A smart piece on a fundamental issue in biopharma. “I don’t know anyone who runs their phase 1 trials in the US anymore.” 'These words, uttered to me recently by a drug development expert at Atlas Venture with decades of experience in industry, are only slightly exaggerated.' Make US INDs Great Again lifescivc.com/2026/08/make-u… @AlexHarding7 @JakeAuch

As suspected -- nobody wanted this one. Great read from a wide cast at the FT: $AZN $BMY ft.com/content/2eb0a79c-f5cd…

Anthropic has confidentially submitted a draft S-1 registration statement to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Pending completion of SEC review, this gives us the option to pursue an initial public offering. Read more: anthropic.com/news/confident…

There is a reason why the US actually has negative nat gas prices. 1. We produce a shit ton of gas (technical term) 2. Our shale wells are getting gassier as tier one acreage has been burned through 3. Yes, we are building out LNG export facilities but its not enough to absorb the excess we are producing. Be happy we have the lowest electricity prices in the WORLD in areas the are powered with nat gas.

You do not have to agree with me on which applications are and are not corposlop to use Ethereum. You do not have to agree with me on what trust assumptions are acceptable in which situations to use Ethereum. You do not have to agree with me on political topics to use Ethereum. You do not have to agree with my views on defi, decentralized social or privacy-preserving payments to use Ethereum. You do not have to agree with my views on AI to use Ethereum. You do not have to agree with my view that Berlin has the best food in Europe, suits and ties should be expunged from our culture, and YYYY-MM-DD is the best date format to use Ethereum. And you do not have to agree with me on any one of those above things to agree with me on any other. I do not claim to represent the whole Ethereum ecosystem. Ethereum is a decentralized protocol. The whole concept of "permissionlessness" and "censorship resistance" is that you are free to use Ethereum in whatever way you want, without caring about what I think, or even what anyone else in the Ethereum Foundation or even any Ethereum client developer thinks. But on the flipside, if I say that your application is corposlop, I am not "censoring" you. This has always been the flip side of the grand bargain of free speech: I am not free to shut you down, but I am free to criticize you, much as you are free to criticize me. In fact, it is *necessary* that we do this. The modern world does not call out for pretend neutrality, where a person puts on a suit and claims to be equally open to all perspectives from all of humanity and not have their own opinions. Neutrality is for protocols (like HTTP, like Bitcoin, like Ethereum), and neutrality within some scope is for some institutions. The modern world calls out for the courage to clearly state one's principles - including stating principles by pointing to negative examples, that is by criticizing the things in the world that are incompatible with one's principles - and work with those with aligned goals to build the metaverse within which those principles are taken as a baseline. Such things inherently cannot be constrained to just the layer of the protocol: any principle you have will naturally lead to conclusions, not just about how the protocol should be built, but also what should be built upon it. Furthermore, any such principle will have consequences that go beyond technology, and reach into specific questions within the larger social world. This should not be avoided. Valuing something like "freedom", and then acting as though it has consequences on technology choices, but is completely separate from everything else about our lives, is not pragmatic - it is hollow. The inevitable converse of this is that (i) a decentralized protocol must not be viewed as belonging to only one metaverse, and (ii) the borders of a metaverse are fuzzy: it is possible, and indeed it is the normal case, to align with any one on some axes and not on other axes. Linux is a technology of user empowerment and freedom, Linux is also the base layer of a lot of the world's corposlop. It's almost certainly the base layer of many things that I think are good, and you think are bad, and vice versa. Hence, if you care about Linux because you care about user empowerment and freedom, it is not enough to just build the kernel, we must also build a full-stack ecosystem compatible with those values, and explicitly accept that this is not the only way that people will use Linux, but it is one way that must be built and must be available. Ethereum is similar. Milady.

Keith Rabois shares the decision-making framework he learned from Reid Hoffman “Reid has a very specific view of how to make decisions… Most people create pros and cons lists. But Reid was adamant that that was the worst possible way to make a decision. He trained me to never do that… So since this conversation in 2002, I have never done that. You will never find a notebook where I write down the pros and cons of any decision.” Instead, Reid advocates for strictly ranking your priorities — this could be priorities in your life, priorities for your company, etc. Then you try to make the decision based solely on the first priority. Only if there’s a tie do you go to your second or third priority. As Keith explains: “The reason Reid’s model is so brilliant is because when you create a pros and cons list, you’re creating effectively — and visually — a false equivalence.” When your brain sees two pros and three cons it looks at each item as though it’s equivalent. But usually the reasons for doing something will follow a power law. The first one might be really, really important, while the second factor is only slightly important. But when you see them all listed equally in a pros and cons list, you’re brain will often make the wrong decision. Video source: @khoslaventures (2023)

The key point about @corserahealth and our mission: Predict and Prevent ASCVD, never needing to treat it. “You want to start treating people that have a high lifetime risk, not a low 10-year risk.”

Eli Lilly is in advanced talks to acquire Ventyx Biosciences for more than $1 billion, according to people familiar with the matter on.wsj.com/4sulFli

I recently bumped into a VC I hadn’t spoken with in years. She asked me one question: “How many people are on your team now?” And when I answered, I could see the distaste in her facial expression. No follow-up questions. No curiosity. Had she posed any follow-ups on what our small and mighty team has actually accomplished, our growth, revenue, customer satisfaction, etc., she would’ve been blown away. I will never understand being impressed by a team’s size with no regard for how much work is actually being done. We wrote each other off that day.

Thanks @jrkelly! Startup biotech is coming out of a negative cycle (seen many b4!), mostly due to interest rates, tariffs, MFN, FDA chaos, defunding NIH…. China competition is a small part only IMO, and also represents opportunity. On U.S. leadership, we can win with carrots, not sticks! Let’s accelerate clinical evidence generation in U.S., lower costs, and reward innovation.