pull-up bar can reshape the acromion bone via Wolff's Law and reduce surgery need, citing a 90 of 92 patient success figure from research.
Vishal Misra argues that the 1948 Bell Labs paper by Claude Shannon, A Mathematical Theory of Communication, contains the first generative AI model and that modern LLMs trace back to it. He quotes a thread by techNmak recounting Shannon's history.
Tech with Mak @techNmakIn 1948, a 32-year-old at Bell Labs published a paper nobody fully understood.
Engineers found it too mathematical. Mathematicians found it too engineering-focused. One prominent mathematician reviewed it negatively.
That paper - "A Mathematical Theory of Communication", became the founding document of the digital age.
The man was Claude Shannon. Father of Information Theory.
At 21, he wrote the most important master's thesis of the 20th century.
Working at MIT on an early mechanical computer, Shannon noticed its relay switches had exactly two states - open or closed. He had just taken a …
Justin Drake reports two papers improving Shor's algorithm, one from Google Quantum AI and one from startup Oratomic. Google estimates about 1,000 logical qubits could break secp256k1 signatures, while Oratomic estimates about 26,000 atomic qubits could do so, both pending expert vetting.
Nic Carter shares a Google Research post on responsibly disclosing quantum vulnerabilities to cryptocurrency, which he links to Google's revised post-quantum cryptography transition deadline of 2029. The linked post describes a new model for disclosing quantum code-breaking capabilities.
LongevityLab shares a thread and video promising ten claims from a sex expert about sexual health, testosterone and lifespan. The post cites a claim that weekly sex is linked to living 49% longer, with no supporting study given.
Jen Zhu describes Google Research's TurboQuant, which compresses LLM key-value caches to 3 bits per value using random rotation and PolarQuant quantization, reporting at least 6x memory reduction and up to 8x faster attention with no measured accuracy loss. The post links to Google's research blog.
Google Research @GoogleResearchIntroducing TurboQuant: Our new compression algorithm that reduces LLM key-value cache memory by at least 6x and delivers up to 8x speedup, all with zero accuracy loss, redefining AI efficiency. Read the blog to learn how it achieves these results: research.google/blog/turboquant-redefining-ai-…