In medieval times, within the arms race of ever more demonic torture devices, some sadistic genius came up with the idea of the Little Ease. This was a prison cell built so small in every dimension that a grown man could not stand upright in it nor lie down at full length nor properly sit. The pain is relentless and without relief and inflicted by one's own body. Prisoners were known to go insane within a few days. A stay at the Little Ease was considered even more cruel than the rack, the thumbscrew, and the other ghoulish machinery of the Tower of London. A breeding pig will spend her whole life in a version of that box. These are social, roaming creatures (more intelligent than dogs) who will never leave this corset of steel. They have been selectively bred to be bigger than their frames can support. Yet we put them in cells so confined that they cannot comfortably sit, and their attempts to do so (for example, by sneaking their limbs into adjacent stalls) reliably lead to fractures and sprains. They cannot sweat, yet have nothing to roll around in to cool themselves off. Except their own manure, which (contrary to the common misconception) they are so averse to (thanks to their strong sense of smell) that new sows will often suffer from constipation to avoid soiling the space from which they eat and sleep. Here is how the writer Matthew Scully described what saw at one of Smithfield’s “gestation barn”: > “Sores, tumors, ulcers, pus pockets, lesions, cysts, bruises, torn ears, swollen legs everywhere. Roaring, groaning, tail biting, fighting, and other “Vices,” as they’re called in the industry. Frenzied chewing on bars and chains, stereotypical “vacuum” chewing on nothing at all, stereotypical rooting and nest building with imaginary straw. And “social defeat,” lots of it, in every third or fourth stall some completely broken being you know is alive only because she blinks and stares up at you … creatures beyond the power of pity to help or indifference to make more miserable, dead to the world except as heaps of flesh into which the [insemination] rod may be stuck once more and more flesh reproduced.” — The Save Our Bacon Act is trying to unroll the few state protections we have against this barbaric cruelty - for example California’s Prop 12 - which banned the sale of pork from pigs kept in gestation crates. It’s incredibly important we don’t end up with this sort of federal preemption. SOB will not only kill the most important animal welfare related laws in the US of the past decade, but more importantly, it will also restrict ALL future legislative progress (aka how the animal welfare movement has gotten its biggest wins). The Senate is currently deciding whether to add the SOB Act to the Farm Bill. With relatively little money now, we can discourage the most pivotal senators in the Ag committee from backing this amendment. Defeating this bill is even more important given the amount of philanthropic funding I expect to come online in the next year or two. It will plausibly be over 10x more expensive to repeal SOB than to prevent it from passing in the first place. All that money that could be spent transforming our society's relationship to mass animal suffering will instead have to be spent just getting us back to where we are right now. That's why money spent now fighting this bill (and I mean right NOW) is so effective. If you’re in a position to donate six figures, please DM me.

Thank god farmers adopt technology early

While I’m no fan of socialism or arbitrary confiscations of wealth, I can see why Bernie Sanders’ proposal (for the government to take a 50% stake in AI companies) resonates, including with many on the right. The CEOs of the leading AI labs have told us repeatedly that they will cause massive job loss. This is not a story that I believe, nor does the data bear it out, but this is what they have told us. Similarly, they have hyped the risks of AI without putting an equal or greater emphasis on the benefits or readily available mitigations. Conservatives have another fear. The employees of the leading labs claim to be philanthropic, but what we’ve seen is massive enrichment of NGOs advancing an agenda at odds with traditional values, fueling a revolution against our cities and communities. Soros-maxxing is not charity in our book. Anthropic and OpenAI have established themselves as Public Benefit Corporations. What could be more in the public benefit than using half the wealth generated by these companies (which trained for free on the collective knowledge of humanity) to pay down the national debt? There is no ideological bias in that philanthropy. Dario and Sam have begun to walk back their claims of massive job loss, but the damage to public trust is done, and now the chickens are coming home to roost. I could almost support the Sanders proposal as a stupidity tax. There’s just one problem. Nationalization of AI will accelerate the corporate-government fusion we’re already sliding toward. Conservatives rightly fear a Central Bank Digital Currency. They ought to be even more concerned about Central Government AI — a system with even more totalistic power over information, decision-making, and human behavior. We saw how social media was weaponized to censor conservatives (including President Trump) in the last Democrat administration. The definition of “trust & safety” expanded to mean protecting the public from supposed psychological harms, micro-aggressions, and disinformation (you know, like hearing conservative ideas or true facts about Covid). That “safety” agenda as applied to AI will be vastly more powerful and Orwellian. AI won’t just moderate posts; it will curate reality — with the ability to rewrite history, enforce ideological conformity, influence policy at scale, mass surveil Americans, and condition the benefits of the many systems it controls on approved behavior. America won’t win the AI race if we beat China but end up with a CCP-style social credit system in the U.S. — and that is the danger as the government becomes more deeply involved in AI development and assumes direct ownership and control. Conservatives are right to fear where this is all headed but ought to think more carefully about how regulations they are flirting with now (that are widely celebrated among those with a long history of lust for Big Government) will be used against them the next time a Democrat administration is in power.

The United States has more than 90,000 dams on its rivers. Many of them no longer generate power, hold back floods, or serve a purpose at all. They just sit there, aging, holding the water back. Take one out, and the ecological recovery can happen breathtakingly fast. In 2024, the largest dam removal in American history finished on the Klamath River, where four dams came down along the Oregon-California line. Within days, Chinook salmon were pushing into water they hadn't reached in generations. By the fall of 2025, they had climbed all the way into the upper basin, spawning in streams that had been sealed off for more than a hundred years. Damon Goodman, a regional director for California Trout, put it plainly: the rivers "seem to come alive almost instantly after dam removal." Maine's Penobscot tells the same story. After two dams came down, the river herring went from a few thousand fish a year into the millions, and with them came back the eagles, ospreys, and otters that live off the run. A dam is one of the few environmental problems you can fix by subtraction. Take the wall away, and the river seems to remember what it was.

people aren’t celebrating this pancreatic cancer breakthrough enough. it should be international news

We go where we need to be, and today that was @NASAKennedy. Some of my senior engineers and I spent time at @blueorigin with @JeffBezos and @davill, speaking with the workforce and seeing the damage at LC-36 firsthand. I appreciated the opportunity to hear directly from those working through the aftermath and better understand the challenges ahead. There is a lot of work to do, but this is exactly why people choose careers in aerospace, whether at NASA, Blue Origin, or across the industry. The talent in this field thrives under pressure and performs at its best when solving the toughest problems. We have been saying for months at NASA that we are not going to sit on our hands and wait for the capabilities necessary to achieve the nation’s most pressing objectives. We are going to take an active role alongside our partners, just as we did in the 1960s, to overcome setbacks, remove obstacles, and deliver the intended outcomes. @NASA is committed to helping the Blue team recover, continue to advance their lunar lander and get New Glenn back to launching as soon as safely possible. America’s greatest achievements in space were never the result of avoiding setbacks. They came from overcoming them. We have done it before, and we will do it again🇺🇸

The near impossible is becoming possible. We are building toward a sustained human presence at the lunar South Pole. It begins with Phase 1: CLPS landers and LTV rovers testing the “science of survival” on the lunar surface before heavy HLS cargo landers deliver the mass and infrastructure needed for an enduring presence. We are building the Moon Base for all we will learn, the innovation that will improve life on Earth, the inspiration for the next generation of explorers, and to master the skills needed for where we will inevitably go next...Mars. The Golden Age of lunar exploration has begun.

If you have a bug zapper up, it's time to take that shit down. A landmark University of Delaware study (Frick and Tallamy, 1996) counted nearly 14,000 insects killed by residential bug zappers over a single summer. Mosquitoes were 31 of them. A mere 0.22%. The other 99.78% were moths, beetles, midges, fireflies, and the night-shift pollinators your yard depends on. Mosquitoes don't navigate by light. They find you by your carbon dioxide, body heat, and skin chemistry. Your bug zapper is invisible to them and lethal to almost everything else. Harvard Medical School's Zika page specifically warns against bug zappers because they may increase mosquito populations by killing the predators that eat them. What actually works: eliminate standing water within 100 feet of where you spend time outside. Bug zappers are 1970s technology built on a 1970s misunderstanding of mosquitoes. It's time to take it down.

Splashdown confirmed! Congratulations to the entire SpaceX team on the twelfth flight test of Starship!

Glued to my computer for this one!

The hydraulic pin holding the tower arm in place did not retract. If that can be fixed tonight, there will be another launch attempt tomorrow at 5:30 CT.

Could ‘chickpea-sized’ biosensors make biomanufacturing more cost competitive? @CapraBio #precisionfermentation agfundernews.com/could-chick…

We're excited to announce Capra's new bioproduced salicylic acid launching today at the New York Society of Cosmetic Chemists Supplier's Day! Capra's salicylic acid is a 100% bio-based, highly effective, and sustainable form of salicylic acid. #cleanbeauty #madewithbio #nyscc

Truly amazing… that they’ve raised about what it takes to bring one drug to market!

This is it. Everything learned spending millions on longevity. From: Your Immortal Unc and Auntie. To: Our Immortal nieces and nephews. 0. Sleep is the world's most powerful drug. 1. Be in your bed for 8 hours 2. Same bedtime every night, any time before midnight 3. Don’t eat right before bed 4. Calm foods for dinner 5. No screens 1 hour before bed 6. Avoid added sugar (be aware it’s in everything) 7. Avoid all things in an American convenience store 8. Avoid fried foods 9. Shoes off at the door 10. Eat whole foods, particularly veggies fruits nuts legumes berries 11. Walk a little after meals or air squats 12. Get your heart rate high routinely 13. Lift heavy things 14. Stretch daily 15. Water pik, floss, brush, tongue scrape, morning and night 16. Make an effort to drink water 17. Get sunlight when you wake up (UV is low) 18. Protect skin in midday sun 19. Stand up straight 20. See at least one friend once a week 21. Avoid plastic where you can (in all things) 22. Circulate air in rooms 23. When stressed, breathe, learn to calm your body 24. Go to the dentist 25. Avoid sitting for long times 26. Protect your hearing, the world is too loud 27. Alcohol is bad for you 28. Finish coffee before noon 29. Avoid bright lights after sunset 30. If obese, look into a GLP 31. Sleep in a cold room 32. Texting while driving is dangerous 33. Turn off all notifications 34. Limit social media use 35. Don’t smoke anything 36. If you struggle to sleep, read a physical book before bed 37. 1 hour before bed have a calm wind down routine: bath, read, light walk, listen to music 38. The body is a clock and loves routine. Have a daily morning and evening schedule. 39. Avoid long distance travel where you can 40. Baby steps first: incorporate new things slowly 41. Do less… most things don’t work. Bonus points if you get your blood checked. Start here, it will change your life.

It is time for the United States Postal Service to ban junk mail. Unsolicited spam calls are already prohibited by the FCC. Emails are heavily regulated by the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. Junk mail is the majority of mail, 100 million trees per year. Enough!

Ok… most of you know I was in the organic baby formula business, but what you don’t know is I dabbled in diapers as well. I also know this baby2baby “non profit” and have had past interactions with them.. I’ll leave that out for now.. Let’s dive into this absolute grifting nonsense. Prepare to be shocked. California is about to spend $20 million of taxpayer money to give 100,000 newborns 400 diapers each through Baby2Baby. Do the math with me: 100,000 babies × 400 diapers = 40 million diapers $20,000,000 ÷ 40,000,000 = $0.50 per diaper!!!!! Now walk into any Costco in California and you can buy the same quality diapers for .12 to .15 cents each! That’s $48 to $60 for 400 diapers. So the state is paying 8–10x more per diaper than a regular family buying in bulk. They could’ve just handed every low-income new mom $100 cash and told her to go to Costco. She’d get more diapers, better ones if she wanted, and still have money left for formula, wipes, or whatever the hell she actually needs. But nah… that wouldn’t let Gavin and his connected “nonprofit” girls running the show there cut ribbons, take photos, do galas and be friends with celebrities and brag about the “first-in-the-nation” program while skimming their cut for “administration” and “partnerships.” This is peak government stupidity!!! Spend way more money to feel good and look good, instead of just trusting parents with their own damn money. We’re not helping babies. We’re funding another bloated nonprofit-government grift. Math doesn’t lie. The diaper math is brutal. What a scam and a joke!!!!!

I once again implore them to consider:

Today we're announcing @_panthalassa’s $140M Series B, led by Peter Thiel, with participation from John Doerr and many other incredible investors. The mission: unlock the ocean as another planetary-scale energy resource for humanity. First stop: compute.

I keep saying: if environmentalists really cared about the environment, they’d be finding ways to sabotage China’s fishing fleet. Instead, they’re complaining about plastic straws.