29 Photos and videos
New open letter just dropped 👀
Jun 4
No one should be able to order a bioweapon through the mail.
@IFP & @JoinFAI are proud to co-lead an open letter calling for mandatory DNA synthesis screening & recordkeeping.
Signatories include:
- Sam Altman, CEO & Co-Founder, OpenAI
- Dario Amodei, CEO & Co-Founder, Anthropic
- David Baker, Director, Institute for Protein Design; 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry recipient
- Patrick Collison, CEO & Co-Founder, Stripe
- Paul Graham, Founder, Y Combinator
- Demis Hassabis, CEO, Google DeepMind; 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry recipient
- Emily Leproust, CEO & Co-Founder, Twist Bioscience
- Lawrence Lessig, Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership, Harvard Law School
- Gerald W. Parker, former Special Assistant to the President for Biosecurity and Pandemic Response
- Mustafa Suleyman, CEO, Microsoft AI
- Alex Tabarrok, Professor of Economics, George Mason University
- Alexandr Wang, Chief AI Officer, Meta; Founder, Scale AI
- Christine E. Wormuth, President & CEO, Nuclear Threat Initiative; 25th Secretary of the Army
Read the letter and see the full list of signatories: screendna.org
Many DNA synthesis companies voluntarily screen orders to mitigate biosecurity risks, but no law requires them to do so.
Leaders in AI, biotech, life sciences, national security, and the nucleic acid synthesis industry agree that Congress should act to strengthen safeguards against biological threats.
@deanwball put it well in the WSJ:
“If you’re synthesizing the stuff that yields biological life and viruses, we’re asking you to screen to see whether it is dangerous in some way. That seems like a reasonable thing for society to insist upon.”
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Jun 13
The US is the Saudi Arabia of oil.
@AlecStapp speaking at the Public Choice Outreach Conference.
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This is the environmental review for a 460-acre project with 6,000 homes.
It started 36 years ago.
If CEQA were in effect a hundred years ago, California’s population would be a fraction of the size it is today.
This approach to development is fundamentally anti-American.
Jun 13
This was the CEQA EIR for Playa Vista
"We wanted a bulletproof EIR. Bulletproof EIR meant if you fired a bullet at one end of the document, it can't come out the other end" - LA City Councilmember Ruth Galanter
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Jun 11
Having just encountered an example of IRB hell -- it took almost six months to get approval to send out a simple online survey -- I fully support @RuxandraTeslo's proposals to reform the IRB process:
ifp.org/protect-human-subjec…
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Jun 12
And this tracker does not include the *years* of litigation delays that can follow final federal approval.
To be effective, permitting reform should also include changes to judicial review & remedies.
Jun 12
It takes an average of 7 years for transmission projects to get their federal permits.
Permitting reform now.
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Jun 12
When I was introduced to the term “metascience” a few years ago, admittedly I had no idea what it meant. I have since come to understand that metascience is the study of science itself: how we structure, fund, and conduct science. It’s the belief that no system is precious enough to not improve and that especially for something as valuable as science we should be continually experimenting with the system to get more social return on investment for the dollars we spend.
This piece was fun to coauthor with @calebwatney (and have edited by @andrewmgerard) as my first written contribution in my new role at @IFP. It lays out six different hypotheses about how science could be improved and examples of research and projects that test those hypotheses. Any one researcher might associate with 1 or more of these “camps” so could wear numerous “badges” as they explore.
This framework is important for policymakers in agencies, congress and the administration: if they are looking to take some of this advice to evolve science, they should be aware of the underlying premise behind each worldview and the types of evidence they generate.
I believe that the most robust policy solutions are ones that are not limited to any one worldview, but consider various perspectives in the proposed reform. This is also why I think it’s important to collaborate within and across camps, to openly debate, and for iron to sharpen iron for the strongest research and development enterprise possible. Would welcome your thoughts on the map as well as any metascience questions you think are the most important to address.
open.substack.com/pub/macros…
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Jun 12
This is one of my favorite pieces we’ve published in Macroscience.
@jenngustetic and @calebwatney fill a crucial gap by articulating similarities and differences between the six metascience camps (tag yourself! I’m Innovation Economics and R&D Management).
In doing so, they give policymakers clarity on what different groups are talking about when pitching metascience ideas.
macroscience.org/p/the-six-c…
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Jun 12
It takes an average of 7 years for transmission projects to get their federal permits.
Permitting reform now.
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Jun 12
It will never not be funny to me that Texas is the Renewable Energy Capital of America
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Jun 11
It's been fascinating to watch the metascience field evolve over the past 5-10 years. A lot has changed!!
This new @IFP blog by @calebwatney @jenngustetic is a excellent field guide for navigating the ecosystem.
macroscience.org/p/the-six-c…
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Jun 11
"Metascience" can mean a lot of different things. Over the years, distinct reform communities have sprung up, each with its own hypothesis about what's wrong with science and how to fix it.
@jenngustetic and I mapped out six different "camps" of metascience:
macroscience.org/p/the-six-c…
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Jun 11
HUD's proposed rule today would remove the requirement for a steel transport chassis between the floors of multistory manufactured homes - it's narrower than the ROAD version, which would allow fully chassis-free homes, but could immediately save ~$5–$7k per multistory unit
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Jun 11
To celebrate the debut of the @IFP @UChi_MSA Atlas of Innovation, a guide to funding innovation, a thread of my favorite Atlas illustrations (by R. Kikuo Johnson)!
First: “milestone payments” - get it?
(Atlas explainer: abundanceandgrowth.org/p/an-…)
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😭😭😭
Jun 10
The most important chart in the world now includes data for 2025.
Trend lines are unchanged (bad).
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I’ve seen several forecasts that show this dynamic of negative elec prices on the east slope of the Rockies growing hugely with time. The Chinese answer to this was build bulk HVDC transmission to load centers, but there no central planning authority & no “USGridCo” to build it.
Jun 11
Our grid is so fragmented, we get crazy outcomes like this:
In some parts of the US, wholesale electricity prices are negative for ~25% of the year.
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Jun 10
We need to build again. All the talk of leading in AI, decoupling from China, national security, reshoring manufacturing is just hot air until we show we can actually build stuff in a timely and cost effective way.
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Jun 11
Our grid is so fragmented, we get crazy outcomes like this:
In some parts of the US, wholesale electricity prices are negative for ~25% of the year.
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Jun 10
The most important chart in the world now includes data for 2025.
Trend lines are unchanged (bad).
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Jun 10
Possibly the most painful chart to look at in energy policy:
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Jun 10
Save the date!
Abundance 2026, December 10-11 in Washington.
In partnership w/ @InnovateEconomy @JoinFAI @IFP @PubEnterprise @InclsvAbundance @yimbyaction @metroabundance @PERCtweets @EPIConservation @ACC_National @coeff_giving @Arnold_Ventures @ProgressChamber and more…
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