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I spent the summer researching technical standards and their (underrated) role in shaping civilization.
The results of that exploration are being published today:
Standards Make the World
summerofprotocols.com/resear…
David Lang retweeted
I'm starting by creating a program myself. It's called Living Threshold. The open call for microgrants is live now! experiment.com/programs/livi….
David Lang retweeted
This is an incredible flower. It is engineered.
To make it, you take a gene encoding a red pigment and insert a transposon into the middle of it. This transposon keeps the gene switched 'off.'
As the flower develops, the transposon spontaneously "jumps" out of the gene in some cells, thus restoring the gene and enabling it to make the color red.
Every red speck, then, is a cell where that jump happened, and all the white is cells where it didn't. This is, in short, randomness in biology made manifest.
You can tinker with these transposons so that they jump more often or less often. You could also insert multiple pigment genes with transposons that jump at different rates to get entirely different patterns of colors.
Application deadline next week—July 10th!
Announcing the Hyperspectral Biology Fund:
It's possible to see engineered microbes from space; not with the naked eye, but by the distinctive way their molecules absorb light.
The secret is hyperspectral cameras. Whereas a normal camera captures just three colors (red, green, and blue), a hyperspectral camera captures the full spectrum of light at every pixel. When merged with synthetic biology, one can create engineered organisms that sense something (a pathogen, explosive, pollutant, etc) and then monitor them using satellites with hyperspectral cameras orbiting Earth. The end goal is to build a planetary-scale biosensing network.
I'm giving away $75,000 in microgrants to help grow this field. Applications are due by July 10.
Thanks to @davidtlang and the Experiment Foundation for making this possible.
Looking for new ideas at the intersection of synthetic biology and planetary monitoring…
Announcing the Hyperspectral Biology Fund:
It's possible to see engineered microbes from space; not with the naked eye, but by the distinctive way their molecules absorb light.
The secret is hyperspectral cameras. Whereas a normal camera captures just three colors (red, green, and blue), a hyperspectral camera captures the full spectrum of light at every pixel. When merged with synthetic biology, one can create engineered organisms that sense something (a pathogen, explosive, pollutant, etc) and then monitor them using satellites with hyperspectral cameras orbiting Earth. The end goal is to build a planetary-scale biosensing network.
I'm giving away $75,000 in microgrants to help grow this field. Applications are due by July 10.
Thanks to @davidtlang and the Experiment Foundation for making this possible.
"The garages of Silicon Valley are no myth. And no accident." -@stewartbrand
I maintain that historians will look back and determine the American dream was never about homeownership—it was about *garage* ownership.
David Lang retweeted
Very grateful to the Experiment Foundation and @navigationfund the "Beyond the Journal award" recognizing our contributions to open science. 1/
David Lang retweeted
If you’re looking for inspiration and worry it’s truly impossible to operate differently in science, take a look at some of these folks who are quietly redefining what is possible without permission or guarantees. Huge kudos to the recipients and thanks to @davidtlang for showcasing them!
experiment.foundation/beyond
David Lang retweeted
New at Good Science Project, from @aishdoingthings and me: Venture Capital Has Lessons for Government and Philanthropy. bit.ly/468MIcx
Dempsey hit a chord—a topic that’s been lighting up my private conversations lately: *Post-Founder Archetypes*
The moment feels similar to 2008, when finance careers went from highly coveted to passé. The social hierarchy seems to run on these ~20-year cycles.
The question now: what comes next?
I'll go a step further than Dempsey. I'm predicting the rise of the *bricoleur*, in the Lévi-Strauss sense of the term: someone who can make and *remake* things with the tools at hand. There's never been a better time to be a maker of things and stories, including your own personal myths.
If you're unbound by the dogma of product/market fit, the world opens widely, ready to be remade by a small group of friends.
I've also noticed the most interesting people I know are having a *terrible* time answering the "what do you do?" question. They can tell you about a project they're working on, but they'll shirk any qualifying identity description, including and especially "founder".
My favorite analogy comes from biology: monopodial vs sympodial growth in trees. Monopodials (like redwoods) have one big trunk and aim for continuous vertical growth. Sympodials (like oaks) grow via multiple branches. The metabolic strategies are very different. Monopodials put all their energy into growing tall quickly, whereas the sympodial plants hedge with multiple different leading edges, which is more resilient.
The next high-status career will be sympodial. Or what @zebriez called Flounder Mode—moving from project to project with people you like, and not letting your identity get too tangled up with any one of them.
(New Essay) VC-Backed Startups are Low Status
The traditional VC-backed startup path is becoming low status in the same way investment banking did. An aesthetic collapse across institutions, ideas, and founders paired with the world's tiring of tech has recently accelerated this shift.
Some thoughts on the cascade, the generational divide, Anthropic vs. OpenAI, what comes next, and more.
David Lang retweeted
1/ Today @stripepress publishes one of my favorite books to date: Maintenance: Of Everything, Part One by @stewartbrand, about the unglamorous yet civilizationally important work of maintenance and repair.
press.stripe.com/maintenance…
Out now: press.stripe.com/maintenance…
@stewartbrand's Maintenance: Of Everything, Part One—about the continuous repair work that keeps complex systems intact, spanning stories from a round-the-world sailboat race, to the restoration of the Statue of Liberty, to the Model T’s rise.
There is a restaurant in downtown Berkeley called Comal, which has good Mexican food. I recommend it.
I suggest you go, if you can, to observe for yourself that they have SOLVED the pesky restaurant noise problem.
You can hear everyone at your table clearly, without anyone straining their voice, all while the whole place maintains a lively background buzz of conversation and ambiance.
It's a technical and design marvel. I hope they figure out how to make these tools cheap and ubiquitous.
Here are the technical details: meyersound.com/news/comal/
The owner was a former manager of Phish, which explains things.
A perennial must-read publication.
Also, Asimov Press a great example of what a small, excellent group can accomplish. More companies should try turning their marketing budgets into a crack editorial team.
Today marks a major milestone at @AsimovPress: Our two-year anniversary!
We formally launched the magazine in December 2023; a tiny team of two operating from inside @AsimovBio.
In 2024, we published 49 articles, including a History of the Micropipette, an argument about why Mitochondria Are Alive, and quite a bit of science fiction.
In 2025, we grew our team slightly, bringing on a freelance Art Director (@EllaWD_PhD) and copyeditor (Devon Balwit), as well as some more contributing writers. This year, we published 72 articles, most of which are quite lengthy and took months to research. Thanks to funding from @AsteraInstitute and @stripe for making this possible.
I'm very grateful to be working with this team and these writers, all of whom are deeply serious about producing the best possible work. @XanderBalwit is so committed, for example, that she will occasionally drive to a writer's house and work with them in person, for hours or days, until a draft comes together.
Some memorable pieces from this year (all can be found by searching our website):
- Edwin Cohn and the Harvard Blood Factory
- Gregor Mendel's Vanishing Act
- The Battle for Better Air
- Healing My Family's Future
- The Nobel Duel
- Making the Centrifuge
- A Visual Guide to Genome Editors
- The Uncertain Origins of Aspirin
- The First Weight Loss Drugs
- How to Scale Proteomics
- What We Find in the Sewers
- A Liver on Ice
- What Makes an Experiment Beautiful?
Thanks for reading and supporting our work. See you in 2026 :)
The scientific apprenticeship model needs reinvention.
Sam and the team are running more than a program—it's also a prime example of something many companies could and should be offering.
We are opening applications for our 2026 cohort of FutureHouse AI-for-Science Independent Postdoctoral Fellows! Apply our AI tools to specific problems in biology and biochemistry, in collaboration with world-leading academic labs:
--$125,000 annual stipend.
--Access to all tools developed by FutureHouse and Edison Scientific at scale, including Kosmos and several as-of-yet unreleased agents, with under-the-hood access to them to specialize them for your workflows.
--Receive dedicated software engineering support.
--1 year with possible 1 year extension.
Even more exceptional co-advisors than last year. Deadline for applications is February 13th, 2026. Link in next post.
In my opinion, most conferences should *not* be annual events.
Many should happen just once—don’t ruin the memory. Others should adopt the Olympic model of every four years (or another meaningful interval).
One of the most interesting conferences I’ve ever attended was OceanObs, which takes place every decade. The decadal cadence created a unique dynamic: scientists had generational discussions, knowing many wouldn’t be around to see the final results of their deliberations and decisions. Important infrastructure was created from that way of working, like the Argo network of ocean sensors.
The COP conferences for climate change should take note.
Too many annual conferences are a recipe for burnout, including for the organizers. I understand the economic pull for organizers to feed their engine, but I suspect there is a better way: fewer high-quality events, each with added anticipation and vigor.
Here they are, steadily building towards 2029:
oceanobs29.net/
David Lang retweeted
ICYMI: the deadline to nominate a publishing trailblazer so we can amplify their efforts is October 31!
I agree with @dwarkesh_sp here: narrative oral history is an underrated and enlightening publishing format.
I wish there were more, especially for technical standards.
A longer plea: davidlang.substack.com/p/pro…
The Scaling Era is out today.
I'm actually surprised with how well this format works. Even better than my expectations.
It's so interesting to read side-by-side how hyperscalar CEOs, AI researchers, and economists will answer the same question.
Thank you to the @stripepress team for making such a beautiful artifact, and to @gleech for being a wonderful co-author.