𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗

Why AI Is 'Not Particularly Good' at Curing Disease (Plus: The Next GLP-1 Boom and Why America Hates Big Pharma) A wide-ranging interview with Dave Ricks, the CEO of Eli Lilly, which makes the GLP-1 drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound and recently became the first trillion-dollar pharma company in history

Striking @dkthomp.bsky.social interview w/ Eli Lilly CEO Dave Ricks covering the widespread effects of GLP-1 drugs, AI as a bad cancer-cure finder, why people hate Big Pharma, and more.

Gotta say, I often wonder if these drugs will end up having way more long-term impact on our lives than AI.

The counterargument would be that a lot of both Defoe and Twain are brilliantly written but slapdash. I just read "Roughing It." It was hilarious and amazing--but it also would've benefited from Twain going over the first draft and asking himself hard questions about its structure.

State of the Species - Orion Magazine Does success spell doom for Homo sapiens?

I re-read this essay by @charlescmann.bsky.social in February and July every year. It holds. Waiting to see if homo sapiens can turn the biological corner away from self extinction. So far, not looking good.

@orionmagazine.bsky.social
#limitstogrowth
#successfullspecies

Tweet from Michael Tracy shows Epstein in a glamourous black overcoat with a fur neck above a crisp white short, open at the beck and wrists, in the parquet-floor foyer of some urban apartment. Behind him is an open door that frames a chandelier.

The Epstein truthers have entered the building.

I get what he's saying, and generally agree, but I also know there are these weird force-of-nature people who write super-well super-quickly. No tenth drafts for them!

Excerpt from speech: "I used to have students who bragged to me about how fast they wrote their papers. I would tell them that the great German novelist Thomas Mann said that a writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. The best writers write much more slowly than everyone else, and the better they are, the slower they write. James Joyce wrote Ulysses, the greatest novel of the 20th century, at the rate of about a hundred words a day—half the length of the selection I read you earlier from Heart of Darkness—for seven years. T. S. Eliot, one of the greatest poets our country has ever produced, wrote about 150 pages of poetry over the course of his entire 25-year career. That’s half a page a month. So it is with any other form of thought. You do your best thinking by slowing down and concentrating."

Via @nxthompson.bsky.social , comforting thoughts for those of us who have, err, just taken a %$#^&! long time to finish a writing project.

(Source: a speech by critic William Deresiewicz in 2009, theamericanscholar.org/solitude-and...)

James Webb Space Telescope images showing two views of what looks like a giant glowing brain in space.

Well good morning giant rapturous brain in the sky!
Here a dying star is blowing its mass into space, shedding its hydrogen skin, in clouds of gas expanding beyond that expiring mortal coil perhaps to begin anew, forming and fertilizing generations of new young stars in a rapture of stellar
(1/n)
🧪

How Buildings Learn is indeed a fantastic book. My wife uses it to teach her architecture and engineering students abd it regularly blows their minds.

COVID’s origins: what we do and don’t know Researchers summarize key insights from the world’s first comprehensive investigation into how a pandemic started.

Nature has issued a summary written by 23 of the 27 original members of the Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO). Look for some looong perspectives on pandemic origins in June in my Garrison Lecture for @aahmhistmed.bsky.social. www.nature.com/articles/d41... #histmed

Tech legend Stewart Brand on Musk, Bezos and his extraordinary life: ‘We don’t need to passively accept our fate’ He was at the heart of 1960s counterculture, then paved the way for the libertarian mindset of Silicon Valley. At 87, Brand is still keen to ensure the world is maintained properly – not just today, b...

Fine profile of Stewart Brand, going over his whole remarkable life but occasioned by his terrific new book, "Maintenance: Of Everything (Part 1)."

“'It’s harder to imagine how something might go well than go badly,' he says. But 'that’s how you negotiate your way into a future you were glad of.'"

DOJ Removed Record of Multiple FBI Interviews with Underage Trump Accuser, Epstein Data Shows The FBI spoke at least four times with a woman who credibly accused Trump of sexually assaulting her when she was a minor, Epstein files show. That document is no longer accessible on the DOJ website.

You can get annoyed at them, though, for waiting until the 16th paragraph to to note that NPR and Roger Sollenberger broke the story.
Sollenberger: sollenbergerrc.substack.com/p/doj-remove...
NPR: www.npr.org/2026/02/24/n...

Top of NYTimes website story is "Epstein Files are Missing Key Records About Women Who Made Claim About Trump." Below is, "Lawrence Summers Will Resign from Harvard after Epstein Revelations."

The front page of the New York Times 30 seconds ago. Lead story: "Epstein Files Are Missing Records About Woman Who Made Claim Against Trump"

The NYT took 18 hours from the NPR report to confirm and (a bit) extend the story. I don't see that as bad. I see that as them attempting to be responsible.

Near-empty produce shelves in my local supermarket.

Snow-induced supply-chain snags in the NE show up in my grocery store. I saw a friend, who said, "Welcome to the USSR!"

A snowy landscape under a brilliant blue sky. The sun is bright on a thick carpet of white.

View from the window of our eating area at breakfast this morning. I love winter.

Kiliii’s photography is spectacular, isn’t it?

I was with Kiliii when he took this photograph of Leaf and Lisa on the Klamath. The image captures, as Kiliii does so well, their humor and joy, the tight bond between them, the suddenly freed river, the regrowing vegetation. Everything capping the successful 30-year campaign to take down the dams.

Kiliii Yüyan puts Indigenous ‘Guardians of Life’ and their planetary stewardship in focus National Geographic photographer Kiliii Yüyan returns to the Mongabay Newscast to share his experience creating his new book, Guardians of Life: Indigenous Knowledge, Indigenous Science, and Restoring...

Almost three years ago I interviewed @kiliiiyuyan.bsky.social about a project he was working on documenting the traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) of nine Indigenous communities worldwide. He returns to the podcast to talk about the experience, and the knowledge he's gleaned. Listen here:

Whoops--Means was nominated last summer. What the Trump people did this week was launch a campaign to push her through the Senate confirmation process, which has been stalled because Means espouses views that are vigorously resisted by a lot of US farmers.

Surgeon General Pick Deepens Rift Between Trump Admin and Farmers RFK ally expected to sail through upcoming Senate vote

As these guys point out, the Trump people's food/ag policy is totally incoherent. In a single week, they've promoted glyphosate production, proposed removing pesticides from environmental review in the Farm Bill--and nominated anti-GMO/anti-pesticide activist Casey Means to be Surgeon General.

“Cyborg” Pancreas Organoids Reveal How Cells Mature and Synchronize “Cyborg” pancreatic organoids extend a decade-long push to merge electronics with developing tissue

Potentially exciting: Using stem cells to replace pancreatic islets to treat diabetes hasn't worked, because the cells don't respond right to glucose. New cyborg "organoids" are recording in real time how stem-cell derived islets develop.

Article: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Good PR explainer:

View from my front door just now. I love winter, and this is the first real New England blizzard in quite a while.

I'd forgotten until I read the article that Trump tried the same rollback on mercury in his first administration. Guess who was the most prominent public opponent to the move? The guy who testified at public hearings to the harm it would cause?

RFK Jr., once poisoned by mercury, is silent as EPA weakens rules against it The HHS secretary has fought mercury pollution for years. He’s now in an administration that wants to make it easier for industries to dump it into the air

RFK Jr spent years denouncing mercury pollution from power plants. He was one of Trump's most public opponents when he tried to roll back mercury limits in 2017. He himself actually got mercury poisoning (eating too much fish). On Friday, Trump's EPA weakened mercury rules. RFK Jr said nothing.

Twitter post by Robert F Kennedy Jr on June 14, 2024, as he is running for president. It says: "The herbicide Glyphosate is one of the likely culprits in America’s chronic disease epidemic. Much more widely used here than in Europe. Shockingly, much of our exposure comes from its use as a desiccant on wheat, not as an herbicide. From there it goes straight into our bodies. My USDA will ban that practice."

I'd forgotten about this vow. I actually thought he really believed this stuff.

COVID-19 vaccination status during pregnancy and preeclampsia risk: the pandemic-era cohort of the INTERCOVID consortium COVID-19 vaccination with a booster reduces the odds of PE by 30% approaching 60% reduction among women with pre-existing morbidities.

Remember when RFK Jr. unilaterally decided that COVID19 vaccines should no longer be recommended during pregnancy?

Well, COVID19 increases the risk of preeclampsia.

And it turns out that getting boosted, either before or during pregnancy, significantly reduces the risk of preeclampsia.

historians_views The Portal for Public History. Please read the rules before participating, as we remove all comments which break the rules. Answers must be in-depth and comprehensive, or they will be removed.

This Reddit summary has a lot of good stuff. www.reddit.com/r/AskHistori...

Good lord.

Now I have bruises on my forehead from banging it into my desk.

Thanks, I guess, for telling me this. Ow.

You'd expect him to keep silent or issue a noncommittal statement. Instead he 180'd so hard and fast you have to wonder if his activism was all grift from the get-go.

I don't say this as a glyphosate-basher. I say this as someone who'd prefer the HHS secretary was sincerely wrong than a con-man.

Jury orders Monsanto to pay $289 million in Roundup cancer trial "The simple fact is he is going to die," said the attorney who represented Dewayne Johnson, who has non-Hodgkin's lymphoma

RFK was on a legal team that successfully sued Monsanto for causing cancer. He repeatedly called glyphosate a prime cause of our "chronic disease epidemic." His MAHA report in May tied it to "reproductive and developmental disorders as well as cancers, liver inflammation and metabolic disturbances."

RFK Jr statement after Bayer, corporate owner of glyphosate, agrees to billion-dollar settlement for glyphosate health claims. "If my life were a Superman comic, Monsanto would be my Lex Luther I’ve seen this company as the enemy of every admirable American value since Rachel Carson visited my home in 1962 at a time when Monsanto had her under fierce assault for her expose on DDT in Silent Spring. My first legal case as an environmental lawyer arose out of Monsanto’s PCBs in the Hudson. I’m so grateful to Michael Baum, Brent Wisner and all the our legal team for finally bringing Monsanto to justice."

RFK Jr' statement: “Donald Trump’s executive order puts America first where it matters most — our defense readiness and our food supply,” Mr. Kennedy said in the statement. “We must safeguard America’s national security first, because all of our priorities depend on it.” Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/18/us/politics/trump-boost-weedkiller.html

On the left, RFKJr in 2020, denouncing Monsanto--"the enemy of every American value"--and cheering its court loss on glyphosate (Roundup).

On the right, RFKJr in 2025, obediently cheering Donald Trump's executive order boosting the production of glyphosate.

Craven even by current standards.