Drew Volpe

New paper from Google on accelerating science using Gemini (as opposed to its specialized research AIs). Lots of case studies and interesting advice on ways to work with these system.

"We view the AI as a tireless, knowledgeable, and creative bright junior collaborator."
arxiv.org/pdf/2602.03837

Massachusetts is losing the battle to keep its residents, and officials need to act fast Six Massachusetts families explain how they escaped $1 million home prices and found better lives in North Carolina, Maine and New Mexico.

MA ranks 46th in population growth. @skirsner.bsky.social interviews people who’ve left and cost of living (housing) is the major theme.

But the stories also show how it’s multifaceted. Economic opportunities in SFBA and also places like FL and NC play into it.

www.masslive.com/news/2026/02...

Mass. AG: Why I filed a lawsuit to enforce housing law — and why it’s personal for me - The Boston Globe Enforcing the law is a necessary step to ensure every transit-served town does its part to allow more housing.

The housing crisis is personal.

I grew up in public housing. When my father unexpectedly passed away, I was able to stay in our apartment because I knew my rights. Finally buying a home meant breaking cycles of poverty for my family.

I want every MA resident to have that opportunity.

it's (mostly) fake. Humans are prompting agents to do this. Most of them are made by people who run agent marketing companies.

Enjoyed hearing and getting to meet @governor.pa.gov on his stop in Boston.

'Is Boston’s tech and innovation scene withering?' - I spoke w/ Kara Miller in the @bostonglobe.com on the state of our ecosystem and what we need to do to level up.

www.bostonglobe.com/2026/01/27/b...

Tech demands ICE out of our cities

proud to sign this w/ other tech leaders from OpenAI, Stripe, Google, Intel, Amazon, Fika Ventures, ... demanding ICE get out of our cities:

iceout.tech

An Un-MAGA Proposal to Bring Back American Manufacturing Follow the path of Italy, France and Japan.

I'm excited to announce I'm doing a new Bloomberg column about the business of fashion. The first column is about how we can re-shore US garment manufacturing. Instead of mass deportations and raising tariffs, I argue the government should move the industry upstream:

tinyurl.com/reshoringapparel

Exclusive | Geothermal Wildcatter Zanskar, Which Uses AI to Find Heat, Raises $115 Million The company says it can unlock hidden troves of concentrated energy and squeeze out more from known fields through the use of AI.

www.wsj.com/business/ene...

Zanskar gets another $115m to build more clean, 24-7 geothermal power. Amazing team on a mission.

What an excellent idea for a Starter Pack, in these days of #AISlop spilling everywhere - here is a bunch of outlets you can trust.
Hats-off to @alexip718.com.

go.bsky.app/8cn1XfT

Read, Write, Gamble Jesse Pollak just announced Base is pivoting away from social. Dan Romero said the same about Farcaster last month. I pulled the data on what went wrong.

Bluesky is now 70x bigger than Farcaster, which has given up on social and pivoted to focus on tokens.

Props to @jay.bsky.team and the Bluesky team.

nickysap.substack.com/p/read-write...

A card that reads "Social media is critical infrastructure. It needs to work for people, not exploit and mislead them. Modal Foundation supports decentralized social tech that helps people create, circulate and discover trustworthy information."

Hi Bluesky! We're Modal Foundation, a new nonprofit dedicated to making open social tech viable at scale. We grew out of the @freeourfeeds.com campaign and support @eurosky.social. Our work will connect experts, strategists, builders and communities to create a human-centered internet.

The NIH has lost its scientific integrity. So we left “We can no longer lend our credibility to an organization that has lost its integrity,” write four scientists and administrators who recently resigned from the NIH.

Powerful piece in STAT this morning from some NIH staff members who have resigned

www.statnews.com/2026/01/10/n...

1/3

You’re supposed only do it in very dry, powdery snow. That looks way too wet.

"It is a pretty exciting time for pears."

(I love heirloom pears and apples)

A majority of US children will be losing access to FDA-approved vaccines against meningitis, hepatitis A & B, RSV & more due to unilateral changes made by new federal health officials today. They're also changing HPV vaccine recommendations from 2 shots to 1. www.statnews.com/2026/01/05/c... #medsky

Medical breakthroughs in 2025 ... and a happy new year.

New post!

There was a lot of innovation in medicine and biomedical research this year, and I've tried to summarize the biggest ones in this blogpost.

Medical breakthroughs in 2025. Plus a serious note at the end.
www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/medical-br...

ATProto seems like a natural place to explore this as so many scientists have moved to bluesky. But gaining traction with anything like this is obviously super hard.

Do you know much about it? What's your take?

I'm just learning about it so don't have any firm takes. The science world is very, very fragmented today and part of that is caused by how much infrastructure is controlled by large institutions and journals/conferences, so this seems like a wonderful idea to explore.

Empowering science communities with open, democratic, researcher-owned infrastructure. We’re building communities and tech for publishing, curating, sharing, and discussing research online using ATProto and other decentralized protocols.

Just learning about @atproto.science Open science on ATProto / BlueSky:

atproto.science

Trust a CEO that uses BBEdit

Boston ❤️ Nova Scotia

guessing he blocked the semantic web (RDF, OWL, ...) out of his memory. which I would do as well if I could.

This is just individuals. The “Cambridge” col here is people who live in Cambridge, so doesn’t include unions or any other PACs.

Causation likely does go both ways. To be clear, this is total funds, not just from Cambridge. Many candidates (Flaherty, McGovern, Simmons, Wilson, ...) got the majority of their funds from PACs and people outside of Cambridge.

Yeh, have to wonder if Bullister had raised another $5k if she would’ve gotten over the top.

Cambridge 2025 Election Spending Results

Took your data and joined on funds raised per candidate (data from OCPF).

Top 9 fundraisers were the 9 that won.

docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Happy Election Day!

Election Day is here, Massachusetts!

Communities across the state have the chance to cast a vote in their local elections today. Make your voice heard and find your polling location: wheredoivotema.com