ZerØtonin

Ptolemy and Aristotle hypothesized that Earth was at the center of the Universe; Nicolaus Copernicus changed that with the Heliocentric view of the world. Major shift in world view and chapter in history. Here are both view points, starting with Ptolemy (Earth @ Center)

This was one of the best podcasts I’ve ever listened to @GavinSBaker is at the top of his game Incredible synthesis of knowledge here

First hand footage of Blue Origin

First hand footage of Blue Origin launch

Competition is fierce Fast following can be a competitive advantage

@slowlyexploring @WyattCatarina Thank you

@WyattCatarina This is AI slop. Look at the pictures on the wall. Sloppy piano hands too

This 9 year old kid Max is an absolute GENIUS...This song is tough, "The WhatsApp Shakespeare" by RAYE is musically challenging not only for him to learn it on his instrument, but putting it all together in the studio like that and singing it!! He’s wired so freakin’ brilliantly it’s unfair! Enough ..take a listen! 😅🎹🎵

@NikoMcCarty I have never seen anyone attempt to describe chemical synthesis in words Hence why chemists draw molecular structures

Nearly 200 years after nicotine was first chemically isolated, we’ve finally figured out its complete biosynthesis pathway. Doing so required an insane effort and many years of work. The authors — a Chinese group — ended up crossing 643 lines of tobacco plants to find a single mutant incapable of making nicotine. They next backcrossed and inbred that plant to figure out the specific mutations, in various genes, and map the enzymes responsible. Nicotine is made from two “ring-shaped” molecules fused together. One ring has five carbons (the “pyrrolidine ring”) and the second has six carbons (the “pyridine ring.”) Scientists already knew quite a bit about how these rings get made, but not every step, and not how tthey join together to make nicotine. The pyrrolidine ring starts when ornithine, an amino acid that is not used to make proteins, gets its carbon dioxide clipped off by an enzyme, called ornithine decarboxylase, to make putrescine. This putrescine then has a methyl group attached to it, and gets oxidized. At this point, the molecule is a chain with four carbon atoms; one end has an amine, and the other a methylated amine. The amine end gets cut off and replaced with a reactive aldehyde; the chain folds into a loop; and the methylated amine “attacks” electrons on the aldehyde to form the ring. To make the pyridine ring, plant cells first take aspartate (the amino acid) and oxidize it. The resulting molecule is then transformed into nicotinic acid mononucleotide, which is just vitamin B3 with a sugar and phosphate attached. This paper is the first to report that NAMN hydrolase clips off the sugar and phosphate to release pure vitamin B3; also called niacin or nicotinic acid. (The names are slightly confusing.) The paper’s major contribution, though, is in figuring out how the two rings get fused together. The nicotinic acid is unstable, so an enzyme quickly attaches a sugar to it. Another enzyme, called A622, then strips off a CO2 group, making the molecule reactive again. And finally, that reactive intermediate “attacks” the five-membered pyrrolidine ring to join the two halves together. Other enzymes strip off the remaining sugar to make nicotine. (This whole pathway is shown in the image below.) All of this happens on the surface of plant vacuoles. Many of the chemical intermediates are toxic, so they need to be sequestered and converted quickly. And as soon as the final nicotine gets made, a transporter pumps it into the vacuole, where it is stored away. It’s actually difficult to wrap my head around the amount of work packed into this paper, so I’ll just give some quick bullet points: 1. They grew 643 inbred plant lines, which were made by crossing together 26 different parent tobacco plants. They extracted metabolites from all of them. 2. They did a bunch of single-cell RNA sequencing on the tobacco roots to figure out which cells actually express the nicotine biosynthesis genes. 3. “Stumbled” upon a mutant plant which was not able to make nicotine, and then sequenced its entire genome. They also crossed back this plant and inbred it for two generations to find the mutation responsible; a single C-to-T swap. This experiment alone must have taken at least two years of work. 4. Fed plants with isotopically “heavy” nicotinic acid and then tracked its movements through metabolic pathways. 5. Collected at least 630 mass spectrometry spectra. 6. RECONSTITUTED THE ENTIRE PATHWAY IN FOUR DIFFERENT SPECIES: YEAST, TOMATO, EGGPLANTS, AND PEAS (!!!!!!!!) 7. And a lot more… Anyway, insane paper. China has been putting out incredible plant biology papers for the last several years.

How on earth did Magnus remember a game sequence from 20 years ago?! 🤯

@jasontan I can relate

You've seen the headlines about Iran not being interested in ceasefire talks. But there is a certain logic by which that means they are interested in ceasefire talks.

Incredible

I for one am all for hip hop culture entering AI / coding

My friend is going through divorce He wanted to DIY it — ie not hire an attorney He wanted to use, and did use, AI Here is my DIY advice to men going through divorce : Hire an attorney ASAP

How will things change if for the first time in human history being smart is a commodity?

@phatman_19 There was a stop sign on right

I just had a hilarious moment with CT and FSD. I was driving through this small this small town. CT on FSD all of a sudden slowed way down. I couldn’t figure out why. Then I noticed a green dinosaur from Sinclair gas station. The dinosaur was on the edge of the grass. It looked like it was about to cross the road. 😂🦖🦕 @Tesla_AI, @cybertruck, @Tesla

@Jason The same odds that OpenAI remains a nonprofit

😔 what are the chances the open source project survives / thrives after this?

@argosaki Please link to research

BREASTMILK She thought she was studying milk. What she uncovered was a conversation. In 2008, evolutionary anthropologist Katie Hinde was working in a primate research lab in California, analyzing breast milk from rhesus macaque mothers. She had hundreds of samples and thousands of data points. Everything looked ordinary—until one pattern refused to go away. Mothers raising sons produced milk richer in fat and protein. Mothers raising daughters produced a larger volume with different nutrient balances. It was consistent. Repeatable. And deeply uncomfortable for the scientific consensus. Colleagues suggested error. Noise. Statistical coincidence. But Katie trusted the data. And the data pointed to a radical idea. Milk is not just nutrition. It is information. For decades, biology treated breast milk as simple fuel. Calories in. Growth out. But if milk were only calories, why would it change depending on the sex of the baby? Katie kept digging. Across more than 250 mothers and over 700 sampling events, the story grew more complex. Younger, first-time mothers produced milk with fewer calories but significantly higher levels of cortisol—the stress hormone. The babies who drank it grew faster. They were also more alert, more cautious, more anxious. Milk wasn’t just building bodies. It was shaping behavior. Then came the discovery that changed everything. When a baby nurses, microscopic amounts of saliva flow back into the breast. That saliva carries biological signals about the infant’s immune system. If the baby is getting sick, the mother’s body detects it. Within hours, the milk changes. White blood cells surge. Macrophages multiply. Targeted antibodies appear. When the baby recovers, the milk returns to baseline. This was not coincidence. It was call and response. A biological dialogue refined over millions of years. Invisible—until someone thought to listen. As Katie reviewed existing research, she noticed something unsettling. There were twice as many scientific studies on erectile dysfunction as on breast milk composition. The first food every human consumes. The substance that shaped our species. Largely ignored. So she did something bold. She launched a blog with a deliberately provocative name: Mammals Suck Milk. It exploded. Over a million readers in its first year. Parents. Doctors. Scientists. People asking questions research had skipped. The discoveries kept coming. Milk changes by time of day. Foremilk differs from hindmilk. Human milk contains over 200 oligosaccharides babies can’t digest—because they exist to feed beneficial gut bacteria. Every mother’s milk is biologically unique. In 2017, Katie brought this work to a TED stage. In 2020, it reached a global audience through Netflix’s Babies. Today, at Arizona State University’s Comparative Lactation Lab, she continues reshaping how medicine understands infant development, neonatal care, formula design, and public health. The implications are staggering. Milk has been evolving for more than 200 million years—longer than dinosaurs walked the Earth. What we once dismissed as simple nourishment is one of the most sophisticated communication systems biology has ever produced. Katie Hinde didn’t just study milk. She revealed that nourishment is intelligence. A living, responsive system shaping who we become before we ever speak. All because one scientist refused to accept that half the story was “measurement error.” Sometimes the biggest revolutions begin by listening to what everyone else ignores.

@chamath I like you Chamath but it’s not clear why this post is more valuable than a simple query on perplexity, grok or other

@DJ_SHOTA Amazing sounds but I don’t fully understand the setup. He is not flipping the records between tracks. Performative?

Acro Jazz Laboratories Mix Big Poppa The Light Resurrection Runnin Get On Down C.R.E.A.M Still Dre