Brian Caulfield 🇺🇦🇮🇪

Chair @ScaleIreland, VC & angel investor, Venture Partner @MoltenVentures. Previously 3-time startup founder. Trying to make things better. Tweets personal.

[Brian Caulfield 🇺🇦🇮🇪 @BrianCVC]

My piece in today's @IrishTimes on why State supports for Irish companies aren't working.

https://t.co/EHEpGiry9i

[BUCHANAN: Dublin Time Machine @RobLooseCannon]

Today in 1844 the Irish inventor of the hypodermic needle used it on a human for the first time in the Meath Hospital, Dublin. Dr Francis Rynd injected his patient Margaret Cox with morphine to treat severe agony.

His invention would revolutionise medicine, saving countless lives. Tallaght University Hospital's phlebotomy unit is named in his honour. I wonder what the good doctor would think of the deadly, ubiquitous abuse of his medical miracle in Dublin today?

[Saganism @Saganismm]

“You see, the religious people — most of them — really think this planet is an experiment. That's what their beliefs come down to. Some god or other is always fixing and poking, messing around with tradesmen's wives, giving tablets on mountains, commanding you to mutilate your children, telling people what words they can say and what words they can't say, making people feel guilty about enjoying themselves, and like that. Why can't the gods leave well enough alone? All this intervention speaks of incompetence.

If God didn't want Lot's wife to look back, why didn't he make her obedient, so she'd do what her husband told her? Or if he hadn't made Lot such a shithead, maybe she would've listened to him more. If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn't he start the universe out in the first place so it would come out the way he wants? Why's he constantly repairing and complaining?

No, there's one thing the Bible makes clear: The biblical God is a sloppy manufacturer. He's not good at design, he's not good at execution. He'd be out of business if there was any competition.”

— Carl Sagan, Contact

[Mark Henry @Mark_J_Henry]

Teenage pregnancy shock! The number of babies born to teenage mothers in Ireland has fallen to a record low. Only 551 babies were born to mothers aged 15-19 last year. That's 83% fewer than the peak in 1999. Better sex education and contraceptive availability worked wonders. 🇮🇪🤰

[TechIreland @techireland]

"2025 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒚 𝒎𝒖𝒄𝒉 𝒂 𝒄𝒖𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒆'𝒔 𝒆𝒈𝒈. 𝑰𝒕 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒈𝒐𝒐𝒅 𝒊𝒏 𝒑𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒔, 𝒎𝒂𝒊𝒏𝒍𝒚 𝒊𝒏 𝑸1." @BrianCVC

Q1 2025 saw Irish startups raise €616 𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐨𝐧, making it the strongest quarter for fundraising in a decade.

Read: https://t.co/OZ2eJD2yhQ

[Brian Caulfield 🇺🇦🇮🇪 @BrianCVC]

That certainly tells you something about Putin's priorities. That's about €2.5m per Ukrainian casualty. Enough to pay pensions for over 80,000 Russian pensioners for a year. How do the Russian people tolerate that?

[Julian Röpcke🇺🇦 @JulianRoepcke]

@Frohnmaier_AfD Mich würde interessieren, weshalb Russland letzte Nacht 250 Millionen € in Raketen & Drohnen verpulvert hat, um über 100 Ukrainer zu töten & zu verletzen, anstatt seinen eigenen Not leidenden Rentnern (durchschnittlich 260 € Rente/Monat) ein ordentliches Leben zu ermöglichen.

[Neil Stone @DrNeilStone]

I still hugely admire this man and support Ukraine's incredible resilience

Sorry if that triggers you (not sorry)

🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦

[Neil Stone @DrNeilStone]

This week a historic breakthrough in pancreatic cancer treatment was announced

Meanwhile in this parallel online universe there are these people claiming viruses don't exist...

[Simon Maechling @simonmaechling]

Misinformation doesn’t spread because it’s true.

It spreads because it pays.

Votes.
Clicks.
Followers.
Donations.
Customers.

The incentive isn’t accuracy.
It’s virality.

That’s why fear spreads faster than facts.

[Governor Newsom Press Office (parody) @AwesomeNewsom]

When a billionaire who destroyed half his businesses, two marriages, every relationship, most friends, FDA, CDC, FBI, the white house, the constitution, world peace, the English language, and his cankles, says it will all work out in the end... he means for him, not you.

[Brian Caulfield 🇺🇦🇮🇪 @BrianCVC]

Extraordinary claims. If supported by further research, another incredible advance for modern medicine. Science. It works.

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

Ozempic activates a 'repair mode' in cartilage cells, boosting joint thickness by 17% and potentially reducing the need for invasive surgeries.

For years, experts assumed that the joint pain relief seen with Ozempic was mainly due to weight loss. A landmark 2026 study has challenged that view. Researchers from the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology discovered that semaglutide—the active ingredient in Ozempic—acts directly on cartilage cells (chondrocytes) to promote regeneration.

By reprogramming the cells' energy metabolism (shifting from inefficient glycolysis toward more efficient oxidative phosphorylation via the GLP-1R-AMPK-PFKFB3 pathway), the drug helps trigger a restorative process that rebuilds the protective cartilage cushioning in joints—tissue long thought to be irreplaceable once lost.

The results are striking. In a small pilot clinical study, advanced MRI scans showed an average 17% increase in cartilage thickness after six months of treatment, along with signs of new cartilage growth in weight-bearing areas. Patients also experienced reduced pain and improved joint function.

This breakthrough points to a new way of treating osteoarthritis: not just managing symptoms, but addressing the underlying structural damage. While larger trials are still needed, semaglutide is emerging as a promising option that could help millions of people avoid or delay joint replacement surgeries and restore mobility through direct cellular repair—independent of its well-known weight-loss effects.

[Qin, H., Yu, J., Yu, H., et al. (2026). Semaglutide ameliorates osteoarthritis progression through a weight loss-independent metabolic restoration mechanism. Cell Metabolism, 38(3), 582–597.e6. DOI: 10.1016/j.cmet.2026.01.008]

[Brian Caulfield 🇺🇦🇮🇪 @BrianCVC]

Mearsheimer is pretty extraordinary...blames Ukraine for the war, advocates capitulation to Russia. Hard to see why anyone views him as a credible commentator.

[Branislav Slantchev @slantchev]

Absolute fucking asshole.

No European leader has said anything about fighting to the last Ukrainian as this sick bastard asserts. And then he has the temerity to clutch his pearls about how immoral this imaginary statement is while also wildly mischaracterizing the war and the situation in the front.

I hope there is some reckoning for these Kremlin cheerleaders.

[terry christian @terrychristian]

Another one who has done his own 'research'

[Neil Stone @DrNeilStone]

Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine didn't work for Covid.

A different cheap generic drug dexamethasone DID..so we used it. A lot.

So the idea of that ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine was "covered up" in favour of expensive drugs is just a lie

[BUCHANAN: Dublin Time Machine @RobLooseCannon]

The legend of the iconic ring originates in the riverside cottages huddled beside the Corrib near the walls of Galway cty. Claddagh was an ancient Irish speaking fishing village with its own laws and customs, it even elected a local “King”.

The villagers of Claddagh lived off the salmon runs, mending nets and hauling currachs. But they also had another specialist trade. They were goldsmiths.

Around 1675 Richard Joyce, a member of one of the Tribes of Galway, left Ireland for the West Indies, seeking his fortune. Instead, he was captured by Algerian pirates and sold into slavery in North Africa. There, by chance or fate, he was purchased by a Moorish goldsmith.

For fourteen years Joyce learned the craft. The folklore says it was then he fashioned the design of a ring bearing two hands clasping a heart, surmounted by a crown, a token of fidelity for the woman he had left behind on the shores of Galway Bay. Whether this was the first Claddagh ring or a refinement of an existing motif is still debated. As is pretty much every bit of the tall tale.

In 1689, following diplomatic negotiations under King William III, Joyce was freed. His master had been so impressed by his skill, he offered him half his wealth and his daughter’s hand in marriage. Joyce refused and returned home. According to tradition, his sweetheart had waited. He placed the ring on her finger, and they were married. So that definetely happened, or not.

What is not legend is that some of the earliest surviving Claddagh rings, dating from around 1700, bear the maker’s mark “RI”, widely accepted as Richard Joyce’s initials. The design was inspired by the Italian "mani in fede" hands clasped in faith. What distinguished the Claddagh version was the crown, a symbol of loyalty reflecting allegiance to the King of the Claddagh.

By the mid-1700s, goldsmithing began to shift into the city proper.Local tradition held that any fisherman found in Galway Bay without the ring could be punished as he wasnt part of the guild, entitled to fish the waters.

In 1750, Thomas Dillon established what would become the most famous Claddagh ring workshop. The Dillon family moved production from the margins of the city to William Street and later Quay Street, closer to trade, visitors, and the growing tourist economy. While other makers followed, the Dillons became custodians of the tradition, and today they are the only jewellers permitted to stamp their rings with the word “ORIGINAL”.

The 19th century carried the Claddagh ring far beyond the Corrib. Queen Victoria’s visit to Ireland in 1849 brought royal attention to the design. The Famine Queen, along with Queen Alexandra and King Edward VII, wore Claddagh rings supplied by the Dillon workshop, transforming a regional custom into a fashionable symbol.

And it was during that Great Hunger , with families from the Claddagh emigrating to Britain, America and beyond that the ring spread, becoming treasured heirlooms passed from mothers to daughters.

The heart obviously stands for love, the hands represent friendship and the crown is supposed to signify loyalty. But its the way the ring is worn that communicates your personal life.

Worn on the right hand, heart facing out, means single and up for it. Right hand, heart facing in means youre in a relationship. When its on the left hand, heart facing out, youre engaged. On the left hand, heart facing in, youre married.

Buy the Dublin Time Machine a pint and support the DTM Book
https://t.co/U7jtCrOTtb

[Millie Marconi @MillieMarconnni]

A British biologist looked at 200,000 years of human history and found that the entire reason humans broke out of poverty was not intelligence, not language, not even agriculture, but one mechanism so simple a 6-year-old could explain it.

His name is Matt Ridley.

He is a zoologist by training, an evolutionary biologist by career, and in 2010 he wrote a book called The Rational Optimist that quietly argued the most important fact about human progress had been hiding in plain sight for the entire history of economics.

Naval Ravikant has been telling people to read everything Ridley has ever written for the last 15 years. The reason is the argument inside this one book.

For 200,000 years, anatomically modern humans walked around with the same brain you have right now. Same skull size. Same neural architecture. Same raw capacity for language, planning, and abstract thought.

For roughly 190,000 of those years, almost nothing happened. Generation after generation lived and died inside the same Stone Age toolkit their great-great-grandparents had used. Then somewhere around 50,000 years ago, the line on the chart of human progress started to tick upward. Then it bent. Then it exploded.

The question Ridley spent years on was the only question that mattered. What changed.

It was not the brain. The brain had been the same for 190,000 years. It was not language, which had existed long before the takeoff. It was not even agriculture, which arrived only 10,000 years ago and was actually preceded by the upward bend, not the cause of it.

What changed was that humans started trading with strangers.

This sounds too small to be the answer. Ridley argues that it is the answer to almost everything. The moment one human exchanged a useful object with another human from a different group, something happened that no other species on earth had ever done.

Two ideas that had developed in isolation came into contact. The flint knapper learned what the spear maker had figured out. The fisherman from the coast learned what the hunter from the forest had figured out. The two pieces of knowledge fused into something neither side could have produced alone.

Ridley calls this ideas having sex. The phrase sounds frivolous and it is meant to. The point is that ideas, like genes, get better when they combine with other ideas from different lineages.

An idea sitting inside one head, no matter how brilliant the head, eventually hits a ceiling. The same idea exposed to ten thousand other ideas does something genes do under sexual reproduction. It mixes. It recombines. It produces offspring nobody planned.

The cleanest proof of this argument is the most uncomfortable case study in the book. Tasmania.

Around 10,000 years ago, rising sea levels cut Tasmania off from mainland Australia. A population of roughly 4,000 humans was now isolated on an island, with no possibility of contact with the rest of humanity. They had the same brains. The same language. The same starting toolkit as their cousins 150 kilometers north. The natural experiment was now running.

What happened next is something no economist or geneticist had ever predicted.

The mainland Australians kept inventing. Boomerangs. Spear-throwers. Fishing nets. Bone needles for sewing fitted clothes. Watercraft with paddles. Their technology compounded slowly across the centuries.

The Tasmanians went the other way. They did not just fail to invent the new tools their cousins were developing. They started losing the tools they already had. Fishing was abandoned within a few thousand years. Bone tools disappeared. Fitted clothing disappeared. They forgot how to make fire from scratch and started carrying lit firebrands from camp to camp instead, relighting their fires from a neighbor's whenever their own went out.

By the time European explorers arrived in the 17th century, the Tasmanians had the simplest toolkit of any human society ever recorded. Their material culture had gone backward for 8,000 years.

The archaeologist Rhys Jones called it a slow strangulation of the mind.

Joseph Henrich at Harvard later proved with formal mathematical models that there was nothing wrong with Tasmanian brains. There was something wrong with their network. A toolkit requires a critical mass of people exchanging skills to maintain itself.

The act of teaching a skill is imperfect. Every generation loses a small percentage of what the last generation knew. If your population is large enough and trading widely enough, those losses get caught and corrected by someone else who still remembers.

If your population shrinks below a certain threshold and stops mixing with outsiders, the small losses compound until entire technologies disappear.

This is the part that should haunt anyone reading this in 2026.

Intelligence is not a property of the individual brain. Intelligence is a property of the network the brain is connected to. A genius in isolation will produce less than a mediocre thinker inside a dense exchange of other mediocre thinkers.

The thing your ancestors needed in order to break out of 190,000 years of stagnation was not better brains. It was better connections between brains they already had.

The implication for any individual is direct and uncomfortable. If you are smart and isolated, you will be outproduced by people half as smart who are connected.

The most successful people in any field are almost never the smartest people in it. They are the ones positioned at the intersection of the most idea flows. They are reading more authors than their competitors. They are talking to more people from more disciplines. They are in the rooms where ideas from different lineages bump into each other.

Ridley ends the book on the line that sounds optimistic but is actually a warning its this "The future will be invented by people who connect ideas, not by people who guard them."

[Andrew Fox @Mr_Andrew_Fox]

Note what has happened today. Iran insisted on Israel ceasing fire in Lebanon as part of US ceasefire, then made their proxy in Lebanon keep firing at Israel, then used Israel’s response as a pretext to break off negotiations.

They know Washington is desperate for a deal before the world economy drops off a cliff and Americans pay a fortune at the gas pump. Tehran is running rings around Trump. The Iranians have a strategy and Washington does not. This is an absolute tragedy.

[Brian Caulfield 🇺🇦🇮🇪 @BrianCVC]

This is brilliant...

[Nature Unedited @NatureUnedited]

At an aquarium in Japan, after closing time, some clever little otter pups help their grandpa tidy up their toys. As a reward, he gives them ice cubes

[University of Oxford @UniofOxford]

NEW: An Oxford-developed vaccine candidate targeting the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola has received backing from CEPI, accelerating efforts to respond to the epidemic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda.

More info ➡️ https://t.co/cPNNWJFwEN

[Neil Stone @DrNeilStone]

The breakthrough drug that has doubled pancreatic cancer survival time, was borne out of years of hard work and investment

Much of it at the NIH, which has now had funding slashed by RFK Jr and Co in favour of pointless pseudoscientific quackery which will lead to nothing