David Lang
5.9K posts
(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.
Anthony Edwards said Chris Finch got into the team at halftime and after the game. Ant said, "yeah, he wasn't happy about this win at all". Asked Edwards about the Wolves' pattern of needing Finch to get into them for the energy and effort to be there against lesser opponents. "Nights like this, it's super hard to find the, not the why, but the energy to put behind it on every play... [Finch] not satisfied with that, and we shouldn't be either. He said somethin like, I'm not gonna let up on y'all. If we bullshit on games like this, I'm gonna be on y'all ass until y'all stop bullshitting. And I told [Jaden McDaniels], he 100% right. Because we coulda played the first 24 minutes hard as shit and been up 30 points and, who knows, maybe not played the 2nd half. And I said, maybe we can shut his ass up that way, if we just come out and play the way he want us to play."
Out now: press.stripe.com/maintenance-pa… @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.
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 :)
A major earthquake could hit San Francisco at any moment and then for years our lives will be about that. I can feel it coming.
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.
