Saloni

Terence Tao (@teorth.bsky.social) has written a thread on Mastodon about the impact of the federal grant freeze to UCLA, particularly to his own field of Mathematics. UCLA's IPAM (Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics) could shut down entirely

mathstodon.xyz/@tao/1149568...

Damn it...

Yeah it was a little painful for me as well, and I had two very small bleeds. I don't think I'll be doing that again 😂

I got a manicure for the first time ever yesterday, and my fingers look a little alien with the cuticles fully removed. Why do they even do that? I actually want them back now.

AI could help lead to an Alzheimer’s cure Lana Del Rey’s “Young and Beautiful” starts with piano keys, church bells, violins soaring through the first verse. Then a drum roll, and Lana belts out: Will you still love me when I’m no longer you...

blog.jacobtrefethen.com/ai-optimism/

AI will not suddenly lead to an Alzheimer’s cure I work on funding science for the sake of medical progress, but only 10% of our science funding at Open Philanthropy is related to AI. The whole premise of Open Philanthropy is we try to allocate mone...

blog.jacobtrefethen.com/ai-san-franc...

What does AI progress mean for medical progress? Rapid AI progress does not automatically mean rapid medical progress. If the point of AI progress is human flourishing, we must make other complementary investments too. Even with extremely powerful A...

Look it's @jacobtref.bsky.social dropping three of the best blogposts of 2025.

“What does AI progress mean for medical progress?” gives a great overview.

Then it turns into a choose-your-own adventure to read about the bottlenecks AI won't solve *and* where it can still help.

Wokeness: a Retrospective In recent times my online sphere has had a fair few people make the claim that, in some sense, the culture has moved on from Woke. The d...

My Retrospective on Wokeness in detail! Blogs are for just saying stuff, after all. So here is my attempt to say what was distinctive (if anything) about a recent era of socio-cultural life, what (if anything) changed, and what (if anything) was to the good

sootyempiric.blogspot.com/2025/08/woke...

I've had it pre-LLMs. It's honestly so bad and doesn't understand what I'm saying half the time... 🤦‍♀️

YouTube video by Le Labo Mean Girls - Karen Is Kinda Psychic

At this rate, its capabilities will turn into this scene www.youtube.com/watch?v=VL9c...

I asked my Google Home if it would rain today (as I always do) and this time it just said:

"I don't know the answer to your specific question, but here's something from WikiHow that might help. Gray clouds usually mean a new or a light storm. White clouds usually mean good weather [...]"

More like "Wizards of Unwavering Plot-holes" if they don't fix it

Finally someone said it.

How to Fix Foreign Aid USAID's former Chief Economist reflects on DOGE

The brilliant Dean Karlan, with whom I worked when he was Chief Economist of USAID, talks about how to reform foreign aid in the long run.

This is what genuine commitment to efficiency looks like. Not ignorant sneering sledgehammers. Smart, conservative, evidence-based reallocation of resources.

😂

The road to lenacapavir, a breakthrough HIV treatment Three individuals have been awarded the AAAS Mani L. Bhaumik Breakthrough of the Year Award for their work on the drug

Another great piece:

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Have you heard of the 'Rebuilding the Renaissance' podcast? It's very popular to listen to while visiting places in Italy. Maybe you could do one but for English cathedrals!

Thank you! :)

Thank you so much Roby!

Thank you! 😊

Amazingly, yes! I joined part-time in 2021 and then, after I graduated, full-time in 2023

Innovation Policy | Open Philanthropy

The clinical trials aspect is new! But they've supported innovation policy e.g. www.openphilanthropy.org/focus/innova...

Anyway, there's lots more to come — 

Look forward to more 9,500 word articles, 5-hour long podcast episodes, regular biotech and medicine round ups, and lots more science, medical innovation, and global health content ☺️

I'll also be working with Open Philanthropy on clinical trials, exploring and supporting the great ideas out there in innovative trial design, improving participation, transparency, and the more 'boring' but important processes that make research possible.

These are some of the things on my to-do list, and from next week, I'll be working full-time at Works in Progress as an editor on science & global health, working with authors, and writing my newsletter Scientific Discovery, co-hosting the podcast Hard Drugs, to cover these topics and many more.

- How do we get ambitious global health efforts restarted?
- What would it take to create a universal flu vaccine?
- How have microscope resolutions advanced so much over history?
- How did heart surgery become possible & routine?
- How did major data collection projects get started?

But I've been wanting to spend more of my time working on longer-form, in-the-weeds content on medical innovation & global health.

For example...

- How can we get innovative clinical trial designs adopted more widely?
- What if the Golden Age of vaccine development is right now?

I've learnt so much from the whole team on data visualization, accessibility, data management and writing for a broad audience.

When I started, I didn't particularly care for data visualization (!) and didn't even know what trachoma was.

Some personal news:

After four years, this was my last week at Our World in Data!

It's hard to express how much I've enjoyed working with my colleagues, and being part of such a great project to make global data & research accessible to the world. I'm really going to miss it!

That bit was 🧑‍🍳🤌💋