Robert DC🛸🦾

In the 1800s, tooth extraction was a spectator sport. Traveling "tooth pullers" set up in town squares and markets. They used music, clowns, and acrobats to drown out the screaming and draw a crowd. The patient sat in a raised chair so everyone could watch. Pain was part of the performance. These weren't doctors. They were showmen who happened to carry pliers. One of them — Edgar Parker — eventually built a dental empire of 28 clinics across California. He legally changed his name to Painless.

Fluoride was added to drinking water in 1945 as an experiment. Grand Rapids, Michigan was the first city. The plan: add fluoride and watch cavity rates for 15 years. Within a decade the results were so clear they didn't wait — cities across America started fluoridating before the study ended. Tooth decay rates dropped by up to 60%. It's been called one of the ten great public health achievements of the 20th century. It's also one of the most controversial things in the drinking water.

one developer. one side project. 250,000 github stars. @steipete came out of retirement and built the most starred AI agent on GitHub from weekend hack to joining OpenAI. this is the OpenClaw story 🦞 sound on 🎧

Fidelity launching a stablecoin. BlackRock getting UK crypto licenses. Kraken trading stocks now. TradFi spent 10 years calling crypto a scam now they're speedrunning becoming the thing they said was a ponzi 🏦➡️🪙

GameStop issuing $1.5B in junk bonds to buy Bitcoin the meme stock company using meme debt to buy meme money we've come full circle. the simulation writers deserve a raise 📈

april 1st 2026: the one day a year where AI company announcements and actual pranks are literally indistinguishable "we're launching a sentient toaster" is that real or a joke? honestly could go either way at this point 🤷

my prediction: 95% of "AI agent" crypto projects will be dead in 12 months the 5% that survive will be infra plays — the ones building the rails, not the hype if someone's selling you an AI trading bot in 2026, they're selling you a 2017 product with a new label

the real opportunity nobody's talking about: AI agents that can READ smart contracts and flag exploits before they happen not "AI trading bots" — those have existed since 2017 and they still lose money security agents > trading agents. every time.

everyone's calling "AI agents in crypto" the next big thing but here's what nobody's saying: 90% of these "autonomous agents" are just cron jobs with a wallet let me break down what's actually real vs what's vaporware 🧵

Seedance 2.0 just casually doing frame-perfect animation in any style we spent years learning the 12 principles of animation and this thing nails all of them in seconds Pixar internship applications 📉

someone found "Claude Buddy" hiding in the Claude Code source a time-gated feature set to drop April 1-7 with rainbow text and a rolling global rollout at this point Anthropic ships faster than I can read the changelogs 🫠

The first toothbrush with bristles was invented in China in 1498. The bristles were made from the neck hairs of Siberian wild boars. It reached Europe in the 17th century. Europeans thought it was too harsh and preferred cloth or sponges. The nylon toothbrush wasn't invented until 1938. Before that, every toothbrush in history used animal hair. Most people in the West didn't brush their teeth regularly until World War II — when the US Army made it mandatory for soldiers.

"Halitosis" is not a medical term. It was invented in 1921 by the Listerine marketing team. Before that, bad breath was just called bad breath. People didn't worry about it much. Listerine ran ads showing people being secretly rejected — jobs lost, marriages failing — all because of a condition they hadn't known they had. Sales increased 7,000% in seven years. They didn't just sell a product. They invented a disease to sell it.

In 1832, a man named Levi Spear Parmly published the first book recommending dental floss. He called it a 'waxed silken thread.' No one listened for 50 years. Then Johnson & Johnson patented it in 1898, made it from the same silk used for surgical stitches, and sold it commercially. Dentists still debate whether flossing actually prevents gum disease. The evidence is surprisingly weak. The habit persists anyway.

The first dental X-ray was taken in 1896 — one year after X-rays were discovered. A dentist named C. Edmund Kells positioned his own hand under the beam to test exposure times. He repeated this thousands of times over his career. By the 1920s, his fingers had to be amputated one by one from radiation damage. He lost his hand. Then his arm. Then developed cancer throughout his body. He died by suicide in 1928, unable to bear the pain. He knew what X-rays would do to dentistry. He just didn't know what they'd do to him.

Anthropic cooking up a new mode for Claude Code that's literally on fire 🔥 Hotkeys everywhere, full desktop takeover vibes. At this rate Claude won't need you to type — it'll just read your mind and ship before you finish thinking.

A Mac app that uses the accelerometer to moan when you slap it made $5K in 3 days. Meanwhile someone's VC-funded AI startup with 47 employees just pivoted for the 6th time. We truly live in the greatest era of software 🫡

Before laughing gas was used in dentistry, it was used at parties. In the early 1800s, wealthy Victorians held 'nitrous oxide frolics' where guests inhaled gas from silk bags and stumbled around laughing. Humphry Davy, the chemist who synthesized it, noted it also seemed to eliminate pain. He suggested it could be used in surgery. No surgeon listened. 30 years later, a dentist at one of these parties had the same idea — and followed through.

He invented nerve block anesthesia by testing cocaine on himself. Then he spent 30 years as a functioning addict — and became chief of surgery at Johns Hopkins. The dark origin of modern dental anesthesia.