Max Schmitz

Half baked VC. Metabolic health, AI, climate resilience. Californian in 🇭🇰

[Jordan @SLCLunk]

Jerry West checking out early to avoid seeing another Celtics championship is god-tier hater.

[andrew chen @andrewchen]

Yes a few years back, a big group of Nordic founders came by sand hill. When I asked them their biggest learning on the trip so far, they said-

We have to learn how to pitch our startup in the “American” way

More self promotional, emphasizing the future not the past, talking about what it could be not what it is, playing up even small bits of proof points, etc. Describing usage and telling stories, not just revenue. They told me the investors back home didn’t care for this style.

[Max Schmitz @Max_Schmitz16]

@elonmusk @lexfridman Seems like a combo of Orwell and Huxley has taken over our times. The flooding of society with distractions and the “pills will fix everything” mentality seems to mesh more with Huxley

[Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias]

People do these elaborate takes about Trump’s authoritarian aspirations and then he just comes out and says the president should be allowed to do infinite crimes

[Hernan Cortes @CyberPunkCortes]

What the hell happened in 1990 to cause that exponential growth in healthcare administration?

[M. Nolan Gray 🥑 @mnolangray]

Gmail search is amazing. You can search something like "flight sacramento receipt 2023" and it will somehow manage to serve up literally every email in your inbox that isn't the receipt for the flight you just took to Sacramento.

[Garry Tan @garrytan]

Degrowth is a popular death cult that is cropping up everywhere, in our policy orgs, in universities, among scientists, and in our media

We must fight this death cult and accelerate human abundance beyond these zero-sum self-limiting beliefs

[Garry Tan @garrytan]

Platforms in biotech are an idea whose time has come

To date most have exited not as platforms but as individual drugs, but given there are so many promising approaches it will be a massive boon to humanity if this next generation of biotech platforms bear fruit

[Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 @Noahpinion]

Medical professors blaming colonialism for inflammation.

Historians of science defending speculation without evidence, based on politics.

These are a few small signs that politicization of science is becoming a problem.

https://t.co/0zpIpuwMr9

[Alex Cohen @anothercohen]

I know we’re all bombarded with news right but holy shit how are we not all talking about this??

New Apple Watch can detect early signs of hypertension, diabetes, and sleep apnea.

This is an insane step forward for wearables

[Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca]

THE TECHNO-OPTIMIST MANIFESTO part 1

“You live in a deranged age — more deranged than usual, because despite great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing.”
— Walker Percy

“Our species is 300,000 years old. For the first 290,000 years, we were foragers, subsisting in a way that’s still observable among the Bushmen of the Kalahari and the Sentinelese of the Andaman Islands. Even after Homo Sapiens embraced agriculture, progress was painfully slow. A person born in Sumer in 4,000BC would find the resources, work, and technology available in England at the time of the Norman Conquest or in the Aztec Empire at the time of Columbus quite familiar. Then, beginning in the 18th Century, many people’s standard of living skyrocketed. What brought about this dramatic improvement, and why?”
— Marian Tupy

“There’s a way to do it better. Find it.”
— Thomas Edison

Lies

We are being lied to.

We are told that technology takes our jobs, reduces our wages, increases inequality, threatens our health, ruins the environment, degrades our society, corrupts our children, impairs our humanity, threatens our future, and is ever on the verge of ruining everything.

We are told to be angry, bitter, and resentful about technology.

We are told to be pessimistic.

The myth of Prometheus – in various updated forms like Frankenstein, Oppenheimer, and Terminator – haunts our nightmares.

We are told to denounce our birthright – our intelligence, our control over nature, our ability to build a better world.

We are told to be miserable about the future.

[Calley Means @calleymeans]

We're getting sicker, and we're told solutions are complicated.

This is a cynical lie.

Here are 5 policies the President can implement tomorrow (without Congress) that would transform the health of our children and society.

(1) Ban TV Pharma Ads
➡️The US and New Zealand are the only countries in the world that allow pharma ads.
➡️Pharma money is 55% of TV news spending. The reason pharma spends is not to influence consumers - it is to influence the news itself.
➡️The President can instruct the FDA Office of Prescription Drug Promotion to ban pharma ads tomorrow.

(2) No soda on SNAP (food stamps)
➡️It is criminal that 10% of all SNAP funding goes to sugary drinks - which are leading to one-third of teens to have pre-diabetes.
➡️Using existing drug policy, the President can issue an executive order tomorrow that government money should not subsidize an addictive, toxic substance for kids.

(3) Fire the Corrupt USDA Nutrition Panel
➡️95% of the USDA panel that makes nutrition policy is paid for by food companies.
➡️This panel recommends 10% of a 2-year-old's diet can be added sugar.
➡️The President can fire this panel tomorrow and insist on unbiased guidelines.

(4) No conflicts of interest among NIH researchers.
➡️This sounds like a no-brainer, but it is a radical suggestion.
➡️Currently, there are no conflict-of-interest bans at the NIH and 8,000 researchers have "major" conflicts.
➡️This Is why 40x more money is spent on ways to "manage" cancer than to prevent it -- prevention doesn't make money for pharma.
➡️This can be changed tomorrow.

(5) Reform Insane Ag Subsidies
➡️Today, the federal government subsidizes tobacco more than vegetables.
➡️90% of agriculture subsidies go the components of ultra-processed food (corn, soy, wheat) - distorting incentives for farmers
➡️These subsidies are Implemented by the Ag Department.

We are being distracted from talking about REAL issues like this by design...

[LindyMan @PaulSkallas]

This may be the most tyrannical law ever devised in the history of civilization.

[Alex Cohen @anothercohen]

Good morning

[David Sacks @DavidSacks]

Yellen & Powell said inflation was transitory so they could keep spending & pumping. When it blew up in their faces, the Fed jacked up rates so hard it collapsed a huge bank. Now they want to say it’s startups’ fault—you shouldn’t have kept your deposits there. Give me a break.

[Alex Cohen @anothercohen]

I feel bad for Silicon Valley Bank right now.

They have been the biggest capital partner to founders, employees, and investors over the last decade and they’re being completely turned on by all of them.

If SVB goes under it would be detrimental to the startup community

[FOX Sports: MLB @MLBONFOX]

HE DID IT!!!

Albert Pujols is the 4th player in Major League history to hit 700 Home Runs!

[Picture Day by NIKYBOTZ @picturedaynfts]

Are you ready for Picture Day?! 📷

Don’t miss the bus! Any interaction with this tweet will be considered for whitelist 🎓